Do You Ever Just … Picture A Whole Scene, A Whole Fanfiction In Your Head, You Know How To Place Every

Doomscrolling Save Point

hey relax for a second and watch the cat

PLEASE BOOP ME

Reblog if your blog is boopable-safe so you can get all the (probably new) achievements. I don’t care about notes I just want boops

Years and years ago, I read a book on cryptography that I picked up because it looked interesting--and it was!

But there was a side anecdote in there that stayed with me for more general purposes.

The author was describing a cryptography class that they had taken back in college where the professor was demonstrating the process of "reversibility", which is a principle that most codes depend on. Specifically, it should be easy to encode, and very hard to decode without the key--it is hard to reverse the process.

So he had an example code that he used for his class to demonstrate this, a variation on the Book Code, where the encoded text would be a series of phone numbers.

The key to the code was that phone books are sorted alphabetically, so you could encode the text easily--picking phone numbers from the appropriate alphabetical sections to use ahead of time would be easy. But since phone books were sorted alphabetically, not numerically, it would be nearly impossible to reverse the code without exhaustively searching the phone book for each string of numbers and seeing what name it was tied to.

Nowadays, defeating this would be child's play, given computerized databases, but back in the 80s and 90s, this would have been a good code... at least, until one of the students raised their hand and asked, "Why not just call the phone numbers and ask who lives there?"

The professor apparently was dumbfounded.

He had never considered that question. As a result, his cipher, which seemed to be nearly unbreakable to him, had such an obvious flaw, because he was the sort of person who could never coldcall someone to ask that sort of thing!

In the crypto book, the author went on to use this story as an example of why security systems should not be tested by the designer (because of course the security system is ready for everything they thought of, by definition), but for me, as a writer, it stuck with me for a different reason.

It's worth talking out your story plot with other people just to see if there's a "Why not just call the phone numbers?" obvious plot hole that you've missed, because of your singular perspective as a person. Especially if you're writing the sort of plot where you have people trying to outsmart each other.

Propagating this so it reaches t h e g o a l

and with your help it can rack up 700k notes on tumblr in 2024

no tumblr this doesnt need tags im releasing it into the wild as god intended

IT'S /gıf/!!!!

OKAY TUMBLR. IT'S TIME TO SETTLE THIS ONCE AND FOR ALL.

Reblog this if you pronounce “.gif” as “GIF.”

NOT JIF,

GIF.

And here is the link for the opposite.

WE SHALL SEE WHICH ONE PREVAILS.

what if every Tumblr user suddenly looses their mouse?

a printer error is an attempt from god to get you to kill yourself but you must be stronger and you must must must beat the printer to death with a large object like object

Boop PSA, for Mobile Users:

To Boop - either tap the boop button next to someone's name or go to their blog and tap the cat paw icon

To Super Boop - go to someone's blog and hold the cat paw icon until it spins once, then let go

To Evil Boop - go to someone's blog and hold the cat paw icon until it spins twice, then let go

Can't Boop - either you or the person you're trying to Boop hasn't opted in yet

To Opt In - go to your feed and you'll see the boop-o-meter and the option to opt in

I'll update this when I know how to get certain badges and such.

Alfred agreeing is the best part

Okay but Bruce has to grow out a beard for a mission and after he shaves it all his kids are screaming bloody murder, the justice league lose it and the public is heartbroken.

The league still maintains some decorum in front of him, though they pout whenever they see him without it the first time. The public has been crying in outrage demanding he grow it back because the man looked like a fucking Greek god.

His kids? Oh, they don’t acknowledge him as the same person.

There’s Beard Wayne, and Bruce Wayne.

And nope. To them, they’re not the same. No matter how much Bruce tries. And to his chagrin, Alfred agrees with them.

10000 likes!

Yayy