To provide the diametric opposite to @Morgrim’s Things Eldrae Might Appreciate thread, this one provides a space for things that they would definitely not appreciate. (Primarily stupidity and barbarianism, I suspect.)
The starting-off entry can be “Please Savor the Flavor Responsibly”, and other such disclaimers at the end of beer commercials, on the grounds that
What are the things, exactly, that you’re supposed to do irresponsibly? Everything else?
If you have to be warned to consume intoxicating substances responsibly, you’re not responsible enough to consume intoxicating substances, period. And that’s between you and your tort insurer.
In the same vein (commercials), drug advertisements:
1: Why am I getting advertisements for pharmaceuticals? I’m not a doctor, do you expect me to plan my medical regimen? Because that’s what I pay my doctor for.
2: Could you provide a little more info than “this is intended to treat X disorder”, maybe substitute that in place of the clips of happy people?
3: Ah, yes. The possible side effects are “everything between a cough and spontaneous death”. Thank you, that narrows it down greatly, very informative.
Because the theme “you should respond to the census in order to ensure you get your fair share” is pretty much the worst. That’s not how you appeal to self-interest, and even if it was, you shouldn’t appeal to people’s self-interest to get them to fulfil their civic duties obligations. That’s something you do because you’re not a defaulting sack of crap.
…oh, wait, this is a sémódarmóníë, right? Never mind that last.
Further to this particular thread, I should like to submit Operation Crossroads as further evidence for the “clearly, humans don’t actually have souls” file.
Nah. The record clearly shows that it was Admiral Blandy who was missing a soul. (eg. his involvement in the Mk. 14 torpedo fiasco). The worst you can say for the rest is they were missing their brains.
The Mark 14 Torpedo fiasco is somewhat infamous in my hometown, because that’s where they confirmed the depth issue. One of the testers’ “genius” [1] moves was using a correctly weighted dummy warhead and setting up their target facing a very gently sloping beach, so that after firing the torpedo would end up in a location from which it could be retrieved with just a tractor and some engineers with snorkels.
It’s a lot easier to get people to listen to your testing when you aren’t “wasting” their rare and expensive torpedoes in the process, apparently.
[1] i.e. “hang on, why weren’t they already doing this?!”
If there is an AH story that I’ve wanted to write for years, this is the basis of it. Namely, one of the early commanders (mid to late 1942) of the submarine force at Pearl Harbor went “either all of my captains are incompetent or there’s something wrong with the torpedoes. Since I’m pretty sure my captains can count past ten with their pants on and past twenty with their shoes on, there’s something wrong with the torpedoes.”
Some rounds of testing later, some screaming of BuOrd that their perfect wonder weapon wasn’t to be expended in tests because it was perfect (after all, we invented it!), and then a series of very detailed memos with abstracts were sent to Admiral Nimitz and Admiral King. And yes, that Admiral King. Who, according to legend, read the memo, waited just long enough to make sure everyone at BuOrd had received their copies and then went down to the BuOrd offices. And in his usual, polite manner that if BuOrd didn’t fix the problems that has been clearly documented about the Mark 14 torpedo, he was going to re-institute keelhauling as a punishment for the US Navy.
Apparantly all of those meetings with BuOrd were somehow not minuted. Odd that.
At any rate, while the war probably comes to an end earlier if the torps work, I’m not sure how much earlier. The atomic bombs can’t be much earlier than they were, ditto the threat of the Soviets invading. I could see setting up a blockade and bringing out the rice blight they had prepared, but I suspect the Japanese could have held on for quite a while.
One wonders what King would have made of the eldrae? “They have a monarchy? They’re not BRITISH are they?”
I think it may have had more impact than commonly realised. Getting the Mark 14s working was effectively the turning point of the “area around Indonesia” campaign; Australia and New Zealand went from being under siege and acting as a distraction drawing off Japanese forces, to turning the tables and starting to methodically dismantle their logistics trains. Hitting their fuel supplies was important.
On an alt-history perspective, when certain individuals within the Nazi party realised they were going to be overrun, several submarines were loaded up with significant chunks of the Axis’ nuclear program to try and relocate it to Japan. The Allied submarine coalition operating out of Western Australia managed to intercept at least one. I suspect the war would have gone VERY differently if there were thoughts that Japan could retaliate with atomic bombs of their own. In hindsight we know they wouldn’t have been able to, they didn’t have enough time to finish the research even if they had all the resources, but the USA didn’t know that. Just the potential could have completely shifted how things were handled.
I have just topped up my morning coffee with “organic”, meaning unhormonalized, half-and-half.
I am pretty sure that the sort of situational metaphors that gave rise to that particular term are not at all appreciated by the programmers of language-translation systems, who have to ask why the hell we feel the urge to label some of our food as carbon-chemistry-based when it is manifestly all carbon-chemistry-based.
So, I learned a while back that, at least in the USA, HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) no longer has to be listed as such on ingredient lists, now being allowed to be labeled as simply ‘sugar’. This sort of intentional deception, I feel, would be rather… ‘irritating’[1] to the eldrae, especially given that IIRC there are at least some health issues linked to HFCS.
[1] ‘irritating’ being an understatement of indeterminate (though most likely quite substantial) magnitude.
Yeah, there that would be quite magnificently problematic.
(“If you mean fructose, say fructose; sugar, while permissible, is an excessively general term and you should either say which sugar [chemically] or which sugar [in terms of origin] to make chefs and diners happy with your product, but under no possible definition or meaning of the word is corn syrup a type of sugar. I suggest you fix this before you end up under hortatory sanction and facing multiple commercial fraud suits.”)
By accident, we recently got a carton of “fat-free half and half”, labelled clearly as such. I was rather morally offended as that seems to be within millimeters of fraud. Would that trigger the eldrae thae same way as the HFCS issue?
“They’re going to sue the one of the six biggest food production companies in the world, what are we going to do?”
“File a ‘friend of the court’ brief, because there’s a case here that is pretty much raining soup and I want this firm to have the biggest f(YAY!)king bucket we can and second in line so we can get to the most out of this case.”
“You’re kidding, right? This is the sort of thing that can put us out of business!”
“No, this is the sort of thing that we either get in on the case, make sure that we can both nail some deserving scrotes to the nearest walls, and protect some of our biggest clients by making sure that they’re first out the gate when the new rules come down or we drown when this tidal wave rolls right over us.”
There was an issue here with a certain brand of socks. The front of the packet said they were PURE BAMBOO. The blurb contained the line “Pure Cotton fibres keep feet dry.” The ingredients list said “80% Bamboo, 20% Spandex”.
The consumer protection magazine commented they have no idea what these socks are actually made of, and the manufacturer got ordered to go fix their labelling. They were not fined, possibly because the packaging is so obviously wrong that it was assumed to be a stupid mix-up instead of attempted fraud, and because nobody reported suffering anything negative before they got yanked from shelves.
