Thereās something pitiful about seeing the taskforceās new weapons specialist mope around so sadly all the time.
People ask whatās wrong, they ask how work is going, but no one actually wants to hear about the nitty gritty details of it all. They don't really care about how you struggle to get out of your workshop most days. Nor do they care much when you mention how hard it is to continue working when the products youāre asked to use make you feel so ill. Itās always a mild, āoh no.ā At best, and then they're asking you to hurry up with their request or the like.
Maybe they feel good, because they were nice enough to ask you how you wereā that they extended their time to you. Well, you don't really care, because it doesn't make you feel good.
It all started around four months ago. You had an experimental device quite literally blow up in your face, but you still learnt some pretty valuable data from it regardless. Of course, you could just write it down and go on with your day, but you were excited! This could turn into something really usefulā a real game changer.
The only problem was, there was no one else in your team since specialists like you were so sparse. Well.. the sergeants were always nice to you. Youāre sure Soap would love to hear about an explosive device anyway.
āThatās crazyā
Well, it was a rather dry response compared to the ten texts you had sent over, but you suppose it could be worse. Maybe he was just waiting for you to finish?ā
āSounds good š ā
Huh.. he sure did text like your dad. You put your phone down, a little disheartened by the lack of energy. Still, he could just be busy.. or a bad texter.. well itās fine. Not a big deal. Youāre an adult, and you still have more work to doā you can totally just tell him in person instead!
āSo then when i tested it, it didn't even react badly at all! There was a little bit of fumes, but hardly near last time.ā Itās been a whole week since, and you just couldn't hold it in today, telling him all about it. Besides, itās lunch time, and he collected you from your lab so it must be fine. āSo.. uh, any progress on the stuff we asked you to make a while back?ā
You tilt your head, confused by his words. āThe new breaching device? I mean, I sent that through a while ago. Thatās not my fault if the testing and safety team haven't approved it yet though.ā
āIt is approved.ā Price pops out of nowhere, almost making you jump before he pats his hand on your shoulder and grabs the last cake. Sneaky. āTheyāll be arriving in time for our next op, Soap.ā
You just grin, happy now that itās gone through as you come and sit with them. As you eat, you start to realise he didn't really react to your story at all, just waiting until he could ask the question. Still, you refused to believe it was on purpose. He mustāve just been worried about the op
So you try Kyle next. Itās been a while, and they just returned from said op a week ago, so you figure itās been enough time now.
āHey Kyle, what do you think of these plans? I'm kind of worried itāll react oddly with the metals, so thereās also this option. And I could just scrap it all together and make this instead.ā
He doesn't reply initially, even if you can see his little icon is online, so you wait in your lab, lips turned down in a frown. Itās only twenty whole minutes later when your phone suddenly dings, making you rush over to check. āSounds good.ā
Huh?
He hadn't even answered the question you asked, not even in the slightest. Maybe he replied specifically to a plan you sent? Nope, not even. Just those two words. You let out a long sigh, glancing back at the prototype and just deciding to go ahead. Maybe he was in a rush but wanted to just give you an answer to your first question.
ā-------------------
You cough harshly as you grab a water bottle from the rec room fridge, face scrunching up at the sharp wrack of it against your chest. Damnit, maybe these new concepts weren't a good idea in the slightest.
āWhatās wrong with you?ā Ghost comes up beside you, grabbing a water bottle for himself and making you frown at his gruff tone. Then again, heās always been like that, so what can you really expect?
āProbably just some strong chemical I used.ā You shrug, almost struggling to open the cap. āIāll probably have to spend tomorrow doing paperwork instead..ā
āNo can do, we need more units of the prototype you put through the other week.ā Price says from the armchair near the tv, stacks of paperwork on the coffee table.
āBut..ā
āThe mission is next week and we have hardly any time to waste.ā
Ghost only shrugs, sipping his own bottle of water down anyway. āDonāt know what the problem is, it is your job. Youāve got the weekend to rest up anyway.ā
ā------------
The longer you work on the units, the less time you spend outside of your lab. Even when you do somehow build the hope up to message one of them again, the best you get is a reaction in the chat, or an emoji. Other times they directly ignore whatever you had talked about, switching the conversation to something else. Plus, the one time you had gotten out and asked Soap if he wanted to go on a walk, he had barely let you get a word in.
āPrice.. You got a minute?ā This is the worst youāve felt in forever. Youāre not sure if it's spending all day getting hand cramps that has you, or spending all week worrying over if you really are just really annoying.
āGot one for you. Go on.ā
Your palms are sweaty, and you wipe them against your jeans, suddenly really nervous about all this. Itās not like you haven't had good conversations with him before, and heās never been explicitly rude either. Still, you can't help but wait for the inevitable.
āSo? What is it?ā He glances up at you, his pen on the papers heās looking over and you just sit there on the couch, tongue falling still as you stare back at him.
āI..ā
Do you start telling him a story? Maybe about how you feel? Or a rant? Do you tell him about the new weaponry because as a captain heād want better right? Or do you tell him about the current project because heād want an update?
What is the right thing to say?
āIām a bit busy, you know.ā He gestures to the papers and then glances back over you, who still sits there like your switch just wont turn on no matter how hard you try.
āI.. was just wondering if you wanted a cup of tea.ā You eventually mumble, even if the words sound utterly wrong strung together and youāre closer to nonsense than speaking normally.
āYeah, could do with one. Thanks.ā He instantly shifts his attention back to his work and you swallow, stepping back and out of his office.
Then a few days later, they left, off for the mission for two whole weeks and you were on your own again. So here you are now, others asking if youāre okay and taking advantage of your āfree timeā since they assumed, when the taskforce was gone, you had no work.
You come back to your lab, only leaving because you needed to grab a package you orderedā itās been days since youāve actually left your lab. Youāre getting real sick of people asking for everything under the sun, or just straight up giving you odd looks when you even come near them anymore. In fact youāre starting to get really sick of everyone. With a long sigh, you stare at the message lighting up your phone. Really? You had to find out from some random soldier that theyāre returning back today? They were supposed to be your teamā werenāt you hired for their taskforce?
Feeling petty, you turn on do not disturb, although a small part of you knows that no notifications will even come through anyway. Instead, you let your eyes flicker to the broken parts sitting on your table, the chemicals littered across the lab. How did you come to dread the one thing you loved so much?
As you let your head rest on your scratched palms, you turn the music on your headphones louderā hoping to drown out the silence following you for days. Youāre so sick of this.
ā----------------
A whole day has passed since they got back from the mission and Price hasn't seen you onceā you even missed the debrief session that discussed how well your devices work and how to implement them moving forward.
For some reason youāve been spending more and more time in your labā not that heās bothered to ask why though. He always just boiled it down to too much work. They all had too much; itās just life.
āGot the report but no one responded from the lab. Figured theyāre not in there, Cap.ā Gaz says, having just tried to deliver the documents to you but to no avail.
āHave you tried their room?ā He huffs, wondering why Gaz was being so pedantic at all. Obviously if you werent in one place you must be the other.
āYes sir, looks like it hasnt even been touched for a week though.ā
āFine. Iāll handle it.ā He takes the report and tucks it with his pile as he dismisses Gaz, carrying in with more pressing matters.
Itās only that evening that he remembers, finding it again when he was looking for another document. Well, he fancied a cup of tea anyway, so he might aswell just deliver it on the way.
āOiā Dont tell me you have those damn headphones again.ā
Thereās no response when he knocked, and so he groans, deciding to put the master key to good use and open the door. Immediately heās hit with the strong fumes from mixed chemicals, so bad he has to pull up his shirt to cover his mouth. āWhat the..ā
In the midst of it all you lay on your desk, passed out and arms limp at your sides, like the dead bodies heād find out there in the field. āWhat did I say about falling asleep in here?ā He grumbles, walking over to nudge your shoulder. You were a light sleeper anyways, he knew from the tiredness that lingered some mornings. Except.. you didn't even twitch.
He nudges you again, harder, before yanking your head up by your hood just to watch your head loll like a doll would. Your face is pale, like life has been sucked out and when his hand finds a weak pulse thatās when he realises something is very wrong.
MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE MANIFESTING A GOOD JUNE
random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google
I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.
also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo
also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)
i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:
Search Engines
Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy
DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)
WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to ācompute expert-level answers using Wolframās breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.ā A data search engine.
Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.
Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that wonāt record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses ā&ā as a bang search.
Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that usersā identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines.Ā
Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted.Ā
Gibiruās tagline is āUnfiltered private searchā and thatās exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy.Ā
Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.
Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden.Ā
MetaGer offers āPrivacy Protected Search & Findā through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.
Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching.Ā
Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar.Ā
https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results.Ā
https://www.mojeek.com/Ā
https://wiby.me/ - Itās goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites.Ā
https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesnāt have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think itās the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.
https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.
https://yep.com/ is a crawler
https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx
https://www.dogpile.com/Ā
https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)
https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?
https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?
https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.
Other Searchers
www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine
Hi! I'm looking for a creepypasta roleplay, I haven't had any luck finding people to rp with unfortunately š
I'm looking for semi lit to lit if possible
I'm open to pretty much everything character except Jeff (I cannot stand him lol) but my personal favorites are Tim/masky, Homicidal Liu, Ticci toby and Laughing Jack
This will have romance and I'm looking for someone to play one of the characters above for my OC
The idea would revolve around my character getting into outstanding debt due to a family member and because of this starts taking odd and dangerous jobs that lead her to the pastas which is where it would start off. If you have any questions feel free to let me know^^
I'd prefer to rp on discord if possible! If interested my discord is beelzelblub_
I cannot describe to you how fucking angry AI makes me. It's actually the fucking worst, and I'm so fucking tired of it. I'm tired of it being pushed and promoted in every type of electronic device and social media platform, I'm sick of it being being used for "art" (as if that absolute fucking garbage is actual art), I'm sick of what it does to the environment, I'm sick of how it's taking over learning for students in school at various different levels of education, and I'm sick of how it fools people into thinking it's real.
But most of all, I'm sick of it being seen as this problem that couldn't just be solved by fucking pulling a god damn cord. Like "oh, no, AI is just a part of life now." Bitch š no, it's not. We can actually fucking stop this shit any day now. This is a problem we can actually solve.
I FUCKING HATE AI OH MY GOD I FUCKING HATE IT WITH THE PASSION OF THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND FUCKING SUNS OH MY FUCKING GOD.
titsay
pixelskylines
vaporwave
izzy806
2087
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
