too late sorry, I'm already picturing an anime hero who is impossible to hurt so long as they can persuade their pet cat to stay in its box

Twitter post from me on Dec 29, 2016: "Schroedinger's Cat is a theory where if you put a cat in a box you're invincible" THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS ZTD

here we fucking go again with the visual novels and their understanding of science

i am broadly proud of the size of audience we get, but any commercial enterprise would call our numbers piddly. when it shoots up like this i didn't know what to think! but yeah, AI. obv i have no proof but it makes more sense than people suddenly reading all our old work.

(sudden realization) OHHHHH we're probably getting plagiarized by AI! for the last few months traffic on scanline has shot up and i wasn't sure why, but thinking about it, it's probably because they're robbing us so they can end the concept of art in modern society. that makes sense, ok.

*in AAA, you know what I meant

Screenshot from MLB the Show 25. My create-a-character getting the call that they’re headed from AAA to the MLB.

So, before I say what just happened- the CPU pulls this all the time, it’s infuriating.

HOWEVER.

In this instance it was a AAA game with scouts from head office in attendance, and as soon as the game was over I got the call. It was clearly a “if you blow this kid’s arm in ASA we will murder you”

MLB The Show pitcher stat screen. Perfect game through 8 innings with 13 strikeouts.

The manager CPU in MLB The Show drives me insane sometimes. In what WORLD do you pull this pitcher in between the 8th and the 9th?!

holy shit! good luck, friend, that's awesome!

AGAINST ALL ODDS, THOSE WHO BELIEVED BLUESKY THAT THE CRASH WAS DUE TO A DDOS

AND THOSE WHO DIDN'T BELIEVE BLUESKY AND WERE SURE IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE AI VIBE CODING

WERE

BOTH

RIGHT

and from day one it was like “damn this kicks ass and is really easy to use.” Shoutouts to Ren’py Tom and the Lemma Soft forums, y’all shaped a genre 💜

I think the closest I’ve ever been to history was back when I was a regular on a little enthusiast forum, and one day a dude posted a thread being like “hey we all like ren’ai games and wish there were more, so I made this version of Python I’m calling Ren’Py, and I’d love it if people took a look.”

The most bad-ass rebuttal from Tite Kubo, the author of Bleach.

this post is bullshit, i’m in my mid 30s and have no kids, i am not “like a grandpa”

there’s nothing INHERENTLY wrong with knowing about guns, but in reality it’s a yellow flag at best…

special thank you to @crasspants.bsky.social for taking the screenshot that made me doubletake, then following up with IMFDB to help solve the mystery

it’s SUCH a good question

So this gun wasn’t for sale. It wasn’t going to be for sale any time soon, as experimental military hardware. But it somehow got in the movie.

It can only be product placement targeting people in charge of the XM26’s military testing trials, to see if they adopt it. A small audience indeed. 5/5

Internet Movie Firearms Database on The One, and its section on the M26, where it is specifically noted as an “early version” of the gun.

The Internet Movie Firearms Database confirms our suspicion- this is an early prototype of the M26, probably an XM26- the X designating it as a US military prototype (“eXperimental”).

Obviously, that’s not the kind of thing a Hollywood studio would have lying around. A deal must have occurred. 4/5

Google infoblock on Jet Li’s The One, highlighting its 2001 release date.

Wikipedia infoblock on the M26, with attention to its In Service dates: “2003-2011 (limited service) 2011-present (full service)”

Further wikipedia infoblock on the M26. Notably, “Designed 1997-2002”

Well, ok, not ~impossible~. But really strange, because The One came out in 2001, and the M26 didn’t even enter field testing til 2003. And didn’t enter active use til 2011! Plus, that one looks kinda weird- the muzzle is off, the magazine is strange, etc.

But the M26 was DESIGNED in 1997. 3/5

M26 shotguns attached to M4s in Jet Li’s The One (2001).

An M4 with a “Masterkey” Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun underneath- clearly not the same weapon as in The One.

Image showing the M26 as a standalone shotgun, as well as how it can attach underbarrel on an M4. It looks MUCH closer to the gun from The One, but still a little different? Stay tuned….

To back up: this is Jet Li’s The One, a movie from 2001. In it, troopers are using M4s with underbarrel shotguns. Sure, that’s a thing.

Except they’re not using Masterkeys, the shotgun attachment for the M4/M16 attachment from the 80s. It looks like they’re using M26s. which is… impossible? 2/5

is paying a movie company to feature a gun that isn’t available for purchase but IS currently in US military weapons trials the arms dealer equivalent of a For Your Consideration oscar bait billboard

Makes sense! Surprised they got it, unless it was deliberate advertising?

Overview of Jet Li’s The One, with a special note that it came out in 2001

Wiki infobox for the M26-MASS, the semi-auto underbarrel shotgun attachment for the M4/16 family of rifles. Note that it entered trial service in 2003, two years after The One released, and full service in 2011, TEN years after The One. It was originally designed in 97, so this isn’t like BAFFLING, it’s just very prescient. One would expect them to use the older, pump-action Masterkey shotgun attachment from the 80s, which the M26 replaced.

i did a double take, because this is actually astonishingly ahead of the curve

This is a rather incredible window into a reactionary mindset, because Daniel Vávra seems like he genuinely wanted to tell a story that included a gay romance subplot in spite of pushback, but refuses to extend that understanding to other writers and developers who also want to tell their stories...

An advert promoting an AI company at Bristol Airport has been pulled after backlash.

The advert showed a female AI worker who will 'never ask for a raise'.

have a pulled pork sandwich with oregano on the menu called the “italian pork”

Screenshot of mobile bsky not loading

Screenshot of Lord of the Rings. The main character says "All right, then. Keep your secrets."

One more ping for this? Why not. I wrote about DLSS 5 for RPS, what it means for us to live in a world without graphics rendering and how easy it might be for us to lose control of the games industry: www.rockpapershotgun.com/with-dlss-5-...

every now and then you see a Sonic fan insinuate that Mario 64 is bad and you realize that some people just can’t be helped. they’ve been immersed in horseshit for so long that they don’t know what anything else looks like

And I have 78 saves to transfer. So I have to do every step of this 78 times. (Well, I'll do it all in bulk, every file step 1, then every file step 2, etc, but still)

And you would think that would piss me off? But there's something oddly satisfying about all this.