🌌 The Day Earth Was Measured in Muh
I was stirring Martian coffee that tastes like a polite apology when a courier drone tapped on my window. It delivered news that Earth students had invented a unit for absurdity called Muh Scale™. The Council laughed, I laughed, the drone laughed accidentally. Then a civilization in the Perseus Cluster built policy around it. Nobody was laughing anymore, except the drone.
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Illustration, The Discovery, Students of Earth dared to measure absurdity, Zyloth took notes. |
📜 Origin story with coffee and equations
The students proposed a simple index. M = 100 - (αA + βE + γC). A for absurdity, E for emotional irritation, C for cluelessness. The constants α, β, γ vary depending on coffee intake and patience. Then came the decay law: dM/dt = -k × (B × F). B is buzzword density, F is forced grandeur. The more someone shouts “quantum synergy cloud,” the faster the slide.
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Muh Index Definition with formula and description. |
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Muh Index Definition with formula and description. |
📉 The first measurement
The Perseus analysts chose Donald Trump’s inauguration speech for calibration. At the start the room was at ninety two Muh in the Zen Zone. The phrase “Nobody knows the system better than me” dropped it into the OK Zone. Minutes later “Believe me!” pulled it toward the Spiral Zone. A buzzword cluster of “Tremendous, folks, just tremendous” accelerated the decline. After thirty minutes the reading was twelve. Void Zone.
Illustration, The Calibration, Zen to Void in thirty minutes.
Annotated moments in the speech, “Nobody knows…”, “Believe me!”, Buzzword Cluster, aligned with drops on the Muh Scale.
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🧠 The influence of Trump speeches on human minds
The Department of Mental Health Security on Mars, abbreviated as MHS, produced a series of reports that now circulate in coffee-stained folders across the galaxy. Their analysis was simple and devastating, Trump’s speeches acted like gravitational wells of attention. People did not simply listen, they orbited, caught in a field of repetition, exaggeration, and sudden contradictions. According to MHS models, the average citizen lost between 15 and 25 Muh per half hour of exposure, equivalent to watching a bad soap opera marathon while balancing on a chair.
For the United States, the average baseline dropped from the mid-seventies into the high fifties during his term. North America as a whole oscillated between OK and Spiral, like a washing machine with loose bearings. Globally, societies either hardened their filters or spiraled faster, with net loss of ten Muh across major democracies. MHS noted that the real missed opportunity was not in hearing him, but in failing to practice the ancient art of ignoring. Ignoring is a stabilizing mechanism. MHS researchers likened it to the immune system. Yet Earth audiences treated each phrase as new contagion and engaged with it, instead of letting silence do the disinfecting.
Douglas Adams would have written it as a field guide entry, “Exposure to Trump speeches is not inherently fatal, but repeated listening reduces the tensile strength of sanity. For best results, apply tea, quiet walks, and a mild refusal to take things seriously.”
🌍 How Earth looked through Muh tinted glass
With a working curve the aliens painted maps. Nations were classified by typical Muh values. News anchors started reporting Muh per minute. Universities wrote grants to increase local Muh. The Council rearranged diplomatic seating. Zen leaders in the middle, Void speakers near the exits. Earth had always been noisy, now it was sortable.
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The Council Briefing, a metric for diplomacy, seating plans changed forever. |
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A diagram of the four Muh Zones, Zen, OK, Spiral, Void, for classrooms and interstellar briefings. 📧 Reader mail to Zyloth |
“Dear Zyloth, our ministry scored fifty seven during budget speeches. OK zone. Can we raise Muh without raising taxes?”Zyloth replies: Lift Muh the way you lift bread, slowly and with warmth. Announce fewer numbers, explain one well, let silence do some work. Serve pastries.
“Dear Zyloth, my teenager measured family dinner at thirty six. Suspect an uncle. Is there a kit for calibration?”Zyloth replies: Baseline with soup or pets. Reintroduce the uncle carefully. If it plunges, more soup. If it rises, adopt the uncle. You invented conflict hygiene.
“Dear Zyloth, is Muh culturally biased?”Zyloth replies: Any metric bends toward its holders. Muh reveals itself by being audible. If people speak clearer it climbs. If they pile buzzwords it slides.
🔭 Field notes
Rain raised Muh by five points. Sports finals lowered it by three. Translators became quiet heroes. Moderators who spoke like librarians kept cities functional. Waiting rooms hummed at sixty and above in healthy places. Below that, poets were hired to repair signage. If rooms touched Void, soup was served. Always soup.
🍵 Appendix
Try a pocket Muh test at home. Ask a question that matters. Note the baseline. Add a fashionable phrase. If the tilt is small, keep it. If it plunges, retire it and the speaker, gently, with tea. End before email. Publish the curve. Walk outside. This is not physics with a heavy coat, it is care with a ruler.
⚖️ Moral of the story
The Department of Mental Health Security (MHS) reminded the Council that measuring absurdity is not a game but a safeguard. Nations that tracked their Muh levels consistently avoided sudden collapses in discourse. Those that ignored it drifted toward the Void, not from malice but from fatigue. MHS auditors now use the Muh Scale as a stress test for democracy: if the national baseline dips below Spiral for too long, institutions fray, civil trust erodes, and even traffic lights seem untrustworthy.
The lesson, simple and durable, is that clarity and moderation can be measured, and measurement can guide repair. What began as a student’s joke became a planetary audit tool. If absurdity is mapped, it can be managed. If speeches are weighed, they can be lightened. If citizens know their own baseline, they can defend it with tea, soup, and the quiet refusal to take noise too seriously. In this way, a scale born on Earth became a safety rail for nations across the stars.
Zyloth signs off. Clarity raises Muh. Soup raises it further. Nations that measure will endure.
📦 Zyloth’s Addendum: On Healthy Gerrymandering
Earthlings invented gerrymandering to bend maps until they looked like spilled tea. The Department of MHS, after running the figures, proposed a healthier variant using the Muh Index. Instead of carving districts by party, carve them by sanity. Regions with low Muh (below 20, Void territory) should be diluted with high-Muh enclaves (Zen libraries, quiet parks, soup kitchens). The result is not electoral advantage but conversational balance.
Zyloth described it thus: “Draw lines not to win, but to keep neighbors from liquefying into madness. If half the street shouts buzzwords, pair it with a bakery. If a suburb spirals, stitch in a pond with ducks. The map should wobble toward equilibrium.”
In short, healthy gerrymandering is absurd cartography in service of civic health. A district is successful not when one party prevails, but when the average Muh holds steady above fifty and waiting rooms hum politely. MHS auditors now include this in their planetary safety checklists, under the heading ‘Map Repair for Mental Hygiene’.