I Solemnly Swear I am Up To No Good. @hampg - Tumblr Blog

every day i am percieved™️

There is a reason for this though!

The original tweet summarizes it pretty well. Fanfic tends to be popular among certain types of neurodivergent people (aka people most likely to read excessively as a child, and have burnout as an adult) for the same reasons that we tend to hyperfixate–neurochemical signaling (I hope I’m using that phrase correctly). What I mean is, for people who are really dependent on changes in dopamine/serotonin/neurotransmitter levels, who have low levels or wonky neural reward systems (perhaps the most common types of neurodivergence)…people like us rely on dependable external sources of those neurochemicals. In order to function, we spend a lot of our free time trying to level out our brain chemistry using things that can reliably bring us a steady stream of joyful moments (rewards) without costing too much of the mental effort that is already in short supply.

significantly: the investment of reading has to be balanced with a steady “return on investment”–and this return has to start fairly quickly. because again, we don’t have a lot of attention/energy to invest on tiring things. we have perpetual “low batteries” in that regard.

that doesn’t mean these stories are “simple,” or that they lack complexity or value–only that the reward has to come in short regular intervals, and it has to have a low “upfront cost.” these stories are only “easy” to read in the sense that the effort we put into them is rewarded in a timely manner. which is why fanfic stories are so perfectly formulated for neurodivergent readers–they are often beautifully written, but skip a lot of the upfront costs (of introducing new characters, of world-building, of getting the audience emotionally connected to the story elements).

the nature of fanfiction is that the reader has a pre-existing relationship with this world and these characters. that–combined with the shorter average length of fics–means that fan fics very quickly start rewarding the reader in a way that traditional fiction struggles to. that’s not a bad thing! and maybe it’s something more traditionally published writers should be paying attention to.

Fanfic, as a genre, has been uniquely helpful and accessible to many neurodivergent readers who would otherwise struggle to immerse themselves in stories. I’m glad so many of you have found a way to love and enjoy reading again! The important thing is that you are spending time inside stories you love–the way those stories are published or presented to the world is just one detail. The fact that you find joy in the process of reading (or listening!) to stories–that is what matters.

attackofjak

I feel understood 🥰

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

a bunch of people have reblogged this with the default “i feel called out” reaction….and i know when we say that we mean it tongue-in-cheek….but this comment sorta blew my mind & shifted my perspective up and to the left a little thank you♥

zadabug98

The Serotonin is stored in the Ao3

biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist

The Serotonin is stored in the Ao3

defense-of-absurdity-deactivate

Correction: fanfiction is only good for neurodiverse types that fanfic communities don’t actively despise. Hell, I still remember when fanfic was in its homophobic “no slash” or “sinful yaoi” days. It wasn’t that long ago. If you don’t have autism or Adhd, you aren’t allowed to have fun.

Personally, as a reader with hyperfixation and those symptoms, I feel a little infantilized. And it’s an insult to books, which are a million times more accessible and less frustrating to me, for various reasons: story structure is better paced, while most fanfic doesn’t bother adapting to serial format. There is a lot of freedom. More genres. People writing across the world and history, not just 21st century america, more interesting places that feel real. Dante’s inferno is fanfic, RC & GS is fanfic, King Arthur is fanfic, so why do I even need fanfic-fanfic?

Book authors don’t need to be like fanfic. Fanfic isn’t simple, but since it doesn’t have to prove anything about its source material, it comes across as mean spirited or lacking in self awareness. Why? Because the product has been ‘proven’. We already like the characters. We have an easier time being biased towards them, having them act in ways that would make you uncomfortable on an unfamiliar face. This is an important shortcut, because it radically reframed how the story functions - in that a lot of stories are the BAD kind of wish fulfillment.

With no sensitivity readers. And a much narrower demographic - books are far more diverse. I can’t think of any better medium for measuring societal bias, honestly. Especially classism. It’s majority rule, because everyone essentially splits a self-selected audience.

And, well, fanfiction writers read a lot of fanfic. Most of the writing… is mind numbingly similar to each other. A lot of run on sentence + stream of consciousness, cutoff. Too much “something like”. Adverb abuse. Similar vocabulary. Awkward use of distancing and choosing what actions to skip or emphasize. Too much internal Monologue, all the time. Repetitive joke structure. Quirky dialogue. Ego. Lots of ego (comes partially with the extensive monologuing), and stereotypes. Lots, of ableism, striking and harmful lack of research across the board. People will research the weather more than marginalized groups.

Lack of legitimate character setup, is what those are all consequences of. This leaves every. Single. Aspect of the work, vulnerable to flanderization.

When you go to the store, there are a lot of options.

You pick cheetos. Because you know cheetos. They’ve been advertised to death in your brain, certain stereotypes, certain simplifications, certain eases. cheetos is now Cheetos. It’s not food, it’s a brand. A tag. Commercialized and accessible.

Would you actually pick cheetos otherwise? Who knows.

tonysopranobignaturals-deactiva

this guy talks insanely fast but this is solid info on electrical outrages in the US.

privatization is cringe level 100

leepacey

here’s a transcription of what this guy says in this video, because he talks extremely fast — i’m also including sources wherever possible, in case anybody wants to do some further reading or wants proof

If you’re looking at Texas right now and thinking, “It seems pretty bad that a state’s electrical grid can fail overnight from a snowstorm,” I have news for you. It’s so much worse than you could ever imagine. Don’t be a heartless idiot and blame ‘red state voters;’ it’s red states, blue states, purple states, green states, everywhere is in crisis.

In 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave our energy grid a D+, because almost all of it was built in the 1950s and 60s with a 50-year life expectancy, and we’re 10 to 20 years past that. Across the country, 640,000 miles of high voltage lines run at full capacity at almost all times, which is way more than the grid was designed to handle, and Texas in particular has one of the worst ratios between planned and real capacity.

It’s so bad that the US Government has said that if just nine of America’s 55,000 electrical substations are brought down, it could cause a coast-to-coast blackout lasting 18 months or more. And testimony from the executive director of Task Force on National and Homeland Security has said that a prolonged collapse of the electrical grid could result in the death of up to 90% of the American population. [screenshot in the video has highlighted text from this source, saying: “a prolonged collapse of this nation’s electrical grid—through starvation, disease, and societal collapse—could result in the death of up to 90% of the American population.”]

Today, the US has more power outages than any other developed country. And that’s because 68% of the electricity in the US is managed by investor-owned privatized utility companies [the source I found said it’s actually 72%], and updating their systems cuts into their profits, so they don’t do anything until something fails. And when things do fail, and, for example, start massive wildfires in California, guess who pays for it? Mostly taxpayers.

There’s no good news, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because all of America’s infrastructure is failing, so I’m gonna keep doing videos about it.

tonysopranobignaturals-deactiva

thank you !! I was hoping someone would do a transcript

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

void-the-bear

@hellsite-hall-of-fame

#me #personal

triptihosmrti

broken tornado siren

mhalachai

official anthem of 2020

spookypineflair

I’ve heard this before, but I still take psychic damage every time I hear it

spookypineflair

Not to double reblog, but this would be an interesting application to nuclear semiotics. If this sound could be preserved and serve as a proximity alarm for places that aren’t meant to be disturbed, how well would that work?

insufferable-catboy-deactivated

I mean I absolutely wouldn’t go near any weird structures just blaring this.

pinkatron

This is not a broken tornado sirin. This is a full on tornado warning sirin. The pattern is called an alternating wail. It has begun to be utilized for Two reaons. One, the normal key up sirin holds a note, and backs off slowly. If you are headphoned or doing loud work it can be hard to hear. Two, hollywood has desensitised us to the origanal sirin. It is offputting and loud, but does not create the sense of urgency needed durring an emergency.

the alternating wail was designed with a spin up and spin down, and half octive jumps timed diffrently then the patern of the primary wail. It is just off enough that it instantly makes you feel unease and danger.

Which is what its designed to warn about!

theriverscribe

It sounds like our whale overlords have arrived.

twitblr

Dear mother of God, I want this. (x)

horror-stim

hellenhighwater

holy SHIT

inebriatednovelist-deactivated2

summer-fruits-and-cream

this was such a delight to read

notsolucky-blog

prokopetz

Level 1: Prophecy proclaims that no man can kill villain; killed by woman.

Level 2: Prophecy proclaims that no weapon can harm villain; pushed down stairs and dies.

Level 3: Prophecy proclaims that villain will be brought low by no mortal hand; kicked to death by angry mob.

Level 4: Prophecy proclaims that no power on Earth shall be villain’s undoing; fatally distracted by sun in eyes.

Level 5: Prophecy proclaims that only power of laughter can defeat villain; beat up by clown.

t-a-c

Level **: Prophecy claims that villain cannot be killed by man nor beast, at day or night, or inside or outside. He is killed in a doorway at sunset by a half-man, half-lion (this is actual Hindu myth)

teratorequests

Level ???: Prophecy claims that hero cannot be killed during the day or night, nor indoors or outdoors, neither riding nor walking, not clothed and not naked, nor by any weapon lawfully made. He is killed at dusk, wrapped in a net with one foot on a cauldron and one on a goat and with a spear forged for a year during the hours when everyone is at mass.

(actual Welsh myth!)

mikkeneko

what i’m getting from this is that rules-lawyering is an ancient and honorable tradition

antique-scarecrow

*squints at Wales*

phonsekal-laure-deactivated2023

Listen... no offense but show me your dicks

astrodidact

aenariasbookshelf

See that picture above? That’s a close up of my great grandmother’s immigration papers when she first came to the US back in the early 20th century. But my great grandma’s information isn’t the important part here. The important part is that line in the middle there about how they arrived in the country.

And how ‘stowaway’ is a legitimate, valid option to select.

So yeah. They absolutely just showed up, and that part of immigration history needs to be talked about a lot more.

drek-odradek-deactivated2022031

REMINDER THAT TRAVEL VISAS AS WE KNOW THEM TODAY WERE INVENTED IN THE 1930S TO KEEP JEWISH REFUGEES OUT OF COUNTRIES THAT DID NOT WANT AN ‘INFLUX’ OF THEM, THEREBY FACILITATING THEIR GENOCIDE :)))))

read What is A Refugee for more history. Educate yourselves.

liberalsarecool

Entire Georgia county claims no mail-in ballots.

How does Brian Kemp explain his incompetence? How does he explain suppressing votes from certain counties?

ms-cellanies

Just in case anyone missed this the last 2 or 3 times I reblogged it.

swan2swan

If you haven’t seen this story, look up his name: Francisco Galicia.

Expect to see him come 2020, when the debates begin and the political battle heats up. Expect to see him in a suit testifying in court, or before Congress. This young man is a witness and a victim, and the fact that this isn’t a more prominent story on every news station is what truly frightens me.

swan2swan

From The Dallas News:

Galicia says he lost 26 pounds during that time in a South Texas immigrant detention center because officers didn’t provide him with enough food.

He said he wasn’t allowed to shower and his skin was dry and dirty.

He and 60 other men were crammed into an overcrowded holding area where they slept on the floor and were given only aluminum-foil blankets, he said. Some men had to sleep on the restroom area floor.

Ticks bit some of the men and some were very sick, Galicia said. But many were afraid to ask to go to the doctor because CBP officers told them their stay would start over if they did, he said.

I would remind you that concentration camps are actually real.

“I told them we had rights and asked to make a phone call. But they told us, ‘You don’t have rights to anything’,” Francisco Galicia said.

This is happening.

arctic-hands

[the screencapped tweets are in initial link]

lost-son-of-rome

Jesus Christ, vote for Biden for the love of god.