"Pokemon fan has an important PSA after sending '20 years of gaming almost down the drain'"

"The looming eShop shutdown has Pokemon fans in shambles"

In other words, it's just yet another example of the glorious digital future in action. This time, it's affecting the past, as well.

Also, today was the day that I first heard about the ability to apparently bring Pokemon from previous games into current games. Not that that is at all relevant to me, given that I played Pokemon (don't even remember now if it was Red or Blue) once, a decade or two ago, on a Game Boy emulator, for maybe a day or two before getting bored with it. That is the only personal experience I have with the Pokemon franchise. I don't even think I've seen a single full episode of the anime.

"Staff at Ubisoft's Beyond Good and Evil 2 studio are reportedly at breaking point"

"Numerous staff have taken extended leave recently, and some never returned."

Look. It has been 15 fucking years at this point. As the article itself notes, this game has already taken the title previously held by Duke Nukem Forever[1]. Just admit that the game is never coming out, or even better, officially cancel it, and be done with it, especially if it's causing employees that much stress. Honestly, as much as I adored the original Beyond Good and Evil game (though I have to admit I'm remembering less and less about it as the decades go on, given that I haven't touched it once since the first time I finished it, a decade or two [closer to two] ago), at this point I think I'd be okay if I never heard the name Beyond Good and Evil 2 ever again. Even if, miracle of miracles, the second game somehow saw the light of day, I don't know that I'd bother with getting it, especially given all the myriad ways in which Ubisoft has become a puddle of shit, generally speaking, between then and now. And this very story, right here, is just yet another example of the puddle of shit that Ubisoft has turned into.

[1] - A game so notorious for its lengthy development time that said development has its own Wikipedia page, which is bigger than the game's normal page. (And both of the pages mention how BG&E2 has beaten DNF's record now.)

"Competitively Explained: French"

Watch on YouTube

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I saw that on the (Youtube upload version of the) original Twitch stream from back in October. (Or that's when the Youtube thing was uploaded anyway. I have no idea when it actually first appeared on Twitch, since I don't do Twitch at all anymore.)

I know shit all about French, so I have no idea how accurate any of that is. But if that stuff's true, then... well... I guess that French is kind of sort of fucked up, sort of like English. Because English is very super fucked up, in a great many ways. I mean, I may be wrong, but I would assume that pretty much every language has parts of it that are ridiculous and stupid.

"Big Merger: Time For More Piss | Castle Super Beast Clips"

Watch on YouTube

Shock of shocks: Activision Blizzard continues to suck diseased, encrusted asshole. Them and Micro$hit merging will be a match made in hell, if it goes through.

(Once again, to repeat, the "diablo iii" tag is my de facto "activision blizzard sucks" tag, because I can't be bothered to go back and fix all the times I linked to the "diablo iii" tag when talking about how much Activision Blizzard sucks in a context that didn't directly relate to Diablo III and how much Diablo III sucks. Though if they end up merging with Micro$hit, I guess I'd just start using the "microsoft sucks" tag for it all. *shrug*)

"Russia fines Wikipedia for publishing facts instead of Kremlin war propaganda"

*weary sigh + facepalm + smdh + eye roll*

Can Wikipedia just... you know... not pay the fine? Given that they've done nothing wrong? Like, can they just pull out any operations they may have in Russia (and if they still have operations in Russia at all at this point, that's already not great, regardless), tell Russia to fuck all the way off, and continue business as usual? Because it would be really great if they could do that. I see no valid reason why they can't do that.

Oh, and it looks like Russia fined Google and, probably, many others for the same thing, i.e. telling the truth (or, at least, allowing the truth to be told) rather than kowtowing to Putin and spreading his blatant lies.

Seriously, Russia can eat shit. They've been free to shove as much shit as they can into their mouths for over a year now. Hell, for almost a decade now, at least.

Or, rather, Putin and his government can eat shit, at least, I should say. I don't want to paint an entire country full of people for the shitty actions of their shitty leaders, any more than I'd want to be painted with the same brush that would've covered Donald Trump and his administration in the diarrhea yellow it so very richly deserved.

"Is It Ethical to Be On Twitter In the Musk Era? A Personal Answer"

A post on Whatever dot Scalzi dot com.

"5 CRAZY Things This YouTuber Said About Me | Petty Pat #02"

Watch on YouTube

"YouTuber Guru Larry, AKA Larry Bundy Jr, has said some crazy things about Pat online over the past decade. We discuss some of the most outlandish claims that Larry has made about Pat, and Pat issues a special challenge..."

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Wow. Just wow.

...

...

Okay, so... the only thing I knew about Guru Larry before this was that he used to be on ScrewAttack, where I watched a few of his videos, and that he was (and technically still is [I almost put a link there, but then decided against it]) on Channel Awesome, where I did not watch any of his videos. And that was it. That was the grand sum and total of my exposure to and knowledge of Guru Larry. This is the first I've heard of any sort of beef between Guru Larry and Pat the NES Punk. And, of course, I had no idea the guy apparently was such a scumbag (assuming, as always, that Pat and Ian are on the level here, which I still as of yet have no reason to doubt).

That said, that bit ("bit" both in the sense of a small portion and in the sense of a performance piece, e.g. "he was doing a bit") at the end of the video where Pat literally pulled out $5,000 USD and challenged Larry Bundy Jr. to come to SoCal Gaming Expo and present incontrovertible evidence of the five claims against Pat that Pat enumerated in this video for which Pat would pay him $1,000 per claim if he (Larry) was successful at proving them true was just... it felt slimy to me. Yeah, I know, Pat was just, as I said, doing "a bit," but still.

Basically, my interest in watching these "Petty Pat" things (and all the similar stuff before "Petty Pat" was officially a thing) can only be described as morbid, and even that might be an understatement. I seriously feel like I need to go take a shower after watching these things, sometimes. And yet, I still watch them, even so.

(To go off on a bit of a tangent, I'd completely forgotten that Pat had done a collab with Spoony/Noah Antwiler back in ye olden dayes. I knew about Pat before he did his collabs with James Rolfe and Spoony and it was pretty cool seeing him work together with those guys. And... yeah, I'd have to agree with Ian's opinion of Spoony these days. Last I saw of Spoony before I abandoned Twitter entirely... he, uh, wasn't doing so hot, like, at all. But... maybe he's actually doing better more recently? I hope so. I haven't yet watched those videos there, as of posting this, but I'll be doing that in a bit. Might even make another, separate post about them later.)