Current weather: HeroAca

mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters

B-17 bomber is riddled with German anti-aircraft fire but miraculously survives. Later they discover the explosive shells were all inert; sabotaged by Nazi slaves working in armament factories.

Do not post your crimes

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

Genji Monogatari's summary might as well be "WHAT IF Yang Guifei had a son before she died? And the story was set in Japan??"

Literally the first novel. is fanfic. Lady Yang is Lady Kiritsubo. There is no overall plot, it's episodic and chapters were circulated and hand-copied by fans for zero monies. The "main" love interest is a self-insert. There's weird quasi-incest and period-allowed grooming and pederasty. There's a gay chapter. There's politics. There's romance. There's a street fight between love rivals that escalates into a ghost attack. Genji cuckolds his own dad, the literal emperor. It's a great read. It has so many problematic elements and tropes.

short version: for the last several months, several political creatures have been ostensibly forwarding a "pro-disclosure" movement, going so far as to get a bunch of (shitty, grainy, fundamentally useless) official footage of UFO/UAPs released recently.

last night, the aliens dot gov site updated, complete with '90s x-filed styling and ai artwork. but hold the fuck on:

the site is about migrants, featuring inhuman othering language (it, its, them), ICE arrest tracking, and is, quite probably, the most vile website they've put out so far.

the ufology communities are pissed beyond belief, and not just because they've been jobbed: quite many of them grasp just how fascist this is.

ik it’s a bit random from what i’ve been drawing recently but I couldn’t NOT, the vibes were VIBING guys, even if I’m not into mha at the moment, hope you enjoy!

some closeups:

can you guys tell how gay i am for hatsume lol

The European Union already forced Apple to abandon its proprietary charging port and adopt USB-C across its entire iPhone lineup. It just did something bigger. A new EU mandate requires every smartphone sold in Europe including Apple devices to feature a battery that can be replaced by the user without specialist tools, without voiding a warranty, and without sending the device to a manufacturer approved service center. Batteries must maintain a minimum capacity threshold after a set number of charge cycles and replacement parts must remain available for up to ten years after a model goes on sale.

The consumer electronics industry built its current business model around batteries that degrade, cannot be replaced at home, and create a natural upgrade cycle every two to three years. The EU just legislated that model out of existence in the world's largest regulatory market.

Apple, Samsung, and every other manufacturer now faces a choice between redesigning their devices for the European market or accepting that their current hardware architecture is no longer legally sellable there.

and in the one hand, did i enjoy spending hours researching housing regulations in my state? not especially. drafting this email was stressful. but on the other hand, did i learn a lot by doing that research? yeah, i did. i’m more prepared for my current and future leases. i used some of that info to make decisions about a new renter’s insurance policy. i already told three different people about things i learned that are relevant to their leases that they didn’t know yet. (pro tip: see if you’re supposed to be getting annual interest payments on your security deposit! also look up what specific appliances your landlords must legally provide as of 2026.) i also got to reconnect with my cousin for a bit because her job gave her specific insight on part of the situation, and i’d much rather do that than have a chatbot make shit up for me.

also, i drafted that email with the power of friendship (friends angry on our behalf) and spite (from landlords telling me not to do my research). chatgpt could never.