I saw that cartoon a couple months back so it’s definitely part of my thinking process. I had also reread the SSC Non-Libertarian FAQ last night.

And I was also reading this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270444 and started thinking about how many of the technologies we ascribe to human inventors had to have been invented millions of years ago by some alien somewhere.

And then I deleted the bit I wrote about corporations being paperclip optimizers, because it wasn’t funny, but unfocused. Kill your darlings; keep comedy to the point. And of course, I let my mind wander — comedy is found in the gaps between expectation and reality.