The earth’s water supply is a closed system, so all our fresh water was dinosaur urine at one point. So you may have been forged in the heart of a star but you were filtered through the kidney of a dinosaur, which I for one, find beautiful
and here we have the difference between biologists and physicists
now I want a story where soulmate identifying marks come in a range of common colors and patterns, so even if it’s super unlikely you’ll ever meet an exact match, you might find you click better with people whose marks are most similar to yours. they’d end up being more like astrological signs than anything– ‘oh, I see you are a blue squiggly line! well, better steer clear of green zigzags, you know what they say’ and Tinder would just be pictures of marks that you swipe through.
Okay, this seems like the SIM setup that provokes the least possible teleological uncertainty about the universe. Sign me up.
But I feel like I would inevitably end up writing the story about the people who weren’t SUPPOSED to match but do … .>.>
Sam, this storyline needs more chapters. Probably 20 more with a solid 5 chapters of just HRC and Maria Hill being badass.
I’m not gonna lie the discussion of Bucky had me thinking last night about how he probably breaks into the White House without alerting any of the security, just so he can yell at Steve, and then I realized wait. Does the VP live in the White House? That would be the weirdest roommate situation ever, and also a huge security risk.
And I realized I have lived my entire adult life in this country without knowing where the VP lives. But we found out he lives at the US Naval Observatory in a very nice house with a turret. I hope the various VP’s children have been allowed to sleep in the turret, it looks fun.
So what actually happens is that Clint wakes up to Bucky Barnes straddling his chest, one hand around his throat, growling “Where is Steve Rogers” and Clint is like HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE WHERE IS THE SECRET SERVICE.
Bucky: …are those the guys in the suits? Yeah I ignored them. Clint: *gurgles skeptically* Bucky: Do you not know who I am? Clint: Need…oxygen…to presidential brain…. Bucky: I just want Steve Rogers. Clint: Wrong…address.
And then when Steve gets up the next morning Clint and Bucky are sitting in his kitchen drinking coffee because Clint didn’t want to miss Bucky’s EPIC YELLFEST about Steve not being able to keep his politics in his pants, he just RAN OFF and BECAME VICE PRESIDENT, and all this backfires on Clint horribly when Steve is like CLINT MADE ME, I WASN’T EVEN IN THE COUNTRY and Bucky turns on Clint and starts harassing him for being a bad influence.
And Clint is like James Buchanan Barnes, I am the President of the United States, if you’re going to talk to me like that you should at least have an official title and that’s how Bucky became the president’s new personal security secretary.
“Can he type?” “No, but he can murder you at three hundred yards using a solo cup and a rubber band.”
Bucky is like the feral cat your dad inexplicably loves and lets wander around the house. He raids the kitchens, he taunts the Secret Service, he brings strange presents for the administration staff, he sits quietly and STARES at whoever’s talking during Cabinet meetings. He is Tony’s favorite.
Looks like the geniuses who run UC Davis never Googled the words “Streisand Effect.”
After a police officer pepper-sprayed UC Davis students in a widely reported 2011 incident, the California university contracted with SEO consultants for $175,000 (or maybe more) to scrub unfavorable online items about the incident and boost online reputations of both the university and Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi.
The Sacramento Bee reported on the SEO scandal, and based their story on documents newly released in response to requests filed last month under the California Public Records Act.
In January 2013, UC Davis contracted a Maryland firm, Nevins & Associates, for a six-month contract that paid $15,000 a month. Nevins was the first of many “reputation management firms” paid off by the university administrators. And that payment was just the start.
I never thought I’d say I was glad I didn’t choose to attend UC Davis, but I’m glad I’m not an alumnus of UC Davis.
FYI, if you are an alum of Davis and you’re ashamed of their behavior but not sure what you can do, here’s a thing. Speaking as someone who works in fundraising, one of the very loudest ways to get the attention of school administration is to tell them why you won’t be giving them any money, ever. Tell them you don’t want your money going to scrub images of their shame off the internet, and you don’t want to pay the salaries of the people who caused it. Don’t tell them to take you off their solicitation list – just tell them, every single time they solicit, through mail or email or by phone, that you won’t be giving them any money and you won’t be engaging with the school in any way (engagement is a new metric and many schools measure fundraising success in part by how many people attend events, tweet positively about the school, et cetera).
Tell them you’re ashamed of your school and that you’ll tell every alum you meet. And this doesn’t just go for Davis – if your school pulls this kind of shenanigans, tell them you won’t give them money, you won’t engage with them, and you will tell everyone you went to school with why. Tell them every time they ask you for money you’ll tweet about their shame, or you’ll find someone on linkedin who went to your school and tell them not to give either.
Some schools have a “lost generation”, a few years to a decade where something they did so appalled or traumatized the students that there’s just no way that most of them will ever donate or support the school. Most schools would do anything to get that generation back. And if they see an impending “lost generation” of alumni because they chose to scrub these images instead of owning their mistakes, well. It can’t fix what’s broken, but it may prevent it from happening again.
Unis really do depend on not just the financial support, but the social support of alums. The bigger the uni, hilariously, the more this is the case.
Alums are basically free advertising. Invaluable free advertising. They are the most important part of reputation. Harvard is what Harvard is in no small part BECAUSE THAT’S HOW PEOPLE THINK OF HARVARD.
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Kimchi and Justice 