The funniest things are the forbidden @riotlion - Tumblr Blog

Who would have guessed the guys who named their company after the tool the all powerful villain from Lord of the Rings uses to spy on the heroes are like *evil* evil.

socialistexan

Like, we already knew, but just coming out and saying it is bonkers.

socialistexan

tamamita

moonstonecassie

Since Netflix is removing She-Ra February 21st here’s a link to a Google drive with all five seasons <3

EDIT: I am not the creator of any of the drives I post on here I found these on Reddit and wanted to share them, I’m not responsible for any problems with the drive (not mad)

probablyasocialecologist

DOGE as an organization has been linked to 300,000 deaths due to its cuts and multiple significant data breaches. All the while, DOGE did not actually reduce the government’s deficit.

[...]

After watching hours upon hours of this footage, what stands out to me is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the arrogance. The surefootedness that this was the correct thing to do despite no experience in government. The presumption that they were entitled to use their own uninformed judgement to cut funds to things that they don’t personally value but do positively impact others. Even by their own metrics of merit based activity, this campaign was a failure. Fox believes these particular cut contracts did save hundreds of millions of dollars, but the cuts ultimately did not reduce the deficit. Not even close. It makes for strangely captivating viewing, seeing someone part of a team that has caused so much damage coldly explain the flawed thinking behind what they did. The answers are sometimes defensive and coached because they’re in a lawsuit, of course. But taken as a whole they show at least these members of DOGE are essentially unapologetic for what they did. In a statement published last week, American Council of Learned Societies President Joy Connolly said, “Our lawsuit reveals this administration’s contempt for that principle and for public investment in research for the common good. DOGE employees’ use of ChatGPT to identify ‘wasteful’ grants is perhaps the biggest advertisement for the need for humanities education, which builds skills in critical thinking.”

12 March 2026

probablyasocialecologist

Barred from publishing details of Iranian missile impacts or interceptions, local and international journalists are struggling to tell the f

Reporters and networks are prohibited from publishing the precise location of Iranian missile impacts, or even filming or photographing the extent of the damage in a way that could give away the location — restrictions designed, in the words of the army’s chief censor Col. Netanel Kula, “to prevent assistance to the enemy during wartime.” Outside of wartime, Israeli law already gives the military censor the authority to prevent certain information from being published, even retroactively. This can include aspects of Israel’s arms deals or intelligence activities, among other security-related topics. But just as it did during the “12-Day War” last June, the censor has tightened its restrictions amid the current U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. The police have already detained several journalists it deemed to be violating these censorship regulations.

[...]

“It’s hard to understand what is actually happening,” a senior manager at a foreign media outlet working in Israel explained. “In a lot of cases, we have official reports that there were no strikes or damage only to discover later that a target was hit. We can’t report or confirm so we don’t know if it happened or not. “We have a partial understanding of the reality on the ground,” the senior manager admitted. “Our coverage of the war is not truthful.”

13 March 2026

depsidase

guerrillatech

mikeneedsadrink

avkamfher-deactivated20251211

Well this is a new horror.

charl0ttan

Security alert: Your orb was pondered from a new location

tanoraqui

Sauron’s desktop when Pippin and later Aragorn looks into the Palantir

Lotta discourse on Bluesky about the size, attention, and effectiveness of the No Kings protests, can see the case that in order to protest in a way that's meaningful you gotta burn down some police stations.

friendshapedhole

You have to disrupt something in some way.

A permitted march is just a parade plus a petition with a lot of signatures.

You don’t necessarily have to be violent or vandalize stuff, but you do have to disrupt the smooth daily operations of government and commerce, and provoke or menace the authorities in some way. Gotta blockade stuff, occupy places, cost the government money.

I got home from the No Kings march today and all I could think was: what are all you people going to do if your demands aren’t met? Vote next November? You were all already going to do that anyway. Where’s the value-add of this march?

lordnot

I've been seeing some pushback about how non-disruptive, non-violent protests have been an effective counterpart to some of the more disruptive actions in historical protest movements such as during the Civil Rights Movement.

So to be clear: if a protest is being touted and even attended by some of the most establishment politicians you can find, its goal is not to bolster the actions of protesters willing to disrupt and put their lives on the line to force change. Its goal instead is to take the energy people have to try to force change in the status quo by any means necessary and harmlessly dissipate it.

girlnextvore

this sims 2 ad has like such deep gay energy to it. Like this feels like queer history to me

boingmann

hoodiegal

The funny thing is that it wasn't even an intentional stance taking. They just forgot to code a check to make sure characters genders "matched", resulting in that characters could get into relationships regardless of gender.

fungaljungal

What the hell are you talking about? They didn't forget anything. A programmer for the sims 1 was a gay man who programmed gay relationships into the game and they kept adding it back, intentionally, in each game.

json-derulo

Actually, you’re both correct. It was an accident and a deliberate decision by one gay developer:

“During The Sims’s protracted development, the team had debated whether to permit same-sex relationships in the game. If this digital petri dish was to accurately model all aspects of human life, from work to play and love, it was natural that it would facilitate gay relationships. But there was also fear about how such a feature might adversely affect the game. “No other game had facilitated same-sex relationships before—at least, to this extent—and some people figured that maybe we weren’t the ideal ones to be first, as this was a game that E.A. really didn’t want to begin with,” Barret told me. “It felt to me like a fear thing.” After going back and forth for several months, the team finally decided to leave same-sex relationships out of the game code.

When Barrett joined the company, in October, 1998, he was unaware of the decision. A fortnight into his new job, he found himself with nothing to do when his supervisor, the game’s lead programmer, Jamie Doornbos, took a short vacation. Jim Mackraz, Barrett’s boss, needed a task to occupy his new employee, and he handed Barrett a document that outlined how social interactions in the game would work; the underlying rules for the game’s A.I. that would dictate how the characters would dynamically interact with one another. “He didn’t think I could handle it with Jamie off on vacation, but he figured that at least I’d be out of his hair,” Barrett told me. “Neither he nor I realized that he’d given me an old design document to work from.”

That design document predated the decision to exclude gay relationships in the game. Its pages described a web of social interactions, in which every kind of romantic relationship was permitted. That week, Barrett confounded the expectations of his disbelieving boss. He successfully wrote the basic code for social interactions, including same-sex relationships. “In hindsight, I probably should have questioned the design,” Barrett, who is gay, said. “But the design felt right, so I just implemented it. Later, Will Wright stopped by my desk,” Barrett said. “He told me that liked the social interactions, and that he was glad to see that same-sex support was back in the game.” Nobody on the team questioned Barrett’s work. “They just pretty much ignored it,” he said. “After a while, everyone was just used to the design being there. It was widely expected that E.A. would just kill it, anyway.”

In early 1999, before E.A. had a chance to kill the design, Barrett was asked to create a demo of the game to be shown at E3. The demo would consist of three scenes from the game. These were to be so-called on-rails scenes—not a true, live simulation but one that was preplanned, and which would shake out the same way each time it was played, in order to show the game in its best light. One of the scenes was a wedding between two Sims characters. “I had run out of time before E3, and there were so many Sims attending the wedding that I didn’t have time to put them all on rails,” Barrett said.

On the first day of the show, the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love. Moreover, they had chosen this moment to express their affection, in front of a live audience of assorted press.”

- from The Kiss That Changed Video Games by Simon Parker

riotlion

LMAOOO

On the first day of the show, the game’s producers, Kana Ryan and Chris Trottier, watched in disbelief as two of the female Sims attending the virtual wedding leaned in and began to passionately kiss. They had, during the live simulation, fallen in love. Moreover, they had chosen this moment to express their affection, in front of a live audience of assorted press.”

Viva las Lesbianas!!!

nobieka

yikes

vague-humanoid

lordnot

The scary thing is that Israel probably sees this as a way to stay in the good graces with their Neoliberal allies in the United States and around the world. Hopefully they don't believe they have the political capital to outright kill him. But they know they can go farther than with a white neurodivergent woman like Greta Thunberg. Far enough that the resulting trauma could inhibit Chris' drive to engage in further political action at home and around the world.

I hope they fail, of course. But it is sickening nonetheless.

kropotkindersurprise

June 9, 2025 - Huge crowds protesting in the streets of Paris, to demand the release of the Madleen activists of the Freedom Flotilla who were kidnapped by Israel in international waters, and an end to the genocide. [video]