A Moment in Time

[disastercomingfaster]

This is like the best thing I’ve ever seen

[imperialeagle]

I love every bit of this

[dreamilypurpleoutcast]

[toastbutteregg]

[sorcererest-sorcerer]

Do not cite the deep magics to me, witch. I was there when it was written.

[telomeke]

[imperialeagle]

Bwahahaha ... I'm older than this, only in green or amber, not white

[no-longer-another-bondi-blonde]

[yeahiwasintheshit]

[mckitterick]

[ ID: photo of David Attenborough sitting on an oceanside cliff, with the quote: 

If I die while I have a pet, let my animal see my dead body. Let them see my dead body please. They understand death and seeing me dead will allow them to mourn, but if I just never show up one day they’ll think I abandoned them. I know what it feels like to be abandoned and I never want anyone to feel that way, especially my dog.

- Sir David Attenborough /ID ]

[a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark]

No, this is good advice.

[seananmcguire]

Please let my cats know I'm not leaving them because I want to. Please let them understand.

When Alice died, it was supposed to be at home. The doctors were supposed to come and let her go peacefully and without fear. But everything happened so fast, and she died at the vet. No one thought about Thomas (me, included: I was gone by that point, so broken by grief that if I could have died with her, I would have, just from wanting). From his perspective, we had been whisking her off to the vet at least once a week for eight months. And this time we just...never brought her home.

They were bonded, and he was distraught. For months, he kept trying to get into the garage where we kept the cat carriers, so he could find her and make her come inside. For months. His grief was real, and so furiously urgent, and I will forever feel bad for not bringing her body home to help him understand.

Please don't do that to my babies when I go. Let them see me and sniff me and understand that Mother Is Gone.

[writing-prompt-s]

Science fiction is full of first contact stories, but is there a such thing as LAST contact?  Decide exactly what that means, and write about it.

[elidyce]

It was too late, when the humans came. They were a young species, still exploring outwards, vital and thriving. 

We… were not. 

War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away. 

And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few. 

“We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.” 

It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful.

But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us. 

Keep reading

[imperialeagle]

This is something Tumblr brings that only one other platform attempted. This art, from a simple prompt. When people ask why I stay here, I point to examples such as this.

[victusinveritas]

[greatmountainfloofsquatch]

Same.

[imperialeagle]

I still don't put spaces in file names, if I intend to link to the file. Spaces can easily create broken links. I still use dashes or underscores for that reason

[depsidase]

[imwiremother]

i tell servers to kill themselves if they bring me tepid water. and i like to push them over and step on their throats afterwards

[seananmcguire]

I want a bowl of rats.

[imperialeagle]

You know you're in IT when it takes till the word Omelette to realize this is talking about a PERSON bringing you FOOD vs a piece of computer hardware. Let me tell you, it takes very little get me to scream at a computer (server).

[completed-nihilism-blog]

[labiodentist-deactivated2015021]

what. why? someone pls explain to me pls i wasnt born yet in 1999 why turn computer off before midnight? what happen if u dont?

[awhdjksadaluigsjkdfasdk-deactiv]

y2k lol everyone was like “the supervirus is gonna take over the world and ruin everything and end the world!!!”

[jibini]

This is the oldest I’ve ever felt. Right now.

[the-ilyasaurus-deactivated20160]

WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN YOU WEREN’T BORN YET IN 1999.

[faisdm]

Ahh the Millenium bug.

It wasn’t a virus, it was an issue with how some old computers at the time were programmed to deal with dates. Basically some computers with older operating systems didn’t have anything in place to deal with the year reaching 99 and looping around to 00. It was believed that this inability to sync with the correct date would cause issues, and even crash entire systems the moment the date changed.

People flipped out about it, convinced that the date discrepancy between netwoked systems would bring down computers everywhere and shut down the internet and so all systems relying on computers, including plane navigation etc. would go down causing worldwide chaos. It was genuinely believed that people should all switch off computers to avoid this. One or two smart people spoke up and said “um hey, this actually will only effect a few very outdated computers and they’ll just display the wrong date, so it probably won’t be harmful” but were largely ignored because people selling books about the end of the world were talking louder.

In the end, absolutely nothing happened.

[ralfmaximus]

Oh gosh.

I’ve been a programmer working for various government agencies since the early 1990s and I can say with some confidence:

NOTHING HAPPENED BECAUSE WE WORKED VERY HARD FIXING SHIT THAT MOST DEFINITELY WOULD HAVE BROKEN ON 1-JAN-2000.

One example I personally worked on: vaccination databases.

My contract was with the CDC to coordinate immunization registries — you know, kids’ vaccine histories. What they got, when they got it, and (most importantly) which vaccines they were due to get next and when. These were state-wide registries, containing millions of records each.

Most of these systems were designed in the 1970s and 1980s, and stored the child’s DOB year as only two digits. This means that — had we not fixed it — just about every child in all the databases I worked on would have SUDDENLY AGED OUT OF THE PROGRAM 1-JAN-2000.

In other words: these kids would suddenly be “too old” to receive critical vaccines.

Okay, so that’s not a nuke plant exploding or airplanes dropping from the sky. In fact, nothing obvious would have occurred come Jan 1st.

BUT

Without the software advising doctors when to give vaccinations, an entire generation’s immunity to things like measles, mumps, smallpox (etc) would have been compromised. And nobody would even know there was a problem for months — possibly years — after.

You think the fun & games caused by a few anti-vaxers is bad?

Imagine whole populations going unvaccinated by accident… one case of measles and the death toll might be measured in millions.

This is one example I KNOW to be true, because I was there.

I also know that in the years leading up to 2000 there were ad-hoc discussion groups (particularly alt.risk) of amazed programmers and project managers that uncovered year-2000 traps… and fixed them.

Quietly, without fanfare. 

In many cases because admitting there was a problem would have resulted in a lawsuit by angry customers. But mostly because it was our job to fix those design flaws before anyone was inconvenienced or hurt.

So, yeah… all that Y2K hysteria was for nothing, because programmers worked their asses off to make sure it was for nothing.

[spytap]

Bolding mine.

[jaybushman]

Absolutely true.  My Mom worked like crazy all throughout 1998 and 1999 on dozens of systems to avoid Y2K crashes. Nothing major happened because people worked to made sure it didn’t.

Now if we could just harness that concept for some of the other major issues facing us today.  

[shananaomi]

this meme came so far since i saw it this morning. god i love tumblr teaching tumblr about history.

[forloveofreason]

As a young Sys Admin during Y2K, I can confirm that it was SRS BZNS.  I worked for a major pharmaceutical company at the time.  They spent millions of dollars on consultant and programmer hours, not to mention their own employees’ time, to fix all their in-house software as well as replace it with new systems.  Sys Admins like myself were continually deploying patches, updating firmware, and deploying new systems in the months leading up to Y2K.  Once that was done, though, the programmers went home and cashed their checks.

When the FATEFUL HOUR came along, it wasn’t just one hour.  For a global company with offices in dozens of countries, it was 24 hours of being alert and on-call.  I imagine that other large organizations had similar setups with entire IT departments working in shifts to monitor everything.  Everyone was on a hair trigger, too, so the slightest problem caused ALL HANDS ON DECK pages to go out.

Yes, we had pagers.

For hard numbers IDC’s 2006 calculation put the total US cost of remediation, before and after, at $147 billion - that’s in 1999 dollars.  That paid for an army of programmers, including calling up retired grandparents from the senior center because COBOL and FORTRAN apps from the ‘60s needed fixing.

Also note that there were some problems, including $13 billion in remediation included in the figure above.  Some of these involved nuclear power plants, medical equipment, and “a customer at a New York State video rental store had a bill for $91,250, the cost of renting the movie ‘The General’s Daughter’ for 100 years.”

Y2K was anything but nothing.

[all-things-olicity]

@figure-forever

[cumaeansibyl]

tfw you do your job so fucking well that everyone thinks you weren’t necessary in the first place :(

salute our COBOL cowpokes and other Y2K wranglers, they saved all our asses

another important lesson we learned: a shitload of stuff in the ‘90s was still running programs from the ‘60s and ‘70s. it’s hard to justify the expense and trouble of a massive upgrade when things are working “fine” – easier to say “well, I suppose we’ll need to change at some point, but not now”

and if things really are working “fine” you can let them go on for a while but every so often you run into something like Y2K where the software simply wasn’t designed to handle certain eventualities. can’t really blame the programmers, either. if you were writing shit in the ‘60s, would you expect people to still be using it in the science-fiction year of 2000? that’s not a real year! you might be dead by then!

so, y’know, you don’t always need the latest and greatest for everything you’re doing – how much power do you really need for an inventory system? – but regular upgrades are a Good Idea

[musicalluna]

nerds quietly saving the world. this is superhero nonsense i love it

[emeraldmercury]

Holy shit so THIS was why my older cousins were saying all the computers were going to die and four year old me was like “what.”

[silks-stuff]

Within a certain FTSE 100 retailer, I worked on the millennium bug project for over 8 months to make sure that none of our 2,400 mainframe programs would crash. Out of those, over 900 needed changing and testing.

On New Year even while others were out drinking and being merry, my colleague and I sat in a dark room together until 5am keeping one eye on our computer screens, and the other on a large TV I’d brought in for movies.

Rest of the world: Nothing went wrong! hahah

Me: You’re welcome.

[kou32-deactivated20190911]

Thank you for your service

[dollsahoy]

Add my voice to the “nothing happened because people made sure it wouldn’t” brigade.

I was married to someone in a bank’s IT department back then, and I remember helping him run updates on individual computers (stick in a floppy, run a .exe, repeat for the next computer…and the next…and the next…) several times near the end of 1999, and then he was at work all night on New Year’s, and I ran into someone I kinda knew at the store the next morning and she said her husband had spent the previous night babysitting computers, too. 

But.

People–the kind of people who would eventually go on to fall for the most outrageous, unbelievable, sensationalist stories on FB–didn’t understand what the problem actually was.  They thought that every electronic thing with a clock would become useless at midnight.  Microwaves.  Alarm clocks.  Coffee makers.  And the fact that those things kept working–those things that never had a chance of not working to begin with–probably has as much as anything to do with convincing them that Y2k was a false alarm.

[imperialeagle]

Adding in my personal experience. I worked for a telco. We spent 2 years finding and fixing all the code AND databases. It wasn't just changing the code, in many cases it was changing years worth of data and/or making the code "bi-lingual" for old date/new date. My team of DBAs started 24hr coverage 2 weeks before, yes including Christmas, and 1 week post just to be ready to jump in the event something happened. There was one operating system fix we had to apply that we got 15 hours before clock change because it was encountered in New Zealand and IBM had the patch out to most places before they encountered it.

It was a non-event because we did our jobs. We joked afterward that we should have left 1 or 2 bugs in non-essential systems so we could say "something happened" and immediately fix it because we had the fixes. 20/20 hindsight.

[bigandlong]

If you see this on your dashboard, reblog this, NO MATTER WHAT and all your dreams and wishes will come true.

[jae-felidae]

Oh hey! Haven’t seen this in forever! Didn’t reblog it when it came across me before, not gonna skip it this time, I need some good vibes.

[imperialeagle]

I just want to be able to find it again. I love meteor pics and vids.

[no-longer-another-bondi-blonde]

[imperialeagle]

I have serious problems with this post. I have a good friend who has owned a Tesla since well before this latest stupidity. They have had their car vandalized at least once because of what Musk is doing. They do not support what is currently happening with the government, they are in the LGBTQ+ community, and they're having their property damaged because people think it's morally ok to damage their property because the CEO of the company that made the car, they bought used, is doing horrific things.

I am capable of being morally outraged by what Muskalini is doing AND be morally outraged by the people who think it's ok to vandalize people's personal property because it has a specific logo on it associated with an a$$hat.

If you think vandalizing personal property of someone not associated with a narcissistic sadist to show that same narcissistic sadist how you feel about them, you need to check your moral compass. Think about it, Muskalini doesn't care that you torched John Smith's car, he already has their money. He might care if you torch cars he hasn't sold yet... maybe.

@wilwheaton, I normally agree with the things you cross post, as a matter of fact, this is the first time I've had issue with what you've said or cross posted. No hate to you from me, just thought you should see this since I cross posted and commented it from your blog.

[jewish-vents]

They removed Anne Frank from the curriculum. English teacher confirmed it was because of I/P. Never read it and was looking forward to doing so this year, but to my knowledge, it has nothing to do with Israel or Zionism or whatever.

.

[mossadspypigeon]

read it on your own!!!

[kick-a-long]

read maus. it's a much more complicated and accurate explanation of the holocaust. Anne makes you feel empathy and makes you sad that they killed such a kind and human little girl.

maus makes you realize that the trauma didn't start in WW2 and that no amount of being good, kind, smart, loving... none of it saved you from it. it erases the, "well what if i were...?" you wouldn't survive off of that. it tackles "well what if my friends hid me or helped me?" wouldn't matter. you don't know who your friends are. it shows you that the worst didn't die because they ratted people out, and the best didn't survive because they defended the weak or bartered with food or sex or whatever with the guards. it shows you that children were the easiest to kill and no relationships can survive in a place like that. it talks about dehumanization, the creep into it, and the tricks the nazis used to keep jews compliant. it shows you how your neighbors, baby sitters, cleaners, friends will turn you in to loot your house. it shows you how broken the people who went through it and lived became and how they deal with it by ignoring it or dismissing it.

it's also a good reference book for how to survive in a genocide.

anne frank gives you feelings and forgives you. maus shows you, how it happened, how it is almost impossible to escape, how to give you chance, how to think about it if it's happening, and how it changes you for life. how the trauma lingers, rewrites your entire understanding of the world. it's a far superior work. no offense to the teen who only had one shot to write about her experience before she was killed in the most industrial genocide ever enacted on the earth.

imo

[mossadspypigeon]

i agree with every single thing you wrote here.

my history professor mother assigns maus. excellent choice.

[kick-a-long]

it's a passion for me because anne frank damages people's understanding of what happened and how.

not to speak poorly of anne, she was a child writing her first novel at the most stressful time in her short life, but goyim use her forgiveness, belief in good winning over evil, and belief that people are good at heart... to prove they would never really be so bad if they can empathize with anne.

it doesn't cover the real horror and danger of the nazi execution machine, how intentional it was, how well planned and ordered and executed. it doesn't explain that your best friend and a woman you knew for 20 years would knowingly rat you out, knowingly send you to death for your house or just out of their inconvenience and envy.

it tells goy, you were never so bad that even the kindest jew wouldn't forgive you for martyring her for your sins. it's a christ allegory for fucks sake.

maus tells you the misery that everyone enacted and suffered. there were no kind and saintly people downstairs protecting you in the attic. that's much more important to learn. complicated and unlikeable men live because of luck and cunning. and not even every complicated lucky cunning person did live.

it's important to know you can't christian your way out of participating in a holocaust just like you can't jewish your way out of suffering one. it's what made me understand that secularity was never a defense against antisemitism. more people should know.

[mossadspypigeon]

E X A C T L Y.

the way i agree with all of this. anne frank is our MLK tbh. palatable (we all know mlk isnt what white people make him out to be today, but you know). goyim can picture themselves in the role of savior without introspection.

it was something that was never meant for the world to consume it the way they do.

it doesnt teach the shoah as a culmination of thousands of years of antisemitism because it’s a young girl’s diary.

exactly exactlyyyyyyy

plus it’s a good jumping off point. after maus you can read elie wiesel and primo levi etc etc and have a deeper understanding.

[imperialeagle]

Personally, I recommend both. The Diary of Anne Frank is a first hand view of a young girl's experiences. It is important to see the views of that young girl living through the atrocities. How it shaped her thoughts, how she felt about the people around her, and the situation. Was it meant for public consumption? No, no more than the letters between Abigail and John Adams were, but they are important to read and understand because the are REAL PEOPLE who lived events and we can see through their eyes.

Maus is disturbing, and it's supposed to be. I've read both and I gained different insights from each. Not only that, having read both, I can correlate between the two; the fiction and the (mostly) non-fiction.

One tale is not better than the other. They are different stories with different purposes and they should both be read and analyzed within the view of each other.... and other books mentioned that I've not read. I applaud recommending additional reading, but do not exclude one over the other because they are both needed, and both need to be understood in the context of each other.

[willsilvertongue]

PACIFIC RIM + letterboxd reviews (insp/insp)

[imperialeagle]

Drift compatibility all the way

[memehumor]

[imperialeagle]

Not just Nazis... that ALL fascism is bad

[thepromiscuousfinger]

[chaifootsteps]

#Please little bird

[imperialeagle]

I personally just think its little hat is adorable, wish it weren't made out of money, but the bird in a paper hat is adorable

[imperialeagle]

Your vote matters

I've seen a lot of "I can't vote for her because of <single topic or statement>" and that topic or statement is not the same in each post. So here is my reminder to each of you saying that:

You are either voting for her, or you are voting for him, period.

A vote for a third party is a vote for him. Not voting is a vote for him. A vote for her, no matter how unpleasant you may feel, is a vote for democracy. A vote for him, no matter how unpleasant you may feel is a vote for dictatorship; he has said as much. If you choose not to vote, or vote for a third party with no chance of winning, you will never GET to vote again. He has said as much.

Please think very carefully about your vote and how you choose to cast it.

[depsidase]

[glutenfree-rootbeer]

Say youre a renter without saying it.

In theory this post is nice but it neglects simple economics in favor of ‘being kind and cool’… (#1) you should be proud of where you live because (#2) you just paid your life savings (presumably) to buy this home. Now imagine you spent hard earned income youve saved for years on your perfect dream house and you move in and your neighbors next door pull their trailer up onto the lawn. And they have a car theyve been repairing in pieces. In most situations this will effect YOUR house value. (Yes it all comes down to money- but also when you pay for something- you should take pride in it and wanting it to be better not worse)

Its nice to think ‘why would i care what my neighbors doing’ but the reality is, you should care. Its called a community. Your neighbors property value directly impacts yours. You wont feel so chill and cool when you realize that you just spent $$$$ on something and one persons actions made it worth $$$ in your first year living there. Single handedly bringing down the value of everyones home on the block.

Its like saying ‘why do i care if other people have car insurance’ i mean sure on surface level why do you care? But youll care as soon as you (a person with insurance) gets hit by someone without it. And then suddenly you wont be so cool, chill and understanding about that person not having insurance.

(In case youre also not familiar with insurance- just because you have it doesnt mean you automatically get paid out- its a push and pull agreement between two companies. Not guaranteed)

[tevruden]

Say your treating your home as an investment and not as a primary place to live without saying it.

You wont feel so chill and cool when you realize that you just spent $$$$ on something and one persons actions made it worth $$$ in your first year living there.

Nah I do not give a shit if my house is worth less then, because that only factors into things when i want to sell it-- and I don't want to sell it, thats a completely bullshit amount of paperwork that I don't want to go through. I'm here for the long haul. I Do Not Care about year to year differences in the value of the property I own. I've seen what house prices have done in this region over the past 30 years. Longer, actually-- because I've looked at the property records for multiple places in this region going back to the 50s. (The original owner of my childhood home buying the WHOLE-ASS house for LESS than the check I wrote for the down payment of my own home made me feel a way.)

Like, its actually wild that you want the assessed value of your house to go up! Whenever the value of my home goes up, that means I have to pay more property tax. And while i don't mind paying taxes to fund things in my area its wild you think that number going up while you don't do anything, is a GOOD thing. Life is too short to worry about what the hell my neighbors are doing unless it might actually burn down my house.

[atopfourthwall]

Viga and I absolutely refused to look at any place with an HOA when we were house hunting. We bought this house. It belongs to us. Some other douchebags don't get to tell us how we decorate or use OUR house.

[imperialeagle]

What am I going to do if they're neglecting their lawn? I'm going to go ask if everything is ok, do they maybe need some help because of... life? of maybe a vacation?

In my life I have passed up several nice houses because they had an HOA. I have to pay to have someone define rules I don't agree with, and get fined if I don't follow the rules I don't agree with? No thank you.

[copperbadge]

Presented without comment because what could I possibly say.

[ID: A screengrab from the Build A Bear website; it shows a stuffed "bear" under the "Loveable Legends" collection, which is a black bear with wings, red eyes, and antennae, labeled "Mothman Plush". It's very adorable.]

[imperialeagle]

@cluegrrl ... tell me I don't need plushy