We all have plastic in our balls so apparently we're on our way to making some kind of plastic lifeform
this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Plastic is stored in the balls
Grandparents had lead in the brain, I got plastic in my balls
Wonder what's next
Your kids will have death stored in their body.
With our current handling of the planet, probably not much.
Lithium
In which body part?
Left pinky toe's nail
finger in the arse
I never tire of this gag
Apparently also in the penis
There technically has always been natural plastic. Polymers. Rubber is an obvious one. But chitin, DNA, silk, sulfer can become plastic, etc are all polymers.
"Achully-ness" aside. It would be wild to find a plastic based insect. It would probably finally unite all of humanity against a singular cause. I doubt we have enough bombs though.
There are sea snails living near volcanic vents that metabolize the extra iron into shells and plating. I expect we'll see a similar adaptation at some point. Simple organisms issuing plastic in some sort of process that toughens their shells. If left unchecked we may see an evolutionary leap as more things adapt, and a die off as plastic becomes a finite resource. Future generations may argue the merits of artificially supporting the microplastic ecosystem in the same vein that we argue about reducing it.
I agree. It's bound to happen, life tends to take advantage of any situation available.
You've got an interesting idea regarding future generations. I can totally see that happing. Nice thought
magcargo real???
Fascinating premise for a game or movie
This is a perfect shower thought, thank you
Won't be long now until we are plastic based life forms.
Considering everyone's sperm is bathing in plastic rn, who knows lol.
Reminds me of this short sci fi story I just recently listened to on a podcast.
That's the story in text. If you want to hear it read to you, it's CZM Book Club: The Plastic People by Tobias Buckell out on 23 Dec 2023.
Reminds me of Code of the Lifemaker, where mechanical life evolves on Titan. Seemed oddly plausible when I read it, but it's been 20+ years. LOL, maybe it was stupid.
Love CZM and everyone involved!
Same! I originally just tried to limit myself to BtB, but then I listened to ICHH to learn about the Unicorn Ranch, and I ended up learning about so many other topics. Then I kept seeing interesting CPWDCS, so now I listen to some of those.
They turn out so much great content every week, and ICHH has really helped me to better understand more people and issues than I ever would have been able to on my own.
I got started on the original season of ICHH, realized I had been reading Robert’s work at cracked for years, and then mainlined all the BTB episodes. I like all their content but recently I’ve really enjoyed Ed Zitrons Better Offline.
I also really love the cousin shows like Some More News and Knowledge Fight.
I checked out BtB due to constant weird if mouth on Reddit and immediately enjoyed Robert's personality. There were also a lot of Cody and Paul F. Tompkins episodes at the time, and I was also already a fan of them, so that helped as well.
I so want to like Some More News, but it feels to doomy to me and Cody's stage persona is a bit much for me, so I enjoy him better as regular Cody on BtB more.
I also feel the more before I was born stuff that BtB usually focuses on us easier for me to deal with as most of the people are long dead and gone, so it feels more like entertainment. For more current things, I try to stick to "legitimate news" instead of things designed more for entertainment. ICHH is an exception because it covers a lot mainstream news wouldn't touch, and it does it pretty calmly and treats it with seriousness moreso than trying to make it into some kind of bit. Plus they often mention ways to participate or to at least try and help with some of the things. I feel the topics are things important to know, and aren't just things that make me depressed about the whole world.
Hood Politics with Prop is probably the next one I may allow myself to get into.
If you like regular Cody you should check out Even More News, which is Cody and Katy’s podcast without the gimmick. I like both although I do concede it’s a bit dark, I tend to prefer leaning into that myself but thats just preference. Had a crush on Katy for years
Edit: and Prop is fucking awesome
You are truly a person with great taste! 😁
I'll have to check out Even More News.
And discovering that plastic surgeons somehow came first....
There's a short story by Ted Chiang called Exhalation which explores an idea somewhat like this. I highly recommend it.
There's no way plastic based life forms don't emerge from one of the garbage patches, given enough time.
Toy Story 5: After the Apokalypse
This is like what I've been saying, how do we know the microplastics are bad for us? Could be our final form...
It might be the answer we've been looking for!
Probably not.
But maybe!
Thank you for not just trying to redefine basic words as a post.
To your thought, Im not sure if it’d be funny so much as existentially tragic—however plastics are both chemically complex and (as far as I understand) fairly inert so not sure if a form of life could develop with them as their base, so hopefully no such cursed creature will ever walk the physical spheres of the universe we inhabit.
There are pretty much inert because they're ignored by most proteins and are largely stable enought to resist chemical damage (oxydation is the big one). This is the reason we make so much of them, they're useful as containers and it's cheaper to make new containers rather than reuse the old ones.
That being said, it could happen that some biological processes start using plastic as an energy source and/or process it for parts. This is already done in labs with plastic eating bacteria today, where the bacteria produces enzymes capable of breaking the molecular bonds in some plastics.
The main factor is that there is considerably less plastic readily available than there is carbon dioxide, because the carbon dioxide is just there, but in a hypothetical future where the earth is covered in several inches of plastic, chances are that single cell organisms that thrive off of plastic could realistically evolve.
Now would be a good time to start watching Doctor Who (2005) if you haven’t yet 😂
I watched through Peter Capaldi, and quite a few of Jodie Whittaker, if not most.