Where you feel comfortable

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

"she's a utau not a Vocaloid"

"Larper!"

go to About:config find media.mediasource.enabled and toggle it to false find media.cache_readahead_limit and change it to 9999 find media.cache_resume_threshold and change it to 9999

additionally if you'd prefer mp4 to webm

also in about:config, find: media.encoder.webm.enabled media.mediasource.webm.audio.enabled media.mediasource.webm.enabled media.webm.enabled and toggle them all to false

note! this will limit video to 1080p

And there are so many articles and videos and discussions. Like, the scientific community is buzzing about this.

So much research will have to be redone because the data was absolutely compromised, off by orders of magnitude, by using standard lab gloves.

The world is probably not horrifically contaminated by microplastics. Sterile laboratories, however, are contaminated by latex and nitrile gloves.

Sources beyond dude just trust me, for the skeptics.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/scientists-lab-gloves-may-be-causing-an-overestimation-of-microplastics-411138

Nitrile and latex gloves may cause overestimation of microplastics - Phys.org (it’s a pdf)

A Chief and his Mage

Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West au for Jack and Hiccup!

For my version of this au, I imagined Hiccup as a former Sky Clan Tenakth who now lives with the Oseram in the Forbidden West, while Jack is a Nora outcast (I couldn't decide between white or brown hair for Jack, so you get both.).

Jack is the one who finds a Focus first and then shares that knowledge with Hiccup. I love thinking about what connects characters and why they’re drawn together, and in my mind, Hiccup already sees machines and the old world differently from everyone else, but he’s missing information to truly understand it.

He sees that Jack is actually using the Focus rather than treating it like an accessory, and Jack chooses to share it with him, offering that missing piece of the puzzle that Hiccup needs to truly understand the metal world. This turns out to be what Jack needed, because while Jack is smart, Hiccup is able to piece things together that jack wouldn’t have been able to do on his own, so they quickly end up relying on each other. I really wanted that trope of working together because: “you have something I want” until that becomes: “you are what I need.”

So, together, they explore the metal ruins and uncover the truth behind the Old World. Hiccup gets a machine companion (Toothless), and Jack gets a glider.

I’m also playing with the idea that all machines have ai like gaia did, so they’re actually capable of feeling and learning (it would probably depend on the species though, I don’t imagine a thunderjaw would be very fun to try and domesticate…), because I want Toothless and Hiccup to have the same connection as they do in the movies.