{"id":103142,"date":"2026-06-21T03:00:43","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=103142"},"modified":"2026-06-20T09:38:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T13:38:44","slug":"explaining-our-failure-to-expand-beyond-earth-to-an-alien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/06\/21\/explaining-our-failure-to-expand-beyond-earth-to-an-alien\/","title":{"rendered":"Explaining our failure to expand beyond Earth to an alien"},"content":{"rendered":"

Devon Eriksen<\/a> pens an ultra-short story in response to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s claim that “we” need to take a lot more money from Elon Musk to benefit “everyone”:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This-individual has an outstanding query for you-individual. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, Dee-six-twenty-four-prime? Ask your question. <\/p>\n

When we-collective initialized language-idea-exchange with you-collective, you-collective had no settlements on the surface of other planets in your-collective own star system. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet you-collective possessed advanced chemical propulsion technology sufficient to leave your-collective native gravity well. For over a hundred cycles around your-collective star, you-collective possessed this. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why did you not use it? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, all that technology was worth a lot of money. <\/p>\n

Value-consideration-tokens, yes. Continue. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So we decided to take it away from the really talented geniuses who built, break it up for parts, sell the parts, and throw a big free stuff party. <\/p>\n

A … free stuff party? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, for like, average dudes. The kind of guys who don’t know calculus or anything. The ones you’d want to have a beer with. We thought we’d buy them some stuff. <\/p>\n

Instead of leaving your home planet? <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. <\/p>\n

This-individual understands, now. Conclusions have been submitted to collective-thought-matrix. Please line you-collective up in an orderly fashion for processing, classification, and reassignment and\/or biomass reclamation.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Devon Eriksen pens an ultra-short story in response to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s claim that “we” need to take a lot more money from Elon Musk to benefit “everyone”: This-individual has an outstanding query for you-individual. Yes, Dee-six-twenty-four-prime? Ask your question. When we-collective initialized language-idea-exchange with you-collective, you-collective had no settlements on the surface of other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,84,57,44,13],"tags":[1006,85],"class_list":["post-103142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-government","category-humour","category-space-science","category-usa","tag-elonmusk","tag-sf"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qPA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103142"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103148,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103142\/revisions\/103148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}