I remember when I found out other people chop off the tops of strawberries. I was getting stoned with a bunch of older kids and popped a whole strawberry, top and all, in my mouth. And everyone started laughing and ragging on me for being so high i ate the whole strawberry and I just had to go with it and pretend like I hadn’t eaten every single strawberry of my life like that
Poe one hundred percent has a space Instagram that’s nothing but pictures of BB-8 with captions like “bb can’t get up the stairs!!!!!!!😂😂😂😂”
“😞bb forgot to ⚡️recharge⚡️so they’re 😴😴 today”
“round bb!!!!!⚪️ today it’s more like round baby!!!👶🏻 because they’re very cute and they kept me up all night w the noises. new rule, no late night beeps”
“🐝🐝8️⃣”
It’s the third most popular Instagram in the Resistance. The second is Leia’s official account which she uses almost entirely to post VINTAGE pics of the Resistance leaders: space poncho Luke napping in the Falcon, C-3PO braiding Leia’s hair, Han on the beach looking suspiciously post-coital (Ben, when he was still Ben, just commented on this, “MOM”).
The first most popular is Chewbacca’s. It’s nothing but selfies. The Wookie knows his best angles.
Upworthy carried a story summarizing an experiment demonstrating that rats exhibit empathy. Why do I care about this? Because the graphics showing the experiment on Upworthy made me smile, and smiling is good. Here’s the link in case you want to watch the video embedded in the story.
Some scientists ran an experiment to demonstrate that. Here’s how it worked:
The scientists put a rat in water (which rats hate). Not enough to hurt the rat, but enough to annoy it.
Then they put another rat in a safer, dry area with a door it could open to save the first rat.
When the dry rat heard the damp, miserable rat get upset, she came to the rescue.
Still not satisfied with the result, the scientists ran a more complex test.
What if you bribe the dry rat with food? Will she ignore it to rescue the wet rat in the next chamber?
Scientists presumed it would be easier for the not-in-peril rat to take the obvious selfless route when it was given only one choice. But what if they gave her a delicious bribe (chocolate cereal) and then let her choose between saving her friend and a buffet?
The rats, by a significant margin, still usually saved their friend before getting their delicious bribe. What does that mean?
Rats might care more about each other than things like food, and that prioritization might be encoded in their DNA.
Why should we care about super-thoughtful rats?
It is often argued that humans are inherently selfish — that without guidance, we would all default to killing and stealing and an “every person for themselves” mentality. That we only help others if it helps us. That evolution can’t make us selfless; it’s something we have to force ourselves to do.
But if rats show human-like qualities (they laugh like us, they dream like us, they like to have selfless lovers) like altruism, that means it isn’t a human-learned behavior. It could be encoded in our DNA. It means humans could be empathetic and kind by default.
It also means that rats and humans have more in common than we think.
An adorable rat not spreading the plague and hugging a tiny teddy bear. Much empathy.
EY FATTY BOOM BOOM 