This dove:
I wanna fly away.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2026
44 points (100.0% liked)
Ask Lemmy
41963 readers
1768 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world
7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.
8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
See username. I could probably name a better bird for what I want, but hawk is literally right there. Not actually what it means in my username, but hey, if the shoe fits...
...as to why, it's basically just flight.
A small and cute goat in a petting zoo. You get fed and you can headbutt people and kids to oblivion while everyone thinks it’s cute.
I guess if you want a plant that would be fair game.
In that case, I would choose a quaking aspen based on the specimen named Pando. I would have a vast array of sizes at my disposal, from as small as a single seed to as large as the 106 acres that Pando covers.
I want to escape from somewhere? Turn into a seed. I want to destroy an environment? Turn into a giant network of trees.
A dead one.
Bird. Daily commute will be fun.
A raven doesn't sound too bad. Can fly, smart, doesn't really have a predator so I can explore the world at ease
what would you do to cross oceans, plop down on a ship and travel along?
Nobody said cats? I'm very disappointed. I'm going to comb my hair, look at you reproachfully, then go to sleep.
Lobster.
I'd continue to live my normal life during the day, but transform every night to sleep, and don't age during that time. Hell, any time I'm not doing something that requires a human body, just push pause on the aging process for a few hours. Careful application could get me an extra ~40-50% lifespan for free.
The lobster's biggest problem is always having to grow new shells. If every transformation puts me back exactly where I left off, that could be an issue, but with a part-time human to stock my own tank/pool, getting enough to eat as a lobster to get the energy to do that shouldn't be an insurmountable hurdle.
Outclassed by rejuvenating jellyfish.
Yes, we're making tier lists about hypothetical animal transformations now.
needs a tierzoo video on this
This came to my mind aswell. Made me also think about why we age and if sleeping in an area without background radiation could have a similar effect. Like sleeping in a lead coffin or underground bunker. But i guess these would still inherit the background radiation from the body itself.
Dönertier
House cat seems chill.
Balls are overrated anyway.
Wolf/husky.
Hey OP, have you read the Animorphs book series? They're a YA series, but it actually gets into some heavier shit surprisingly (child soldiers, PTSD, etc) and are not half bad. I bring this up because the premise is some teens are given powers to morph into any animal they "acquire" DNA from by touching. Really gets into the mindset of each animal, what it feels like, how awesome (or terrifying) it is being each animal, etc. Give them a read if you haven't already.
Well you didn't add any caveats to the transformation and you said it's at will so... If mass is not conserved then I'd just turn into something heavy yet compact like a rhino and harvest infinite energy from the toggling. If I get support from a State I might even choose a whale so we can extract the most energy per toggle. You can basically build an engine from it, and since whales are like 200 tons and I'm 70kg, the conversion ratio would be pretty damn good. Though it would require a dedicated facility, which is why I'd rather go with a rhino or something, which is however about 100 times less efficient so it would require 100 times as much toggling. You get the picture.
Funny you assume this would not lead to almost immediate enslavement.
Others: I like this animal for reasons.
You: I'll be a power plant.
That sounds like slavery with extra magic.
I remember reading something (might have been xkcd) that said Superman could do the objectively most "good" by simply powering a massive generator and providing free energy to the world. It would benefit the most people at one time, and provide a larger affect than simply beating up bad guys. So, in the same vein, your sacrifice will be remembered.
it's Saturday morning breakfast cereal but my 5 minutes ddg couldn't find the source. there's a (urgh) reddit post about it that added some repeating flashes for the powerplant superman had to operate.
I wouldn't want to spend my life stuck in a power plant.
Beats being stuck at a desk.
YFW power plant desk
It's free energy, yes ... but only a relatively small amount of free energy, in the grand scheme of things.
Let's say you go as big as possible with a blue whale, topping out at 200 metric tons. And let's say the dedicated facility built for this has a height of 500m from which it can capture the energy of your descent. Each descent can (assuming 100% efficiency of the system) deliver about 980MJ (272kWh) of energy. A 500m drop in complete freefall would take about 10 seconds (disregarding air resistance). But since we need you to survive to do the process over again (rather than splatting into whale goo at the bottom), you'll need to decelerate gently at the end, which will slow the process down. Capturing energy from the fall will also slow you down. Let's say the drop takes 20 seconds, minimum. And, as unrealistic as it is, let's go for a highly optimized scenario of lifting human you back to the top just as quickly, so 20 seconds for the trip back up. Assuming you can transform instantaneously, that's 40 seconds per cycle -- 90 cycles per hour, at the absolute maximum. 90 cycles x 980MJ means you can generate up to 88,200MJ per hour, which is equivalent to 24.5MW.
A fairly average wind turbine like this one will generate 5MW at peak output. So you, as a blue whale power station, can generate a maximum power equivalent to ~5 large wind turbines. It's not totally free, either, since the machine to capture this energy will be huge and expensive to build -- likely bigger and more expensive to build than 5 wind turbines.
(Not to mention, we're ignoring a lot of minor inefficiencies here. Air resistance will be an energy-sapping factor on both the downward and upward parts of the cycle. Then there's friction in whatever mechanical setup you build for the machine. Then there's the energy cost of lifting human you back to the top. Then there's the inevitable inefficiency of the energy capture, which would more realistically be in the 80-90% range at most, not 100%.)
And to keep up that relatively meager energy production, you'll have to transform every 20 seconds. 180 times per hour, every hour, as long as you can keep doing it. And assuming you need to be awake to transform, the power station will have to go offline regularly while you nap. It could also be a problematic power source because of its pulsing nature -- 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off. That's messy power to be dumping into a power grid, forcing other energy sources to constantly vary in order to make up for it. You could smooth that out with giant capacitors or something ... but then that adds additional inefficiency and power loss into the system.
Yes, it's neat to be able to cheat physics and get 'free' energy ... but on a grid level, the amount of free energy you can possibly get this way is pretty trivial. Not worth giving up your whole life for.
Now you just need to find a way to boil some water and… I feel like I’ve heard this one before.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Tapeworm. Just hanging out in a warm cosy intestine, protected from the outside world and food dropping on to me so I don't even have to move.
First thought is a very small insect, especially a small flying bug, so I could effectively vanish instantly and escape from most any situation.
Of course this comes with some assumptions, such as magically keeping my intelligence. And not aging at hyper speed while transformed, etc.
Instantly vanish and escape, yes ... but pretty significant chance of getting squished or eaten by some predator while in bug form, and likely to happen so fast you don't have time to change back.
Having human intellect should help, like knowing to stay away from corners because of spider webs, knowing how windows, doors, and vents work. Also I wouldn't just stay a fly - I would switch back as soon as feasible. (But might head for a clothing store first)
My human intellect is pretty situationally unaware. I don't think the risk of being stuck in a web, paralyzed, and slowly drained of life by a spider is worth not hearing about Sharon's sister's wedding in Colorado over the weekend.
(But might head for a clothing store first)
So you can buy clothes?
Too bad your wallet is left in the heap of clothes you escaped from...
Oh, good point
I think a cheetah would be my go. Mostly chill, very cute, excellent at sunbathing, could still play with my dog, and very fucking fast sometimes.
I'm thinking either hawk, raven or seagull. Definitely something that can fly and is big enough to not be a target for too many other animals (I don't wanna get randomly murked by a cat). Also something that can swoop down on people and steal shit.
Beaver. Any day. Favorite animal period. No doubts or worries at all.
3 toed sloth is about my speed
Bear
Tabby cat
A gorilla so I could still use human technology, but I'd be 200 kgs of muscle.
European Lion or some other interesting extingt animal to push sience in that specific field. Or an authentic "Auerochs" to boost efforts of renaturation in Europe with my genes. Also lots of sex for the good for a while. The beastiality could become a problem tho since im not into animals.
An arctic tern.
Ancient Psychic Tandem War Elephant
Then I would go around abolishing the state.
Human
A tiny bird. Maybe a sparrow. Or an elephant, so that Iive in a forest and have a thick skin.
view more: next ›