Leather Luxe

benepla:

i know “act your age” is a nebulous concept but when i click on your calarts-style cartoon character icon and onto your nigh unreadable pastel blog and i see the PAGES of you defending a dumbass comment you made with quivering pseudo-confusion and the fragility of a newborn lamb in a tornado, and then i go on your about and you’re a 23 year old in a six way polyamorous relationship working on your masters in cultural studies…..it’s time to consider. Why you are like this. you pay taxes ma’am. 

Anonymous asked: high key can u give me a rundown of ur fav wacky wwii shenanigans

deducecanoe:

profmeowmers:

Okay friends today we are gonna learn about the GHOST ARMY, which, disappointingly, was not actually an army made of ghosts

pictured: the unit patch for the Ghost Army, which is DOPE AS FUCK

see one of the things that made WWII so fucking nuts was the totally bizarre level of technology. Like wow we invented the first real computer and radar but also if you wanted to see how many troops were hanging out somewhere you had to send a dude to fly over and take pictures manually??? this left A LOT of room for shenanigans

so the normal method of dealing with aerial surveillance was to cover shit with camouflage netting. Say you’ve got an nice air base that you really don’t want any bombs dropped on- you literally just cover that with a ludicrous amount of netting and some fake trees and BAM now it looks like just an empty field from the air

there’s a building under that weird lump

that’s cool! That’s really cool! But not cool enough

At some point somebody sat down and went “hey wait. What if…what if instead of disguising buildings and units as fields, we disguise fields as units”

holy fucking shit!!!

the British had used a bunch of fake tanks and like, boxes of provisions stacked up in tank shape and then covered with a tarp in 1942 during Operation Bertram and it worked really well, but they didn’t have a special unit devoted to just clowning on the Germans like that.

so the US military decides they do want a designated clowning unit and goes out and recruits a bunch of fucking nerds from all the art schools and makes them into the 23^rd Headquarters Special Troops aka THE GHOST ARMY, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU USE ANY OTHER NAME LIKE SERIOUSLY

the ghost army’s job was basically to go in, sidle up to a real unit, and then basically set up a fake version of that unit while the actual unit sneaked away to go dunk on Nazis where the Nazis weren’t expecting them

okay time to get into the really cool part of this story, which is HOW the ghost army faked being a real unit:

step 1: INFLATABLE TANKS AND AIRCRAFT OH MY GOD

that’s a big ol balloon!!!

the ghost army had a stockpile of inflatable tanks, aircraft, artillery, cars, whatever, that they would set up and then poorly cover with camouflage netting so from the air it looked like someone had just done a real shit job of hiding actual materiel. They even had dummy soldiers that they would set up to make the scene look populated, since the ghost army itself was about 1,000 dudes regularly imitating units of 30,000 men

what’s really cool is that visual deception was more than just the inflatable stuff itself. If the ghost army plopped down a balloon tank, they then also had to go out with shovels and rakes and shit to make a fake track that a real tank would have left, because it turns out tanks are really hard on your landscaping

step 2: “spoof radio”

the last couple of days before the real unit moved out, the radio operators of the ghost army would move in. see, radio transmissions were done in Morse code, and it turns out every radio operator has a slightly different “fist” when typing Morse. A “fist” is basically typing style- some people would take longer to type out certain letters or would have pauses between groups or anything like. Anybody listening to the radio transmissions who was skilled enough could tell different radio operators apart from just their fist

anyway the ghost army operators would move in and basically listen to all the real unit’s radio transmissions until they had learned the real operators’ fists. Then they would take over radio traffic, imitating that fist so it seemed like the real operator had never left. I forgot to make this section funny because I was too caught up in how rad it is SORRY

step 3: making a lot of noise

the ghost army had special trucks fitted with huge fuck off speakers and a whole library of stock sound effects. Once the real unit left and the fake unit inflated, the sound trucks would come in, select a combination of sound effects that matched the unit they were impersonating, and then played everyone in the 15 mile radius of the speakers their fire mix tape

step 4: fuckin partying!!!

see the thing about impersonating your own units is that other allied units would know about it and might talk about it where enemy collaborators could hear. So the ghost army had to fool the Germans but they also had to fool their own army. Every time they impersonated a new unit, the ghost soldiers would paint that unit’s insignia on all the fake materiel, make fake signs with the unit’s name and colors, and sew the unit’s patches on their own uniforms

once they were dressed up as soldiers from the impersonated unit, the ghost army dudes would go into town and mingle with other soldiers from actual fighting units nearby and hang out in bars while loudly saying things like “YES HELLO I AM DEFINITELY A REAL SOLDIER FROM THE WHATEVER DIVISION, ABSOLUTELY FOR REAL STATIONED ON THAT HILL OVER THERE”

so anyway this bunch of weedy American art nerds staged 20+ battlefield deceptions between 1944 and the end of the war, sometimes fooling that Germans so successfully that they actually got shelled

I'mma leave you with this quote from the book “The Ghost Army of World War II” by Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles, because it’s a quote from an actual member of the Ghost Army and that alone makes it funnier than anything I could ever write:

On another occasion, two Frenchmen on bicycles somehow got through the security perimeter. Shilstone managed to halt them, but not before they had seen more than they should. “What they thought they saw was four GIs picking up a forty-ton Sherman tank and turning it around. They looked at me, and they were looking for answers, and I finally said ‘The Americans are very strong.‘”

The Ghost Army of WWII is a great book. There is also a documentary called The Ghost Army that may still be on Netflix. These guys were awesome. 

pastel-fluff-witch:

voidbat:

mishasassbutt:

mishasassbutt:

my mom just came to me and ranted about how everyone is making this facebook status that says, “raising teenagers is like nailing jello to a tree”. she was so baffled by this because she said, “you were pretty easy to raise as teenagers. all you did was sleep and eat.” 

so to prove some point she’s going to nail a small cup of jello to a tree. 

she’s so pleased with her self

incredible

parents are weird 

yeah but this is about as accurate as it gets.

you say “nail jello to a tree” and most people think jello all by itself.

but if you put any actual thought into what you’re doing and then give it just a little support

well gosh. look what happens.

please tell your mom good job.

Cover your kids in plastic and watch them flourish

pettyprettybitch:

“Emotionally abusive or manipulative parents often make a practice of constantly questioning their child’s reality and experiences. Our childhoods were full of moments of being told that problematic parental behavior “never happened,” that a problem our parent created doesn’t matter because they “did the best they could,” or that an event that traumatized us “didn’t happen like that.” -Gabrielle Moss (Why You Shouldn’t Feel Bad About Not Talking to Your Toxic Parent)

eva-la-revolution:

lethbian:

hi folks I’m scarfbeard manbun and this is my girlfriend septumpierce undercut and we’re queering heterosexuality by making a joint tinder account for threeways

This post is the spiritual successor to  

sirenfemme:

I’m ok. I’m gonna be ok. I’m gonna live a beautiful life and I’ll get to know beautiful people. I will create things of beauty and be surrounded by flowers. And I’ll love myself, and I’ll be soft, I’ll be kind. And I’ll be ok.

staff:

avocados-and-avocadonts:

reserve:

starsarelimitless:

quasi-normalcy:

quasi-normalcy:

kaylapocalypse:

mikkeneko:

eight-times-nine:

bass-borot:

normaler-on-the-outside:

trickytalks:

argumate:

anosognosic:

argumate:

dagny-hashtaggart:

pochowek:

tumblr user, drinking a bottle of uncontaminated water in post apocalyptic america: i love this?? this is so pure omg

tumblr user, finding a miraculously untouched packet of frozen pastries in post-apocalyptic america: beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure

tumblr user, succumbing to dehydration in the wilderness of post-apocalyptic america: my hands are literally shaking as I type this

tumblr edgelord, to a booby-trap in post-apocalyptic america, an arrow embedded deep in their chest: i’m sorry, are you triggered? 

tumblr user, attempting to reestablish a pony express mail service across the shattered remnants of post-apocalyptic america: this post is important

tumblr user, standing behind thousands of other refugees from post-apocalyptic america, straining to hear the instructions of the volunteer who is giving them their floor space assignments: say it louder for the people in the back

tumblr user, handing out vials —filled with a cure for the plague which has devastated the world— to the remaining people of post-apocalyptic america: spread this like wildfire

tumblr user, checking the post-apocalyptic town’s notice board for information important to rebuilding: why doesn’t this have more notes??

tumblr user, about to venture out into a dangerous part of the post-apocalyptic world with a small group of volunteers for whom they care for dearly and are concerned about the mental wellbeing of and the impact the adventure could have on them: if you don’t like this unfollow me right now

tumblr user, watching a boy be dragged into the stocks of a post-apocalyptic settlement for the crime of stealing a crust of bread: FREE HIM

Post post modernism

tumblr user, trekking on foot across the burned out plains of post-apocalyptic america in search of refuge for what seems like forever: Is Canada even real?

tumblr user, being offered bark tea to fend off against scurvy in post-apocalyptic america: This tea is HOT!

tumblr user, alone and searching for the warmth and comfort of other humans and being jumped by a group of post-apocalyptic american vigilantes: I came out to have a good time and i’m honestly feeling so attacked right now

tumblr user, caring for a nursery of small children, the last children born into this broken, dying world, gently feeding them watery broth: take a fuckin’ sip babes

tumblr user, watching a suspicious figure approach the gates of their ramshackle settlement in post-apocalyptic america: who is she

tumblr user, looking helplessly at their shattered pole weapon before perishing in the battle circle of post-apocalyptic america: wtf staff

bonesleo:

this is the single greatest meme i have seen from any of my facebook groups and frankly y’all need to step up your game