Lover of All Geeks Galore @ultraredphoenixlove - Tumblr Blog

So I just simultaneously did, and possibly didn't lose my job today :)

Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.

So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.

But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.

It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?

So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:

Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.

And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.

So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".

So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.

I don't know what else to say aside from I've been laughing all day and I'm gonna have a hell of a time explaining Schrodinger's Unemployment to the benefits office.

basuralindo

Update that is not an update because I'm basically certain this isn't what actually happened:

My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.

Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.

Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.

Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).

Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues

(also shout out to the person who proposed Carmen Sandiego)

basuralindo

ACTUAL (partial) UPDATE:

According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.

Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.

For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.

So now I'm officially out of a job. Because my workplace was literally stolen in the night.

basuralindo

Actually fuck it let's share some photos cause I wouldn't be inclined to believe this myself. It's not like anyone can stalk me at my job now and I'm not gonna have to see any coworkers that might find my tumblr.

Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life

Aaand a close-up:

The last remains of a once Very Much Solid And Immobile Workplace

basuralindo

HEY HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE

via @kagaminilen

mysteryteacup

[cut to a kiosk on legs, sipping a boba, while wandering into the nearest forest on chicken legs]

ardanelvilyafeanturi

Here you go @a-bit-too-dyscrasic

a-bit-too-dyscrasic

Oh my goodness you're my hero this is so beautiful

basuralindo

Holy fuck my job got fan art

ladyshinga

OceanGate, the deep-sea exploration company that created the Titan submersible, has removed its Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn a

poor things, well we should definitely make this easier on them by never repeatedly mentioning their name and deeds on the "reblog things forever" website

septicake

yea that'd be a shame

by the way, just so everyone knows what not to do, shift+r reblogs a post instantly

just make sure you don't reblog anything about oceangate because that would completely undermine their entire plan 😇😇😇

curoopeez

You also shouldn't queue a post, that would make people keep remembering this post for a longer time, which is the opposite of forgetting

ladythatsmyskull

nitpickspot

So, what you're saying is, under no circumstances should we be reposting the above image as much as humanly possible?

aqueerkettleofish

Well, we should certainly make sure that everyone knows about this image, or how will they know not to post it? It's not like "That image of Musk looking like a Nazi" would narrow it down.

necrotranscjk

An important tweet

sighinastorm

This is such a "common sense" way of putting it. Everybody memorize this for spitting it back out whenever needed.

skin-slave

Never thought I'd have the opportunity to say this again: Reducing women and girls to their vaginas and then forcing them to show those vaginas to strangers is not a feminist ideal.

takereveng3

I have three monitors on my desk. The left one shows the order book. The middle one shows Truth Social. The right one shows the investigation queue.

On April 21st, the left screen moved first.

I am a Senior Surveillance Analyst at a commodities exchange. I have held this position for nineteen years. My job is to monitor trading activity for suspicious patterns and generate compliance reports. I am employee of the quarter. I have a mug.

At 19:54 GMT on April 21st, someone placed 4,260 sell orders on Brent crude futures. They did this during post-settlement. The window after the market closes when daily volume is typically in the dozens. Sometimes single digits. Sometimes I watch the screen and nothing happens for forty minutes and I think about whether my daughter is happy.

On April 21st, someone placed $430 million in directional bets in 120 seconds during that window. One hundred and twenty seconds. I timed it on my watch because the system clock rounds to the nearest minute and I have found, in nineteen years, that precision matters to no one but me.

At 20:10 GMT, the President posted on Truth Social that he was extending the Iran ceasefire.

Brent dropped from $100.91 to $96.83.

I flagged the trade. I flag a lot of trades. I want to tell you what happens to my flags.

My flags go into a system called TRACE. Trade Review and Compliance Evaluation. I did not name it. The system generates a report. The report goes to a committee. The committee has a name I am not allowed to share but I can tell you it meets quarterly and the conference room has a credenza with bottled water that is sparkling because someone once put still water in the room and a managing director sent an email about it that was longer than most of my surveillance reports.

The committee reviews my flags. The committee has reviewed all of my flags. Here is the complete record of actions taken on my flags in 2026:

Reviewed.

That's it. "Reviewed" is a status. In compliance, a status is the absence of an action that has been given a name so it looks like one.

Let me show you my flags.

March 9th. Someone bet millions on oil falling at 18:29 GMT. Forty-seven minutes later, a CBS reporter posted that the President said the Iran war was "very complete, pretty much." Oil dropped 25%. Forty-seven minutes. I flagged it.

March 23rd. Someone sold 5,100 lots of Brent and WTI crude futures between 10:49 and 10:50 GMT. Fourteen minutes later, the President posted on Truth Social about a "COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION" to hostilities. Oil dropped 11%. Over 13,000 contracts traded in sixty seconds after the post. Fourteen minutes. I flagged it.

April 7th. Someone established a $950 million short position in oil futures at 19:45 GMT. Three hours later, the President declared a two-week ceasefire. Nine hundred and fifty million dollars. I flagged it.

April 17th. Someone placed $760 million in bearish bets twenty minutes before Iran's foreign minister confirmed the Strait of Hormuz would reopen. Seven hundred and sixty million. I flagged it.

April 21st. The $430 million. Fifteen minutes. I flagged it.

That is $2.1 billion in directional oil bets in April alone. Every one of them landed on the correct side of a presidential announcement. Every one of them was placed in a window so narrow you could measure it in bathroom breaks. I flagged every single one.

The CFTC chair told a Congressional committee that his organization has "zero tolerance" for fraud and insider trading. I wrote that quote on a Post-it note and stuck it to my right monitor. The one that shows the investigation queue. The investigation queue has not moved since March.

Zero tolerance. Zero staff. Zero budget. Zero prosecutions under the STOCK Act since it was signed in 2012.

Fourteen years. The law has existed for fourteen years and has been enforced zero times. In compliance, we call that a compliance rate of one hundred percent. No cases filed means no cases lost. You cannot fail an audit you never conduct. We call that excellence.

Last month the White House sent an internal email to staff. I was not on the distribution list but I have read reporting on it and I need you to sit with what I am about to say. The email instructed White House staff not to use insider information to place bets on prediction markets.

The White House had to send a memo telling its own employees not to insider-trade.

I want you to read that sentence again. Not because the instruction was unclear. Because the instruction was necessary. Because someone in the building looked at the same pattern I have been flagging for months on my three monitors and decided the appropriate response was an email.

The President's son sits on the advisory board of Kalshi. He is an investor in Polymarket. Both are prediction markets. Both saw accounts created days before U.S. military action.

One account. I cannot stop thinking about this account. It was called "Burdensome-Mix." It was created in December. On January 2nd, it placed $32,500 on Venezuela's president being removed from power. On January 3rd, Maduro was seized by U.S. special forces. Burdensome-Mix collected $436,000. Then it changed its username. Then it disappeared.

One account is a coincidence. But there were six.

Six accounts were created on Polymarket in February. All bet on U.S. strikes on Iran by the 28th. When the President confirmed the strikes, the six accounts collected $1.2 million between them. Five of the six never placed another bet. The sixth went on to correctly predict the ceasefire date and made another $163,000.

My surveillance system logged all of this. My system logs everything. My system does not have opinions and neither do I. I generate reports. The reports go to committees. The committees meet quarterly. Between meetings, the windows get shorter and the bets get larger.

March 9th: 47 minutes. March 23rd: 14 minutes. April 17th: 20 minutes. April 21st: 15 minutes.

The window is compressing. In March, you had time to make coffee between the trade and the announcement. By April, you had time to send a text. By summer, at this rate, the trade and the announcement will be the same event.

The spokesman said any implication that administration officials are engaged in insider trading is "baseless and irresponsible reporting."

Then the White House sent the email again.

I have been in compliance for nineteen years. I have seen insider trading run out of strip mall offices by men who could not spell "derivative." I have seen pump-and-dump schemes coordinated over WhatsApp by people who used their real names. I have seen a man try to manipulate soybean futures from a Panera Bread.

I have never seen $2.1 billion in perfectly timed trades across five presidential announcements in a single month go uninvestigated.

But I have also never seen a compliance system work this beautifully. Every trade flagged. Every report filed. Every committee briefed. Every quarterly meeting attended. Bottled water: sparkling. Minutes: distributed.

Zero prosecutions.

As long as the flags go up and the cases don't, my performance review says I am meeting expectations.

I am meeting expectations. The system is meeting expectations. The $2.1 billion is meeting expectations. The fourteen-year-old law with zero prosecutions is meeting expectations.

The left screen moves. The middle screen moves. The right screen stays perfectly, immaculately still.

In my field, we call this price discovery.

tartrazeen

supergameboytwo

If you guys don't start behaving I'm going to turn off reblogs for this post. This post is about launching matchbox cars into your wall at high enough speeds to lodge them there. Nobody cares about how strong the walls in your house are, and I'm suddenly learning that a lot of people on this webbed site don't know what drywall is, but none of that matters.

The only thing that matters is shoot cars into your wall.

mumblesplash

no but the “”ai”” boom is crazy bc they made the entire internet so shitty that the only reason to use it is because it’s where all the people are and now they’re getting rid of the people. like i’m straight up logging off and going to the library there’s nothing on here anymore

mumblesplash

‘here’s how to tell if an image is ai’ ‘signs the person you’re talking to is a bot’ ‘how to tell if a song is ai generated’ ah but consider this: i am shutting my laptop and walking outside

jedusaur

I saw a bsky post last year where someone said their grandma couldn't tell what was real on the internet anymore so she stopped using it and I really, genuinely think the techbros currently ruining everything have never even considered that possibility. their projections and pie charts and market share research and whatever simply do not take into account a scenario where people lose interest in being online. like yeah we're pretty much all gonna keep using the internet to book travel and look up words and order pizza, but in terms of how we spend our leisure time? I'm still extremely online, but in the last few years I've been learning candlemaking and carpentry and sewing, and I was already spending a lot of time cooking and reading books and skating at the rink and hiking, and an afternoon spent on any of those things always leaves me feeling better about myself than an afternoon spent doomscrolling. I think my daily life is going to keep reflecting that more and more as the slop encroaches, and it sounds like I'm far from the only one feeling that way. silver lining the everything, I suppose.

mckitterick

bovid-beauty

The rule could have heavy impacts towards trans people across society.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

Importantly, the gender ideology prohibition has no age limitation—hospitals could be targeted not just for providing care to minors but for providing gender-affirming care to adults, because prescribing hormone therapy to a transgender patient of any age could be deemed promoting the belief that "sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic."

junequeer

THIS IS OPEN TO COMMENT UNTIL JULY 13, 2026

featherandstorm

This is all very bad and horrible, but I want to be clear that it’s worse and more sweeping than just eliminating trans research.

This torches everything. And I do mean everything.

A very abbreviated list of its ramifications include (but are not limited to):

ending funding for ALL DEI related initiatives

allowing the government to terminate grants at any point for any reason

preventing researchers from publishing, going to conferences, and being part of academic societies

requiring that topics must support the president’s agenda.

What this means, and if anything I’m under selling it, is the death of science and research in America. It allows the government to restrict any topic they please at a whims notice, putting officials who have no background in the topic in charge of deciding funding continuity. It controls what gets researched and if/how researchers are allowed to share their discoveries. There are no books to burn if the government never allows them to be written. This is fascism plain and simple.

Please, if you only ever write one public comment, this is the one to do.

genderkoolaid

Bringing back this guide to writing an effective public comment. This gives you the basics you need to know, what you need to include, a basic outline you can follow, etc.

Public comments are not a vote, it is a chance for you to say "here is an issue with this law I think you need to address" and provide justification for legal challenges if it goes forward:

"Comments raise the bar that agencies have to meet when making a rule; “if an agency fails to adequately respond to significant, relevant comments in a final rule, members of the public may seek to challenge the rule in court on that basis and claim it could be struck down.ˮ"

But also, if possible, don't stop at writing a comment. Don't stop at calling your representatives. You should ideally be talking to people in your community about this and organizing resistance on-the-ground; there is a good chance people are already doing that even if you aren't hearing about it.

brainscrems

Also, please keep in mind, this is 100%, without a doubt, wholly unconsitituonal. They will try to enforce it regardless, but that does not make it legal. Do not treat this as law because it is not.

ereszdnekiperesztegi

oww666

should be shown at every DMV when you get your licence

gentlesmile2-deactivated2024070

Always a reblog.

roger-reblogs

You learn the basics of this at least when you get forklift certified, but this video is a great demonstration!

unamusedsloth

“Vicious” Leopard seal tries to keep national geographic photographer alive by feeding him penguins.

bendablebananas

@maculategiraffe tags

sztupy

A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previou

ayeforscotland

Let’s fucking go

cheeseanonioncrisps

Okay but imagine being the team of Eridian scientists tasked with keeping Erid's Only Human alive for as long as possible while the whole planet's environment is literally trying to kill him. And then Rocky shows up and is like:

“Grace says he would like half of dome to be water.”

“Oh, is necessary for humans to have large amounts of water question?”

Small Eridian equivalent of a sigh. “No. Not needed for life. In fact Grace will die if he falls in water and does not get out.”

“Tell him we give him water in containers that won't kill him. Lots lots lots of water on Erid for Grace to drink.”

“No. Grace say he want water on ground. Also want it with excess sodium chloride compound so it will be unhealthy for drink.”

“WHY QUESTION???”

cheeseanonioncrisps

To celebrate Erid getting their sun back on track, Grace asks for some alcohol. There's a small amount left from the Hail Mary and Rocky offers to take it to the science Eridians to see if they can synthesise more.

“Grace want this liquid for celebration.”

“Of course.” They scan it. “You have wrong liquid. This contain compounds which are poisonous for humans.”

“Yes yes yes. Grace say humans like feeling of being slightly poisoned.”

“WHY QUESTION?????”

cheeseanonioncrisps

Grace is like one of those extremely finicky tropical fish who instantly die if not kept in extremely specific conditions.

Only here the fish can talk and keeps asking you to make it vodka.

shiverandqueeef

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

your-dads-filing-cabinet

@/teaboot

teaboot

This isn't even a joke it's just what we do

cheeseanonioncrisps

I see your “Rocky swears like a sailor but only in pitches humans can’t hear/refuses to teach Grace what those words mean” and raise you “Rocky swears like a sailor and now has to explain to Grace that ‘bad bad bad’ isn’t actually a sequence you play on your Eridian speech piano in polite company.”

Grace is both horrified and amused to realise that a more accurate translation for what Rocky’s been saying is “shit shit shit”.

cheeseanonioncrisps

Eridian government representative: Greetings Rocky, Saviour of Erid, and Grace, Saviour from Beyond the Stars. We are pleased to welcome you home.

Grace, haltingly on the keyboard Rocky built for him: Wassup bitches. Fucking jazzed to—

Rocky: GRACE STOP TALKING NOW NOW NOW I EXPLAIN LATER