#Source: quote / copy

[natasharswifey]

Natasha: A girl doesn't dye her hair that colour unless she has serious psychological problems

Wanda: My hair colour has nothing to do with my psychological problems!

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Numbers 14, 11-20:

And יהוה said to Moses, "How long will this people spurn Me, and how long will they have no faith in Me despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst? I will strike them with pestilence and disown them, and I will make of you a nation far more numerous than they!"

But Moses said to יהוה, "When the Egyptians, from whose midst You brought up this people in Your might, hear the news, they will tell it to the inhabitants of that land. Now that they have heard that You, יהוה, are in the midst of this people; that You, יהוה, appear in plain sight when Your cloud rests over them and when You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.

"If then You slay this people wholesale, the nations who have heard Your fame will say, 'It must be because יהוה was powerless to bring that people into the land promised them on oath that [that god] slaughtered them in the wilderness.'

"Therefore, I pray, let my Lord's forebearance be great, as You have declared, saying, 'יהוה! Slow to anger and abounding in kindness; forgiving iniquity and transgression; yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children, upon the third and fourth generations.'

"Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to Your great kindness, as you have forgiven this people ever since Egypt."

And יהוה said, "I pardon, as you have asked..."

Reading this really changed something in me - the thought that g-d is somebody with Whom you can directly argue against, that His ideas are ideas which you can directly argue against is something that truly makes me love g-d more.

If g-d were solely Divine, I don't think I'd have a relationship with Him. If He were strictly Perfect, I believe I'd hate Him. But here, seeing Moses literally talking g-d into an alternative tells me g-d is the mixture between Perfect and Fallible that makes it so much easier for me to love Him, to serve Him, to want to be close with Him.

I don't know, I just love g-d.

[incorrect-star-allies]

Kirby: I have a philosophy in life; if the seat is open, the job is open. That’s how I came to briefly drive a Formula 1 car.

[gardentool]

Gojo: We’re about the only two people in the world who don’t think we’re married.

Geto: We don’t think we’re not. We both know we’re not.

Gojo: I’m beginning to have my doubts.

Geto: Don’t tell me I have to convince you too.

Gojo: The only difference between us and other married people is we can’t even get a divorce.

Geto: We get married now, I could start divorce proceedings in the morning!

Gojo: Well, Suguru, this is so sudden!

[nonoel-28]

Kakashi finishing up a mission report to the Hokage:

Kakashi: All in all, nobody got hurt.

Kakashi: Well, maybe somebody got hurt, but nobody we knew.

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

TT: So, people. I have done some awful things with experimenting with AR, and I may have found a way for him to emulate my own voice. Poorly.

TG: OH??

TT: I have no words for this. I’m just gonna let it play.

AR: Hey youtube it’s Dirkkhhh. And today we have some sad news. I know a lot of you are going to be dissapointed by this, BUT. I’m getting turned into a pig. Now please- you have to understand I didn't want.          To get turned into a pig. But this is just something that I just have to deal with. Sorry, anyways I’ll have a large number 6 combo meal- uh-OH IT’S HAPPENING. OINK OINK OINK OINK. squeaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL.

AR: Oink. Piggy Piggy. Hah!

TG: FDSHJKUAHFGLID H GIU.DAWG DFSghd???????

GG: PARDON?

GT: Cheese and fucking crackers!

GT: The fucking- “Anyway, I’ll have a large combo- UH OH IT’S HAPPENING!”

TG: AND THE RELA PIG NOICE AFTERWORSD…… MY GOG…. 

[catos-wound]

new pater patriae just dropped

[artificial-horizon]

TIL about Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman, a badass aviation pioneer who was the first Black and Native American woman to obtain a pilot's licence. Not sure if the Americans of Tumblr already know about her, but as a Brit I unfortunately did not until now, so I wanted to share her story here! (Image IDs in alt text.)

Born in Texas on January 26, 1892, Bessie was the tenth of thirteen children in a family of sharecroppers. From the age of six, she attended a small, segregated school, where she excelled as a student and eventually won a scholarship to the Missionary Baptist Church School aged 12. When she turned 18, she moved to Langston, Oklahoma to study at the Oklahoma Colored Agricultural and Normal University, but had to drop out after one semester due to financial difficulties and returned to work at the acorn fields back home.

When she was 24, Bessie moved to Chicago, Illinois and worked as a manicurist in a barber shop, where she discovered her passion for aviation after hearing the stories of some of the clients, who had been pilots during World War One. She then decided to become a pilot herself, taking on a second job to save up for flight school. However, no flight schools in the US would admit Black or women students, so another of the barber shop's clients, Robert Abbott - a Black philanthropist and publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper - suggested that she move to France and learn to fly there. He and Jesse Binga, another Black philanthropist and banker, gave her the financial support to do this, so in November 1920, Bessie set off for France to begin her training.

On June 15, 1921, Bessie Coleman was awarded an international pilot's licence by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, becoming both the first Black woman and the first American to do so. Following this, she returned to the US, but found it difficult to make a living as a pilot, as commercial flight did not yet exist - her only option was to become a stunt (aerobatic) pilot. Once again, the US's racism and misogyny prevented her from receiving stunt training there, so in 1922 she went back to France, and by September that year was back home again for her first stunt flight. On September 3, Labor Day, she became the first Black woman to stage a public flight in the US, flying at a show sponsored by the Chicago Defender and held in honour of the veterans of the all-Black 369th Infantry Regiment of WWI.

Bessie soon became a media sensation, earning herself the nickname "Queen Bess" and performing at air shows across the US and Europe in a Curtiss JN-4 "Jenny" biplane (example pictured above). She refused to fly at any shows that did not permit Black people to attend, and went on speaking tours at schools and churches to encourage fellow Black aspiring aviators to take to the skies. Her dream was to open a flight school to train Black pilots, and she tirelessly raised money for this with her shows.

Sadly, on April 30, 1926, while flying with her mechanic William D. Wills, Bessie's plane unexpectedly went out of control and dove into the ground, killing both of them. An investigation revealed that this had been caused by a wrench that had been accidentally left in the plane and had jammed its controls. It was a devastating loss, and her funeral, which was held in Chicago and led by Ida B. Wells, was attended by around 10,000 people. In 1929, the Bessie Coleman Aero Club was founded to continue her work promoting Black participation in aviation, and to this day there are several scholarships in her name aimed at high school students interested in careers in aviation.

"I knew we had no aviators, so I thought it my duty to risk my life to learn." - Bessie Coleman

Fly high, Queen Bess, blue skies forever! 🛩💙

[nerevar-quote-and-star]

Legate Rikke, cautioning General Tullius to take Ulfric Stormcloak seriously: Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.

[existingkindasucks]

Person A: Injury report?

Person B: Not dead yet

Person C: Killed them first

Person D: Half alive

Person E: Mainly intact

Person F: I won

[whosafraidofvirginiawoolf]

[Charlotte Bronte] once told her sisters that they were wrong—even morally wrong—in making their heroines beautiful, as a matter of course. They replied that it was impossible to make a heroine interesting on other terms. Her answer was, 'I will show you a heroine as small and plain as myself who will be as interesting as any of yours.'

'Death of Currer Bell', Daily News (April 1855). Quoted in the Correspondence, iv, 182.

[brick-van-dyke]

Gonna review all the sources I've been provided with (they're damning for the zio so rip to them but thanks for the sources lmao), and been searching through more sources from the time periods in question and, well, basically I started a thing.

(sorry for the blurriness) An overall essay going through the evidence and providing a small splash of input as someone noticing a lot of discord in said evidence, which isn't surprising but still it is telling how zionists cherry pick.

Anyway, the more I learn, the more I realise that there's a lot of political and nationalistic push to emit details in some papers, while pushing for certain conclusions based on the framing of the research for others. I think this is legitimately just unproductive when acknowledging the subjectivity of history as a study and the way certain overlap may point to a conclusion that isn't preferable by a variety of people, from researchers to the intuitions that may use or pay for the research to begin with. I find this in studies that delve into contentious topics in general. It's why it's so important to note the overlap and notice the inevitability of bias in understanding these topics.

As far as the history the Middle East goes and who colonised who, I think many disregard the simple theory that, perhaps, colonisation itself can be something inflicted by the post-colonised and equally be something done to a group with connections to conquest, ultimately making both the same in terms of land rights and the concept of legal ownership. Or, more specifically, that Zionists' attempts to become conquests have since reduced their claim, just as it would reduce a Babylonian, despite their deep links to the land and, arguably, being one of the first social groups before or at the same time as the Israelites.

History and Carbon Dating specifically become difficult to assign moral value of land rights to when cultures blossom and change in such extreme ways (to the point of being unrelated or unrecognisable with those from ancient eras) with the passing of time. The racial blame placed by Israel is thus shown to be one of mistaken vengeance and generally racial profiling of modern Arabs, just as the Persian, Turkish, Roman and British empires showed signs of racist attitudes to employ totalitarian tactics of rule over the peasantry. Being the colonised when one is willing to colonise with the same means reduces the ethical claims and, meanwhile, the history itself reflects greater nuance than political nationalists may desire of it.

Ultimately, as I search further and further, I find that the claim of nationalism and identity is a mere shared ideal of all empires formed through conquest and the desire for ownership of abundant resources. Meanwhile, I find that the idea of an ancient homeland to reclaim is obsolete when the people in question do not resemble those they wish to avenge. Culture evolves with geography and time, a constant for every country's history. Religion, culture and the concept of a homeland forms where the resources are abundant, rather than any legitimate greater or lesser claim from neighbouring tribes and civilisations. The wish of a Promised Land is a logical conclusion for any group seeking refuge from the elements; a moral argument filled with human necessity and a shared common ground if faced with an open mind and a willingness to review the past, while simultaneously moving on from it. The complexity becomes simple when it is understood that only the present can take responsibility for the present; and choose a better path than those who horde resources in the modern age of globalised colonialism.

[bloghrexach]

… that’s THEM!! … 

[biscuitrule]

HOLY SHIT WE WERE ROBBED

That is one of my favorite scenes and it somehow got better?!

Like forget subtext feral protective lockwood has been canon in this scene the whole time

I’m going to kill whoever localised the L&co books for the US, they changed the vibe completely in the moment where Lockwood realises Lucy’s injured.

US version:

It’s giving alarm and concern and yeah, it’s nice, it’s lovely. But now look at the UK version:

Two little words and suddenly it’s giving that feral, infinitely superior “who did this to you? I’ll kill them” energy. US readers were robbed.

[incorrect-hs-quotes]

(Dave): ONE TWO THREE FOUR

(Dave): DAVES A BIG FAT MEANIE

(Dave): A BIG FAT MEANIE ZUCCHINI

(Dave) and [Dave]: LETS CHOP IT UP CHOP CHOP IT UP

(Dave) and [Dave]: AND SERVE IT WITH LINGUINI

(Dave): AL DENTE AL DENTE AL DENTE

(Dave) and [Dave]: AL DENTE

{Dave}: *sick guitar solo*

[treasure-mimic]

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.