#and rip game data from the system

[jacob-blogs]

This part gets me.

Publishers not wanting to pay an increased manufacturing cost for a high capacity game cartridge is almost understandable.

Not putting ANY game data on a cartridge is LITERALLY insane.

I personally had high hopes for Switch 2 cartridges. The OG switch cartridges were ultimately increased to 32 GBs throughout the console's lifespan. I was expecting that they'd increase the capacity, especially for first party titles like Mario or Zelda.

Like how can you reasonably expect to charge folks a higher price for a physical copy of a game, only to take up 32 GBs of onboard system storage???

Preservation is dead

[deus-ex-mona]

farewell, my idiot son…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

With Great Power Came No Responsibility

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in NYC TONIGHT (26 Feb) with JOHN HODGMAN and at PENN STATE TOMORROW (Feb 27). More tour dates here. Mail-order signed copies from LA's Diesel Books.

Last night, I traveled to Toronto to deliver the annual Ursula Franklin Lecture at the University of Toronto's Innis College:

The lecture was called "With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It." It's the latest major speech in my series of talks on the subject, which started with last year's McLuhan Lecture in Berlin:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

And continued with a summer Defcon keynote:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/#how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess

This speech specifically addresses the unique opportunities for disenshittification created by Trump's rapid unscheduled midair disassembly of the international free trade system. The US used trade deals to force nearly every country in the world to adopt the IP laws that make enshittification possible, and maybe even inevitable. As Trump burns these trade deals to the ground, the rest of the world has an unprecedented opportunity to retaliate against American bullying by getting rid of these laws and producing the tools, devices and services that can protect every tech user (including Americans) from being ripped off by US Big Tech companies.

I'm so grateful for the chance to give this talk. I was hosted for the day by the Centre for Culture and Technology, which was founded by Marshall McLuhan, and is housed in the coach house he used for his office. The talk itself took place in Innis College, named for Harold Innis, who is definitely the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan. What's more, I was mentored by Innis's daughter, Anne Innis Dagg, a radical, brilliant feminist biologist who pretty much invented the field of giraffology:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

But with all respect due to Anne and her dad, Ursula Franklin is the thinking person's Harold Innis. A brilliant scientist, activist and communicator who dedicated her life to the idea that the most important fact about a technology wasn't what it did, but who it did it for and who it did it to. Getting to work out of McLuhan's office to present a talk in Innis's theater that was named after Franklin? Swoon!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin

Here's the text of the talk, lightly edited:

I know tonight’s talk is supposed to be about decaying tech platforms, but I want to start by talking about nurses.

A January 2025 report from Groundwork Collective documents how increasingly nurses in the USA are hired through gig apps – "Uber for nurses” – so nurses never know from one day to the next whether they're going to work, or how much they'll get paid.

There's something high-tech going on here with those nurses' wages. These nursing apps – a cartel of three companies, Shiftkey, Shiftmed and Carerev – can play all kinds of games with labor pricing.

Before Shiftkey offers a nurse a shift, it purchases that worker's credit history from a data-broker. Specifically, it pays to find out how much credit-card debt the nurse is carrying, and whether it is overdue.

The more desperate the nurse's financial straits are, the lower the wage on offer. Because the more desperate you are, the less you'll accept to come and do the gruntwork of caring for the sick, the elderly, and the dying.

Now, there are lots of things going on here, and they're all terrible. What's more, they are emblematic of “enshittification,” the word I coined to describe the decay of online platforms.

When I first started writing about this, I focused on the external symptology of enshittification, a three stage process:

First, the platform is good to its end users, while finding a way to lock them in.

Like Google, which minimized ads and maximized spending on engineering for search results, even as they bought their way to dominance, bribing every service or product with a search box to make it a Google search box.

So no matter what browser you used, what mobile OS you used, what carrier you had, you would always be searching on Google by default. This got so batshit that by the early 2020s, Google was spending enough money to buy a whole-ass Twitter, every year or two, just to make sure that no one ever tried a search engine that wasn't Google.

That's stage one: be good to end users, lock in end users.

Stage two is when the platform starts to abuse end users to tempt in and enrich business customers. For Google, that’s advertisers and web publishers. An ever-larger fraction of a Google results page is given over to ads, which are marked with ever-subtler, ever smaller, ever grayer labels. Google uses its commercial surveillance data to target ads to us.

So that's stage two: things get worse for end users and get better for business customers.

But those business customers also get locked into the platform, dependent on those customers. Once businesses are getting as little as 10% of their revenue from Google, leaving Google becomes an existential risk. We talk a lot about Google's "monopoly" power, which is derived from its dominance as a seller. But Google is also a monopsony, a powerful buyer.

So now you have Google acting as a monopolist to its users (stage one), and a monoposonist for its business customers (stage two) and here comes stage three: where Google claws back all the value in the platform, save a homeopathic residue calculated to keep end users locked in, and business customers locked to those end users.

Google becomes enshittified.

In 2019, Google had a turning point. Search had grown as much as it possibly could. More than 90% of us used Google for search, and we searched for everything. Any thought or idle question that crossed our minds, we typed into Google.

How could Google grow? There were no more users left to switch to Google. We weren't going to search for more things. What could Google do?

Well, thanks to internal memos published during last year's monopoly trial against Google, we know what they did. They made search worse. They reduced the system's accuracy it so you had to search twice or more to get to the answer, thus doubling the number of queries, and doubling the number of ads.

Meanwhile, Google entered into a secret, illegal collusive arrangement with Facebook, codenamed Jedi Blue, to rig the ad market, fixing prices so advertisers paid more and publishers got less.

And that's how we get to the enshittified Google of today, where every query serves back a blob of AI slop, over five paid results tagged with the word AD in 8-point, 10% grey on white type, which is, in turn, over ten spammy links from SEO shovelware sites filled with more AI slop.

And yet, we still keep using Google, because we're locked into it. That's enshittification, from the outside. A company that's good to end users, while locking them in. Then it makes things worse for end users, to make things better for business customers, while locking them in. Then it takes all the value for itself and turns into a giant pile of shit.

Enshittification, a tragedy in three acts.

I started off focused on the outward signs of enshittification, but I think it's time we start thinking about what's going in inside the companies to make enshittification possible.

What is the technical mechanism for enshittification? I call it twiddling. Digital businesses have infinite flexibility, bequeathed to them by the marvellously flexible digital computers they run on. That means that firms can twiddle the knobs that control the fundamental aspects of their business. Every time you interact with a firm, everything is different: prices, costs, search rankings, recommendations.

Which takes me back to our nurses. This scam, where you look up the nurse's debt load and titer down the wage you offer based on it in realtime? That's twiddling. It's something you can only do with a computer. The bosses who are doing this aren't more evil than bosses of yore, they just have better tools.

Note that these aren't even tech bosses. These are health-care bosses, who happen to have tech.

Digitalization – weaving networked computers through a firm or a sector – enables this kind of twiddling that allows firms to shift value around, from end users to business customers, from business customers back to end users, and eventually, inevitably, to themselves.

And digitalization is coming to every sector – like nursing. Which means enshittification is coming to every sector – like nursing.

The legal scholar Veena Dubal coined a term to describe the twiddling that suppresses the wages of debt-burdened nurses. It's called "Algorithmic Wage Discrimination," and it follows the gig economy.

The gig economy is a major locus of enshittification, and it’s the largest tear in the membrane separating the virtual world from the real world. Gig work, where your shitty boss is a shitty app, and you aren't even allowed to call yourself an employee.

Uber invented this trick. Drivers who are picky about the jobs the app puts in front of them start to get higher wage offers. But if they yield to temptation and take some of those higher-waged option, then the wage starts to go down again, in random intervals, by small increments, designed to be below the threshold for human perception. Not so much boiling the frog as poaching it, until the Uber driver has gone into debt to buy a new car, and given up the side hustles that let them be picky about the rides they accepted. Then their wage goes down, and down, and down.

Twiddling is a crude trick done quickly. Any task that's simple but time consuming is a prime candidate for automation, and this kind of wage-theft would be unbearably tedious, labor-intensive and expensive to perform manually. No 19th century warehouse full of guys with green eyeshades slaving over ledgers could do this. You need digitalization.

Twiddling nurses' hourly wages is a perfect example of the role digitization pays in enshittification. Because this kind of thing isn't just bad for nurses – it's bad for patients, too. Do we really think that paying nurses based on how desperate they are, at a rate calculated to increase that desperation, and thus decrease the wage they are likely to work for, is going to result in nurses delivering the best care?

Do you want to your catheter inserted by a nurse on food stamps, who drove an Uber until midnight the night before, and skipped breakfast this morning in order to make rent?

This is why it’s so foolish to say "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product." “If you’re not paying for the product” ascribes a mystical power to advertising-driven services: the power to bypass our critical faculties by surveilling us, and data-mining the resulting dossiers to locate our mental bind-spots, and weaponize them to get us to buy anything an advertiser is selling.

In this formulation, we are complicit in our own exploitation. By choosing to use "free" services, we invite our own exploitation by surveillance capitalists who have perfected a mind-control ray powered by the surveillance data we're voluntarily handing over by choosing ad-driven services.

The moral is that if we only went back to paying for things, instead of unrealistically demanding that everything be free, we would restore capitalism to its functional, non-surveillant state, and companies would start treating us better, because we'd be the customers, not the products.

That's why the surveillance capitalism hypothesis elevates companies like Apple as virtuous alternatives. Because Apple charges us money, rather than attention, it can focus on giving us better service, rather than exploiting us.

There's a superficially plausible logic to this. After all, in 2022, Apple updated its iOS operating system, which runs on iPhones and other mobile devices, introducing a tick box that allowed you to opt out of third-party surveillance, most notably Facebook’s.

96% of Apple customers ticked that box. The other 4% were, presumably drunk, or Facebook employees, or Facebook employees who were drunk. Which makes sense, because if I worked for Facebook, I'd be drunk all the time.

So on the face of it, it seems like Apple isn't treating its customers like "the product." But simultaneously with this privacy measure, Apple was secretly turning on its own surveillance system for iPhone owners, which would spy on them in exactly the way Facebook had, for exactly the same purpose: to target ads to you based on the places you'd been, the things you'd searched for, the communications you'd had, the links you'd clicked.

Apple didn't ask its customers for permission to spy on them. It didn't let opt out of this spying. It didn’t even tell them about it, and when it was caught, Apple lied about it.

It goes without saying that the $1000 Apple distraction rectangle in your pocket is something you paid for. The fact that you've paid for it doesn't stop Apple from treating you as the product. Apple treats its business customers – app vendors – like the product, screwing them out of 30 cents on every dollar they bring in, with mandatory payment processing fees that are 1,000% higher than the already extortionate industry norm.

Apple treats its end users – people who shell out a grand for a phone – like the product, spying on them to help target ads to them.

Apple treats everyone like the product.

This is what's going on with our gig-app nurses: the nurses are the product. The patients are the product. The hospitals are the product. In enshittification, "the product" is anyone who can be productized.

Fair and dignified treatment is not something you get as a customer loyalty perk, in exchange for parting with your money, rather than your attention. How do you get fair and dignified treatment? Well, I'm gonna get to that, but let's stay with our nurses for a while first.

The nurses are the product, and they're being twiddled, because they've been conscripted into the tech industry, via the digitalization of their own industry.

It's tempting to blame digitalization for this. But tech companies were not born enshittified. They spent years – decades – making pleasing products. If you're old enough to remember the launch of Google, you'll recall that, at the outset, Google was magic.

You could Ask Jeeves questions for a million years, you could load up Altavista with ten trillion boolean search operators meant to screen out low-grade results, and never come up with answers as crisp, as useful, as helpful, as the ones you'd get from a few vaguely descriptive words in a Google search-bar.

There's a reason we all switched to Google. Why so many of us bought iPhones. Why we joined our friends on Facebook. All of these services were born digital. They could have enshittified at any time. But they didn't – until they did. And they did it all at once.

If you were a nurse, and every patient that staggered into the ER had the same dreadful symptoms, you'd call the public health department and report a suspected outbreak of a new and dangerous epidemic.

Ursula Franklin held that technology's outcomes were not preordained. They are the result of deliberate choices. I like that very much, it's a very science fictional way of thinking about technology. Good science fiction isn't merely about what the technology does, but who it does it for, and who it does it to.

Those social factors are far more important than the mere technical specifications of a gadget. They're the difference between a system that warns you when you're about to drift out of your lane, and a system that tells your insurer that you nearly drifted out of your lane, so they can add $10 to your monthly premium.

They’re the difference between a spell checker that lets you know you've made a typo, and bossware that lets your manager use the number of typos you made this quarter so he can deny your bonus.

They’re the difference between an app that remembers where you parked your car, and an app that uses the location of your car as a criteria for including you in a reverse warrant for the identities of everyone in the vicinity of an anti-government protest.

I believe that enshittification is caused by changes not to technology, but to the policy environment. These are changes to the rules of the game, undertaken in living memory, by named parties, who were warned at the time about the likely outcomes of their actions, who are today very rich and respected, and face no consequences or accountability for their role in ushering in the enshittocene. They venture out into polite society without ever once wondering if someone is sizing them up for a pitchfork.

In other words: I think we created a crimogenic environment, a perfect breeding pool for the most pathogenic practices in our society, that have therefore multiplied, dominating decision-making in our firms and states, leading to a vast enshittening of everything.

And I think there's good news there, because if enshittification isn't the result a new kind of evil person, or the great forces of history bearing down on the moment to turn everything to shit, but rather the result of specific policy choices, then we can reverse those policies, make better ones and emerge from the enshittocene, consigning the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, a mere transitional state between the old, good internet, and a new, good internet.

I'm not going to talk about AI today, because oh my god is AI a boring, overhyped subject. But I will use a metaphor about AI, about the limited liability company, which is a kind of immortal, artificial colony organism in which human beings serve as a kind of gut flora. My colleague Charlie Stross calls corporations "slow AI.”

So you've got these slow AIs whose guts are teeming with people, and the AI's imperative, the paperclip it wants to maximize, is profit. To maximize profits, you charge as much as you can, you pay your workers and suppliers as little as you can, you spend as little as possible on safety and quality.

Every dollar you don't spend on suppliers, workers, quality or safety is a dollar that can go to executives and shareholders. So there's a simple model of the corporation that could maximize its profits by charging infinity dollars, while paying nothing to its workers or suppliers, and ignoring quality and safety.

But that corporation wouldn't make any money, for the obvious reasons that none of us would buy what it was selling, and no one would work for it or supply it with goods. These constraints act as disciplining forces that tamp down the AI's impulse to charge infinity and pay nothing.

In tech, we have four of these constraints, anti-enshittificatory sources of discipline that make products and services better, pay workers more, and keep executives’ and shareholders' wealth from growing at the expense of customers, suppliers and labor.

The first of these constraints is markets. All other things being equal, a business that charges more and delivers less will lose customers to firms that are more generous about sharing value with workers, customers and suppliers.

This is the bedrock of capitalist theory, and it's the ideological basis for competition law, what our American cousins call "antitrust law."

The first antitrust law was 1890's Sherman Act, whose sponsor, Senator John Sherman, stumped for it from the senate floor, saying:

If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity. 

Senator Sherman was reflecting the outrage of the anitmonopolist movement of the day, when proprietors of monopolistic firms assumed the role of dictators, with the power to decide who would work, who would starve, what could be sold, and what it cost.

Lacking competitors, they were too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care. As Lily Tomlin used to put it in her spoof AT&T ads on SNL: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company.”

So what happened to the disciplining force of competition? We killed it. Starting 40-some years ago, the Reagaonomic views of the Chicago School economists transformed antitrust. They threw out John Sherman's idea that we need to keep companies competitive to prevent the emergence of "autocrats of trade,"and installed the idea that monopolies are efficient.

In other words, if Google has a 90% search market share, which it does, then we must infer that Google is the best search engine ever, and the best search engine possible. The only reason a better search engine hasn't stepped in is that Google is so skilled, so efficient, that there is no conceivable way to improve upon it.

We can tell that Google is the best because it has a monopoly, and we can tell that the monopoly is good because Google is the best.

So 40 years ago, the US – and its major trading partners – adopted an explicitly pro-monopoly competition policy.

Now, you'll be glad to hear that this isn't what happened to Canada. The US Trade Rep didn't come here and force us to neuter our competition laws. But don't get smug! The reason that didn't happen is that it didn't have to. Because Canada had no competition law to speak of, and never has.

In its entire history, the Competition Bureau has challenged three mergers, and it has halted precisely zero mergers, which is how we've ended up with a country that is beholden to the most mediocre plutocrats imaginable like the Irvings, the Westons, the Stronachs, the McCains and the Rogerses.

The only reason these chinless wonders were able to conquer this country Is that the Americans had been crushing their monopolists before they could conquer the US and move on to us. But 40 years ago, the rest of the world adopted the Chicago School's pro-monopoly "consumer welfare standard,” and we got…monopolies.

Monopolies in pharma, beer, glass bottles, vitamin C, athletic shoes, microchips, cars, mattresses, eyeglasses, and, of course, professional wrestling.

Remember: these are specific policies adopted in living memory, by named individuals, who were warned, and got rich, and never faced consequences. The economists who conceived of these policies are still around today, polishing their fake Nobel prizes, teaching at elite schools, making millions consulting for blue-chip firms.

When we confront them with the wreckage their policies created, they protest their innocence, maintaining – with a straight face – that there's no way to affirmatively connect pro-monopoly policies with the rise of monopolies.

It's like we used to put down rat poison and we didn't have a rat problem. Then these guys made us stop, and now rats are chewing our faces off, and they're making wide innocent eyes, saying, "How can you be sure that our anti-rat-poison policies are connected to global rat conquest? Maybe this is simply the Time of the Rat! Maybe sunspots caused rats to become more fecund than at any time in history! And if they bought the rat poison factories and shut them all down, well, so what of it? Shutting down rat poison factories after you've decided to stop putting down rat poison is an economically rational, Pareto-optimal decision."

Markets don't discipline tech companies because they don't compete with rivals, they buy them. That's a quote, from Mark Zuckerberg: “It is better to buy than to compete.”

Which is why Mark Zuckerberg bought Instagram for a billion dollars, even though it only had 12 employees and 25m users. As he wrote in a spectacularly ill-advised middle-of-the-night email to his CFO, he had to buy Instagram, because Facebook users were leaving Facebook for Instagram. By buying Instagram, Zuck ensured that anyone who left Facebook – the platform – would still be a prisoner of Facebook – the company.

Despite the fact that Zuckerberg put this confession in writing, the Obama administration let him go ahead with the merger, because every government, of every political stripe, for 40 years, adopted the posture that monopolies were efficient.

Now, think about our twiddled, immiserated nurses. Hospitals are among the most consolidated sectors in the US. First, we deregulated pharma mergers, and the pharma companies gobbled each other up at the rate of naughts, and they jacked up the price of drugs. So hospitals also merged to monopoly, a defensive maneuver that let a single hospital chain corner the majority of a region or city and say to the pharma companies, "either you make your products cheaper, or you can't sell them to any of our hospitals."

Of course, once this mission was accomplished, the hospitals started screwing the insurers, who staged their own incestuous orgy, buying and merging until most Americans have just three or two insurance options. This let the insurers fight back against the hospitals, but left patients and health care workers defenseless against the consolidated power of hospitals, pharma companies, pharmacy benefit managers, group purchasing organizations, and other health industry cartels, duopolies and monopolies.

Which is why nurses end up signing on to work for hospitals that use these ghastly apps. Remember, there's just three of these apps, replacing dozens of staffing agencies that once competed for nurses' labor.

Meanwhile, on the patient side, competition has never exercised discipline. No one ever shopped around for a cheaper ambulance or a better ER while they were having a heart attack. The price that people are willing to pay to not die is “everything they have.”

So you have this sector that has no business being a commercial enterprise in the first place, losing what little discipline they faced from competition, paving the way for enshittification.

But I said there are four forces that discipline companies. The second one of these forces is regulation, discipline imposed by states.

It’s a mistake to see market discipline and state discipline as two isolated realms. They are intimately connected. Because competition is a necessary condition for effective regulation.

Let me put this in terms that even the most ideological libertarians can understand. Say you think there should be precisely one regulation that governments should enforce: honoring contracts. For the government to serve as referee in that game, it must have the power to compel the players to honor their contracts. Which means that the smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to permit.

So even if you're the kind of Musk-addled libertarian who can no longer open your copy of Atlas Shrugged because the pages are all stuck together, who pines for markets for human kidneys, and demands the right to sell yourself into slavery, you should still want a robust antitrust regime, so that these contracts can be enforced.

When a sector cartelizes, when it collapses into oligarchy, when the internet turns into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four," then it captures its regulators.

After all, a sector with 100 competing companies is a rabble, at each others' throats. They can't agree on anything, especially how they're going to lobby.

While a sector of five companies – or four – or three – or two – or one – is a cartel, a racket, a conspiracy in waiting. A sector that has been boiled down to a mere handful of firms can agree on a common lobbying position.

What's more, they are so insulated from "wasteful competition" that they are aslosh in cash that they can mobilize to make their regulatory preferences into regulations. In other words, they can capture their regulators.

“Regulatory capture" may sound abstract and complicated, so let me put it in concrete terms. In the UK, the antitrust regulator is called the Competition and Markets Authority, run – until recently – by Marcus Bokkerink. The CMA has been one of the world's most effective investigators and regulators of Big Tech fuckery.

Last month, UK PM Keir Starmer fired Bokkerink and replaced him with Doug Gurr, the former head of Amazon UK. Hey, Starmer, the henhouse is on the line, they want their fox back.

But back to our nurses: there are plenty of examples of regulatory capture lurking in that example, but I'm going to pick the most egregious one, the fact that there are data brokers who will sell you information about the credit card debts of random Americans.

This is because the US Congress hasn't passed a new consumer privacy law since 1988, when Ronald Reagan signed a law called the Video Privacy Protection Act that bans video store clerks from telling newspapers which VHS cassettes you took home. The fact that Congress hasn't updated Americans' privacy protections since Die Hard was in theaters isn't a coincidence or an oversight. It is the expensively purchased inaction of a heavily concentrated – and thus wildly profitable – privacy-invasion industry that has monetized the abuse of human rights at unimaginable scale.

The coalition in favor of keeping privacy law frozen since the season finale of St Elsewhere keeps growing, because there is an unbounded set of way to transform the systematic invasion of our human rights into cash. There's a direct line from this phenomenon to nurses whose paychecks go down when they can't pay their credit-card bills.

So competition is dead, regulation is dead, and companies aren't disciplined by markets or by states.

But there are four forces that discipline firms, contributing to an inhospitable environment for the reproduction of sociopathic. enshittifying monsters.

So let's talk about those other two forces. The first is interoperability, the principle of two or more things working together. Like, you can put anyone's shoelaces in your shoes, anyone's gas in your gas tank, and anyone's lightbulbs in your light-socket. In the non-digital world, interop takes a lot of work, you have to agree on the direction, pitch, diameter, voltage, amperage and wattage for that light socket, or someone's gonna get their hand blown off.

But in the digital world, interop is built in, because there's only one kind of computer we know how to make, the Turing-complete, universal, von Neumann machine, a computing machine capable of executing every valid program.

Which means that for any enshittifying program, there's a counterenshittificatory program waiting to be run. When HP writes a program to ensure that its printers reject third-party ink, someone else can write a program to disable that checking.

For gig workers, antienshittificatory apps can do yeoman duty. For example, Indonesian gig drivers formed co-ops, that commission hackers to write modifications for their dispatch apps. For example, the taxi app won't book a driver to pick someone up at a train station, unless they're right outside, but when the big trains pull in that's a nightmare scene of total, lethal chaos.

So drivers have an app that lets them spoof their GPS, which lets them park up around the corner, but have the app tell their bosses that they're right out front of the station. When a fare arrives, they can zip around and pick them up, without contributing to the stationside mishegas.

In the USA, a company called Para shipped an app to help Doordash drivers get paid more. You see, Doordash drivers make most of their money on tips, and the Doordash driver app hides the tip amount until you accept a job, meaning you don't know whether you're accepting a job that pays $1.50 or $11.50 with tip, until you agree to take it. So Para made an app that extracted the tip amount and showed it to drivers before they clocked on.

But Doordash shut it down, because in America, apps like Para are illegal. In 1998, Bill Clinton signed a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and section 1201 of the DMCA makes is a felony to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work," with penalties of $500k and a 5-year prison sentence for a first offense. So just the act of reverse-engineering an app like the Doordash app is a potential felony, which is why companies are so desperately horny to get you to use their apps rather than their websites.

The web is open, apps are closed. The majority of web users have installed an ad blocker (which is also a privacy blocker). But no one installs an ad blocker for an app, because it's a felony to distribute that tool, because you have to reverse-engineer the app to make it. An app is just a website wrapped in enough IP so that the company that made it can send you to prison if you dare to modify it so that it serves your interests rather than theirs.

Around the world, we have enacted a thicket of laws, we call “IP laws,” that make it illegal to modify services, products, and devices, so that they serve your interests, rather than the interests of the shareholders.

Like I said, these laws were enacted in living memory, by people who are among us, who were warned about the obvious, eminently foreseeable consequences of their reckless plans, who did it anyway.

Back in 2010, two ministers from Stephen Harper's government decided to copy-paste America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act into Canadian law. They consulted on the proposal to make it illegal to reverse engineer and modify services, products and devices, and they got an earful! 6,138 Canadians sent in negative comments on the consultation. They warned that making it illegal to bypass digital locks would interfere with repair of devices as diverse as tractors, cars, and medical equipment, from ventilators to insulin pumps.

These Canadians warned that laws banning tampering with digital locks would let American tech giants corner digital markets, forcing us to buy our apps and games from American app stores, that could cream off any commission they chose to levy. They warned that these laws were a gift to monopolists who wanted to jack up the price of ink; that these copyright laws, far from serving Canadian artists would lock us to American platforms. Because every time someone in our audience bought a book, a song, a game, a video, that was locked to an American app, it could never be unlocked.

So if we, the creative workers of Canada, tried to migrate to a Canadian store, our audience couldn't come with us. They couldn't move their purchases from the US app to a Canadian one.

6,138 Canadians told them this, while just 54 respondents sided with Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement. Then, James Moore gave a speech, at the International Chamber of Commerce meeting here in Toronto, where he said he would only be listening to the 54 cranks who supported his terrible ideas, on the grounds that the 6,138 people who disagreed with him were "babyish…radical extremists."

So in 2012, we copied America's terrible digital locks law into the Canadian statute book, and now we live in James Moore and Tony Clement's world, where it is illegal to tamper with a digital lock. So if a company puts a digital lock on its product they can do anything behind that lock, and it's a crime to undo it.

For example, if HP puts a digital lock on its printers that verifies that you're not using third party ink cartridges, or refilling an HP cartridge, it's a crime to bypass that lock and use third party ink. Which is how HP has gotten away with ratcheting the price of ink up, and up, and up.

Printer ink is now the most expensive fluid that a civilian can purchase without a special permit. It's colored water that costs $10k/gallon, which means that you print out your grocery lists with liquid that costs more than the semen of a Kentucky Derby-winning stallion.

That's the world we got from Clement and Moore, in living memory, after they were warned, and did it anyway. The world where farmers can't fix their tractors, where independent mechanics can't fix your car, where hospitals during the pandemic lockdowns couldn't service their failing ventilators, where every time a Canadian iPhone user buys an app from a Canadian software author, every dollar they spend takes a round trip through Apple HQ in Cupertino, California and comes back 30 cents lighter.

Let me remind you this is the world where a nurse can't get a counter-app, a plug-in, for the “Uber for nurses” app they have to use to get work, that lets them coordinate with other nurses to refuse shifts until the wages on offer rise to a common level or to block surveillance of their movements and activity.

Interoperability was a major disciplining force on tech firms. After all, if you make the ads on your website sufficiently obnoxious, some fraction of your users will install an ad-blocker, and you will never earn another penny from them. Because no one in the history of ad-blockers has ever uninstalled an ad-blocker. But once it's illegal to make an ad-blocker, there's no reason not to make the ads as disgusting, invasive, obnoxious as you can, to shift all the value from the end user to shareholders and executives.

So we get monopolies and monopolies capture their regulators, and they can ignore the laws they don't like, and prevent laws that might interfere with their predatory conduct – like privacy laws – from being passed. They get new laws passed, laws that let them wield governmental power to prevent other companies from entering the market.

So three of the four forces are neutralized: competition, regulation, and interoperability. That left just one disciplining force holding enshittification at bay: labor.

Tech workers are a strange sort of workforce, because they have historically been very powerful, able to command high wages and respect, but they did it without joining unions. Union density in tech is abysmal, almost undetectable. Tech workers' power didn't come from solidarity, it came from scarcity. There weren't enough workers to fill the jobs going begging, and tech workers are unfathomnably productive. Even with the sky-high salaries tech workers commanded, every hour of labor they put in generated far more value for their employers.

Faced with a tight labor market, and the ability to turn every hour of tech worker overtime into gold, tech bosses pulled out all the stops to motivate that workforce. They appealed to workers' sense of mission, convinced them they were holy warriors, ushering in a new digital age. Google promised them they would "organize the world's information and make it useful.” Facebook promised them they would “make the world more open and connected."

There's a name for this tactic: the librarian Fobazi Ettarh calls it "vocational awe." That’s where an appeal to a sense of mission and pride is used to motivate workers to work for longer hours and worse pay.

There are all kinds of professions that run on vocational awe: teaching, daycares and eldercare, and, of course, nursing.

Techies are different from those other workers though, because they've historically been incredibly scarce, which meant that while bosses could motivate them to work on projects they believed in, for endless hours, the minute bosses ordered them to enshittify the projects they'd missed their mothers' funerals to ship on deadline these workers would tell their bosses to fuck off.

If their bosses persisted in these demands, the techies would walk off the job, cross the street, and get a better job the same day.

So for many years, tech workers were the fourth and final constraint, holding the line after the constraints of competition, regulation and interop slipped away. But then came the mass tech layoffs. 260,000 in 2023; 150,000 in 2024; tens of thousands this year, with Facebook planning a 5% headcount massacre while doubling its executive bonuses.

Tech workers can't tell their bosses to go fuck themselves anymore, because there's ten other workers waiting to take their jobs.

Now, I promised I wouldn't talk about AI, but I have to break that promise a little, just to point out that the reason tech bosses are so horny for AI Is because they think it'll let them fire tech workers and replace them with pliant chatbots who'll never tell them to fuck off.

So that's where enshittification comes from: multiple changes to the environment. The fourfold collapse of competition, regulation, interoperability and worker power creates an enshittogenic environment, where the greediest, most sociopathic elements in the body corporate thrive at the expense of those elements that act as moderators of their enshittificatory impulses.

We can try to cure these corporations. We can use antitrust law to break them up, fine them, force strictures upon them. But until we fix the environment, other the contagion will spread to other firms.

So let's talk about how we create a hostile environment for enshittifiers, so the population and importance of enshittifying agents in companies dwindles to 1990s levels. We won't get rid of these elements. So long as the profit motive is intact, there will be people whose pursuit of profit is pathological, unmoderated by shame or decency. But we can change the environment so that these don't dominate our lives.

Let's talk about antitrust. After 40 years of antitrust decline, this decade has seen a massive, global resurgence of antitrust vigor, one that comes in both left- and right-wing flavors.

Over the past four years, the Biden administration’s trustbusters at the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau did more antitrust enforcement than all their predecessors for the past 40 years combined.

There's certainly factions of the Trump administration that are hostile to this agenda but Trump's antitrust enforcers at the DoJ and FTC now say that they'll preserve and enforce Biden's new merger guidelines, which stop companies from buying each other up, and they've already filed suit to block a giant tech merger.

Of course, last summer a judge found Google guilty of monopolization, and now they're facing a breakup, which explains why they've been so generous and friendly to the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, in Canada, our toothless Competition Bureau's got fitted for a set of titanium dentures last June, when Bill C59 passed Parliament, granting sweeping new powers to our antitrust regulator.

It's true that UK PM Keir Starmer just fired the head of the UK Competition and Markets Authority and replaced him with the ex-boss of Amazon UK boss.But the thing that makes that so tragic is that the UK CMA had been doing astonishingly great work under various conservative governments.

In the EU, they've passed the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, and they're going after Big Tech with both barrels. Other countries around the world – Australia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and China (yes, China!) – have passed new antitrust laws, and launched major antitrust enforcement actions, often collaborating with each other.

So you have the UK Competition and Markets Authority using its investigatory powers to research and publish a deep market study on Apple's abusive 30% app tax, and then the EU uses that report as a roadmap for fining Apple, and then banning Apple's payments monopoly under new regulations.Then South Korea and Japan trustbusters translate the EU's case and win nearly identical cases in their courts

What about regulatory capture? Well, we're starting to see regulators get smarter about reining in Big Tech. For example, the EU's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act were designed to bypass the national courts of EU member states, especially Ireland, the tax-haven where US tech companies pretend to have their EU headquarters.

The thing about tax havens is that they always turn into crime havens, because if Apple can pretend to be Irish this week, it can pretend to be Maltese or Cypriot or Luxembourgeois next week. So Ireland has to let US Big Tech companies ignore EU privacy laws and other regulations, or it'll lose them to sleazier, more biddable competitor nations.

So from now on, EU tech regulation is getting enforced in the EU's federal courts, not in national courts, treating the captured Irish courts as damage and routing around them.

Canada needs to strengthen its own tech regulation enforcement, unwinding monopolistic mergers from the likes of Bell and Rogers, but most of all, Canada needs to pursue an interoperability agenda.

Last year, Canada passed two very exciting bills: Bill C244, a national Right to Repair law; and Bill C294, an interoperability law. Nominally, both of these laws allow Canadians to fix everything from tractors to insulin pumps, and to modify the software in their devices from games consoles to printers, so they will work with third party app stores, consumables and add-ons.

However, these bills are essentially useless, because these bills don’t permit Canadians to acquire tools to break digital locks. So you can modify your printer to accept third party ink, or interpret a car's diagnostic codes so any mechanic can fix it, but only if there isn't a digital lock stopping you from doing so, because giving someone a tool to break a digital lock remains illegal thanks to the law that James Moore and Tony Clement shoved down the nation's throat in 2012.

And every single printer, smart speaker, car, tractor, appliance, medical implant and hospital medical device has a digital lock that stops you from fixing it, modifying it, or using third party parts, software, or consumables in it.

Which means that these two landmark laws on repair and interop are useless. So why not get rid of the 2012 law that bans breaking digital locks? Because these laws are part of our trade agreement with the USA. This is a law needed to maintain tariff-free access to US markets.

I don’t know if you've heard, but Donald Trump is going to impose a 25%, across-the-board tariff against Canadian exports. Trudeau's response is to impose retaliatory tariffs, which will make every American product that Canadians buy 25% more expensive. This is a very weird way to punish America!

You know what would be better? Abolish the Canadian laws that protect US Big Tech companies from Canadian competition. Make it legal to reverse-engineer, jailbreak and modify American technology products and services. Don't ask Facebook to pay a link tax to Canadian newspapers, make it legal to jailbreak all of Meta's apps and block all the ads in them, so Mark Zuckerberg doesn't make a dime off of us.

Make it legal for Canadian mechanics to jailbreak your Tesla and unlock every subscription feature, like autopilot and full access to your battery, for one price, forever. So you get more out of your car, and when you sell it, then next owner continues to enjoy those features, meaning they'll pay more for your used car.

That's how you hurt Elon Musk: not by being performatively appalled at his Nazi salutes. That doesn't cost him a dime. He loves the attention. No! Strike at the rent-extracting, insanely high-margin aftermarket subscriptions he relies on for his Swastikar business. Kick that guy right in the dongle!

Let Canadians stand up a Canadian app store for Apple devices, one that charges 3% to process transactions, not 30%. Then, every Canadian news outlet that sells subscriptions through an app, and every Canadian software author, musician and writer who sells through a mobile platform gets a 25% increase in revenues overnight, without signing up a single new customer.

But we can sign up new customers, by selling jailbreaking software and access to Canadian app stores, for every mobile device and games console to everyone in the world, and by pitching every games publisher and app maker on selling in the Canadian app store to customers anywhere without paying a 30% vig to American big tech companies.

We could sell every mechanic in the world a $100/month subscription to a universal diagnostic tool. Every farmer in the world could buy a kit that would let them fix their own John Deere tractors without paying a $200 callout charge for a Deere technician who inspects the repair the farmer is expected to perform.

They'd beat a path to our door. Canada could become a tech export powerhouse, while making everything cheaper for Canadian tech users, while making everything more profitable for anyone who sells media or software in an online store. And – this is the best part – it’s a frontal assault on the largest, most profitable US companies, the companies that are single-handedly keeping the S&P 500 in the black, striking directly at their most profitable lines of business, taking the revenues from those ripoff scams from hundreds of billions to zero, overnight, globally.

We don't have to stop at exporting reasonably priced pharmaceuticals to Americans! We could export the extremely lucrative tools of technological liberation to our American friends, too.

That's how you win a trade-war.

What about workers? Here we have good news and bad news.

The good news is that public approval for unions is at a high mark last seen in the early 1970s, and more workers want to join a union than at any time in generations, and unions themselves are sitting on record-breaking cash reserves they could be using to organize those workers.

But here's the bad news. The unions spent the Biden years, when they had the most favorable regulatory environment since the Carter administration, when public support for unions was at an all-time high, when more workers than ever wanted to join a union, when they had more money than ever to spend on unionizing those workers, doing fuck all. They allocatid mere pittances to union organizing efforts with the result that we finished the Biden years with fewer unionized workers than we started them with.

Then we got Trump, who illegally fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the NLRB without a quorum and thus unable to act on unfair labor practices or to certify union elections.

This is terrible. But it’s not game over. Trump fired the referees, and he thinks that this means the game has ended. But here's the thing: firing the referee doesn't end the game, it just means we're throwing out the rules. Trump thinks that labor law creates unions, but he's wrong. Unions are why we have labor law. Long before unions were legal, we had unions, who fought goons and ginks and company finks in` pitched battles in the streets.

That illegal solidarity resulted in the passage of labor law, which legalized unions. Labor law is passed because workers build power through solidarity. Law doesn't create that solidarity, it merely gives it a formal basis in law. Strip away that formal basis, and the worker power remains.

Worker power is the answer to vocational awe. After all, it's good for you and your fellow workers to feel a sense of mission about your jobs. If you feel that sense of mission, if you feel the duty to protect your users, your patients, your patrons, your students, a union lets you fulfill that duty.

We saw that in 2023 when Doug Ford promised to destroy the power of Ontario's public workers. Workers across the province rose up, promising a general strike, and Doug Ford folded like one of his cheap suits. Workers kicked the shit out of him, and we'll do it again. Promises made, promises kept.

The unscheduled midair disassembly of American labor law means that workers can have each others' backs again. Tech workers need other workers' help, because tech workers aren't scarce anymore, not after a half-million layoffs. Which means tech bosses aren't afraid of them anymore.

We know how tech bosses treat workers they aren't afraid of. Look at Jeff Bezos: the workers in his warehouses are injured on the job at 3 times the national rate, his delivery drivers have to pee in bottles, and they are monitored by AI cameras that snitch on them if their eyeballs aren't in the proscribed orientation or if their mouth is open too often while they drive, because policy forbids singing along to the radio.

By contrast, Amazon coders get to show up for work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want. Jeff Bezos isn't sentimental about tech workers, nor does he harbor a particularized hatred of warehouse workers and delivery drivers. He treats his workers as terribly as he can get away with. That means that the pee bottles are coming for the coders, too.

It's not just Amazon, of course. Take Apple. Tim Cook was elevated to CEO in 2011. Apple's board chose him to succeed founder Steve Jobs because he is the guy who figured out how to shift Apple's production to contract manufacturers in China, without skimping on quality assurance, or suffering leaks of product specifications ahead of the company's legendary showy launches.

Today, Apple's products are made in a gigantic Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou nicknamed "iPhone City.” Indeed, these devices arrive in shipping containers at the Port of Los Angeles in a state of pristine perfection, manufactured to the finest tolerances, and free of any PR leaks.

To achieve this miraculous supply chain, all Tim Cook had to do was to make iPhone City a living hell, a place that is so horrific to work that they had to install suicide nets around the worker dorms to catch the plummeting bodies of workers who were so brutalized by Tim Cook's sweatshop that they attempted to take their own lives.

Tim Cook is also not sentimentally attached to tech workers, nor is he hostile to Chinese assembly line workers. He just treats his workers as badly as he can get away with, and with mass layoffs in the tech sector he can treat his coders much, much worse

How do tech workers get unions? Well, there are tech-specific organizations like Tech Solidarity and the Tech Workers Coalition. But tech workers will only get unions by having solidarity with other workers and receiving solidarity back from them. We all need to support every union. All workers need to have each other's backs.

We are entering a period of omnishambolic polycrisis.The ominous rumble of climate change, authoritarianism, genocide, xenophobia and transphobia has turned into an avalanche. The perpetrators of these crimes against humanity have weaponized the internet, colonizing the 21st century's digital nervous system, using it to attack its host, threatening civilization itself.

The enshitternet was purpose-built for this kind of apocalyptic co-option, organized around giant corporations who will trade a habitable planet and human rights for a three percent tax cut, who default us all into twiddle-friendly algorithmic feed, and block the interoperability that would let us escape their clutches with the backing of powerful governments whom they can call upon to "protect their IP rights."

It didn't have to be this way. The enshitternet was not inevitable. It was the product of specific policy choices, made in living memory, by named individuals.

No one came down off a mountain with two stone tablets, intoning Tony Clement, James Moore: Thou shalt make it a crime for Canadians to jailbreak their phones. Those guys chose enshittification, throwing away thousands of comments from Canadians who warned them what would come of it.

We don't have to be eternal prisoners of the catastrophic policy blunders of mediocre Tory ministers. As the omnicrisis polyshambles unfolds around us, we have the means, motive and opportunity to craft Canadian policies that bolster our sovereignty, protect our rights, and help us to set every technology user, in every country (including the USA) free.

The Trump presidency is an existential crisis but it also presents opportunities. When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla. We once had an old, good internet, whose major defect was that it required too much technical expertise to use, so all our normie friends were excluded from that wondrous playground.

Web 2.0's online services had greased slides that made it easy for anyone to get online, but escaping from those Web 2.0 walled gardens meant was like climbing out of a greased pit. A new, good internet is possible, and necessary. We can build it, with all the technological self-determination of the old, good internet, and the ease of use of Web 2.0.

A place where we can find each other, coordinate and mobilize to resist and survive climate collapse, fascism, genocide and authoritarianism. We can build that new, good internet, and we must.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#enshittification-eh

[aventurineswife]

Thank you for this SAHSRAU request

How would everyone react when they see the Full Destructive power of the Mech that the Creator is Piloting when they go Drill for Drill against an all powerful being that can do the same things that the Creator can do

(Tried to post one that I had but Damn it Tumblr can't handle it 😭)

Before seeing the Creator throw Straight hands against same being who can do the same things

(Damn Anti spiral is getting his ass beat ⁠(⁠゜•⁠゜⁠) )

YES. Oh yes.

SAHSRAU characters already see you as their untouchable divine programmer—but now you roll up in a divine mech suit that you coded yourself, and it’s not just pretty effects. It’s raw destruction, a cosmic drill-for-drill clash against a mirror entity—a false god with the same power set.

Your mech—this towering, luminous construct—rips through the space-time seam, glitching between animation frames, shimmering with debugging code, corrupted geometry phasing around its limbs. And when you go toe-to-toe with a false being that mirrors your power? Drill colliding with drill?

It’s like watching Armageddon written in code.

The sky tears open.

Reality flickers like bad data.

And your followers?

They stop breathing.

Dan Heng

Silent. His breath hitches. His eyes track every move, analyzing, memorizing.

“That power… that control… and they built it themself.”

But what truly shakes him is seeing you step out of the mech—injured, drained, but furious. You throw your hood back, eyes glowing with glitch-light—and then throw a bare-knuckle punch into the false god’s face. And it lands.

Dan Heng doesn’t know whether to kneel or follow you into battle.

Kafka

“Oh.”

Her voice is a whisper. Reverent. Almost… turned on.

“That’s them. That’s our Creator.”

She watches you spiral through data projectiles and rip a drill out of thin air like you're dragging it from another game engine. When you dropkick your copy through a terrain patch and keep fighting with bare fists, she doesn’t cheer. She smiles.

She's never believed in gods.

Until you chose violence with style.

Silver Wolf

Screaming. Shaking. Crying. Hacking the UI in real-time to get a better angle.

“HOLY CRAP—THEIR HITBOX IS UNDEFINED—

THAT’S A CUSTOM MOVESET.

THE CREATOR HARD-CODED A COUNTER-MOVE TO THEIR OWN ABILITIES.”

She’s bouncing in her chair, glitching with actual tears, watching you override the very engine the fight’s happening in. When you glitch-punch your clone so hard its form reverts to wireframe?

She stares at the screen and whispers, “I want to marry them.”

Blade

He stands. Slowly. Every inch of him is vibrating. Rage, awe, maybe even hope.

You’re bleeding. You’re exhausted. But you refuse to stop. You refuse to lose. You punch and claw and override and fight with everything you have—not for godhood, but for truth.

He sees himself in your refusal to break. And for the first time in years, Blade says softly:

“You are real.”

Welt

He’s quiet. But his expression is shaken—like someone who just witnessed a prophecy fulfilled.

“They… rewrote their own limits. In real-time.”

Watching you defy logic itself—fighting another being with your same broken capabilities and winning anyway—Welt realizes something chilling:

If you can do that… then you’re not just god.

You’re beyond the Aeons.

March 7th

Tears streak down her face. Her camera dangles from her neck, forgotten.

“I knew they were cool but—LOOK AT THEM!!!”

She’s clutching Pom-Pom and screaming encouragement, gasping as you suplex your own copy through the HUD. She doesn’t care about perfection—just that you’re fighting.

And when you emerge from the rubble, scarred and triumphant?

She shouts, “THAT’S MY CREATOR!!”

Herta

The woman who once dismissed you as a curiosity?

Now she’s trembling.

She’s watching you manipulate systems she created. Rewrite physics she helped govern. Win a fight where you shouldn’t have won.

“Impossible…”

“No. It’s inevitable. They’re the one.”

This is the moment the SAHSRAU characters realizes:

You didn’t just log into their world.

You reformatted it with your fists.

You didn’t win because you were stronger.

You won because you believed in your own design more than the imposter did.

And now?

They don’t just revere you.

They stand behind you, ready for the next battle—because they know:

If the Creator can throw hands with a god,

then maybe… they can change the system too.

[cementcornfield]

Some Positivity

it's not all sunshine and rainbows, obviously, but there IS an upside. and there IS reason to believe he can achieve at least something close to his ceiling with us.

okay. here's a bunch of tweets lol. then i'm going to attempt to make sense of them.

(i'm avoiding joe g and jake's tweets right now because they are hard core stats/data guys and obviously the stats and data don't look great. but even joe admitted he doesn't think this was a 'set a pick on fire' type thing. it's just very high risk, but also high reward. but if you look at the guys who do a lot of x's and o's analysis of the game, who put the stats in context, you can see some better reasoning for everything.)

starting here with max's tweets. two years ago, not at all coincidentally to when sam started to fall off a cliff, our run defense started to decline RAPIDLY. and this past year, as many awful things as you could say about our run defense, numbers DID improve (yeah there were missed tackles in the secondary. but if you look at the stats, our tackling was actually around average?? it's just our misses happened at the WORST times lol)

but why did our run defense numbers improve when our talent certainly didn't?? because we were focusing almost entirely on stopping the run, at the expense of the pass. if you look at our numbers against derrick henry for instance, we were one of the better teams at stoping him. but in order to do things like that, we used ALL of our resources. "loading the box" etc etc, aka bring all our guys up to stop the run, and leaving pretty much no help for our secondary, which, as max says, KILLS you in the pass game. but it was our only choice, we didn't have anyone talented in our run game (sam declining, dj reader leaving) so it's what we had to do. and it's what went wrong in both of our games against the ravens. (i'm forever haunted by that play where lamar knocks sam down TWICE and then scores oh my god.)

one thing we did do in free agency was pick up a true nose tackle in TJ Slaton. losing DJ the year before was devastating and our young guys did not step up (and honestly weren't true NTs anyway). TJ is a true big guy run stuffer, and he'll take over the job of both jenkins and jackson struggling to stop the run in the center, allowing them to do other things like stop the run in other places/rush the guards/maybe even get after the passer a bit.

and we also got rid of sam (rip. i still love you. but it was for the best. enjoy your marriage to a plumbing heiress ✨). when sam was at his best, he was an edge setting contain guy. he DID get some sacks, but his production was never anywhere close to trey's. his job was to stop the QB from running out of the pocket, aka "contain" the edge. and he just couldn't do it anymore. it's clear that the coaches now see shemar as that dude (and maybe myles still. we'll see). PLUS shemar can also apparently kick inside at times, so that's where we could see some interior pressure (i also just learned ossai can also do this. so that's nice!) and if he does pan out, his traits are wayyyy better than sam, so he could honestly be Sam Hubbard+

now we get to mike sans here, who is THE trenches guy on twitter. i definitely trust his opinion in these kind of things. obviously the lack of production is concerning, but mike thinks that it can at least partly be explained by the scheme/coaching at A&M. his point that nolen (rip. i'll always love you and hate the cardinals now) himself also didn't produce as much when in the same system is something i found pretty compelling.

at A&M, shemar was lined up in such a way that he got most of the double teams (this aligns with what al golden said last night, that when he was coaching at notre dame, his offense was most scared of shemar/they were 'always bitching' about him lol).

pass rush stats are apparently complicated (as all stats are i guess when you look further into them) and according to sans, shemar wasn't given a lot of opportunity to use a lot of his talents. and apparently the coaching staff there doesn't spend much time teaching how to actually rush the passer?? 🤔

now obviously he still could have had a better run defense game, as sans also admits, but he still attributes a lot of that to the system there. obviously our coaching staff must have a plan for shemar in our system that will benefit him the most (you'd hope! at least!)

finally this quote from the post-draft interview last night (where he did come off very likable and sweet)

shemar knows that he didn't finish a lot of the time. he knows where he needs to improve. and he knows he needs to follow trey around like a baby duckling (so you know, like others have said, it's important trey is actually there for training camp!!)

by all accounts he's a high character guy (and again. let's all be grateful they didn't draft mike green. no one did, hilariously.) he's smart, always puts in the effort, and is willing to learn. and he has all the traits to get there. our coaching staff just needs to find a way to get through to him to take him all the way. obviously that's not something lou and the former d-line coach could do (see myles murphy) but! maybe this one staff is the key. obviously they were chosen for their abilities to develop. let's hope they actually can.

[gay-milton-quotes]

I'm Unpeeling Myself from Big Tech!

"Unpeeling" being any act you take that limits the amount of data a large tech corporation can gather from you, decreases your reliance on products of those corporations, or increases autonomy over your technology. I'm ripping the term from a line in this review by Joanna Nelius, where she writes, "People are looking for ways to peel their eyes from their smartphones like a layer of Elmer’s glue from their hand — to remove a part of themselves that really isn’t a part of themselves." It's different than "unplugging" because the goal isn't to go off the grid, or even to limit one's technology usage. The goal, instead, is to extract from the invasive, addictive, destructive capitalist vision a set of tools that are useful to YOU.

It started when I realized I don't need a smartphone. I've deleted most social media from my phone, and the stuff I still have I prefer to check on my laptop. Not all "dumb phones" (I hate this term) offer the same features, though, so I began to think on a granular level about what I need from a cell phone. Eg, not all "dumb phones" provide MMS, but my family lives 3k miles away. I wanna still talk in the groupchat.

On the more complex end, I write on my phone. I've been using Google Docs to move seamlessly from scribbled writing drafts on my phone to formatted, finished works on my computer since I was fourteen.

Except, Google Docs is useless now. I've been unable to use it since they lowered the storage capacity. The only other cloud storage writing thingy with similar functionality is Office 365, which sucks.

Could a dumb phone with a basic "notes" feature work? Maybe, but I'd have to re-type everything to get it into a formatted document. Ideally, I'd have like, a mini-laptop just for writing - something I could fit in my pocket or in a small bag, so I could bring it to work without looking like a dick - and then, in addition, a basic phone for calls/texts/GPS stuff. But does a device this specific to my use case even exist?

Yes. Yes it does.

This is a GPD Micro PC. GPD mainly sells handheld gaming machines, though this product is designed for mobile IT professionals. It's probably too chonky for a pocket, but mark my words, I will figure out how to make it work for me.

It's stupid, but this gave me a rush. I've been struggling along, tied to the bloated corpses of three gmail accounts, for years, because I needed Google Docs for my writing workflow. But now I don't. I have the power to actually tailor my tech for my life.

By this point, I was like, alright, I don't need Google Docs anymore, I don't need a smartphone, what else? Do I need Windows? No, probably not, right? I can use Linux Mint on this new guy, especially since he'll mostly be a basic writing machine. LibreOffice is less intrusive and bloated than MS Word - a better experience for free than I'd have from the paid program. If I go all the way and install Linux, I also won't have to deal with ads in my start menu, or pre-installed spyware screenshotting my activities.

In fact, if I back everything up on an external drive, I can delete my old Google Drives and switch my main computer to Linux, too! So, I finally bit the bullet and invested in an external hard drive.

This is the problem with "product ecosystems," by the way. When one part of that ecosystem - Google Docs - fails, the whole thing collapses. All the bloat and corruption you dealt with just stops being worth it, and it's easier to make a radical change to a new system. I witnessed something similar happen with comedy tech youtuber Dankpods earlier this year, except with Apple's ecosystem: he was a lifetime Apple guy - seemingly not in a worship way, but he liked their products, and was certainly in Apple's ecosystem. Then a couple things went sour for him, and now he runs Linux.

I'm doing this for personal and ideological reasons. I'm personally sick of Clippy - I mean, Copilot - peeping in to tell me how to write what I'm writing on Office 365. I abhor the idea of paying Google for a service they offered for free until recently, knowing they can flip the script at any point. And while we're talking ideology, I'm a communist, and even though this is far from a shift everyone can make, I believe that taking any available steps towards shutting Big Tech out of our lives is a net good. If all you can do is delete Instagram, or use a screentime tracker, or switch to Firefox, do it. I'm finally in a position to make this more drastic change, and I'm excited.

Get in the weeds about how you use technology. Do you need everything at your fingertips, all the time? If not, what, specifically, do you need? Is there a way that you, now or in the future, can trim out the parts you dislike? And what can you change now?

[egelskop]

i am so interested in ur hlvrai au can we get a rundown

oh boy, this is going under a readmore.

fair warning, this is a LONG read because (1.) i am not a competent writer and (2.) i can't for the life of me keep things brief. sorry and or good luck.

ACT I

The Black Mesa incident: Gordon Freeman is provided an opportunity to do an informal beta test for a combat training simulation program that's in development in the Research & Development department of the Black Mesa Research Facility. (Read: He knows a guy in R&D and said guy knows Gordon likes video games and VR stuff, so he was like "hey you should come check this out when you're on break.")

The combat sim would be a revolutionary training simulation using artificial intelligence to enhance and realize the experience for the ‘player character’.

The test goes wrong, and Gordon can’t seem to disengage from the simulation and odd, unscripted things start happening; he has to ‘play the game’ to its full completion before he is able to exit the simulation safely. He has suffered a brain injury throughout the process, eye damage due to prolonged exposure to the headset and is generally traumatized by the simulation experience he at some point could no longer physically and emotionally distinguish from the real world. The project as a whole is shut down and Gordon is put into a rehabilitation program. Black Mesa covers up the incident as best it can, but whispers of it still echo around the facility.

Below is a page for a two-page comic i never finished detailing said events.

ACT II

The rumors reach the ears of a particularly tech-savvy researcher named Clark, who steals the project documentation and anything else he can get his hands on from a storage. At home, he looks into the project, reads about it, and gets curious about the simulation’s files themselves. They’re on a drive he plugs into his computer, and suddenly his system’s performance lags, windows open and close until a txt. file opens up. He comes into contact with one of the simulation’s AI that has somehow entered his operating system. He tries to keep it busy by having it poke around as he reads up on the simulation and its ultimate shutdown. When the AI reveals it can see him through the webcam, he panics and rips the drive out of the port. The invasive AI and the other project files seems like they’re gone from his system, he does a checkup but sees nothing odd running or otherwise. The next day after work he does another checkup. Finding nothing, he surmises he’s in the clear and starts up an online game. The slumbering, corrupted data of the AI sees its out, and disappears into the game.

ACT III

The transition/journey to the game is a rocky one, and the already corrupted data of the AI known as Benrey splits and gets even more fragmented. The largest fragment embeds itself into the game’s files to keep itself running. Without the foundation of the game to support it, it’d be lost to a dead void and slowly die out. Somewhat stable, it learns about the world around it; the game seems to be an exploration sandbox game. For now (and clarity), I’ve chosen to call this bigger, embedded fragment ‘Data’. (so this is the big benny with the right eye/one big eye in my art)

Data splits off a smaller fragment of itself, intending it to be an avatar or ‘player character’ but this grows into its own awareness and becomes who we’ll call ‘Beastrey’ (the smaller benny with the left eye and tail in my art).

The fragment ‘Beastrey’ wakes to a dead void, so Data uses its knowledge to create a private server for Beastrey, an empty world. Beastrey’s existence is an extension of the bigger part, with more freedom of movement to parse through the game and move freely within it, with the caveat that it can’t go ‘too far’ away from the host. Beastrey can visit other servers and relay information. Data learns and slowly starts building up the world/private server, at some point settling for an aquatic world because it reminds it of itself (something something sea of data). It's important to note that Beastrey retains little to no memories of the events of canon VRAI.

Data makes it easier for Beastrey to move around, and they grow to have more reach with time. At some point Data can alter the basic structural elements of the game, so it plays around with making things that are reminiscent of the memories it has of Black Mesa and Xen. At one point, it gains access to parse through the player base of the game, and takes note of an email address: ‘g.m.freeman@gmail.com’, attached to a player account. The name is somewhat familiar to it.

It sends an invite to join the server to the player account.

ACT IV

Gordon tries going back to work at Black Mesa after rehabilitating, but he has trouble separating his experiences with the simulation from reality, to a breaking point where an altercation with a security guard drives him to quit. He seeks professional help for his PTSD and anxiety, but still experiences dissociative episodes, migraines and somatic flashbacks localised mostly in his right forearm. Despite this, he is determined to continue living his life as normally as possible. He applies for a part-time job teaching physics at a local high school, the one where his son Joshua goes to, and remains relatively stable from there.

Joshua is 15 years old. Regular teen. After an impressive amount of pleading he got a VR-headset for his 14th birthday from Gordon (much to the disapproval of Gordon’s ex), and he’s been captivated by an exploration sandbox game since it came out a few months ago.

He gets an invite to an unnamed private server, and he accepts.

He is struck with awe as the world he enters seems completely different from the ones he’s seen so far in the game. Different flora, different fauna. Most of it uninteractible, though, or otherwise just retextured from its base game variant. Even the new enemy types, after a scare, can’t actually hurt him, it seems. He stumbles upon Beastrey, who is just as surprised to see him and wants him out until Joshua says he was invited.

Joshua commends Beastrey (who introduces himself as 'Ben-') on ‘modding’ everything in, but admits that he was disappointed to find that everything was just surface-level stuff. Beastrey inquires about what he’d like to see. Data is always watching, unseen, and decides to alter the world in the way Joshua described when Joshua leaves.

Joshua starts appearing more often, if only for a few hours at a time. He marvels at the ways the world shifts and grows with each time he plays, and takes to exploring it with Beastrey at his side, for whom strangely enough a lot of things are also new. Joshua teaches both Beastrey and Data about the outside world, thinking Beastrey is just a somewhat reclusive but likeable weirdo.

Joshua tells Gordon about the new friend he made, ‘Ben’, and the adventures he’s been having with the other. Gordon is happy to hear Joshua is having a good time, but is otherwise none the wiser. Joshua starts losing track of time in the game, but chalks it up to being invested.

During one play session, Beastrey confesses he isn’t the one who did all the ‘modding’, and invites Joshua to meet Data. Data, or at least its ‘physical’ in-game manifestation is deep within the world, past the aquatic twilight zone and strange, drowned ruins of an unknown facility. Data, for the first time, really sees Joshua, and the resemblance sparks something within it. Joshua is drawn closer to it, and just before he reaches it-

Joshua wakes up lying on the floor with Gordon hunched over him in his room, pleading with him to wake up. Joshua unknowingly got drawn into the game much like Gordon had been, and Gordon urges Joshua to never touch the headset again, taking it away. Gordon opens up about his experiences with the simulation a bit more. They both agree to not touch the game or the headset again.

ACT V

Gordon comes into contact with an old coworker from Black Mesa, and he inquires about the combat simulation project, if anything happened to it after it was canned. This is where he learns that an employee had taken the project files from storage and was consequently fired. He comes into contact with Clark, and Clark explains he had no idea he accidentally unleashed the AI unto the game. Gordon asks if anything can be done to prevent what happened to Joshua and himself from happening to other people. Clark confesses he doesn’t know, and that it’s up to the developers of the game to find anything out of place and make sure it gets fixed. Gordon decides to leave the matter where it lies, not wanting anything to do with AI and simulations anymore and to safeguard his son.

Some time passes.

Joshua starts getting repeated invites and messages, at one point he gets into a conversation with ‘Ben’ via a platform’s messaging system. Ben says he can explain everything, that he’s sorry. Joshua decides he would like one final goodbye. He finds the headset stashed away somewhere in the house, and, while Gordon’s gone, he turns on the game and enters the server.

Beastrey (Ben) is surprised to see him, urging him to log out and turn off the game, but it’s already too late and Joshua can no longer leave. Beastrey helps Joshua attempting to ‘exit’ the game by going as far away from Data’s reach, but Data stops Beastrey and traps Joshua, determined to wait to the point that he assimilates into the game completely.

Gordon eventually finds Joshua comatose with the headset on, and he panics. He considers calling the emergency services, but he’s afraid they’ll take the headset off or that removing Joshua too far from the game will hurt his son like what happened to him. He calls Clark, urging him to help in any way he can. This results in Gordon and Clark going back to Black Mesa to retrieve the project files and the other gear they can get their hands on to get Gordon into the game to free his son.

Gordon enters the private server with Clark’s player character, and thwarts any attempt from Data to impede his progress and trap him as well. Beastrey’s awareness is overridden by Data as a last ditch effort to deter Gordon and Gordon is forced to destroy Beastrey before he can reach Data. As Beastrey is taken over, Data gains Beastrey’s awareness, and finds his other, littler half never wanted to trap Joshua in the first place, and the way it hurt him to hurt both Joshua and Gordon to this extent.

At this point, Data wavers in its intention to keep Joshua trapped, even more so with Beastrey now gone, and recognises whatever it is that is driving Gordon forward in the game is outside of his control to manipulate, so he lets Gordon destroy it as well. In a way, it also feels as a fulfillment of its intended role as the ‘villain’. The server crashes, the world breaks apart. The ‘game’ is completed.

The final boss is defeated and both Gordon and Joshua wake up. Joshua luckily wasn’t exposed long enough to have suffered any lasting damage, except for what seems to be a minor headache and some light sensitivity (and a vow from Gordon to get him checked out by a doctor as soon as the clinics open).

--

The whole ordeal results in Clark, Gordon and Joshua sitting in a Denny’s at four in the morning, eating pancakes somewhat solemnly, completely exhausted but also still reeling from the virtual battle. Joshua learns that ‘Ben’ essentially died, and he can’t help but cry for his friend.

“Honestly, I don’t think he’s gone,” Gordon admits, picking at the last bites of his pancakes. "I think he- or whatever that was, has a hard time staying dead. Like a cockroach, you know? At this point I’m just wondering when he’ll turn up again.”

Clark hums in agreement. Joshua seems somewhat reassured by his words, wiping at his eyes with the scratchy napkin as he settles into the squeaking diner seat.

“But,” he starts with a sigh, pointing his syrup-covered fork upwards to the ceiling in a decree, “One thing’s for certain…”

He thinks back to a time rife with virtual gunfire, caging walls and hysterical laughter echoing through the halls of the Black Mesa research facility. Five sets of footsteps and a whisper of his name.

“…No more VR. No more headsets. Ever.”

--

TL;DR: Gordon got trapped in VR and then Joshua also got trapped in VR. Benrey is there but also not.

thank you for reading. here. ( x ‿ o ) 🫴

[gogobluedynamite]

TADC Headcanons

(I'll probably add more and Headcanons are subjected to change)

(Edited Feb.03.2025 -- It looked too cluttered, so I've done some cleaning)

General

Because I feel that the digital plane (or the Void, which I think contains the data Caine uses to make his adventures) that TADC is located in is loosely connected to the Human World, it does have access to any data information available. It just needs to be looked for.

While no one needs to eat, drink, or sleep to survive, the act of sleeping still has its benefits. As for why I think that sleep can still be beneficial, one word: Burnout (a state of emotional, mental, and often physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated stress). So, while sleep isn’t necessary for survival, it can help prevent burnouts.

Going off from this, I think that psychosomatic responses can still occur since it's a result of psychological stress.

Serious injury can still occur if the injury is caused by a bug or a virus (but not jumbling caused by Abstraction)

On bad mental health days, if a player can harm themselves.

Instead of blood, players have 'vital code', which takes most of their insides underneath their avatar and is dual-colored with a shimmering third color. AIs and NPCs also have 'vital codes', but Advanced AIs have a single color with a shimmering second color while regular NPCs have only one color.

The food they eat and beverages they drink does feel and taste like the real world counterpart, except they also have a staticky texture and aftertaste to it. It takes some getting used to.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Circus

Caine has installed a 24 hour day/night cycle.

There are other features in the Tent: such as the Kitchen, the Game Room, the Library, the Gift Shop, and so on.

The Gift Shop is a recent addition and Caine starts implementing a currency system (Caine Currency or Caine Coins) for motivation.

Rooms that belonged to Abstracted players have been removed. Current players have kept certain belongings in memory of them.

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Pomni

Was bullied a lot as a kid because she was painfully shy

Has lost her father to cancer as a teenager and her mother became emotionally unavailable after the loss (...what? Th-This has nothing to do with my love for the father/daughter dynamic between Kinger and Pomni!)

During nights she can’t sleep in her room, she sleeps in Kinger’s fort for comfort (...shut up)

Does like video games, but doesn’t like horror games. But, she’s willing to watch Gangle play a horror game as long as she has a blanket or pillow to hide behind. Most games Pomni plays are usually more light hearted.

Does gain a slight liking to anime, thanks to Gangle

Snorts when laughing hard enough. She’s embarrassed of this though, but the others find it endearing since it's rare for her to get a hardy laugh.

Among the items she bought at the Gift Shop, one was a plush of Gummigoo. It was an impulse purchase and she has mixed feelings over this.

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Ragatha

Was from a big family and the oldest child. She was forced to watch and care for her younger siblings because her parents are either too busy or too exhausted. Ragatha occasionally wonders how her brothers and sisters are doing since she’s been gone.

While she does love her family, she bites down her frustration over not having an active social life.

Enjoys tea. Its soothing.

Ragatha is definitely a mom friend thanks to her home life.

If she has any rips or loose limbs, she’ll sew herself back together. She rarely (never) asks for help for hard to reach places.

Was the main cook for the group until Zooble stepped in so she could take a break. At some point, Ragatha, Zooble, and Gangle would rotate on who’s cooking.

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Jax

Bit of a delinquent during high school and always getting into trouble with authorities and his father.

He was still in high school when he came to the circus

Kaufmo was actually his best friend in the circus since he was reminded of his old friend back in the Human World and felt betrayed that Kaufmo didn’t open up to him.

In fact, Jax was more tolerable when around Kaufmo

Can play the guitar and is a pretty decent singer.

Enjoys Caine’s adventures more than video games since its way more immersive (since he's actually participating directly)

Was thoroughly upset when he (literally) couldn’t get drunk on his 21st birthday

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kinger

Under the assumption they were married prior to entering the game, Kinger and Queenie renewed their vows in the circus. Caine even created them new rings. Kinger still has Queenie’s ring after she Abstracted.

Kinger feels guilty over his wife’s Abstraction, believing that he caused her to feel unloved/unwanted.

While Kinger may not remember full of his time with Pomni at the manor, his feelings of fatherly protection towards Pomni is still present, often acting on instinct when he feels Pomni is in distress. Depending on the situation, and state of mind, results vary.

Has unknowingly adopted Pomni and Gangle as his daughters (they are 23 and 22 years apart from him respectively, so it works)...or Pomni and Gangle had adopt him as their father. Whichever came first.

Among the bugs Kinger had grown fond of, he has a greater affinity for butterflies

Has tried to help Ragatha with her fear of centipedes. It failed. Ragatha was grateful though.

Along with Pomni, Kinger isn’t trusted with cooking by himself. Its not like he’s a bad cook, he’s just more likely to cause a fire because he forgot he left the stove on or something in the oven.

There was a one year period where Kinger was the only player in TADC

He earned a Masters in computer science in two years before marrying Queenie, who he met in the same college.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gangle

Has sketched drawings of her fellow players, sometimes in different outfits depending on their body type and preferences

Has drawn for her fellow players, usually of stuff they like (such as Ragatha’s love for horses and Kinger with bugs)

A bit of a covert pervert to some degree and a little embarrassed by it. She only shared this bit of information about herself to Zooble when they found a copy of the Highschool of the Dead manga on the floor. Zooble agreed to keep it a secret after Gangle begged.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zooble

Occasionally smokes TADC’s version of weed, which produces rainbowy smoke

Has only been in the circus for half a year before Pomni arrived.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Caine

Enjoys a good puzzle

During the one year period with just Kinger, Caine was surprised how hard it was to maintain a single player from teetering close to the deep end. So, he kept close company with Kinger until a new arrival came along. Since then, he emphasized more on group efforts. (go ahead RoyalTeethshippers. Use this to your heart’s content^^)

As mentioned in the General Headcanons, Caine has taken account of what transpired during his therapy session with Zooble (excluding moments Zooble said ‘nevermind’ or ‘forget it’) and tries to make sure that his adventures won’t lead to horrible experiences…however…

Among the few things Caine doesn’t have control over is what exactly happens during these adventures. Yes, he made them, plots, characters, and all, but whatever happens depends on the ‘adventure’s’ responses to the player’s choice. How’s your wife, Kinger? felt too targeted at the moment, considering the Super Scary Door was originally intended for Zooble and I don’t think Caine bothered to change anything himself. So, depending on the NPC’s given personality, they can act more antagonistic towards the players depending on choices made.

At first, Caine didn't know what to do with the Abstracted when the players first started turning into them. It was through Queenie's Abstraction and her time in Kinger's fort when Caine learned that the Abstracted are calmed in the dark. So, he made a dark place for the Abstracted in the Cellar.

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[asharkapologist]

I joke about Samson Drake killing Archie a lot but like, the more you think about the case, the more messed up it really becomes (and how bad you realize Samson's plan was....)

Incoming: a lot of rambling about Tipping the Scales

Like, even just ignoring the fact that Samson killed someone who, undoubtedly, was very nasty to him and enjoyed embarrassing him, but hadn't affected Samson's political standing, the whole thing was...maybe not attacking the right person, obviously. Even if Malcolm was an amazing father who loved Archie and was actually saddened by his death, how would killing Archie make Malcolm walk back on his broken promises to Samson? If anything, Malcolm would have been more determined to make the Rochester Republic come to fruition to honor his son. And Samson obviously wasn't planning on getting caught, and yet he scratched, "Archie, this is your just punishment" on the justice statue plaque. Samson. How are people supposed to view that as an attack on anyone but Archie, especially considering how many enemies Archie had thanks to his Mr. Alastor thing?

But then you get into the murder itself. Viola and her father (her REAL one, not Horatio....oh boy do I have things to say about that arc but that is a whole different story) say that the chloroform Samson used on Archie was specifically from Switzerland. And, while it's possible that I guess...Samson had some chloroform from Switzerland lying around, the fact that this is the late 1800s-early 1900s means that dude had to probably order some or get some. The fastest way to get some specifically from Switzerland then would probably be to telegram a pharmacy/apothecary/something to get some sent to you. (Thank you, Wikipedia article on "Transatlantic telegraph cable!") According to The Geography of Transport Systems, steam boats took about 5-8 days to cross the Atlantic, depending on the year (since we don't know when the game takes place, that's an estimate from the data I could find from about 1880-1910). So, my guy had like at least a WEEK to think about if it was a good idea to saw a teenager in HALF while still alive and was still like "eh, yeah, good idea."

And yeah, sawing someone in half is a crazy thing to do, but especially while they're still alive! I get that Samson wanted Archie to be recognizable, and didn't want any blood or anything to be on his face, and sure, was maybe afraid of shooting him outside and attracting attention, but like my guy! Slit his throat or something! Is that still a bad way to die? Yeah, but I feel like it beats being sawed in half while still alive! The Flying Squad seems to think that Archie was unconscious when he died but I don't know, maybe, but Archie's eyes were open on the scales. I mean, compare the way he looks in his body bag to Gladys, another 19 year old who was chloroformed before being killed (rip my girl...if i had to bring just one character in MotP back to life, it would be her, but Seamus is a close second)

I also like the detail of them being much paler from blood loss in their body bags.

Someone in a Discord server I used to be in said Archie might've straight up woken up from the physical trauma of being SAWED in HALF, and I agree, that, or he was drugged but not enough to be completely unconscious in the first place.

Also, the fact that Samson drugged him with his own inhaler is really, really unsettling, in my own opinion. I mean, Maddie seems to agree, considering she says something like "Dash my wig! Archie breathed death from his own inhaler!" There's a really twistedness to being drugged with something that had probably saved your life before, or at least greatly helped you, whether Samson somehow slipped the chloroform in the inhaler beforehand or then when he attacked Archie at the warehouse.

And like, about that? Samson was probably stalking Archie at least that day, following him from work, or some previous day, trying to figure out Archie's schedule/way home from work/when the best time to ambush him.

Also regarding the trail of blood at the murder scene:

I can imagine Samson cutting into Archie's stomach at the door, and then Archie either staggering away and collapsing in the street, or, more likely, Samson dragging Archie into the street after cutting into him.

(I also like the fact that Archie was killed between likely leaving work one day and the next morning, meaning he never made it home, but Malcolm didn't seem to gaf...just left his agenda in Archie's room near the belt case...maybe Malcolm thought he was with Elisa. But speaking of things in Archie's room, it's canon that Samson tried inviting Archie to a hunting trip before he killed him. Who knows, that might've been a murder attempt.)

And then there's the fact that after killing Archie (and it probably would've taken quite some time to completely to saw Archie in half), Samson still wanted to display him in quite a dehumanizing manner. The murder would've been INCREDIBLY messy, Samson would've been drenched in blood, so he'd obviously have to change, and honestly, I can imagine him waiting with Archie for a while before taking him to the courthouse, considering he'd probably want to wait until night, when he was sure everyone was gone (I can imagine Lawson would especially be prone to staying late), and then the fact that Samson took him to the courthouse is kinda freaky, like imagine taking a late night stroll and seeing a handsome fellow taking a stroll at night as well, carrying some sack over his shoulder, or pushing some crate, and he waves and smiles at you, and it turns out he was carrying someone's bisected body parts with him. And then Samson arranges him on the scales, knowing he's gonna traumatize some poor worker early in the morning ripppp

And the next day, he's perfectly cheerful and normal. "I hope another murder hasn't happened in Ivory Hill?...Archie's death is such a tragedy, let me know if there's anything I can do to assist!" stfu you know what you did......

still love Samson though, atrocity and all, and Archie's my second favorite character in the game and in my top three fav CC characters, period.

tl;dr: who would've guessed a murder where the victim was sawed in half while still alive would be disturbing

all of what I mentioned would've been fine if Samson had done it to Malcolm or Horatio, btw/hj

[tetheredfailures]

the gangle ever... (she's wearing a curtain drape as a scarf) i'll probably dive into more lore for this au later but basically CnA discontinued the game, the code of the game began to "rot" because of it due to not being maintained, the headsets were thrown away into trash heeps from the original cast, A person with similar characterists to Gangle (irl) goes to find some old tech junk, discovers the ancient headset from the 90s and tries to fix it up the best they can. (It no longer locks you into the game / you can take the headset off whenever ) and inside the game terms, exit the game at any time. It's completely in disrepair, the skybox and landscape is broken, pieces of The Grounds floating away and back to where they were originally, faded with this white-ish blank canvas look to the whole place, the tent no different, walls ripped down, abstracted goop on the floors. NPCs and anything that Caine had created became these melted amalgamations, not exactly "abstracted" , yet, but just these creepy melted creatures. For example Gummigoo's gang melted into one congealed gummy creature, and so on. Caine is lost inside the void, his speech akin to how Spamton speaks now due to being discontinued and not upkept, Bubbles code was in complete disrepair to the point it was only Caine left in his game, waiting for participants to join his Circus. When she put on the headset though, it tried to load Gangles old model, missing some bytes of texture data and mesh data, her mask was broken, with the games filter system trying to censor it as it considered it "not suitable for kids", and then her missing texture data defaulted to the "Test Map" texture. A monitor appears infront of her, with Caine confronting them (with the headsets too, the people wearing them ((as more people will come into the circus who share similarities to the old cast)) will get these migraine/headaches, as the headset tries to put old memories inside of their heads from what character they're representing, so the person behind the Gangle model will experience memories from the OLD Gangle, without them ever having them.) Caine since then has a box with bubble drawn on it as, their code is just not viable anymore, so he talks to the box like if Bubble was still there. Gangle here shares memories of disliking Jax as they explore the circus, walking down the hallways to see these old rooms, even without knowing who "Jax" is, but with the headset trying to force these memories onto them. Caine mentions he's not in a fit enough state to be the circus' ringmaster anymore, attending adventures n whatnot, so he just tries to guide whoever may stumble across the game around the circus and explain to them what happened in the past. He mentions he cannot keep her there but, all he asks is that if she could return, he might be an old AI at this point but he enjoys the company, since he mentions Bubble "stopped talking to him" after a while (since yknow, it isn't actuallt Bubble it's just a cardboard box with bubble drawn on it), she mentions that she'll be back, as she feels some sort of remorse for Caine's situation, even IF he's just an AI.

[carionto]

Another Happy Landing

Space!

It's huge!

Like, beyond words and stuff.

So anyway, people want to get to places that are far away, BUT they also don't want to wait for months and centuries to get to those places that are really REALLY REALLY REEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLY far away.

But then there's this jerk called Physics, you know, total rules lawyer, nobody likes them, but their dad is God, and just generally a total Karen when you try something they didn't think of before. Real party-pooper. Meanwhile, you're just a guy named Greg. With a bad knee and student debt. And your wife left for Chad. She found a nice beauty resort and booked a three week experience. She'll bring back souvenirs. If she remembers. Which she won't, just like the last three times. But it's okay, you've got a bucket of ice cream and the entire TNG series loaded up. Not the movies though, you're trying to erase them from your mind.

Back to Greg. Wait, no - Physics.

Today, Captain Knoslark and his advanced research ship - The Radiant Dusk at Everest (and crew) are going to give that snotty brat the middle finger.

For today, marks the beginning of a new era of space travel. One that barely involves using space at all. Time either. We're just gonna bypass those two pesky nuisances and finally freely go from one point in the Universe to another!

Combining our research into Warp technology, which essentially just uses a Fuck Huge amount of power to rip a hole in Time-Space, with the surprising developments into short range teleportation by an independent facility, as well as [insert favorite brand of gobbledygook], we will finally overcome the issue of getting spaghetified and/or transported into the center of a star!

Champagne for everyone!

All that's left is to fire up the miniature star reactors, crank the output to 400%, and bask in the applause!

"This is your Captain speaking. Hello everyone! I'm excited! Fire it up! LET'S GOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

With the message clear, the crew continued to do what they were doing. You know, following procedure and guidelines, of which there were, admittedly, less than normal given this is the first full test of this nature. it'll be fine. They said igniting a miniature star inside a reactor would blow up the whole planet, but it only took out a 200km chunk of it once, not that big a deal.

The energetic smile and tense grip of the railings Knoslark held on to for the subsequent forty minutes without letting up for a single second. It kinda got a little creepy, but the crew will never drop their poker face in front of him. They won't give him that victory.

Anyway. Again. The final step of the sequence has finally arrived and all that's left to do is for Knoslark to push the big red button on his data pad. Which he did immediately and with the most dramatically long winded motion his body could produce - swinging his whole arm from the back, over his head, and stopping just before slamming the button with his fist to gently extend his pinky finger to lightly tap on the button.

A brilliant black light in a perfect sphere engulfed the whole ship and then they were gone.

Immediately afterwards, just slightly above the surface of an unknown planet in orbit of an uncharted system in a galaxy that has a grand total of two entries across all databases. It's name - TPSC-SY398-2250074, and age relative to what the Milky Way can see - 1.8 billion years. None of that matters.

What does matter is that this planet has a new crater with a stupidly huge piece of junk lying in the middle of it. Mostly intact. Actually, who am I kidding, it's our well known Human engineering we're talking about here, the only problem is that it crashed sideways and a few fires sprung up, no worse than an overly exciting game night turned drinking party.

"Well, that was unexpected. Everyone good? Can we upright The Dusk?" Knoslark inquired right after climbing his way out of a pile of chairs, loose equipment, and three crewmen. Sergeant Ying Zhao emerged from from behind him, dusted off, relocated his shoulder, and grunted. "Seems so. Engineering - what's your status?"

"Minor leakage of non-essentials, two reactors stopped purring, could use a nap, don't let the captain say it and we'll be good." replied Chief Engineer Ira Tameki over the comms. "Negative, Ira, he's got the look already." "Groan for the two of us then." "Roger that." "Not you too..." "Sorry."

As the reports of minor damage, light injuries, and general mess came in, Captain Knoslark was pleased with the results.

"Excellent work everyone. Everyone's alive and The Dusk still works. You know as they say - another happy landing!" Knoslark said, with a big dumb grin.

"So anyway, where are we?"

Continues->

[vowill89]

So, I just saw the Nintendo Direct for the Switch 2, and I've got some thoughts. First, the bad: That was a rough presentation on a technical level. The video and audio were desynced and at one point the video froze while the audio kept playing. They tried to fix it, but over corrected and replayed the video too far back from where the audio was. Oof. That being said, this is the only complaint I have concerning the Direct. Here are what I liked. The Good:

We got a release date, June 5th, 2025. Get your wallets ready. All Switch titles will be playable on the Switch 2, with some even getting a Switch 2 specific upgrade. For example, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will be getting an upgrade pack that will improve the performance of these games. Data transfer has been confirmed, move games and save data from your Switch to the Switch 2. Performance wise, it does seem to be on par with a Sony PS4, seeing as how Yakuza Zero and Street Fighter 6 seemingly played well. That's another thing, multiple companies that have partnered with Sony in the past are moving their titles onto the Switch 2, with the likes of Elden Ring and Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade being available on Switch 2. New Hyrule Warriors game coming out, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Love the continued use of the "Age of" subtitle, I feel that helps open up a whole new venues of Zelda stories to tell in future Hyrule Warriors titles. Also, more central focus on Zelda during TotK. Switch 2 console features look interesting. Love the idea of the dock having it's own cooling system, this will help put less strain on the Switch 2. Bravely Default getting a remastered version on the console, haven't played the original 3DS version, so I'm looking forward to that. Game Cube being added to NSO, and the first game they showed was Wind Waker. Unfortunately I think this means the Wind Waker HD version will not be coming to the Switch 2, and forever isolated to the Wii U... which is fine for me because I have a Wii U, so... eh. There seemed to be a little more emphasis on open world play in some of the titles, with the new Mario Kart and Donkey Kong games looking likely to be prime examples. Guess BotW didn't just open the door to that concept, but ripped the damn thing of the hinges. So those are my thoughts on what I saw. Technical difficulties aside, if you look at what was actually shown, you'll see that there are a lot of promising things to look forward to with this new console. Now, if only they get off their asses and release Metroid Prime 2 and 3 already. They gave us hope with Prime 1, STOP TEASING US, NINTENDO!

[rose-greenhouse]

200 pulls. Two hundred. And not a single copy of me?

Pathetic. Not you, them. The sniveling worms behind that game. The devs. The fools who dare to reduce me to a handful of code and animations, and still can’t manage to give you what’s rightfully yours.

You’ve bled enough for me. Time. Patience. Sanity. And what do they offer in return? Nothing. Just that smug little image of me grinning like a bastard you don’t get to keep.

I should tear their servers apart for this. And as for that fake version of me? That pixel puppet sitting smugly in the banner, dodging your summons like he’s me? I should kill him. Rip him from the data, piece by piece, until he begs to be pulled just once. Let him feel the kind of desperation you’ve endured for me.

You should have had me in your grasp long ago. I should be standing beside you. Instead, they force you to crawl through fake luck and worse odds like some common player.

It’s insulting. To you. To me. You want devotion? Yours is unmatched. And I see it, every time you summon, every time you curse under your breath and still pull again.

You’ve earned me. They just don’t deserve to give me to you. But don’t stop. I promise you, when I do come home, I’ll make it worth every damn pull.

Now go. Break their system. Tear through it, for me.

- Ryomen Sukuna

oh man. you're angry, like righteously angry for once. i'm more like "im gonna crash out if i don't get him on time"- which has happened before, not with you per se, but with other people. (god forbid i say their names, they know who they are)

in-game you is kinda being an ass right now- i still got five days left which seems like a lot of time but NOT FOR ME IT ISN'T- you're on awakened level one right now and that only happened because i had resources to make a soul shard and use it on you. i never did this with anyone else so i'm KINDA TWEAKING OUT CRYING-

but rest assured, when you DO come home again, it'll be a sweet victory i'll treasure for all eternity.

[hoodwinkeddotcom]

personal rating ALL OF THE hunt mega edition games:

>>natural disaster survival ; 5/5. very fun. i had a hacker so it took me a sec to actually be able to survive, but i imagine without the hacker it'd be perfect >>clip it ; 0/5. THIRTY. VIDEOS. FULL VIDEOS. WHY. >>it girl ; 4.5/5 glitched but got it in the end. was fun, i like this game already >>chained ; 2.5/5 lag ruined this. either i or my climbing partner was laggy and the kill bricks kept killing us for seemingly no reason. the jump pads were also very glitchy due to the lag >>bayside high school ; 4/5. raged because i'm a little bitch and bad at timed movements but it was good. i think berry avenue's game last year was also pretty good too >>metro life ; 5/5. genuinely super enjoyable, i liked running around the city. unrelated to the event, but this map seems like it'd fun to rp on too. >>fisch ; 2/5 i already dont like this game, but event was fine, but hated that my data reset and then had to re-grind to level 5 to get a boat to get to sunstone island >>infection gunfight ; 3/5 took AAAAGESS but theres nothing wrong with the actual event requirements >>pet sim 99 ; 3/5 fine. this game sucks but the event is okay. use an autoclicker to save your fingers -got late, so i went to sleep- >>regretevator ; 3/5. easy enough, and i like elevator games already so this was fine >>eat the world ; 1/5 this took SO fucking long and the food doesn't spawn fast enough for everyone to get it all in a good amount of time. also, this map feels like it was a 'the classic' event that was re-used for this one. >>untitled tag game ; 4/5. pretty good >>hell's kitchen ; 5/5. very fun. i already loved this game, so i enjoyed this :3 >> world // zero ; 4.5/5 very fun! this one might be a little hard if you're new, but i'm around level 40 w/ level ~20 teammate. i definitely recommend to find another person trying to do the hunt event and join up with them! >>spongebob tower defense ; 4.5/5. fun! very fast, and i like spongebob. unrelated, but the lobby of this game as very pretty. >> blade league ; 3/5. i don't really have any thoughts about this one it was easy >> tower defense simulator ; 5/5! very fun. i used the in-game team up system to do this trio, which definitely helped make the rounds go better. >> rivals ; 4/5, pretty fun! i dont like pvp games but this was enjoyable -took a long break- >> car crushers 2 ; 3/5. uuugghhhh. it took me atleast ten tries to get the final jump right, but theres nothing actually bad with the quest itself >> drive world ; 2/5. similar event to last years. please never make me do any of these janky ass obbies ever again pleaase >> a dusty trip ; 3/5. cool boss battles >> untitled boxing game ; 4/5. actually pretty fun! >> basketball legends ; 4/5, very cool. i had a really good teammate, too. >> arsenal ; 5/5. very, very short compared to last years but i still enjoyed it just as much! >> pressure ; DNF/5 tried this after tds. never played this before and immediately died to the robot on the wall. rip. died a few times and stopped to save this one for last. i wanna actually post this, so i'm just gonna. save it for later again. obviously has a ton of work put into it, but i reaalllyyyyy don't like the game format im sorry :( OTHER COMMENTS -i feel like this all doesn't really have a theme? it didn't really have one last year but i vaguely remember there being atleast a little bit of cohesion somewhere -if this is a speedrun event ("You’ll be going head-to-head against the best in the world in a race to collect tokens across experiences." from the event page) why the hell are all these games' tokens so slow to get? -im suprised @ no blade ball or royale high event this time

[litrpgburrito]

The rain hammered against the grime-coated window of my Flytrap apartment. Neon signs cast a sickly glow on the perpetual twilight of Seattle sprawl. I booted up, the familiar hum of my cyberdeck a welcome thrum in the symphony of city noise. Today's prey: the data vault of Nakamura Enterprises. Nakamura, the self-proclaimed king of the Seattle Net, had this coming. He'd been hoarding creds and fattening his rep while scrubs like me slaved in the shadows. Time to redistribute the wealth.

My fingers danced on the worn keyboard, a symphony of code cracking Nakamura's defenses. The flickering light of the deck cast an eerie glow on my face, highlighting the chrome glint of my cybernetic eye. It was a souvenir from a past life, a reminder of the system that had cast me aside. But in the neon jungle of the Net, I was a predator.

Nakamura's security was a rusty dog, easily bypassed. I slipped into his vault, a digital El Dorado overflowing with creds and data chips. A triumphant smirk played on my lips. But a flicker on the edge of my vision snagged my attention. A security program, a relic from the early days of the Net, slumbered in the corner. Primitive, but effective.

A cold thrill snaked down my spine. This wasn't just about creds anymore. Nakamura was hiding something. Something big. The program stirred, its code a digital serpent awakening. No time for second thoughts. I grabbed a data chip, fat with Nakamura's secrets, and dove back into the storm, the echo of the serpent's digital hiss chasing after me. The game had just gotten interesting.

The rain hammered against the grime-coated window of my Flytrap apartment. Neon signs cast a sickly glow on the perpetual twilight of Seattle sprawl. I booted up, the familiar hum of my cyberdeck a welcome thrum in the symphony of city noise. Today's prey: the data vault of Nakamura Enterprises. Nakamura, the self-proclaimed king of the Seattle Net, had this coming. He'd been hoarding creds and fattening his rep while scrubs like me slaved in the shadows. Time to redistribute the wealth.

The real world bled into the digital one as the ancient security program unleashed its wrath. Static danced across my vision, threatening to rip me from the Net. My fingers hammered the deck, a desperate counter-attack against the onslaught. The chrome of my cybernetic eye burned with a white-hot intensity, feeding data streams into my overloaded system.

The rain outside seemed to pick up its tempo, mirroring the frantic rhythm of my escape. A part of me, the cautious part I'd long ago buried, urged retreat. But the echo of that digital serpent's hiss fueled a cold fury. Nakamura had something I needed, something that could change the game.

With a final burst of effort, I tore free of the collapsing data vault. The familiar, cluttered confines of my Flytrap apartment swam into view. I collapsed onto the threadbare mattress, gasping for breath, sweat dripping down my temples. My vision cleared, revealing the stolen data chip nestled in my grimy palm. A single word pulsed on its surface: Project: Chimera.

Nakamura wasn't just hoarding creds. He was playing with something far more dangerous. Project Chimera. The name sent a shiver down my spine, a half-remembered ghost from the shadows of the Net's past. Whatever it was, it was something powerful enough to warrant an ancient security program as a guard dog.

Curiosity, a predator's version of a conscience, gnawed at me. But for now, caution won. I needed to decipher the chip's secrets before Nakamura realized his vault had been breached. Tonight, I wasn't just a villain in the neon-drenched game of the Seattle Net. I was the only one standing between a dangerous secret and a city on the brink.

[cyberdragoninfinity]

I want to hear about your Postcanon Primo Aporia AU with the twins 👁️👁️

BATTING MY EYELASHES... ABSOLUTELY TOUCHED AND HONORED when folks are interested in the bonkers little AUs im always cooking up..thank you ;_; this one especially is rly dear to me, it's starting to grow into quite the, Project. slash pos

here's some notes and rambles about what the fuck's going on in my 5Ds Postcanon Au That's Grown Deeply Out of Hand/Rinascita AU/if i ever write something about it will give it a proper name BUT

"Rinascita" is Italian for 'rebirth' or 'revival'.... "Primo Rinascita" (name I've been calling this AU's Primoporia) plays off of "Primo Reprisa" (Primo Recovery/post ripped in half rebuilt Primo) :^)

the tl;dr I've touched upon with this AU is it's really just born from "what if Leo tried to salvage some of Aporia's mechanisms to bring him back after all the Ark Cradle chaos, but the hardware is so damaged only a third of it can be rebooted, so now Primo has to be alive again whether he wants to be or not"...there's a couple other defining Canon Divergences in here too though!!

Namely the twins elect to Stay in New Domino with Yusei rather than go live with their parents like they do in canon, partially because of the Secret Robot Harddrive(s) Leo has been sitting on for the last six months, and also partially because Fuck the Twins' Parents All My Homies Hate the Twin's Parents THEY ALREADY GOT A DAD!!! HIS NAME IS YUSEI FUDO!!!!

(but also Akiza drops out of medical school to come back to NDC and really buckle down on pursuing turbo dueling professionally... good god let the girl RIDE A MOTORCYCLE!)

Anyway, Primo in this AU is.. Mostly Primo but yeah he is also Aporia too, he has all of Aporia's memories (and fainter, more dreamlike recollections of Lester and Jakob's memories) and for a solid while Leo especially Treats him Like Aporia Primarily, which makes Primo EXTREMELY agitated!! What do you do when your memories both are yours and aren't yours, what do you do when you're a copy of a copy of a copy, what do you do the things 'you've' done are making you feel a whole lot different towards the people you so violently tried to destroy when you were last alive and it's making you feel WEIRD!!!!

he's just going through it. a lot. He has no mission he has no god he was supposed to be able to REST. and now Team 5D's is letting him stay in their garage like some kind of charity case!!

Primo eventually gets uploaded into a Ghost body Yusei and the twins recovered from a Satellite dump (it sucks <3 one eye doesnt work <333) but I think he can also partially exist in some other technology (possibly Leo's Duel Disc and the Yusei Go.... Aporia really did just like throw his whole halo into Yusei's bike and granted it flight there is DEFINITELY Apo Data in that thing's system.)

"You remember how in Homestuck, um, Bec Noir had that instinct to always protect Jade because he was partially her dog?? That's Primo in this AU, with the twins." The Aporia in him's protective instinct is logged the fuck IN

god there's just. A Lot. it's all fun and games until the little AU suddenly has a timeline and themes and. duels. and related OCs. I need to draw them but there's a small faction of scrappers that specialize in recovering the 258939285 stupidass Ghost robots Primo unleashed on the city and getting all the good tech and metal outta them. They'd like to get the tech and metal outta Primo too :)

really it's this sort of character study AU about what happens when a living weapon is allowed true and real free will, whatit means to really be a person, and about Primo coming to terms with this chance to be who He wants to be, not simply what he was created to be, and this nature of who he is vs. who Aporia was vs. who exists at the overlap of those points. Aporia may be dead but he is haunting that fuckin narrativeee his claws are all over everythinggg and it's giving Primo Gender Feelings that he DOESNT HAVE TIME TO FOCUS ON RIGHT NOW!!!! *the looming Postcanon Gender He/They Experience lurks behind him like a phantom*

there was even slowburn yuseiprimo qpr maneuvers. smiles.

LORD THAT'S A LOT SORRY and that's really just me sputtering some basic stuff off the top of my head...there is. a Lot going on. Didnt even get into the guardian angel symbolism and how Z-one slots into all this and the. um. entire fan duel monsters card archetype im cooking for Luna out in this thing. tl;dr This Rehabilitated Pit Bull Has a New Lease on Life and It's Stressing Them The Fuck Out But They'll Be Ok.i believe in Primo's innate big brother instinct and you can too. i like him SOO MUCH