Saturday, September 9, 2023

The mental soundness of dictators

Thanks to Star Wars, people don't understand how Hitler rose to power.
If he thought like Charles Manson, he would have never had an army. If he was one hundred percent batshit, he never would have took over the country.
His memoirs sound logical, and that's what's so dangerous about him, and why other leaders will come along and get away with doing the same things. He didn't say "I'm going to kill everyone." He just ranted about patriotism.

Friday, July 28, 2023

Echo Charlie Sierra

Seeking Greenlights:  Yes.
Page Type:  SCP Article
Genre:  Horror
Page Layout:  Official Document with photo
Hook:  Shortwave V-2 Broadcast violates FCC guidelines by constantly bleeding into other bandwidths.  FCC investigators who try to stop the signal end up dead.
Elevator Pitch:  The transmission comes from abandoned buildings containing broken radio equipment and dead bodies.  The equipment works independently of electricity.  
The first recorded incident involves a dead woman, the one whose voice keeps getting repeated on all the other V-2 broadcasts.
Intense poltergeist-like activity around the equipment.
The NATO code she repeats spells out the location of a dimensional conduit, and how to enter it.  No one who has broken the code has survived the voyage.
Central Narrative:  Foundation agent and their quest to lock up the radio equipment and signal in a radio-proof underground cavern.

The Pillow

 The Pillow
Page type:  SCP Article
Seeking Greenlights:  Yes
Page Layout:  Informational
Elevator Pitch:  Crocheted pillow that makes ghostly songs in a Friend's Church of Getty, PA.  Simply placing it on a specific pew prompts the eerie music.  No one can explain the reason.  Some say it's a ghost, but no one can connect it to anyone who has ever attended the church.

SCP 059040950: The Box

 The Box
SCP 059040950
Seeking Greenlights:  Yes
Level 2
Object Class:  Euclid
Elevator Pitch:  Package from Amazon keeps getting ordered and never delivered.  People die during every step of the delivery process.  The most captivating part:  Nobody knows what's inside it, the contents are anyone's guess.
Central Narrative:  An unopenable, continuously recycled cardboard shipping container.  Hundreds of individuals order items from Amazon, and the Fulfillment Center ships this box out by mistake.  The label changes by itself, its weight varying between 35 kilograms to 20 pounds.  Porch pirates who attempt to steal and open the package die from mysterious causes, and the container is always found in brand new condition, with the flaps perfectly sealed.  A series of unlikely Rube Goldberg-esque situations conduct the package all the way back to the Warehouse, sometimes from the other side of the world.  Delivery drivers meet with accidents when the container is onboard their vehicle, ranging from a flat tire to rolling off the side of a mountain in a sudden rainstorm.  The package never gets delivered, somehow always finding its way back to the Fulfillment Center.
Special Containment Procedures: Create simulation Fulfillment Center with a security door.

Assignments for crazy people

Facebook probably won't approve of these 

Assignment 318: Everything they do on Beavis and Butt-Head is a great idea you should try at home.

Assignment 319: Whenever you see something that says "Do not try this at home," do it anyway

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Mystery catalog numbers

 I have found some of my grandpa's Montgomery Ward receipts from 1950. They don't say what he bought or what specific catalog or exact year it was, just a catalog number. 

Is there anyone on the internet who can show me a site with all the catalog numbers, or do I have to buy all the catalogs from 1950 to find out? Surely someone has a catalog and can leave a message here saying that grandpa ordered some socks and a belt, right? Seriously, that's just a guess, I don't know what any of these catalog numbers mean. Any ideas? Or will I never find out what these are?

Catalog numbers:

MA4609,

45AP5603 (costs $2.34),

53A1626 ("Ames let dev ns" for $79? $7.90?),

53AP5325 (quantity 1, "ton ns" for $95? $9.50?),

30A278 (quantity 3, "gy 11" for $115? $1.15?),

45A5583 (quantity 2, "bra loc" $9.95. okay, so this might have been something grandma ordered, but I have no idea about the other items listed above)

I guess I'll never know.



Tuesday, April 18, 2023

That damn Quick Mask

 For more than 10 years, the Quick Mask function in Photoshop has caused me endless frustration. When using Photoshop LE in Windows, you push Ctrl Q to exit the program, but if you forget the Ctrl, you end up with a damn Quick Mask, and I never knew how to get rid of the friggin red layer. I'd go into layers, click show Quick Mask and select remove Quick Mask, but it never went away. I saved copy after copy of my files, and rebuilt the files by copying the separate layers into a new file, just to avoid the mask.

I just now discovered the solution: All you do is press Q again, so it puts a marquee around everything, then click anywhere to deselect the mask. When you save the file, the red layer will be gone.