it should be more acceptable to use the "ex-" prefix for family like it is with other relationships. that's my ex-father.
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@cuteocs20
it should be more acceptable to use the "ex-" prefix for family like it is with other relationships. that's my ex-father.
HERE’S THE THING THOUGH
I used to work for a call center and I was doing a political survey and I called this number that was randomly generated for me and the way our system worked was voice-activated so when the other person said hello you’d get connected to them, so I just launch right into my “Harvard University and NPR blah blah blah” thing and then there’s this long pause and I think the person’s hung up even though I didn’t hear a click
And then I hear “you shouldn’t be able to call this number.”
So I apologize and go into the preset spiel about because we aren’t selling anything, etc. etc. and the answer I get is
“No, I know that. What I mean is that it should be impossible for you to call this number, and I need to know how you got it.”
I explain that it’s randomly generated and I’m very sorry for bothering him, and go to hang up. And before I can click terminate, I hear:
“Ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”
I accidentally called the director of the FBI.
My job got investigated because a computer randomly spit out a number to the Pentagon.
This is my new favourite story.
When I was in college I got a job working for a company that manages major air-travel data. It was a temp gig working their out of date system while they moved over to a new one, since my knowing MS Dos apparently made me qualified.
There was no MS Dos involved. Instead, there was a proprietary type-based OS and an actually-uses-transistors refrigerator-sized computer with switches I had to trip at certain times during the night as I watched the data flow from six pm to six AM on Fridays and weekends. If things got stuck, I reset the server.
The company handled everything from low-end data (hotel and car reservations) to flight plans and tower information. I was weighed every time I came in to make sure it was me. Areas of the building had retina scanners on doors.
During training. they took us through all the procedures. Including the procedures for the red phone. There was, literally, a red phone on the shelf above my desk. “This is a holdover from the cold war.” They said. “It isn’t going to come up, but here’s the deal. In case of nuclear war or other nation-wide disaster, the phone will ring. Pick up the phone, state your name and station, and await instructions. Do whatever you are told.”
So my third night there, it’s around 2am and there’s a ringing sound.
I look up, slowly. The Red phone is ringing.
So I reach out, I pick up the phone. I give my name and station number. And I hear every station head in the building do the exact same. One after another, voices giving names and numbers. Then silence for the space of two breaths. Silence broken by…
“Uh… Is Shantavia there?”
It turns out that every toll free, 1-900 or priority number has a corresponding local number that it routs to at its actual destination. Some poor teenage girl was trying to dial a friend of hers, mixed up the numbers, and got the atomic attack alert line for a major air-travel corporation’s command center in the mid-west United States.
There’s another pause, and the guys over in the main data room are cracking up. The overnight site head is saying “I think you have the wrong number, ma’am.” and I’m standing there having faced the specter of nuclear annihilation before I was old enough to legally drink.
The red phone never rang again while I was there, so the people doing my training were only slightly wrong in their estimation of how often the doomsday phone would ring.
Every time I try to find this story, I end up having to search google with a variety of terms that I’m sure have gotten me flagged by some watchlist, so I’m reblogging it again where I swear I’ve reblogged it before.
But none of these stories even come close to the best one of them all; a wrong number is how the NORAD Santa Tracker got started.
Seriously, this is legit.
In December 1955, Sears decided to run a Santa hotline. Here’s the ad they posted.
Only problem is, they misprinted the number. And the number they printed? It went straight through to fucking NORAD. This was in the middle of the Cold War, when early warning radar was the only thing keeping nuclear annihilation at bay. NORAD was the front line.
And it wasn’t just any number at NORAD. Oh no no no.
Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. “Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number,” she says.
“This was the ‘50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States,” Rick says.
The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. “And then there was a small voice that just asked, ‘Is this Santa Claus?’ ”
His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying.
“And Dad realized that it wasn’t a joke,” her sister says. “So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho’d and asked if he had been a good boy and, ‘May I talk to your mother?’ And the mother got on and said, ‘You haven’t seen the paper yet? There’s a phone number to call Santa. It’s in the Sears ad.’ Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus.”
“It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, ‘The old man’s really flipped his lid this time. We’re answering Santa calls,’ ” Terri says.
And then, it got better.
“The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them,” Pam says.
“And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole,” Rick says.
“Dad said, ‘What is that?’ They say, ‘Colonel, we’re sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?’ Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, ‘This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.’ Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, ‘Where’s Santa now?’ ” Terri says.
For real.
“And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information,” she says. “You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he’s known for.”
“Yeah,” Rick [his son] says, “it’s probably the thing he was proudest of, too.”
So yeah. I think that might be the best wrong number of all time.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport
No okay THAT is adorable and I’m queueing this for next December.
new horror character archetype: guy whose first response to every situation is to suggest hitting it with a car regardless of how likely that is to be effective at dealing with the threat they're up against
i love when a character has something terrible happen to them and as a result they see themself as, essentially if not literally, a ghost. and so that means they only can (and have to) do what ghosts do, ie get revenge and then cease to exist. easy as that. but then halfway through this ghost vengeance they realize hey actually i might still be a human person. with human needs. that’s incredibly inconvenient, considering how much i’ve invested in this whole ghost thing
if you like crafting and also free things, might i suggest the antique pattern library?
it’s a not for profit that’s gathering books, patterns, and other materials related to crafting that are out of copyright (or getting permission from copyright holders in some cases) in order to share them online. they scan items, clean them up, then make everything available for free!
free things are great, especially when you’re just starting to get into something. like oh, i’m supposed to spend money on this hobby i just picked up 20 minutes ago???
the first time i ended up on the site, i seriously spent hours just trawling through everything. there’s the usual suspects like knitting, crochet, embroidery, but there’s also woodwork, calligraphy, and books on things like how to mount and frame pictures. with cross stitch patterns, they also make modern charts with the dmc colour codes available.
links to their webbed site and instagram:
https://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/
https://www.instagram.com/theantiquepatternlibrary/
behold, a glorious cat cross stitch pattern (link goes to antique pattern library page):
[image id: Multicolour charted cross stitch design of a cat sitting on a red pillow with tassels, holding a green ball]
ROUGH'N SKETCHY FIBONACCI!
i just wanted to draw raph with my shiny drednaw but then i kept going
The reading comprehension and overall common sense on this website is piss poor.
how dare you say we piss on the poor
World Heritage Post
NO CHRISTMAS POST FROM ME BECAUSE IM LAZY AND WANNA ENJOY THE HOLIDAYS BUT HERE!!!
TURTLES IN MY OWN CLOTHES BECAUSE I HAVEN’T HAD AN ORIGINAL THOUGHT IN 15 YEARS
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO THOSE WHO CELEBRATE!!
u know whats wild. everyone on here like 20 and when i first joined everyone was like 14 15. u ask anybody n they been here for years. nobody new on here. staff locked the doors n were all Stuck Inside
Tag your current age and how old you were when you joined Tumblr
Beige Romantic Gal
Loves to read/write poetry, to skate and to wear baggy sweaters. She's a sucker for romantic novels, long walks on the beach and instrumental music.
White Spirit
Just a curious entity with a loud mind that questions everything around him/them for the sake of learning.
He/they can turn into a snake on command, loves to wear long robes because he/they like the airy feeling and just to be extra.
Sea Witch
Curious, carefree, creative, resourceful; she lives in an cave inside an island, near the seashore.
The ocean is a friend of hers, they occasionally bring her gifts like seashells or pretty rocks, and she always receives them gratefully while making sure they won't be missed by any creature. They once gifted her a piano.
Neon Hunter
"The light gradually fades into darkness as she realizes that the truth is not the world full of bright she believed in once; she holds on desperately to her made up life, grasping helplessly to made up faces and promises. She is forced to succumb into the dark, monstrous reality, one that isn't what she expected ot to be. One she could even find solace in."
(The text in the corner says "I'll kill you all.")
Moon Spirit
Blue Knight's s/o. One night they were looking down on Earth and saw how BK almost gives her life away. They couldn't let that happen, so they saved her. Ever since they've been really close.
Unfortunately, MS couldn't stay for long. So before they had to go back to their place in the sky they gave BK a necklace, as they pointed at the night sky, full of stars, and with all the caring and conviction possible they said: "You have me. Until ever last star in the galaxy dies, you have me." BK didn't understand the reason behind those pained, but truthful words, other than someone in the world genuinely cared for her.
Blue Knight
She went through a rough patch in her life a while ago. She considered ending it all, until she met someone who helped her realize that there's more good in this world than bad. And so she was determined to life her best life: she picked interest on literature and got inspired to train to be the most reliable, capable and strongest soldier in her kingdom, and she did.
But one day, her s/o was victim of the mysterious disappearings in the woods that have been threatening the village for quite some time. She was devastated, she found herself shielding on wine, making her forget all she had lost and all the things she couldn't do with that one person who believed in her and told her she was born to make history, or at least for a while.
She used to be the best knight of a small, but strong kingdom. But after what happened to her s/o she kind of wandered around, trying to help as best as she could to whomever needed it.
Flannel Gal
She just moved in to the city with the hope of fulfilling her dream of becoming a fashion designer (she got inspired by the comics she grew up reading.)
She starts working at a coffee shop, a job she actually loves, mostly because of the latte art and she just finds it exciting to learn constantly about new people and memorizes by heart the regulars' orders. She lives in a small apartment with her best friend, who's like an older brother to her and he happily offers himself to be her model sometimes.