just a box of rain

The past and the present

In celebration of the previous twos (and the ongoing season)

Happy Drawtectives Seasons Three!

(If you're new & curious about who these characters are, or want to revisit the past cases in anticipation of the next episode of S3, check out the links below!)

i walk a fine line between “i’m asexual and i hate how much the world revolves around sex” and “sex is way too stigmatized and people should be able to be more open about it if they want to”

I think these are two sides of the coin called "sex should not be such a big deal"

you know you're good at your job when every single person tells you "thank god you're back"

Boss makes a dollar You make a dime You read unsanitary pirate slash On company time

Look if you read fanfic on the clock and everyone is still relieved that you're back you must just be that got-dang good at your job

Fam, some jobs are like being a firefighter. 90% of the time you're not doing anything that important, but by golly, when they need you, they need you.

Some jobs, you can fuck around for six hours a day, but you know what you're doing so well that the work you do in two hours would take somebody else ten.

Some jobs, you spend those two hours preventing other people from making mistakes that would take 100 hours to fix if you weren't there to steer them right.

So don't buy into the idea that if you're not working 480 minutes a day, you're not doing enough to get paid a day's wages. That's the capitalism talking.

You're a better employee when you keep your morale up, and sometimes you do that by reading fanfiction on the clock in between putting out your little fires.

there's an actual term for this, it's called "waiting for assignment" and the day I learned it cleared up a lot of stupid guilt I was still carrying around for reading fanfiction on the clock despite being the person no one could live without.

essentially, at some jobs you are "engaged to wait," meaning something may not be happening right now but you are being paid to be around when it does. it's a real federally recognized concept and you are morally, legally, and within the bounds of business norms allowed to kill the protestant guilt tripper in your mind telling you that every minute not spent working is stealing from the company or being lazy. it's not. you're extremely valuable and your time being paid to sit there is worth every cent you're being paid.

also, I learned all of this from Ask a Manager, here's a piece where she talks about it, and if you're not reading AAM you should be, especially if you're job hunting or want to be soon.

wmata you may want to rethink your phrasing

Cozy facades of Japanese cafes and shops

Really shows how pathetic US "journalists" are when every other paragraph is "I will not publish this part because it could theoretically threaten our Blessed and Holy CIA officers and Da Troops." Then ends with "I removed myself from the chat once I knew it was actually real and politely informed the imperialist morons of their mistake." If this guy got the Watergate Tapes, he'd have sent them back with a bow and a gift card.

Uh, so he actually can't publish classified data. Many, many lawyers would have reviewed that article to make sure he wasn't breaking the law. Because, yes, everyone in that chat group was breaking the law, but the reporter is the one who would've been prosecuted and "But they did it too!" isn't actually a good legal defense.

The information he refused to publish was detailed operational information, such as sequencing of American fighter jet attacks. Aside from the very emphatic treason charges he would've been slapped with, he doesn't want to put the CIA officers or troops in danger by publishing the information that could get them killed. And publishing that information guarantees foreign governments get it, not just the highly likely instance that they get it because government officials were talking about it in a Signal chat.

Lastly, yeah, he left the group chat. He was going to get dropped once he published anyway, so he left it as soon as he had confirmation it was real. How long should he have stayed? What number of deaths would have been required to make it "acceptable" for him to have left? Should he have stayed all 4 years and published it in a book after?

"Informed them of their mistake." I guess the previous one wasn't lastly, this one is. He reached out for comment before publishing the article. That's what reporters do. At an institution like The Atlantic, they're always going to do that. And at this point, he knows that asking for comment isn't going to lead to them covering anything up because they're either too stupid or too careless to cover it up.

In conclusion, he actually did a lot right. (I won't say he did everything right because I wasn't there, but it sure seems like he did.) This is the Watergate tapes. We just don't have anyone in government right now willing to act on it in the way Congress was 52 years ago.

My cover for "Monsters of Fife: Sea Dragons" by Jane Yolen, out from Charlesbridge Publishing in June 2025. I also illustrated the interior. Thanks so much ADs Jon and Ellie!

really enjoying all the videos Muslims have been posting of their cats looking like this

when the humans are up at 4 am for suhoor

there was a great study a few years that went into the whole "ppl online are bigger jerks than irl cuz theres a virtual wall and no repercussions" and the researchers were expecting to see that be the case but it turns out that people who were really angry or argumentative online were also found to just be assholes in person and people who were pretty patient and nice online were found to be patient and nice in real person as well

and it just debunked that whole cynical idea that people will naturally be mean if theres no punishment for it

source another source

the researchers found that being online didnt make people more hostile, but that being online allowed already hostile people to dominate forum conversations, and the less aggressive people were much less likely to reply or engage, ending in just the aggressive people bickering at eachother

a missing remark, this study describes these people as "status-driven". this is important. do not omit it.

putting people down and verbally abusing others is almost always tied to systems of power and social status.