Poisoned Foods as Recreation

Is this actually true?

Enter humans, who have the uncanny knack of figuring out how to distill, process, or otherwise convert various forms of biological matter into shit that'll have them trippin balls for hours.

Humans are unique in the galaxy because unlike the super tough, durable, bite your head off races, their biology isn't SO good at processing poison that they never are effected by it at all, and they're not like the less tough species that weren't evolutionary equipped to experiment with their medicines just to see which are the most fun to use.

Enter humans with their rather extensive set of cultures and rules on getting high, and that's their export to the galaxy. A new form of entertainment based on chemically altering your brain in a safe way. Suddenly there's a market for all those poison processor implants and gene-tweaks that isn't just for the survival nuts or the military, and for the super tough dudes? Maybe some kind of speciliazed pump can be invented for them to allow the chemicals to bypass their natural safeguards.

I'm not quite sure what I'll be encouraging the party to do in this game, but it'll probably involve crazy shenanigans, smuggling, exploration for the next big high, and other fun things like that.

Thoughts? Additions? Places I can take this? What do you guys think?

>>52363280
>you will never be the Walter White of space, producing and selling large quantities of chili peppers to tweaked-out Martian addicts

>>52363280
You must understand that technically just about everything is poisonous, it's all about dosage. But that would create some interesting bits, not so much in recreational drugs and food, but more in the world of medicine. In your scenario, human medicine would be chemo compared to alien medicine, just because their bodies would fail to shit as mundane as ibuprofen fun fact, with current FDA guidelines ibuprofen would have been approved. Shit is hell on your liver

>>52363396
>Shit is hell on your liver
Even within the guidelines on the box?

>>52363423
Kinda, it won't kill you, nor does use give you any real indications (unless you use it a lot)
The issue is that the window of overuse is very small

>>52363396
>used to take like two-three times the listed dose just to get any effect out of it, solely for painkilling purposes
Fuck. Least I'm not doing that NOW.

>>52363345
That red peppers are actually poison? Yeah, it is.

A lot of animals can't EAT that shit without dying. There's almost no animals out there who ENJOY having pain inflicted on them from eating spicy things, or eating bitter things either.

We are about 90% sure 'hypertasting' or 'picky eaters' are from folks who have left over adaptations from when humans COULDN'T eat that stuff without dying, so picky eaters who can't stand bitter or spicy food have that reaction cause our brains are screaming 'poison spit it out' to us.

>>52363396
That's not entirely true. There's different chemicals and they have different effects, dogs can't really take a lot in terms of heavy spices, or god forbid, chocolate (both poisonous), but they're fine with other drugs we use that don't get you high.

And at the end of the day, 99% of sci-fi is based around misapplied science-facts. If we let that stuff get in the way of cool ideas for settings we'd never get anywhere would we? As long as internal consistency is met, I think it'll be fine surely?

>>52363483
>As long as internal consistency is met, I think it'll be fine surely?
Oh yeah, just wanted to give another thing to think of, other than drugs and food.
Because let's face it, chances are that your players will use medicine a lot more than food or drugs, unless it's really, really roleplay heavy

>>52363463
How small is very small? My aunt killed herself through overmedication, but she was a tiny woman and was popping pills for years.

>>52363478
I took it for migraine headaches until it gave me upper intestine bleeding that hospitalized me.

>>52363345
Humans do handle dietary trauma pretty well. We are one of the few creatures where diarrhea isn't a sign of certain death.

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>>52363396
Ibuprofen isn't really bad on your liver, it's mostly just tough on your stomach lining and then generally only in large doses. The over the counter drug that really kills the liver is acetaminophen, especially if you do any drinking.

>if you drink regularly the liver opens up a metabolic pathway that literally converts tylenol into a substance that directly kills the liver
>tylenol is regularly used by people to deal with hangovers and is put into a lot of other painkillers and cold remedies
>the warnings on the box about liver damage are super vague, lax, and noncomittal
It's a good thing the liver is so good at healing itself or a lot of people would be fucked

>>52363525
sure, but the idea for this is just in the setting. My thought is that most aliens got around the drug problem via direct injection to problem areas rather than just 'swallow two pills and let your digestive and cardiovascular system sort out the rest'

>>52363549
...I was taking it for constant migraines as well, though it wasn't internal bleeding that got me to stop, just the realization that taking handfuls of pills at a time was probably not the best idea.
Now I've got prescription stuff.
>>52363562
Whiiich has acetaminophen in it. Because of course it does.

>>52363354
Could be super fun, I'd definitely play it. You could do hilarious stuff with hallucinogens, look up DMT. Smuggling shipments of space drugs while avoiding the feds and pirates while dealing with the space mafia sounds incredible.

You may want to incorporate human food being a delicacy. If our constant poisoning of food has any benefits, its the rich, savory and incredibly large selection of different tastes and dishes we've been able to make with them. Hell, sometimes we shave gold onto things!

They'd also wouldn't be high priced for just that, no; they'd be also high priced for the medication you have to take before and after eating human meals to strengthen you immune system and help aliens deal with and eject the toxins.

On another thought, humans also could introduce aliens to the "miracle berry", which makes sour and bitter tasting things taste sweet. People will take these and literally bite into lemons like they're candy. I've tried it before, its like lemons taste like they're made out of pure sugar.

>>52363595
The thing was, it was a slow bleed and I didn't notice the side effects of the resultant anemia (one of which was more headaches), so I was basically pouring gasoline on a fire.

>>52363396
>Humans are fucking horrible doctors unless they are treating other humans
>They are as likely to accidentally kill you as they are to cripple you
>But fuck they are surprisingly good at fixing humans

>>52363345

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/11/1111_051111_spicy_medicine.html

Seems pretty true.

>>52363625
Hell, smuggling a fucking CHOCOLATES and CHILI PEPPERS would be fun. Especially chocolate with a chili on it.

>>52363703
sounds like a cool thing to run with. Humanity's largest industrial projects end up being aero and hydroponic stations.

>>52363959
Hersheys being associated with drugrunning is amusing

>>52363483
>A lot of animals can't EAT that shit without dying. There's almost no animals out there who ENJOY having pain inflicted on them from eating spicy things, or eating bitter things either.
It's not "poison". It's just designed to be unpleasant to eat for mammals. Birds can't taste capsaicin, so they don't mind. Plants like peppers want birds to eat their fruits but not mammals because birds will spread the seeds further.

Humans, however, produce endorphin in response to the pain of eating something spicy, so once you get used to it, it becomes pleasant.

>>52363280
>What is alcohol?
The discovery of beer is sometimes considered a contributor to the birth of human civilization, because people settled and organized to make more of it.
So yes.

>>52364127
http://youtu.be/ZNRSHr3b4uA
This ad now takes a new, somewhat sinister twist. A stash of chocolates on seemingly barren had been ransacked by a local aliens, who turned into choco addicts. Now it's time for them to pay for their next fix.

>>52363766
We're a species of Zoidbergs...

>>52363483
Average sized dogs could eat a whole tablet milk chocolate without problems. Sure it's going to get poisonous for them if done too often, or wreck their kidneys if regularly, but they can eat some. A square of black chocolate isn't going to kill anything but the smallest puppiest chihuahua either, and it has to be some pretty high cacao content chocolate at that.

>>52364312
Booze was also cleaner than most water sources, so it was healthier to drink alcoholic liquids than take a risk drinking water that could have bad shit in it.

>>52364495
My 6lb pomeranian ate the last 3/4 (over 2oz.) of a 74% cocoa organic dark chocolate bar and I didn't even notice until I found the empty wrapper a day later. No symptoms at all.

I think cocoa affects some dogs more than others but it's best to not give it to them just to be safe.

>>52364660
Pretty sure the whole 'chocolate is poisonous to dogs' thing is because if people didn't believe that, they'd be feeding their dogs a shitton of chocolate just because in the amounts that ARE toxic to them. Especially the smaller ones.

>>52363280

Humanity as the hedonists of the galaxy? There was an old, old, /tg/ archive on the subject, written in the days of yore.

>>52363280

Source? Google search yields nothing.

>>52368717
cassiopeia quinn

>>52363959
This just adds more layers to the "Mexico is literally made of drugs, murder, and other deadly things" trope.
>chocolate
>chilis
>coffee
>nightshades (tomatoes, squashes, etc.)

>>52369300
Speaking of coffee, apparently caffeine is deadly poison to most other vertebrates, but has a beneficial effect on bees.

>humanity encounters a spacefaring civilization of bee people
>embassies and trading areas are required by treaty to have large coffee plantations nearby
>both sides are quite happy about this
>one day the humans learn that the bee people excrete honey
>war is nearly started when some lance corporal on guard duty asks a passing drone to shit in his coffee

>>52369352
Bee's don't excrete honey.

They vomit it.

>>52369216

Many thanks anon.

>>52364587
This is also why most pre-modern forms of booze have very low alcohol content. There's a reason the verb "to drink" without a description of what you're drinking refers to alcohol in most European-derived languages.

>>52363354
>Thoughts? Additions? Places I can take this? What do you guys think?
Space is an Ocean => Spacers are Sailors => sailors are infamous for getting high/drunk as hard and as often as they can. Some bored space marine spiking the punch at a diplomatic function could lead to a Jonestown type massacre, if you want to use this to spark conflict with a species that can't metabolize ethanol properly.

>>52369695
stealing this idea thankyou!

>>52369524
To be fair, these are aliens, not Earth bees.

>>52363396
Chemo itself probably looks like torture to everyone else.
>So let me get this straight, hew mon.
>You deliberately inject RADIOACTIVE POISON into the BLOODSTREAMS of your elderly and infirm on PURPOSE?
>It's the only thing that'll kill cancers that we can't cut out with knives
>[panicked xeno screaming]

>>52370150
"Have I mentioned that there are microorganisms that can induce cancer in their hosts? Or that occasionally a cancer that is inherently contagious will form?"

>>52368356
got a link by any chance?

>>52370320
I remember the gist of it.
>we make first contact with hulking shark men
>their spaceship is very utilitarian and their vocabularies are sharply limited
>other species were better warriors, engineers, diplomats, and traders
>but none of them had art worth a damn
>we became the creative class of the galaxy
>all was well

>>52363483
>e are about 90% sure 'hypertasting' or 'picky eaters' are from folks who have left over adaptations from when humans COULDN'T eat that stuff without dying, s
No comment of hypertasting, but the vast majority of picky eating is from behavior altering parasites (in this case, bacteria) living in screwed up gut flora.

>>52370150
Unless they've cured it or have a far stabler and more copy-sure DNA equivalent, then they'll have cancer too.

Though, they may have cured theirs.

>>52370277
Hey now, Science wants you to ignore that... even as they push the HPV vaccine as preventing cervical cancer...

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>>52368717
>>52369216
>>52369538

Ugh, I can't believe I just wasted an hour of my life reading that garbage! The webcomic is riddled with plot-holes, the protagonist is an unrepentant mary-sue whose morality flip-flops every other issue, it seeths with virtue signalling, and the webcomic's sole redeeming virtue is its well-drawn mammary glands! I'm willing to tolerate mediocre art, setting, and even plot, but this "webcomic's" absolute shit characterization is simply inexcusable!

>>52370476
really? I thought pickyeating was all hypertasting to a greater or lesser extent?

>>52370497
I think you're overthinking it.

>>52370516
Picky eaters like most foods they don't touch, and find the foods the eat bland/repetitive.
But give them options and they'll pick routine in a snap. It's not about flavor, it's about craving.

>>52370526

I'm a professional critic, it's literally my fucking JOB to overthink plot!

>>52363553
Diarrhea is the number one cause of death.

>>52370669
PAJEET, MY SON

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>>52370635
Hey anon.
Try reading this then.

>>52364861
I'd like to believe this isn't true, but I know someone who's dog starts losing hair and getting skin lesions if it eats anything other than dog chow, and she still keeps giving it lots of food.
So the poor thing's in pain, because the stupid cunt's too busy babying it to take something away for it in order to help it.

>>52369352
Why does this seem vaguely fetishistic?

>>52363280
>poisoned food as recreation
So alcohol?

>>52370877
You have a sick mind.

>>52370669
it's still less lethal in humans than it is in literally anything else.

>>52364861
a chow (medium sized dog) eating a Heresy Kiss isn't going to keep over dead but it'll probably get sick from it. A chow eating a chocolate bar is probably in danger.

>>52371026
just double checked.

It's 20mg of toxic ingredient per pound of dog to reach 'stomach pump the dog or it's dead' levels. So it depends largely on your cacao content.

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>>52370984
Seriously though, it doesn't say where they excrete honey from, which means it's likely one or more of several things:
It comes out of their mouth = Kissing
It comes out of skin = Licking them
They have some sort of tube = Sucking honey out of tube
It comes out of genitalia/ass = Shouldn't it be obvious?

>>52371055
to compare. Humans can eat 1 gram of that particular extract per pound of body weight before it starts to reach lethal dosages. It's also a matter of the actual stuff in the cacao.

What that means is that an 80lb human has to eat around 5.7 kilograms of average chocolate to overdose on it. An 80 lb dog, by comparison, would die from 114 grams.

>>52363483
Dogs are frequently alergic to chocolate, it's not actually poisonous. My dog will gorge itself on snickers if it can sneak a bag of them (better luck next year Trick or Treaters) and come out fine.

>>52363345
>>52363483
>>52363785
The actual active ingredient we taste as spiciness, Capsaicin, has no effect on non-mammals. It is entirely evolved in an attempt to stop creatures with molars that can break open and destroy the seeds of the plants from eating the peppers, while allowing creatures like birds that will just scatter the seeds everywhere to be unaffected. It has absolutely no cellular effect, and simply binds directly to the temperature regulator sites of mammalian cells, causing them to falsely report that they are experiencing extreme heat. This can still be lethal due to physiological shock responses, but capsaicin is extremely non-toxic otherwise. It is very likely that aliens would find it much less poisonous than most other stuff in our diets.

The fact that peppers also contain antimicrobials is completely separate. Capsaicin is likely an evolutionary spinoff of those microbials. Plants in hotter climates have to deal with more pest species so they evolve much more complicated chemical cocktails to try and deter them.

>>52371106
Your math is wrong. According to the 1 gram per pound, the person would have to be 5000 pounds to start to OD from 5 kilos of chocolate

>>52371596
>>average chocolate
>so not pure cocoa
Didn't notice that line. Oops

>>52371596
Sorry, I should have been more clear. The gram weight is the actual toxic compound -inside- of chocolate.

I worked backwards from the measurements of 'how much chocolate would it take to kill a man' and the article also provided how large a dosage of the actual compound inside of chocolate was necessary based on body weight.

I worked backwards from there.

>>52371634
yeah that probably contributed.

>>52370827
those kind of people are scum. my friends parents overfed their dachshund (long sausage dog) so much that it's fucking spine broke and they had to put the poor thing out of it's misery

>>52371006
yeah, right now

not in an natural setting

>>52363357
Holy shit, I just had a massive flashback to this YA book I read back in fifth grade or so where alien bodysnatchers were walking among humans, but red pepper was ridiculously addictive to them and also actually killed them if they ate too much.

Anyone else know what I'm talking about? Can't remember the name for the life of me.

Lol! This is turning into a discussion about how humans are better than aliens! That's silly!

>>52370497
>52370497
And butts. Don't forget the butts.

>>52372139
eeeeven in a natural setting. yeah, it's HIDEOUSLY dangerous even still, but even today humans can handle it better than just about any other species can.

If you want to get technical, we also survive having our limbs chopped off and going into shock better than anything else, so that might be more closely linked to our ability to survive diarrhea than our superior gut flora.

>>52373202
I did say it was almost certainly going to end up as a HFY thread. This is more or less the topic that started the original humanity fuck yeah thread.

>>52373881
lol its still cool though

but what if we take it the other way!

What if aliens don't need to have fun to be happy?

What if humans are the junky hedoniists of the alien civilization!? lol

>>52373904
possibly, but I'm having trouble imagining what a civilization that doesn't need entertainment would be like.

I mean, come on, there's basically two forms of industry, the industry of needs and the industry of entertainment, and almost all of culture falls into the later.

>>52363562
>>52363595
Doctors have outright said that if it was introduced today Tylenol probably wouldn't have passed FDA safety regs for over the counter medicine.

Fortunately I don't drink, so i'm free to take either or. I find acetomephanine is best for muscle aches, ibuprofine is best for swelling/nerve pain.

>>52373904
What if one of the main alien civilizations don't feel the need to be happy?

They're a theocratic race of aggressive but calculating warriors who consider it their holy duty to bring order to the universe and all the lesser races. They expand because they believe that it is the divine will, they have no real entertainment-oriented culture to speak of.

>>52373954
lol I neeeeeeeever take tylonol because its bad bad bad. alcohol is all the painkiller I need lol jk

>>52373981
lol I like this! I could be a good future scifi commedy

>>52374003
You should read Consider Phlebas.

>>52373981
>>52374003
>Now I have to run a sci-fi comedy using the PARANIOA system.

>>52370492

Science doesn't *want* anything, anon.

Actually, science could be a pretty cool human trait now that I think about it. Sure, everybody learns from observation, but humanity has an uncanny willingness to experiment.

"I wonder what happens if I poke/eat/fuck it..."

>>52374150
It's kind of hard to justify space age technology without that impulse. Unless you involve the usual progressor/ ancient aliens! tropes that get stale very quickly.

>>52372397
Animorphs by any chance? Can't recall too well, but it rings a bell.

>>52374211
What if the aliens stumbled into hyperdrive by chance?
Like, say, they have this nagging to randomly try new combinations. Like, they can't help tinkering with technology, it's like an impulse they can't stop. Like DF dwarves' Fey Mood or something like that. While curiosity is more controlled, they have no concept of it.
So here we have a race that bumbled through science because they're somewhat autistic, and is basically driven by bursts of sporadic intelligence.
Their masterpieces would then be analyzed by other races and perhaps reverse-engineered, maybe? Because after these bursts of inspiration/intelligence they revert back to their 'normal' selves and cannot perceive exactly how and why their masterpiece work.

tl;dr: what if they can't help it?

>>52375118
Presumably these aliens had to start at prehistoric technology at some point. If their whole culture is essentially 100% based of random tinkering without any understanding of underlying concepts, starting with sharp rocks and ending with hyperdrive... that would be a quite alien race indeed.

>>52375181
Or maybe they abuse their Fey Moods. Like, as soon as one creates a masterpiece that does something good, it would be copied perfectly down to the tiniest detail they can. They still don't know how it really works - all they know is 'place power here, attach it to a ship, and point it the other way of where you're going' for their FTL engines. It just works!

>>52363345
A lot of animals eat stuff that's toxic to a lot of other animals. Either because they're not affected by it, or because they're reasonably resistant and very hungry.

As for recreational drugs, that's shit which IS poisonous to us, which we intentionally take what we hope is a less than lethal dosage of. And we don't seem to be the only animals around doing that either.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/wild-parrots-opium-highs_us_58d43f31e4b03787d3569797

>>52369352
>caffeine is deadly poison to most other vertebrates

Swallow 20g of it and you'll notice that it can be quite lethal to mammals too.

>>52373981
That's gonna end with Hatsune Miku hijacking a carrier, isn't it?

>>52375246
I don't know if they would necessarily have a society in any way humanity does. You could have an intelligent non-sentient race of space ants like this though. I'm pretty sure ants don't have architects who figure out exactly how to build tunnels and mounds, or farmers who actually figure out how to farm insects and fungi... they just do it instinctively.

>>52371492
I attempted to disinfect the wound with pepperspray once, expecting capsaicin to kill the bacteria. I feel dumb now.

>>52372397
There's an Alien in my Breakfast Cereal?

>>52373202
>>52373295
>>52373904
Anon, you have to be 18 to post on 4chan.

>>52374150
>>52375181
Made me think of http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-001-ex-j

so in this setting we have

>literal "spicers" being spice smugglers right alongside drug-runners.

>do individual planets regulate importation based on the average lethality of consumables?
>"I swear officer I'm just importing hydrocarbon fuel, yes, ethanol is a valid and legal fuel source."

>human doctors are the zoidbergs of space, horrifying in the ham-fisted(to other aliens) application meds.

>accidental assassinations because some asshole spiked the punch-bowl

>human-food parlours with complimentary anti-death drugs so aliens can eat and not die.

>I wonder what human "drug culture" translates to in space?

>what other cultural variances would be fun or interesting?

what else guys?

>>52377658
A planet with no anti-fungal defenses in its native fauna was accidentally wiped clean of all sentient life when a French crew dropped by with an innocent gift of bleu cheese.

>>52377887
PERFECT

>>52377658
>"I swear officer I'm just importing hydrocarbon fuel, yes, ethanol is a valid and legal fuel source."
My sides have been confiscated by the authorities holy shit

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>>52377658
Bless this thread

>>52364127
Gives a new meaning to "chocolaholics."

>>52375118
That sounds a lot like the novakids from starbound

>>52375393
...so how'd it feel to essentially inject stonefish venom into your leg?

>>52377658

I'm not sure how it fits in exactly, but there could be groups of humans that liked pufferfish on Earth that go around looking for poisonous animals and figure out how to prepare them to be edible.

>>52381329
Like a bad decision.

>>52384505
That sounds like a quest hook to me. It's a perfect fit for sending small groups of people on distant adventures to wacky locales to get up close and personal with monsters.

>>52385276

Good point, I feel like groups of humans looking for anything alien they can try to turn into the tasty food would be great for fetch hooks. Get soil samples from multiple planets to use to try growing grapes for wine. Bone marrow from predators on one planet baked with spices smuggled in.

Don't forget deep alien sea spearfishing.

>>52372397
We all know aliens love the Reeses, man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mQzmK670yI

>>52387134

I was going to post this if someone else didn't.

>>52363280

A similar idea I've been playing with is about hunger. The idea would be that humans evolved through some rough climactic times: large seasonal variation, ice ages, the odd drought. Most other sentient species have evolved with some kind of perennial food source that's high calorie enough to support a big 'ol brain.

Humans are like people who periodically went hungry as kids. They have an obsession with food by the rest of the galaxies standards. Food as a social ritual, food as an emotional stimulant, food as art, food as disease, to a alien, humans are what would happen if Gordon Ramsay managed to have a baby with Anthony Bourdain.

If you want to add an HFY bit, bring up survival cannibalism. The idea that hunger is such a powerful motivator that humans will eat each other would kind of freak out something that didn't really have the same concept of hunger. Or bring up type two diabetes. Humans, given unlimited calories, will sometimes eat themselves to death. The implication being that if a human has a hunger for something, there's no enough and there's no moral boundary.

If you don't want to go all HFY, then humans are the weird obsessives who do things with crude chemistry that will make you understand why you have olfactory glands.

>>52375309
>20g of caffine
Dude that nearly 600 cokes or nearly 200 red bulls. Of course that would fucking kill you.

>>52387830
btw, it takes roughly 9300 mg of caffine to kill your average human. That's a little over 200 cokes.

This is quite possibly the best HFY thread to have ever existed.

>>52377658
If there are any fish-like or cephalopod-like aliens, they'd get mightily offended at the Japanese and Korean tradition of freshly killed fish, squid, or octopus being served with soy sauce that acts as a neurotransmitter so the muscles twitch and contract randomly, giving the appearance of life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxQmOR_QLfQ

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>>52394493
That's horrifying

>>52363280
>Poisoned Foods as Recreation
What is booze

>>52363423
Sustained use will kill your digestive system. My mother's been taking it regularly for years, and has developed major issues from it.
Paracetamol is what kills your liver with overdoses.

And that's not even counting what the stuff does to your brain. Ibuprofen basically knocks me stupid, so I can't take it.

>>52394493
Would you get offended by a twitching rat that an alien was eating?

>>52394769
If he was doing it at the dinner table possibly. At least break the thing's neck and let it die before you sit down.

>>52394787
Well yeah. But you'd probably be offended by anything that was twitching. A cephalopod alien isn't going to find a twitching octopus especially offensive.

>>52377658
this post alone made making this thread worth it.

>>52394913
ehn, I probably would be more offended by a freshly slain, still bleeding, or even not bleeding, just raw, hominid.

>>52397072
did it?

I just listed what was already talked about...

>>52397131
Mostly the line about ethanol. I just woke up and fell out of my chair laughing so hard my dog came in to find out if I was alright. Considering she sleeps outside, that means she had to shoulder butt the exterior door hard enough to bump it open.

>>52387481
Both. Both of these sound good.

>>52394493
>Nippon
Not even once, anons. Not even fucking once.

>>52387481
>A similar idea I've been playing with is about hunger.
Look up the Toba Catastrophe. That's basically the key thing that has shaped human culture. A famine-induced population crash. There's also the fact that we developed tools shortly before a major ice age.
Humans keep their sick, wounded, and infirm around, we're compulsively nice to our own kind, we wreck ecosystems because we're convinced every little scrap of a calorie may be the difference between surviving the winter and freezing to death.
But when we waste food and chew through resources stopping other humans getting hold of less resources than we spent stopping them, and wreck the world's economy for decades recovering from it, just to make a point.

We torture animals to make ingredients, we twist plants to our whims, and letting things partially decompose before eating them is a common way of topping up symbiotic bacteria.

>>52398207
>We torture animals to make ingredients
What do we torture instead of outright killing?

>>52400236

Ducks slaughtered to make foie gras are force fed before being slaughtered to fatten their liver. Some people also call the way non-free range chickens are farmed for eggs is inhumane.

>>52398207
Are these meant to be traits and actions that are unique to humanity?

>>52374255
It was oatmeal, not pepper.

>>52400476

Kinda. I'm not the guy you're responding to but I had a similar idea upthread. Obviously it's speculation; most of these basic ideas are taking some circumstance or trait, assuming it's unique or rare enough to be locally unique, and then trying to figure out the what if for species without it.

My idea was that the normal pattern for development to sentience involves an accidental domestication of a species that serves as a food source. Say wolves figure out how to keep chickens, or rats figure out how to cultivate tubers, or something. You get a species with enough regular calories to fuel a larger brain, that has to be social, and boom away to the races.

Combine that with the further assumption that earth has unusually large seasonal climate variation, and unusually common glaciation, and you get the idea that food scarcity was a far bigger issue for humans than it was for other sentient species.

Now, the various means of food preparation or things we will do over group competition for resources may not be unique. The way it conceives of humanity as unique is how central and how obsessive we are over food, and how that hunger and the fact that our biology is geared to situations where we could find ourselves starving at any moment colors what we think of as reasonable.

Or you could turn this completely on its head. Plants and animals that are toxic to other species are now delicacies for humans, and now everyone is exporting their toxic produce to the living filtration systems that are humans.

>>52402286
That has the potential to be completely Monty Pythonesque.
>Your punishment for absconding with the Princess of Babulon 18 is one month's confinement in the field of poisonous plants, with nothing to eat but their toxic fruit! Bwahahahaha!
>What, you mean that cherry tomato patch over there? Can I at least bring some bread and cheese with me so I can make sandwiches?

>>52403581
>Bread AND cheese!? You must have a deathwish, mon-keigh. Let nobody say that we are not merciful, you shall have as much rye bread and brie as you like! We hope your honorable suicide will free your soul from the burden of your sins.

>>52370635
Well, we're not paying you for this one, so maybe just turn it off. It's a goofy webcomic about 70% space babes, 5% story and 25% references to other sci-fi material.

>>52403905
>H-he simply won't die, my lord!
>He has even requested toxic fermented grape-derived ethanol in order to end his suffering, but it simply leaves him in a stupor
>he has lost his finer motor control, and shouts about nothing! He has become completely delirious with the poison!
>Surely this is punishment enough! I beg you to pardon the man and allow us to give him the medical help he desperately needs!

>>52397112
What, no seasoning?! Not even roasted? What a waste.

File: ultros.png (899B, 128x94px) Image search: [Google]

899B, 128x94px

>>52407009
What do you get when a Catholic saint encounters a tribe of tropical cannibals?
A Man for All Seasonings

>>52407264
Dammit.

>>52372397
>>52372397
https://books.google.com/books?id=jiIv7Glq1Q4C&pg=PA45&lpg=PA45&dq=Aliens+eat+red+peppers+pizza&source=bl&ots=tcyCdUEOE9&sig=S5JuMMMOWB4y_MJlN0gPEGN7lzY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiSl4_hy_jSAhXERSYKHZ3KDfkQ6AEINjAE#v=onepage&q=Aliens%20eat%20red%20peppers%20pizza&f=false

Aliens for Breakfast. Read it in school.

>>52375904
That's it. 'Aliens For Breakfast'. Shit, I wildly misremembered the target age group for that book.

Thanks, anon.

>>52407647
>>52407616
Thank you too. Should have read thread before posting.

>>52363280
This is all implying that gut parasites don't exist anywhere but earth, so humans would have to be quarantined every time they visited aliens to stop them from catching anything

>>52363280
>the ability to eat stuff that is actually poisonous to you and survive it isn't exactly the most common skill for macrobiological beings.

Yeah

Because that's what poisonous MEANS

Nothing is just "poisonous." Things are poisonous TO something, when consumed at certain dosages.

If you can eat a lot of it no problem, that's not because you can eat poison, that's because the thing ISN'T poison (to you).

>>52363423
>Even within the guidelines on the box?

Oh fuck yeah. My mother had a patient on it at 2/3rds of the maximum dosage and he almost died from internal bleeding when his stomach gave out.

>>52400324
I find chicken factories amusing. They put a bunch of little eggs in an oven & take out chicks some time later. Then, the chickens are in these crowdes little places where moving walls herd them around.

>>52400236
>>52400324
>foie gras
Pretty much. You literally force-feed a duck until it's liver goes wrong.

>>52400324
>Some people also call the way non-free range chickens are farmed for eggs is inhumane.
PETA say that. Chickens are jungle birds and don't need personal space or companionship. And if allowed near other birds, will peck/claw them to death.