40 Comments
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Cheri Collins's avatar

"Big, fleshy locusts and parasites" Yep, spot on! I would so much prefer to focus my worry and dread on this bacterium. Instead, it inspires hope . . .

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Robin Wilding's avatar

😆 I'm glad I could give you a perverse sense of hope Cheri.

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Robot Bender's avatar

Cue the theme from "The Andromeda Strain."

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Robin Wilding's avatar

😆 The only thing that cued was my flashbacks

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john king (MY HUMBLE OPINION)'s avatar

Perhaps, we can coat Musk, Bezos Et al in this adaptive new bacterium, and send them on a sacrificial scouting mission to Mars. That sounds like the perfect testing ground for their Dark Enlightenment Sovereign Individual philosophy.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

😆😆 Solid idea, John.

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Teri Gelini's avatar

AGREE!

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MastiffSal's avatar

Need a space craft big enough for certain politicians and a whole swathe of Israeli's as well as the techies. Basically, if they're mad about power, money or genocide squeeze them in. We can always tie the door closed, like the boot of an old car with a sofa in it.

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Taryn's avatar

Yes, too many don't realize we're one super-pandemic away from becoming a was. The smallest things are the deadliest: bacteria, viruses, nuclear particles.

We really don't understand what we're f*cking with, and yet, we do it anyway.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

That last line is exactly it, we don't know what we're doing but do it anyway.

So...if you believe in aliens. I do, and the American government has confirmed it. Spotting tend to cluster around nuclear facilities and weapons sites and tests. My hope for humanity is that they're going to keep us from blowing ourselves up. ...I may have to write a piece on this 😆

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Heidi L's avatar

So many things can make us a "was" at this point and the current US regime seems determined to make that happen. Days like today make it seem like a not-so-bad idea.

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

Thank you! Really interesting article, Prof. Wilding. Never thought I would get science news from my favorite Canadian

comedian. You are PFA!

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Glad you liked it! My science stuff generally doesn't do too well, and fair--wtf do I know lol. But it's so much fun to write. So I'm glad you appreciate it Linda :)

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

Please keep writing it! Science for laypersons (dummies) is more fun when you write it! I also appreciate what it takes for you to write about it. Researching and fact checking can be exhausting. So take care of yourself.

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Annabel Youens's avatar

I will prepare for the apocalypse now.

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Only now? 😆

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ER's avatar

agreed!

Let's not study "space bacteria" right now, eh?

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Sigh, we're doing it. Because we're dumb.

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Lee Neville's avatar

Mad scientist fuckers we are as a species - "Just poke it" or better yet "Wonder what it tastes like" seems to be the primal urge.

Consider we grow wheat, grind it up to flour, add sugar, spices and we add our tamed unicellular creature (baking yeast) to make the dough rise, then off into the oven then bake into tasty cinnamon raisin buns, which we can cover them with tasty icing. Then we eat them, covering our stupid fleshy finger appendages in sticky ooey-gooey tastiness to lick off ecstatically... That there is applied science!

Want to make a bet the new space bug gets tested for what it does to milk - aka a new cheese! Or to a vat of malted water - i.e., space beer! Or added to a vat of sweetened raw cabbage and red chili - i.e., space kimchi.

Or kinked up in a cartel lab to a opioid precursor for the next rad club dance tab. Space drugs! Whoop!

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Robin Wilding's avatar

Spot on, what does it taste like and poke it. We're just babies with bank accounts.

😆😆😆 That entire second paragraph is phenomenal.

But space drugs--now you're talking!

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Mark Hayes's avatar

What I've always really wanted to know is what seriously unhinged motherfucker looked at a puffer fish and thought...

Mmmmmm, good eatin'!

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

Love this! What a mind you have!

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Lee Neville's avatar

Awww shucks! *Blush*. All credit goes to Robin - she's the OG that inspires!

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

She is that :)

But sshhh,

ẃe're going to give her a big head.

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Lee Neville's avatar

But if we give her a BIG HEAD, she’ll be even more scary fun to read!

Selfish for us, but like “WINNING! “ right?

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Linda Blatnik's avatar

Scary, yeah. Fun, maybe.

Winning, no.

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William McF's avatar

If you need the number to

the office of the Men in Black, call me. JK, I don’t really have it since they are ‘fictional’!!

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Robin Wilding's avatar

I will in fact take this 'fictional' phone number ;)

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William McF's avatar

I just made one up…

1-FUCKYOUDJT (1-383-596-8358) Sorry, it’s not a toll free line!

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Dani's avatar

I feel like…. Like this was in a horror movie, or twelve….. 🤔🫣🫠

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Robin Wilding's avatar

😆😆 Yeah, pretty much all of the movies about space

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Sandra S. Oitzinger's avatar

Oh, Sillies, what can go wrong! The central question is, Robin, have you named your warming blanket?

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Mark Hayes's avatar

I'm not quite naked and I'm very afraid. I've seen the Alien movies...

...and this is how it begins...

In Beijing No One Can Hear You Scream

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J C's avatar

I like how you paint humans for what we are, knuckledragers of the cosmos, among other stupid evolutionary "things". I always thought of us as above ground earthworms with legs and genitals.

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Danielle Amory's avatar

Have hope and fingers crossed. Look on the potential bright side of this - A gift from space aliens that will only feast when in contact with pedophiles, bigots, and spineless humans. Hey, MuskyRat that means you and Suckerberger and your gutless buddy TacoTits.👍

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Maggie Jon's avatar

Hmm. My reaction to that is both 'nope' and 'how cool'! They better be really fucking careful with it 😅

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Mikki Fisher's avatar

This is fun! A complete analysis without fear-mongering. Almost! LOL IMHO ETs already live among us [they shape-shift! ;-) ] And have done for eons. And it likely doesn't matter - if peaceful coexistence is how they exist among us. On the other hand, if they're the bad guys currently creating havoc here in the US and elsewhere in the world (you know who I mean), they need to be sent back to where they came from. Problem is, how do we prove they're otherwise-disguised illegal aliens, arrest them and send them 'home'? Anyway, bacteria schmacteria. They're probably gonna be more useful than DJT or MTG or the couch humper. I'm spouting tongue in cheek, of course. Mostly. :-D

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