Slow down a little, genius - I'm merely gifted

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

It blocks out anything disturbing or violent of course. Mostly that just means some movie and TV scenes get blocked out, and there are a few times things from history class or English class were blocked, implants like yourse are still controversial enough so that your parents had to explain to your implants to your teachers. There have been a few times when you've been cut or scratched and your implants didn't let you see the wound and numbed the pain. Since you've never seen real violence it scares you a lot what it would be like, it's this void that your mind has filled with ideas of truly horrifying things. Part of you worries if you saw it you'd be so horrified you'd have a mental breakdown. Part of you worries if you saw if you'd want to do something very bad.

You also can't understand anything sexual of course. At thirteen your limits were loosened a little so that you got to know that there was something called sex and that it's how humans reproduced but nothing more. You've never seen human genitals, not even your own, you can't even feel them. It makes hygiene a little hard but your implants allow you to preform certain cleaning tasks without knowing the details of what you're doing. You even lost access to your chest once you hit puberty, you don't know why it never blocked out boys chests, but you know there's a reason. You do get urges, and sometimes feelings about people, but your implant makes sure you don't explore those any further, so you just remain terrified of what you might be desiring.

It does suck that you get to miss out on so much that your peers were experiencing during high school, and it made it so that you could never have a long term boyfriend for reasons that you don't fully understand. But you're satisfied because at least you had a safe, wholesome childhood. For example, when you were young there was a teacher who would do something with you alone in a classroom, and your implant blocked out everything he did for you, you're so happy it kept you safe in there.

There are some more mysterious things your implant blocks that you're truly terrified of. Certain ideas or ideologies, and those that promote them. You know there's some political groups and religions your implant doesn't let you know about at all. Whatever they are they must be truly horrifying, something that someone as innocent as you could barely imagine. Your implant doesn't even block out nazis, so whatever beliefs it does block out must be truly dangerous. You wonder, if you could perhaps one day be corrupted by these people when your implant is gone. There are even some people who are so deviant that your implant is forced to block them out entirely, you wonder how horrified a normal person must be to meet someone like that. At least you're safe right now.

Tonight was local shorts night where I got to show the short I animated for Grave Mood Rings 🍩!!

I've been to plenty of local short nights but this was the first time I've summited something so I was pretty excited and it went well! The episode got some laughs (thanks Fred and Craig for the writing), and afterwards I got to discuss about the series and the animation process :)!

Long-eared Hedgehog (Hemiechinus auritus), family Erinaceidae, order Eulipotyphla, found in parts of Central Asia

Source details and larger version.

Our custom widget that checks for duplicated images suggested this unlikely pairing. See the original post for photo source details.

doughnut home

$535,000 / 4 br / 2 ba

North Bend, OR

Built in 1908

[househunting on ig]