History Memes

Okay so one of the many things that drives me absolutely nuts about most TV shows and (some) books that involve secret or classified information or secure facilities is how absolutely not secure everything is, so these are a few basic things that people get wrong:

You can't carry around classified information. There are, I assume, exceptions in specific cases, though they are assuredly very carefully managed, but random intel agent #12 cannot legally just take home classified information so they can work on it at home. That's incredibly illegal. And that's for a reason--secure facilities are, as the name suggests, secure. Everywhere else is varying levels of not secure. Even for people working with regular business or government materials on their work phone or laptop, there are varying levels of strict rules about where you can leave it, how to report a lost device, and not keeping it in checked bags.

Badges should be innocuous and limited in visible information. Any sensible security system doesn't have badges that are numbered/colored/otherwise identified by access level, because that is a really easy way to identify targets for thieves/people who want to break in. American federal ID cards (CAC for military, PIV for civilian) have really specific layouts. Some companies distinguish between full time employees, interns, vendors, etc in their cards.

Badges shouldn't be displayed outside of the office. This is not really followed by real people (if you get on the metro on DC you will see a wide variety of visible badges), but displaying a badge is not security-wise because 1) it makes them easier to steal, and 2) it can make you a target.

Names/access level/information shouldn't be openly announced. I'm looking at you, MCU Spider-Man fanfiction. Just. Don't.

Confidential/classified information shouldn't be openly discussed. Stop having your characters talk about confidential or classified information in front of people who shouldn't know it, or even just out in the open at all. They shouldn't be telling their parents, their friends, their spouses, etc. Even businesses or government buildings that deal with sensitive information, there may be spaces where certain things can or can't be discussed, and employees/contractors will go through approximately 8 million trainings on where you can't discuss certain information. This also involves erasing whiteboards, locking computers, etc.

So, I have some further things to mention (keeping in mind that this is coming from someone on the outside)!

I have occasionally asked someone a question (about current events, technology, or something along those lines) and been told, “I can’t talk about that. I don’t think it’s classified, but it’s something I heard in a room with classified information.”

If someone works in one of these jobs, they will occasionally lie to every single one of their friends and family members. This doesn’t generally bother those friends and family members. Assuming that the nature of their job isn’t classified in and of itself (like claiming to work at a department store when you actually work for the CIA), you just kind of accept it. Sometimes you realize that you’re being lied to, but I suspect most of the time you don’t. But if someone goes on a work trip to a place that’s allegedly a three-hour plane ride away and doesn’t call to tell you they’ve arrived until ten hours later, and then only calls you at 10pm in the time zone they’re allegedly in... maybe there’s something going on that you’re not aware of, and maybe you keep your mouth shut about it.

On a practical note (and due to many rants from someone I know), no one is going to drop a classified file and have stuff come spilling out. When they are transported, they are kept wrapped up in multiple layers. This not only keeps someone from dropping it and allowing any passersby to read what’s on those papers, but it also acts as a tamper-proof seal. If someone receives a file with torn packaging, you know something’s up.

Another thing I know, courtesy of a rant from someone who accidentally did this: duress codes and keypads! If you have a location that requires a coded entry, first of all you cannot do a cool trick with a mirror to see what the code is while someone else puts it in. You cannot see it on the camera. IIRC, you will likely stick your hand in a little opaque box to put in the code because the people who design these things are not idiots. Secondly, you will have a duress code. This code will likely still give you access to the room/building/whatever, but it will alert security that you are doing so under duress. This may be by putting in the actual code backwards, or by using a previous code, or something else entirely. In this case, be sure to keep track of which codes are which, so that you don’t leave the lab on a regular day of work to find the hall lined with very concerned (and very armed) security personnel prepared to shoot whoever “forced you to let them in the room” (this story is definitely based on a true story, and we still mock him for it).

Secure locations are more secure than you think. The previous post mentions things like cell phones and furbies (and yes, everyone in town laughs about the furby thing), but this extends to a lot of other security measures. For example, cable management. In secure computer labs, there are likely to be extensive rules about how close cables can run to each other. You need to know exactly what is doing what, and it needs to be clear that nothing else is there. A mess of cables could easily hide something that’s not supposed to be there.

For the love of God, learn what a closed network is. If you have a bunch of classified materials that do not actively need to be shared, you cannot hack in from the outside to get access to them. Those computers are not connected to anything outside of that room or facility. Also, if you have a mystery thumbdrive you do not plug it into your network, holy shit what is wrong with you, this is what non-networked devices are for you idiot. There are plenty of computers on hand that completely lack the hardware necessary to connect to another in any way, shape, or form. Your virus can’t turn on the computer’s wi-fi to send information to you because there is nothing to turn on.

There are a lot of security measures. A lab may have things like thermite grenades on hand. In the event that you need to destroy everything inside, you put the grenade on top of a file cabinet and set it off. It won’t explode, it’ll just melt through the file cabinet, setting everything inside on fire. And yes, that sounds super badass and I kind of want to see this happen.

Sometimes a person with this kind of clearance is just going to go silent. It may be when you’re watching the news, discussing current events, or when you’re talking about a cool article you just read about some new developments in technology, but it’ll happen. If they’re good at it, you won’t notice. If they’re not, you’ll smile to yourself and keep your mouth shut.

Also I’ve kind of touched on this, but this is not going to be strange to the people around the person with clearance. The things that I’ve described here are pretty mundane when this is a part of your life. You may joke about it with other people (a friend and I will laugh about her dad’s late night calls that are followed by “I’m leaving town. I’ll be back eventually.”), but this isn’t odd to you. It’s like joking about any other aspect of someone’s job, like a weird fast food uniform or an eccentric boss.

Kind of connected, but no one who’s been married to someone in one of these jobs for any decent amount of time is going to be mad that their spouse is “keeping secrets” and the next time I see this trope in media I’m going to punch someone. Keeping secrets is literally part of their job and you know that. They will keep those secrets or they will go to jail, and you do not want your loved ones in jail. Depending on the nature of their job, you may worry about them, but you will not be mad at them for not telling you every detail of their day at work. If this kind of thing is a problem, it will be a problem from the start and is just generally a sign of incompatibility.

And finally, and most importantly:

I always look at cookbooks for people who have no energy/time to do elaborate meal preparations, and roll my eyes. Like, you want me to stay on my feet for long enough to prepare 15 different ingredients from scratch, and use 5 different pots and pans, when I have chronic fatigue and no dishwasher?

These people seem to get it, though. It’s very simple in places. It’s basically the cookbook for people who think, ‘I’m really bored of those same five low-spoons meals I eat, but I can’t think of anything else to cook that won’t exhaust me’. And it’s free!

15 minutes later this old guy came up to the counter with his address written on a napkin & he said “me and my wife have a whole herd of dexters and a couple of new calves. come on over any time”

so after work I was like ok fuck it & I drove to the address and I parked at at the gate & I walked down the driveway to the barn and this woman was like “oh my husband told me you might stop by! come see our cows” and she introduced me to every single cow. made my whole week.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

and mods are half the magic. here's how to install them and here's a bunch of gameplay tweaks.

this is just cosmetic stuff but i highly recommend it:

huge directory of cc

noblu/noglo

no white outline

if you find a sims player that you like the style of, check their tumblr for a resources page. they'll often list most of what they use.

DO NOT USE THIS SITE AND DEFINITELY DO NOT NOT TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THIS SITE, THEY MIGHT START DOING THESIS RESEARCH FOR FREE OR JUST START READING BOOKS THEY FOUND ON THERE FOR FUN BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE INTERESTING. This would be terrible :( :(

https://2lib.org/

pdfdrive.com for 79,081,664 eBooks for free

core.ac.uk for the world’s largest collection of open access research papers

citationsy.com which is a free referencing tool for making citations

archive.org a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more

elephind.com for free newspaper articles from around the world

I have restructured the folders to make them easier to use and managed to add almost all languages requested and then some

I did not find my husband in this way.

In rural France it is apparently Known that one brings one’s own shopping bags to the grocery store. I was a visitor and had not been briefed and had no shopping bag. I saw that other people were able to conduct negotiations to purchase shopping bags, but I could not remember the word for “bag.”

“Can I have a box that is not a box,” I said.

The checkout lady looked extremely tired and said, “Un sac?” (A sack?)

When I phoned my mom during week two I tried to tell her that it was a bit cold in the sleeping bag at night. I stumbled around the word in German because for the love of god, I could remember the Germwn word for sleeping bag.

“Yeah so, it’s like a bag you sleep in at night?”

“And my mother must probably have thought I lost my mind. She just sighed and was like ‘So, a Schlafsack, yes?”

That afternoon I met up with some friends and was talking about the new job, and the new office, and for the life of me I couldn’t remember the English word for pheasants. So I basically ended up bragging to my friends about “the very fancy chickens” we had outside the office.

She gets to Israel and is riding a bus for the very first time.

American: כמה ממון זה? (”How much money?” but in rather archaic language)

So in Biblical Hebrew the word for penis and weapon are the same. There is a verb meaning to arm, which modern Hebrew semanticly drifted into “fuck”: i.e. give someone your dick.

Except he doesn’t speak a lick of modern Greek, and the receptionist couldn’t speak English.  Or French.  Or German.  Or Italian.  (He tried all of them.)

Finally, in a fit of inspiration, he went upstairs and got his copy of Medea in the original Greek (you know, the stuff separated from modern Greek by two and a half thousand years).  He found the passage where Medea begs Jason to let her stay for one more day, went downstairs, and read it to the receptionist.