theassenterprise reblogged
Waluigi, Unraveled (2019), has greater cinematic artistry, story structure, and cultural impact than any other film released this year, and is therefore most deserving of an Oscar nomination. In this essay I will
theassenterprise reblogged
theassenterprise reblogged
truckhole-deactivated20181203
god today i ID’d an old dude buyin booze and he pulled out a fake ID with an elvis pic, then laughed and pulled out a matching one but with curly from three stooges on it, and im like okay please and he finally pulled out his real license and his legal name was steve sinner
sourdoughnibblers
that was the devil
theassenterprise reblogged
Cappy sure loves his NAPpuccinos and Costco rotisserie chickens
The separation of Rotisserie Chicken and Connoisseur keep making me think they’re two separate things
theassenterprise reblogged
the reason healthcare is free in the Pokemon world is because every time some corporation starts hoarding all the wealth some 13 year old comes in with a team of literal gods to stop them
theassenterprise reblogged
barbarianarchy-deactivated20200
whats the point of having a cat if it doesn’t commit crimes
Walks into the shelter like “give me the biggest bastard here”
theassenterprise reblogged
ricc-ii
Imma start yelling then
The pure delight on his face
theassenterprise reblogged
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.
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.
OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS.
I’ve seen the first post a bunch of times, but never the story of How The Santa Tracker Started.
theassenterprise reblogged
Broke: Barbie's many different careers are a way to sell dolls and accessories to little kids.
Woke: Barbie had every single one of those careers and is an immortal timeless being.
Bespoke: Barbie's different careers are different versions of Barbie from across the multiverse who occasionally swap place with each other or combine into one Barbie.
SO THERE’S SOMETHING Y’ALL SHOULD KNOW ABOUT...
ginger-le-gay-deactivated202008
Attack of the clones
I have often used Barbie to explain Greek mythology, and people laugh until I explain it, and then they get really serious and thoughtful.
I say, “The Greeks ascribed aspects to gods. Apollo had many aspects, but all were Apollo. He’s like Barbie that way. She’s an astronaut, a veterinarian, and a rollerskater, but no matter which of those things she is in the moment, she is always still Barbie. She is Barbie in her aspect as.”
Then people get not only the idea of “aspects” of godhood, but also, well, the changeable yet eternal nature of Barbie.
theassenterprise reblogged
the illusion was always that we just had to do it. just “do” the homework. the meal prep. the college application. just write the email, send the homework, follow up with that interview, clean your room. these are easy things, one-click things, two-hours-max things. we had so many people in our lives shout it at us. “why didn’t you just do it!”
often my answer was a soft i don’t know. an i-got-tired when actually it was more like - i couldn’t. i just couldn’t. it feels like everything is covered in snow. don’t you know that i’m mad at myself too? i want this stuff just as much as you do. i want to live in a clean house with good food and have an okay job and know i’m not disappointing the people i’m coming home to. i don’t like missing opportunities and having to scramble in a panic about last-minute things.
i’m a fully grown adult. she is posing for a pic on insta. if you want a life like this, go out and get it. it’s 2pm and i haven’t eaten breakfast. i am staring at the space where i should be working.
her video has a laugh. “just do it!”
theassenterprise reblogged
boychic-deactivated20230922
theassenterprise reblogged
1 month post-op
Woah you used to be a mushroom??
yeah dude i’m trans, ftm (fungus to man)
theassenterprise reblogged
corporealformdenier
i’m a simple person; anything happens, i cry
theassenterprise reblogged
soredd-deactivated20240308
Tl;Dr chic fil a funds the National Christian Foundation. The National Christian Foundation paid a preacher to help with a bill to pass in Uganda. That bill gives the right for folks to kill gay people. People's lives > sandwich.
theassenterprise reblogged
guess who just found out the difference between wax paper and parchment paper the hard way
wait what’s the difference?
one you can use in the oven safely and the other you can also use in the oven if the thing you are trying to make happens to be fire
theassenterprise reblogged
Angus, looking at the 3 upper lip hairs he has managed to grow in the past year: I am Angus McDonald
Angus:
Angus: *whispers* man detective