the face I make when someone tries to speak to me before 11am
😂😂😂😂😂😂
Grumpy sky cats
11am? Lucky you…try getting phoned before 7am to discuss something “urgent” that cannot be dealt with on the spot but needs “consideration” o.O
STILL ON PATROL
I learned something new and horrifying today which is… that… no submarine is ever considered “lost” … there is apparently a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”
?????
There is a monument about this along a canal near here its… the worst thing I have ever seen. it says “STILL ON PATROL” in huge letters and then goes on to specify exactly how many WWII submarine ghosts are STILL OUT THERE, ON PATROL (it is almost 2000 WWII submarine ghosts, ftr). Here is the text from it:
“U.S. Navy Submarines paid heavily for their success in WWII. A total of 374 officers and 3131 men are still on board these 52 U.S. submarines still on patrol.”
THANKS A LOT, U.S. NAVY, FOR HAVING THIS TOTALLY NORMAL AND NOT AT ALL HORRIFYING TRADITION, AND TELLING ALL OF US ABOUT IT. THANKS. THANK YOU
anyway now my mother and I cannot stop saying STILL ON PATROL to each other in ominous tones of voice
There’s definitely something ominous about that—the implication that, one day, they will return from patrol.
Actually, it’s rather sweet. I don’t know if this is common across the board, but my dad’s friend is a radio op for subs launched off the east coast, and he always is excited for Christmas, because they go through the list of SoP subs and hail them, wishing them a merry Christmas and telling them they’re remembered.
Imagine a country whose seamen never die, and whose submarines can’t be destroyed…because no ones sure if they exist or not.
No but imagine. It’s Christmas. A black, rotting corridor in a forgotten submarine. The sound of dripping water echoes coldly through the hull. You can’t see very far down the corridor but then, a man appears, he’s running, in a panic, but his footsteps make no noise. The spectral seaman dashes around the corner and slips through a rusty wall. He finds himself at the back of a crowd of his cadaverous crew-mates. They part to let him through. He feels the weight of their hollow gaze as he reaches the coms station. Even after all these years a sickly green light glistens in the dark. The captain’s skeleton lays a sharp hand on his shoulder and nods at him encouragingly, the light sliding over the bones of his skull. The ghost of the seaman steadies himself and slips his fingers into the dials of the radio, possessing it. It wails and screeches. A bombardment of static. And then silence. The deathly crew mates look at each other with worry, with sadness; could this be the year where there is no voice in the dark? No memory of home? The phantasm of the sailor pushes his hand deeper into the workings of the radio, the signal clears, and then a strong voice, distant with the static but warm and kind, echoes from the darkness; “Merry Christmas boys, we’re all thinking of you here at home, have a good one.”
A sepulchral tear wafts it’s way down the seaman’s face. The bony captain embraces him. The crew grin through rotten jaws, laughing silently in their joy. They haven’t forgotten us. They haven’t forgotten.I am completely on board with this. It’s not horrifying, it’s heartwarming.
Personal story time: whenever I go to Field Museum’s Egypt exhibit, I stop by the plaque at the entrance to the underground rooms. It has an English translation of a prayer to feed the dead, and a list of all the names they know of the mummies on display there. I always recite the prayer and read aloud the list of names. They wanted to live forever, to always have their souls fed and their names spoken. How would they feel about being behind glass, among strangers? Every little thing you can do to give respect for the dead is warranted.
I love the idea of lost subs still being on patrol. Though if you really want something ominous, let me say that the superstitious part of me wonders: why are they still on patrol? If they haven’t been found, do they not consider their mission completed? What is it out there that they are protecting us from?
There’s been something in the water since we first learned to float on it. Not marine life, although there’s more of that than we’ll ever know. Not rocks and currents and sand bars and icebergs either, although they’ve all taken more than their share of human life.
But something deeper. Something Other. Something not natural.
Sailors have always been superstitious.
Not one of them described it right.
You don’t hear about it so much now that we don’t lose ships anymore, really, not like we did at the height of the sea trade when barely an inch of ocean floor didn’t bear some wreck or other. And better ships and GPS and weather satellites have all played their part in that.
But we have protection now that we didn’t before. They don’t interfere with war and battle, even on behalf of what used to be their country, or with rocks and weather and human stupidity. Those are concerns for the living.
But the Other Things, the Things that shouldn’t be there - They can’t get to us now without a fight. It’s a fight They haven’t won in a very long time.
As long as we remember them, as long as we call out to them - not very often, just once a year will do - they will keep protecting us from the Things that go bump in the deep.
More than fifty submarines, Still On Patrol.
I love everything about this, but it’s the last bit that made me say “okay now I’ll reblog it.”
URGENT: get the hell off Apache OpenOffice, it’s insecure and not worked on any more. LibreOffice is better in literally every way.
you know OpenOffice, right? free substitute for Microsoft Office which is basically just as good, but free.well, it’s not as good. and is in fact actively dangerous to use.
the security hole: HWP files can be exploited and pwn your PC. obscure minor format, no problem … except that if you get a HWP file with a .DOC extension - say, what appears to be a MS Word file emailed you by anyone - you can get pwned by that.
they’ve known about this since april 2015 and haven’t fixed it. they have distributed over 50 million known-vulnerable copies of AOO since 27 april.
the fix is, literally, remove one file from the installer. they haven’t got it together to do this in five months.
tell everyone you know. tell your writer friends. tell anyone you see running OpenOffice. get LibreOffice, it also originated in OpenOffice but is actually developed and they show the slightest sign of caring about their end users. LO 5.0 is really very nice. much faster to use than 4.4 too.
so what’s going on here:
- Sun Microsystems (mild yay) ran OpenOffice from 2000 to 2010. it was imperfect, but it was good enough and free and open-source. it accumulated one heck of a famous brand name. (“we need an office program” “how about that openoffice thing”)
- Oracle (boo hiss!) bought Sun in early 2010. OpenOffice development stopped as they reassigned developers.
- a bunch of non-Sun/Oracle developers went “bugger this” and forked it (‘cos it was open source) in late 2010. thus, LibreOffice, which immediately became stupidly better.
- Oracle had a snit and shoved the corpse of OpenOffice at the Apache Foundation in mid-2011 at the behest of IBM, who wanted to do it their way.
- Apache OpenOffice had nothing worth the trouble, but got downloads because of the famous “OpenOffice” brand name.
- IBM gave up in late 2013. since then, AOO has literally been sixteen ex-Sun devs squatting the name and doing bugger-all with it. their reasons are unclear.
- they insist they still have a product, even though what they’ve actually achieved has been to put over fifty million downloads that they knew were vulnerable on people’s PCs. possibly your PC.
- instead of fixing it, by removing one file from the installer, they post excuses for not doing stuff.
(if this sounds like a fascinating tale, feel free to check the extensively-cited history sections of the OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice articles on wikipedia, which i mostly researched and wrote.)
Apache OpenOffice’s lack of developers since IBM gave up is extensively documented. in late august a Red Hat developer posted an open letter urging them to just give up the pretense and redirect the end users (that’s you) to LibreOffice. this had wide impact, and quite a pile of others concurred that they need to stop making life actively worse for the end users. the AOO people posted numerous comments making excuses … but they still distribute their known dangerous software and just won’t lift a finger to fix it.
tl;dr: get the hell off OpenOffice, get everyone you know the hell off OpenOffice. get LibreOffice, it is strictly superior in literally every dimension, and they actually give a damn about you the user and fix the security holes.
this text is CC-0 public domain. please spread far and wide.
Perfect accents for any Harry Potter fan’s bed or couch. House crests with corresponding colors fill the surfaces on this pillow set. Measures 18” x 18”. Sold on Etsy.
These are gorgeous ^_^
Contents Under Pressure
I rarely use this to just blog. I’m going to just blog now, so you can all just ignore this if it’s not to your liking.
Warning. Contents under pressure.
I made a Menger Sponge for you! I made every iteration out to the 6th iteration. Any larger won’t fit into minecraft.
This is pretty awesome!
So I wrote a fairly lengthy bit of Wizarding World fan fiction. It’s the first substantial piece of fiction I have ever released upon the world. It is a perk for the Equality FTW campaign, which works to make the world more equal for all people despite their race, orientation, gender, and…
Is it too late to point out that it should be Gamp’s law?
Celtic Knotwork Fox
Prints available on deviantART. I did two versions of the final finished piece - the version shown here on the green textured background, and a second version on transparent background suitable for printing on t-shirts etc. If there’s enough interest, I’ll look into prices for t-shirts.
That is beautiful!
guys. GUYS. I LOVE THE INTERNET SO MUCH.
is this real life?
Is this just fantasy? (sorry, couldn’t resist ;-)
This napping pod (referenced from a Napshell) was super-fun to draw. Getting the people inside was a bit of a challenge, but I think it works.
You’re so good you scare me.
Holy. Crap. This is amazing.
Wow, I want one of those!
