So The Rule In My Previous Workplace Of Longest Employment Duration Was (and Probably Still Is)

Star Trek + Social Commentary (context in the captions)

Nine trying to send a distress signal to any potential other survivor of the Time War. That’s not a good idea.

Inspired (a couple of months ago) by this picture made by this user on DA.

This is the Lucky Ace. Reblog to recieve a wad of cash that is oddly specific to your current needs.

4 comrades go to a Soviet hotel for a night during a business trip...

As they walk into their room, 3 of them, whip out some vodka, food and cigarettes and begin to make jokes about the government and be very loud indeed. The 4th one is trying to get some meaningful sleep and knowing that it would be fruitless to ask them to stop, hatches an ingenious plan. He goes downstairs to reception and asks for a cup of coffee to be delivered to the room.

“Make sure you deliver it exactly after 10 minutes starting from now”

Returning back to the room he joins his comrades midway a Stalin joke. He sits up shocked and exclaims:

“Comrades! You must not say these things! Don’t you know? They are listening to our conversations right now!”

The comrades jeer and laugh at him and say that that is impossible.

“Really? Then how do you explain this?”

He gets up and speaks into the lampshade by the beds.

“I would like a black coffee to be delivered to my room, please.”

And surely enough, in a short amount of time, a maid walks in with a cup of coffee and some sugar.

The other 3 comrades turn deathly pale and quickly turn in for the night. The last comrade drinks his coffee and peacefully goes to sleep.

Come morning the 4th comrade awakens only to find that his friends and all their belongings are missing.

Throughly confused and anxious, the man walks down the stairs to reception to enquire whether his friends had checked out earlier in the morning.

“I am afraid not sir. You see, the KGB raided your room during the night and placed your friends under arrest for ridiculing the Soviet regime.”

“B-but how come they didn’t take me?!”

“Oh, the Captain very much enjoyed your joke”

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

Weapons from Celtic Myth

Celtic myth is wack, and the weapons are some of the weirdest stuff out there, so here’s a short list of my faves.

The Gae Bolg- The spear of Cú Chulainn. If you wash it in a stream before use and throw it from the foot, it extends barbs down every blood vessel in the victim’s body. You don’t remove the spear from the corpse so much as clean the corpse off of the spear. Very nasty.

The Spear of Lugh- This thing is so bloodthirsty that if you don’t keep it immersed in a bath of blood while it’s not in use, it’ll burst into flame and consume the blood of everyone nearby. Fortunately, if you don’t have enough blood to fill a bathtub, poppy juice will do.

Claíomh Solais, the Sword of Light- has seven edges. Emits blinding light.

Caladbolg- the sword of Fergus MacRoích. It leaves a rainbow trail when you swing it, and once lopped the tops of three mountains when Fergus missed a strike.

Fragarach, the Answerer- A sword that can cut through anything, inflict wounds that never heal, control the winds, and prevent people from lying when it’s pressed against their throat. That last one may not be a magic power per say.

Excalibur- You think you know it, but those basic boring Athurian Legends you’ve read don’t show off its best powers. In Welsh stories, this thing burns out the eyes of its wielder’s enemies, and cuts through anything that isn’t enchanted like a lightsaber.

If you know any others, feel free to add them!

I think you’re probably right that of Harris as the nominee it might be difficult to hold more Senate seats, but I also don’t think she is likely to be the nominee in 2024 unless Biden dies between now and then. The old guy has wanted this his entire life and I don’t think he’s giving it up for anything other than his death.

Dysentery Florida guy is probably a better candidate to run against Biden (because of the age thing)  I’m not actually too sure how he’d hold up against Harris, although my instinctive reactions is that he get the benefit of the sexism assumption.

Do you think it’s better if the Democrats don’t manage to scrape together a ultrafine minority and instead let the Republicans hold the house without trying to break off any of the Republicans into switching sides?

How bad 2024 Senate is probably comes down to Georgia, and whether the Dems have some wiggle room to let their most vulnerable incumbents take some unpopular votes.

And of course Joe Mansion probably use this as an excuse to vote against all of Joe’s agenda and then somehow managed to get re-elected in a R +40 state because he sold his soul to Satan.

Looking ahead to 2024 (never too early, haha), do you think Dems controlling the Senate and having a 50-50ish House could actually hurt them? My fear is that Dems will pretty much have to own whatever happens over the next two years, whereas if the GOP had won both chambers, Dems in 2024 could have more easily campaigned against them.

Also, to the extent that the midterm fallout hurts Trump and boosts DeSantis, I worry that Dems will be facing a decent GOP nominee in 2024 who they're going to underestimate. Anyway, sorry to rain on what was a shockingly good week for us!

ladyofpembroke asked: I know this might be too soon, but for the senate elections in 2024, where do you think dems should focus their attention on flipping a seat considering they have very competitive elections for incumbents in WV and MT? All republicans incumbents seem to be in extremely republican states. to me, the mostly likely would be trying to unseat Hawley in MO but that’s still a long shot. What’s your take?

I agree with you both in that the 2024 Senate map is a bloodbath for Democrats since we hold Ohio/Montana/West Virginia Senate seats, which are likely to flip red since people don't ticket split anymore. So, I agree with @ladyofpembroke the DSCC should focus on protecting Brown/Tester/Manchin as well as Baldwin/Casey/Stabenow/Sinema in Wisconsin/Pennsylvania/Michigan/Arizona as well since especially is Harris is the nominee, there's no guarantee she wins those states either although I think Biden wins the latter 4 and carries those Dem Senators over as well.

But here's the key thing: voters don't really know the difference between a 219 Republican House majority and a 290 seat Republican House majority, they just know Rs hold the House, so when Republicans overreach and repeatedly say and do insane shit, voters will punish them. Also, if Democrats hold a trifecta, they'll be held accountable for things that aren't even their fault like government gridlock due to the filibuster but if Rs hold the House, Dems can just blame them for the gridlock.

And, I'll worry about DeSantis once he's polling above Trump in primary polls when weighted by education lol.

The U.S. Midterms are Tomorrow, November 8, 2022

If you're eligible to vote in the midterms already and haven't yet, make a plan for how to go vote tomorrow.

Know your polling place and when it opens and closes. Know the rules in your state and at your job about taking off from work to vote. Be prepared to wait in line.

And then go vote!

Dear Neil, I am a horrible person. How to be kinder, please?

Sometimes I suspect we are all horrible people. Or at least, we are human people. Same thing. We are impatient, judgmental, irritating and irritated, grumpy, easily offended and the rest of it.

So how to be kinder if it doesn’t come naturally? 

Fake it. 

Fake it a little bit at a time. 

Because there isn’t actually any difference between doing something nice for someone because you are naturally saintly and perfect, and doing something nice for someone because you are secretly demonic and trying to cover it up. It’s still an act of kindness either way, and you still made their lives better.

Smile at people. Say hullo. Ask about their lives. Remember what they’ve told you about their lives. Do small things to try and help them. (They will not know you are horrible, do not worry. They will just perceive that you are helping.)

Give people the benefit of the doubt. Remember that it’s more often stupidity to blame than evil, that everyone can screw up (including you) and what’s important is learning from that.

Think “What would an actually kind person do now?” – and do that. Don’t beat yourself up when you fail. Just be as kind to yourself as you will be to others – even if you have to fake that.

And good luck.

Would that there were five of me, one for each child, so I might keep them all safe.