I Finally Made The Meme I've Had In My Head For Over A Year

Put [tumblr] (lowercase) in the square brackets [] <- those

oh shit I didn’t know [tumblr] could do that

I’m always fascinated by vengeance arcs in fiction because of their potential to create conflict within the audience—it’s an extremely natural, human thing to desire justice, and seeing someone get their comeuppance is extremely satisfying, and fulfills almost a spiritual need within everyone, I think. But there’s a fine line between justice and vengeance—where is it? How far is too far? I’m not here to answer these questions here other than to say that there is a line, but how a piece of fiction decides to indicate that line and where it’s been crossed is utterly fascinating to me. It’s the ability to have your audience response go from “YES! YEEESSSS!! WOOHOOOOO” to “…wait…no, this isn’t…oh no” on a dime.

The Time Lord Victorious in Doctor Who is still my favorite example of this (the shift is just so subtle!), but FMAB is getting some MAJOR points from me for how it handled Roy’s pursuit of vengeance over Hughes’ death. It isn’t subtle by any means—the dude is terrifying, Ed and Scar are actively commenting on how far he’ll go, Riza is obviously terrified for him—but it’s still extremely effective. I think part of what makes it so good is how well it parallels his encounter with Lust—she was also a homunculus, he also torched her to death protecting Riza, it even happened in the same exact place—but while that situation felt karmically satisfying and necessary to defend someone else (though, admittedly, it was still a bit disturbing), his encounter with Envy, while it starts out hyping you up for what promises to be a long-awaited delivery of justice, quickly begins to feel utterly wrong. Roy’s face is contorted, he doesn’t possess his usual control of his emotions, and he’s cruel. Envy is actively fleeing from him, and Roy isn’t even running to keep up with him, he’s just walking, and it’s terrifying. But where any pretense of justice completely vanishes is where Envy reverts to his tiny, weak, reptilian form, and Roy is still just as willing to murder him. And of course, the final nail in the coffin is Riza pointing her gun at his head—fulfilling the promise set up in earlier episodes that she would kill him if he ever deviated from his path. It’s just *chef’s kiss* perfection.

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

By that logic shouldn't you prefer Minneapolis Minnesota? It fits so well

What can the twin cities do to earn your respect :(

Give complete and total power to St. Paul and demolish that fucking K mart and put something useful there instead

dear USAmericans,

VOTING WORKS!!!

French people showed up, French people voted, turnout was higher today than it has been since 1997, and we kicked the far right to 3rd place

a week ago, the far right was the biggest party in France, we were slated for a far right parliament, prime minister, and government

this week, we voted against them en masse and we won!

VOTING WORKS!

you're up next in November! it's very rare we get to say this, but this one time, take example on the French! show up and vote!

because VOTING WORKS!

Join the Cult of Kestis!

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