Dispatches from the Middle Circle

you want to help stop tumblr from murdering itself? here's how!

i encourage you to reblog this so we can get as many people leaving feedback as humanly possible. we need to let staff know this is an utterly terrible idea

by the way, tumblr has turned off asks on all of their staff blogs, so this is the only way to tell tumblr how you feel

here it is again because uh. seems relevant.

I think

soon

I might…

spend an irresponsible amount of money on a Japanese robot toy

but in my defense, it transforms into an airplane

I’ve only had the Bandai Hi-Metal R VF-0S Phoenix for a few minutes but if anything happened to it I would kill everyone in the room and then myself

I feel the same about my Hi-Metal R stuff. While the Valkyries from the line are slightly partsormery, you aren’t going to find anything better at retail without paying nearly three times as much.

The Glaug and the Dougram from the line are AMAZING

blu

Like I really, really want to sit down and talk with whoever is in charge of tumblr’s day to day operations and planning and just ask, “Why?” Like I don’t think they’ve made very many changes over the past two years that have been well received and yet, they’re striving to do worse in a time where every other social media website is under the gun. you can win by doing nothing and yet you choose to actively lose. people would be happy to spend money on worthless gimmicks for their blogs if you actually put in effort to make the website more functional instead of less.

Like holy fuck I know a shit ton of staff are tumblr users. Are they fucking blind and deaf, or just straight up in denial on how bad they’ve been blowing it? you can’t tell corporate executives are responsible for bad UI designs. Yeah I can see how tumblr live definitely came down from people who wanted that twitch.tv money but really, making likes public? it’s not even the worse thing but if I wanted my likes public then I would turn that on because newsflash assholes, that’s been a feature for over a decade.

I don’t even have porn and other nsfw shit in my likes it’s just a matter of privacy. That’s why people love this site, is because you still have some of the old net shit where you don’t have to put yourself on display every waking moment you’re online.

I think

soon

I might…

spend an irresponsible amount of money on a Japanese robot toy

but in my defense, it transforms into an airplane

Does anyone remember what happened to Radio Shack?

They started out selling niche electronics supplies. Capacitors and transformers and shit. This was never the most popular thing, but they had an audience, one that they had a real lock on. No one else was doing that, so all the electronics geeks had to go to them, back in the days before online ordering. They branched out into other electronics too, but kept doing the electronic components.

Eventually they realize that they are making more money selling cell phones and remote control cars than they were with those electronic components. After all, everyone needs a cellphone and some electronic toys, but how many people need a multimeter and some resistors?

So they pivoted, and started only selling that stuff. All cellphones, all remote control cars, stop wasting store space on this niche shit.

And then Walmart and Target and Circuit City and Best Buy ate their lunch. Those companies were already running big stores that sold cellphones and remote control cars, and they had more leverage to get lower prices and selling more stuff meant they had more reasons to go in there, and they couldn't compete. Without the niche electronics stuff that had been their core brand, there was no reason to go to their stores. Everything they sold, you could get elsewhere, and almost always for cheaper, and probably you could buy 5 other things you needed while you were there, stuff Radio Shack didn't sell.

And Radio Shack is gone now. They had a small but loyal customer base that they were never going to lose, but they decided to switch to a bigger but more fickle customer base, one that would go somewhere else for convenience or a bargain. Rather than stick with what they were great at (and only they could do), they switched to something they were only okay at... putting them in a bigger pond with a lot of bigger fish who promptly out-competed them.

If Radio Shack had stayed with their core audience, who knows what would have happened? Maybe they wouldn't have made a billion dollars, but maybe they would still be around, still serving that community, still getting by. They may have had a small audience, but they had basically no competition for that audience. But yeah, we only know for sure what would happen if they decided to attempt to go more mainstream: They fail and die. We know for sure because that's what they did.

I don't know why I keep thinking about the story of what happened to Radio Shack. It just keeps feeling relevant for some reason.

I found one open in Monroe Wisconsin recently. (July of 2023 for sake of posterity).

If I understand it correctly the local franchise owner bought out their license or whatever and was thus spared going out of business when the main company went under.

My Mica Majority force, the Majority Gaurd, exsists to show off units that likely will never see an official battletech mini release.

3d printing can be controversial in the Battletech community, but I want to thank the crazy fools out there that spend hours modeling industrial mechs, and obscurities and put them online for anyone to print. Without your thankless labor these mechs may never see play.

Holy fuck whatever madlad was responsible for these models is my hero

every year I post this meme and every year people get more mad at me than they did the previous year

"i wasn't like anything i've seen before. Two warmachines brawling like them knights i used to watch in holovids. I knew at that moment, that i wanted to become just like them, they call them Battlemechs, and he promised he'd teach me to pilot one"

-Michael's Journal entry 133

Franz Vohwinkel artwork (AI upscaled) #battletech #mechwarrior

The Blues Brothers (1980) // Dir. John Landis

Always reblog Jake and Elwood taking care of business.

While my Taurian concordat battle force cleaned up nicely against significantly more advanced tech yesterday (including a third act armistice between my brother and buddy so they could hang up on me) I think im gonna have to swap my marauders

For warhammers

Based on flavor and the fact it will let me bring even more infantry to the fray.

Well the heat sinks of the warhammer were definitely a big plus, and the short range firepower was a hell of a lot more than the marauder coulda brought to bear. Unfortunately due to shitty decisions, the woods they were supposed to drop into was actually a swamp and artillery opened up as soon as they landed.

Infantry was wiped out, commandos were wiped out. Hunchbacks went down swinging but at the end of the day it was the Warhammers’ focused PPC fire that dislodged the defenders.

Heck of a slog to work your way out of, congrats.

Here’s this guy

I’ve been emotionally invested in the Dark Angels since 1999, it’s weird to see this happen

Thoughts on Lynn’s return?

Hey, PSA for my fellow disabled people: UPS workers are trying to negotiate a new contract, and it looks like it's leading to a strike soon. Now, I am absolutely all for this, they need safe working conditions and should strike if need be, but for us?

Please contact your doctors and make sure you're prepared in any way possible. This will affect many of you, whether that's through med deliveries, oxygen tanks, or other one-use supplies. If you live in America, try to get in contact with an insurance case worker for resources and advice if you're able.

Stay safe, and hope that the precaution isn't necessary.