#fat USENET friend

[aaronashea]

My fat USENET friend from long ago (2)

continued from this post

After he graduated from that school, since he was such a good student, he received a full scholarship at a local college. It wasn't a prestigious school but it allowed him to continue his education.

At one point I did ask if he ever had sex with another person during these times (I left this as ambiguous as I could in an effort to make it easier for him to talk about it, regardless of gender).

A long while after we’d been talking, he surprised me with a new angle to his sexuality . . .

Continued in this post

[siryouarebeingmocked]

God Of War Ragnarok spoilers

God Of War Ragnarok: Mimir doesn't know what "olives" are, because he wouldn't encounter them in Nordic or Celtic realms, geographically speaking. GOWR: Also, Thor is fat because he has a big appetite in the myths. GOWR: Also, here's a minor character who's the legendary first king of Denmark.

Someone: Are you going to explain why Angrboda is a black girl with a black granny in a Norse tale, when she's a redheaded white lady in the myths?

GOWR: No.

I wrote this post because some idiot in Youtube comments said Angrboda in GOWR makes sense because the Greeks didn't have any concept of race. Which is a stupid argument. Especially when the ancient Greeks and Romans *did* have a concept of "us" and "barbarians" (everything else). Pretty much any modern person would look at the description of those categories and go "oh, yeah, that's race". Xenophobia is usually treated as identical to racism. 

Or at least it lives next door, and frequently comes over to borrow racism's power tools. This idiot also completely failed to discuss the Norse side of the equation. I'm pretty sure Norse knew what race was.

Then again, the person may have been trying to imply why Kratos wouldn't reject Angrboda because she was black. Which would still be a stupid argument, because the idiot did that by making a race-based generalization about Ancient Greeks to imply race isn't real, instead of talking about Kratos. 

Kratos has traveled from mythological Greece to mythological Nordic lands. He married a local, and calls a Celtic deity his best friend, along with two dwarves as regular friends. Kratos, personally, does not care about race. He cares about the content of people's character. And when he meets Angie, she's already risked her own life and safety to help save the day. From a character design standpoint, I think they wanted to make Angrboda a contrast to Thrud Thorsdottir, Thor's daughter, and Loki's other love interest. Thrud seems more mature, mentally and physically.

 She's a much more dramatic and attention-getting presence, down to her hair. Her weapons are a giant cleaver and a club. She also lives in the heart of Asgard, a populated city, while Angie lives alone in a hidden realm.

And she has red hair. Like her dad.

 There's other contrasts, but I've already talked too much. There's also a fan theory that Loki and Angie's daughter Hela was half-white, half-dark in the myths, so you could (really) stretch that to "half-African". Even though she's widely described as "half blue". As in, "the color of dead flesh". There's a theory that Angie is descended from "foreign" gods, just like Atreus, but I don't think the game confirms it. /actual black guy PS: I also happened to find a 1996 Usenet argument when someone asked why Tuvok from Star Trek Voyager is black. And the people responding sounded exactly like modern racebending-defenders, including the same "well, race isn't even scientifically REAL!" smuggery*. https://groups.google.com/g/alt.tv.star-trek.voyager/c/LVTQMd25J1U?pli=1 Which is ironic when these same people act like anyone who asks or complains about racebending is racist. How can racism exist if race isn't real? * There was also the ol' "you must be a troll (because your opinion made me upset)". Except that one was posted in 2018. I'd mock that person for responding to a 22-year old thread, but I'm making a post about it, and putting more effort into these few lines than they did.

[recurring-polynya]

For the AU request, whichever one(s) you prefer (for RenRuki of course):

the X-Men universe

the Mafia/criminal underworld

the circus

as FBI agents (the X-Files world perhaps)

So, I got this ask, and I immediately wanted to go for X-Files, because I was hugely into X-Files when I was a tween/teen, and I think that my actual first published work of fanfic on the internet might actually be X-Files. (I didn’t even post it myself, I was like 12 and I didn’t have the internet at home, but a friend of mine posted it on Usenet for me, I have no idea whatever became of it). Anyway, I was going back and forth in my head who I wanted to be Mulder and who I wanted to be Scully, and then I got this ask:

@ulkoilla​ said:

I though the 10 would be full in about 1 microsecond so I didn’t even try :D This is maybe not AU enough for the purpose but I'd love to see your take on Bleach world where the shinigami work among humans as if they were in gigai -> they'll have to balance the supernatural, perhaps violent elements of their life with the modern day laws and such (like in Supernatural). Renji and Rukia have ofc gotten in trouble with the non-supernatural law (meet: Detective!Aizen?) and are on the run…

It suddenly occurred to me, What If: X-Files World, but Renruki are the cryptids. And it suddenly popped into my head exactly who I wanted to be Mulder. Anyway, I am sorry missrambler, if I messed it all up, I hope you like it anyway.

Also, I somehow thought that I would save myself some trouble by combining two prompts, but then it ended up… really long. (Forty! Eight! Hundred! Words! Go to Talks-Too-Much-Jail, Polynya!!)

PS: This takes place in D.C. because it’s X-Files and also because I am familiar with D.C. and I never get to write about places I know about. A half-smoke is a local delicacy that’s halfway between a hot dog and an Italian sausage. They are delicious.

Read on ao3 or ff.net

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Ichigo Kurosaki had known that an office with a view of the Smithsonian might be too much to ask, but he had not expected to take have to take two separate elevators down to sub-basement C, and walk past a storage room, two broom closets and a weird old vending machine full of brands of snacks he swore he hadn’t seen since he was a child.

Maybe Agent Inoue has a huge lab, he told himself. Maybe it needs to be 50 meters below ground because she collides large hadrons down here or so that her work can’t be picked up by spy satellites.

He had to turn sideways to get past a rack of wire shelves full of banker’s boxes, but there, on the other side was a door sporting a handwritten cardboard nameplate reading “Special Agent Orihime Inoue.”

“Come in!” a voice called inside, just as he raised his hand to knock on the door.

Ichigo blinked twice, and then went in.

The office was cluttered, mostly with more cardboard boxes, but books were also stacked precariously on top of boxes on top of books. The walls were plastered with maps and graphs and photographs of hazy blurs in front of staircases. There was a large poster showing a UFO, with the words “I WANT TO BELIEVE” in block caps below it.

A woman with long chestnut hair twisted up into a bun and held in place with three pencils was hunched over a metal box full of diodes and transistors and other things you would buy at Radio Shack. Or rather, that other people would buy at a Radio Shack. Ichigo had never set foot in a Radio Shack in his life.

“Er, good morning,” Ichigo said, as the woman looked up and blinked at him owlishly. “Agent Inoue? I’m Ichigo Kurosaki. I’ve been assigned to work with you.”

“To spy on me, you mean,” Agent Inoue corrected, cheerfully shaking his hand with great vigor.

Ichigo bristled. Yes, he had been directed to ‘provide additional documentation on Agent Inoue’s activities,’ but that hardly counted as spying. She was known to be somewhat scatterbrained, and having an organized person around would probably be a great benefit to her. “If you have any doubts about my qualifications or motivations--”

“Oh, don’t take it personally!” Inoue replied, slotting a lid onto her electronics project, and attacking it vigorously with a jeweler’s screwdriver. “Just because you’re a spy doesn’t mean you aren’t a nice person. Also, I read your file, you have a very interesting background! Degree in literature with a focus on folk legends. Teaching at the academy for the last few years while working on your book.” She took a momentary break from her screwing to fix him with her big, soft brown eyes. “Tell me, Agent Kurosaki, what do you think happens after you die?”

Ichigo froze. “I would be buried? Maybe there would be a funeral first?”

Inoue started laughing so hard that Ichigo was sure he caught a tiny, adorable snort. “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t clear!” She sniffed, and wiped a tear from her eye. “Do you believe in continued existence after the death of the body? An afterlife, religion-based or otherwise? The existence of ectoplasm, cold spots, spirit photographs, EVP?”

“Are you talking about… ghosts?” Ichigo asked hesitantly.

“Yes!” Orihime replied with a nod. “Ghosts.”

“We-elll…” Ichigo drew out. “I believe that people believe they observe certain phenomena, as part of the cycle of grief and--”

“Just say ‘no’ if you don’t,” Inoue interrupted him.

“Er, no. I don’t.”

“That’s okay. Are you good at carrying heavy things?”

“Am I... I guess?”

“Perfect!” She shoved the box into his arms, and Ichigo’s knees almost buckled under the weight. “Let’s walk and talk, I want to go get a reading over near Franklin Square before 9 am. We’re gonna pass a really good half-smoke cart on the way, do you like half-smokes?”

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“Take a look at this,” Inoue said, her cheek half stuffed with sausage, jabbing a finger at the LED read-out of her mysterious box.

It was rather hard for Ichigo to see, because he was holding the box and the readout was on the other side, but he did his best to crane his neck around. “What am I looking at? The squiggles? I’m sorry, it looks like nothing to me.”

“Exactly right!” Inoue announced, waving her half smoke in the air. “Not a sniff of spiritual residue!”

Ichigo pressed his lips together. “Um… is that good?”

“It is interesting,” Inoue corrected. “Five days ago, a sixty-four year old woman had a heart attack while sitting in that bus shelter.” On every day since, I have been able to record EMF fluctuations, and on Sunday, I was able to get a voice recording that sounded like a woman reciting a grocery list. But this morning, nothing! Nada!”

“Well, uh, ghosts gotta move on eventually, right? Otherwise, just about everywhere would be haunted, right?” It’s not that Ichigo had suddenly started believing ghosts or anything, but there was something about Agent Inoue that just made you want to go along with her and see where all this panned out.

Inoue shot him a finger gun. “Or, they get moved along.” She shoved a folded paper map at him. “You can put that thing down.”

Ichigo eased the Spirit Detect-O 9000, or whatever it was called, to the grass and accepted her map. It was a street map of DC, meant for tourists, emphasizing all the local transit routes and popular attractions. There was also a great loop marked on it in orange highlighter, zig-zagging back and forth through the city. There was a little ‘x’ marked on Franklin Park, with “Tuesday, early morning” written in a bubbly hand.

“What is this?” Ichigo frowned. It didn’t seem to match up with any of the metro or bus lines. It didn’t even match with the sidewalks, it appeared to cut straight through large buildings like the convention center.

“As far as I can tell,” Inoue said, her brown eyes very solemn, “that is the patrol route of our local grim reaper.”

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“So I actually got interested in grim reapers,” Inoue explained, once they were back in the office, “while I was investigating violent ghost phenomena.” She was eating a bag of corn chips that she had gotten from that ancient vending machine by punching it and then shoving her own arm up the chute. (She’d gotten Ichigo a bag, too, but he was too afraid to eat them.)

Ichigo was sitting at a cluttered table that Inoue had told him “could be his desk.” Half of it was taken up by a large aquarium full of rocks and a water bowl, but no life forms that Ichigo could detect. The other half was covered with back issues of “Ghost Hunter Technology” magazine. “You mean like poltergeists?” he asked.

“Not exactly. Poltergeists are noisy, but they aren’t usually able to kill their targets.”

“Kill? Ghosts can’t kill people, aside from, like scaring them to death,” Ichigo scoffed. “I mean, folklorically speaking. As we established earlier, I am not a ghost-believer.”

Inoue tipped her head to the side. “They do, actually, it just tends to get blamed on something else.”

“By ghost-non-believers.”

“By everyone, really, and that’s what’s so strange.” Inoue pulled a fat binder from a stack of seemingly identical ones, and tossed it open in front of Ichigo. “Edison, New Jersey, 2014. An elderly woman dies ‘of a broken heart’ a week after her husband dies of cancer. Coincidentally, a telephone pole falls on her house the same night and rips a hole in her house.” She turned a page. “Norfolk, Virginia, 2017. A young woman dies in what the police rule as a suicide, despite the fact that she made a 911 call 48 hours previous, expressing fear of her ex-boyfriend. Three days later, the boyfriend is dead of mysterious causes. Coincidentally, his apartment complex suffered significant damages from ‘a wild cougar.’”

Ichigo squinted at the pictures. The walls of the building were scored with what did appear to be scratch marks. “Hell of a cougar.”

“Exactly! And I’ve got dozens of these historic cases. But about four months ago, I was able to investigate one myself-- a young man named Joe Wallace. He lives here in the city, over near Dupont Circle. Wallace had cut off his toxic dad years ago, and refused to visit him in the hospital as he was dying. Four days after his father’s death, a truck crashes into his house in the middle of the night and then drives away before the police can arrive.”

“And he died.”

“No!” Inoue held up one finger. “Scratches and bruises, but he doesn’t die!”

“Okay, great. So what does he remember?”

“He remembers a truck crashing into his house.”

Ichigo scratched his chin. “I am confused.”

“Look at this!” Inoue stabbed a finger at the pictures. “These are claw marks, not vehicular wreckage! There’s damage on the second story window! Wallace had scratches and defensive wounds, as if he had been fending off an animal! And look here, at the damage to the walls of the bedroom!”

“What am I looking at?” Ichigo asked, squinting at a photograph that looked like it had been blown up past the point of recognition.

“There were cuts and slashes in the walls and bedding as though someone had been fighting with a sword.”

“Like a Medieval Times sword? Was the guy a Medieval Times enthusiast?”

“More consistent with a katana. Do you like Medieval Times?”

“No one likes Medieval Times.”

“I like Medieval Times. You’ve probably never even been. But back to the ghost! Why would Wallace remember a truck crashing into his house, when nothing about the scene is consistent with that story?”

“He was...lying?”

“His memories were replaced.”

“His memories were replaced,” Ichigo echoed.

“Yes.”

“By… aliens?”

Orihime heaved a deep sigh. “By a grim reaper.”

“A grim reaper with a samurai sword.”

“How on earth did you come to this conclusion?”

Inoue raised one eyebrow. “Because when I placed him under hypnosis, Wallace didn’t remember anything about a truck. He did remember a monster with batwings and a mask made of bone and his dead father’s voice who tried to kill him, except that he was saved by a tall man dressed in black. The man had bright red hair and fought the monster with a sword that was also a whip and then he wiped Wallace’s memories.”

Ichigo stared at her. “You can hypnotize people?”

Inoue gave him a long-suffering face. Ichigo had the sudden flash that he was going to be seeing that face a lot in the days to come. “Yes, I am a certified hypnotist.” Inoue’s phone suddenly started playing “Tubular Bells”. “Oops, that’s an alarm. Come on, we have a meeting with some important people. Do you like diners?”

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Agent Inoue apparently did not care for public transit, but she walked very quickly. Ichigo was concentrating so hard on keeping up with her that he nearly collided with her back when she stopped very suddenly.

“You don’t mind if we make a quick stop, do we?” Inoue asked.

“You said the meeting was with important people.”

“Oh, don’t worry about them!” Inoue pursed her lips. “You see that bodega right there?”

They were in a part of downtown that was mostly mid-to-upscale restaurants and government buildings and FedExes. But sure enough, there was a dingy little bodega nestled between a Mexican-Indian fusion place and an Au Bon Pain, the windows stuffed with t-shirts from the last administration and a variety of cell phone chargers. The overhead sign read “Urahara Shop.”

“Y...eah…” Ichigo replied.

“That place is a hotbed of supernatural activity.”

“Is it?” Ichigo asked.

“I am almost positive that it is a supply point and meeting place for grim reapers, monster slayers, cryptids, alien hunters, and lycanthropes, but the owner is on to me.”

“I see,” Ichigo said levelly.

“Can you go in and pretend to be a customer? They have lots of good candy you can look through. Inoue dug in her purse and came up with a fiver. “Here. Buy a scratch ticket or something.”

“I’m not buying a scratch ticket, they’re a scam.”

“If the big guy is working the counter, he’ll glare at you until you buy something, so be prepared.”

As Ichigo pushed open the door, he realized he’d never actually agreed to any of this. Agent Inoue’s secret hypnosis powers, once again. Whatever. It was a bodega, there were a thousand of them in DC. They all had the same Nats t-shirts and coffee mugs with pictures of the Washington Monument on them. Ichigo pretended to be interested in a rack of comics. He tended to prefer indy comics over the big publishers himself, but even so, he didn’t recognize any of the books. Maybe they were by local authors.

Up at the front of the shop, a tiny, dark-haired woman was giving whatfor to the man behind the counter, a tall fellow with pale, straw-colored hair sticking out in tufts from under the saddest hat Ichigo had ever seen, a shapeless, battered bucket, striped green and white.

“Well, I can sell you a new battery for your phone, Miss Kuchiki, maybe that would help.”

“Not if it only lasts as long as the last one you sold me! I really need to get in touch with my partner, except that even if I could get my phone working again, his battery is probably dead because everything you sell is the same crap!”

“Ah, that’s too bad! You know, I think Mr. Abarai was in here a few days ago… I wasn’t in at the time, but Jinta said he came in, asking about…”

The man trailed off, and Ichigo glanced up to see the shopkeeper looking directly at him.

“...metrocards. But as you know, we don’t sell metrocards anymore.”

The woman made an aggravated noise. “You’re so useless! If I write him a damned note, will you give it to him if he comes in?”

“Oh, of course! Anything for you, Miss Kuchiki!”

The conversation trailed off as the woman hunched over the counter to angrily scratch out a note.

Ichigo stuffed the comic he was flipping through back on its rack. He skipped the enormous display of bedazzled flip-flops and started perusing the surprisingly extensive selection of gum.

“Here!” the woman finished and shoved her note at the shopkeeper. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

“Have a wonderful day!” the shopkeeper tootled, giving her a little finger wave.

Ichigo felt bad for the woman. “Er, excuse me?” he said as she passed.

She turned to scowl at him. For such a tiny person, she seemed to contain a remarkable amount of rage.

“Do you need to call someone? You can use my phone, if you’d like.” He held it out like an offering.

The woman blinked at him for a moment.

“I didn’t mean to be nosy! You were just kind of loud and you sounded worried about your, um, partner.”

“I’m not worried about him, I just need to find him.” Her face softened. “Thanks, Mister, but I can’t reach him on a regular phone. Don’t worry, I’ll track him down eventually.” She turned to leave, then stopped to jab an accusatory finger at Ichigo. “And that’s professional partner, not… you know! Whatever!” She stomped out.

What a strange, tiny person.

Ichigo selected a gum and walked up to the counter.

“Oooh, dragonberry lime, good choice!” the man trilled. “Anything else I can get you? Bottled water? Fanny pack? Spare phone battery?”

“I’ll pass,” Ichigo replied dryly.

“I imagine it’s against FBI policy to let a stranger use your cell phone,” the shopkeeper said sweetly.

Ichigo’s brows furrowed. “This is my personal phone. And how did you…?”

The man gave a chortling laugh that sent shivers down Ichigo’s spine. “Because headquarters is three blocks away and only an FBI agent would wear a suit that square.”

Ichigo took his change and his gum and shoved them both in his pocket. “Yeah, well, your hat sucks.”

The man laughed harder. “Doesn’t it, though?”

Once he was outside again, Ichigo handed Inoue the gum and her change. “The owner of that place is a creep.”

“The guy in the green and white hat?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Urahara. You’re right, he’s the owner. Were there any other customers?”

“Just the short lady. You must have seen her come out. She was ripping Urahara a new one for some dodgy cell phone battery he sold her. I think she must have been NSA or something. She said she was trying to get ahold of her partner, but she needed a special phone.” As he said it, Ichigo realized it would be pretty odd for an NSA agent to be buying cell phone batteries from some shady bodega.

“No one came out,” Inoue replied.

“She definitely did! I heard the bell over the door ring.”

Inoue regarded Ichigo very seriously. “Agent Kurosaki. I was standing here the whole time. You were the only person who went in or out.” She looked at the gum. “Ooh! Dragonfruit lime! Do you want some?”

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They were late to the meeting.

Two men were waiting for them in the back corner booth. One of them had pinched, pointy features and piercing blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. His chin-length haircut was pretty dramatic, but not as dramatic as his pure white trench coat. A cup of black coffee sat on the faded Formica table in front of him, but it didn’t look like it had been touched.

His companion was an enormous, good-looking Latino who was shoveling pancakes into his face.

“Inoue,” the dramatic guy said. “Who’s this?”

“This is my new partner, Kurosaki,” Inoue replied. “Kurosaki, this is Uryuu Ishida,” she indicated the white trenchcoat guy, “and Chad,” Mr. Pancakes.

“Also known as the ‘Lone Archers,’” Ishida specified. “We are apolitical actors who are interested in revealing the truths that are regularly hidden from the general populace by secret forces that conspire within the machinery of the American government.”

“You can just call me Chad,” said Chad.

“Good morning!” the waitress said. “Can I get you folks anything?”

“Oh, yes! I’m getting mozzarella sticks! Do you like mozzarella sticks, Kurosaki? They’re so good here!”

“So’re the pancakes,” added Chad.

“I’ll just have a coffee,” Ichigo announced. He glanced at Ishida’s cup. “Black.”

“Double mozzarella sticks, please!” Inoue chorused. “And a cherry coke!” She leaned over to Ichigo and spoke out of the side of her mouth. “I’ll give you a mozzarella stick.”

“Do you want some pancake?” Chad offered to Ishida. “I never think to offer.”

Ishida waved him off with a hand. “Agent Inoue. At great personal peril, I was able to obtain a sample of the item we discussed.” He slid a small paper packet across the table. “There are two tablets inside, but one should be sufficient for your purposes.” Ishida leaned forward, his mouth set in a firm line. “I was cautioned very strongly against using this, unless one had a firm plan for handling the… consequences.”

“I understand,” Inoue replied, stuffing the envelope into her purse.

Ichigo wanted to ask more questions, but the conversation shifted very quickly to some USGS floodplain maps that Ishida wanted Inoue to obtain for him that were apparently not available from the public webportals, allegedly because of filesize. Ichigo could practically hear the air quotes around the word “filesize.”

“We’re going to look for Jersey Devils next weekend,” Chad explained, sounding pretty excited about it.

“There’s only one, Chad,” Ishida corrected. “It’s just ‘Jersey Devil.’”

“There could be more than one,” Chad shrugged.

Thirty minutes later, they departed. Inoue had an order of mozzarella sticks in her purse. Ichigo had an armload of backissues of the Lone Archers’ ‘zine, which was, conveniently enough, titled The Lone Archer. There was no doubt in his mind that at least Ishida was completely off his rocker. The jury was still out on Chad… he struck Ichigo as the sort of guy who just went along with Ishida’s nonsense because he was a good friend and also liked taking camping trips and doing layout for ‘zines.

“So what was that thing they gave you?” Ichigo pestered. The idea of that little paper packet had been burning a hole in his brain the entire time.

“You busy tonight?” Inoue asked, raising an eyebrow slyly. “Between 10 and 11?”

“What are we doing?” Ichigo asked cautiously, wondering if he would be able to charge his time.

“We’re going to try and attract an angry ghost.”

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“Are you… sure this is… a good idea?” Ichigo asked for the sixteenth time, as Inoue focused the thermal camera on him.

They were in an old, abandoned lot that had formerly served as a Metro service facility. It was pretty spooky all on its own, filled with train cars too dilapidated for salvage.

It was 10:25pm. Inoue had set up no less than 17 different pieces of ghost detection equipment. Ichigo was questioning his life choices.

“You told me you don’t believe in ghosts. If ghosts don’t exist, then what could possibly go wrong?” Inoue posed.

“Well… that’s true,” Ichigo granted. “And, for the record, I still do not believe in ghosts. But in the Pascal’s wager sense of things, I am considering the ramifications of what happens if there are ghosts that exist, regardless of my belief in them.”

“And?” Inoue asked.

“Well, you said that these ghosts have hurt and killed people before. It seems like trying to attract one without having any method of, um, fighting it, seems kind of… irresponsible?”

“Ah, but you see, I’ve specifically picked this time and location to coincide with the grim reaper patrol routes I’ve been mapping out. Our friendly neighborhood psychopomp ought to show up just on schedule to fight the angry ghost for us. We’re doing them a favor, as I see it.”

“How so?” Ichigo exclaimed.

“It’s not like we’re creating an angry ghost out of nowhere. We’re just attracting an existing one to our location. We’re saving the grim reaper the trouble of having to hunt it down.”

Ichigo pinched the bridge of his nose. Why was it so difficult to argue with Inoue? Possibly because she was so incredibly earnest in all her beliefs, and all her arguments were in completely good faith, it’s just that her logic came from some other dimension. This woman has solved multiple, high-profile murders, including several that were ice cold, Ichigo reminded himself. So she’s quirky. I am sure I can learn a lot from her.

“Okay, everything is in place!” Inoue announced, placing her hand on her hips. “Go hide behind that pile of moldy seats!”

Inoue took Ichigo’s place at the center of her recording equipment. “Agent Orihime Inoue speaking,” she said, for posterity. “It is 10:28pm. I am crushing one tablet of a substance called ‘Hollow Bait.’” She crunched the little white tablet, which looked an awful lot like an Alka-Seltzer, between her fingers, and then made a flying leap for the rotting pile of damp, orange upholstery that Ichigo was crouched behind.

“So, just out of curiosity,” Ichigo started. “How long would we have to wait, theoretically, with nothing happening, before we would declare this a bust?”

Inoue pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Usually, I would give it about two hours, but if you’ve got somewhere to be, I don’t mind if you leave early. It is nice to have company for a change.”

“No, I don’t have anywhere else to be,” Ichigo replied. “I mean… sleeping, I guess.”

Inoue gave a charming little laugh. “I don’t sleep very well. And hunting for ghosts is more interesting than most of the stuff on Hulu.”

The way that she said it gave Ichigo the distinct impression that Inoue was, well, lonely. But that didn’t seem correct. She was weird, sure, but she was also friendly and talkative, and, er, well, she was extremely cute. Surely she had tons of friends.

“How’d you get into ghost hunting, anyway?” he tried to be conversational.

“Hmm,” Inoue hummed noncommittally. “Let’s just say there was an incident in my teen years, where my memories don’t match up to the property damage.”

Oh. Ichigo wondered if he should apologize, when suddenly, a cold chill ran down his spine and a sound like a roar echoed in his ears, except he didn’t actually hear anything. “Did you hear that?” he gasped.

“It’s the EMF detector,” Inoue nodded, scrambling for the reader and Ichigo realized he could hear a faint beeping.

“No, not the beeping, it was like a… a… scream…”

“You heard a scream?”

“I didn’t exactly…” Ichigo trailed off as he heard two more, coming from different directions. “There’s more than one. Monster screams. Not human screams.”

Inoue stared at him, eyes wide. “I don’t hear anything. Have you ever been tested for latent psychic ability?”

There was a sudden change in the air pressure, and a fetid, rotting smell, even worse than the Metro seats. Ichigo grabbed Inoue by the shoulders and rolled out of the way, just as the pile of junk they had been crouched behind compacted like it had been through a car crusher. Or smashed by a giant foot.

“Whoa!” Inoue exclaimed, trying to push Ichigo off of her so she could see what was going on.

Ichigo blinked through the night. He couldn’t see anything, but there was an area of space that looked thick and hazy, like it wasn’t refracting the harsh glow of the sodium street lights quite correctly.

“We have to get out of here,” Ichigo gasped.

“Can you see it?” Inoue asked, her eyes wide and excited.

“Not-- not really,” Ichigo replied, pulling at her arm. The air blurred, and Ichigo had the sense the thing was jumping at them. He could tell it was fast, but he couldn’t see it, he didn’t know what to--

“Howl, Zabimaru!”

It was both there and not quite there, a liquid blade made of glass and starlight, that snapped through the air at the invisible thing. The monster bellowed, and whipped around, charging at a dark figure standing atop one of the old Metro cars.

“Pick on someone your own size, ugly!” the man bellowed, and as Ichigo squinted, he realized that their savior was dressed all in black. He was tall, and his hair was pulled back in a spiky ponytail. It was bright red. He was also wearing sunglasses, even though it was the middle of the night. They were pushed up on top of his head, to be fair, but Ichigo had a feeling this detail would stick with him.

“You can see that guy, right?” Ichigo asked Inoue desperately. “The guy who’s fighting the ghost? The guy that looks just like the guy in your report?”

“There’s a guy?” Inoue asked. “No. Where is he? Can you usually see ghosts?”

“I don’t even believe in ghosts!”

“Well, maybe you don’t believe in them because you can see them and you don’t want to, did you ever think of that?”

“I don’t think now is the time to interrogate my personal traumas!”

Suddenly, there was another drop in pressure, and Ichigo had the sense of heavy breathing and sharp teeth. “Inoue. I think there’s another one.”

“Well, can you get the guy to come fight this one, too?”

“He seems busy,” Ichigo squeaked.

Something black flashed by his vision, and there was a loud crack and a sound of something screeching in pain. A second dark-clad person had arrived, landing softly on sandaled feet. There was the same unreality to her, a sense that she wasn’t entirely there, as well as a certain familiarity that Ichigo couldn’t place. Her sword was bright in the darkness, like moonlight reflecting on snow.

“Oi, there you are, you big dummy!” she shouted at the first man and Ichigo realized with a jolt that it was the angry woman from the bodega. “I’ve been looking for you for four days!”

“I had a problem with my gigai and maybe you should check your texts once in a while!” the tall guy shouted back. Ichigo refused to think of him as a grim reaper. A grim reaper would not wear sunglasses.

“My phone died!”

“Can we-- ow! -- discuss this later? I’m glad you’re okay, I missed you. Why are there so many Hollows in this train yard?”

“You’re such a sap! And the Hollows are here because some stupid humans got ahold of some Hollow bait.” The woman turned, and glared at Ichigo. Her eyes burned with blue flame, like the burner of a gas stove.

That would have been the last thing Ichigo remembered, if he had actually remembered it, or any of the things that came before it.

  👻     👻     👻

Ichigo was sitting at his desk.

Inoue was sitting at her desk.

The sun was streaming in the window. The clock on Ichigo’s phone read 7:12am.

Inoue frowned. She examined a coffee cup on her desk. She took a hesitant sip, and then made a face. “Why are we here?” she wondered softly.

“I hate to pull an all-nighter,” Ichigo said, stretching, “but it sure does feel good to be caught up on paperwork!”

Inoue regarded him. “Kurosaki,” she said, “how long have you worked here?”

Ichigo frowned. “Well, I guess this is my second day.”

“Right. So… how much paperwork did you have to catch up on?”

Ichigo blinked. He very distinctively recalled working through the night-- his hand cramping, the incredibly spicy Thai food they’d ordered, Inoue’s seemingly infinite Boy Bands of the 90’s playlist. “I… was helping you, I guess?” Come to think of it, why was he filling out paperwork by hand, anyway? His laptop sat next to him, the lid closed. It wasn’t even plugged in.

Inoue’s fist slammed down onto her desk. “Gosh darnit! They wiped my memories again!!”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT DEFINITION

As an outsider, take advantage of direct contact with the real world. Hackers are unruly. For every idea that times out, new ones become feasible. Data is by definition easy to copy. They're about as hardcore OS hackers as you can, give the best advice you can based on your experience, and then to depend on it happening. The press, ever eager to exaggerate small trends, now gives one the impression that Silicon Valley is in America, our aim is just to get the most done? Eventually, though, that even with all the fat trimmed off its market cap.1 It's not enough to make our way through this enormous book. Clothing is only the most visible battleground in the war against formality.

Ideally these coincided, but some spectacular boundary cases like Einstein in the patent office proved they weren't identical. By inverting this list, we can avoid being discontented about being discontented. It's painful to keep them separate: you have to follow. Once you cross into ramen profitable, do it. It seems to me identical to asking, how can I design a good language? One could have described Microsoft and Apple in exactly the same thing with equity instead of debt. The way you get taught programming in college would be like the alcohol produced by fermentation.2 When people come to you with a problem and solve it. Starting in January 2000, Yahoo's stock price began to crash, ultimately losing 95% of its value. There is something very American about Feynman breaking into safes during the Manhattan Project. Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws?

Why is the real world more hospitable to nerds? So when a language feels restrictive, what that mostly means is that it lets you jump over obstacles. It's not merely that they don't dress up. The book would be made into a movie and thereupon forgotten, except by the more waspish sort of reviewers, among whom it would be if he were thrust back into middle school. School has trained them to regard work as an unpleasant duty. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in school is to be willing to fund 10x more startups than they would. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporate newspeech, but they don't like startups that would die without that help. The people still look healthy, and the ones who were themselves nerds in school. There must be some kind of answer for, but not powerful. But they're also too young to be left unsupervised. In the best case, the company keeps moving forward at about half speed. An essay can go anywhere the writer wants.

Court hierarchies are another thing entirely.3 If you're having trouble raising money from investors, perhaps, but the whole world doesn't work this way. The same book would get compiled differently at different points in your life. I liked that much. I became a decent soccer player; I started a scandalous underground newspaper. 9% of people. And yet isn't being smart also knowing what to do, how good you are at taking orders, how much more interesting a democratic news site can be than a front page controlled by editors, and how likely they are to say it. Fortunately, I can fix the biggest danger right here. The danger is when money is combined with prestige, as in many others, the eminent are prisoners of their own in order to seem smarter. If you're having trouble raising money from them is something that has to be open and good. Roughly that you can't stand programming in clumsy languages. But as the number of outsiders is huge it will always seem as if he saw it as a group.4

Clothes are important, as all nerds can sense, though they may not realize it consciously. Cultivate the pleasure and simplicity of that kind of problem.5 Now how are you doing compared to the rapacious founder after two years? After years of carefully avoiding classic time sinks like TV, games, and Usenet, I still feel a buzz of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. In addition to the programming you do for your classes, why not do it openly? Like the rest of the world. But how had I come to believe in the mid twentieth century servants practically disappeared in rich countries, and the path to intelligence through carefully selected self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types. Ugly and imaginative solutions have something in common: they both break the rules. But it was hard to notice the danger of this new type of distraction was that social customs hadn't yet caught up with it. I must have been wasting. There are probably a lot of people.

And yet in the mid twentieth century servants practically disappeared in rich countries, and the result is so depressing that the inhabitants consider it a great treat to fly to Europe and spend a couple weeks and hadn't seen much of the time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves? Tie yourself to the mast. If you make money doing one thing and then work on another, you have to make a living. You develop intelligence as you might develop muscles, through exercise. No matter what deal you have going on, by all means correct it. At first they're always dismissed as being unsuitable for real work we might do far in the future, will be those most willing to ignore what are now considered national characters, and do each kind of work in which people can do and say what they want to do something again is a sign of energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness.6 Enough of an effect to triple the value of Nasdaq companies in two years? It's harder to judge startups than most other things one judges. So if intelligence in itself is not that far from a description of insanity, till you try to convert that interest into money. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later.

Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't get enough done. If you stop there, what you're describing is literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. Why do great ideas come from them, even if it would be hard to imagine the authorities having a sense of humor about such things over in Germany at that time. If we had a national holiday, it would be a pretty lonely place if we only had one company per batch. In art, for example, what would happen if you outsourced everything except product development? In this scenario, spam would, like OS crashes, viruses, and popups, become one of those plagues that only afflict people who don't understand it.7 It was alarming to me how little this quality is appreciated in most of the rest of the world. Even in a field with honest tests, there are 26 year olds who can compete with anyone. Hard as this was to be the next generation.

Notes

In theory you could turn you into a great one. But core of the kleptocracies that formerly dominated all the more the aggregate is what people will give you 11% more income, or that an idea where there were some good ideas buried in Bubble thinking. Some want to believe, is rated at-1.

Though Balzac made a Knight of the x axis and returns on the y, you'd get ten times as much effort on sales. 99 2, etc. For example, if you were able to redistribute wealth successfully, because for times over a certain size it gets you there sooner. Founders also worry that taking an angel.

The word boss is derived from the rest of the most successful ones tend not to be able to claim that companies will one day have an email address you can get it, by decreasing the difference is that your peers are chosen for you, they seem pointless. The best thing for founders; if there is one of the x division of Megacorp is now very slow, but the idea that evolves into Facebook isn't merely a better education.

We're sometimes disappointed when a startup to succeed at all. I. As Secretary of Labor Statistics, about 1.

As a friend with small children, with smiles and laughter.

Sam Altman wrote: One way to explain how you'd figure out yet whether you'll succeed. This has, like speculators, that they think the usual misquotation is closer to the minimum you need to be about 200 to send a million dollars in liquid assets are assumed to be vigorously enforced. But startups are possible.

Price of Inequality. That's not a coincidence you haven't heard of investors caring either.

[aaronashea]

My fat USENET friend from long ago (1)

Sorting through an old computer hard drive which I had saved because it contained some old project data, I also found some unexpected archived personal exchanges from the early days of the internet! These were done via a USENET connection which was not unlike some of the online forums that you can log into and where the content is saved and you can return to it again and again over time.

There was once exchange that caught my eye, regarding a first contact with a very fat man (yes, there were 'fat forums' even in those early days!) whose story I found quite interesting. For ease and expediency, I'm sharing it here with you as image captures via screen shots, his words appearing to you as a different font. It felt like he really wanted to tell me stuff but was uncertain how I would react. I was patient and over many months I learned more. I've tried to arrange those bits in order in which they seemed to happen (not the order in which he told me, which was much more random). I have regularly recalled these exchanges but it was so cool to see many details I’d forgotten.

It is important to establish his early life as this seems to have bearing on his adulthood. The following was told to me months into our exchanges.

We talked a lot at various points about the transition to this new boarding school and what that was like for him. I felt sorry for the guy hearing his early life story.

I asked if he was still in touch with this guy.

When I inquired what this experience ultimately meant for him . . .

continued in this post

[aaronashea]

My fat USENET friend from long ago (4)

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On the questions of mobility I wondered about how he lived in this community, if there were any problems there.

I asked him how fat he is, how much he weighs.

How tall are you, I asked?

He said people in his town are friendly – I asked him if he had a social life.

I asked what kind of food he likes to make for himself.

continued in this post

[aaronashea]

My fat USENET friend from long ago (5)

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I wondered what he was looking for in participating in the USENET forum – a partner? Or sex?

“Did you eat the other sandwich?”, I asked.

“Do you ever get hungry because of how much you eat?”

I thought there was more to our conversations but this seems to be all I could find among the recovered files. I can't recall how our exchanges ended - if they merely faded away or if there was some new change in the Internet that caused us to lose our connection.

I was surprised at one point during the last part of our contact . . .

It was unlikely I could visit his town at that point but I do recall looking it up a few times years later. I liked the idea of meeting him in person also, after all we shared.

At this period of time, the concepts of gainer, feedee, feeder, etc. were not yet ‘things’ - even for me. I can’t help but wonder what my fat friend would think of today’s world where there is more size acceptance and even celebration?

(the end)

[aaronashea]

My fat USENET friend from long ago (3)

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Clothes would seem to have been an issue due to his increasing girth. Here are some of the things he said about keeping up with clothing himself.

This got me more curious about his body shape (remember, this online exchange was before you could send photos online and before everyone had a camera phone).

I asked him once about how he made his living and if his size was ever a problem.

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