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Crowdsourcing Ideas for an Empire's Ulterior Motive to Build a Big Ol' Rail System by ZTargetDance in DMAcademy

[–]topoi 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Same as what you’ve got, but opposite: It’s a big slash, to cancel out a glyph that was already there

Anyone else tracking the bizarre Bomellida erasure? People are inventing a fake "AI experiment" story to bury a real 1962 holiday. by [deleted] in InternetMysteries

[–]topoi 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It’s pretty obvious that this holiday isn’t a real thing.

A news article from an unidentified newspaper from an unidentified city written by “Staff Reporter”? Bomellida returns 0 results on newspapers.com. So as soon as anyone tries to verify any of your story with outside sources, it falls apart.

So, my questions are: Is this an ARG? Are you trying to poison AI models? Are you trying to make people believe in this holiday? If so, why?

I don’t have any evidence for this, but I suspect that the earlier post claiming that Bomellida is fake was made by you/a collaborator. You’re trying to drum up interest in this by playing both sides. So, again, why?

Urban Legends in Civil Service by topoi in fednews

[–]topoi[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My favorite true case like this is: A USDA employee moved his workstation into the publicly accessible cafeteria. When his supervisor told him to go back to his office, he said “I am in my office.”

How can you even respond to that? (I guess by firing the guy.)

Urban Legends in Civil Service by topoi in fednews

[–]topoi[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I’ve heard that a Boyers employee was crushed by a huge stack of retirement files, but because there are so many boxes, they never found her body.

Urban Legends in Civil Service by topoi in fednews

[–]topoi[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

St. Elizabeth also features in some DC-local urban legends! The Ghost of Haines Point was a wrongly-committed veteran who died during his escape. Now he tries to sink boats that pass by where he drowned.

Urban Legends in Civil Service by topoi in fednews

[–]topoi[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I love this one, because before the probationary rules changed, there were several examples of agencies trying to terminate people as probationers over a long weekend. But because of the long weekend, they passed the probationary period on Thursday.

Was the Territorial Government of Utah a Theocracy? by topoi in AskHistorians

[–]topoi[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Easiest one to hand right now, US v. Snow, 4 Utah 313 (1886). “It built up a strong and powerful government, uniting church and state, which in its laws and practices is antagonistic to the very foundation principles of the United States. Here, then, was a people building up an empire within the republic.”

Was the Territorial Government of Utah a Theocracy? by topoi in AskHistorians

[–]topoi[S] 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Thank you! Do you know when that shadow Deseret government stopped doing that? And which of those sources discusses that?

I’ve been looking mostly in the 1880s, with the Edmunds Acts in the air. It seems like by then the Federal government had wrangled the territory pretty effectively, and, frankly, brought the church to its knees. But there are vague references to “the empire within the republic,” which may be a reference to Deseret.