#aaaaaaaaaanyway

[cookinary]

*pops out of art block* Here, have an AU I created 2 days ago

Cleaner AU! His nickname is Snow for reasons

Pedro isn't sent on jobs in this one, but is instead the designated cleaner

Against his will obviously

He gets rid of the bodies and of the evidence

Cleans all the blood and trash

He got incredibly effective as the years went by

Pretends to be unfazed by it after a while but still hates doing it and is always disturbed by it deep down

The Family decided to lend his services to other gangs

Still against his will

All his experience with making someone disappears off the face of the Earth got really useful when he decided he had enough

Killed everyone and cleaned the crime scenes so well, it's like nothing happened

Uses more sneaky ways of killing people (like poison darts) so he doesn't have to clean as much blood afterwards

He happens to like painting in his free time so he uses the red paint excuse if he misses a blood stain on his clothes

He developed a severe anxiety linked to cleaning as he associates death threats with a bad cleaning job

Needless to say, he regularly deep cleans his apartment

I love him very much, he's my boi

Reminder that my ask box is always open and that reblogs help more than likes!

*pops back in art block*

[trollprincess]

Me when my mom told me the racist homophobe on the town council told her, “I didn’t know your daughter was *like that*!” about me being bi and that her mom (not her sister) was the one harassing me on FB:

[zylphiacrowley]

Code Blood

<previous - next>

[om340700]

they'd get along well

[incorrectskyrimquotes]

fucking idiot.

[chaoswillcalmusdown]

i never really understood why people always say there's a shame involved in like. chronic illnesses. but i think i get it today. i'm just like overcome with shame every time i write a sub plan bc of how many i've written and how shitty my work has become bc of the amount of sub plans. the way i haven't been able to get any consistency in my fucking english lessons bc i keep having to be home sick. anyways.

[windandwater]

Thank god someone made this post, I've been sitting on info like this for years. Some other DC cultural stuff that I absorbed from growing up there:

The mundanity & the secrets are for safety not just to keep them out of jail but to keep them, you know, alive. If you know that someone specific has a specific secret job doing specific secret & dangerous things, that knowledge puts you & them at risk.

For this reason it is cultural in DC to know when to shut up and stop asking questions. There are certain things you hear in response to "where do you work?" that you know to say "okay cool" to and move on from and you very deliberately do not learn more.

When I left DC I was horrified by people's rudeness in this regard. You can no longer say "works at [x]" because people will start asking invasive, dangerous questions. People assume the lies you're telling are exciting instead of boring; you have to be much more vague to throw them off.

In certain places in the US government, every email/correspondence is marked "for official use only," one level below "confidential" so even if you are allowed to take it out of the building you have to destroy it after use. So for example if you, say, need to print out tickets for something that you get with a government discount to your government email, it is very, very funny for your [redacted] tickets to have a big scary government "THIS IS OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENCE DESTROY DO NOT MISUSE" warning at the bottom of the printout.

own personal quotes from, uh, knowing people: "it'll be on the news" "they got the guy" "don't believe everything you hear"

sometimes you will know about facilities/offices that the media hasn't found yet and this is regular information

sometimes you will know someone who has seen the president of the united states cry. you will not know their job.

(you might have the pieces to figure out what their job is but not put them together on purpose because you have been trained by the culture of your city to not do that)

this is normal.

if this sounds like regional gothic, yeah, I wrote a whole post.

There's a huge patch of government-owned land in Maryland with a big "keep out" sign on it and everyone Just Knows that the Secret Security trains there. no idea where the entrance is. it just looks like regular woods.

Note: the "secret" security is just the security that everyone knows about and if you think about it for two seconds of course it is? It's actually hilarious that people talk like that's the only people guarding the president.

Not only can you not have a cell phone, in certain agencies you must assume that all your phone conversations are being listened to (or can be in the future). If you need to call someone at work, you operate under that assumption.

For the vast VAST majority of jobs, your immediate family can know *where* you work, just not the specifics of what you do. This wasn't the case in the 40s/early days of security agencies but it is now.

The types of jobs where you have to actively lie to even your family about where you work are incredibly rare and incredibly secret and anyone who has them is going to be very tight-lipped even once they're dead. You may not ever know. If you find out you are probably not ever going to be able to share that information with anyone.

Related to phones, this is just a tip that I know because of related reasons: your cell phone conversations are not secure. If you need to exchange personal information over the phone and want to do it securely, use landline-to-landline communication. Otherwise assume that info is not safe.

I also had a seven-month job as an admin at a government contractor and here's some info on that:

A bunch of government contractor offices are clustered in the same area in Arlington. Big ones, little ones. Right around the Rosslyn metro stop but Arlington in general is kind of the hub for that stuff. Military stuff too, including the Pentagon.

(I fucking hate Arlington lmao) (at least montgomery county has science shit)

I didn't need a clearance to work there but certain people there did have clearances and certain information was private/classified/etc., and as a result I had to deal with that from the admin side.

For example: we had a large volume of documents required to be shredded. To the point where in-house shredders couldn't handle it all. There are services that will take your documents away to be shredded but due to the level of security, we had to have the shredding truck (a giant shredder in the back of a truck, it is as terrifying as it sounds, one of the guys said you could put a glass bottle in those blades and they'd chew it up) come to us and I had to watch everything be shredded on-site then sign off to confirm that it had been completed.

Certain areas of the office were off-limits to non-employees without an escort, and I was that escort, because you do have to have outside vendors come in and do maintenance etc. Someone had to sit with them the entire time they did the work. They never clarified to me whether I could bring a book or not so yes this was as boring as it sounds, although a couple times the workers were chatty and I made friends.

At one point we (the admin staff) had to stop wearing company-branded lanyards on our badges because employees from a competing company heard our people from our company talking about a helicopter we were competing on, and from that point on if we left the building a lot no one could know where we worked. This was extremely stupid due to I didn't know anything about the helicopter but technically at that point I could have been a spy for that company if I'd felt like it (I also didn't care about the helicopter) and I guess they just didn't want us to be approached at all.

And here's my last fact, also the most important one:

The only non-Washingtonian I've ever met who viscerally understood this side of DC culture, was Russian.

Your OPSEC is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

Okay so one of the many things that drives me absolutely nuts about most TV shows and (some) books that involve secret or classified information or secure facilities is how absolutely not secure everything is, so these are a few basic things that people get wrong:

You can't carry around classified information. There are, I assume, exceptions in specific cases, though they are assuredly very carefully managed, but random intel agent #12 cannot legally just take home classified information so they can work on it at home. That's incredibly illegal. And that's for a reason--secure facilities are, as the name suggests, secure. Everywhere else is varying levels of not secure. Even for people working with regular business or government materials on their work phone or laptop, there are varying levels of strict rules about where you can leave it, how to report a lost device, and not keeping it in checked bags.

Badges should be innocuous and limited in visible information. Any sensible security system doesn't have badges that are numbered/colored/otherwise identified by access level, because that is a really easy way to identify targets for thieves/people who want to break in. American federal ID cards (CAC for military, PIV for civilian) have really specific layouts. Some companies distinguish between full time employees, interns, vendors, etc in their cards.

Badges shouldn't be displayed outside of the office. This is not really followed by real people (if you get on the metro on DC you will see a wide variety of visible badges), but displaying a badge is not security-wise because 1) it makes them easier to steal, and 2) it can make you a target.

Names/access level/information shouldn't be openly announced. I'm looking at you, MCU Spider-Man fanfiction. Just. Don't.

Confidential/classified information shouldn't be openly discussed. Stop having your characters talk about confidential or classified information in front of people who shouldn't know it, or even just out in the open at all. They shouldn't be telling their parents, their friends, their spouses, etc. Even businesses or government buildings that deal with sensitive information, there may be spaces where certain things can or can't be discussed, and employees/contractors will go through approximately 8 million trainings on where you can't discuss certain information. This also involves erasing whiteboards, locking computers, etc.

You can't have cell phones in certain secure facilities. People shouldn't be having their cell phones with them in SCIFs. This prohibition extends to all things that can be recording devices, including furbies.

[starfilled-galaxy]

sniff

[ghastigiggles]

aaaaaaaaaanyway i havent played the latest update of pressure yet (fashionably late as always. and im too chickenshit to play solo) but i love the bunnies. oh my god i would die for them.

the amount of videos where they trade a mine and get exploded has had me absolutely rolling though, oh my god, why did they code that. those poor bunnies

[f4y3w00d5]

well you sorta cant anyway? she'd kill you before she let you leave....

*knocks on your door*

*slowly opens said door*

[determined-magi-archive]

eeeeeeeh... well... guess this is it?

muses pretty much, in this form, are... well.... dead.

blog's dead... ngl.

I couldn't recover consistently the muses to write them for RP, the drive is... pretty much lost tbh, and the encouragement on their narrative is near cero. So... might as well nip it in the bud and call the grave digger to make it official.

I will no longer write the mages on this blog. I can't bring myself to do so anymore. As much as I hate to admit it. As developed and complex as they are, they no longer really fit the UT fandom, which, also, is pretty old by now and no longer holds the same activity it used to. Plus... they aren't probably the most rp friendly lot due to power disparity to canon characters... despite trying to balance out things.

And I won't lie, the server incident made a big blow on my esteem and confidence to write them any longer in a way that encourages others to interact with them. That never really left and thinking on it... this is the second time it happens. Let me be clear, however, I do not blame those I wrote with over the loss of muse. This is only a by-product of realizing my weaknesses as a writter, as well as the long term effects my distopic narrative has on others and their drive to interact with my characters. This is solely on me. I refuse to put the blame on others.

I am adapting the mages, however, into a personal fictional world project and story still. Once I am done adapting them, and fleshing out the blog for their adaptation counterparts, I MIGHT share the blog here.

The blog will be similar in many things, tbh, but it should, once I am done, balance stuff out in term of power levels depending on the verse as well as the chance for people's characters to be able to even the scales against them... for the most of it, at least until the full-blown villain arcane overlords verse. It won't be imposible in that one, but one may need to interact with some characters to even the scales. They will be, after all, the BBEGs in that verse akin to the dark lords n ringwraiths of Tolkien in that verse, in a way. And it should also be far more friendly for other characters... for the most of it, and as much as it can be on a distopic anti-arcane society on the twilight of arcane societies and the dawn of dark arcane reigns.

aaaaaaaaaanyways...

Its been... quite a journey, hasn't it? I am honored by those that shared with me, and I can't say how thankful I am to have met any and all of you. Nor can I say how sorry I am to those that felt affected negatively by my narratives without it coming short and rather lacking as an apology... I am, however, not regretful for having met any of you, nor resentful.

Hell... I am really, truly grateful...

However fleeting friendships may be, however fleeting out collaborative literaties may be, however long and lengthy they had gotten, I am Honored, I am glad, I am happy I got to have them with you, any of you. You, your tales, your characters, will be all something I will hold dearly in my heart for many, many years. Long after this place is no more... long in the coming years. You are all, marvelous, grandiose incredible individuals I am lucky to have met. You all have things I can't help but often admire and be inspired by... And I want you to know that... no matter what may happen, what has happened, what could happen. How much or little we may know each other, or for how long we have known one another.

Thank you, all of you...

See you all, on the next tale... may the world be kind on your fares and your heart and soul fair upon yourself.

Love y'all

may you have merry and pleasant holidays.

[purplehairedwonder]

Chapter 1080: Holding Out for a Hero

Man, the events happening outside of Egghead continue to be fascinating, don’t they? We’re going from one Emperor’s territory last week to another’s this week, as this chapter takes place entirely on Hachinosu.

So, Blackbeard took Coby hostage with the intent of using him to bargain with the World Government to make Hachinosu an actual country with Blackbeard as king. 

This is an unexpected development. On the surface, it lines up because Blackbeard is quite power hungry, and what could be more powerful than a king? It worked for Doffy for a decade. We also know he wants to be Pirate King, and this would make him king of Pirate Island... a kind of Pirate King, I suppose. My assumption, though, that Blackbeard’s desire here is part of a larger plan, like him becoming a Warlord to get access to Impel Down. The question is what next step this might lead to, though.

Could he be scheming to gain access to Mariejois at the next Reverie? (Yes, I’m aware the next one isn’t for four years; we’re also talking about a guy who stayed with the Whitebeard Pirates for twenty years before making a move.) Let’s not forget the existence of the national treasure that Doffy mentioned needing the Ope Ope no Mi for?

(And where is Blackbeard currently? Oh, you know, just fighting the owner of the Ope Ope no Mi.)

Anyway, Blackbeard assumes the World Government will go out of their way to rescue their young hero, but Coby tells him that is not going to happen because...

And, according to Kuzan (who many also believe to be a member of SWORD), the World Government won’t negotiate over a member of SWORD.

Slight tangent, but this explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If the members of SWORD have resigned their commissions, doesn’t that mean they’ve literally quit their jobs? How are they still employed by the Marines (e.g., we saw Coby escorting the Dressrosan entourage to the Reverie)? And, if members of SWORD resigned their commissions, then the World Government would be aware of who the members are, which seems counterintuitive for a group that is the direct opposite of CP0/Aegis.

Hopefully we’ll get more clarification here, but the explanation is, well...

Aaaaaaaaaanyway, Blackbeard plans to try to negotiate anyway because the optics will be terrible if the World Government doesn’t help the hero of Rocky Port.

SPEAKING OF ROCKY PORT. We got another mention. And it turns out Rocky Port was on Hachinosu this whole time?!

That’s quite surprising for a few reasons. One, it means that apparently civilians live on Hachinosu, not just pirates (as Coby became a hero for helping civilians). Two, it likely means that Law made it all the way to Hachinosu during the timeskip. My boy was just jetting all over the New World while preparing to take down Doffy, wasn’t he?

I need to know what happened at Rocky Port, Oda. I’m begging you. (I wrote some other thoughts about Rocky Port in a separate post here.)

Another wrinkle in this whole thing is that Perona has arrived to rescue Moriah, who apparently is not dead after all. 

The fact that Blackbeard took Moriah captive rather than killed him seemed to support the idea that he’d take Law hostage rather than kill him if he comes out ahead in their fight.

Another thing we learn in this chapter is which members of the Blackbeard Pirates are present on Hachinosu: Shiryu, Avalo Pizarro, Vasco Shot, and Sanjuan Wolf. (Also, some of their Devil Fruits are wild. Pizarro’s seems like an upgraded version of Pica’s, for instance.)

Meanwhile, Blackbeard, Van Augur, Jesus Burgess, and Doc Q are at Winner Island, facing off against the Heart Pirates.

That leaves Lafitte, Catarina Devon, and Kuzan to be on the ship heading for Egghead.

At the end of the chapter, the cavalry arrives. We meet some more members of SWORD, including Tsuru’s granddaughter. 

I just wanted to include this page because it’s a really freaking cool angle.

We also see Helmeppo and Tashigi. (No Smoker, though. Where is he, I wonder?)

And then there’s Garp.

Last chapter we finally got a named attack from Shanks. Now we’re getting one from Garp. And neither disappointed. WOW.

Wow wow wow.

(I hope Coby wasn’t caught up in that explosion, heh.)

Another break so soon is brutal. But these last few chapters have been absolute bangers, damn.

[h4unt3d-s0u15]

aaaaaaaaaanyways we have work so see yall tomorrowww

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for committing countless war crimes in the name of vengeance?

Alright. A little bit of backstory for all of you. My hometown was completely obliterated along with all my friends and family. I was a little bit upset, so I joined the army of the man who was responsible in order to get close to him. Close enough that I could assassinate him, and finally avenge the only home I knew. This part worked surprisingly well, but the main issue was I was now on the "destroying towns and killing people" side of the second great war.

Fast forward, I'm a lieutenant, the war has just ended with a peace treaty (the tensions are still as high as ever before. Maybe even higher since nobody knows what the cunt in yellow is planning), and the aforementioned cunt is orbiting this shithole of a town. "My chance", I thought at the time, and caught a train immediately. Arriving there, me and the other passengers were thrust into a death game, but that's not really important right now except I think there's some cult shit going on. The only sane soldier here (besides me) isn't wearing boots...

Aaaaaaaaaanyways, I am almost immediately attacked verbally and maybe even physically (Does heartbreak count as physical pain?)by everyone else because I'm SOMEHOW the scum of the earth because of a few things that I didn't do and a few things that I definitely did do. The thing is, the ends surely justify the means, correct? This man took everything I had. I had everything. I had to do this because we were in a war, I had to do this exactly because it's the only method that would work. Surely what I'm doing would benefit more people than not doing it.

Either way, I'm pretty dead set in my ways. I could be guilty, or whatever, but I've done too much to stop. Go big or go home, right? I'm just using the results to show everyone else. AITA?

Edit: You'll never guess who's about to shoot this idiot and end this once and for all. I don't even caaaare about what results I get I'm gonna post the results in a bit.

Edit: um. oosp. wgy did the bullet not work?

Edit: i tguink this guy is actually a god, and also I now huave a gaping cgest wound. i was rescued and put back ontothe train and i'm really pissedt off at this. because now im being called a n asshole to my face even more like okayyyyyyyyyyOw.Ow. good news i probsably wwont make it for like alonger than a day or two. pluease aita results come in sooner

[trollprincess]

So my mom was talking to my brother’s girlfriend on Christmas about how my grandpa (her dad) paid for my dad’s college for a year as a wedding present in 1977. It cost $600. That’s $3,100 today. For college. For a year.

Then she mentioned something I didn’t know, which is that because my mom was uninsured and pregnant, my grandpa also paid the hospital bill when I was born five months later. It was $700. Which is $3,500 today.

Aaaaaaaaaanyway.

[anonymous-bastard]

15-minute cities

I have been enabled by @hinata-rosario-revamped and @transdimensional-evildorito

Most of this will be under the cut because I'm not a monster that spams people with text blocks.

Edit: uh I did n o t plan to post this yet lol. I'll leave this up and like, nothing I say here is wrong but I'm not sure how coherent it is yet and I wanted to add some more stuff, I'll take a proper look tomorrow.

So short tldr on the concept of the fifteen minute city: basically, the idea that all anemities of daily life should be reachable within fifteen minutes and without use of a car.

Got it? Good.

So you will realise what it isn't is, is a government conspiracy to lock people into ghettos. If you start coming at me with that bullshit in my comment section or askbox I will eat you. I have no patience for that brand of bullshit.

Aaaaaaaaaanyway. Let's do this.

To understand why the idea of the 15 Minute city gained popularity, you need to understand why the cities of today are the way they are. Where I will take this moment to subtly point the finger at the Athens charta.

The Athens charta codified two ideas relevant to us: the car-centric city and the functional separation within cities.

The car-centric city is basically what the names implied: cities, build and restructured in such a way to prioritise travel by car. It was based on the belief that the automobile would replace all other forms of transports, including walking, even for short distances. This resulted, especially in the US, in the reduction and abolishment of public transport and a loss of cities walkability.

"Functional separation" is just a fancy way of saying the Charta wanted for cities to separate industrial areas, living areas, shopping areas etc (= the different 'functions' within the city). This was achieved by zoning regulation.

These ideas were standard practice for decades until people went wait... this is complete and utter trash.

The idea behind car-centric design as that soon, peope would no longer need to walk anywhere, they'd always simply take the car, even for short distances.

The problem with car-centric design is it makes the city an incredibly unsafe place, because cars are incredibly unsafe. It makes walking and biking dangerous and uncomfortable. It means excluding people without a car from participation in society. Also there are parked cars everywhere, which believe it or not is an incredible nuisance to city planners. I could probably write a 1000 word essay on why car-centric design is bad alone.

Separating life and work by a long distance results in ridiculously long commutes, a lot of time spent just sitting in a car. It also results in needing to built car infrastructure in such a way that they can handle rush hour and results in traffic jams. Another factor is that, especially in North America, it really lengthened the distance to things such as the grocery store, doctors, restaurants, etc.

Now caveat: there is sense in separating living areas from industrial ones, because they are loud, smelly and unhealthy. But there is no sense not to allow a grocery store next to the people that buy their groceries there.

After urban planners realised hey, we fucked this up, new ideas and guiding principles startd to emerge.

One of them is the 15-minute-city, which presents a direct antithesis to the ideas I just explained.

Like I mentioned, the idea is simple: daily amenities, reachable within 15 minutes (one way), no cars. Daily ammenities include: work, school, groceries, hobbies, doctors, exercise etc.

This sound simple, but it actually requires a lot of restructuring of the city.

Like I mentioned, especially in North American cities, daily ammenties simply Are Not that close by. They need to be shifted back into the communities they serve, so instead of driving to the restaurant for half an hour, you are there within ten minutes by foot. This requires massive rezoning and rewriting of zoning regulation in general.

What it also includes is a massive increase in pedestrian and biking infrastructure. This is a basic requirement for the 15-city to work. Without good pedestrian and bike infrastructure, people will simply continue to take the car. Similarly, public transport needs to be introduced/ increased.