Yet another new study debunked the basis for the anti-trans sports bans. It was never about sports but for creating legal avenues for exclusion and abjection. This is one of the largest analyses ever conducted, involving 52 studies and 6,485 trans people. Read the study here.
So, Carmen Sandiego’s To Steal or Not to Steal, along with almost all of Netflix’s Interactive specials, will be deleted from the streaming service come December 1st 2024. There's really no changing that, at least for now.
My friends and I had originally planned to archive TSONTS ourselves, but someone had kindly directed me towards this group called The Netflix Interactive Archive. These people are doing AMAZING work to preserve not only Carmen’s interactive special, but EVERY interactive special. These people have far more technical know-how than I could ever begin to understand for this topic.
As of now, they currently have archived every single interactive special in every single available language, and they are working on eventually releasing their archived versions for anyone to play! I’m confident when I say that Carmen Sandiego’s interactive is safe in their hands, so once they are able to release their archival of TSONTS I will definitely be posting about it. Subscribe to their youtube channel to keep tabs on the archive’s progress!
So the actual content of the interactives are as safe as they reasonably can be. But I’d like to talk about WHY Netflix is doing this, as I didn’t explain properly in my first post and many people were confused.
According to a Netflix spokesperson in an article with The Verge, “The [interactive special’s] technology served its purpose, but is now limiting as we focus on technological efforts in other areas.” This, of course, is total bull. There's no reason that keeping already existing content on your platform would limit the capabilities of future content. So what's the REAL reason? Corporate greed, of course! Deleting these interactives from the streaming site would save Netflix money.
Originally, I believed that cutting TSONTS from Netflix would allow them to claim the interactive as a loss and receive a tax break from it; this is what happened to Coyote vs. Acme, a fully-produced movie that Warner Brothers never released, and got an estimated $30 million dollar tax break on (source). While this might play a part in Netflix's decision to cut the interactives, I think that this situation is more alike to what happened to Infinity Train on HBO Max.
In 2022, many beloved animated TV shows, including the acclaimed Infinity Train, were removed from HBO Max. Infinity Train had no other legal home at the time, and now there are very few legal places to access the show. The show's creator, Owen Dennis, had this to say on the matter: "...It’s about saving money somehow. The consensus is that it has something to do with paying animators and artists the residuals that they’re owed for their work. Our pay is not complete without the ongoing residuals." (source).
HBO Max didn't want to pay Infinity Train workers the money they were owed, and now it's likely that Netflix doesn't want to pay Carmen Sandiego workers what they are owed. It doesn't matter to them if these interactives are important pieces of media that matter to many people, and it doesn't matter to them if their workers lose money that they need to survive. Ultimately, Netflix doesn't believe that these interactives are bringing in enough revenue to keep them on the streaming platform.
Right now, animation workers have few ways to protect themselves from these types of business decisions, but it doesn't have to stay this way forever! Right now, The Animation Guild is negotiating with the corporations to receive better pay, working conditions, and to help prevent the conditions that influence corporations to delete shows. You can help them by signing their petition, helping to convince corporations that animation matters! Sign the petition here!
Members of The Animation Guild (TAG), IATSE Local 839, are facing unprecedented levels of unemployment despite animation outperforming on s
THIS is a mega folder containing literally everything rwby-related that is available right now on roosterteeth (+v9). rwby, fairytales, world of remnant, the grimm campaign, ice queendom (sub and dub), vtubing, all the behind-the-scenes stuff. everything.
plus soundtracks for every volume + IQ, and drm-free epubs.
i will add any additional rwby content released during the wind down period as it becomes available. V1-8 have an english subtitle track embedded in the files, V9 does not because it came from CR. IQ dub has english subtitles. and for the sake of completeness i pulled all the non-english subs available on CR for V1-9 as well, those are in there as loose .ass files for the time being.
whenever possible, buy physical media. learn how to strip drm out of digital content that you own and make it a habit to do so.
ao3 is facing a ddos attack from an overseas right-wing anonymous group because it contains "degeneracy and disgusting things like LGBT and NSFW".
they're not the only right-wing group that is attacking fanfiction sites because of queer & nsfw content. the Heritage foundation, the US right wing think tank that writes laws for republicans, wrote an article about how "big tech turns kids trans" in which they're advocating for the Kid's Online Safety Act to pass because it will give state attorney generals power to sue websites for "potentially harmful content towards minors". in this article they point out websites like wattpad, tumblr, tiktok, twitter as sites that GOP attorney generals can and will target for censorship if this bill passes. all places where fandom, that's mostly queer, hangs out.
if you think this bill has no chance of passing because of all the red flags it poses, think again. it currently has 38 cosponsors in the senate, and is being pushed by the democrats as a "protecting the children!!" type bill.
there are left-aligned orgs in congress rn lobbying for this bill to pass. july is extremely decisive, because if KOSA goes through to markup it'll be bundled with the Earn It act, Restrict, and all the other bad internet bills and passed as a package, completely censoring the internet forever.
if you want to learn more about the bill, go here. also sign the open letter against it here
it's ESSENTIAL that you call your members of congress, specifically Maria Cantwell (you can call from out of state) and tell them DO NOT PASS KOSA. this site here connects you to your members of congress and gives you a short simple script to read off of! super easy and doesn't take much out of your day! please do this now!!
I am obsessed with the way Mustang just took over the role of Ed and Al’s dad. He took one look at those boys and went “oops guess im a father now” whether he was aware of it or not.
“It’s been awhile since we saw each other… why don’t we have a cup of tea?”
HE MISSES THEM AND WANTS TO HAVE TEA WITH EDWARD TO TALK ABOUT THINGS. THIS MAN IS LITERALLY A FATHER.
AND THE WAY HE JUST?? SETS UP MEETINGS WITH PEOPLE TO HELP ED??? (Yes, even though Tucker is a horrible person, he potentially had a lot of information that could’ve been very useful to Edward. And Mustang wasted absolutely no time in helping him.)
AND THE WAY HE SENDS HAVOC TO GO PICK THEM UP. HE LITERALLY PULLED THE “Sorry I’m busy and I can’t pick up my kids can you go get them for me”