A serial killer leaves his mark by writing four numbers on each victim.
On the right palm, on the forehead, on the left palm, and on the abdomen.
The first victim is discovered in the Florida Everglades.
0, 8, 2 on his hands and forehead. 5 on his abdomen.
“We believe the numbers may be significant,” a uniformed man reads from a prepared statement to the press, “but we cannot say for sure at this time.” Detective Pierce has seen more faces of death than any man should ever have to endure, but this case—this seems different, somehow.
Another victim is discovered in the marshes of Louisiana soon after.
0, 8, 0 on her hands and forehead. 19 on her abdomen.
Are they connected? Law enforcement in Louisiana contact the agency in Florida. Criminal psychologists and cipher experts are called in to decode the strange numerical messages. Nothing yet. There isn’t enough data. Detective Pierce knows, if there is a deeper meaning, it will only surface with more bodies. To solve the murder, more must be committed. A cruel irony.
A third victim emerges, and a macabre certainty is apparent—a serial killer.
0, 6, 9; 2
“What could it mean?” Detective Pierce ponders over a table littered with dozens of photographs. The psychological stress begins to weigh on him. He first began the investigation into the mysterious number killings, and he now makes it his mission to discover the secret of these symbols and put an end to this evil.
More victims.
0, 7, 1; 6
0, 6, 5; 10
0, 7, 8; 8
0, 7, 3; 12
0, 6, 9; 4
0, 7, 8; 9
“069 repeats!” the authorities notice after the ninth victim is discovered. “It’s certainly a code!”
“And here! The victims with 8 and 9 on the abdomen have identical numbers on the hands and forehead too: both 0, 7, 8.”
Detective Pierce broods over this information. He locks himself away with the numbers, poring through literature about ciphers and codes. He devises complex algorithms to analyze the data, looking for patterns.
Pierce has always put work before his family. His colleagues will all tell you that. But the domestic strain from the number killings is pushing his relationships to the brink of collapse.
Another body in Florida.
0, 8, 5; 17
Pierce is on the scene, crouching over the Number Killer’s latest conquest, examining the slapdash 17 scrawled unceremoniously on the abdomen.
“Detective Pierce.” A voice from behind him. Pierce stands and peels the purple nitrile gloves from his hands and glowers at the intruder on his crime scene. “Agent Rickson. Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is my crime scene now, sir. I’ll need a full briefing.”
“The hell it is!” Pierce snaps back. “I’ve been working these killings from day one! You think you can just come in here with your federal mandate and expect me to catch you up on all the work my people have done?!”
Agent Rickson hands Pierce a bound legal envelope. “You’ve been relieved.”
“This isn’t over. You’re gambling with people’s lives…sir.” Detective Pierce practically spits the final word at the agent’s feet before snatching the envelope and rushing off the scene.
Over the next two weeks, eight more victims. Pierce’s anxiety has left him unable to leave his office. He hasn’t been home in three days. Though he’s officially off the case, he’s still haunted by the numbers and mounting body count. His work has suffered to the point that his superiors have issued reprimands.
At his wits’ end, Detective Pierce pulls officer Malloy into his office. Malloy is a rookie who’s eager to please and has a knack for numbers.
“I need you on special assignment, rookie.” Pierce is looking pensively out his office window when Malloy enters.
“Special assignment, sir?”
“Secret, special assignment, Malloy.” He turns and places a sealed envelope on the table. “I need you to collect everything we have on the Number Killings. Meet me at the address enclosed here. Tomorrow night. Midnight. Tell no one.”
“But sir, I thought you had been reliev-”
“Dammit, rookie! Do you want more people to die?! We need to figure out this nonsense now or we’re going to end up with dead bodies in triple digits, son!”
Malloy reluctantly agrees. He smuggles boxes of files and pictures out of the precinct late the next night and meets Pierce at an abandoned warehouse to go over the information.
For hours, the two sit at opposite tables, running numbers, delving into research, and analyzing the evidence, late into the early hours of the morning.
With a sudden energetic vigor, Malloy springs from his chair and cries out, “ASCII!”
Startled out of his analytic trance, Pierce inquires, “What did you say, Malloy?”
“ASCII! It’s a computer language that uses numbers to represent letters! Look!” Malloy pulls up a reference sheet and begins arranging numbers on Pierce’s desk. “If we take the abdomen numbers as the order, and the palm and foreheadnumbers as the code for the letter…”
“Malloy, you’re a genius!”
Working furiously, Pierce and Malloy clear a space on the dusty warehouse floor to lay out the pictures in sequence:
Abdomens: 6, 12, 17…
G, I, U…
4, 9, 11…
E, N, G…
In minutes, the men have spread 76 photos over a 10 foot square of the warehouse floor and scratched nervous letters on ripped sheets of notebook paper under each group corresponding to the symbol.
As they finish, Malloy stands back to survey the message.
“No…” All blood drains from his face. His legs go weak, and he collapses onto his knees. “It can’t…It just…It can’t!
Detective Pierce is wide-eyed next to Malloy’s broken form, mouth agape.
A sound from the warehouse wall rattles the building as a dozen federal agents storm the facility.
“Mother of God…” Pierce doesn’t even notice the agents. His unbroken stare is consumed by the message on the dusty warehouse floor.
Agent Rickson grabs hold of Detective Pierce. “You’re under arrest for interfering with a federal investigation and tampering with evidence.”
Malloy sheepishly confesses. “I told them everything! I told them you wanted me to take the evidence. It was a setup. I was worried about you. I’m sorry! But I never thought…oh God! What can we do?!”
Pierce is handcuffed, and as he is dragged backward from the grotesque mosaic of death, he laughs in spite of himself, “You monster…”
As he comes back to his senses, Pierce begins tearing at the agents pulling him away. He lets out a shrill, animalistic shriek…
“YOU MONSTER!!”
The other agents crowd around the space on the floor that has itself become a crime scene, and in an eerie silence, they collectively ponder the ethereal message left by the elusive Numbers Killer:
“One of my favourite Steve Jobs stories was the time the engineers working on the iPod brought their finished prototype to him in his office. He said it was too big, they needed to make it smaller. They said it was as small as they could make it, it couldn’t be made any smaller. So he took the prototype over to his aquarium and dropped it in. The iPod sank to the bottom, and as it did, tiny little bubbles came out. ‘See those bubbles,’ he asked. ‘They’re air inside the iPod. Make it smaller.’
“Another story about Steve Jobs was when they brought the prototype for the iPad 2 to his office. The engineers told him it was faster than the first iPad. He took it over to his aquarium and dropped it in. ‘Look how slowly it sank,’ he told them. ‘Make it faster.’
“One time a newly hired intern had been sent out to get Steve a sandwich. When she brought it to him, he looked at it. ‘I thought I ordered the beef on rye,’ he asked. She told him it was indeed beef on rye. He took it over to his fish tank and dropped it in. ‘Does that look like beef on rye?’
“He was always dropping things in that fish tank. We couldn’t stop him. We told him he had to stop, he wouldn’t listen. It was full of stuff that shouldn’t be in an aquarium.
“The fish had all died years ago. One had been crushed under an early generation iMac. The others were all poisoned. He didn’t care.
“It got to the point where there was no room for anything in the fish tank. When we emptied it after he died, we found a body in there. We never found out who it was.”
Me as a kid: There’s no way Jessie and James are in their twenties! People have their shit together by then.
Me now: Wow okay yeah these broke disasters drowning in debt and picking up part-time gigs to supplement the meager pay from their crap job working for an evil boss are ONE THOUSAND PERCENTin their twenties, huh.
They’re 15 and 16 last time I checked
Jessie and James have been confirmed 25 in the anime since the 2nd movie (and before that if we’re looking at radio dramas)
this is why old ppl never realize what they’re saying when they say “when i was your age i payed for my tuition all by myself” yeah well sorry susan my tuition is $35,000 a year and i make $7 an hour
So I was going to do the #2009vs2019 post thing with just my face but to be honest I dont look all that different outside of learning to do my eyebrows so heres something a little different
On the left is the very first “cosplay” I ever did.It was 2010, and I made a lydia deetz poncho using sharpie on a blanket the night before i went to c2e2 with my friends. On the right is a picture of me last year in one of my more intricate costumes I made.
This is your reminder to never give up on what makes you happy and that as long as you work hard and keep consistent, you’ll improve in whatever you set your mind to!
#cosplay #cosplaygirl #blackcosplayerhere #lydiadeetz #domino #deadpool2 #positivevibes #practicemakesbetter https://www.instagram.com/p/Bsn1KTZj6Li/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=cpg7pnfuqu8s
i feel like counter-trolling is an essential skill that kids online aren’t learning and it’s kinda worrying
like back in my day, the day of online forums, learning how to trick someone in to getting themselves banned was an essential skill. if you could tell someone was a chud, you would ask them short, leading questions and watch them get frustrated and post longer and longer rants until they said something that would catch a mod’s attention and get them banned and/or at least publicly humiliated.
and guess what? that’s the exact same tactics the alt-right use now. these people are exclusively acting in bad faith. every interaction these people post online is done with the intention of getting someone to respond to them so they can screenshot the massive paragraphs of text and laugh
so, what’s the solution?
dare ‘em to post dick pics.
don’t acknowledge the content of the stuff they post. if you see someone trying to engage you in bad faith just dare them to post pictures of their penis until they either get frustrated and leave or get frustrated and do it. either way they lose.
this is the tactic used by the fans of a podcast (that i haven’t listened to) called the Chapo Trap House, and 4chan’s /pol/ users fucking HATE them. they hate Chapo Trap House and think they’re crazy because Chapo Trap House fans refuse to engage in meaningful debate and repeatedly demand dick pics. they get frustrated and leave. it works.
Some of you never used your position as a mod on an a series of unfortunate events forum to get a racist troll to post evidence of their tax fraud and it shows
…that second comment is oddly specific and I’m a little scared
Minding one’s own business needs to be a course in college…
This makes me sad. I grew up in a diverse area near the westcoast and I love casually hearing other languages. It makes me feel closer to the world and happy that they’re free to speak whatever language they want. This might sound weird, but whenever I hear them, it reminds me that strangers are real people with their own life and history. It’s a fact we easily forget. Language is such a huge part of who we are. I can’t imagine being forced to deny a part of my identity. To be told that I need to squish myself into their boxes or I’ll become the nail that needs to be hammered down. I hate this and I am so sorry this is happening to you.
If you move to an English speaking country, speak English, or better yet go back to the country that speaks your language and no one will say shit to you 🙆🏻♀️ the complete entitlement from immigrants when the loacals ask them to assimilate to their country. I wouldn’t go to Korea and cry like a baby because they told me to stop speaking English. Its expected I speak Korean. You people need to grow up .
While the United States is a predominantly English-speaking society, there is actually no official language. What would you say someone speaking an indigenous language? Also, the person who wrote these tweets speaks English? She was speaking Korean over the phone to her cousin in Korea. Do you expect her to speak in English to someone who might not speak it rather than a shared one because she’s in a public space in an “English speaking country”? Do you believe that everyone sharing a public space with you owes you something?
There’s a big difference between assimilation and integration and I don’t know how to tell you that assimilation is not a desirable thing.
Literally how the fuck are you going to call the victim entitled? They were having a private conversation and some fucking rando told her what language she could be speaking in a private fucking conversation that didn’t involve her at all. Gtfo.
Americans literally go to other countries and expect that everyone around them should know how to speak English. Really. I’ve seen americans completely and utterly lost in Brazil because our population mostly doesn’t speak English, and the fuckers didn’t even know a single word in portuguese. Or worse, they tried spanish, and while that’s valid cause hey, it’s closer to portuguese, it’s fucking rude to say that we speak spanish cause we fucking don’t. Wanna talk about research and speaking another country’s language before going there? Make sure you fucking do that before leaving your stupid ass country, bitch. Because my english might not be perfect, but I got a 107/120 in my toelf and moved to Canada. I know 2 languages fluently e a lil bit of a 3rd, looking forward to learn a 4th. What can you say about yourself, huh?
Sorry for the politics, but I’ve seen various variations of this type of incident come across my dash and I need to say this.
This is not about speaking English. This is about racism.
I’m a white woman, with two white kids, and I’m an immigrant. I often speak my native language ( Danish) to my children.
Now, I live on the West Coast, in an area with lots of immigrants and that might play a part, but all I’ve ever heard when doing this has been variations of “what language is that?” “That is so cool” “making sure your children are bilingual are such a gift to them”
Everyone arguing that you should speak English in the US can delude themselves all they want, but they don’t really care if someone speaks English.
Heres the thing you gotta understand about statistics.
“Increases your chances by 80%” does not mean “there is now an 80% chance”.
If your chances were previously 10%, your chances are now 18%, not 90%.
if your chances were roughly 1%, they’re now just slightly less than 2%.
thats how that works.
Wow I don’t understand math at all
‘if you have a baby after 35, the chance of deformities goes up by 100%’ is a line I hear alot.
It goes up from .5% to 1%
To simplify: It’s the percent amount of the current factor.
In the starting example: 10% is the factor. 80% of 10 is 8, and then add together (increase by that): 10 + 8 = 18. Thus an 80% increase of 10% is 18%.
Similarly: 1% is the factor, it’s really the same as 10, just the decimal stepped over (10.0%, 1.00% // I know that isn’t really how numbers work, I’m just doing this for the visual). And thus, 80% of 1% then adding it on would be basically 1.8%
And finally, .5%. 100% of .5 is just that, ‘point 5′, or a half a percent. Two halves make a whole, and thus a single percent or ‘1%’.
Pretty easy to be honest… Though, it’s easy to get caught up in the statement and forget that, sometimes even when you know better.
Practical, every day use of maths: Not being dooped by dipshit marketing teams
Ok so I’ve been playing for 18 years and i’m a string teacher. Can i just say how IMPORTANT it is for young kids to see a BLACK, MALE-PRESENTING PERSON playing, nae, SHREDDING on a violin? I’ve know maybe 5 black people who played stringed instruments throughout my schooling and teaching (predumably because i’m an upper middle class white woman). In districts where the population is predominantly black, funding is always low, so the instruments are crappy. Kids quit, or the program is dismantled. I’ve seen very few professional string players who are black.
Obviously there are black string players. We just don’t see them because they “don’t look like” string players.
This person is the real deal. They were clearly classically trained, and seems to have some fiddle training as well. How cool is that?
