The Hale Storm

the next Pharaoh after her Tuthmosis III  tried to erase Hatshepsut out of history ,chiseled her name off her monuments ,covered the text on her obelisks with stone,knocked down and defaced her statues .

she was even left off the list of pharaohs ..talk about some patriarchy bullshit

her name was lost for a couple of millennia, her body was found in a unmarked grave  in early twentieth century

Not only did she reign for a long time, she expanded trade and wealth in Kemet to areas and volumes unprecedented in history, AND she did it without conquest or war. She had a fleet of fucking ships built just to go to Punt for trade, no other apparent reason. Before these ships were discovered, Egyptologists didn’t think the ancients of Egypt knew how to sail on the sea, just the Nile. Hatshepsut knew, or at least knew who to employ to get that shit done. And got shit done she did. 

So if you guys don’t know about Epaulette Sharks, you better watch this now! This juvenile is the cutest little sea puppy and he’s always happy to greet us when we come up to the glass.

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.

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.

Also reminds me of a story. 

A dude I once knew has a fancy job in computer security that has him travelling all over the world and one of my favorite stories is how this company (I was not allowed to know the name due to confidentiality clauses but I was assured it was one with strong ties to national security) had a problem where every day their servers would go down at the same time for 15 mins straight and no one could figure out why because everything checked out and it was literally supposed to be impossible for the servers to go down and so they hired him to come have a look at their servers and figure out if they were being hacked or what because according to security logs no one had been in there that shouldn’t be.

The security around the server room was ridiculous. Like, he couldn’t even go in the room without the head of security and one of the vice presidents of the company in there with him. 

when it turned out that it was a normal piggy who grew up to be a big fat fatty piggu

EDIT: This is a photo of the world’s smallest recognized breed of pig, the kune kune. I’m sorry cartoons lied to you all.

This is the pot bellied pig, another famous “small” breed.

This is your average adult pig.

“hmm hmm yes very good”

Osiris and Riff Ratt 

Osiris is a 3-year-old Dutch Shepherd mix. Riff Ratt is a 3-month-old fancy rat. They live in Chicago and they’re BFFs.