u/Aubery_

One day, every single rat on earth suddenly changes. They are all now part of a hive mind, capable of communicating with any and all other rats in the world instantaneously. They have massively increased intelligence, approximately equalling the brainpower and general understanding of human society that an average human adult has. Their physical strength, size, number, location, etc. have not changed, just their minds. These new rats are determined to kill every last human on the planet, and will stop at nothing to do so.

If the rats manage to make humanity go extinct or force us off of the planet, they win.

If humanity manages to survive indefinitely, then we win.

A couple things to note:

• Humanity does not initially know what has happened to the rats. They will have to figure out the changes through observing the rats.
• The rats are patient and self-sacrificing. All that matters to them is that humanity is destroyed, be it tomorrow or in a thousand years. Any individual rat would be willing to end its own life if it would further the greater cause of all rats.
• An example of the "general understanding of human society that an average human adult has" would be, for instance, they would know that countries usually have some kind of appointed leader who is "in charge" in some kind of manner. They would not inherently understand the exact, specific chain of command of world leaders, or their precise location, or the information that heads of state are privy to. All of these things would have to be deduced by the rats through their observations. The rats can also understand human speech/writing.
• It is estimated that there are about seven billion rats on earth currently.

The chunky steel sports watch has somehow become the default face of luxury watchmaking and all I can think whenever I see one is how cheap they all look. It's well known that mechanical watchmaking pivoted to making luxury status symbols rather than utilitarian timekeeping after the quartz movement was refined and produced on a mass scale, but I don't really get why they've ended up with such a non-luxurious look to them. These huge, wide, thick watches made of cheap, abundant metals (sometimes hilariously using the much more expensive white gold or platinum even though they look almost indistinguishable from regular stainless steel) have more in common aesthetically with a g-shock than with finely crafted expensive jewellery. It wasn't that long ago that thinness, smallness, and lightness were valued in high-end watchmaking, both because it's more pleasant to wear but also because it requires much better, more impressive, and expensive engineering to shrink a movement rather than expand it. But now it's like these companies have just given up on that entirely because larger movements are cheaper and easier to make. Whenever I see a rolex, a patek phillipe nautilus, or a royal oak, all I can think, even if they look nice, is that they really don't look even 1/50th of their price, and that's very odd for a status symbol.

(Rolex is a particularly big offender in this regard, due to them using the exact same generic date wheel on absolutely every single watch they make, even if it's not really suited to the dial. Honestly feels like aliexpress-tier cost-cutting.)

To be clear, I don't think that a watch looking cheap necessarily means it looks bad, I just find it a bit odd that the default look for wealth-flexing watches is one that actually serves to de-emphasise the wealth required to purchase them.