Tapioca Hallucinating So Hard It Invents Calculus

the pink stripe was simply taken away because pink fabric was too expensive to mass reproduce at the time, and the turquoise stripe was taken away for a really odd reason: for the harvey milk remembrance parade in 1979, they wanted three stripes on each side of the street and didn’t want it to be asymmetrical, so they did away with the turquoise stripe. like, they could have fixed it in some other way without removing a whole stripe, but eh whatever history’s history.

(source 1; article) (source 2; official site)

BIGGER,

Have you never…seen a turtle???

i’d only ever seen sea turtles, not freshwater turtles

while freshwater turtles have actual legs (as i now know) sea turtles have flipper-like limbs like this badboy 

I like the idea of Anaander secretly anonymously posting memes about how cool she is. “A buddy of mine saw Anaander take her shirt off in the shower. She said that Anaander had an 8 pack. That she was shredded”

the squad

wow first post in years and it’s more homestuck trash.

1. The DNC reported a hack of its emails by a Russian server a month ago.

2. A cybersecurity company agreed with the identification of the hacker as Russian and noted that one of the hacking groups involved was operated by the Russian military intelligence service.

In mid-June the company announced that the intruders appeared to include a group it had previously identified by the name “Cozy Bear” or “APT 29” and been inside the committee’s servers for a year. A second group, “Fancy Bear,” also called “APT 28,” came into the system in April. It appears to be operated by the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence service, according to federal investigators and private cybersecurity firms. 

3. From the same article: Pro-Putin Russian hackers have been a thorn in the side of American cybersecurity for years now.

The first group is particularly well known to the F.B.I.’s counterintelligence unit, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. It was identified by federal investigators as the likely culprit behind years of intrusions into the State Department and White House unclassified computer system. 

4. Wikileaks, along with publishing the emails, published unredacted credit card numbers, passport numbers, social security numbers, and home addresses of hundreds of Democratic donors. They called this “not an error.” This is known as doxxing, and it is illegal in US jurisdictions.

Doxing is always illegal, whether it is done against a federal employee, a state employee, or a regular person.  There are federal and state laws that specifically address doxing government employees.  With regular citizens, doxing falls under various state criminal laws, such as stalking, cyberstalking, harassment, threats, and other such laws, depending on the state.  Since these doxing threats and activities are made on the internet, the law of any state may be invoked, though most often an investigator  will look to the state in which the person making the threat is located, if this is known, or the state in which the victim is situated.  A state prosecutor can only prosecute violations of the laws of his or her own state, and of acts that extend into their state.  When acts are on the internet, they extend into all the states. Misinformation was spread that doxing is legal.  I am not sure how or why anyone fell for that misinformation.  Surely, people must understand instinctively, even if they were misled about the law, that if they are threatening someone or putting them at risk, or tormenting or harassing the other on the internet, that this must be illegal.  Common sense would tell you that bullying or jeopardizing another would be illegal in some way.  So yes, doxing is illegal, no matter who the target.

5. Wikileaks has offered support to the racist, sexist agitator and Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos after his ban from Twitter for inciting hate mobs. This support was not merely a tweet or two extending a hand: it was an offer to build an entire new social network fine-tuned to Yiannopoulos’ needs.

6. Milo is a vocal Trump supporter and headlined an event at the RNC.

7. Wikileaks is run by Julian Assange, an accused rapist, who has for years taken a paycheck from Russia Today, the English-language propaganda arm of the Kremlin.

8. Trump, blacklisted as he is from borrowing form most US banks, has enticed mostly investors from Russia to prop up his floundering enterprises.

After his bankruptcy and business failures roughly a decade ago Trump has had an increasingly difficult time finding sources of capital for new investments. As I noted above, Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks with the exception of Deutschebank, which is of course a foreign bank with a major US presence. He has steadied and rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia. At a minimum the Trump organization is receiving lots of investment capital from people close to Vladimir Putin.

9. Trump is pro-Putin to the point where he would not defend other NATO member nations against Russian attacks.

10. Trump’s right hand man, Paul Manafort, was for almost a decade an advisor to Viktor Yanukovych, the ousted president of Ukraine who now lives in exile in Russia and is a major Putin ally. Trump’s other top staffers tend towards supporting the Russian government/elite in various ways.

11. There is nothing in the DNC emails that indicates breaking of any laws.

12. Bernie Sanders only declared himself a Democrat this election cycle. The DNC was not obligated to support him, and yet they did - there are emails where staffers complain about bending over backwards for the Sanders campaign. There’s also a memo from the Sanders campaign demanding a private jet  to be paid for by the DNC after Bernie had reached the point where it was mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination. (They also called Lin-Manuel Miranda a baby for not doing a fundraiser on his off day, which is frankly hilarious.)

12c. Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic nomination by 3,775,437 votes. He lost badly among registerd Democrats, black Democrats, and Latino Democrats. If the DNC is incompetent enough not to secure their servers against hackers, they are sure as shit not capable of stealing nearly four million votes.

13. Hillary Clinton does not have mind-control powers and is not responsible for every single word typed in a private DNC email server.  

14. The release of the emails was timed for when Trump would have a large amount of goodwill - the “convention bump,” as noted in several large-scale polls by reputable organizations - and before the Democrats/Hillary would have a chance to respond to the bump at their own convention.

15. Trump has engaged in much worse political ratfucking of his same-party opponents than the DNC did in its emails, in public, and it is widely known that the RNC has been attempting to sabotage him for months.

16. It ain’t like Putin hasn’t done shit like this before. He killed a journalist with plutonium. I could go on about what he does inside his country, but I’m not super familiar with it, and frankly "sitting head of state ordered the assassination of a journalist in exile by means of nuclear material" is fucked up enough. 

Conclusions that can be reasonably drawn from these facts:

1. Wikileaks, whatever its intentions in the past, is not a neutral whistleblower and cannot be, given the money their founder draws from the Russian government.

2. The DNC did not engage in any political ratfuckery beyond what is normal for any and especially this cycle, nor did they break any laws.

3. Wikileaks is not a progressive actor, given its support for both Milo Yiannopoulos and Vladimir Putin.

4. The hackers sat on the material for more than a month, and the reveal of the documents was timed to hurt Hillary Clinton and buck up Trump.

Other conclusions that can be drawn:

1. Trump and Putin colluded somehow on this hack job.

2. Putin wants Trump in the White House because Trump has, among other things, publicly stated that he will not defend NATO states bordering Russia if Russia invades, and is willing to sponsor illegal activity to make this happen.

Conclusions the FBI has drawn:

The FBI is publicly saying that they suspect the Russian government did this. Several unnamed US officials suspect this was “a deliberate attempt to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, according to five individuals familiar with the investigation of the breach.”

(Also, on that note - the DNC is not gonna accuse a foreign state of trying to influence the election via cyberterrorism without some cold hard proof. That’s not an accusation you throw around lightly, especially when you represent one of the two largest parties in America.)

TL;DR

Debbie Wasserman Schultz complaining about an independent tanking her anointed candidate should not make you mourn the death of American democracy. What should be making you furious - and terrified, honestly - is that a foreign state, led by an autocrat with a history of human rights abuses, has used a “pro-transparency” organization to achieve its goal in installing a malleable strongman and has committed cyberterrorism in the process.

blood now must be repaid with blood later, but the fourth baby is a girl, and she lives.

*

she grows slowly, and out of order. first her hands, long and bony; then her arms, thin, hollow-looking. she never looks quite like a child: no chubby cheeks, no skinned knees, no missing teeth. her hair is thick and so black it sometimes seems viscous. her skin is so thin you should be able to see the blood running through it.

they name her snow white, for the fairness of her skin. so fair that she cries when left in the light too long.

*

the queen dies when snow white is four, still small, and beloved. she is not beautiful, her mouth too painfully red, her eyes too liquid dark, her teeth too pointedly sharp. but only those who do not live in the castle think this. to know the child is to love her. to know the child is to want to please her. to know the child is to know that she is precious.

that she must be protected. that she must be obeyed.

“it is not your fault,” the king whispers to the child on his lip, petting her head. “she was not strong enough. i will make sure you never go hungry.”

the child presses her tiny hand against his cheek. “i know you will,” snow white says.

*

peasants begin to go missing. young boys are snatched from the fields. women are summoned to the castle and never seen again.

“gifts,” her father calls them. “eat. you are too thin.”

the girls are always silent, and the boys always scream. snow white hates it. she wishes they would stop, but she is hungry. she is so hungry. and doesn’t she have the right to survive? isn’t she a child, too?

but her mother’s blood is the only food that ever made her feel full. now she can eat and eat and eat and never feel like she has taken a single bite.

she grows thin. the sun becomes too strong for her to go outside.

“a mother’s blood,” the king muses, and sends his advisors out to find snow white a new one.

*

the kingdom has six queens in six years, but no more peasants go missing. it must be something in the castle, they say. some mold. some terrible illness. something that lingers, and kills you slowly.

but snow white grows healthy regardless. she can be seen, sometimes, on the parapets: in the early years she wears a heavy cloak but as she grows it gets thinner, and then disappears entirely.

she is small, and delicate. her laughter, floating down into the village, is silver and gold and painted in eighth notes. it is said that if you look into her eyes you can see your deepest desire. it is said that she will give it to you. it is said that every time a queen dies it breaks snow white’s gentle heart. she shrinks. she hides away indoors. she becomes frail and cannot leave her bed.

so many queens in so many years. eventually, somebody will notice.

eventually, somebody does.

*

“mirror, mirror, on the wall: who’s the fairest of them all?”

you, my queen.

“there are no others?”

there is one other. but she is young. she was made by the forrest. she doesn’t know what she is.

“another? after all this time? where?”

the kingdom of six queens.

“how strong is her heart?”

she is too young to know for certain. but she when she is hungry, she has always been fed.

*

snow’s new mother arrives on horseback. her lips are red as blood, her hair as black as ebony, her skin as fair as–snow’s. 

she marries the king and they spend the night in his chamber. this has never happened before. snow white does not understand. she is hungry. she always gets fed, the very first night. she always gets blood on her gown.

but her father stays in his chamber and does not come out. in the morning, his eyes are hazy and he does nothing but smile. her new mother’s teeth are red.

snow white waits. she isn’t starving yet. surely her father will snap out of it and feed her.

*

“today?” snow white asks, and her father pats her head.

“i will find you a peasant boy,” he says. “a strong one. your favorite kind.”

“that is not my favorite,” snow white tells him. she frowns. he has never told her no before. he, and everyone else, has always done exactly what she wanted. “father, i am hungry. you promised i would never be hungry again.”

she begins to cry, and the hazy look leaves him. he falls to his knees, her face between his hands. “of course,” he murmurs, “of course, tonight, i’ll send her. i don’t know why i didn’t before. i don’t know what i was thinking. tonight.”

snow white kisses his cheek. her red lips leave a print.

*

her new mother does not come. in the morning, her father’s eyes are hazy once again.

*

“father,” snow white begs.

“i promise,” he answers, but he is weak, every night he gives in to weakness because her new mother does not come. snow white is hungry. snow white grows thin. snow white cannot go out into the sun.

*

at last, her new mother comes. she has a plate of food: vegetables, fruit, and a slab of meat.

“eat,” her new mother murmurs. she perches on the edge of the bed.

snow white shuffles away from the sunlight coming through the window. “i’m not hungry,” she says.

“but you must be hungry,” her mother says, smiling. she reaches out to chase the edge of snow’s jaw. “you haven’t eaten in weeks. not even a peasant boy.”

snow white looks up, startled. “they aren’t filling,” snow white says.

“no,” agrees her new mother. “i agree. i prefer kings, when i can get them.”

“i prefer mothers.”

“i am not your mother.”

“then what are you?”

her smile is slow and bitter red. “my mother made the woods a promise, and the promise was me. she did not know that promises must be paid in blood, and sustained in blood, and that the blood was also me. she got what she wanted, and i ate until i was as full as a human could make me.”

“are there others? like you? …. like me?”

“there were,” the queen says. “once, there were many of us, and all of us were starving.”

snow white does not yet understand. “then what happened? where did they go? how did you survive?”

the queen runs a finger along the fabric of snow white’s blanket. her nail rips a line through the thread. “humans are weak, snow white. a thousand of them would not be enough to fill us up. but we are strong. our hearts can sustain a body for a hundred lifetimes.”

her teeth grow long. “i have been hungry for such a long time,” she says. 

snow white understands.

she runs.

*

it hurts: her skin is so hot it is nearly on fire. her feet blister as she runs. she has never been outside of the castle grounds, but the woods are dark and shaded. the shade is like jumping into a pool of water. the red bleeds from her skin, leaving her fair and white once more.

she hides inside the hollow of a tree (the woods created her and the woods will keep her safe until her mother’s debt is paid). she sleeps while the hunting parties pass her by, all but one. he is a huntsman. he knows the woods. he knows the woods have favorites, and protect them; but the woods are old and can be tricked.

he waits.

when she emerges, it is dark. her skin is so white he almost wants to drink it. she is small, her hair so black he thinks she has woven the night sky into it. as he notches his bow he thinks it seems a shame to kill something so beautiful, something so beloved by the woods. the huntsman is loved by the woods, too. he knows how its favorites suffer.

she turns to look at him. when their eyes meet he sees his deepest desires. her eyes promise to give it to him. we are the chosen, her eyes promise, as she approaches and he does not shoot. cannot shoot. cannot look away.

“i am so hungry,” she whispers, reaching out to touch his face. “my father hasn’t fed me.”

“she wants your heart,” the huntsman confesses.

snow white knows that already. snow white is beginning to understand the bargain that her mother made.

“she cannot have it,” snow white says, and her teeth get long, and she eats.

*

“mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

you, my queen. but not for long.

*

im bi but I tend to get crushes on fictional male characters more that real men and real women more than fictional female characters

after watching act 7 i felt sad, but in a good way. I really can’t describe my reaction better than that.

“ohhh would you look at that, my pawns found jesus and now they’re all bishops”

“so i realize it looks like i’m putting a thimble on the board but actually my rooks have been using their downtime to build another rook, one that’s better, stronger, faster—”

“hey welcome back. while you left to get a snack, those six pieces you’d captured slipped their guards, tunneled to safety and emerged right in the middle of your royal palace.”