this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 193 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (4 children)

Both the US and Russia have spent my entire life cooperating on the most ambitious space endeavor the planet has (the ISS), why are we trying to create some kind of ideological wedge between the two countries on the one issue we seem to agree on? Don't we have enough of those?

[–] Rhoeri@piefed.world 61 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Because tankies don’t like nuance.

[–] kautau@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago

Yeah one of my favorite little stories / poems is something I read on Tumblr years ago. It's currently attributed to Swan Jolras:

we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering "is there anybody out there" and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us— we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we'd never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won't be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we'll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won't be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we're people, too! you're not alone any more! , maybe we'll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

The astronauts of today from various nations literally live and work together in shared space stations, less concerned with who's tribe is better and more concerned with, you know, space, which is vast and doesn't give a shit about our petty differences

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 27 points 2 days ago

This has some tankie level vibes. It’s referencing the Cold War era. Though I seem to remember as a kid in the 80s learning about Russia’s Venus crafts. This is like reverse propaganda.

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Exactly. And let's be real, both countries are absolute shit.

[–] trolololol@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Oh yes. The world would be much better if they could self destroy or destroy each other while leaving everybody else to their own problems, like Switzerland is famous for.