The Tired Tenor

Today in niche genres of joke that I can never get enough of and will probably still be secretly thinking about four years later

There's an EU initiative going on right now that essentially boils down to wanting to force videogame publishers with paid games and/or games with paid elements such as DLC, expansions and microtransactions to leave said games in a playable state after they end support, or in simpler terms, make them stop killing games.

A "playable state" would be something like an offline mode for previously always online titles, or the ability for people to host their own servers where reasonably possible just to name some examples.

I don't think I need to tell anyone that having something you paid for being taken from you is bad, which is a thing that routinely happens with live service and other always online games with a notable recent example being The Crew which is now permanently unplayable.

Any EU citizen is eligible to sign the initiative, but only once and if you mess up that's it. You can find it here. (https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2024/000007_en)

Even if you're not European or you signed it already, you can share this initiative with anyone who is, even if they don't care about videogames specifically because this needs a million signatures and there is different thresholds that need to be met for each EU country for their votes to even count and could also be a precedent for other similar practices like when Sony removed a bunch of Discovery TV content people paid for.

SUPPORT BELOW 50% OF THE THRESHOLD IN THESE COUNTRIES:

Bulgaria - 35% Croatia - 45% Cyprus - 12% (!!!!) Czechia - 47% Greece - 27% Italy - 41% Latvia - 43% Luxembourg - 20% Malta - 11% (!!!!) Romania - 48% Slovakia - 47% Slovenia - 38%

SEVEN countries out of 27 have met the threshold so far. Deadline is 31st July, 2025.

This should absolutely be the law <3

*Scrolls past*

*reluctant sigh*

*scrolls back up*

*rebogs*

“The old magic persists thanks to it’s unfathomable power.”

No, the old magic persists because the new magic can’t run the legacy spells I need to do my job, and keeps trying to install spirits I don’t want or need onto my orb.

Look, if the new magic didn't have a personality construct that kept trying to tell me which spells to use, maybe I wouldn't still be using the old magic.

people will endlessly rb "if there's one nazi at a table with 3 other people you've got 4 nazis" and the crust punk bar post and then want to kill you because you asked them not to platform or hang out with transmisogynists

frankly they don't even not reblog from nazis but you get my point

One weird experience of transitioning is failing at ur assigned gender role the whole time and everyone constantly deriding you for it but then u come out and it's like we lost a beautiful gender conforming warrior today. Must grieve for my wonderful child who pissed me off by being ugly and weird since day 1

DELETE THIS POST

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

*clicks play in morbid curiosity*

*hammers reblog button*

I think I find this post every April Fools Day and I am so happy that I do

WHAT THE FUCK

i missed it last year so i’ve had this scheduled for an entire damn year

Great, now I need to clean snorted water out of my keyboard.

The story of British Airways Flight 009.

Holy cow I absolutely adore British humor!

Captain Moody on QI:

There's a few bits that need adding to the awesomeness of this story:

1. There exists a club, started by Captain Moody, called the Gallunggung Gliders Club.

Everyone on the plane is a member. They are still in contact.

2. This flight held the record for the longest ever unpowered glide in a commercial air liner for just short of 13 months. The Gimli Glider beat it on 23 July 1983 (Air Canada flight 143, which famously ran out of fuel due to a metric/imperial conversation error).

3. A lot of the height lost in the glide was actually done on purpose. The first officer's oxygen mask wasn't functional, and Captain Moody decided he would rather have his entire flight crew available to problem solve, so they did an emergency descent to breathable air rather than sacrifice the FO to hypoxia and retain height.

They knew this was problematic, because of the mountains - if they couldn't get at least 2 engines lit, they had no chance of making a landing (hence the preparation for ditching). But it was very likely the right call as the FO worked diligently with the flight engineer to get the engines running.

4. The electro-magnetic interference caused by the volcanic dust messed with their radios, and it took them a long time, and help from another plane, to get Air Traffic Control to understand what was happening. ATC thought it was just a single engine failure for a long time, and wondered what all the fuss was about.

5. When they managed to get power back, and turned around, they flew back into the dust cloud. They had engine failures again, radio issues, static effects on the windshield... They quickly decided "fuck that" and descended to clear air. They had to fly almost dangerously low the whole way back to Jakarta. And then put the thing down while blind.

6. Even though it was the first time the dangers of volcanic ash clouds came into the awareness of the international flying community, LOADS of pilots and engineers in Jakarta took one look at the sandblasted plane and correctly identified what had happened.

(sadly not the last time teachable incidents that didn't occur in Europe or North America were ignored by Europe and North America and it bit people in the ass...)

This wild Sylveon is very excited to meet you!

If Sherlock Holmes was Isekai'd to a fantasy world he would just deduce the rules of this world and get back to solving crimes. He'll find an elf girl sidekick,name her Watson, and pretend like nothing happened.

"If you look closely, you can see traces of chalk dust on the floor. Our murderer must have used a magic circle to kill our victim."

"Actually Holmes, this looks like salt. Quite unusual for a magic circle, since it can be scattered so easily..."

"It tastes like salt too. Good eye Watson. Let us start by visiting the fish mongers."

"Well I would enjoy some fried dragonfish, but how does this help our investigation?"

"A process of elimination, my long-eared friend. There're only two ways for the culprit to get salt in the city. They could have brought it in themselves-"

"But then they'd have to pay the tarrif!"

"Very astute! No, a much likelier option is that they bought it here. Either the docks or the meat market would be the place. And I have a hunch that our culprit is fishy in more ways than one."

"But Holmes, how did you know the merfolk ambassador was the killer?"

"An excellent question, the key was the footprints."

"But he doesn't even have feet!"

"He doesn't as of right now. But you forget, the magic circle."

"I see! The killing spell was a water spear, which normally requires a circle."

"But doesn't if you're already imbued with water magic like our scaly ambassador."

"So the circle..."

"To grant him a pair of feet. For just long enough to leave distinctive footprints in the scattered salt and to make us suspect a two-legged killer."

"By the Goddess, Holmes, you're a genius!"

Makes sense.

Anyway, getting sheer autism vibes from Holmes

Good. That means I wrote him in-character.

so long as we're back to social justice 101 on this stupid website, u need to be aware of the feedback loop that emerges from disproportionate scrutiny: any social group that is placed under extra scrutiny, regardless of the actual prevalence of any particular behaviour, will appear to engage in that behaviour more often.

you see this most blatantly with racialised groups (more cops in black neighbourhoods = more arrests in black neighbourhoods = "omg look at all the crime in these neighbourhoods!" = more cops in black neighbourhoods etc). even if the rate of crime is the same (putting to one side the criminalisation of poverty which is also an important related factor), one group gets away with it way more often and a new generation of racists is indoctrinated with the crime statistics which "prove" that some groups are simply more criminal in nature. we see a similar phenomenon online with particular groups (trans women being a huge example) being subjected to mass stalking, their every move documented by weirdos and broadcast as representative of the group as a whole.

tl;dr - overscrutinising groups based on existing bigotries creates a recurring feedback loop, reproducing those bigotries across generations and nominally justifying them. this is bad, and you need to remember that you are not immune to it.

additionally, this kinda thing is why "my political ideology is called Being A Good Person" does not fucking work. the world is set up to keep you from accidentally stumbling onto these dynamics. either you develop a capacity for critical analysis which can light your path, or you happily toddle down that road to hell convinced you're on the right side of history. go read some theory.

400,000 new cases of tuberculosis (TB) were estimated to have been prevented by these rats, whose sense of smell would make a bloodhound take notice. As the number-one killer among infectious diseases worldwide, many of those 400,000 can be translated into lives saved.

“Not only are we saving people’s lives, but we’re also changing these perspectives and raising awareness and appreciation for something as lowly as a rat,” said Cindy Fast, a behavioral neuroscientist who coaches the rodents for the nonprofit APOPO.

“Because our rats are our colleagues, and we really do see them as heroes.”

APOPO uses giant pouched rates to sniff out traces of TB in the saliva of patients. In parts of Tanzania, a saliva smear test under a microscope by a human may only be 20-40% effective at detecting TB.

By contrast, a giant pouched rat like Ms. Carolina, a now-retired service rat who worked for APOPO for 7 years, raised the rates of detection on TB samples by 40% in the clinic where she worked.

It would take 4 days for scientists to analyze the number of samples that Carolina could screen in 20 minutes. For that reason, when Carolina retired last November, a party was thrown at the clinic in her honor, and she was given a cake.

TB is sometimes thought of as a thing of the past—a disease for which doctors used to prescribe “dry air,” leading modern humors to muse at the antiquated, pre-antibiotic medical advice.

But it remains the number-one cause of death globally from a single infectious pathogen, and Tefera Agizew, a physician and APOPO’s head of tuberculosis, told National Geographic that once people see what the nonprofit’s rodents can do to slow the spread, they “fall in love with them.”

3,000 times in her career did Carolina detect one of the six volatile compounds that can be used to identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and she got a hero’s send off to a special compound to live out the rest of her days with her closet friend and sniffer colleague Gilbert, in a shaded enclosure dubbed “Rat Florida.”

“We’ve made special little rat-friendly carrot cakes with little peanuts and things on it that the rat would enjoy,” Fast said. “Then we all stand around and we clap, and we give three cheers, hip hip hooray for the hero, and celebrate together. It’s really a touching moment.”

Rats finally making reparations for the bubonic plague I see

pirates of the caribbean really introduced an eldritch octopus man who kills indiscriminately and torments the dead as their poster villain and then you watch the movies and it's like, "oh no, actually the worst villain in this series is a small white british man who functions as the herald of capitalism" and that was very very brave of them

I don't remember what you said but for the rest of my life I will remember the car window was rolled down when you said it.

Hey did you know there's a tell all book about the behind the scenes of Meta and the author is forbidden from promoting it?

The good news is however that it's already published and can't be stifled and whoever didn't sign the NDA can promote it as much as they want.

You mean Careless People, written by Sarah Wynn-Williams?

Available from Macmillan Press?

i haven't watched a single episode of severance and while it does pique my curiosity at this point i think it's way more interesting and funny to learn everything i know about it via tumblr osmosis

my beloved tumblr mutuals with great taste: oh my god... the innies... the outies

me, oblivious: wow what are they doing to those guyses bellybuttons

Reblog to do psychic damage to Severance stans