Cephalopods.

I'm here today to enlighten everyone to the first of many animals that people should be aware of.
Cephalopods.

Octopus! Terrifying Beast.

For those of you who don't know, Cephalopoda is a class in the phylum Mollusca that have adapted the normal molluscan characteristics to be hyper-lethal. Animals in this designation are octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. In addition, cephies have large brains and well developed eyes, making them efficient hunters and killers.
To demonstrate how much they have evolved from their distant relative, the snail, I have a few diagrams.

Ignore the other lines. That'll teach Johnny...

 Notice on the clam the 3 main highlighted body parts. the Foot, which is used primarily for movement and digging through sand, the Mantle, which grows the shell and encases the body cavity, and the shell, which is to protect the snail.



Now, the squid. Being a cephalopod, squids have adapted the foot to be long tentacles with "suction cups" (the suction cups are also lined with tiny teeth for better grip) for catching prey. The mantle has been adapted for, get this, jet propulsion. More on that later.

Now you may be asking "Where's the shell on this?" For unknown reasons, mainly that it simply doesn't need a shell, the shell is either reduced  or eliminated from the anatomy entirely.


So, basically, these are mindless, intelligent, crazed killing machines. And jet power - they use JET PROPULSION. I mean, humans have only had jet-technology for 60 or so years. Cephies have had it for millions of years. Imagine how much they must have improved on it over this time. "Obviously, they can't fly through the air, or else we'd see them, right?" WRONG.
Active Camouflage.

Cephies have developed the ability to rapidly change the color of their skin to suit their immediate surroundings. While this primitive active camouflage may not be threatening, the idea of an intelligent being having millions of years to develop it is. If cephies have developed near-perfect invisibility, they could be flying around our world completely undetected. "But, hey, even if there is a super evolved form of a cuttlefish, we can prove that there isn't enough of them to be a significant threat, right? I mean, it's not like they have an army or anything..." Oh, voice of reason in my head, how stupid you are. Why do you think giant squid attack ships at sea? They're preparing their giant underlings for war.

One of the smaller giant squids.

 Not to mention they are already training the smaller cephalopods to destroy humanity. The octopus is ready to invade and destroy our food supplies by opening all our jars and infecting all our food!

Fuck yo' jar!

tl;dr, if you see a shimmer of light or if your neighbor looks suspiciously like a squid, don't be afraid to defend our world.

Nihilism

This post has been so long in the making, I almost forgot why I was doing it. I originally set out to gather a day's worth of evidence to settle a long standing argument that has come up, but I found the more I searched, the more information and debates spawned to be mulled over. Finally, after countless books read and countless philosophy professors consulted, I present the difference between nihilism and existential nihilism.
Nihlism is simply defined as "the philisophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life." So, this can simply be the rejection of validity of any set standard or system. For instance, believing that there is no morality and that it can not be inherently right or wrong to commit a crime is moral nihilism. This also works in multiple other forms, including politcal nihilism, an entirely different concept altogether.
When the word "nihilism" is uttered, it is most often assumed to mean existential nihilism, which is the belief that, effectively, there is no meaning to life whatsoever.
These two are NOT the same.
Nihilism is not the belief that there is no meaning to life. But, the belief that there is no meaning to life is a form of nihilism. Just like Protestantism and Catholicism are forms of Christianity, but Christianity is NOT Protestantism.
On that note, if someone is inquiring as to your religion and you answer "Christian" but, upon being asked if Catholic or Protestant, you respond "No, I'm a Christian," I feel as if I have the right to be annoyed.
I digress, the point of this all being, if I say the words "moral nihilist" and someone tells me that's incorrect, I will gladly give the 132 pages of resources and notes that explain the exact difference.