and then they proceeded to be the worst at their jobs for the next 20 years

No no, you don’t get it. Jesse and James are the absolute best there is at their jobs, but they have no idea what their jobs are.

They think that they’re thieves, agents of an elite criminal group led by Giovanni, stealing rare pokemon and advanced technology and such. And there might have been a time this actually was their jobs. In the first season or two, they frequently get angry phone calls about how they’ve fucked everything up, or get their expense account cut off because they have literally never turned a profit on their criminal enterprises and constantly procure and then lose/destroy expensive and elaborate devices.

But then the world came within a hair’s breadth of being destroyed, several times, and Jesse, James, and their weird cat rescued everybody. As terrible as they’ve always been at criminal endeavors of any kind, when the apocalypse approaches and they’re forced to step up, they’re really fucking good at saving the day.

And Giovanni is over here like… if the planet is destroyed, or time/space becomes unrecognizable, or civilization collapses, there’s no way for me to run a profitable criminal enterprise anymore. I need this planet, because it’s where I keep all my stuff. And I don’t pretend to understand the why of it, but these couple of bumbling nutcases that I should have fired years ago seem to be an important component of that? Somehow? So you gotta stop thinking about them in terms of acquisitions and start considering them… loss prevention. As in, even if you waste a million dollars a month on giant cat-faced robots and a vast array of fancy ball gowns and they never turn a profit, they are preventing all of your assets from going away at the same time because of something you can’t do anything about.

And that’s the great secret behind Team Rocket. These guys aren’t thieves, they’re professional superheroes (sponsored by organized crime). Of course, nobody ever bothered to tell them that.

“To protect the world from devastation…”

Plus, as is frequently pointed out: Jesse and James are good at every other job EXCEPT Team Rocket. They’re actually smart businesspeople and run successful food and merchandise stands and are great salespeople. Hell, even in Team Rocket situations where they’re not chasing after Pikachu they’ve done better. It’s just their Achilles Heel is one damn OP rodent.

Pikachu Proximity Intelligence Chart

pretty sure giovanni keeps them on so he can commit insurance fraud by giving them tech insured for way more than what was paid for it so when it inevitably gets destroyed he gets a nice check.

I’m accepting all of these responses actually

J&J (& Meowth) are field testers, catspaws and urban legend verifiers.

Also your honor might I remind you of this image

Basically these guys have a deep well of ability and cunning but it’s also their proximity to EACH OTHER paired with their character flaws that make them share the same brain cell.

Even more than that, they are what is keeping specifically Team Rocket alive!

It is canon that Giovanni knows about, and used, the multiverse (as shown in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon where he created Rainbow Rocket). So it is very likely that he has seen different timelines of Team Rocket either succeeding or failing. There are many timelines where Team Rocket straight up ceased to exist, he learns. Possibly he’s even even seen different timelines for other criminal organizations as well.

And what all of the failed timelines have in common is one thing, and one thing only: some puny, annoying little 10-year-old messing with the team’s plans, invading their headquarters and single-handedly ruining everything. It has happened several times in different realities and it was always the same pattern. Every universe has that one kid.

And that is when Giovanni realizes: Jessie and James are the only thing standing between him and utter defeat by the most unlikely little hands. For whatever weird reason, these two idiots have a talent for keeping that kid occupied. A kid that might very well end all of your plans with his stupidly overpowered zap mouse. So you just keep ordering them to steal that Pikachu. You don’t even care if they manage to succeed. You just know that, somehow, you’ve found a loophole that keeps you safe.

“Bring me that Pikachu”, you shout into the phone once again. They’ve only destroyed one balloon this week. You are sleeping well.

its official: tumblr is selling our data to Midjourney

we'd been hearing rumors about this for a bit but now its open and out there. some details from this article

it goes without saying, but if @staff goes through with this its going to be an utter shitshow and im all but certain the website will not survive it.

everyone go enable this immediately. it can be a bit hard to find because “visibility” is under blog settings instead of general settings or privacy. you have to do this individually for each separate side-blog

if you can’t find it on the app then the update probably hasn’t rolled out to you, and you’ll have to go through the web browser. what a truly wild way/time to implement this

I liked this post, scrolled for like another minute before I went “SHIT FUCK SHIT” and scrolled back to reblog it

I always reblog this one when I see it on my dash. When someone posts their own art, writing, or music here they are really hoping you will share it.

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.

unfortunately, a lot of the userbase won't opt out. those who don't see this post, those who have posted to tumblr but don't anymore, users on older versions of the app who forget to opt out next time they're on desktop, etc. the point of making it opt-out is to take advantage of people who wouldn't have opted in but don't/can't opt out in time. automatically opting out people who have discouraged search crawling is a gesture that helps Tumblr look more kind, but from the fact that everyone else has to manually opt out, Tumblr is definitely not looking benevolent.

I wonder, will Tumblr/Automattic be selling images from deactivated blogs? I assume deactivated blogs can't opt out.

when will they start selling this data? Is it already too late to keep them from selling every image you've posted before you opted out?

and if they're especially malicious, I wonder if they could get away with saying "this image is from a blog that's opted out, but it was reblogged by a blog that hasn't opted out, so we're selling the image that's on that non-opted-out blog."

making users need to opt out to keep their images from being taken and sold is a shitty move that makes it clear Tumblr/Automattic don't respect our privacy, and @staff are really not giving us much info here to suggest otherwise.

- For he is the sun my whole being yearned to reach -

FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH THIS WEEK weeeeeeeeeeeeee

I’m so exited to see how they will adapt the second part of the the original game ! So many great scenes coming up !

For this illu, just imagine AC Cloud time travelling and taking a still sane (woobified) Sephiroth and Zack on a road trip to get that god forsaken vitamin D 🌼