#i should switch to bedrock.

[neproxrezi]

how is the minecraft java launcher so fucking bad it is 2022

[prenzea]

Oh Bad and Pierre are SO pissed about the nerfs this is so fucking funny

"Tomorrow, no backpacks! The day after, they build a world border. After that, no voice chat for a 'better server experience' *laughs*" "Day 6, they switch us to Bedrock edition. No more Java! Everyone has to play on pocket edition!"

"They were looking for more people to join the admin team, we should fill out the google form! we have such good ideas!"

I don't even think this is roleplay chaos anymore I think they're genuinely so pissed LMAO

Pierre is now filling out the google form and sent the link to Bad.

[hashtagcaneven]

Kuro's Advice for Awesome Fight Scenes

So I heard you want to write a cool fight scene. Rock on.

Running into some trouble though? No sweat, I got you covered.

I compiled this list of 8 Rules I personally use for Kickass Action Scenes for a Discord group of writers and thought it might be useful for others as well.

Rule #1 Fight scenes MUST tell an emotional story.

A fight is just an argument but with physical violence instead of words. Just like how in a musical people talk until the energy and emotion goes so high they burst into song and then when that keeps building, they all start dancing. Same concept. People argue and disagree until the emotion is so high they start throwing hands.

Fights act like any other scene where it starts with one emotion and ends with another. Emotion should flow through each move. They should ebb and flow from start to finish, raising and lowering tension to keep a reader engaged and guessing over who is going to win.

This is the bedrock of fight scenes. No amount of “rule of cool” is going to save the scene if there is no emotional heart beating through it.

Rule #2 You need personal stakes

Goes kit and parcel with Rule #1. Your POV characters have to have something on the line to tell an emotional story.

What happens if they lose? What happens if they WIN?

Go beyond JUST “oh if they lose, they die”. What happens to the character’s world if they lose. What will happen to the ones they love when they’re gone? What are the TRUE long term consequences for failure?

Even if it's a friendly (ie non lethal) competition scene, what are those stakes? Bragging rights for a proud character? Or perhaps taking their opponent down a peg?

Avoid vague generalized stakes and find what makes it personal. A knight may fight for his king and country but he also does it because he has his pride as a knight on the line if he walks away or loses.

Rule #3 Pacing is key

Action is fast paced in real life. It should be so in writing.

I personally think of my fight scenes as if they were a movie/show/play fight scene. Partly because that’s my own personal experience and partly because it helps me with pacing, especially with multiple POV characters.

Don’t spend too long on one action. Keep it flowing but have moments of pause. Real fights have moments where someone needs to pick themselves back up or two opponents need to steady themselves for the next round of assault. Use those moments to dig into the introspection of the POV. Your reader is also gonna need a breather from time to time.

With multiple POVs, I flip through them like I’m switching shots on film. We cut away from one thing to see what another character is up to in the flow of things. I flip the camera at moments of triumph or tension to keep building that emotion.

Rule #4 Let your heroes take some hits

Show off those stakes by letting your big bad character get his ass kicked a little bit.

Let ‘em get knocked around a bit to build that tension within a reader. Make them wonder how they’ll pull this off.

Superman fights are so easy to be boring because he’s basically invincible. We all yawn because we know he’s gonna win. Then along comes someone with kryptonite and suddenly it's Superman getting the beat down. Now we’re emotionally engaged because how is he going to get out of this one?

Show their competency in a fight by how well they can take big, painful hurts and keep going anyway. Show it in how they fight back or stay standing, despite the effort.

And don’t be afraid to let your heroes lose a few times. It makes their eventual victory sweeter.

Rule #5 Be clear and concise with your descriptions

Now ain’t the time to pull out your best Tolkien describing a meal impressions.

Action is fast. There are a ton of moving parts which can be severely complex and hard to follow. You want to avoid this confusion at all costs.

Use clear, specific language so the reader can visualize what is happening in their head and not get lost. Once they get lost, they will get frustrated and disengage.

Ditch the heavy metaphors. Let the movement speak for itself as the allegory. If you want to sprinkle in some flowery language, do so separate from the actual action happening in a fight.

Rule #6 Learn the basics of movement

You don’t need to know how to swing a sword with proper technique to write a sword fight (though, let’s be real, it helps). As long as you understand the fundamentals of how the weapon moves, you can write a good sword fight.

Because what makes a fight good is the EMOTION in the fight. Not just the fancy flourishes.

However, if you go too crazy and it becomes unrealistic, your readers can easily disengage.

So you don’t need to know the difference between a riposte and an ochs stance. You just need to know that arms don’t swing that way. You need to know if someone gets pushed, it can throw them off balance.

Learn the basics of human movement, and if there are weapons involved, learn at least the basics because if I see one more person say they’re wielding a longsword like it’s a small sword, you people will kill me inside even more.

Rule #7 Every action has a consequence

When someone attacks, someone has to defend (or get hit). But when someone moves their body one way, it can open them up to a counterattack.

If I lunge too far forward and overextend, I’ve left myself open for attack. If an opponent turns around, their back is now my next best target.

Pay attention to how your characters are moving. Are they opening themselves up for easy counterattacks when you don’t want them to? 

Thinking about what opening a move gives their opponent can help you write your fight scenes, as it will lead to a natural flow and chain of events.

Rule #8 Don’t be afraid to add sound

Fights are vocal. People grunt and groan and shout when they’re hit. They also make noise when they attack. The more wrapped in emotion, the louder and noisier people tend to get as they get lost in it.

During those moments of pause you add from Rule #3 is a great moment for characters to continue the verbal part of their argument

 If one character temporarily overpowers the other, let them brag. If one character gets punched in the mouth, describe the sound of the blood they spit on the ground. 

Just, for the love of the gods, don’t go all Marvel and be quip central. Don’t undercut your own tension and emotion for a quick laugh or to sound cool.

Some examples of great fights:

[anarchy-and-piglins]

you want c!techno take asks so can i ask for your insight in the take that c!techno was the shitty one in c!bedrock bros because he... i'm not entirely sure what the argument is tbh just the way some people bend over backwards to make c!tommy leaving him alone in a crowd of enemies seem not like a shitty move

I feel like the insistence some people have that you should take a 'side' in the bedrockbros relationship is part of this weirdly prevalent trend now in some fandoms - and especially in dsmp - that every single relationship that goes bad has to have a 'victim' and an 'abuser'.

(Sometimes not in those specific terms, though I've certainly seen enough people call c!Techno abusive towards c!Tommy. But sometimes people just call it like, a good guy and a bad guy. Like they need to put the blame somewhere, and it's usually not with their own guy because their blorbo is perfect (part of a second, also very prevalent trend in fandom these days, where people seem incapable of viewing their favourite character as having any flaws, and thus they jump through hoops to excuse everything they do as perfect or flawless. Very common for a specific flavour of c!Tommy enjoyer indeed.))

The time between the failed Butcher Army execution and Doomsday was literally a low point for c!Techno, he himself talks about this afterward with the Syndicate and stuff. Emotionally and mentally this man was Going Through It (tm). So I don't doubt there are some aspects of the whole bedrockbros post-exile relationship he should have done differently. Though that hardly makes him a bad person, it just means he's imperfect and doing his best and also traumatized and trying to do what he felt was right. I'm very biased in siding with Techno because he's my fav but also because I just actually agree that he's right a lot of the time, kekw. And he genuinely did his best to offer Tommy shelter and make him feel safe while also not pushing any boundaries (and also Tommy straight up refusing to share a bunch of shit. Which is understandable from Tommy's side in context, but since Techno is not a mind reader, I really don't like how some inniters act as if Techno was supposed to act upon information he literally didn't have). While also meanwhile sticking to his morals and trying to ensure the continued safety of himself and his closest friend.

Like, at the end of the day, the bedrockbros relationship post-exile fell apart because it was a relationship of convenience and their goals and wants didn't end up compatible. And that's fine, honestly.

The part where Tommy's behaviour becomes somewhat shitty to me is at the Green Festival itself. Him deciding to switch sides and rejoin L'Manburg is not even the shitty part. It's the sort of thing that, especially in context of who c!Tommy is as a person and what makes him tick, makes sense, and it's the right thing to do for him, even if Techno feels hurt by it (which, see what I mean that characters can do things that hurt others or are maybe less than ideal, but that doesn't make them terrible people?)

The parts of Tommy's behaviour that I find shitty are:

1) Tommy stealing Techno's axe. Like, okay, I've posted about this before, but it will never stop bugging me that Techno gave Tommy the axe of peace specifically as a temporary thing and he wanted it back (the axe was important to Techno and he spent a lot of time on it) and then when Tommy decided to fuck Techno over by switching sides in the middle of a high tension situation (which, again, I don't blame Tommy for switching sides necessarily but doing it in the middle of an encounter with enemy forces threatening Techno was a little dickish of him), Techno asked for it back in a very calm, non-angry manner and Tommy's response was basically "lol, no". Like ??? That's just straight up theft, I don't care how much you like Tommy, that's shitty. That's a shitty thing to do! Even if it did end up giving us the peerpressureduo 'ranboo gifting techno an axe' arc that was peak

2) Tommy not really caring about what happens to Techno after switching sides. This is kinda tied into the thing I said above, about Tommy really picking the most terrible timing to betray Techno. But his general lack of care for Techno's wellbeing there - especially after Techno just promised to fight an angry mob for him - where Tommy does not at least try to dissuade them from killing Techno, or bothers to express any concern that Techno can make it out alive, also bugs me. Like, I know Tommy had a lot on his mind but him not seeming to care much if Techno is ganged up on and murdered, right after taking one of Techno's weapons AND after basically getting all his armour and shelter and potions and food from Techno, just feels like a major dick move.

I don't know what specifically the inniters are saying Techno did wrong at the Green Festival so if you know, feel free to enlighten me and I'll reply (though I'm assuming a lot of it is bollocks anyway. It's mainly some variant of 'Techno was mean to Tommy by not completely forsaking his own moral compass and agreeing with everything Tommy did ever, and also for having emotions :(')

[megabuild]

hesitating only because i didnt really like playing bedrock on switch but idk

[ronearoundblindly]

Being in the hospital im thinking what would it be like if Ari's girl ended up in the hospital nothing life threatening but something that needed to be treated in the hospital. I'm betting he'd be a nervous wreck and wouldn't let anyone see it he'd maybe go into the bathroom and freak but I'm guessing he'd try and stay strong but crack a bit infront of her or maybe stay overnight if they let (it depends on the wards)

ok, full disclosure, I did absolutely no research for this because I'd like you to have reading materials, so it's in no way scientific 🤷🏻‍♀️

The Chair Beside Your Bed, a Bedrock and Blueprints tale

No warnings except minor angst to fluff. (Sry, the gif barely works here but I'm...not changing it. 👀) WC 975

Ari can barely keep his eyes open. You're already asleep, but he just can't bring himself to join.

The IV in your hand looks uncomfortable when you tense involuntarily. He watches the tendons pull and roll beneath your skin and swallows hard.

He should have seen the signs, and the doctors say you'll be right as rain once the antibiotics are done. He still can't leave. He still can't eat. He still refuses to sleep.

Ari's mind can refuse all it wants. Eventually, his eyelids are too heavy, his neck slumps over the thin pillow behind it, and he's lost to a dreamless land in the chair beside your hospital bed.

"Ow," you hiss, releasing the two-by-four in your grasp.

"You get your hand, honey? I got those gloves for you."

You wave him off. "No, no. Stepped too close to the pile and scraped my leg. No big deal. That's almost all the wood from the truck."

"Great," Ari chirps, straightening after marking the outline of your She-Shed in the backyard. "I'll go get another load before dark. We can plot out the frame and whatnot tomorrow."

As you wipe the back of your hand over your head, Ari doesn't see any blood on your legs and immediately forgets.

"So we'll need equal amounts of wood on all sides," you ask.

He shrugs and pulls off his own thick work gloves. "More or less, yeah." Ari won't let you use any of the tools, but he will let you speak like it's a joint effort. Because it is. Everything he does is meant for you now.

While he's out at the store again, you divvy up the stacks of planks around the edges, far enough away for space to work but close enough for convenience. He's grateful, but Ari doesn't realize this means hours where you did not clean the cut on your leg.

A week later and you're running a slight fever. Ari only notices you aren't walking properly when you get off the couch.

His worst fear at that point is that stupid desk chair you're always complaining about. Your back is constantly aching. He wishes the company would replace all the chairs soon but especially, specifically yours.

You work too hard. You're worn out.

He knows you've had a bandaid on one calf, but it's on the outside leg where you sleep in the bed. He forgets a lot until his leg brushes against it while you two snuggle, and you hiss in pain.

Ari insists on taking a look, switching on the bedside lamp. He can tell something is wrong before even removing the bandage because it's red beyond the adhesive. The middle is warm to the touch, which he can barely do before you gripe at him.

You promise to go to the urgent care first thing in the morning, and Ari drives you himself. You're so sure that they'll just slap some pills in your hand and send you on your way that you shoo him off to work.

He gets a voicemail two hours later.

"Hey, uh, don't be mad, but they've transferred me to the hospital. I have to be hooked up to this drip thing for a few days and--"

Ari's in his truck before his supervisor can even wish you well.

If he'd thought about it at all, he would have gone by the house to get you and him a change of clothes, but no such luck. He refuses to leave the hospital grounds and only leaves the building when he absolutely can't stand his cigarette cravings anymore. Otherwise, he is right beside you.

You sleep a surprising amount, wiped out by the intensity of your treatment albeit fairly standard.

It's a long three days.

Ari decided after the first afternoon there that his chair needed to be on the other side of your bed. That way he could hold your hand that wasn't pierced with a needle, and he can safely rest his head on your side.

When you're awake, your fingers card through his hair. When you're awake, you tell him he looks like shit and needs to sleep, too.

"I promise I will later."

"You're lying," you complain weakly.

"Yeah, kid, I'm lying."

This exchange happens three separate times: the first you forget, the second you laugh at, and the third you start playing dirty.

You tell him you'd like to listen to one of your audiobooks, and since neither of you has headphones, you play it on speaker with the phone on your chest.

Ari is successfully out cold within minutes and wakes refreshed and a little pissed.

He lied and told the nurses you are his wife in order to be allowed to stay overnight, so them calling him by your last name during the discharge routine is awkward, to say the least.

Ari has fun explaining that one on the drive home.

With a few more days of ingestible antibiotics left, you're entirely on the mend and use every single ounce of your energy to argue Ari out of the house and off to work. He only feels less guilty when he comes back to find you asleep again, and after one more full day of bed rest, you are able to return to work as well.

From those days on, however, you are forbidden from helping with any repairs or building Ari does. José and Dimitri are rangled to assist when necessary, but it's a hard line in the sand that Ari will not shift on. He also takes it upon himself to be the First Aid King of the Castle and is in charge of all bandaging and cleaning of any wounds, no matter how small.

You only allow this complete farse (enacted over every papercut now) because he looks so cute when he fusses.

[Main Masterlist]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End to End

In “End to End,” my new column for Locus Magazine, I propose a policy framework for a better internet: the “End to End” principle (E2E), a bedrock of the original design for the internet, updated for the modern, monopolized web, as a way of disenshittifying it:

https://locusmag.com/2023/03/commentary-cory-doctorow-end-to-end/

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/2023/03/07/disenshittification/#e2e

The original E2E marked the turning point from telco-based systems where power was gathered at the center, controlled by carriers, to the packet-switched internet, where power moved to the edges. Under the old model, only the network operator could add new features. If you wanted to create, say, Caller ID, you needed to convince the phone company to update its switches to support a new signaling system (and you probably had to rent a Caller ID box from the carrier, too).

But packet-switching made it possible for new services to be created by people at the edges of the network. Once your device was connected to the internet, it could exchange data with any other device on the internet. If someone set up a voice-calling system and you connected to it, they could add Caller ID to it without asking Ma Bell for permission.

End to end was the core ethic of this system: the idea that the telcos that sat beneath these systems should get out of the way of their users, serving only to deliver data from willing senders to willing receivers as quickly, efficiently and reliably as possible.

E2E was a powerful idea, one that truly treated the telcos as utilities — the plumbing that sat beneath the services, obliged to serve its subscribers by doing their bidding to the extent they could. If you chose to use a internet calling service instead of making phone calls, the carrier’s job was to shuttle those packets around, not to slow them down or block them to funnel you into its rival service.

There’s a powerful logic to this: no one rents a phone line because they want to make sure that the carrier’s shareholders are getting the highest possible return on their investment. The reason we buy network connections is to get to the services we value.

We have no duty to arrange our affairs to the benefit of a carrier’s shareholders. If those shareholders are so emotionally fragile that they can’t bear the thought of network users making their own choices on which services to use, they should get into a different line of work.

E2E wasn’t a law, it was a principle. Principles are useful! They can be embedded in laws (for example, the laws that establish most network providers as common carriers often include an E2E rule), but just as importantly, they can give us a vocabulary for critiquing or designing services: “Ugh, I won’t use that service, it’s not end to end,” or “How can we make this work in an end to end way?”

Principles can be integrated into professional codes of ethics, or procurement rules for public bodies (“Our university only buys end to end services”). Tech groups and publications can use principles to rank competing technologies (“Which network providers are end to end?”).

Network Neutrality is a way of operationalizing E2E: the idea of Net Neutrality is that carriers should be obliged to treat all traffic the same. If you request Youtube packets from Comcast, Comcast should deliver those packets as quickly and reliably as it can, even though its parent company, Universal, owns several competing services.

Net Neutrality can be treated as a principle (“This ISP sucks — it violates Net Neutrality”) or as a regulation (“The FCC is fining your ISP because it violated Net Neutrality”). As a regulation, Net Neutrality has a problem: it’s hard to administer, because it’s very difficult to detect Net Neutrality violations. The internet is a “best effort” network, with no service guarantees, so when your Youtube connection starts to jitter, it’s hard to prove that this is because Comcast is screwing with it, as opposed to regular network congestion.

Which brings me to my E2E proposal: end to end for services. Contemporary services have no E2E. If you search for a product on Amazon, Amazon often won’t show you that product until you’ve looked at five screens’ worth of other products that have paid Amazon to interrupt your search:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

If you hoist an email out of Gmail’s spam folder and add the sender to your address book, Gmail will still send that message to spam, or even block its server. It’s incredible that we had a Congressional debate about whether Gmail should mark politicians unsolicited fundraising emails as spam but not whether emails from your reps that you asked to receive should be delivered:

https://doctorow.medium.com/dead-letters-73924aa19f9d

Platform creators are workers whose boss is an algorithm that docks every paycheck to punish them for breaking rules they aren’t allowed to know about, because if the boss told you the rules, you’d learn how to violate them without him being able to punish you for it. Again, it’s wild that we’re arguing about “shadowbanning” (a service choosing not to send your work to people who never asked to see it), while ignoring the fact that platforms won’t deliver your posts to people who explicitly subscribed to your feed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone operators were young boys who entertained themselves by deliberately misconnecting calls, putting you in contact with people you never asked to talk to and refusing to connect you with the people you were trying to converse with.

As @brucesterling​ wrote in The Hacker Crackdown:

The boys were openly rude to customers. They talked back to subscribers, saucing off, uttering facetious remarks, and generally giving lip. The rascals took Saint Patrick’s Day off without permission. And worst of all they played clever tricks with the switchboard plugs: disconnecting calls, crossing lines so that customers found themselves talking to strangers, and so forth.

https://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html

Bell fired those kids. Even the original telecoms monopolist understood that the point of a telephone network was to connect willing speakers with willing listeners.

Today’s tech barons are much more interested in charging other people to interrupt your consensual communications with nonconsensual and often irrelevant nonsense and ads. This is part of the enshittification cycle: first, the platforms lock you in by giving you a good deal, including feeds that contain the things you ask to see and search boxes that return the thing you’re looking for.

Then, platforms take away your surplus and give it to business customers. They spy on you and use the data to help target you on behalf of advertisers, whom they charge low rates for ads that are reliably delivered. They insert performers’ and media companies’ posts into your feed, generating traffic funnels that result in clicks to off-platform sites. They offer low fees and even subsidies to platform sellers and creators who produce DRM media, like ebooks and audiobooks.

Users get locked into the platform — by the collective action problem of convincing their friends to leave, by the collapse of local retail that can’t match the investor-funded subsidies of would-be monopolists, by DRM that they are legally prohibited from removing, causing them to lose their investment if they quit the service.

Business customers also get locked to the platform: platform sellers have to sell where the buyers are; publishers and creators have to provide media where the audiences are; advertisers have to run ads on the services they’ve optimized for.

Once everyone is locked in, the platform can fully enshittify, harvesting surpluses from users and business customers for themselves. Platforms can hike fees, charge media companies and creators to reach their own subscribers, block posts with links off-site, insert ads into media (like Audible is doing with paid audiobooks!), and so on.

This is the cycle that E2E seeks to interrupt. E2E for services would dictate that platforms should connect willing speakers and willing listeners. The best match for your search should be at the top of the results — even if someone is willing to pay more to put a worse match there. Emails should be delivered to people you’ve told your provider you want to correspond with — not sent to a spam folder or blocked.

As with the original E2E, there’s lots of ways we can use this principle. It can simply be a term for criticizing platforms (“You aren’t sending my posts to the people who follow me — that’s a violation of the end to end principle!”). It can be a law (“It is a deceptive and unfair practice for ecommerce companies to deliberately return search results that are not the best match they can locate for the users’ query”). It can be a punishment (“The FTC settled with Google today and ordered the company to implement a Gmail feature that permits users to identify senders whose messages will never be blocked or sent to spam”).

Lots of people are pissed off about Big Tech and many have proposed that we could make it better by treating platforms as “utilities.” But I don’t want President DeSantis to run my email provider, or to decide what’s too “woke” for me to see (or post) on social media.

An E2E rule, on the other hand, creates a role for government that doesn’t determine who gets to speak or what they get to say — rather, it ensures that when people speak and to others who want to hear them, the message gets through.

Unlike Net Neutrality, E2E is easy to administer. If I claim that your emails are being sent to spam after I marked you as a sender I want to hear from, we don’t have to do a forensic investigation into Google’s mail servers to determine if I’m right. You just send me an email we observe where it lands.

Likewise for search: if I search Amazon for a specific product or model number, it’s easy to tell whether that product is at the top of the search results or not.

Same goes for delivery to subscribers: if we suspect that Twitter is shadowbanning posters — say, for including their Mastodon addresses in their bios, or linking to posts on Mastodon — we just send some test messages and see whether they are delivered.

Beyond administratability, E2E has another advantage: cheap compliance. Lots of the rules we’ve created or proposed for service providers are incredibly complex and expensive to comply with. Take rules about “lawful but awful” content, which require platforms to somehow determine whether a message constitutes harassment and block it if it does.

These rules require an army of expensive human moderators or a vast, expensive machine learning system, or both — so they guarantee that Big Tech will rule the internet forever, because no one else can afford to launch a new service with better community norms and better practices.

By contrast, E2E is cheap to comply with. Trusted-sender lists for email providers, search engines that put best results first, and content delivery algorithms that show you the things you asked to see in the order that they were posted are all solved problems:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/social-media-algorithms-twitter-meta-rss-reader/673282

This isn’t to say that platforms wouldn’t be allowed to offer algorithmic feeds and results. Think of how Tumblr does it: you can choose between a feed called “Following” (posts from people you follow) or “For You” (posts that Tumblr thinks you’ll enjoy). Forcing platforms to clearly label their recommendations and give you the choice of controlling your own feed is a powerful check against enshittification.

If you know when you’re in charge and when the platform is driving things, and if you can toggle away from platform-determined feeds to ones that you design, the platform has to be better than you at choosing what you see, or you won’t choose its recommendations.

Platform owners have hijacked the idea that “freedom of speech isn’t freedom of reach” to justify the now-ubiquitous practice of overriding users’ decisions about what they want to see:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

The Old Internet had lots to going for it. It wasn’t perfect, though. While it was easy to find the things you knew you liked, it could be hard to find things you didn’t know you liked. Recommendations, whether they come from an algorithm or a human editor, are a source of endless delights. But when a we find something we like through one of those recommendations, we need to know that we can find more from that source if we choose to.

Sometimes it’s nice to scroll an algorithmic feed and get a string of surprises. But we are forced to use those feeds, they will inevitably enshittify, to our detriment, and to the detriment of the people who make the things that please us.

As ever, the important thing about a technology isn’t what it does, it’s who it does it for and who it does it to. When we control our feeds, we can choose to let a recommender system do the driving. If we’re locked into a recommendation system, it drives us.

Today (Mar 7), I’m doing a remote talk for TU Wien.

On Mar 9, you can catch me in person in Austin at the UT School of Design and Creative Technologies, and remotely at U Manitoba’s Ethics of Emerging Tech Lecture.

On Mar 10, Rebecca Giblin and I kick off the SXSW reading series.

Image: Felix Andrews (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elephant_side-view_Kruger.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A room full of telephone operators at a switchboard; their heads have been replaced with hacker-in-a-hoodie heads. On the wall behind them is a poster ad for Facebook with the slogan, 'Find Your Facebook Group.' Atop the switchboard stands a small elephant with a bite taken out of its back.]

[star-arcana]

Rabbids Bio: Bunny Nr.#1 Sergeuï

Hello guys, here I give you bio's interesting Rabbids from, well the Rabbids series as they are to me one of my favorite species in all fiction and shaped my love for bunnies!!!! Today's Bio is none other than Sergeuï, the bad guy from the first Rabbids game; "Rayman Raving Rabbids" and thus a natural fit for our Nr.#1 Bunny in that series. Without any further do, let's finish this:

"Sergueï is a softy. Out of pure coquetry [flirtatious behavior], he wears a delightful, finely worked metal muzzle. His joie de vivre and [Joy for life in French] his strong sense of repartee [quick, witty conversations, kinda like Edge's language] make him a very pleasant companion. He's always ready to keep things light and lively with little tricks, such as grinding phalanxes, switching your clavicles or even playing "this little piggy" with your toes."

-Manual, Rayman Raving Rabbids

Sergeuï , a.k.a. Grandus Lapinus (french for Big Rabbid), a.k.a. "The Butcher" is as you can see in the wanted post was a very powerful Rabbid and an elite warrior of the Rabbid forces and pretty serious. He has very large arms and uses his big hands to best his foes with ease. He is big and Scary and strong, and should not be taken lightly at all, as he is after all the one, who alongside 3 Rabbids in the intro of Rayman Raving Rabbids successfully captured Rayman and 3 Baby Globoxes during their Picknick, taken them to the Coliseum.

Yep, you heard it right, Rayman, an icon of gaming who bested the likes of Mr.Dark, Admiral Razorbeard and Reflux empowered by the Leptys sceptre, was defeated by Sergeuï, a member of the elite force of the first Rabbid Invasion, this tells you how powerful and cunning he really is!!! Of course Rayman was surprised and caught off guard without his power ups, but the fact that Rayman offered their very little resistance shows that he is capable of dealing blows and pull out tricks that our Hero could not counter... It was undeniably a good idea that Cursa never got this guy's genes, then we would have even worse Spark Hunters to deal with...ugh, the idea makes me shiver to the bones already! Imagine If Bedrock had been made by using Granite and this guys's DNA? We would have probably never won, unless if in that alternative reality, Edge would have gotten Sergeuï's DNA...yeah...terrifying...big and scary...

Anyway he throws Rayman into the Coliseum's arena and Rayman has to perform certain mini tasks to get his reward: Save a Baby Globox and a Plunger as trophy. After completing the first series of minigames Sergeuï sends Rayman to his rather bleak cell via grabbing him with one hand and throwing him in there. If Rayman wants to leave, he would have to play again a series of Mini games and to do that, he would ask Sergeuï to bring him there, who is watching via the door viewer and guarding his cell. Sergeuï would grab Rayman forcefully and take him to the Coliseum for more games. This would mark their first interactions in the game and would continue up until the 7th time. There Sergeuï awaits our Boy without Limbs and greets him. When Rayman tells him to stay, he stands firm and waits for his next round in the Arena. If Rayman then would call Sergeuï, he would surprise Rayman hiding on the left side of the door and wait for Rayman to go first and escort him to the Arena. After Rayman begins to win over time the hearts of the Rabbids over and becoming even more popular, Sergeuï starts to lay down a red carpet for Rayman to enter the cell all the while assembling a chore for Rayman that sings for him and holds many gifts for their hero, the chore btw has them use plumbers as trombones. Sergeuï also is not left out of the fun and dances with a batuta he waves to celebrate Rayman, the new hero of the Rabbids.

He would also over the course of the game play in some of the mini-games like "Bunnies are bad at Peek at boo", where he would play with us Peek at boo within the corridor leading to the arena, with it's entrance being guarded by none other than Sergeuï . We must run with our toes to the door, all the while Sergeuï would turn around and if we move while we are forced to stand still, he would eliminate us...if we are cunning and succeed we will go to the gate, but Sergeuï will try to catch us, only to fail.

Another Mini game called Bunnies have no memory part 2 has us click on Rabbids to repeat the order by which the sounds are given to us to gain points. Sergeuï as you can see appears on the right and clicking on him emits a purple light.

The last mimi game on the list where Sergeuï participates in is the game called Bunnies have natural rhythm part 2, whereby you start playing music in order to punch the Rabbids entranced by the music they are suceptile to: Green Rabbids love the music from the Green Boombok, Blue ones from the Blue Boombox and so forth with Red and Yellow. You have for this challenge 3 hearts and if you get hit by the Rabbids 3 times, game over for you. Sergeuï would in this part stop the music from playing by smashing on it with his big hands, if it's played for too long and if you get even slightly too close to him or he rans over you, you lose a heart. You cannot touch him, he is more untouchable than Reflux, who is btw a Knaaren, a race of Ogre-like people invulnerable to almost anything btw...Sergeuï is a boss! He even composed a song called "The Butcher Deejay" which would put the skills of DJ Cheep Tuna to shame and that track can be heard in the 2 parts of the dance mini game "Bunnies are raving mad" and in the Jukebox within Rayman's cell, if you like to hear it without the mini-game aspect like here:

Overall Sergeuï once hostile to Rayman, became over time a friendly person to Rayman and treats him like an honorary celebrity rather than a prisoner, suggesting a change of attitude the Rabbids have towards Rayman. From kidnapping him, into making him one of their stars through completing games for them, which shows that appearances are deceiving and that these volatile Bunnies are fun-loving and even generous to a point back before they parted ways with Rayman.

This change in behavior and overall development of the Rabbids is based on the concept of Rayman 4, the original Rayman Raving Rabbids, where Rayman would have to impress the Rabbids in the Coliseum in order to liberate his people and win the bunnies over by becoming more popular than their leadership. This idea was here used as well, and it seems that Sergeuï was intended to be also one of many of these Large Rabbids, but they were scrapped and only he remained. What also is weird is that the manual described him as a softie with a lot of repartee and joie de vivre, basically being great with words and having a lot of joy, which he sort of shows over time in the final product, but is not really a typical softy. Still he is despite his initial hostility towards Rayman a good guardian and begins to care for Rayman and treating his captor with a lot of respect, something that would later be lost in the next game with the other bunnies. Below is seeing how that concept flourished at the final parts of the game.

Their special bond will not last forever as Rayman, having acquired a lot of these Plungers after completing more than 10 mini-games for them, uses these well-earned trophies as letters for him to climb up to a far away window where Rayman will escape from the bunnies. He manages to do that, only to realize that he left his friends children, the baby Globoxes in the coliseum and wants to venture back via a hole the Rabbids made near the picnic place, only to get stuck and would remain there like a trapped prey for the rest of the ending, until Rayman Raving Rabbids 2 comes and Sergeuï is nowhere to be seen!!!

Around the same time of RRR's release on the Wii, we got the DS version of "Rayman Raving Rabbids" as well, which is more like a traditional platformer rather than a large collection of solo mini games. is our softy Sergeuï the final boss hovering on an UFO with inflated size while Rayman would use some Rabbid tech to beat him. Sergeuï summons Rabbid allies in many vehicles to help him against Rayman and engage in an energy ball battle a la Ocarina of Time...it's difficult but not impossible and Rayman defeats him and pacifies the Rabbids...this is a weird game in the series and I think beyond being a fun trivia...I think the game would have little bearing on the series...it was very obscure after all.

Afterward we only see Sergeuï in the American cover for RRR2 near on the Edge of the Eiffel Tower right below as you can see, reminiscent of King Kong:

This is the last we have seen of Sergeuï ever since. Either he took some break after his work on the Coliseum or was fired after Rayman was freed, who knows? But some of us some of us Rabbid Fans, including me, hope he will appear in one way or another in the Rayman DLC for Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope. He may be a boss or simply be reffrenced or like in the DS game, becomes the final boss of that game as he was the first Rabbid that attacked Rayman and his friends as well as being unique and cool enough to be in there, after all, he would have made a fine Spark Hunter!

As @bramble-scramble said in an answer regarding her views on Sergeuï, his sense of Repartee could be shown here due to us having now translated Rabbidese and would be a lot like Edge, with few, but hard-hitting words. His weapon of choice would be maybe diffrent but rigth now, it would be too exhausting in this bio to further speculate, but we can hope for more Sergeuï, we can hope!

That is it and I will discuss more about him in the future, especially for my Edge fanfic in-planning and how he and Edge would make great friends and why Cursa never bothered to use this guys's DNA...he is so powerful and cute and smart and sexy and BWAMAZING!!

[naruhinalife555]

bullshit



No bitch you totally wrong Naruto not stuck with awufl partner Naruto loves Hinata, my headcanon is that it was hard for Naruto to get anything done when he first became Hokage cause his clones kept going MIA to see Hinata before he switched to controlling them all in real time.

Bitch Kishi never thought about making Naruto and Sasuke together Sasuke didn't even exist until he was suggested by the editor to be Naruto's rival

Instead of blaming Kishi for not developing characters maybe write your own manga what do you say? Hell he couldn't make sasuke and naruto meet because he already created hinata before her character existed before sasuke so the whole narusasu thing makes no sense

simple and easy sasuke is a character suggested by the editor to be naruto's rival if they really had romance and feelings of love for each other kishi wouldn't have them fighting all the time

Who said that the end would be better with Narusasu's couple??? When Kishimoto created Naruto he didn't make him a character that loves boys the fact that Sasuke and Naruto appear in most episodes does not make Sasuke a main character because the main character at least for me is only Naruto and Hinata is his love interest

God help me because in Shifoden Sasuke didn't even appear at least until the arc of the Kage summit so how does he and Naruto have development?? The quest for Sasuke Naruto and Hinata got a moment where Naruto smiles at Hinata

Man, go write a manga before you even give such a stupid review

Really sweet having someone try and rip your heart out when all your trying to do is help them. Who caring feelings for him by dropping me from a few thousand feet and head first into solid bedrock.

Spending years chasing after them only for them to try and plunge a sword into my back and then the next time I see them they say they are going to kill me. 

He would then try and carry out his death threat and we make vows under a great big waterfall by blowing an arm off each and even after everything we’ve been through he will still leave.

Yeah that is what real love, it’s not true in less you want to kill you partner for it. It's starting to get on my nerves all your nonsense Sasuke didn't even want Naruto as a friend because he was in the dark .By the way they both thought about killing each other is this called a healthy relationship?

First of all, Naruhina and Sasusaku are not the same, don't even dare to compare them! No surprise really plus any scenes from shippuden are most bad any way with Sasuke treating Sakura like trash in most of them or her fangirling over him.

and sasunaru not diffrent from sasusaku. It has nothing to do with what you wrote narusasu it just won't work when did naruto and sasuke have feelings for each other? Sasuke literally tried to murder Naruto, is that what you call a healthy relationship? Because if so then your head is screwed up

Are naruto and sasuke so compatible why did naruto cry he was always alone? And he doesn't understand love at all, the proofs are shown in the manga, you don't have to invent it

what? This has nothing to do with homophobia, the author of the series wanted to do something specific and it is completely his right, after all it is a manga for youth At the same time though gay ships tend to be ridiculous and over the top, like you can't have any friendship or brotherhood without people shipping and forcing it and throwing it in other people's faces. It's just ridiculous like even if they ship it they shouldn't act like it should have been when their friendship/sisterhood was never meant to be taken romantically. It really makes it hard to enjoy any same-sex friendships and camaraderie because people will keep pushing it to be canon and start a fuss over it.

All they wanted was to fight each other because Naruto considered Sasuke his best opponent

Both were in pain and loveless

With Hinata Naruto felt happier I don't understand what your problems are??He took care of her and was always there for her their relationship was always positive why do they always have to be toxic couples if naruto and sasuke were gay kishimoto wouldn't think of letting them beat each other up have you thought about that?

What selfishness is in your mind, there is no selfishness here. Naruhina is canon because that's how Kishimoto ran between Naruto and Sasuke. It wouldn't work. Did I say that you want to talk about selfishness? sasuke never thought about naruto's feelings after he left the village and naruto suffered so much that he broke down i think you don't even understand the characters pain

put naruto single??? And what does it matter anyway he was always alone ugh the people in this fandom are so cruel haven't you seen Naruto? He never wanted to be alone

Why doesn't Naruto deserve to be with someone who really supports and loves him? Like what's the wonder he's hiding only Hinata by his side.His moments with Hinata made Naruto feel less pain

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 25, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 26, 2023

Exactly four years after he announced he would challenge then-president Donald Trump for the leadership of the United States, President Joe Biden today announced his reelection campaign, along with running mate Vice President Kamala Harris. The contrast between the 2019 announcement video and the one released today shows how both the country and Biden have changed over the past four years. The earlier video featured former vice president and presidential hopeful Biden alone. It began by focusing on Charlottesville, Virginia, and the promise of the Declaration of Independence, written by Charlottesville’s famous resident Thomas Jefferson, that all men are created equal. Biden claimed that while we haven’t always lived up to those ideas, we have never walked away from them. They are the foundation of who we are. In the video, Biden contrasted the ideals in the Declaration of Independence with the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, where Klansmen, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis came out into the open and were met by “a courageous group of Americans.” The resulting clash took the life of counterdemonstrator Heather Heyer. Trump answered the horror over the riot by saying there were “some very fine people on both sides.” “With those words,” Biden said, “the President of the United States assigned a moral equivalence between those spreading hate and those with the courage to stand against it. And in that moment,” he continued, “I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime.” We were in “a battle for the soul of this nation.” He urged us to remember who we are. Biden’s 2019 campaign video was a rallying cry to defend American values from those who were trying to destroy them. Now, four years later, after winning the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes and working with Democrats and some Republicans to pass a raft of legislation to shore up the position of working- and middle-class Americans that rivals that of the New Deal, Biden’s message is different. Like the previous video, today’s message begins with footage of an attack on the United States, but this time it is the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to overturn our democracy and keep voters from putting Biden into the White House. But Biden is not the centerpiece of this video; the American people are. The video is a montage of Americans from all races and all walks of life, interspersed with images of President Biden, Vice President Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff talking to people, laughing with them, hugging them, supporting them. It is a picture of community. Over the image, Biden says that fighting for democracy has been the work of his first term. “This shouldn’t be a red or blue issue,” he says. He has fought “to protect our rights, to make sure that everyone in this country is treated equally, and that everyone is given a fair shot at making it.” In contrast, the video says, MAGA extremists are threatening our “bedrock freedoms.” They have taken aim at Social Security while cutting taxes on the rich, dictated healthcare decisions for women, banned books, and attacked gay marriage, all while undermining voting rights. We are still in a battle for the soul of the nation, Biden says. The question is whether in the years ahead, “we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer.” The video switches to upbeat music and faster energy as Biden says, “I know America. I know we’re good and decent people. I know we’re still a country that believes in honesty and respect, and treating each other with dignity. That we’re a nation where we give hate no safe harbor. We believe that everyone is equal, that everyone should be given a fair shot to succeed in this country.” “Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they have to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedom. Stand up for the right to vote, and our civil rights. And this is our moment,” Biden says, as the music changes and the video shows images of Americans coming together, laughing and working together. “We the people will not be silenced,” Biden says. “Let’s finish this job; I know we can,” the video ends. “Because this is the United States of America. And there’s nothing, simply nothing, we cannot do if we do it together.” “Let’s finish the job,” says writing across the screen. It is a revealing moment. If Biden announced a presidential run in 2019 to recall the United States to its principles, he is running in 2023 on an extraordinary record of legislation and the idea that he has restored competence to Washington. And unlike Republicans eager for their party’s nomination, he appears to revel in highlighting the people around him rather than hogging the spotlight, while he touts the work the government has done for ordinary Americans. Politico’s Eli Stokols observed that some major media outlets treated the president’s announcement as a less important story than a new revelation that yet another right-wing Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, didn’t disclose that he sold real estate to a wealthy man with business before the Supreme Court, or information coming out about the ongoing lawsuits against the former president. Stokols suggested the Biden campaign was quite happy to let the Republicans tear themselves apart in public while the president stays in the background, permitting Americans to forget the federal government is there—as they were able to in the past—because it is operating competently and without drama. As if to honor that theme, Biden announced that Julie Chávez Rodríguez will serve as his campaign manager. The former director of the White House office of intergovernmental affairs, focused on working with state, local, and tribal officials, she has been described by a colleague as “a get-sh*t-done staffer.” Rodríguez is the granddaughter of union activist César Chávez. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who had left open the possibility that he would run as a progressive candidate, promptly threw his weight behind Biden and announced that he would support the incumbent president, suggesting the Democrats are unified behind Biden's reelection. The Republican National Committee responded to Biden’s announcement with an entirely computer generated video warning of what the world would look like if Biden were to be reelected: a dystopian future full of international and domestic crises (including an economic crash, which promptly led Twitter users to speculate that House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s threat to force a crisis over the debt ceiling was part of a larger plot to destroy Biden’s booming economy before the election). In keeping with the party's construction of false narratives, the “news reports” in the ad are fake; the images are computer generated. MSNBC’s Steve Benen notes that the ad “accidentally makes an important point.” Unable to find anything horrific about Biden’s actual record, “the RNC found it necessary to peddle literally fake, made-up images referring to events that have not occurred.” Bloomberg columnist Matt Yglesias tweeted: I feel like if you have to use fake [images] of hypothetical future bad things that might happen if the *incumbent president* stays in office, that itself tells you something.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[fountainpenguin]

"It's not that difficult to get your head around; you'll never meet another me..." (x)

---

New Pixels Imperfect stuff today! || One-Shot

“There Are Many Benefits to Being Corporeal”

Read on AO3

---

I am back on my “LazyBeans26 and PiglinMyNose are the same person on NameMC” propaganda… Sniff and Pig have infected my brain, so here’s a silly sickfic about a tired camera boy and his weird new friend who's just contracted "experiencing the horrors of being sentient" disease.

(First 1,000 words under the cut)

---

When Jimmy and Scar asked if they could take turns possessing his vessel, LazyBeans26 didn't even hesitate. "Sounds like fun! I'm in." Why not? He's always down for a good time and he's not a square.

They tracked him to his studio apartment, 4th floor of the Raisin Tower. It's the Sun Ray Tower; nobody ever calls it that. Yeah, he's earned it; he's been around New Star Station a long time. It's a tiny place, but that just feels right, y'know? Must be his slime hybrid genes. Something about small, square spaces just feels right. And it's really not bad for a guy who's lived his whole life alone. He's not a builder; he hates doing interiors. This spot works just fine for him, even though Jimmy and Scar are bumping into each other in the kitchen space and they're so close to the bed, Scar could jab it with his cane.

"Are you sure?" Jimmy asks, tilting his head. Lazy's in front of his mirror in the skin change room, two bobby pins in his teeth as he ties back his hair. He clamps the pins to one side with his tongue.

"What d'you mean? Of course I'm sure. I've been thinking of changing my name, actually… It's about time I haul my butt across the station and hit up Etho for that anyway. He'll be much happier if we make it a two-fer. He'll get all huffy if it's just the name."

"Oh, really?" That's Scar. "What- What are you changing your name to?"

"Pig. Pig something… I haven't figured out the rest. I'm just kind of tired of going by 'Lazy.' It's kind of run its course for me. And '26' never really clicked as a name." Hair pinned back, he rinses his hands and splashes at his face. "I'll settle it on the way over. Shall we go?"

"Gods, you're so cool," Scar breathes, staring back at him. His mouth quirks up in a smile at one end in a very GoodTimesWithScar sort of way. "I told Jimmy you'd say no."

"How long have you known me, Scar?"

Scar giggles, waving a dismissive hand. "L-let's not get into it… You're very cool, Pig. And handsome!"

"I appreciate that, yeah."

They give him the rundown on the way downstairs. Jimmy and Scar are looking to team up, taking turns with a single vessel, in a painful attempt to defeat the ender dragon and free the End before the chaotic duo of Grian and Joel. "And every time we die," Jimmy explains, looping his arm around Lazy's neck, "then Scar and I switch off who's in control."

"So are we all in my vessel at once?" he asks, pushing open the apartment door. They step onto the street together. The road's all bedrock, accented in a sidewalk of deepslate half-slabs as far as the eye can see. As always, Lazy glances down the left-hand street. The slime soul spawner sits in a place of honor in the town center, wrapped in the roots of an enormous dark oak tree. It's custom made, entirely decorative… but it's fun to admire nonetheless. Should I say hi to Mum? I should swing by and say hi to Mum.

"No, no… We're taking turns." Jimmy pats Lazy on the shoulder as though in reassurance. He's not the most reassuring fella that there's ever been, but Lazy lets him anyway. "The thing is, we log off every time we die. You're the only one who'll know everything that's happening for the both of us. You're collecting all the footage and as a third party, you'll be there to hold us responsible so we can't do any cheaty cheating. We're in a race, after all. We're Minecraft professionals. Does that all sound good?"

"You want to know what I think?" Lazy peels away from Jimmy and starts walking backwards, thrusting his hands in his hoodie pockets. He sticks his tongue at Scar. "I think Mr. Good Times With Fey here is hoping to wheedle out another password for his collection!"

"Oh, no, no, no," Scar protests, eyes like innocent emerald blobs. He lifts his cane, shaking both hands back and forth. "I don't take those anymore… I'm an honest man, Mr. Pig!" He bops Lazy on the head with his cane, then scampers down the road with a hum. He catches the copper rod of a lamppost with the cane hook and swings around, over and over, just waiting for Lazy and Jimmy to catch up. Lazy rolls his eyes.

"You're getting a substitute password if we do this. And you can keep it."

Scar makes a face, but doesn't protest. One-times do nothing for me, goes unsaid. His cane clicks and scrapes as he twirls around the pole again. Then Scar drops back to the road and pauses to massage his foot.

Grian and Joel, apparently, will be inviting someone new to the station to play this little game. Lazy asks about that as he and Jimmy wait for Scar. Jimmy shrugs. "Some endermite soul showed up near the fox spawner and got tangled in their soul-catcher. They never found his vessel, so Mama Fox let Etho bring him to the station."

Lazy lifts one eyebrow.

"All right," Jimmy amends, scratching behind his neck. He flashes a guilty smile. His canary-yellow wings, small and positioned low against his back, give the softest flutter. "He may have smuggled the guy out to bring him here, yeah. You know Mama Fox. She's gotta have one of everything in her collection…"

"I do believe I made her acquaintance once, yes. I wasn't gonna mention it, but I did wonder how he could've swayed an entire soul out of her if there wasn't a bit of deception involved. It's been a hot minute since we've had a new endermite hybrid running around, yeah? Good for him. Hey Scar, I'm gonna say hi to Mum real fast."

"That's fine! I'll be up in a minute. Just gotta rest my foot. My glitch did a weird jolt when I hopped down; oooh boy… I'm gonna be feeling that."

[Cnt'd on AO3 - Link at top]

[nihlisticringe]

I have a dilemma.

I dont own a proper gaming pc and dont have money to really invest in a proper one either so I mostly play games like Minecraft and Genshin on my laptop that I've had for a couple years now and it's starting to be at the end of its days. I'm trying to preserve it at least till I get into uni so I can start there with a brand new laptop so I'm kind of scared of playing any games on it too much as they will slow it down. I am however getting myself the Nintendo Switch as a high school graduation present and this is where the dilemma comes in.

I've always been a faithful Minecraft Java edition player, since 1.5, and I've sworn never to switch to Bedrock as Java is ultimately the superior version of the game. However, if I buy Minecraft on the switch, I'll be able to enjoy the full game without worrying too much about the device I'm playing on. Minecraft on switch is Bedrock edition and I'd have to learn a bunch of things over, most of which do not make any sense whatsovever, not to mention playing with a controller. I play mostly singleplayer so I dont really care if I cant play on Java servers or if minigames run on very low fps. The biggest plus side is that I'll be able to play more because honestly I'm too scared to even fight the dragon on my laptop cause it might crash the whole thing.

So the big question is; Should I buy Minecraft Bedrock edition on the switch?

[eclipsedcrystalstar]

I should see if Bedrock runs on my computer since controls are easier there, otherwise I’ll just use my switch

[crazydoughnutlady]

RAEsed in the End

master list prev

Sherbet was the one leading the charge. The various members of the town began to look for their missing member. They eventually came to a large bedrock bubble. Inside it there seemed to be a building.

“Hello?” sherbet, carefully called out into the building.

***

The day is gone from bad to worse, not only had Rae jumped into the void in front of Centross now the three remaining members of the household have been teleported to the prison. Ghosty was having a panic attack, and Athena was confused because of the aforementioned panic attack.

“Ghosty you need to breathe just listen to me.” Centross’s said, reaching through the bars, and grabbing Ghosty’s hands it usually worked with Rae. it was about to continue his instruction and help calm down the panicking adventurer. However, a voice rang through the building.

“Hello?”

“Sherbet up here!” Athena instantly ran towards their door.

“Athena!” the voice, which apparently was named Sherbet ran up the stairs, followed by a variety of people crowding into the small space outside the cells.

“Oh, there’s three of you.” Spoke a brown-haired woman with a shriek of white.

“How does prison works somebody has to take the place of the others so if you want to free Athena, someone else will have to stay behind” Centross explained, standing upright and coming to the door, so they could easily see his face. “If you are to take Athena, you should also take Ghosty’s here I would like to stay.”

The townspeople debated it for a moment but before much arguing could happen someone in a dino onesie, hit the button to Athena‘s door.

“Easton!” a red-haired woman with flowers all over her, called out angrily.

“Don’t worry mom I’ll be fine plus you need to look after Jamie and Athena,” Easton said in a calm tone, with a small smile.

“No, I’m staying with you!”

“Well, whoever switching you should do it soon the portal probably won’t stay open for that long.” Centross expressed the urgency. He had sometimes listened to Rae.

“Mombo if you’re staying, can I wish you well before I go through.” The person called Sherbet whose I was bleeding. Is that OK?

“Yeah, of course, Sherbet,” she said closely pulling them into a tight hug. They looked like they were about to kiss.

As overworlders all hurried down to the portal Centross turned toward Ghosty, “ Ghosty, can you promise me something?”

“Yeah…” his voice was weak as he looked up at Centross with tear-stained eyes.

“Take care of Rae for me.” Gosty looks like he was about to respond, but then Sherbet showed up. Taking Ghosty’s place.

“Wait I thought my mom was going to his place”

“Change of plans Easton, I know how much she would hate it here.”

As the two of them talked, Ghosty cast one last glance back at Centross before he two ran down to the portal and jumped through.

***

When Ghosty opened his eyes in the overworld for the first time, in a long time it was raining. there was a conversation happening outside of the building he had woken up in arguing about what had happened.

“Ghosty! You're here!” Athena headed down the stairs and hugged the adventurer.

“What happened did Sherbet take your place?” a masked man asked.

“Yeah, it was weird. It’s been so long since I’ve been in the overworld it looks different…”

“Have you seen much of it?” The masked man once again inquired.

“Yeah, I’m an adventurer or I was.”

“Oh, so am I I’m Will”

“Ghosty nice to meet you!”

“Here if you come to my house, I can get you geared up!”

As the two walked to wills house Ghosty couldn’t help but think over the last words, Centross had said to him. How would he take care of Rae? Rae was still in the end, wasn’t he?

***

Rae wandered of fair distance from the town and climbed the top of the mountain when suddenly the sky began to change. Little dots of white, began to drift from the clouds above. It was fascinating!

The auras said it was called snow, and he remembered reading about it a few times. He decided that he wanted to live in this mountain. It even had a pretty little stream leading down into the forest below.

He spent the next few days building his house. It was so weird to him that you could tell the time from how bright or dark it is instead of the constant light at the end. He wished Centross was here to explain most of it. After all, he remembered more of the overworld than Rae.

He is enjoying his quiet little mountain home and what she had added pretty doors from the woods below and so many fun, colorful blocks all sorts. The overworld was just filled with so much. When he heard a knock on the door.

“Athena we shouldn’t be knocking on random doors that show up behind my house!”

“Why not it could be a new friend!”

Rae opened the door to see Athena, standing next to a creature from the overworld.

“RAE! How did you get here?”

“I went through the portal when it was open, woke up in the strange building under the giant ball of light walked for a bit. Then the light ball of light went away, and stuff started falling, and I decided to live here.”

“Wait, Athena, you know him?” the brown overworld creature asked.

“Yeah, this is Rae. I was his lab assistant in the end!”

“Oh, well, do you need another?” they had flowers on their head were they connected to the red-haired lady with flowers?

“Yeah! can Jamie be your lab assistant as well?”

“Umm.. sure nice to meet you, Jamie.”

“Nice to meet you too Rae.” They said, with a careful tone and suspicious eyes.

“OK this is gonna sound terribly rude,” Rae began as he welcomed them into his house, “but what are you?”

“Have you never seen a bear before?”

“the books I read, didn’t say bears didn’t talk.” Rae mused, leading them down to the lab.

“Yeah we usually don’t, wait books?” Jamie quirked an eyebrow.

“Rae is from the end, Jamie, I don’t think he has seen the overworld, and what he does know it’s from books,” Athena explained with a laugh.

“Oh, sorry I guess I didn’t realize that.” the bear apologized.

***

It was like that for a short while Athena and Jamie, being the only ones that knew that Rae existed, and them learning all sorts of exciting and fascinating things, such as the scientific method, inter-dimensional auras, redstone, and even some other languages. Athena had picked up Ender very quickly.

However, Athena began to worry about Sherbet and Easton. wanting to bring them home. So Rae added that to his priority list getting them back to the overworld. Maybe even Centross could come along.

[cornbread-but-cringey]

fuck i wish bedrock edition would fix its loading issues on non-mobile platforms. typing out a full command should not be the fastest way to switch gamemodes when it's literally one of the first options in the settings menu.

[notsocheezy]

Brain Curd #191 - Twenty-Minute Tuesday #21

Brain Curds are lightly edited flash fiction - practically first drafts - posted daily (haven't missed one yet!) and sometimes written with the express intention of being terrible… but, you know, in an endearing way. Please like and reblog if you enjoy - the notes keep me going!

Is this thing working? It is! Great! Listen up, because there’s not much time.

I’m from the far away future of January 2025, and not to spoil anything for you, but the situation is grim. Not enough people voted in the United States 2024 election and the race was too close to call. It went to the Supreme Court, the last nine robed individuals I’d want casting the tiebreaker votes.

No, really, I don’t want to tell you too much lest it cause some kind of time anomaly, but what I will do is remind you to make sure you’re registered and make your voice heard by election day! If you all work together, you can stop this horrible future from ever happening. Visit VoteLikeABeast.com to make sure you’re registered and learn about the down-ballot candidates - they’re too important to leave blank! So few people voted for one of the senate seats that a write-in candidate won. I think Sparky is an adorable little congressman, but a human would almost certainly do a better job in the position.

To be honest with you, even though the state of the union is pretty dire in my timeline, I mostly regret that we didn’t get enough registrations to put Rhett & Link through the pregnancy simulator.

We still have ten minutes? Alright, alright, I’ll tell you some more of the weird stuff that’s happened. For one thing, they keep releasing Minecraft Movie trailers and it only gets worse. Jason Momoa’s character digs straight down, and he ends up dying in the void, which is just ridiculous because a diamond pickaxe shouldn’t be able to mine bedrock. They should have had him fall in lava. That is why you don’t mine straight down.

The Nintendo Switch 2 was revealed, and they’ve gone back to two screens. I never would have bet on that, to be honest with you, but they were very clever about how they implemented it. You actually just hook up an original Switch on the top and pull back on it like you’re loading the chamber of a pistol. They call it cock-docking.

Chappell Roan has released a new single to critical acclaim, and it’s even gayer than the last one.

They brought back purple ketchup.

The UK exited the European Union again by mistake.

I’ve healed from bottom surgery and started doing yoga. I’m gonna blow somebody’s fucking mind.

Shit, not much time left, so I’ll close out this important message. Please, please, please! Vote! Refusing to vote is not a boycott, it’s how the fascists win!

VoteLikeABeast.com