#like… entertainment factor is UP there

[lollytea]

I need to watch Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure to reach my final conclusion on if she's even attracted to men

[aceredshirt13]

So my buddy @oshawolt and I have watched the first two episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, and by far the funniest part about the show is that its complete inability to give teenaged Indy anything like a concrete logical reason to enlist in WWI results in it reading like Indy is willing to go against his friends, his family, his loved ones, all logic, and a significant number of his moral codes, solely because his bestie T. E. Lawrence signed up for the war, and he apparently values that above literally all other aspects of his life.

Like. Listen. In the first episode, Indy joins Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution because he wants to help people, but when a poor villager tells him how even the most just of wars inflict untold suffering on the innocents the soldiers claim to be fighting for, Indy becomes disillusioned with the war effort... only to read a letter + photograph he keeps with him from Lawrence, who says he's joining the war effort in Arabia because he believes it is a cause worth fighting for. And Indy proceeds to immediately forget literally everything he just heard that Mexican villager say and go "fuck it, we ball. and by ball I mean go to the trenches." Indy has decided that the Mexican Revolution "isn't his war", but he's American - WWI in 1916 isn't his war any more than the Mexican Revolution is. So that obviously can't be his justification??

Now, ostensibly he goes because his friend Remy, a Belgian guy he met in Mexico who was fighting for the revolution after his family was killed, decides to go back to Belgium and fight in his own homeland's war instead of the Mexican one. In fact, in the upcoming episodes, he and Remy are together quite a lot. But during the first episode set in Mexico, we are never given to believe that he and Indy are particularly close - they seem like acquaintances at best. Not much time is shown of them together, and we hoped that in the second episode, when the two of them disembark in London and enlist in the Belgian Army, we'd get some of that good old intergenerational friendship energy and really see why Indy, despite not necessarily believing in this war, might want to go to support his friend in Belgium, and his more distant friend in the Middle East.

Nah. Remy ditches Indy for a hot widow almost immediately, and for the entire rest of the episode his ass is GONE. He literally doesn't show up again except to give Indy the papers saying it's time to go to the army, and to be like "oh by the way I'm married now!" at the train station. Bro apparently does not hang out with Indy or tell him anything. Which would be understandable if they were acquaintances, but like??? Aren't they meant to be so close as friends that Indy would up and fight a war with this guy???

Meanwhile, Indy follows a cute girl to a suffragette meeting, they become best friends on the virtue of "speaking an unbelievably unrealistic number of languages" and "having literally identical backstories" (to the point where we found ourselves wishing she'd been Indiana Jones in this show instead, given that she's apparently just his cooler genderbent version played by someone who can act better), meet and get along with his tutor since childhood (who apparently is close enough with Indy now not to want him to enlist in the Army and endanger himself, despite the fact that she disliked Indy so much as a child and allowed him in so many absurdly dangerous situations that we became convinced she was deliberately trying to get him killed in a way that looked like an accident), and eventually fall in love. All through this, Indy helps with the women's suffrage movement, lends money to a poor woman and her children, watches his friend/girlfriend throw a dessert at Winston Churchill (who is in this episode for five minutes because Why The Hell Not I Guess), meets multiple people whose loved ones have been killed in the war, and is told by an older suffragette that one day of the good work he's put in today is worth one year of time in the trenches. At one point, while visiting the girl's family, he is asked why he joined the war effort, and gives an unbelievably vague and evasive answer that all but proves he doesn't even know why. And in the end, he wants to ask the girl to marry him, but she says no - partially because of the implication that she doesn't know him quite well enough to be willing to sign her rights away, and partially because she doesn't know if after the war they'll be two different people.

So let's look at the facts. Here in London, he has friends, family, someone he loves who he could spend a life with and eventually marry after they've established themselves, and a purpose he enjoys with clear, positive results. Sure, he's already signed up for the Belgian Army, but he enlisted under a half-assed fake name that couldn't possibly be traced. He scarcely ever sees Remy - he seems to owe him nothing, and owe his country no allegiance. Why not just... not go when his number is up? What reason on Earth could he have to do anything but stay?

So naturally, he just. He just fucking goes! For no conceivable reason - no conceivable reason other than that Lawrence is also in the war!

Indy's been friends with Lawrence since they met when Lawrence was 20 and Indy was a nine-year-old kid who couldn't act very well - Lawrence asked him to call him "Ned", and he still does (which, for the record, Indy's tutor, who has literally known Lawrence longer than Indy has and is on good terms with him, does not. Apparently she didn't get the nicknaming permission. Rip). Still does, because the only time Indy is able to give a concrete answer about anything in the war is when said tutor angrily asks him why he's enlisted, and he says that "Ned" is in the war! He knows this because apparently Lawrence actually kept his promise to write to him, and they've been writing letters and sending stuff to each other since Indy was a child! And - judging by every other thing in his life suggesting otherwise - Indy values the actions of his pen pal more than anyone else's opinions, his friends and love life, and his own safety and happiness! That doesn't seem like a normal way to react to the actions of a guy you only knew in-person for a few days as a child!

Unless...

...

...In conclusion, world-famous fictional film character Indiana Jones would not have become the person he is if it hadn't been for his gay little crush on real human man T. E. Lawrence.

[paradife-loft]

so this "ethics & legal requirements for research involving human subjects" course I'm doing for class rn hasn't figured out that you don't hyphenate "cisgender," and yet has still somehow heard of "trans broken arm syndrome" and wants to inform us about it being a source of distrust in medical professionals among some trans people. what's happening here....

[martyrbat]

in the newest edition of skinny bitch audacity (fatphobia):

comparing weight gain to... being a meth addict. and that you can look at someone and be qualified to say theyre degrading their health if they arent a small enough size for you to be attracted to them/be 'acceptable'

[IF YOU SHAME ADDICTS ON THIS POST YOURE GETTING BLOCKED. IF YOU SHAME FAT PEOPLE ON THIS POST YOURE GETTING BLOCKED. I WILL NOT WARN YOU TWICE.]

[arkhavens]

had a loose idea for smthn that would fix like all of my issues w where swtors storyline is/has been going.

what if, instead of immediately getting queued for the prelude to kotfe, there was a quest placed right before it where you essentially chose if you want that toon to actually go through the kotfe/kotet expansions, OR to play through the 5 years that the alliance commander is in carbonite?

bc for 1- i really want details on that period, and 2-it seems like Such a fucking lazy cop out to just mention that "oh yeah lol all the class characters just disappear for some reason right when the alliance commander does and their respective govts are fine w that" and act like that Makes Any SENSE.

it would give bioware a chance to actually diversify the story again, it would give players that dont want to lose their companions a way to still continue the story, we could get actual development into why the hell malgus is even alive, it would make the republic and empire being even remotely functional make sense(bc while i could understand the smuggler+bounty hunter dropping off the map, you cannot fucking tell me that the republic losing the Barsen'thor, the Hero of Tython,+Havoc Squad's leader, AND the empire losing the Empire's Wrath, multiple major members of the dark council,+Cipher 9, ALONGSIDE anyone Else that was lost in the fighting, would just be fine.)

and like it wouldnt even need to be a complete chronicle of the 5 years!! we've had major timeskips in game b4, so it could definitely speed past some shit. but just seeing how the empire and republic even managed to hold it together at ALL would be fascinating.

i honestly feel like setting up a sort of branch out -> joining point -> branch out again -> rejoin etc pattern to content could work really well if done properly. it would weave the overarching story together but allow for a lot of diversity in playthroughs, which is what ive seen practically Everyone complaining about.

idk. just, more class content. the little class missions on rishi engaged me more than the entirety of kotfe+kotet, and im saying that as someone who actually kind of enjoyed those expansions the first go around

[rebelband]

cks was making a cameo in my dream and then my alarm woke me up, so. well. okay.

[leatherbookmark]

a thing i have JUST realized, isn't the human brain amazing lol -- is that we talk about izzy's thoughts and feelings on ed, on blackbeard, about how he serves one but not the other, etc, etc, and how it means he never loved or even respected the True Man Underneath It All but rather the bloodthirsty legend of a pirate--

e x c e p t izzy is not the first person who makes the distinction between edward and blackbeard. it's ed himself, when he says "actually, i want to be called edward from now on".

before, when he was with stede, it didn't bother him at all that the crew called him blackbeard. that was his name! he was blackbeard, what else would they call him. only stede and izzy got to "ed" or "edward" him, because they were closer -- stede was his first close friend, izzy was his friend and first mate for decades. (note that fang was with ed the longest, but he doesn't call him by his name! you gotta deserve it.)

izzy doesn't do anything inappropriate or out of proportion when he snaps at the crew to call him blackbeard or captain -- that's who ed is, is supposed to be, to them. they're not friends! they even call stede captain, and have you seen that guy?

it's ed that makes the connection between his current state: draped in fuchsia robes, singing sad songs about how sad he is, showing his vulnerable and emotional state in front of people who are supposed to respect and trust his authority. and by that he splendidly loses that authority, to the point that wee john calls him ed, and when izzy snaps at him for disrespecting his captain, ed goes no, actually, yknow what, do call me edward! and then he goes on to encourage the crew to sing as well and hey, actually, why are we being pirates! we should do a talent show!

the distinction is clear here. before all that, in izzy's eyes, his boss was blackbeard, captain, ed/edward -- different names for different occasions, but one and the same guy. but now? this guy singing songs in a pink bathrobe doesn't want to be called blackbeard, he's edward! ed time now! we're going to eat marmalade and express our feelings in front of everyone! and hold talent shows! Ya Hoo !

yeah, it's no wonder izzy doesn't want that. he wants his competent captain back, and this current dude, edward? he's not him. so, uh,

[poptartmochi]

however.. it's not just blorbo thoughts that haunt me with that song... it's teacher thoughts too! 🤯

[releaseholiday]

You are honestly to god stupid Katty. No, Harry Styles is not promoting a brand like his own if he doesn't own it. It's stupid as fuck and Harry is not stupid. Period.

[elainemorisi]

being in love is SO fun but there are so few people who inspire it whine whine whine

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

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/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[lovelybucky1]

Ain’t as Good as I Once Was

warnings: old man!logan x AFAB!reader, riding, bratting, dom/sub dynamics, daddy kink, age gap, punishment, degradation, 18+ minors dni, divider from @strangergraphics

“C’mon, girlie, if you want it, you’re gonna have to take it yourself,” Logan’s gruff voice says from below you.

You’re sitting on his lap, trying desperately to fuck yourself on his cock as he sigs back and watches you. Despite your begging, Logan refuses to do the work for you.

“I’m too old for this shit. If you’re that fuckin’ horny, you can take care of it yourself,” he told you smugly.

You sank down on his cock and have been trying to bounce on it, but the strain on your thighs is too much to reach a satisfying pace.

“Please, Daddy, can’t you just fuck me?” you whine pathetically. Logan smirks a bit and chuckles through his nose.

“I ain’t as good as I once was, dollface. I doubt my old bones can fuck you the way you want me to,” he says, not seeming apologetic in the slightest.

You know he’s full of shit. He may be old and gray, but his healing factor keeps him in peak condition. He’d be able to fuck you just fine, he’s just a crotchety old man who wants to see you suffer for his entertainment.

He places a large hand on your hip and starts gently guiding you, urging you to rock back and forth. You follow his movements and while it’s better than what you were attempting, it’s still not what you want.

“You’re a spoiled fuckin’ princess, that’s the problem. So used to Daddy takin’ care of ya, you forgot how to ride, is that it?” Shamelessly you bite your lip and nod.

You wouldn’t call yourself spoiled. Well cared for is a better term. Logan never lets his girl go to bed unsatisfied, and now he’s suffering from the consequences of his actions.

“C’mon, flip me over and fuck me,” you say.

Logan raises an eyebrow at you.

“Who do you think you are, givin’ orders? If I want you to ride my cock, then that’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna fuck that pretty pussy with it until she’s had her fill.”

Logan lets go of your hip but you keep up with the same pace he set. With his hand now freed, he reaches over to the nightstand to grab his cigar and lighter. He lights up and smokes it as if he were at the bar, not in bed, deep inside his girl.

He looks up at you, bored, as smoke pours out of his mouth. You’ve been riding the edge of just enough for the past fifteen minutes and you’re getting increasingly frustrated with Logan’s lack of help. You briefly consider being more of a brat in hopes of egging him on enough to punish you with a hard fuck, but with the kind of mood he’s in, it’s likely that the punishment would be stopping entirely.

You let your head hang down as you brace yourself with your hands on his chest. The solid muscle covered in gray hair is hot, unnaturally so, under your touch and you desperately want to feel that heat on your back while he fucks you from behind.

“Daddy,” you plead quietly.

“What’s the matter, dollface?” he asks, playing dumb like the tease he is.

“I can’t do it.”

Logan smirks around his cigar like you just said the magic words he’s been waiting to hear this whole time.

“What’re you saying?”

You pout down at him. “I can’t make myself cum. I need you to do it for me”

Logan, surprisingly, grins at you. “Bet you regret calling me an old man now, huh?”

You furrow your brows in confusion, but you quickly realize what he’s talking about. Before this all started, you pounced on his lap and asked him to fuck you. He told you he was busy reading his book, and in your usual bratty fashion, you replied, “What, you can’t get it up, old man?”

“I didn’t mean it, Daddy,” you whine. “I swear, I was just teasing you.”

Logan hums but makes no effort to move. “Guess you better start behaving if you want something from me.”

“I promise I’ll be good. I won’t talk back anymore,” you attempt to bargain.

You both know that’s about as empty of a promise as you could give, but Logan doesn’t seem to care. He prefers when you’re trouble anyway; it’s the game you play. He’s the grumpy and mean and you’re the spoiled, demanding princess.

Logan stubs his cigar out in the ashtray on the nightstand and places both hands on your hips. He lifts you off of him with ease, something that never fails to amaze you, and sets you on the bed next to him.

He moves so he’s kneeling between your legs and holding them up around his waist, his cock lined up at your entrance.

“Spoiled fuckin’ rotten, you are,” he mutters as he pushes inside.

Logan always makes sure his girl goes to bed satisfied, no matter how much of a brat she is.

[dapperrokyuu]

My fatal flaw is that Ill gravitate towards crime/detective shows even tho I know from experience theyll either be dramatized garbage or played straight predictable.

[erb23]

If nothing else, I think more movies should definitely commit to bigger press tours because I can not be making plans to go see something if I only become aware of it the week of release.

[lith-myathar]

.

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Welcome to my Tuesday morning PSA about plastics!

So--I was walking along the Bolstadt beach approach sidewalk here in Long Beach, WA yesterday afternoon, and I started seeing these little orange pellets on the ground that looked a little bit like salmon roe (but probably weren't). So I picked one up, and it was most definitely rubber. I went around picking up every one I could find, and while I didn't keep exact count I probably amassed 50-60 of them. I took this picture before depositing them in the nearest trash can.

These are airsoft gun pellets, and you can buy them in big jars containing thousands of them. That means that someone who decided that the beach was a great place to shoot their airsoft guns could easily litter the place with countless little bits of plastic rubber in less than an hour. We already have a huge problem here with people leaving trash, including tiny bits of plastic, all over the beach (you should see the gigantic mess after 4th of July fireworks when thousands of people come in from out of town, blow things up, and then leave again without picking up after themselves.)

But these airsoft pellets have a particularly nasty side effect. You know how my first thought was "wow, those look kind of like salmon roe?" Well, we have a number of opportunistic omnivore birds like crows, ravens, and several species of gull that commonly scavenge on the beach, especially along the approaches because people often feed them there. If I can catch the resemblance of an orange airsoft pellet to a fish egg, then chances are there are wildlife that will assume they're edible.

Since birds don't chew their food, they probably won't notice that the taste or texture is wrong--it'll just go down the hatch. And since they can't digest the pellets, there's a good chance they might just build up in the bird's digestive system, especially if the bird eats a large number of them--say, fifty or sixty of them dropped on the ground along the same fifty foot stretch of sidewalk. The bird might die of starvation if there's not enough capacity for food in their stomach--or they might just die painfully of an impacted gut, and no way to get help for it. If the pellets end up washed into the ocean, you get the same issue with fish and other marine wildlife eating them, and then of course the pellets eventually breaking up into microplastic particles.

You can get biodegradable airsoft pellets; they appear to mainly be gray or white in color rather than bright screaming orange and green. But "biodegradable" doesn't mean "instantly dissolves the next time it rains." An Amazon listing for Aim Green biodegradable airsoft pellets advertise them as "Our biodegradable BBs are engineered to degrade only with long-term exposure to water and sun and will degrade 180 days after being used." That's half a year for them to be eaten by wildlife.

I don't know, y'all. That handful of carelessly dropped rubber pellets just encapsulates how much people don't factor in the rest of nature when making decisions, even on something that is purely for entertainment like an airsoft gun. We could have had a lot of the same technological advances we have today, but with much less environmental impact, if we had considered the long-term effects on both other people and other living beings, as well as our habitats. We could have found ways from the beginning to make these things in ways that benefited us but also mitigated any harm as much as possible. Instead we're now having to reverse-engineer things we've been using for decades, and sometimes--like the "biodegradable" airsoft pellets--they still have a significant negative impact.

But--at least there are people trying to do things better, thinking ahead instead of just on immediate profit. We're stuck in a heck of a mess here, figuratively and literally, and changing an entire system can't be done in a day. Maybe we can at least keep pushing for a cultural shift that emphasizes planning far into the future--if not the often-cited "seven generations ahead", then at least throughout the potential lifespan of a given product.