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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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Why none of my books are available on Audible (and why Amazon owes me $3,218.55)

I love audiobooks. When I was a high-school-aged page at a public library in the 1980s, I would pass endless hours shelving and repairing books while listening to “books on tape” from the library’s collection. By the time iTunes came along, I’d amassed a huge collection of cassette and CD audiobooks and I painstakingly ripped them to my collection.

Then came Audible, and I was in heaven — all the audiobooks, none of the hassle of ripping CDs. There was only one problem: the Digital Rights Management (DRM). You see, I’ve spent most of my adult life campaigning against DRM, because I think it’s an existential danger to all computer users — and because it’s a way for tech companies to hijack the relationship between creators and their audiences.

In 2011, I gave a speech at Berlin’s Chaos Communications Congress called “The Coming War on General Purpose Computing.” In it, I explained that Digital Rights Management was technologically incoherent, a bizarre fantasy in which untrusted users of computers could be given encrypted files and all the tools needed to decrypt them, but somehow be prevented from using those decrypted files in ways that conflicted with the preferences of the company that supplied those files.

As I said then, computers are stubbornly, inescapably “general purpose.” The only computer we know how to make — the Turing-complete von Neumann machine — is the computer that can run all the programs we know how to write. When someone claims to have built a computer-powered “appliance” — say, a smart speaker or (God help us all) a smart toaster — that can only run certain programs, what they mean is that they’ve designed a computer that can run every program, but which will refuse to run programs unless the manufacturer approves them.

But this is also technological nonsense. The program that checks to see whether other programs are approved by the manufacturer is also running on an untrusted adversary’s computer (with DRM, you are the manufacturer’s untrusted adversary). Because that overseer program is running on a computer you own, you can replace it, alter it, or subvert it, allowing you to run programs that the manufacturer doesn’t like. That would include (for example) a modified DRM program that unscrambles the manufacturer-supplied video, audio or text file and then, rather than throwing away the unscrambled copy when you’re done with it, saves it so you can open it with a program that doesn’t restrict you from sharing it.

As a technical matter, DRM can’t work. Once one person figures out how to patch a DRM program so that it saves the files it descrambles, they can share that knowledge (or a program they’ve written based on that knowledge) with everyone in the world, instantaneously, at the push of a button. Anyone who has that new program can save unscrambled copies of the files they’ve bought and share those, too.

DRM vendors hand-wave this away, saying things like “this just keeps honest users honest.” As Ed Felten once said, “Keeping honest users honest is like keeping tall users tall.”

In reality, DRM vendors know that technical countermeasures aren’t the bulwark against unauthorized reproduction of their files. They aren’t technology companies at all — they’re legal companies.

In 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into law. This is a complex law and a decidedly mixed bag, but of all the impacts that the DMCA’s many clauses have had on the world, none have been so quietly, profoundly terrible as Section 1201, the “anti-circumvention” clause that protects DRM.

Under DMCA 1201, it is a felony to “traffick” in tools that bypass DRM. Doing so can land you in prison for five years and hit you with a fine of up to $500,000 (for a first offense). This clause is so broadly written that merely passing on factual information about bugs in a system with DRM can put you in hot water.

Here’s where we get to the existential risk to all computer users part. As a technology, DRM has to run as code that is beyond your observation and control. If there’s a program running on your computer or phone called “DRM” you can delete it, or go into your process manager and force-quit it. No one wants DRM. No one woke up this morning and said, “Dammit, I wish there was a way I could do less with the entertainment files I buy online.” DRM has to hide itself from you, or the first time it gets in your way, you’ll get rid of it.

The proliferation of DRM means that all the commercial operating systems now have a way to run programs that the owners of computers can’t observe or control. Anything that a technologist does to weaken that sneaky, hidden facility risks DMCA 1201 prosecution — and half a decade in prison.

That means that every device with DRM is designed to run programs you can’t see or kill, and no one is allowed to investigate these devices and warn you if they have defects that would allow malicious software to run in that deliberately obscured part of your computer, stealing your data and covertly operating your device’s sensors and actuators. This isn’t just about hacking your camera and microphone: remember, every computerized “appliance” is capable of running every program, which means that your car’s steering and brakes are at risk from malicious software, as are your medical implants and the smart thermostat in your home.

A device that is designed for sneaky code execution and is legally off-limits to independent auditing is bad. A world of those devices — devices we put inside our bodies and put our bodies inside of — is fucking terrifying.

DRM is bad news for our technological future, but it’s also terrible news for our commercial future. Because DMCA 1201 bans trafficking in circumvention devices under any circumstances, manufacturers who design their products with a thin skin of DRM around them can make using those products in the ways you prefer into a literal crime — what Jay Freeman calls “felony contempt of business model.”

The most obvious example of this is in the Right to Repair fight. Devices from tractors and cars to insulin pumps, wheelchairs and ventilators have been redesigned to use DRM to detect and block independent repair, even when the technician uses the manufacturer’s own parts. These devices are booby-trapped so that any “tampering” requires a new authorization code from the manufacturer, which is only given to the manufacturer’s own service technicians.

This allows manufacturers to gouge you on repair and parts, or to simply declare your device to be beyond repair and sell you a new one. Global, monopolistic corporations are drowning the planet in e-waste as a side-effect of their desire to block refurbished devices and parts from cutting into their sales of replacements:.

DRM laws like DMCA 1201 are now all over the world, spread by the US Trade Representative, who made DRM laws a condition of trading with the USA, and a feature of the WTO agreement. Whether you’re in South America, Australia, Europe, Canada, Japan, or even China, DRM-breaking tools are illegal. But remember: DRM is a technological fool’s errand. So while there is no above-ground, legal market for DRM-breaking tools, there is still a thriving underground for them.

For example, farmers all over the world replace the software on their John Deere tractors with software of rumored Ukrainian origin that floats around on the internet. This software lets them fix their tractors without having to wait days for a $200 visit from a John Deere technician, but no one knows what’s in the software, or who made it, or whether it has sneaky back-doors or other malicious code.

And yet, manufacturers keep putting DRM in their products. The prospect of making it a felony to displease your corporate shareholders is just too much to resist.

Which brings me back to Audible. Back before Amazon owned Audible, I bought thousands of dollars’ worth of Audible audiobooks, and they worked great — but they failed badly. When I switched operating systems and could no longer get an Audible playback program, I was in danger of losing my audibook investment. In the end, I had to rig up three old computers to play my Audible audiobooks out in real time and recapture them as plain old MP3s. It took weeks. If I’d made the switch a couple years later, it would have been months (the “audiobooks” folder on my current system has 281 days’ worth of audio!).

Amazon bought Audible during a brief interval in which the company was taking on DRM. They had just launched the Amazon MP3 store, as a rival to Apple’s iTunes Store, which sold music without DRM, so users wouldn’t be locked to Apple’s platform. This was a problem the music industry had just woken up to, after years of demanding DRM, they realized that nearly all the digital music they’d ever sold was locked to Apple’s platform, and that meant that Apple got to decide whether and how their catalog was sold.

Amazon’s MP3 store’s slogan was “DRM: Don’t Restrict Me.” They even sent me a free t-shirt to promote the launch, because they knew my feelings on DRM.

When Amazon announced its Audible acquisition, they promised that they would remove DRM from the Audible store, and I rejoiced. Then, after the acquisition…nothing. Not a word about DRM. The Amazon PR people who’d once enthusiastically pitched me on Amazon’s DRM-free virtue stopped answering my email.

When I got new PR pitches from Amazon, I’d reply by asking about DRM and I’d never hear from those PR people again. I got invited to give a talk at Amazon and I said sure, I’d do it for free — but I wanted to talk to someone from Audible about DRM. The invitation was rescinded.

Once on a book-tour, I gave a talk at Goodreads — another Amazon division — about my work and when they asked if I had any questions for them, I raised Audible’s DRM and the senior managers in the audience promised to look into it. I never heard from them again.

Today, Audible dominates the audiobook market. In some verticals, their market-share is over 90 percent! And Audible will not let authors or publishers opt out of DRM. If you want to publish an audiobook with Audible, you must let them add their DRM to it. That means that every time one of your readers buys one of your books, they’re locking themselves further into Audible. If you sell a million bucks’ worth of audiobooks on Audible, that’s a million bucks your readers have to forfeit to follow you to a rival platform.

As a rightsholder, I can’t authorize my users to strip off Audible’s DRM and switch to a competitor. I can’t even find out which of my readers bought my books from Audible and send them a download code for a free MP3. Even when I invest tens of thousands of dollars of my own money to hire professional narrators to record my audiobooks, if I sell them on Audible, they get the final say in how my readers use the product I paid to create. If I provide my readers with a tool to unwrap Audible’s DRM from my copyrighted books, I become a copyright infringer! I violate Section 1201 of the DMCA and I can go to prison for five years and face a $500,000 fine. For a first offense.

All of this is so glaringly terrible that it prompted me to coin Doctorow’s First Law:

“Any time someone puts a lock on something that belongs to you, but won’t give you the key, that lock is not there for your benefit.”

It’s been more than a decade since Amazon bought Audible and it’s clear that their DRM policy isn’t going anywhere.

Which is why none of my audiobooks are available on Audible.

I don’t want to contribute to the DRM-ification of our devices, turning them into a vast, unauditable attack-surface that is designed to run programs that we can’t see or terminate. I don’t want my work to be a lure into a DRM-poisoned platform. I don’t want to make myself beholden to Amazon, locking my customers to its platform with every sale.

This doesn’t mean I don’t have audiobooks — I do! Early on, I worked with great audiobook publishers like Random House and Blackstone and Macmillan to produce DRM-free audiobooks which were sold everywhere except Audible. But Audible has the vast majority of the market, and it just didn’t make financial sense for these publishers to pay me a decent sum for my audio rights and then pay great narrators and engineers to produce books.

So I started retaining my audio rights in my book deals, and paying to record my own audiobooks. The first one was Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, recorded by @wilwheaton, with introductions by @neil-gaiman and Amanda Palmer, which explains Doctorow’s First Law in detail.

Since then, I’ve produced many more independent audiobooks, including the audio for Homeland (the bestselling sequel to my YA novel Little Brother, also narrated by Wil), Walkaway (a fabulous multi-cast audiobook starring Amber Benson, Wil Wheaton, Amanda Palmer, Miron Willis, Gabrielle de Cuir and others), and Attack Surface (the third Little Brother book, narrated by Amber Benson).

Generally, these books recoup and make a little money besides, but not nearly so much as I’d make if I sold through Audible. My agent tells me that if I’d been willing to set aside my ethics and allow Audible to slap DRM on my books, I’d have made enough money to pay off my mortgage and save enough to pay for my kid’s entire college education.

That’s a price I’m willing to pay. In the years since the Amazon acquisition, Audible has become the 800-pound gorilla of audiobooks. They have done all kinds of underhanded things — like buying up the first couple books in a series and releasing them as Audible-only recordings, then refusing to record the rest of the series, orphaning it. They’re also notorious among narrators for squeezing their hourly rates lower than anyone else. Audible also refuses to sell into libraries, so all the “Audible Original” titles are blocked from our public library systems.

I think audiences get that there’s something really wrong with a system where a single company controls an entire literary format. In 2020, I Kickstarted the independent audiobook of Attack Surface and broke every record for audiobook crowdfunding, raising $276,000.

But Audible continues to dominate. It is the only digital audiobook channel Amazon will allow, so anyone who searches Amazon for a book will only see the Audible audio edition. It’s also the exclusive audio partner for Apple’s iTunes/Apple Books channel, which is the only iOS audiobook store that doesn’t have to pay Apple a 30 percent commission on all its sales, so it’s the only audiobook store that lets you actually buy new audiobooks.

Other audiobook stores require you to buy your books with a web-browser (which avoids Apple’s sky-high commissions) and then switch back to the app to download them — a clunky experience that has ensured that Apple’s own audiobook channel — with its mandatory DRM — is the only one iOS customers really use.

Not surprisingly, a lot of people assume that if an Audible search for an author or book comes up empty, that means there is no audiobook available. They don’t think of searching for the book on Google Books, or Libro.fm, or Downpour. They never think to check to see whether the author maintains their own storefront, as I do, where you can get all their ebooks and audiobooks without DRM.

That’s bad enough, but it gets worse. So much worse.

Audible has a side-hustle called ACX: it’s a “self-serve” platform where writers and narrators can team up to self-produce their own audiobooks, which are locked to Audible’s platform and encumbered with Audible’s DRM.

ACX has some nominal checks to ensure that the audiobooks that land on its platform are duly licensed from the rightsholders, but these are trivial to circumvent. Here’s how I know that: on multiple occasions, I’ve discovered that my own books have been turned into unauthorized audiobooks over ACX.

Scammers claiming to have the rights to my books commission narrators to record them on the cheap, with the promise of a royalty split when they are live. Inexperienced narrators, excited at the prospect of recording a major book by a bestselling author, put long, grueling hours into recording them. Then the book goes live, and I discover it, and have it taken down. The scammer disappears with the profits from the sales in the interim, and the narrator is screwed.

As am I.

Because these illegal ACX audiobooks compete with my own, self-produced editions, for which I pay narrators, directors and editors a fair wage for their creative labor. These unauthorized ACX audiobooks show up in searches for my name on Audible and Amazon, where my own (vastly superior, authorized) DRM-free audiobooks are not allowed.

This isn’t an isolated incident. It’s happened over and over again. It just happened again.

Last week, I heard from Shawn Hartel, a narrator who got scammed on ACX by someone calling themself “Barbara M. Rushing,” who told Hartel that they held the audio rights to my 2017 novel Walkaway. They do not have those rights.

I spent about $50,000 recording a stupendous audiobook edition of Walkaway, which you can buy here for $24.95.

This audiobook has met with widespread critical acclaim and the print edition has been translated and celebrated around the world. But Hartel didn’t know that.

On January 11, 2021, he accepted an offer from “Barbara M. Rushing” to record the book and worked long hours to produce a 16-hour narration. On February 1, 2021, the book was accepted by Rushing. On July 7, 2021, ACX listed Walkaway for sale. On November 9, 2021, ACX took the book down, having figured out that it was infringing.

In the meantime, Rushing sold 119 copies and gave away ten more, diverting people from buying my own, DRM-free edition.

129 times $24.95 is $3,218.55, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s what Amazon owes me.

Now, I’m not going to sue them (probably). I don’t have the money or time to fight that kind of battle. For one thing, I have eight books (four novels, a YA graphic novel, a short story collection and two nonfiction books) in various stages of production right now, and I’m going to be producing my own audio editions for them, which is going to suck up a lot of time.

But Amazon does owe me $3,218.55.

I don’t expect they’ll pay it.

Anyone who’s paid attention to Audiblegate knows about Amazon’s dirty ACX dealing. The company has been credibly accused of more than $100 million in wage-theft from ACX authors and narrators, whom it has scammed with a combination of a one-sided refunds policy and out-and-out accounting fraud.

I know a lot about Audiblegate because there’s a whole chapter about it in Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We’ll Win Them Back, the book on creative labor markets that Rebecca Giblin and I wrote for Beacon Press:

Chokepoint Capitalism explains how large media and tech companies have cornered the markets for creative labor, and why giving creators more copyright won’t unrig this rigged game. The tech and entertainment giants are like bullies at the school gate who shake down creators for their lunch money every day.

To reach your audience you have to go through the chokepoints they have erected, and when you do, any additional copyright powers Congress has granted you is taken away as a condition of entry (think of how Audible nonconsensually takes away your right to use DRM law if you want to list your audiobooks).

If you give your bullied kid more lunch money, you won’t buy them lunch — you’ll just make the bullies at the school-gate richer. Giving creators more copyright inevitably results in those copyrights being transferred to Amazon and other monopolists. To get lunch for your kid — or justice for creators — you have to get rid of the chokepoints.

That’s what Chokepoint Capitalism is really about — not just how the markets got rigged, but how to fix them, with a list of shovel-ready, practical actions for local governments, national legislatures, artists’ groups, as well as creators, technologists and audiences.

We’re going to be rolling out a crowdfunding campaign for the Chokepoint Capitalism audiobook in a couple of weeks (the book comes out in mid-September). We’ve scored an incredible narrator, Stefans Rudnicki, who you may have heard on the Ender’s Game books, Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, or any of 1,000 other audiobooks. Stefan’s won a Stoker, a Bradbury, dozens of Audies and Earphones, two Grammys, and two Hugos. It’s gonna be fucking great.

And it won’t be available on Audible. Who owe me $3,218.55.

But you know what will*be available on Audible?

This. This essay, which I am about to record as an audiobook, to be mastered by my brilliant sound engineer John Taylor Williams, and will thereafter upload to ACX as a self-published, free audiobook.

Perhaps you aren’t reading these words off your screen. Perhaps you are an Audible customer who searched for my books and only found this odd, short audiobook entitled: “Why none of my books are available on Audible: And why Amazon owes me $3,218.55.”

I send you greetings, fellow audiobook listener!

I invite you to buy all my audiobooks at prices lower than Amazon’s, free from DRM and unencumbered by comedy-of-the-absurd “user agreements” that no one in their right mind would ever*agree to. They are for sale at craphound.com/shop.

Among those audiobooks, the $15 edition of Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, where I explain not just Doctorow’s First Law, but also my Second and Third Laws (my agent was Arthur C. Clarke’s agent; when I told him I had come up with “Doctorow’s Law,” he told me that I needed three laws). As noted, this is superbly read by Wil Wheaton, and Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer read their own intros:

Of course, you will only find this book if Amazon ACX accepts it. I’ve combed quite carefully through their terms of service and I don’t see anything that would disqualify this from being listed as an ACX book.

But then again, they say they ban books produced without permission from the copyright holder and we’ve seen how that works out, right? From poking around on ACX, it looks like Amazon’s main way of checking whether a user has the rights to a book is by looking in Amazon’s catalog to see if there’s already an audiobook edition. That means that if a writer refuses to sell on Audible because of their DRM policies, Audible will use that boycott as an excuse to let ripoff artists bilk the writer, the narrator and the listeners — because if there’s no Audible edition, they assume that the audio rights must be up for grabs.

Will Audible let me use its platform to give away a book that criticizes Audible? Or will they exercise their overwhelming market power to both abet a $3,218.55 ripoff and suppress a critique of their role in that ripoff?

Only time will tell.

[Image ID: A screengrab of the ACX page for the audiobook, showing that it is 'pending audio review]

Addendum: I wrote the above on July 4, 2022, just before submitting the audiobook to Amazon and leaving for a holiday. Over the past two weeks, I've checked in with ACX daily, but the audiobook still shows as "Pending Audio Review." ACX advises that this process should take a maximum of ten business days. It's been 15. Perhaps they're very backlogged.

Or maybe they're hoping that if they delay the process long enough, I'll give up. In the meantime, there is now a Kindle edition of this text:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5RWTPR7/

I had to put this up, it's a prerequisite for posting the audio to ACX. I hadn't planned on posting it, but since they made me, I did.

[Image ID: A screengrab of the Kindle listing page for my ebook showing it as the number one new release in antitrust.]

Bizarrely, this is currently the number one new Amazon book on Antitrust Law!

Also bizarrely - given the context - this book was taken down for several days due to a spurious copyright issue over the cover art, a cack-handed collage of some Creative Commons icons I put together with The GIMP. Amazon flagged this as a copyright violation (despite correct Creative Commons attribution) and took the book down, demanding that I change the cover art, ignoring my explanations. I was ultimately able to get the book restored by contacting someone I know at Amazon legal, who intervened.

I don't know if Amazon will ever release my audiobook, but I hope they do. In the meantime, you can listen to the audiobook of this essay for free via my podcast:

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_431/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_431_-_Why_none_of_my_books_are_available_on_Audible.mp3

ETA: Within a few hours of my publishing this thread, ACX released my audiobook. https://audible.com/pd/B0B7KH8KSD

Image: Paris 16 (modified)/CC BY-SA 4.0; Dmitry Baranovskiy (modified) CC BY 4.0

[Image ID: An anti-pickpocketing graphic featuring a stick figure reaching into an adjacent stick-figure's shoulder-bag. The robber's chest is emblazoned with an Amazon 'a' logo. The victim's chest is emblazoned with an icon of a fountain-pen. The robber's face has an Amazon 'smile' logo. The victim's face has an inverted Amazon 'smile' logo (and is thus frowning). Beneath these two figures is a wordmark reading 'Audible: Am Amazon Company.']

#audible #amazon #amazongate #creator economy #ripoffs #drm #digital rights management #audiobooks #books #publishing #writing #monopoly #doctorow's first law #pluralistic

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olomaya · 7 months

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Shhh!! It's a Library (mod)

27 Sept Update: Found a better shushing sound so I replaced with that. Also added ITUNs for the non computer interactions. Thanks to @cs2te for the Brazilian Portuguese translation! Redownload (if you want these updates) at the link below.

(Note: This mod uses the Ticket Machine animations for the kiosk. If you don't have it, you can download it here. Honestly, it's not that important and without it, your Sim will just stand in front of the machine for a second, that's it)

I'm officially in my Streets era. I'm building out all the community lots in my town so you're going to be seeing a lot of community/town related stuff from me for the next few months. My Sims are trying to be outside!

First up! This is a small library mod that allows you to search for books at the library using this gorgeous kiosk object from @aroundthesims. If the book is in the library, it tells you where they are by panning the camera to the bookshelf that has the book and putting a blue outline around it for 10 Sim minutes. Pretty simple.

Features:

Browse Catalog… pulls up all books in the library

Search by… Category | Title | Author - pulls up any book that matches your search entry

Request a Book to Order - allows you to add more books to the library.

You can only order the types of books that are allowed in community libraries so no books that are destroyed after you finish reading them (e.g. recipes, song compositions) and no academic textbooks.

You can order written books, including articles, as well as books from other worlds (e.g. Shang Simla, etc) though for the latter, there is a §35 “overseas shipping cost” added to order these books.

Once you order a book, the mod will check whether the library has enough money to purchase it and then place the order.

Ordered books are added to the library at 8am the next day and you’ll receive a notification that the books have been added.

Library Funding

In order to pay for the books ordered, library kiosks have a budget. Every kiosk, upon creation, comes with a §250 budget.

The library budget is the total amount of funds in all kiosks on the lot. Costs are deducted from individual kiosks even if that specific kiosk doesn't have enough money for the book so long as the library budget has enough money.

Support your Local Library

Sims can donate books (up to 3 books at a time) to the library using the book donation bin. The bin must be placed on the library lot (either outside or inside) and you need to have books in your inventory. Your Sim will get 500 Lifetime Happiness points for every book donated. (this is related to another mod that I’m working on. More on that at a later date!)

There is also a computer interaction that lets you donate money to the library. Sims that donate §2500 or more will get a 4-hour charitable moodlet. Donations are added to the library budget.

Finally, Bookworms and Proper Sims can shush other Sims at the library. Once shushed, all Sims in the same room doing social interactions or playing music instruments will stop. (You'll find, like in real life, people quickly go back to doing what they're doing so it's kind of useless but it was a low lift so I kept it in). If someone can think of a good "shushing" sound from the game, let me know!

Credits/Thanks: Both credit and huge thanks go to @aroundthesims for creating this beautiful library set and the kiosk which I used as the main object. I did recategorize it to Misc Electronics instead of Sculptures. If you already have it in your game, you may need to remove it or you can just change the script to “Sims3.Gameplay.Objects.olomaya.LibraryStuff.Kiosk”. The donation bin is from Sketchfab created by TheLatestShit (that’s their name, thank you TLS!) and can be found in Misc Storage.

Read through everything below the cut before downloading please! Important instructions below!

Important things to note:

The kiosk must be placed on a counter. If it’s not, your sim will reset because they can only interact with it if it’s on a counter. If you are having issues with resetting, place it on an EA-made counter to confirm it’s not this issue first before you reach out for support. You can use OSMP counters provided they are cloned from a counter and place the kiosk on there and put it wherever you want (like I’ve done in my photo. the kiosk is actually on an OSMP counter, not the white table).

Pulling up the entire library catalog, depending on how many books you have on the lot, can take a few (or several) seconds. Or maybe it won’t, I play on a brick laptop so it does for me

Keyword searches are case sensitive so “raymundo” yields no results, but “Raymundo” will bring up the 85 copies of that 🤬 book that your library probably has

The search will only check books that are in bookshelves, it will ignore library books that have been taken out of the bookshelf and are being read or lying around.

Book requests and financial donations can only be made at public libraries and not privately-owned libraries. So if a Sim in your town owns the lot, these options won’t come up (it should be the owners’ responsibility to buy books). You can still donate books though.

You can have multiple kiosks on the lot. If you delete a kiosk, its funds (if it has any) will be transferred to any of the other kiosks on the lot so you don’t lose the money.

There is a debug interaction on the kiosk that allows you to check the library budget.

You can order one book at a time but there’s no limit to how many you can do in a day but once the books are delivered the next morning, the mod will check whether the library has enough money and will only order the books there is money for

Download HERE | alt: HERE

@simstifulccfinds @kpccfinds @katsujiiccfinds @pis3update @wanderingsimsfinds

#s3cc download #download #s3cc #around town #sims 3 cc #sims 3 mods #library mod

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lmaonade · 5 months

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i used apple music for most of the music streaming life bc i didn't really.. care ? the prices were similar and apple music was already on my phone, i also don't care for spotify's playlist-based format i just like having a music library. idk, either way i switched to spotify a few months ago and something i rlly miss from itunes/apple music is i could set individual start/stop times for songs. so if songs had annoying fucking 3 minute silence after them, i could manually set the song to end at a specific time. or if a song had like a minute of talking at the beginning, i just got tired of that shit. it was a cool feature lol

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simphoraa · 1 year

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ઇଓ│ Simphora’s Ultimate Sims 3 Masterlist of Mods │ઇଓ

Hey guys! I receive a ton of questions on the mods I use in my game, so here is my ultimate masterlist of mods for the Sims 3. All of the mods listed are organized by category. This list will be updated from time to time. Happy Simming!

3/20/24 - Last Updated

(credits to all of the wonderful modders listed below!)

(Keep reading to see the list of mods).

εϊз NRAAS Mods

These mods are essential!

NRAAS Master Controller: This mod adds countless options that allow you to easily control and change just about anything about Sims in your town. Featuring a robust filter system to allow you to find the Sims you want to target and execute actions on.

NRAAS Master Controller Cheats (module): This mod is an optional module of Master Controller and includes the more advanced; therefore "cheaty" aspects of Master Controller. (Must have the base-mod installed for this module to work properly).

NRAAS Master Controller Integration (module): This mod is an optional module of Master Controller and replaces all the CAS interactions in the game with the one managed by Master Controller, including the "Create-A-Sim" button in "Edit Town". (Must have the base-mod installed for this module to work properly).

NRAAS Career: This mod is used to load custom careers into the game. It is also possible to load custom book lists, custom skills, and standing social interactions.

NRAAS Careers School: This mod contains a series of high-school "trade" school careers.

NRAAS Debug Enabler: This mod exposes EA debug commands so that it is usable in game. It also adds a few useful commands to fix common problems.

NRAAS Error Trap: This is a core-mod intended to catch and correct data corruption errors that can render a save-game unloadable. Any corruption errors that can not be corrected will be trapped and logged, allowing the save-game to load regardless.

NRAAS Go Here: This mod replaces the "Go Here" interaction, with one that can be stacked in the queue, allowing the user to better direct the route of a sim. It also makes inactive Sims less likely to go home, restores haunting ghosts in the grave yard, fixes common routing errors and adds a robust set of door locking features.

NRAAS Mover: This mod removes the "greater than eight" and "requires adult" restrictions in "Edit Town" and the Phone and Computer "Move" interactions. It also retains the dreams and opportunities of Sims when switching households.

NRAAS Overwatch: The primary purpose of this mod is to act as a periodic clean up system for correcting errors and eliminating junk that accumulates over a regular play-session.

NRAAS Portrait Panel: This mod changes the Portrait Panel to display a maximum of 24 Sim portraits, useful for playing overstuffed families.

NRAAS Porter: This mod adds a custom version of the import and export system used to create Library families. With this, it is possible to transfer entire towns worth of sims, preserving relationships across households, and reducing the amount of manual intervention required afterward.

NRAAS Relativity: This mod can be tuned to change the speed at which time flows during the course of a sim-day.

NRAAS Relationship Panel: This mod changes the Relationship Panel. Changes have also been made to correct the "red box" relationship error that occurs when the window bounces while displaying certain types of sims.

NRAAS Register: This mod alters the rules governing role assignment in the game, allowing sims to maintain regular careers without losing their roles. In addition, it provides the ability to select which sim you want to perform specific roles in town.

NRAAS Returner: This mod provides the ability to alter which interactions are autonomous and/or user-directed via an in-game interface, both ITUN and SocialData based.

NRAAS Saver: This mod prompts the user to save after a given amount of play-time.

NRAAS Story Progression: This mod is a non-core story progression replacement. The EA story progression will be disabled by this mod, and a new, hopefully better, system is started in its place.

NRAAS Story Progression Money (module): This module contains the expanded money scenarios for use with Story Progression. (Must have the base-mod installed for this module to work properly).

NRAAS Sims Drinks: This mod adds custom moodlets to the game when your Sims have drinks to simulate them being drunk.

NRAAS Tempest: This mod provides a more detailed approach to controlling weather on a town-by-town basis, providing the ability to adjust weather profiles on an daily basis during any particular season.

NRAAS Woohooer: This mod alters the romantic game systems allowing for more relaxed rules when compared to EA's. It also allows for teen woohoo and pregnancy along with risky woohoo.

NRAAS Woohooer Toilet Stall (module): This module for Woohooer integrates the toilet stalls, adding support for Woohoo interactions. (Must have the base-mod installed for this module to work properly).

NRAAS Woohooer KamaSimtra (module): This is a custom skill to facilitate tracking of woohooing. It provides a series of optional challenges that can be completed for improved post woohoo moodlets. (Must have the base-mod installed for this module to work properly).

εϊз CAS & Genetics Mods

These are mods that affect Create-A-Sim and the Sims genetics.

CAS Zoom In + Pets: This mod allows the camera in CAS to zoom in closer, including pets.

CAS Room Recolored: A custom/recolored CAS background instead of the original one.

Pearly Whites Default Teeth: A realistic default teeth replacement.

Stand Still in CAS: This mod gives Sims more of a gender-neutral, natural-looking, standstill animation in CAS.

Sliders: This mod realistically enhances Sims facial and body features in CAS.

Teen Neck Edit: This mod allows Teen males to wear Adult male clothing without a neck glitch.

εϊз Environment Mods

These are mods that affect the environment.

BrntWaffles Frozen Lighting Mod: A default replacement lighting mod that overrides the lighting in all worlds. It makes the environment look so much prettier, and not dark or gloomy.

Realistic Clouds: More realistic and improved clouds. This mod is compatible with all lightning mods.

Snow But Better: An override filled with textures to make your game more frosty looking and even more realistic if you're into those sorts of things!

No Full moon Lighting Effect Mod: This mod completely removes the special, hardcoded "full moon" lighting effect in Supernatural - a green glow with added bloom. The full moon lighting is now just like any other night, both indoors and outdoors.

Improved Environmental Shadows: This mod enhances the shadows in-game.

εϊз Gameplay Mods

These are mods to help enhance gameplay.

Better Greets: This mod aims to solve that and expand upon the possibilities by making Sims’ greetings also take into account things like personality traits, social group and relationship status.

Cigarette Smoking Mod: This mod allows Sims to smoke/purchase cigarettes and nicotine gum.

Deep Conversations Mod: This mod gives you some insight on what your Sims are talking about and often lets you choose what your sim will say, which may affect their relationship positively or negatively.

Hospital Overhaul Mod: This mod improves upon the hospitals by adding more features to it, such as abortion, donation services, in-vitro fertilization & alien implantation, sex reassignment, sterilization, surrogacy, ultrasound scanning, and veterinary services.

More Complex Recipes: This mod makes existing recipes more complex by changing or adding ingredients.

No Fridge Shopping: This mod replaces the meal-making interactions on the fridge with custom ones that check whether the Sim has the required ingredients to make the meal or snack.

NPC Romance: This mod attempts to breathe some life into your Sims’ NPC friends and romantic interests by allowing them a chance to advance their relationship with your Sims.

Online Center: This mod adds a set of new interactions to computers and smartphones, such as eShopping, reading eBooks, checking the PlumbBook.

Retuned Attraction System: This mod revises a bunch of the parameters that control the attraction system; changing it to be more selective in-game.

Sim State: This mod focuses on adding ownable stores to the game. (LINK DELETED)

Taxi Charge: This mod will charge sims for Taxi rides.

Violence and Aggression: This mod adds a list of violence social interactions.

εϊз Gameplay Fix Mods

These are mods to help fix any gameplay errors/mistakes from EA.

The Smooth Patch 2.0: This mod alters the speed at which the game's processing runs, which improves the overall performance of the game and some loading times. Most noticeably in Create- A-Sim, Create-A-Style and Buy/Build.

Thumbnail Camera Edits: This mod contains some edits to the INI files that control the camera positioning the game uses for generating thumbnails.

Random Sim Fixes: This mod attempts to fix issues with and improve randomly generated and aging up Sims (such as pudding face) in a non-intrusive, non-core way.

Route Fix: This mod reduces the amount of time sims will stand around trying to figure out how to get where they are going, checking for obstacles, and waiting on other sims to move before going around them.

Shimrod’s Autonomy Fixer: This mod makes the autonomy run more frequently, such that auto-Sims will not stand around as long before deciding what to do next, they choose the next action quicker.

No (or fewer) Automatic Memories: This mod stops the memory scrapbook from filling up with useless memories that then have to be manually deleted to make room for custom memories or to keep save files small.

No Social Groups: This mod disables all Social Group Influence gain and removes any existing Influence from all Sims.

No Mutant Hair or Eyes: This mod forces all newborn sims to have their parents' or (if they exist) grandparents' eye and hair color. There is no chance of a mutated color being chosen.

All Traits for All Ages: This mod unlocks all visible traits for all ages, baby through elder.

Get To Know Fix: This mod fixes the broken get to know code and enables more discoverable traits.

Spring Cleaning - An Assortment of Vaguely Spring-Related Tweaks: This is a collection of four pure script mods that make a variety of tweaks with the aim of providing a bit more fun and realism to springtime activities.

Spicy Animation Fix: This mod fixes the fire breathing animation error when a sim gets the Spicy or Too Spicy moodlet that forces them into the sitting animation, rather than playing the proper standing animation.

User-Directed Scolding + Other Punishment Tweaks: This mod tweaks parts of the punishment system from Generations. It will warn you with a pop-up whenever the game tries to force a sim to scold a misbehaving child/teen so you can stop them if you wish.

Higher Quality Headline Effects: A default replacement for headline effects. It is more clean and sharp, graphic wise!

Home Video Camera Fix: This mod changes the speed of the home video from Generations to a slower, more efficient speed.

University Life Visual Fixes: This mod includes fixes for a few visual mess-ups EA made with University Life.

No Camera Fade: No fade in camera view or first person.

Less Or No Laundry On The Floor: This mod can either reduce the amount of laundry piles that appear on the floor in a 24 hour period once a Sim gets changed to complete a particular task, or can eliminate laundry piles appearing on the floor forever.

Faster Gardening: This mod reduces the time needed for weeding, watering and harvesting plants, and therefore makes gardening much faster.

Pigtails Glitch fix: This is a core mod that fixes the infamous 'pigtails glitch' caused by CC hairstyles.

Pick up Toddler fix: This mod does in detail, is a simple fix that now sims will always route to the toddler to pick them up no matter where they are, while the toddler waits and stays in place. They can also pick up them up at whichever angle, which doesn't always look the best but I've also replaced the animations so the transition between the toddler sitting on the floor and being picked up is smoother.

εϊз Pregnancy Mods

These are mods that affect pregnancies in the game.

Mixed Feelings About Pregnancy: This mod allows pregnant sims to express feelings about their pregnancy.

More Pregnancy Interactions: This mod adds new social interactions between pregnant sims and sims of all ages. Another part is an overhaul of the pregnancy announcement interaction.

More Seasons Interactions For Pregnant Sims: This mod enables various seasonal interactions for pregnant sims.

Pregnancy Controller: This mod adds a set of pie menu Pregnancy Options to all sims teen and above, both human and pet. This mod consists of a bunch of functions like, ending or pausing pregnancy, start labor, set chance of multiples, set pregnancy progress, and set the sex. (OUTDATED)

εϊз Baby & Toddler-Children Mods

These mods impact babies and toddlers in the game.

No Stretch Children Can Series: These mods convert adult motion to child one. Children can use objects with no stretch.

Blush Baby: A default skin blend for babies. (LINK DELETED)

Beetle Eyes: Accessory contacts for babies.

Little Baby Wisps: Little hair wisps for babies that will show the baby’s real hair color at birth.

Sleeper Footies: Babies are now born with cute onesies and legs. No more burrito babies!

Better Playdates: This mod allows toddler-children to have playdates.

Breastfeeding Mod: This mod adds a breastfeeding interaction to the game.

White Formula Default Replacement Bottle: This mod replaces the green milk bottle with a white milk bottle.

Biggest Little Mod For Toddlers: This mod enhances the gameplay of a toddler.

More Toddler Interactions: This mod adds new interactions for toddlers, so now you can do a lot more with them, such as bathing them, talking to them, literally tossing them in the air and more.

More Play, Playmat: An interaction where babies can actually play on the mat.

Toddler Food and Snacks: This mod adds two interactions to the high chair to feed toddlers meals or snacks.

Toddlers Extra Activities: This mod allows Toddlers to do extra activities.

Toddler Foods and Snacks: This mod adds two interactions to the high chair to feed toddlers meals or snacks. There are 11 meals and 5 snacks. Similar to Growing Together, toddlers will love, like or hate certain foods.

Toddlers Can Learn To Walk Alone: In this mod, toddlers will finally be able to learn to walk by themselves, no adults or store walker required!

Toddlers Can Sit With Sims: This mod allows toddlers spend even more quality time with their parents and/or siblings!

Functional Baby Carrier: An actual functional baby carrier inspired from the Sims 4 Growing Together Expansion Pack.

Tooth Fairy Mod: This mod gives child-aged sims the chance to lose their teeth and get money from the Tooth Fairy.

εϊз Pet Mods

These are mods for pets.

Pet Diseases: This mod introduces four diseases (or five, depending on how you count). All can be caught by cats or dogs and are contagious between the two species.

Pet Bowl Requires Food: Instead of watching your money disappear into thin air when you fill the pet bowl, now watch your money disappear into the grocery store void (or your supermarket owner’s pockets, if you please).

εϊз Miscellaneous Mods

Extra mods, not essential to have at all.

Build/Buy Catalog Search: This mod simply adds a search button to Buy and Build mode.

One More Slot Please: This mod allows you to place objects anywhere in your sims house.

Facial Expressions Converted From The Sims Medieval: This is a replacement mod that swaps out The Sims 3's facial idle animations with their The Sims Medieval equivalents, plus some additional tweaks.

Clean UI: This mod changes the UI color from Blue to White.

#sims 3 #sims 3 mods #ts3 mods #sims 3 must have mods #s3 mods #simphoraa #mods

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roo-bastmoon · 1 year

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Revenge Retail Therapy

So, I had a shithead human being who forgot their humanity for a moment, operating under a throw-away account, come to my inbox right after my post asking for us all to be kind to each other just to tell me that 1) Jimin has faked being a good singer all these years thanks to auto tune 2) Jimin is a lying queerbaiting attention whore and 3) Jimin is secretly loathed by Taekook for these obvious reasons.

Now, I'm a human and an Aries and menopausal, so you best believe I needed to take a moment and find my better self before deleting that nonsense.

And I confess, for a few moments it did leave me feeling pretty powerless. Frankly, all the stuff happening in the charts, with military enlistment, with online bullying, all of it left me feeling super powerless.

So on my lunch break, I went to the bank and drew out some cash. To hire a hitman? No, to use my anger as a tool to manifest the world I want.

This is TMI, but, I'd been saving up to treat myself to a new sofa. I had my eye on a nice little cream-colored comfy sectional with a lounge built in. Figured it would be a nice grownup thing to get.

But also? I have three furry overlords who LOVE to scratch up and puke on the furniture and they still have a good five to ten years of life left in them. These are my three demons who took cat form:

So as long as I am their slave, a brand new nice sofa is just not a realistic purchase. Better to save my money...

But then I got the idea to get revenge retail therapy. And on my lunch break today, I drove my butt to Target.

I will be giving away these albums at Yoongi's concert in Newark on April 29th. Anything that doesn't get taken will be donated to my local country public library system. And HOPEFULLY these purchases will end up reflected in the charts, since they were made in person at a US retailer, using only cash, and purchased ONE AT A TIME with sheer malicious glee.

Listen. I blocked that set-up account, but, on the off chance they are lurking around my blog, I want to gently but firmly say something:

You cannot keep Park Jimin down. And you cannot MAKE us Jimin stans lower ourselves to your level.

You keep spreading hate. It only makes me love harder. Keep going. I'll make more iTunes accounts at this point. WATCH ME.

Y'all keep playing I just might take up a collection to found the Park Jimin Center for Haters Who Can't Read Good and Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too, Inc.

You'll never have the last word. Never.

Kindest regards,

Roo

PS. Jimin is so loved. Jimin is so, so, SO very loved. By all his members. By true ARMY. Most of all by Jeon Jungkook. And if you liked my retail therapy, here have some more receipts about that:

#jimin #jikook

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duckyfruitbat · 4 months

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YoHoHo, It's a New Era of Pirating

I'm sure a lot of us have been ruminating on this lately, but first I want to draw some parallels.

Picture it, the year is 2005 and you are watching a movie you picked out with your grandma at blockbuster during your weekend visit to give your parents a god damned break from your bullshit. Relatable so far yes? You pop that disk in and sit down as grandma makes the popcorn and an odd little PSA comes up between the previews. It's the infamous pirating PSA that compares downloading films to car jacking. So what do you do? You download copious amounts of pirated music onto the computer under your fathers supervision of course, still pretty relatable right?

You have entered the world of media piracy my friend, an old tradition with a rich culture and history. The early 2000's were some wild times, piracy was at its peak, the internet was a lawless land, and the 2008 housing bubble was just around the corner, truly a glorious time.

Now needless to say, publishing companies hated piracy and were desperately trying to curb it but only through legislation through a government that didn't really care. It was already hard enough to catch one pirate so why waste resources to crack down on it. There was an attempted crackdown by the publishers but that completely failed, one infamous case was a grandma who didn't even have a computer.

This age of piracy was only stopped when Itunes and Netflix made their way online. That was only because everything was on these two websites and later also Hulu. The only people who continued to pirate were kids who didn't have money and anime fans. There were two specialized websites just for them.

Everything was going smoothly, until we get to today, now every studio has at least one streaming service and even then there is no guarantee that their own shows would even be up and they're all owned by the same five corporations. Discovery got in trouble not too long ago for deleting their own shows from their own streaming service. Disney still has a backlog to upload onto Disney+, and there are many exclusives between each site. It's very similar to what cable and satellite television was, gotta pay over a hundred dollars and you don't even watch half the channels. These streaming services are getting too specialized, sure it makes business sense especially when you already have a large library or you're just Disney, but when there are obscure TV channels trying to get their own service, you know something's wrong.

Somehow the music industry didn't go the same path, yes Spotify has its problems, especially for musicians, but it is far better than purchasing entire albums or the old piracy methods that always put your computer at risk.

The obvious consequence of all this is that piracy is once again going up once again. Why? Because it is far easier to pirate than it is to figure out which steaming service that Disney owned show you want to watch is on. The only reason Itunes and Netflix originally won was because it was more convenient to actually pay for the things you wanted to see and not have to worry about malware. That's a lesson that these corporations could benefit from again, but they are if anything stubborn.

Now because of the stubbornness of these corporations I will have a lot to talk about, specifically with all sorts of pirating methods, and some fun stories. I already talked about Tengen and their massive swinging balls of steel as they walked into the patent office to steal from Nintendo, but there is so much more. So plenty of legally dubious fun to be had!

#duckyfruitbat #rambling #piracy #streaming services #disney

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feeshies · 9 months

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I got a workout app that also lets you add your music library, but it only has support for Apple Music which I don’t use so the app could only pull from my iTunes library from middle school

Basically I just worked out to the Shrek 2 soundtrack

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jones-friend · 8 months

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So if you want to build a physical music collection (in that you have the tracks on a hard drive or computer rather than streaming them). This is what I recommend:

Figure out what you’re storing your music on. I prefer iTunes/Music bc I have a mac. Your chosen program has some import settings! These make the difference between your songs sounding near studio quality vs coming from a tin can on a string. On Mac I prefer Apple Lossless Encoding file format ALAC. There’s a guide here on how to do that. This makes your files bigger but keeps your music quality high.

Check out your local library. Most have a CD collection. Find out what they require for a library card and get one set up.

Go through their CD collection in person or peruse online. Some libraries have a consortium in place where media is shared between multiple physical centers. I like being able to peruse their CD’s online, place holds for everything I’m looking for, then stop by to pick them up.

Import all those binches into your computer. If your computer doesn’t come with a disk drive you can buy an attachment disk drive to do so. My library specifically states on receipts how much money I’m saving by using them and its a three digit number every time. You can. Right now. Go to your library and check out a ton of music and have it forever. And don’t feel bad like you’re doing something wrong, your library will be ecstatic with your interest.

Some libraries go beyond music too. I’m going to have played God of War Ragnarok, Final Fantasy XVI, and Armored Core 6 all through my public library. Its also how I’ve watched the dnd movie, venom 2, soul, turning red, encanto, all without spending a dime. Mine also has physical items for checkout including modern gaming consoles, a candle maker, and a telescope.

🅱️lease check out your library. You will be happier for it.

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lastweeksshirttonight · 9 months

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Hey uh remember when I did retrospectives of Last Week Tonight episodes? Let's bring it back to 140.

Last Lee Tonight (wherein I'm definitely showing United Passions at my next bad movie night) Season One, Episode Six

(original air date: 6/8/2014) Major topics covered: FIFA, Bashar al-Assad's incredible iTunes library

"And speaking of Germans losing things, it was the 70th anniversary of D-Day this week."

It's really nice to throw this show back on again, on a note unrelated to the purpose of this project. I don't talk much about myself but it's been a rough few months with work scheduling, my chronic illnesses, and my mental health. For every "I'm taking a very spontaneous and ill-thought-out trip to New York to see John Oliver WOOO!" moment, there's been at least five "why can't I catch a break"s. When I'm not being beaten down by the collective forces of capitalism, I genuinely haven't been watching much John at all, mainly in an effort to play the large backlog of video games and read the large pile of books lying around my house. I've been moderately successful there (hey y'all should give Cassette Beasts a go, it's delightful), but there's nothing like going back home, so to speak. (I hesitate to call LWT a comfort show for me, given that it's basically A Record of the Decline of the United States in Real Time, but it kinda serves that function to some degree. I am a psychopath.)

Where we last left off in... May, Jesus Christ, I'm so bad at scheduling and writing and content creation - when we last left off in May at Episode 5, things were finally starting to coalesce into the modern LWT experience. We had our first viral segment on Net Neutrality, the first time a segment was uploaded in full to the LWT YouTube, and an opening news roundup that was starting to feel more thoughtful and themed. This episode continues that theme and gives us our second big viral topic.

There is a variant on the desk-slapping here, where John doesn't do it to open the show, but does a milder version of it to get the audience to shut up so he can move on with doing the show. One of my favorite things about him is his constant desire to barrel through clapping or any audience praise of anything he's done at a given moment in time and this opener is a pretty good example of that.

We open on John calling the week disappointing because California Chrome, a horse competing for the Triple Crown, did not win the Triple Crown. You can tell this is an early episode of LWT because there is no prerequisite horse-fucking/bestiality joke, just John angrily saying "fuck that horse" about Tonalist, the horse that defeated California Chrome. All of these horses sound like indie bands from my college years. I feel like Tonalist opened when I saw MGMT live.

We then move into German Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. This gives John an opportunity to plumb one of his favorite comedic depths, making fun of the musicality, smoothness, and romanticism of the German language. A German man used his lifeline to call Chancellor Merkle, who, thankfully, did not answer, as she was busy running Germany.

This transitions into China hiding the events of Tiananmen Square from their populace, including by censoring the Internet.

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Attempts by protestors to use different trending words - and to put facts about Tiananmen Square in a sex tape - to get around that were also clamped down on, leading to this absolutely glorious screenshot of John's hypothetical romance novel:

I feel like someone on Reddit probably wrote When Spring Turns to Summer recently.

We also learn that Friends is incredibly popular with Chinese youth. I'm not really shocked by this, Friends has a weird international reach. I know multiple Korean idols who learned English partially through watching Friends. The fact that there's a Chinese replica of Central Perk? That's wild. The show edits a Friends clip to include historical facts about the massacre, and then we move to our central story.

I'm a big fan of whenever John talks about FIFA and football in general. Recently in one of her "posts relevant to my interests", @tellthemeerkatsitsfine noted that there's a strain with John and his contemporaries with them being nerds who really wanted to be jocks, and I think that dichotomy really helps John come off credibly when he talks about the deep-rooted corruption in this particular organization. The sport is something that is literally rooted into him, hardwired as something he deeply cares about... but there's the rest of it to consider.

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In my opinion, someone who deeply loves something can really be the best at describing everything wrong with it. You don't really find the grime if you're only on the surface of something. I know that critical observation of a fandom while in said fandom is in short supply these days, but I wish it was more common.

Anyways. I think FIFA's corruption and grotesqueries are pretty known in 2023, but at the time, knowledge of their fuckery wasn't as widespread. Socially, we've definitely spoken a lot more about the cost-benefit analysis of the Olympics and taxpayer-funded stadiums, which is comparative to John's opening about the issues with FIFA and claims that World Cups bring money to the areas hosting them. (Not true!) Other items I'd completely forgotten about, like FIFA Court and their boardroom looking like something out of Dr. Strangelove.

The "And Now This" is "Chris Matthews Reminds Everyone Who He Used to Work For". (Answer: Tip O'Neill.) My abiding memory of Chris Matthews is Zell Miller accusing him of beating a woman and challenging him to a duel at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

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SNL had a pretty great sketch of this where Will Forte played Miller that I can't find right now. PISTOLS AT DAAAAAAAAWN MATTHEWS!!!!

The final segment is on Bashar al-Assad's campaign of terror against Syria, rigged electioneering, and chemical warfare. More importantly, al-Assad's life history and iTunes library are discussed.

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This was also the subject of the classic Bugle episode 187, which has a chance to go far more in depth about his favorite music, like "Sexy and I Know It". (Andy Zaltzman describing Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes as a doubles tennis group is one of my favorite Bugle moments of all time incidentally.)

Right Said Fred coming out to perform an anti-Assad version of "I'm Too Sexy" gives us the first time John has had a celebrity come out basically to troll one single person, and thus almost the cornerstones of modern LWT have been established. Eagerly awaiting the first bestiality joke. Also, really love the changed lyrics, they put a hell of a lot of effort into this one. I wanna see Right Said Fred live now.

Random notes:

Lee will continue sexualizing one (1) older man damn it: light blue and dark blue checked shirt, black tie, and black jacket? I know I've said red is John's color but light blue is a very close second, 10/10

I feel like I made up for not doing these for two months by writing about five year's worth of unnecessary analysis of this damn episode. Hopefully you enjoyed it!

It was amazing seeing an ESPN ad for something not handegg-related. -groan-

LWT YouTube is still a bit confused, as we did get the two major topics as their own videos... and then 1 minute of the FIFA section as its own minisode. I really would love to know the logic behind why there specific jokes were isolated like this in the beginning of the show's airing.

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My sausage, if anyone cares, is the Korean idol industry. It's an absolute cataclysmic nightmare and yet there's a lot there personally that changed me and a lot that I love out of it. It's complicated. Fuck SM Entertainment.

A reminder that John's LMFAO fandom has endured for a decade longer than the band itself lasted:

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#john oliver #last week tonight #last week tonight with john oliver #last lee tonight #fifa world cup #seriously debating tagging zell miller in case anyone has that snl clip #zell miller #the bugle #the bugle podcast #andy zaltzman #Youtube

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