Update:
April Fool's Day in my household has always traditionally been observed in silly, largely harmless ways (as a child I put my clothes on backwards for school, tied the sink nozzle down, and put stickers on my parents' backs), but the Tapening™ began a few years back when my father lovingly, attentively wrapped a long strip of blue painter's tape around my phone.
Couldn't find the blue tape this year, so for lack of my usual agent of chaos, I whipped out my roll of novelty Rosie the Riveter packing tape (!) and Rosie'd the house.
yeah no guys i can't do sunday. yeah its gonna be 3 years since destiel confession. yeah its gonna be all day
can you all tell me and be haters for a bit
Forgot I had the "Cloud to Butt" extension and opened a Final Fantasy VII fic
I realise a lot of girl’s Gay Awakenings was kiera knightly or kristen stewart which is cool phenomena tbh but I’m rlly interested in other Gay Awakenings like for example mine was morena baccarin in firefly and also gemma artenton in st trinians. CALLING ALL GAYS (boys and nb babes included)!! reblog with ur non kiera/k-stew Gay Awakening!!!
I don't do a lot of reblogging, but after reading through the entire thread, there was one thing that really got to me... about halfway down Page 13, SA user "Kramer" has a truly prophetic take:
"Not to belittle the signifigance of these events, but you do realize that this means a whole slew of "anti terrorist" and probably "anti violence" laws will be passed through congress. Any "anti terrorist" laws will be given almost a blank check to do what is necessary. I'd be surprised if in 6 months you'll be able to make a domestic call without it being monitored. That's the way terrorism works. It's not the attack that hurts most people. A couple of hundred people die -- every death is tragic, but the truth is the real tragedy will be the loss of freedoms for the survivors."
How unbelievably dead-on; "I'd be surprised if in 6 months you'll be able to make a domestic call without it being monitored." I wonder where they are now, what they're doing and what they think of the state of the world 22 years later... any other predictions for us, Cassandra Kramer?
I reblogged it earlier but I'm glad the Something Awful Forums 9/11 thread was archived because it's an incredibly important slice of internet history. For the record I think 9/11 was thousands of personal tragedies for the direct victims of the attacks but one big national farce that led to America's ongoing slide into fascism, and the nationalism and remembrance around it is a joke especially in the wake of the same amount of deaths every fucking day in the US during the height of coronavirus.
Nevertheless I think it's important that if you do not remember because you were too young or just didn't exist on Sept 11, 2001 to read the Something Awful 9/11 forums to get an idea of what the internet was like at the moment when America changed to 24 hour news cycles and renewed hyper-nationalism not seen since WWII.
This all happened before Twitter, Facebook, before Discord. Before smart phones. Before most people had cell phones. When a lot of people still had dial-up internet, even. Some people in the thread were relying on radio because internet and TV weren't keeping up.
It was a live event of internet denizens reacting to the biggest national event (and among the biggest international events) of the past 25 years. It was also a slice of what the internet was like at the turn of the millennium. Not only that, but people accurately calling out who was responsible, and what would result before the attacks even finished.
Keep in mind that the links that follow contain images of the event, lots of Islamophobia, people calling for the Middle East to be nuked, people blaming Palestine, casual racist and homophobic language (this was Something Awful after all), etc etc. They preserved the first 17 pages which spanned about 24 hours during the events. It's the origin of the "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR" screenshot.
Links under the fold. I've also annotated the pages with notes regarding the timeline and any posts of interest. Note the thread was preserved in Pacific Time even though the page says times are Eastern. That's incorrect. Post timestamps are 3 hours behind Eastern Time, which is the time zone where the attacks occurred:
Page 1 - Note the first post was edited to include images of the second attack. The thread started after the first plane hit. Second plane hitting the WTC happens here too.
Page 2 - Poster accurately calling out Bin Laden was responsible at 9:14 AM EST
Page 3 - "WATCH BUSH START A FUCKING WAR"
Page 4
Page 5 - First official acknowledgement it was a terrorist attack.
Page 6 - Pentagon hit
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9 - Commercial flights grounded by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration)
Page 10 - First mention of towers collapsing at end of page
Page 11 - More reactions to collapse of first tower. People thinking it was a bomb or yet another plane. Rumors about a fourth plane just missing the White House (these are false and predate the actual 4th plane crash by minutes)
Page 12
Page 13 - By this point there's just rampant speculation about more bombs at the WTC, the US Capitol building being hit, etc (all false). Remember this is all just people reacting to TV news and radio and the rumor mill via phone, AIM, IRC, and maybe text messages.
Page 14 - By this point internet news sites are overwhelmed
Page 15 - Second tower collapses. First acknowledgement of the fourth plane that crashed in PA.
Page 16 - There's an abrupt time jump in the threads, I think it was the result of admins pruning the activity or the SA forums going down. This page starts on 9/12 even though it is page 16. American flag signatures and ribbons start appearing.
Page 17
i think supernatural should end with d*stiel becoming canon but then immediately pulling a bury your gays. sorry i know homophobia isn’t funny but at the same time that would literally be so hilarious
Years ago back when I worked in cubicle land, we were hiring junior software developers. They didn’t have to have a ton of experience, just a willingness to learn, and some demonstration of their software skills. Like: show me a program you wrote (any language) or a web site you designed. Anything.
And there was this one guy I talked with who seemed super sharp, but had virtually zero experience writing software. When it came time to do the show-n-tell part of the interview he whips out his laptop, brings up a website, and spins it around to show me what he made.
A website of tiny ceramic frogs.
Not for sale. Just… all these ceramic frogs, organized into categories. Frogs on bicycles, frogs with hats, frogs sitting on lily pads. It was a virtual museum of ceramic frogs in web form.
I scrolled through his online collection of frogs, slightly baffled.
“This is your website?” I asked finally.
“Yep!”
“You coded this yourself?” I popped into view-source mode and poked around some incredibly well-formatted, well-commented html. I nodded slowly. This guy was meticulous.
“Yep!”
“So… where’d all the frogs come from?”
“I made those too,” he says, beaming.
And while I’m processing this he rummages in his bag and pulls out a little ceramic frog working at a computer terminal. He places it on the table before us, next to the laptop.
“And THIS one,” he says, “I made for you! As a thank you for the interview.”
It was adorable. I hired him on the spot. I mean, why not? Worst case he’d wash out in 90 days and we’d hire somebody else. He turned out to be one of the best developers on our team.
And yes, his cubicle was loaded with ceramic frogs.
I can't believe this is my first original tumblr post in literally years, but also I guess I can totally believe it??? This seems on brand
Anyway does anyone remember the end of Wild Space when Palpatine lost it because Bail Organa was in his cafeteria instead of being dead? No? Well, that's a shame. Here have a meme