i know most leftists agree that everybody should have a right to food, water, shelter, and healthcare but i think a vitally important fifth pillar is privacy. people should not be compelled to be tracked, monitored, or to share personal space with others to access their other essential rights
>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.
>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.
>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.
>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.
>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.
>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.
>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.
>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!
>Lemmings problem now solved.
>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.
>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.
>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.
>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.
>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.
>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.
Seriously, get and run PiHole if you can. It changes your internet experience so much for the better. I get shocked when I visit a website when I'm on someone else's network, by just how many ads the internet is flooded with now. Take back control.
the thing about twin peaks is that season one and the pilot are the best of it. if you're half way through season one and wondering "when it gets better." or if it gets "less boring." then you should probably sit this one out bc u don't have the lynchian gene
I’m a season two apologist. I fucking love it. Miss Twin Peaks? Sign me up for another beauty contest! Nadine in high school because of adrenaline or whatever? Checks out to me, champ.
I’m all in and you can’t convince me any of it isn’t worth watching (except for any scene with James).
Updated version of Boy Who Cried Wolf but there are actual wolves every single time and no one ever believes the boy - they get closer and closer every time he tries to warn them, until it's too late and the whole town screams at the boy for not warning them "enough", and blame him for the wolves at their door.
Once upon a time, there was a boy who said, "Hey, guys? This is a big wide mixed meadow and woodland with a river in it."
"Yeah, isn't it great?" said his companions. "It'll be awesome for the sheep once we get the village built."
"Don't you think this looks like a spot where wolves would wait in the trees to ambush animals that come down to eat the grass and drink the water?"
"Dude," said his companion, taking the boy aside by his elbow. "Cut the wolf talk, alright? You're gonna freak everybody out and they're not gonna want to settle in this obviously fruitful place. This will be good for us, so don't mess it up. Tell you what," the companion added, tone turning placating. "If we see wolf sign around, then we'll worry about it. Okay?"
Once upon a time, there was a boy who brought the gnawed skeleton of a deer to the campfire. "Look at this," he said.
"What the hell?" The other settlers were tired after the day's construction, and grouchy at having their dinner interrupted. "Why would you drag that nasty thing into our campfire circle? Nobody needs to see that! We're trying to eat here!"
"This is proof that wolves hunt here," said the boy.
"It's a health hazard, is what it is. Get that shit out of here."
The boy pointed stubbornly to the bones. "Look at the marks here and here. Those are teeth marks. You can see how wide the jaws were."
"That could have been anything," said one settler.
"Yeah. Or it could be old," said another.
"I don't even see what you're talking about," said a third.
"Yeah," they all said. "Those don't even look like tooth marks to me. Those could have been made by rocks, or birds pecking. You're worrying about nothing."
Once upon a time, there was a boy who led his reluctant neighbors to the riverbank. They picked their way through the mud, grimacing, until the boy stopped and gestured at the ground.
"What am I supposed to be looking at?" said one villager.
The boy said, "It's a footprint." He pointed. "And here's another and another. Lots more."
"Lots of animals leave footprints," said the second villager. "Doesn't mean they're wolves."
"You guys told me specifically to watch out for wolves and signs that wolves are around," said the boy. "I went and studied the tracks and sign of every animal around here, under the best trackers and trappers, because you asked me to. This is wolf."
"Yeah, but," the third villager said. "Listen, kid. We can't just go running off on a wolf hunt with only circumstantial stuff. It's lambing season. I've been awake for nineteen hours. I left my boys fixing that hole in the fence so the ram can't get stuck in it again. I'm already behind schedule, and I took time out of it to come look at some mud."
The other villagers nodded. "Yeah," they said. "Yeah, we're busy working hard. We can't be dropping everything every time you see a shadow. You better have something real the next time you raise this kind of alarm."
Once upon a time, a boy awoke a sleeping village.
"What do you want?" they grouched.
"Do you hear that?" the boy said.
The villagers listened for a moment. In the middle distance, an eerie howling rose, held, and fell, only to be picked up by another and another.
"That's disturbing," said one.
"What do you think it is?" asked another.
The boy pointed to a pattern of prints outside the village gate. "That's wolf," he said. The pointing finger moved along the line of the fence. "That's wolf spoor," he said. He raised the finger to the sky. "That howling? It's wolves." He led them to a place where dirt had been clawed out from under the fence. "I came and woke you all up because I found a wolf digging under our fence. Here's a tuft of its hair. Here's where I hit it with my knife and shed its blood. If you get close to the fence, you can smell its musk. There are wolves in this valley, just like I've said from the beginning, and they're getting closer to the village sheep."
The villagers looked at the tracks. They looked at the scratches and the fur. They wrinkled their nose at the spoor. "Gross," one said.
Finally, from the middle of the group someone muttered, "Well it's not here anymore, is it?"
The others made 'good point' faces and murmered along.
"I mean. Crisis averted, right?" the speaker continued. "Nobody's sheep actually got got, right?"
"Yeah, because I was here watching and chased the wolf away," the boy began.
The speaker gave an apologetic grimace. "I don't know, bud," he said. "I've never seen one of these wolves with my own eyes."
"Yeah," said another. "No offense, but you are our wolf watchman. So you'd have an incentive to maintain the narrative that wolves are at our doorstep."
"What? But they are!" The boy gestured at the dig site. "You told me to watch for wolves. You sent me to be trained to track wolves so we'd all know I wasn't imagining or misinterpreting things. You asked me to stay up at night to watch for wolves, and now that I've seen one and chased it off, you don't believe me?"
"Hey, we're just saying none of us have ever actually seen a wolf," said one of the villagers. "Only you. And you do objectively have a bias towards wolf-spotting."
Once upon a time, a boy sprinted screaming across a pasture. He held his sword two-handed, braced against his side. The blade was deckled with crimson. Ahead of him a shadowy hackled body lurched and limped, yelping. In the wake of the two figures, a ewe lay dying, crashed to her knees but still holding her heaving body between the retreating predator and her lamb.
"Holy shit!" their shepherd hollered, running up to his animals. "My sheep! What the hell? I thought we were supposed to be safe from attacks here!"
The boy stumbled to a halt, unable to catch up to his nemesis. He panted, staring after it into the trees.
"Yeah, what the hell?" the other villagers agreed, gathering around the stricken sheep. "Look at this! Are you kidding me? What do we keep you around for, man?"
Wearily, the boy trudged back to the little group. He swayed as he walked. The sword was chipped, the grip worn. He wondered when he could have last been truly called a boy.
"This is the fourth attack this week," he told them.
"Yeah, buddy, it sure fuckin' is!" The villagers surrounded him, red-faced. "We can't keep losing sheep like this! This is unacceptable!"
"It was wolves again," he said.
The villagers threw hands in the air or rolled their eyes. "Oh, give us a break. Always wolves with you."
The boy stared back at them. "Okay, so what do you think it was? It had four legs, right?"
"Obviously. We all saw that," said one.
"And it was hairy?"
"Don't be insulting," said another. "You could see the hair a mile away."
"Big teeth?" the boy asked, gesturing at the lamb's wounds.
"Well it didn't kill it with a hammer," the shepherd said caustically.
"These tracks," the boy said. "Canine, would you say? And these clumps of fur, are they thick and grey?"
The group scoffed and chorused variations on "duh."
The boy looked around at them all. "So all that adds up to...?"
"Lost revenue," the shepherd said loudly. "I can't afford another one like this. Hell, I can't afford this one."
"But what was the animal that dug under your fence to sneak into your pasture to kill your sheep, that we all saw, that had four legs and thick gray hair and had big teeth and left canine prints?"
One of the villagers clapped a weighty hand onto the boy's shoulder. "Kid," he said, "that ain't nobody's job but yours."
"It was a wolf! The last three times were all wolves! It's always been wolves! I've been showing them to you for years! I am your wolf watchman and I am telling you right now that wolves keep getting in here to kill the village sheep, because none of you are listening to me!"
The villagers straightened, drew together. Faces hardened. "Don't you dare take that disrespectful tone with me, boy," said the one who felt he was owed the most deference. "If you want listening, you ain't gonna get it by ranting and shouting."
Once upon a time, a boy stared from the grinning faces of his neighbors, to the animals panting alongside them, and back to the neighbors.
"They're going to protect our sheep," said one of the townspeople.
"Yeah. Fight fire with fire," said another.
The boy found his voice. "You're going to put wolves... in your flocks... on purpose?"
"Hey now, these are different. They're our wolves."
The other shepherds nodded and said things like "Yeah!" and "Our wolves!" One of the wolves was staring, drooling, at a young ewe.
"How do you know they won't, oh I don't know, just eat all your sheep the second you turn your back? As a random, non-specific example?" the boy asked them.
"They're not for eating sheep, they're for defending them," said one. "Totally different."
The boy raked his fingers through his hair. "How are these different, exactly?"
"Well, we're using them, obviously," said the first villager who had spoken. "They're totally legal. The mayor got the council to write it into the town charter. Every shepherd has the right to protect his flock."
One of the wolves was stretching its jaws wide, seeing if it could fit them around the head of a lamb. It noticed the boy watching and hesitated.
"Are you guys seeing what that wolf is doing right now?" the boy said, pointing at it.
The wolf made a split-second decision. The jaws snapped shut and it dragged the lamb away, behind its shepherd's house.
"What the hell!" The boy looked back up at the shepherd's face. "It literally just snatched that lamb out from under your nose! It did it in front of everybody!"
Another shepherd patted the shoulder of the one who had just lost the lamb. "Tragic," he said. "It always hurts, losing a lamb. I'll pray for you."
"What do you mean, pray?" The boy drew his arm back and pointed even harder in the direction the wolf had vanished, as if by gesturing violently enough he could make them react. "The wolf is right over there! We could go chase it or kill it!"
"Whoa there, son," said the prayerful shepherd. "Just because tragedy's hit us today doesn't mean you can just take away our sheepdogs."
"They're not sheepdogs! Who told you they were sheepdogs?"
"Dude, I thought you would be on board with us protecting our sheep from wolves," said another townsperson. "There's no need to slander the business who hired them out to us."
"Which business?" the boy demanded.
"Wolves R Us." The townsperson raised both hands in a placating gesture. "I know how it sounds, but the guy who runs it is totally legit."
The boy strode up to the speaker. "Who? Who runs it?"
"Chill out, dude. It's the mayor."
Once upon a time, a boy fell against the double doors of the town hall, shoving them open. Dust swirled in the shaft of sunlight that slanted into the gloom from the doorway. Every curtain was drawn tightly closed, blocking out the light. He staggered inside, towards the shadowy shape of the mayoral desk at the far end of the hall.
"Sir," he called as he went, "I'm sorry to interrupt you. I know the council told me never to set foot in the town hall again, but this is urgent." He grimaced, glancing down at the hand clasped to his middle. "They're inside the town walls. I don't know why, but they just invited them in like - like nothing would happen." He braced himself with his free hand.
"You're bleeding on my desk," said the voice from the mayoral chair.
The boy blinked. "I was attacked on the way here."
A deep sigh. "Well, son, I'm sorry you feel that way, but you have to admit you sure do rile people up around here. What did you say to provoke them this time? Let me guess - it was wolves all along."
"What? I didn't - sir, I'm the wolf watchman. I watch for wolves and raise the alarm when I see one. That's my job," he added. "I don't think I deserve to get attacked for doing what the town asked."
The chair squeaked as the figure within shifted position. The boy frowned, suddenly realizing something was off.
"I wasn't born yesterday," said the mayor. "We all know something's wrong in this town. People are afraid. Sheep are dying. It's bad for business. But your way isn't working, is it?"
"That's because-"
"Would you let someone else do the talking for once?" the mayor growled. "If you really cared about this place, you'd stop hogging all the attention and just admit you haven't been able to solve anything. I'm handling the problem now. I love this town, and I don't want to see you causing a panic by making a bunch of wild accusations."
The boy sank slowly into the visitor chair across the desk. "Sure, Mr. Mayor," he said, unable to muster the energy for sarcasm. "What a big heart you have."
The mayor's grin gleamed all the way up and down his muzzle. "All the better for running a town with."
"So what's your plan?" the boy asked flatly.
The mayor readjusted his bifocals with a dewclaw. "Fortunately, son, you won't have to worry about that," he said. "It's become clear to me that you and I aren't going to be able to work together. I'm going to have to let you go. Consider yourself terminated, effective immediately."
Later, the boy stood over his threadbare bed, wondering if there were any point to packing his things. He didn't own much; there had never seemed to be enough time to get a proper house built for himself, let alone accumulate possessions. It had been years since they first settled the valley. Tiredness pounded in his sinuses. His knees creaked, his wrists and elbows twinged from long use of his guardsman's sword. He would have liked to have been able to retire. Or at least take an apprentice. Or at least feel like anything he did mattered at all.
Outside, the town had been gathering. Their stares were accusing and their murmurs hostile.
"I heard he's actually been a wolf this entire time," he distinctly heard someone mutter to someone else.
He felt his shoulders tense. He expected rage to boil, but when he turned around he suddenly realized if he went postal now, the rumors would only be worse.
"There are wolves in your flocks," he told them. "They're going to continue killing your sheep until you decide to do something about it. I'm not going to tell you again."
The crowd parted for him, bipedal and quadripedal members alike. They watched him go.
One of the villagers broke the silence when he turned to look at the wolf next to him. "Get a load of that guy," he said. "What an absolute killjoy."
it’s not just a modern thing either. it started in the ussr as a way for stalin to systemically persecute jews without being explicit about it, which then made its way to swana via soviet propaganda. when you hear “zionist” in swana, 99.9999% of the time, they are using it to mean jew because that is how it was introduced to them. and now western leftists are picking it up from a combination of old soviet propaganda and current use in swana — both of which mean jew. so you have westerners who are in fact intentionally using it as a dogwhistle (nazis frequently use “zionists” as a dogwhistle for jew, and most self-admitted antisemitic leftists will intentionally use “zionist” to save face), and then you have westerners who have no clue they’re using a dogwhistle. which is in fact the whole point of a dogwhistle. now you have millions of people using this word that was explicitly used to persecute jews in the ussr and across swana, who have absolutely zero knowledge of the history or implications of the world they’re using, who throw a fit if you try to point these things out. it’s fucking exhausting.
All that could be true. I don’t know. But what I do know is that Zionists are Jews and Gentiles who believe in the ethnostate of Israel. They are actively committing a genocide against a he Palestinian people *right now* and don’t like that people have noticed.
Posts like this are trying to conflate antisemitism with people refusing to support that genocide or let it go unnoticed. Don’t let these miserable assholes with the moral authority of pond scum convince you that supporting those who resist against them is wrong.
Fuck Israel. Fuck Zionists.
Sincerely,
A Jew who believes in Tikkun Olam and that Never Again means *Never* Again
In regards of the Trump government scraping all trans inclusion in its queer information portion of its websites I have made this thing. Spread the word. Don't let them pretend we never existed.
Gosh I hate grind culture. My little sister just started medical school and all of her orientation leaders are like “you absolutely cannot have a life WHATsoever you WILL have to give up EVERYTHING besides this program say GOODBYE to your hobbies and relationships” and now she’s calling me feeling guilty for running and going to the grocery store and that’s just WRONG! And that is exactly what I was told starting law school as well, and rejecting that mentality was the best thing I ever did but it was so hard not to buy into. Anyway if any of you are in an intense academic program PLEASE take time to sleep and eat and exercise and maintain your relationships and keep up your hobbies! you are not a robot who exists solely to study and I promise that living a life and staying physically and mentally healthy is not going to make you fail
Workaholism is not just a “millennial quirk”, it’s a very real psychological problem that should not be normalized and praised. Diligence and self-realization? Awesome!!! Working so much you forget to eat, sleep and socialize? Not okay under any circumstances.
I’ve never heard workaholism as a millennial quirk before. Very interesting tbh because I’m old enough to remember when we pushed for work life balance and “killed” so many industries.
Godspeed to Gen Z. Kill more industries. Do not go gentle into that terrible workaholism.
Fun fact about the early Catholic church is that, despite spending generations being persecuted by the Roman empire, it took less than 15 years under Theodosius I to go from “the empire is Catholic now” to “and also every other religion is banned.” You can literally read St. Augustine move from “state religious persecution is unacceptable” to “state religious persecution is cool actually” over his lifetime as Catholicism came to power. I’m sure there’s no broader lessons to be learned there
Just gonna keep pointing to the part in Asimov’s auto biography I Asimov, where he talks about antisemitism (cause it’s all really good stuff even all these years later), but I’m once again gonna just share the last 3 paragraphs cause… well you tell me they’re not relevant to this post and relevant all these years after he wrote them:
Even as I write, Jews are immigrating from the former Soviet Union into Israel. They are fleeing their country because they fear religious persecution. But the moment they set foot on Israeli soil, they become Zionist extremists who are merciless toward the Palestinians. They change from persecuted to persecutors in the blink of an eye.
That said, the Jews are not alone in this. If I’m sensitive to this particular problem, it’s because I’m Jewish myself. In fact, this phenomenon is universal. In Roman times, when the first Christians were persecuted, they pleaded for tolerance. But when Christianity prevailed, did tolerance reign? Not on your life. Instead, persecution was soon going on in the opposite direction. Or take the case of the Bulgarians, who demanded freedom from their dictatorial regime, but once they had it used it to aggress against their Turkish minority. Or the people of Azerbaijan, who demanded of the Soviet Union the freedom denied it by the central government, only to immediately attack the Armenian minority.
The Bible teaches that the victims of persecution must in no circumstances become persecutors in their turn: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”(Exodus 22:21). But who follows this teaching? Personally, whenever I try to spread the word, I get hostile looks and make myself unpopular….
I got a laptop with Windows 11 for an IT course so I can get certified, and doing the first time device set-up for it made me want to commit unspeakable violence
Windows 11 should not exist, no one should use it for any reason, it puts ads in the file explorer and has made it so file searches are also web searches and this cannot be turned off except through registry editing. Whoever is responsible for those decisions should be killed, full stop.
u r absolutely right I have SO many complaints about Windows omg.
For anyone who'd like to follow along, I'm gonna share how to get around those things with group policies bc they're more user friendly and descriptive than registry editor imo :3 I'll also show how to get around needing a Microsoft account to get setup.
For the Device Setup
"OOBE" stands for Out Of Box Experience which is what that setup workflow is. But it also happens to be a folder with a little program in it that'll let you skip connecting to the internet; this makes it so you don't have to sign up with a Microsoft account and can just use a normal local one instead. And it already comes preinstalled! Here's how you get to it:
Hold Shift + F10, or Shift + Fn + F10 depending on your keyboard.
Click inside the window that pops up, type the following and press enter afterwards to run it: OOBE\BypassNRO
I believe it should restart your computer automatically, but if not then restart your computer or type: shutdown /r /t 0 /f
Now when you're brought back to the setup workflow, the page where you connect to the internet will have a new button on it that lets you say you don't have internet. Clicking that and proceeding through the rest of the setup lets you get around the Microsoft account thing.
Group Policies
You don't have to know much about them, these are just a bunch of specific settings for what your computer can or can't do that lets you decide how it works in different ways.
I'm gonna show you how to turn off the recommendations and internet stuff basically. For now bring up search and type gpedit, pick this
It'll open up to Local Group Policy Editor and we can get started :3c
Start Recommendations
In the side menu, go to User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Start Menu and Taskbar. Click on Settings to sort them with all the "Turn off" ones bumped to the top.
Here's what you should set:
Turn off user tracking: enabled
Turn off feature advertisement balloon notifications: enabled
Remove Recommended section from Start Menu: enabled
Remove Personalized Website Recommendations from the Recommended section in the Start Menu: enabled
Do not search Internet: enabled
Windows Spotlight
Back in the side menu, go down to Windows Components > Cloud Content
Turn off all Windows spotlight features: enabled
Do not use diagnostic data for tailored experiences: enabled
Cortana
In the side menu, this one's back at the top under Computer Configuration. You're gonna want to go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Search
Allow Cortana: disabled
Don't search the web or display web results in Search: enabled
News and Interests
In the side menu go to Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > News and interests.
Enable news and interests on the taskbar: disabled
Microsoft Account Login Nudges
When you don't use a Microsoft account they'll nudge you repeatedly to sign in so you can "get the most out of your experience" *gag*. The group policy for turning that off has a note that suggests it might not work with Windows 11 though (implicitly), so you can close the group policy editor window now and for this last one let's just open up the regular settings.
Go to System > Notifications > Additional settings, then uncheck all the boxes. And there ya go! (✿◠‿◠)ﾉ u are done.
Group policies are kind of a rabbit hole so while there is a lot more you could change or read into, for your own sanity's sake I would advise against it and say call it a day lol
I endorse this as an IT technician. I do this to every new Win11 device I set up.
As a bonus, run Chris Titus Tech's debloat tool on it.
Having Fun with Technology
It allows you to add tools, remove/disable shitty parts of windows, and easily change some settings. My default is running the preset for a desktop/laptop and applying security update settings, but there are so many options to customize. I used it on my personal laptop.
This is called the "analog loophole" and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. They can encrypt and copy-protect all they want, but eventually the file has to be sent to a speaker and/or screen, and it has to get there in a human-readable form because that's the whole dang point
The simplest way to exploit the analog loophole is just pointing a camera at a screen or a microphone at a speaker, but direct recording is also always possible and always will be. Anything that can be displayed can be saved and displayed again
Back in the day, people also used to share software over the radio with this technology. Because computer programs and files are really just sets of binary code, and that code can be turned into audio tones.
The resulting audio file can be played over the radio (sounding a bit like the old dial up noise, as it's just two quickly oscillating notes) and recorded to a cassette tape, which you can then give to your computer to "decode" back into 0's and 1's, which gives you the program file. You can then run it as if you'd installed it from a disk.
baratheonpilled
2087
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
titsay
