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where the moon and stars collide

@alabaster-moon / alabaster-moon.tumblr.com

twenty-something and still in fandom, another writer that doesn't write.

My friend was messing with Never Gonna Give You Up on her record player and she sped it up. It beCAME A FREAKING MAGICAL GIRL THEME.

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skele-cain

Reminds me of a late 80s or early 90s anime ending theme.

God his voice is so deep even this fast he hasn’t hit ‘chipmunk’ vocals

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aimless-helter-skelter

I regret many things.

This is the tone people expected to hear from him at 20.

i think the reason why the assassination of Julius Caesar is one of the funniest political assassinations is for this very simple reason:

1 guy stabs 1 guy: not funny. that's murder.

2 guys stab 1 guy: even less funny. that's two against one.

60 guys stab 1 guy: uproariously funny. why do you need so many guys.

60 guys stab 1 guy 23 times: absolute buffoonery, peak comedy. How many other dudes got accidentally stabbed in all of this or dropped their knives on their own feet

2025 is the year to get around to it. rub some dirt in the gaping wound of your heart and bare your teeth to your own life

HERE’S THE THING THOUGH

I used to work for a call center and I was doing a political survey and I called this number that was randomly generated for me and the way our system worked was voice-activated so when the other person said hello you’d get connected to them, so I just launch right into my “Harvard University and NPR blah blah blah” thing and then there’s this long pause and I think the person’s hung up even though I didn’t hear a click

And then I hear “you shouldn’t be able to call this number.”

So I apologize and go into the preset spiel about because we aren’t selling anything, etc. etc. and the answer I get is

“No, I know that. What I mean is that it should be impossible for you to call this number, and I need to know how you got it.”

I explain that it’s randomly generated and I’m very sorry for bothering him, and go to hang up. And before I can click terminate, I hear:

“Ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”

I accidentally called the director of the FBI.

My job got investigated because a computer randomly spit out a number to the Pentagon.

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kuroba101

This is my new favourite story.

When I was in college I got a job working for a company that manages major air-travel data. It was a temp gig working their out of date system while they moved over to a new one, since my knowing MS Dos apparently made me qualified.

There was no MS Dos involved. Instead, there was a proprietary type-based OS and an actually-uses-transistors refrigerator-sized computer with switches I had to trip at certain times during the night as I watched the data flow from six pm to six AM on Fridays and weekends. If things got stuck, I reset the server. 

The company handled everything from low-end data (hotel and car reservations) to flight plans and tower information. I was weighed every time I came in to make sure it was me. Areas of the building had retina scanners on doors. 

During training. they took us through all the procedures. Including the procedures for the red phone. There was, literally, a red phone on the shelf above my desk. “This is a holdover from the cold war.” They said. “It isn’t going to come up, but here’s the deal. In case of nuclear war or other nation-wide disaster, the phone will ring. Pick up the phone, state your name and station, and await instructions. Do whatever you are told.”

So my third night there, it’s around 2am and there’s a ringing sound. 

I look up, slowly. The Red phone is ringing.

So I reach out, I pick up the phone. I give my name and station number. And I hear every station head in the building do the exact same. One after another, voices giving names and numbers. Then silence for the space of two breaths. Silence broken by…

“Uh… Is Shantavia there?”

It turns out that every toll free, 1-900 or priority number has a corresponding local number that it routs to at its actual destination. Some poor teenage girl was trying to dial a friend of hers, mixed up the numbers, and got the atomic attack alert line for a major air-travel corporation’s command center in the mid-west United States.

There’s another pause, and the guys over in the main data room are cracking up. The overnight site head is saying “I think you have the wrong number, ma’am.” and I’m standing there having faced the specter of nuclear annihilation before I was old enough to legally drink.

The red phone never rang again while I was there, so the people doing my training were only slightly wrong in their estimation of how often the doomsday phone would ring. 

Every time I try to find this story, I end up having to search google with a variety of terms that I’m sure have gotten me flagged by some watchlist, so I’m reblogging it again where I swear I’ve reblogged it before.

But none of these stories even come close to the best one of them all; a wrong number is how the NORAD Santa Tracker got started.

Seriously, this is legit.

In December 1955, Sears decided to run a Santa hotline.  Here’s the ad they posted.

Only problem is, they misprinted the number.  And the number they printed?  It went straight through to fucking NORAD.  This was in the middle of the Cold War, when early warning radar was the only thing keeping nuclear annihilation at bay.  NORAD was the front line.

And it wasn’t just any number at NORAD.  Oh no no no.

Terri remembers her dad had two phones on his desk, including a red one. “Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number,” she says.
“This was the ‘50s, this was the Cold War, and he would have been the first one to know if there was an attack on the United States,” Rick says.
The red phone rang one day in December 1955, and Shoup answered it, Pam says. “And then there was a small voice that just asked, ‘Is this Santa Claus?’ ”
His children remember Shoup as straight-laced and disciplined, and he was annoyed and upset by the call and thought it was a joke — but then, Terri says, the little voice started crying.
“And Dad realized that it wasn’t a joke,” her sister says. “So he talked to him, ho-ho-ho’d and asked if he had been a good boy and, ‘May I talk to your mother?’ And the mother got on and said, ‘You haven’t seen the paper yet? There’s a phone number to call Santa. It’s in the Sears ad.’ Dad looked it up, and there it was, his red phone number. And they had children calling one after another, so he put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus.”
“It got to be a big joke at the command center. You know, ‘The old man’s really flipped his lid this time. We’re answering Santa calls,’ ” Terri says.

And then, it got better.

“The airmen had this big glass board with the United States on it and Canada, and when airplanes would come in they would track them,” Pam says.
“And Christmas Eve of 1955, when Dad walked in, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole,” Rick says.
“Dad said, ‘What is that?’ They say, ‘Colonel, we’re sorry. We were just making a joke. Do you want us to take that down?’ Dad looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, Dad had called the radio station and had said, ‘This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.’ Well, the radio stations would call him like every hour and say, ‘Where’s Santa now?’ ” Terri says.

For real.

“And later in life he got letters from all over the world, people saying, ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ for having, you know, this sense of humor. And in his 90s, he would carry those letters around with him in a briefcase that had a lock on it like it was top-secret information,” she says. “You know, he was an important guy, but this is the thing he’s known for.”
“Yeah,” Rick [his son] says, “it’s probably the thing he was proudest of, too.”

So yeah.  I think that might be the best wrong number of all time.

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the-noble-scientist

No okay THAT is adorable and I’m queueing this for next December.

fandom end of year asks

  1. favourite fandom you joined this year
  2. favourite fic of the year 
  3. favourite fanart of the year
  4. favourite fanvid of the year
  5. favourite mood board of the year
  6. favourite playlist of the year
  7. favourite podfic of the year
  8. favourite author of the year
  9. favourite creator of the year
  10. favourite blog of the year
  11. favourite OC you met this year
  12. longest fic you read this year
  13. shortest fic you read this year
  14. best fixit you read this year
  15. favourite headcanon of the year
  16. best BTS (behind the scenes) moment of the year
  17. WIP you hope gets updated next year
  18. fandom you plan to join next year
  19. fic you plan to read next year
  20. favourite character of the year
  21. favourite ship of the year
  22. tags you used most this year
  23. tags you searched most this year
  24. best episode you watched this year
  25. best movie you watched this year
  26. best song you listened to this year
  27. best fandom moment of the year
  28. best fandom meme of the year
  29. fandom “first” you accomplished this year
  30. fandom resolution for next year

WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}

  1. E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;
  2. Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);
  3. BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;
  4. Charlotte Dillon - Research links;
  5. Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;
  6. One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;
  7. One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!
  8. Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;
  9. National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;
  10. Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;
  11. Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;
  12. The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;
  13. Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;
  14. QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);
  15. Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;
  16. Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

(Also, check my gumroad store if you want to!)

Source: href.li

so i just saw a post saying “yeah youre seeing sherliam fanart in 2024”

when else was i meant to see it? the manga’s still running? please don’t tell me they think yuumori’s already old

life will go on whether i like it or not. may as well grit my teeth and find a way to be okay with it

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