\@_ >o o< _@/

\@_ Previously Sluggish-But-I-Escargot-On. I like bugs and other animals. I collect obscure knowledge. And I make my own art sometimes.| Insta: CuttleF1shCuddles | Twitter: AbolutelyAppl1

[tamarrud]

While we continue to donate to personal evacuation funds, I think it is crucial to keep in mind that these individuals as well as millions more in Gaza are currently actively in need of basic necessities like food, water, shelter, and medical care. Keeping this in mind, and recognising that there is no way to know when the border crossing with Egypt will reopen, I think our attention should also be on raising funds for organisations currently on the ground who will have the widest impact on the lives of Palestinians who are still enduring the genocide in Gaza.

Below are some verified donation links of organisations that are currently providing assistance for the people in Gaza directly:

Food, water, and shelter

Taawon has launched a campaign to provide support in Gaza through food parcels, shopping vouchers, fresh produce, water bottles and shelter tents.

Watermelon Relief is a project initiated and implemented by a group of activists in Gaza, who work to provide aid to displaced families in Gaza through meals, support and activities.

World Food Programme (WFP) managed to provide assistance to more than 1 million people in Gaza in May by delivering food in shelters, makeshift camps and shops.

Life for Gaza is an initiative through which the Municipality of Gaza aims to provide basic necessities for the people of Gaza such as water projects, waste collection and the reconstruction of roads.

Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN) is working to plant farmlands in Gaza through their "Revive Gaza Farmlands" project, through which they had already started planting vegetables, fruits and leafy greens in Gaza.

Purchasing eSIMs is one of the only remaining ways to keep Gazans connected with the outside world, to get their stories out or even enable them to call for help after Israeli strikes.

The Sameer Project is a donation based aid initiative that provides tents, cash aid, diapers and formula for displaced families in Gaza.

Care For Gaza is an organisation that works to provide essential aid such as food packages and cash to deliver to displaced families in Gaza.

Palestine Children's Relief Fund, through their "Gaza Relief and Recovery" campaign, plan to provide essential medical supplies and treatments, as well as food and clean water.

Mutual Aid for the People of Gaza is a fundraiser managed by Mona in Gaza, who personally purchases and distributes basic supplies including food parcels to families in Gaza.

Help Gaza Children is another grassroots effort operating on the ground in Gaza to support families with food, water and clothing.

Medical care

Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) provides medical supplies and supports healthcare services in Gaza.

Gaza Wound Care is a medical team in a tent in Nuseirat, providing care to children and supporting pregnant women.

Children Not Numbers is an NGO dedicated to providing medical care for the children in Gaza including delivery of medical aid and medical evacuation for children.

[shrimpathizer]

thats my mayor!!! (i don't live in new york)

[tastefullyoffensive]

[prismatic-bell]

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.

[kuroba101]

This is my new favourite story.

[therobotmonster]

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. 

[arctic-hands]

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.

[voroxpete]

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

[arty-ari]

No okay THAT is adorable and I’m queueing this for next December.

[2mo3cm-man]

[memewhore]

[ruffboi-mags]

unmute for the love of god please it's amazing

[moonlightdistractions]

to think I would have just swiped past on mute, therefore not hearing pure unadulterated joy

[kropotkindersurprise]

[flowersinthegrocerystore]

I’ll reblog every time I see. Communist guy is always what does it for me

[mysticdragon3md3]

[bogleech]

That last tweet is so depressing

[aquariumpacific]

This crab is under construction! Read more on the Aquarium's website. 🦀🦺

Caring for Crustaceans with Creativity

An aquarist cares for crabs in need of new shells in a new, inventive way, by using non-toxic epoxy, molding, and paint.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Imagine aliens abduct you, give you better skin, then drop you off back at home

[queeranarchism]

Fun fact: in the 80′s the Dutch Unemployed Union held ‘fridge raids’ to protest against poverty. 

They’d find out when a politician of big boss who upheld poverty and starvation wages was speaking at some public even, then they’d carefully break into his house with a LOT of people and they would eat EVERY piece of food in his house and leave the empty dished behind without taking anything else. 

[gottamoveonup-deactivated201612]

Direct action at its finest.

[themasterplanner]

I theoretically disapprove, but at least it’s ballsy as fuck.

[themasterplanner]

I no longer disapprove.

[thebroccoligoblin]

Growth

[messingwithvampires]

One time my brother’s construction crew didn’t get paid on time. So he went to the boss’ house at dinnertime and when the boss opened the door my brother walked right in, asking “what’s for dinner?” And while the boss sputtered and protested, my brother started going through his fridge, calmly explaining that since he didn’t get paid, he didn’t have money for groceries, and his kid was sitting hungry at home because they didn’t have dinner. The boss’ family looked on in horror as my brother commented on how much nice food the boss had in his fridge. Until the boss finally loaded my brother up with a bunch of stuff out of the freezer and managed to get him to leave. Everyone got paid the next day and, as far as I know, they got paid on time as long as my brother worked there. Who knew that being supremely annoying could be such a gift?!

[charl0ttan]

they used to do nothing to me back in the morally neutral lab. it sucked

[grymmdark]

you were the control

[charl0ttan]

fuuuuck what were they doing to the other folks #fomo

[blus0x]

You can only REBLOG THIS TODAY

[surohsopsisofclouds]

a classic

[penny-anna]

if you've ever used the London Underground you might have noticed that it often gets uncomfortably hot. the reason for this is actually that its builders dug too greedily & too deep and as a result the trains are very close to the fires of hell. hope that helps.

[stripedroseandsketchpads]

^Real advertisement from the 20s. Normal train system.

[knightofleo]

Animated scrap metal figures by Guillermo Galetti

[knightofleo]

[hawkpartys]

[redtail-lol]

I am gonna look like the kind of tumblr user with no reading comprehension who is accidentally being exactly who this post is talking about but I assure you I know exactly what I'm doing and am disagreeing for one species and one species only

If it were possible I'd absolutely support driving fleas to extinction. Make a case for their existence! Why do fleas deserve to exist? They cause me daily suffering and serve zero purpose that I am aware of. Why can't we make them go extinct other than the fact that it would probably be difficult to only target fleas

[thethingything]

"one species and one species only"

[transcript: flea, the common name for the order Siphonaptera, includes 2,500 species. end transcript]

you might want to do a little bit of research about the organisms you want to drive to extinction before you claim to know exactly what you're doing, but anyway...

there are already a number of people in the notes bringing up these points, which apply to all species, but here they are again anyway:

firstly, nothing has to have "a purpose", but things don't just evolve for no reason and contribute absolutely nothing to the ecosystem they're in. that's just not how it works.

secondly, parasites are basically the Robin Hood of the ecosystems they're in. they take nutrients from large, long lived organisms, and make it available for smaller organisms, thereby redistributing nutrients that would essentially get hoarded away otherwise.

yes, being bitten is annoying, but we can't just kill off everything that annoys us. in fact, parasites being annoying causes their hosts to leave the area, which affects things like migration routes, and helps prevent areas being overgrazed because the megafauna leave due to the parasites before that can happen.

yes, parasites can spread diseases, but it's much more productive and less harmful to ecosystems to put money and effort towards curing and preventing those diseases than trying to kill off their vectors.

everything in an ecosystem (with the exception of introduced species) has evolved together and adapted to each others' presence. you can't just remove an entire species from that complex, interconnected system and expect there to be no negative repercussions

[bogleech]

All this plus most of those species won't bite humans anyway. Still, causing irritation to just humans shouldn't be a crime. We're destructive too. We shouldn't want all of nature to be safe and comfortable to us when we've already irreversibly razed so much of it for modern convenience as it is. We even probably caused the extinction of the last big predators that naturally hunted us, we should probably be satisfied with that really.

[hawkpartys]

There are over 3500 species of mosquito on this planet and every single one of them contributes more to the ecosystem than you do.

[vinnfeyntheinsane-deactivated20]

Friendly reminder that humans are also parasites. And we are an invasive species of parasite as well.

[hawkpartys]

Incorrect on every account. Try not to be an ecofascist on my post thanks

[cuttlefishcuddles]

Only some of those 3500 mosquito species bite humans. Of the species that do bite us, the female mosquito utilizes our blood to produce her offspring, while male mosquitoes only drink nectar and are pollinators as a result.

Also, mosquitoes' ability to produce viable offspring in mass quantities with only a small amount of water makes them an incredibly abundant food source.

If you hate mosquitoes but love frogs, reptiles, birds, fish, etc. well, there's probably a mosquito in your favorite animal's food chain, and eliminating all mosquitoes would negatively impact them.

[j-tee]

SHAPE HELL

Yup.

[j-tee]

SHAPE HELL 2

[medranochav]

where i’m at girls

[hembrista]

I just got lightheaded from reading this

[pomme-poire-peche]

a lot of people’s trauma symptoms get worse when they’re finally safe

[the-haiku-bot]

a lot of people’s

trauma symptoms get worse when

they’re finally safe

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Maintaining the biodiversity of sheep is not just important for knitters and spinners, but for the health of the environment. Essentially, a sheep functions like a carbon sequestration system. Atmospheric carbon makes up 50 percent of wool's weight, and, unlike synthetic fabrics, wool is naturally biodegradable. When disposed of, wool acts like a fertilizer, slowly releasing valuable nutrients and carbon back into the soil. Wool fixed carbon in the topsoil rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. This process can help regenerate pastures, which sheep will graze. And sheep can help answer the problem of how to avoid far-flung fiber supply chains. Because sheep do well in such an extraordinary range of terrains, wool is a natural choice for people interested in rebuilding local systems of cloth manufacture. Certain breeds are more suited to certain atmospheric and geologic conditions than others, so preserving diversity also means preserving the geographic range in which sheep can flourish.

Sofi Thanhauser, Worn: A People’s History of Clothing