There's really nothing here

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Myrient, a massive archive preserving over 390 terabytes of video games, is shutting down on the 31st of March 2026. And AI is to blame.

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WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?

According to a statement made by Myrient on Discord, there are many reasons for the shutdown. But the primary reasons include a lack of traffic to the website, scummy download managers that added paywalls to certain downloads despite this being against Myrient's terms, and the rising prices of RAM, HDD, and SSD due to AI.

Now, the reason why AI is at the root of these price rices is because of the increased demand coming from the expansion of data centres. These places require a massive amount of computing power to maintain their AI models. So, the AI companies are buying up all the RAM, SSD, HDD, and other components to be able to keep expanding as fast as they are. Which means manufacturers can't produce fast enough to keep up with demand without raising prices and also neglecting older components. And this impacts or is going to impact basically every bit of tech possible.

So, y'know. If you want to keep archival sites like Myrient around, boycott AI. Let AI companies bankrupt and hopefully die forever.

This post by @goodusernamepending outlines how this links to AO3's recent outages.

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CAN WE DO ANYTHING?

Unfortunately, in the case of Myrient, it's too late. The shutdown appears to be inevitable at this point.

Go to Myrient while you still can and download anything you want/need.

This post by @imakuni has an awesome list of alternatives to Myrient.

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SAVE OUR ARCHIVES!

What we CAN do to stop the loss of other preservation websites is to support archival websites and organisations. Here's a list:

Wikipedia - The online encyclopedia! It also has several other archival efforts which you can find at the bottom of the page.

Internet Archive/Wayback machine - A massive archive of the Internet, ranging from webpages throughout time to software and books, and so much more.

MyAbandonware - A gigantic collection of video games for a wide range of platforms, from the years 1965-2014.

Archive of Our Own - A huge archive of fanworks. You know.

OldVersion - A collection of old versions of software for platforms including Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The Black Vault - A major archive of declassified U.S documents.

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If you've got an archive site that hasn't been included here, please do let me know if you'd like me to add it to the list!

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

And that this is actually a really fun, low cost way to not only access news and larger cultural magazines, but also to get free patterns for many different crafts that you can screenshot if need be and that lower the financial barriers to entry for trying new things

From my experience working in both academic and public libraries, many libraries are use it or lose it funding-- I have to say this because a lot of patrons feel guilty for how much they use the library and how often they're using it funny enough, but the worst thing you can do for libraries is not try out new features and not use what's already given to you as much as possible.

he’s not a reckless teenager who’s grieving his mother and coping with that and a million other things in an unhealthy way.

now, he can easily be painted as a grown man of color who simply can’t handle himself.

who hands over property to his white father because he’s just not quite mature [pt: mature /end pt] enough.

or has for some reason decided not to mention it at all or let anyone else know.

I just found out something insane today. in the new dregs editions that came out for the 10th anniversary, leigh bardugo has removed any and all mention of the crows being teenagers, cut out whole sentences and completely changed quotes that are classic and very well known by fans of the six of crows duology. she’s replaced any mention of words like ‘children’ ‘boy’ ‘girl’ and ‘kids’ with ‘man’ ‘woman’ ‘grown’ etc

this is concerning, bewildering and just feels wrong for so many reasons. but besides the obvious —which is that the six protagonists of the duology being young is essential to many aspects of the plot, seeing as their world weariness and competence is a result of their experiences as children and survivors who are victims of their environment—besides even that, editing a piece of literature that’s been published and on shelves for 10 years is objectively not a good idea at all, and doesn’t at all take into account the new contexts and connotations the new wording brings.

above is an example of the original scene we know verses the new version. lots of it has changed, namely their ages, but the sentence at the end in matthas' pov doesn't even sound like him at all. her writing quality has declined noticeably and she sounds like she wrote that sentence in a rush. it makes no sense, and it's not something matthias, who knows practically nothing about the barrel, would be thinking.

and not to mention the famous line 'brekker's eyes were ancient, but he couldn't be any older then matthias' — cut out of the book completely. I do wonder what impact, effect and influence these changes will have on new readers.

this is another example. such a classic line and they cut it completely.

the entire books are like this. inej saying kaz looking seventeen is changed to kaz looking like someone's apprentice. the boy of the barrel changed to man. criminal prodigy changed to just mastermind. inej described as a woman in place of a sixteen year old girl. wylan changed from boy to young man. full scenes cut. 'jesper is zemeni but don't hold it against him' changed to ‘don’t let him wax sentimental about it’ which sounds way worse then the original.

and I don't actually own the new copies of these books, my best friend was looking at them in a bookstore and that's when we first noticed all of the changes. so I truly have no idea what else could possibly be changed besides the things I noticed as I cannot look at them for reference - the crow's physical appearance, more of the plot, other famous scenes just being cut completely, etc. if nothing else has changed, then it’s still way too much and massively changes core aspects of the books. but I do wonder. if you own the dregs special editions, I suggest looking for similar differences. I might have to write examples to express how messed up the new connotations are.

leigh now implies that jesper, an adult black man, made the right choice by handing over his share from his job to his white father to keep for you, as he cannot control himself and isn't ready to receive his own funds, as he is a mindless gambler. this is extremely different to a reckless irresponsible teenager grieving his mother and making stupid mistakes, and then deciding to make better decisions in the future with help from his parent. I'm sure you can see without me spelling it out how awful, racist and problematic the new context of jesper being a grown man makes this situation sound.

another example is matthias' childhood centrally seeing him be groomed, manipulated and indoctrinated by a nazi coded witch hunting organisation that targets grisha, an oppressed community, with the intention of torturing, burning, hanging, raping and eradicating them from the world

matthias is just turning 18 when he meets nina. he has not yet done any of these terrible things himself. he is fresh out of training and still basically a child. his views are first challenged, and he eventually breaks out of the brainwashing and mental manipulation that has been taught and instilled in him with repetition. it's not an excuse, but it's more understandable. matthias, now a grown man apparently way older then 18, has no excuse for these bigoted views as he is way more mature, has way more experience, and would have had to have done these horrific things to grisha at some point.

it feels like some sort of fever dream that six of crows was edited and re published so that these famous teenage characters (who were first written so obviously— in dialogue, actions, pov, - as teenagers) and their criminal prodigy leader were made into poorly written adults. I can put into words how much this has deeply bothered and distressed me and many other readers I've spoken to.

it's such an odd choice and makes me think it was done to soften the backlash the shadow and bone adaption received from some fans for aging up the characters in the first place.

I cannot stress this enough- leigh bardugo would edit iconic lines and change core aspects of her characters that have been around for 10 years to justify a cancelled netflix adaption of these incredibly popular and well loved books. it's odd and uncomfortable.

now, these books mean the world to me, they have quite literally got me through physical, mental and emotional childhood abuse, suicide ideation and self harm, the everyday ableism and oppression, chronic pain and disability experience, severe depression and anxiety, absolute hopelessness, work and life, etc) but the sheer absurdity of this all just outmatches my distress that it happened. it feels like some sort of hallucination becasue it's lowkey just insane. she never even mentioned she was going to do something like this?

there is just no conceivable reason for leigh bardugo to have done this secretly and quietly other then to have stopped people negatively critiquing the show or some other deeply odd notion. and with all of these changes, the new books absolutely are not the 'dregs' editions— the heart of the dregs is the young blood, 'the kids like kaz who he had brought in a organised, who worked the hardest and took the worst jobs'

First to establish the rules: to get an official reply from the commission and possibly legislation, an initiative needs 1 million signatures within 1 year AND at least 7 different countries need to hit their threshold which is calculated based on population (idk how it's calculated but a little more than 1 in 1000 adult citizens of the country need to sign to hit its threshold). This is to ensure that not all the support for an initiative comes from one or very few countries.

Ok so here's the graph for signatures that the conversion therapy ban got over time according to the wayback machine:

The deadline is in 2 days as I write this and there's a MASSIVE last minute push! 415,223 signatures to go still but the last update to the website added about 360,000 all at once. I think it might still be possible after all.