sometimes i think about how aliens who understand most things, but not how we make electricity, would react to humanity.
"i found this new planet today. the things there are weird. they've figured out how to harness the power inside the atom - but they just use it to boil water?"
"what? why? some religious thing?"
"i dunno. but get this - they take the energy from the boiling water, send it to their house, and use some of that to boil more water."
"sounds fake but ok"
"they also figured out how to transport goods in bulk with powerful engines and wheels. they call them 'trains'"
"oh thats kinda quaint. why is that notabl--"
"trains move by boiling water"
"FUCK OFF"
even discounting the obvious "the wheel" how much of our society revolves around spinning
to generate power, sure, we boil water, but we boil that water to spin shit.
like pretty much every method of power generation we have hinges on spinning, except for like, solar. it's turbines or piston engines (which turn the linear action of exploding against a piston into spinning via a crankshaft) all the fuckin way down
without rotary machining (spinning shit on a lathe) we wouldn't have nearly the technology we do today either
we spin fibers to make cloth and fabric for clothes
until recently we told time by spinning hands on the surface of a dial
almost everything that makes our existence possible is a result of something spinning somewhere
