You Know That Whole Trope Where Like, The Protagonists Get Teleported Up Into The Aliens Spaceship Or

You know that whole trope where like, the protagonists get teleported up into the aliens’ spaceship or base or whatever and the alien appears to them only it doesn’t appear as it really looks like but rather, since it doesn’t want to scare the protagonists, it takes the form of something we find familiar and pleasing and is like, “I look like your dad or whatever–is this form okay?” Like I think about that trope a lot and I think like, what if the alien couldn’t pick out a form via telepathy and only had earth media to try and decide what form would scare its human guests least and be accepted almost immediately and honestly the more I think about it the more options for what form that might be are just really fun to me.

“I have chosen the form of your earth playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda–do not be afraid. I come in peace.”

“Greetings. I am Glofnorbo of the cloud you call the ‘Pegasus Nebula.’ I have scanned your earth media from afar and empirically decided that you would find the form of the one known as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson most pleasing. I have come to confer with your leaders.” 

“Do not be panic. I come in peace. I have assumed the form of your insectoid demigoddess ‘Hatsune Miku’ so that we may communicate peacefully without my true form horrifying you.” 

Actually helpful 👍, thenk

Yes, hi, what's happening to reddit? I usually check some fandom news there but everything is private/blocked now? I have an account and not even that allows me to enter?

Reddit is changing their policy so they every thousand api requests they charge money. This means that third party apps, moderation tools, and other various things just won’t work anymore, since these things rack up thousands of requests very quickly, they’d just be unsustainable to run.

This cost would be average out to a dollar per month per person using third party applications, like an alternative app, text to speech, moderation tools, etc. Reddit has millions and million of users, most of which would be affected.

For example, Apollo for Reddit, a popular third party alternative to the Reddit app (which I used myself, seriously the Reddit app is abysmal) would cost $20MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR TO RUN. Given the app is developed by one guy, that legitimately puts him out of business.

Moderation would get even worse than it already is, as moderation tools use the api to effectively moderate, but now it’s at a cost.

The reason why this change is happening, is because the API can be used to collect data for AI, and, to quote the CEO, “the Reddit corpus of data is really valuable” and he doesn't want to “need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”

So, once again, AI and capitalism is ruining things for everyone else.

This is a change that is created solely to make money without thinking for a second about the millions of people it would effect. This lead to 7000 of the most popular subreddits blacking out for 48 hours in protest, and I’m pretty sure it crashed the whole site. The voice of the people has definitely been heard, now it’s just time to see if it’s done anything.

Edit: I got something wrong! Thanks to all who corrected me! No thanks to the anon who was an asshole about it lmao

It’s not that Reddit is charging that’s the problem, it’s that it’s charging way too much, is way too short of a deadline to change it, and spez is just an asshole lying about the Apollo dev. Still a shit situation! Just not exactly for the reasons I said. Look into the reblogs for people who know more!!

Is it just me or does this line hit different when you remember that David Tennant actually has a non-binary kid who uses they/them pronouns, and has worn this non-binary rainbow pin to a bunch of interviews —

beach episode

YOU ARE MY LUCKY STAR