I'm patient. I can wait.

The idea of dragons in modern times is so fun because imagine a hot summer day on your vacay and go to use the hotel pool and staff is like "valued guests we regret to inform you that the pool area is out of service at the moment, we apologize for the inconvenience"

And people like "wtf why" looking out their hotel room window and there's this. This dragon just curled up in the pool chilling, literally, cooling itself down

Some of the staff are trying to gently shoo him away and the dragon does a soft little "rrrrrr" like a grumpy cat and a warning puff of smoke and they're like "fuck it i don't get paid nearly enough for this" and no ones using the pool today sorry!

They did it, they fucking did it.

holyfducjk

HISTORY

holy shit!

can someone explain this to me

Thirty years ago a legendary ET game came to fruition, so awful that as the tale told, all unsold copies of it were buried in a pit in New Mexico. A documentary film crew has just unearthed the stash, proving the legend true.

I don’t think people fully grasp just how awful it was. This one game, by the sheer merit of its unmatched shittiness, destroyed the video game and console market so thoroughly that the at home video game nearly went the way of the 8-track player.

It was literally so awful that it nearly changed the entire course of technology.

how can a video game possibly be that bad

People don’t really understand why it was terrible though, and the reasons why are extremely important and relevant especially today.

The game itself is bad, yes. It was built up to be an exciting hit for kids to play at Christmas in 1982. So much in fact, that retailers bought WAY more stock then could every be sold based on the hype.

However, people at the time liked the game. It looks bad now, but the game itself was pretty on par with the times. It wound up selling 1.5 million copies. Which would be great, except Atari was expecting to sell 4-5 million.

While initial reception was positive, critics started panning the game as critics do. While it was no worse than most other games at the time, it was stil frustrating and hard to play. It could not live up to the hype that had been built and negative press built up quickly.

But what was ALSO happening was a flood of cheap imitations on the market. ET is a licensed game, and like all licenses comes at a higher markup. So if you wanted to buy a game for yourself or your kid, would you buy 1 game, or 2 for the same price?

Atari was also screwing around with how they handled their distributors. Just before the game went to public, but AFTER the game had been bought and shipped, Atari announced that they were cancelling every existing contract with distributors and signing with only a select few.

So distributors, now pissed off and with an abundance of games that were NOT selling and with prices slashed horribly to sell games that people were quickly losing interest in, retailers put their claims to return a collective 2.5-3.5 million copies back to Atari. Atari, unable to recycle the cartridges or resell them in any way, wound up burying them in the Nevada desert.

This caused the Video Game Crash of the early 80s that put a dark mark on video games until Nintendo (and in some small part other game companies) to revive later. 

 It was the perfect storm. An over-hyped overpriced game sold to an increasingly frustrated and over-saturated market with retailers scrambling to make a dime while Game Devs blame the market for poor sales.

Some say the proverbial planets are aligning again, with way too many consoles putting way too samey games on the market at way too high a cost with a strong dependence on Pre-orders and pre-order exclusives.

Wanna give the game a shot?  Internet Archives actually has a copy of it at this link:

https://archive.org/details/E.T._The_Extra-Terrestrial_1982_Atari_NTSC

this is like the dutch tulip bubble of our times

It’s worth noting that this game was a symptom, not a cause. Like, one game didn’t crash the market. This was just the snowflake that tipped the avalanche. But it became famous because it is VERY funny.

professors be like "I'm swamped with grading right now" my brother in christ you made the assignments

you know what’s always bugged me? when a character is faced with some magical two headed being or some shit and one always lies while the other tells the truth and to figure out which is which the character’s like “which one of you is the liar” or something like bruh literally all you gotta do is be like “what’s two plus two” one of them’s gonna say four and the other one is gonna say 83 or some shit. there you go. answered. go on with your magical quest to defeat david bowie. 

this has forty notes. that’s forty more notes than expected.

THIS IS A VERY GOOD POINT and deserves more notes

LISTEN i don’t normally engage in Discourse but this information is DANGEROUSLY MISLEADING!

the point of the riddle isn’t to figure out which one is lying, in fact, knowing which one lies and which one tells the truth is irrelevant. What you want is the correct answer from the magical beast/two guards/etc. Usually this means knowing which path to take. For that, you HAVE to ask it “if i ask the other head/guard/etc which is the safe way to go, what will they tell me?”

if you asked the truth-telling one, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because the liar will always mislead you. if you ask the liar, they’ll tell you the wrong way, because they’re misleading you, so

ALWAYS do the opposite of whatever answer you get.

“who cares this is a stupid tumblr post this doesn’t matter irl–”

WRONG AGAIN! story time:

A few years ago a friend threw a halloween party, and since he dressed as the Riddler, he decided to have a riddle contest.

now, i’ve been preparing for a riddle contest my entire life, since i first read the hobbit and it got bilbo out of trouble. for some reason, i assumed riddle contests were as inevitable as quicksand.

I answered the first riddle easily (it was one of the ones from the hobbit) and then i had to answer the next one to win a bottle of top-shelf rum. it was a variation on the two-guard riddle, only i had to choose one of two paper bags. one had crappy cheap vodka, the other the nice rum. 

the host and his friend did the classic one lies one tells the truth thing, and of course before i asked everyone started shouting “ask him what color your hair is!” and stuff like that, but i already knew what to ask, so i shushed them and won the rum

remember, kids, it doesn’t matter which one is lying and which one is telling the truth. all that matters is you get the correct knowledge to move you forward, win your rum, and make you seem like a superhuman riddle-solver to a crowd of drunken party guests.

always be ready for a riddle contest

Here’s a thing that usually doesn’t come up when people try to criticise this riddle as well. One of the conditions of the riddle is typically that you only get to ask one question. You arrive at the liar and the truth teller and you need to find out which bridge is safe and which one will collapse when you’re halfway across.

They tell you that one of them always lies and that one of them always tells the truth. And they tell you you can ask them one question.

If you ask “What’s two plus two?” than great. You know which one lies but you also still don’t know which bridge you can cross and can’t find out.

You played yourself.

i can get the answer in zero questions. block all the other exits, light them on fire, and see which way they run.

^ Look at Alexander the Great up here, cutting the knot and all.

funniest thing would be if when Queen Elizabeth dies or steps down and Charles is all ready to assume the throne, here comes King Arthur, Excalibur in hand, sauntering back from Avalon like “oof what a nap! thanks for keeping the chair warm I’m back to be king again”

like, given that “King Arthur isn’t actually dead, he’ll be back to be King again someday” is, like, an actual aspect of the legend and a thing that a lot of people purport to believe, has anyone ever actually tried it? showing up to buckingham palace claiming to be Arthur Pendragon, The Once And Future King, and assume the throne? does the british government have a protocol for checking whether someone claiming to be King Arthur actually is? does parliament have a secret picture of the Real Excalibur kept under lock and key, only viewed if someone claims to be King Arthur, that they can use to confirm or refute the identity of alleged Kings Arthur? if not, how do they deter every jackass with a sward from pretending to be him? does filing a false King Arthur report constitute treason?

This has actually already happened.

doomsday preppers always keeping rusty tins of food in their basement but never building springhouses and smokehouses and paddocks for future livestock 🤨 those canned peaches are only going to bring you so far babe

are you going to study medicinal herbs and their cultivation or are you just going to keep stockpiling weapons like a little bitch 😩

going to shoot your way out of an infected cut, dumbass?

your characters literally don’t need a reason to be lgbt. no lgbt person in real life has a reason for being lgbt. we just are. if somebody says your character has to have a ‘reason’ to be diverse, they’re full of shit. diversity isn’t an aberration from the norm. it’s an accurate reflection of reality.

petition to make Americans google “euro” before writing fic

If you can roll up a coin you deserve to snort coke imo

Superman is doing drugs in the UK -not clickbait- -gone wrong-

petition to make tumblr users google “what countries use the euro” before commenting on a post

fantasy characters: “Geez”

me: who the fuck spread Christianity there

this two-years-old shitpost just gained a hundred notes who the snickerdoodles dug it up

W H A T

@rogha

In moments like this I always fall back on the fact that they also aren’t speaking English because they don’t have England or the many languages and conquering peoples that contributed to the creation of the English language and therefore the work musr be a translation into recognizable terms in our world’s terms. Call that Tolkien Brainrot.

It’s called “Translation Convention” but “Tolkien Brainrot” is funnier.

Maybe if instead of the vague cutesy term "brain fog" we use the more directly accurate term "neurological damage", that will help ppl stop seeing that as a "minor" outcome of covid

people who are already suffering from brain fog wouldnt really describe it as a vague cutesy term 😭😭 shits ruining my life

Being attracted to men in button up shirts with the sleeves rolled up is so weird cause like all you're seeing is their forearms but like,,, its so hot?? It's like I'm in olden times getting a glimpse of someone's ankles or something

i often wonder how many ppl from 2012 tumblr are still active on here

are u also still here, lurking in the shadows????

An Idea To Prevent A Nuclear War

“My suggestion was quite simple: Put that needed code number in a little capsule, and then implant that capsule right next to the heart of a volunteer. The volunteer would carry with him a big, heavy butcher knife as he accompanied the President. If ever the President wanted to fire nuclear weapons, the only way he could do so would be for him first, with his own hands, to kill one human being. The President says, “George, I’m sorry but tens of millions must die.” He has to look at someone and realize what death is—what an innocent death is. Blood on the White House carpet. It’s reality brought home.” - Richard Fisher, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1981)

Never forget that part of the reason this system was never implemented was that when he presented it to his colleagues, their response was IIRC “George, that’s terrible! If he has to take an innocent life, he may never press the button.”

why would u leave this in the tags!

i love when i plug the charger into the wall and see a little spark but i survive. we live so close to dying every day. and in this terror our hearts only delight

Okay but true

reblog this to have a Happy Wildcat New Year™

not enough people reblogged this last year we gotta really try this time to have a Happy Wildcat New Year™