XenoRat @xenorat - Tumblr Blog

LLM psychosis is simply the democratisation of being surrounded by yes-men and unctuous toadies, an experience previously only accessible to dictators and kings and cult leaders and venture capitalists

victusinveritas

All of these are by @mattxiv on Instagram.

Here's to all the shockingly single bachelor uncles or the two very close friends who just happened to be girls and are only living together until one of them finds a man (they lived together for forty two years).

victusinveritas

*All of these make me tear up.

keatxu

abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them

omikronsoul

Game companies hate emulation, but none of them seem to understand that a lot of us would just buy ROMs from them directly if we could. I don't want a fifth remake of Final Fantasy IV, I want to pay five bucks for the 3MB file you already made bank with thirty years ago. Nobody who wants to play something for the purpose of retro gaming is going to consider a $40 remake as the alternative option, and we're certainly not going to let the original dissappear. They're crying about opportunity cost for a product they're not even selling.

justletmeremember

op i know you're probably talking about like, video games, etc, but this is also critical for research science - my lab has so much abandonware, either because the company's out of business, or the company decided to not maintain it, and it's a fucking nightmare. we have two windows 95 computers that are CRITICAL for performing experiments/data analysis because the software needed is abandonware. one of the main roles for a guy in my lab is to maintain these little dinosaurs because if they go out, we lose access to ~20 years of raw data for research. part of why is that these companies also make their own file types, and make it difficult-to-impossible to convert those file types without their specific software. by habit, i convert all research files to more generic versions (txt, pdf, tif, etc) so that i minimize risk of losing my shit, but some stuff can't be converted.

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

so like, i know a lot of people look at the original post here and go "well op just wants old video games to play" (which is valid! games companies should not be able to push shit to abandonware and then close it off) but also this is critical for like. biomedical research. if y'all had any idea how much basic infrastructure built on science relies on shit that is technically abandonware, you would probably be horrified.

jollysunflora

#there is so much abandonware just...out there being used and carefully maintained#because nothing quite replicates the functionality

infectiouspiss

disabled ppl we need to start lying to nosy people okay? you tell me i'm too young to need a cane and i will tell you point blank that maybe you should tell that to the guy who ran me over. you don't get an explanation of my health issues you get lies and depending on how much of an asshole i want to be that lie will be anything from a humble car crash to a 1 billion lions attack. mind yr business.

infectiouspiss

"i could never live like that" well maybe you'll have to because this happened overnight. yeah you heard me i was the most able bodied man in the world but then one morning bam i woke up disabled. yeah you could have that too. there's no cure either you'll just wake up one morning and now you have to live like me

infectiouspiss

"what happened" well have you ever seen looney tunes? yeah an anvil landed on me and squished me flat.

do-you-have-a-flag

things u do not know about if you have watched project hail mary but not read the book

1: Ryland Grace experiencing involuntary knowledge of his co-workers sex lives because they think of him as someone they need to report to

2: Ryland Grace's surprise at being informed that he is considered the second highest up on the mission after Stratt

3: Ryland Grace finding out a room full of people assuming he's sleeping with Stratt

4: autocannibalism

introvertathome

I love that because of number 4, I can fuck with movie only people on ao3 by tagging my phm fanfics with "canon typical cannibalism"

taraxippos

I think this is the single funniest artfight rule. Like....I guess?

taraxippos

WHO DID THIS

taraxippos

Rockwith Aleaf

heedra

if i couldn't have any of the obvious first choice superpowers i would want my power to be the power of i can go anywhere and its not a problem. the way this power would work is that as long as im peaceful and respectful i can go anywhere and nobody will see it as weird or see me as a target for hostility. i can walk into a cool house to politely peep the decor or walk into a tall office building to politely peep the decor or walk around a city at night alone to politely peep the decor or walk into a strange facility to politely peep the decor or walk onto a plane and ride the plane to its destination and then walk around there to politely peep the decor and its fine as long as im chill. no need to make me faster or anything i can just walk at a normal pace. its good for the soul.

catchymemes

mephistopheles

i bring a sort of “you should maybe interrogate your so-called ‘preferences’ to make sure they’re not literal textbook examples of severe unconscious bias” vibe that my woke gay friends dont really like

mephistopheles

what this post does NOT mean

go out and fuck someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to

go out and date someone you aren’t attracted to because a stranger on tumblr said to

You’re Not Allowed To Be Gay Anymore

what this post DOES mean

if you just ‘prefer’ to avoid majority black areas of your city

if you just ‘prefer’ to read, write, think, and talk about men

if you just ‘prefer’ to socialize with people you (perceive as) your assigned birth sex

if you just ‘prefer’ to exclusively watch white-directed movies, read white-written books, listen to white-authored music

if you just unconsciously perceive men as more authoritative/competent and ‘prefer’ to be spoken to by them

this is a post about acknowledging unconscious bias. it is not a post about dating. please stop coming into my inbox and accusing me of rape apologism and telling me to kill myself. thank you

mamoru

life pro tip: if you happen to be considering purchasing an LG TV or monitor, you possibly want to pick something else! and if you have an LG monitor that has not been plugged into anything in a while, you might want to leave it that way!

if you already have an LG monitor or TV or intend to buy one, you probably want to watch this video and keep an eye on gamers nexus for updates (or anyone else covering the LG spying situation):

posted july 16 2026

LG is doing some bad things. how bad? well. here are some very brief bullet points. I am not an expert, gamers nexus is, see the video for more information than this:

LG monitors (brand new and years old, cheap and expensive) auto-install LG's own adware-spyware called LG Monitor App onto windows 10 and 11 computers. you plug in an LG monitor for video output and this gets installed automatically. no hitting OK, no confirmation, no toggles, NOTHING.

the auto-installed LG Monitor App auto-grants itself access to your internet connection and ALL computer resources. the LG Monitor App has the ability to collect: geolocation data, device data, personal information, online activity data, contact data, and more!

...and it shows pop-up ads! because fuck you

on some affected versions of windows, auto-installed shitware like the LG Monitor App can be prevented by navigating to gpedit.msc -> computer configuration -> administrative templates -> system -> device installation -> prevent automatic download of applications associated with metadata

...but, if your LG monitor already installed the LG Monitor App, this is like closing the barn door after the horse got out. and that horse has the logs of everything you were doing on your computer! someone stop that fucking horse!!!

unrelated to the LG Monitor App, many LG TV owners are now required to tell all household members and guests that their LG TV is recording and processing ALL nearby voices. or else they may be in violation of local eavesdropping and wiretapping laws. for owning a fucking LG TV.

plus, how many businesses, workplaces, public spaces use LG TVs?

allegedly the microphone spying can be turned off by disabling microphone features, but LG has been caught disregarding opt-out settings before.

LG TVs can record everything that happens on the TV, including the video output of connected devices like phones, computers, gaming consoles, anything that happens on the TV screen.

LG was sued for their spying, and as a result of that spying suit, now shows pop-ups saying oops! they got caught spying and intend to continue spying. thanks for buying LG!

as of when the video was posted, there was no list of every spying LG monitor or TV. but this stuff is getting rolled out to more and more LG devices, including those purchased years ago.

and that is the shortest summary I can make of this situation without just summarizing more of the gamers nexus video.

Update: We are working on a follow-up to the LG story and have some disturbing findings re: LG's products. It will take us a while to parse

⬆️posted july 23 2026

gamers nexus is fairly respected in technology journalism. they fly around the world investigating companies that fuck people over and have pressured major companies to make major changes over the years.

so for gamers nexus to say that this LG spying situation is both unprecedented in how uniquely bad it is in this era of spying, and that it gets even worse than their video where they already say to stop buying and using LG products while recanting every prior recommendation for LG products?

oooooofff

dittography-direwolf

Totally normal for a legitimate for-profit company to refuse to reclaim or stop running their products even after they're no longer being paid to do so. I'm sure it's very normal to just keep running your service for free when your contract's been terminated. Spending money to continue running cameras that supposedly no one is looking at is definitely not an indicator they are just run by the federal government to spy on everyone and only a wacko conspiracy theorist would think so.

pagliacci2

If the woman that JK rowling posted an upskirt photo of had been a cis woman snopes wouldn't have said this was "mixed" and you know it.

vexatiousvic

Not that it was necessary, but I looked up definitions, and yeah, obviously "taking a photo under someone's skirt" is literally it. Fuck Snopes so fucking hard. I need them to explain to me how it doesn't fit the definition to a fucking t:

And what the FUCK do they mean, "public setting"?? Yeah, upskirts are mistly taken in public fucking settings! That's not an eycuse, that's part of the fucking issue

pagliacci2

And truly what do they mean it was in public? Does that mean that the upskirt photos people take on subways dont count because other people are around? OF COURSE IT WAS IN PUBLIC THATS HOW THE PHOTO GOT TAKEN IF SHE HAD BEEN PHOTOGRAPHED AT HOME IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BREAKING AND ENTERING

doe-eyed-disaster

what do they mean "it wasn't taken surreptitiously"? there isn't any implication here except that because Freda Wallace was in public, she consented to any pictures that might be taken of her? this is just "look at the way she* was dressed". snopes is doing rape culture.

estrogenesis-vaporeongelion

https://archive.is/Nv1K1

according to archives the first version of the snopes article listed it as "true," but it seems to have been changed. given rowling's widely known history of extreme and aggressive litigiousness i'd be willing to bet her legal team probably objected and snopes caved

byjove

Seriously though, unmarked/badly marked graves on historical properties are a much bigger problem than you would think. People were just burying people anywhere, especially children who seemed to have home burials more often than adults. Sometimes you know, sometimes you do not. Often there was a wooden cross when the person was buried and it has since decayed. My great great great grandmother is buried alone in the middle of a cow pasture. Her grave is marked by a rock. Just a large weathered chunk of granite, not a headstone. You wouldn’t know she was there if you didn’t have family oral history. She deserves to have a headstone I think but I’m not sure if disturbing her is right. The rock was out there by her husband so it feels wrong to move it.

byjove

Great great great grandma Mary has been dead 104 years. She died during the influenza pandemic of 1918 though we can’t find the exact date she died on. She was 35 or 36. She was a fantastic mother to her 5 daughters. My great great grandmother was the oldest and she was only 13 when her mother passed. Mary’s youngest daughter was a toddler. Mary wasn’t buried in the churchyard, maybe because of the pandemic or maybe because her husband didn’t want her to be too far away. It’s unclear. It’s also unclear if she had another headstone or grave marker besides the rock.

What is clear is that before her death, there was a fantastic harvest of persimmons on the property and she canned an abundance of persimmon jam. After her death, my great great great grandfather Robert ate the persimmon jam on toast every morning and cried. I remember this because my great grandmother used to tell my grandmother about being a girl and seeing her father sitting at the kitchen table bawling for his wife. Alone in this world, missing the woman he had been married to for 16 years, thinking of her as he ate the last of the things she had made for the family. Most widowers with young children got remarried quickly in those days. He didn’t. He raised his girls alone and died at 60, never having remarried.

My grandmother is named Mary, after her mother’s mother who lies in a cow pasture with a rock to mark her grave. A woman who died entirely too young, who died wanted and loved and needed.

Every unmarked grave has a story like this.

chuunifox

Autism Representation written by an allistic: My name is John Autism and I like the designated autistic interests

unintentionally autistic character written by the creator who hasn't really thought about whether or not theyre autistic: I wish I could be human like the way everyone else is but I know they can tell I'm not. And I know they're right

marxism-transgenderism

What always gets me about learning about settler colonialism is how once you learn about it you cannot unsee the violence to the land itself. My home state was previously nearly 100% wetlands, apart of the wider Ohio river valley whose biodiversity supported such large populations of hundreds of different species that many contemporary source from settlers describe it as like the garden of Eden.

The Indigenous people who farmed and hunted here (and still farm and hunt in what land they have been able to keep and reclaim) were able to grow miles of upon miles of crops with multiple harvests a year, encouraging this biodiversity by creating forest gardens with incredible amounts of food from staples like corn and squash to local fruits like pawpaws to European imports like apples alongside controlled burns which allowed fields and buffalo ranges to expand.

Nowadays my state is known almost exclusively for its fields of nothing but corn and soy beans. Driving through in between the comparatively small cities you'll see nothing but fields where the plethora of different trees and plants were chopped down mile by mile, the remaining wetlands drained and flattened, and the rich black soils robbed of their nutrients through decades upon decades of monocrop agriculture now preserved through the life blood of petrochemical fertilizers which destroy the surrounding environment.

This process was done mile by mile as the tens of thousands of Indigenous people were killed and displaced by settlers and the US army, the land measured and sold acre by acre to white settlers who raped the land as described, filling the pockets of wealthy land speculators (like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson) who bought the land directly from the government in schemes so corrupt historians have dedicated entire careers to mapping out their dramas.

It's like learning about commodity fetishism and suddenly seeing hundreds of strangers in the products that surround you. Once you learn how the land was destroyed for profit you'll never look at the miles of fields or the cracks in the concrete of buildings built on wetlands or the stench of now obsolete canals built solely for a once boat-dependent economy with no care for the environment the same.