#Link Aggregation

[unimatrix-420]

Decentralized social networks to use instead

Instead of Facebook

Friendica

Lectrn

Instead of Goodreads

BookWyrm

Instead of Instagram

Pixelfed

Instead of Reddit

BrutalLinks

Lemmy

Lotide

Instead of Spotify

Funkwhale

Instead of Twitter

Mastodon

Misskey

Pleroma

Instead of Youtube

PeerTube

[lesbian-moon]

I shan’t stop my ai chat hate this is an anti-chat GPT household. make no mistake

[cyuzi-the-prismatic]

Oof the elongated muskrat is having another tantrum.

Seems Tumblr is safe for now? But oof. Link aggregator sites like linktree or cardd are also banned.

[thephilosophersapprentice]

With the way Etsy treats its sellers, I think we should all block @sosuperawesome.

I accidentally clicked through a link from sosuperawesome to get a better look, and now if I try to make a purchase anywhere on Etsy, Etsy will likely do their scummy thing of charging the seller for my ad revenue.

Here's a screenshot inspecting the link from a sosuperawesome post:

Notice all that stuff appended to the link?

In case the screenshot is too small or just doesn't load, here's the link (with backslashes replaced with uprights so it doesn't immediately turn into a link. Tumblr post editor is nicer now but it does make making my point a little more challenging)

https:||href.li|?https:||www.awin1.com||cread.php?awinmid=6091&awinaffid=245609&clickref=Infinite+Love+Creative&ued=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.etsy.com%2Flisting%2F990007782%2Fbig-crab-planter-pot-w-drainage-handmade

See all that awin1.com stuff in the link? That's all trackers. I'd be willing to bet 24 karat gold that it's specifically advertising trackers. Sosuperawesome is almost certainly Etsy's own advertising, making money off people who clicked the links thinking that they're just looking at another Tumblr user's blog. Sosuperawesome is costing creators with these spurious links, and even trying to copy a clean link location with a firefox plugin is not removing the routing address.

Etsy's promotional policies are theft. Don't be fooled by advertising blogs acting like real humans.

[branmer]

why is linktree banned but not carrd

[unitech-universal-it]

Cat6A /Cat6 STP Copper Patch Cord OSILAN Category 6A shielded patch cords shall be constructed of shielded 26 AWG stranded copper cable and an enhanced performance shielded modular plug at each end. Patch cord cable shall be offered in colored Shielded cable with a black boot. Patch cords shall be wired to be compatible with both T568A and T568B wiring schemes.

Applications: Stacking switches and switch-to-switch links, Storage area networks, Aggregation of Gigabit Ethernet channels, Real-time intensive financial transactions, Streaming video, Animation, Scientific modeling, medical imaging check product on google store: https://lnkd.in/dtMcdtcw

#Patch_Cord #osilan#unitech#unitech_osilan#cat6a#cat6#information_technology#it#iot#light_Current#networking#passive_networking

[letspepaymentgateway]

Artificial Intelligence, aka AI, is playing a vital role in fraud prevention for Payment Gateways today. There are many tools updated in the market used to make payment gateway services more secure daily. Hackers are becoming advanced and there is always a threat that they may crack the code to break the latest technology used in fraud prevention for the payment gateways. This generated the need to update the AI technology used for the prevention of payment gateways.

[gaypornvideoswebsite]

the rafah border crossing could close as soon as next month, leaving people in gaza with no way out. please continue to fund trusted people who are on the ground. do not donate to anyone who does not know what they are doing or how to get funds moved properly, or those who have no connections to volunteers in cairo who are working tirelessly to transition traumatized people as smoothly as possible while the egyptian government does squat. many sources are aggregating vetted funds like the linktree to several funds below.

[jdunlevy]

From the archives: A roundup of old “Did you read” blog posts

I've gone back and gathered links to old Chicago Reader “Did You Read __________?” blog posts that I contributed items to from 2012 to 2016. These posts were all “authored” by “Reader staff” with attibution to the individual contributors appearing in the body text next to their contributed items. So like some other things with the top-level byline done in this way, they don't appear on individual contributors’ author archives pages.

I got the post URLs using Google Search and then wrote a PHP script pulling all the URLs from the Search results into an array and fetching each post’s headline, subheadline, and publication date, sorting it all in reverse chronological order, and then outputting a useful list of links in nice HTML for presentation on the web. It’s probably most but not all of these posts that I contributed to.

(Among possibly other things, this let me add these to my Muckrack portfolio.)

“Did You Read __________?” [snapshot in the Wayback Machine at archive.org] was a topic series—you can think of it simply as a blog—that started in January 2012 in The Bleader blog (previously “The Blog,” sort of a single-company blog network or parent blog under which individual blogs or sub-blogs existed) on chicagoreader.com that ran initially as a more-or-less daily place for Reader staff to share interesting things, usually articles, from elsewhere on the web, sort of quick-hit link sharing. It shared links to “stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us.”

It was the successor to “What the Reader’s Reading” [Wayback Machine snapshot], a regularly updated feed of links from early 2010 to late 2011 powered by a news-aggregation platform called Publish2 that the Creative Loafing folks were especially excited about but did actually do some cool microblogging things including tagging and categorizing content and, if I recall, also had some rudimentary social media-type features built in. Links shared this way were presented in various places on the site, especially on the Reader homepage and on section-specific posts (e.g. music-tagged links [Wayback Machine] on music posts) and on section table of contents [Wayback Machine] pages.

Later, the idea of daily “Did you read” posts as compilations of staff contributions was dropped and freelancer Kate Shepherd wrote all the posts for the rest of the series from January 2016 until it was discontinued after Valentine’s Day in February 2018—at a particularly tumultuous time in the Reader’s history.

[weirdmageddon]

what is this . actual baby tantrum shit. no link aggregators either? telling that to artists, musicians, software developers, etc? literal 180 from that “free speech platform” elon was going on about

[gael-garcia]

PALESTINE FILM INDEX

Palestine Film Index is a growing list of films from and about Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation, made by Palestinians and those in solidarity with them. The index starts with films from the revolutionary period (68 - 82) made by the militant filmmakers of the Palestine Film Unit and their allies, and extends through a multitude of voices to the present day. It is by no means a complete or exhaustive representation of the vast universe that is Palestinian cinema, but is only a small fragmentary list that we hope nontheless can be used as an instrument of study & solidarity. As tools of knowledge against zionist propaganda and towards Palestinian liberation.

The century long war against Palestinians by the zionist project is one waged not only militarily but also culturally. The act of filmmaking, preservation, and distribution becomes an act against this attempted cultural erasure of ethnic cleansing. The power inherent in this form as a weapon against the genocidal project of zionism is evidenced in the ways it has been historically & currently targeted by the occupation forces: from the looting & stealing of the Palestine Cinema Institute archives during the siege of Beirut in 1982, through the long history of targeted assassinations of Palestinian filmmakers, journalists, artists, & writers (from PFU founder Hani Jawharieh, to Ghassan Kanafani, Shireen Abu Akleh, Refaat Alareer, and the over 100 journalists killed in the currently ongoing war on Gaza).

It is in this spirit of the use of film and culture as a way of focusing & transmitting information & knowledge that we hope this list can be used as one in an assortment of educational tools against hasbara (a coordinated and intricate system of zionist propaganda, media manipulation, & social engineering, etc) and all forms of propaganda that is weaponized against the Palestinian people. Zionist media & its collaborators remain one of the most effective fronts of the war, used to manufacture consent through deeply ingrained psychological manipulation of the general public agency. Critical and autonomous thought must be used as a tool of dismantling these frameworks. In this realm, film can play a vital roll in your toolkit/arsenal. Film must be understood as one front of the greater resistance. We hope in some small way we can help to distribute these manifestations of Palestinian life and the struggle towards liberation.

This list began as small aggregation to share among friends and comrades in 2021 and has since expanded to the current and growing form (it is added to almost every day). We have links for through which each film can be viewed along with descriptions, details such as run time, year, language, etc. We also have a supplemental list of related materials (texts, audio, supplemental video) that is small but growing. We have added information on contacts for distributors and filmmakers of each film in order to help people or groups who are interested in using this list to organize public screenings of these films. The makers of this list do not control the rights to these films and we strongly urge those interested in screening the works to get in touch with the filmmaker or distributors before doing so. This list was made with best intentions in mind, and in most cases with permission of filmmaker or through a publically available link, but if any film has mistakenly been added without the permission of a filmmaker involved and you would like us to remove it, or conversely if you are a filmmaker not included who would like your film to be added, or for any other thoughts, suggestions, additions, subtractions, complaints or concerns, please contact us at palestinefilmindex@gmail.com. No one involved in this list is doing it as a part of any organization, foundation or non-profit and we are not being paid to do this, it is merely a labor of love and solidarity. From the river to the sea, Palestine

[actiaslunaris]

Linked posts of Yukaoru fanart on Buhitter.com. This search only pulled up artwork dating back to 2020.

[shadowxsama]

the return of the girlbots on tumblr sucks but at least it's not like twitter where they now ban you for linking to or even just mentioning your username on a "competing" social media site like instagram or facebook

[izzy-b-hands]

cool, the post office has no idea when my latest edible order that's already late will get here

neat.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Media explainers are a cheap way to become an instant expert on everything from billionaire submarine excursions to hellaciously complex geopolitical conflicts, but On The Media's "Breaking News Consumers' Handbooks" are explainers that help you understand other explainers:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media

The latest handbook is an Israel-Gaza edition. It doesn't aim to parse fine distinctions over the definition of "occupation" or identify the source of shell fragments. Rather, it offers seven bullet points' worth of advice on weighing all the other news you hear about the war:

https://media.wnyc.org/media/resources/2023/Oct/27/BNCH_ISRAEL_GAZA_EDITION_1.pdf

I. "Headlines are obscured by the fog of war"

Headline writers have a hard job under the best of circumstances – trying to snag your interest in a few words. Headlines can't encompass all the nuance of a story, and they are often written by editors, not the writers who produced the story. Between the imperatives for speed and brevity and the broken telephone between editors and writers, it's easy for headlines to go wrong, even when no one is attempting to mislead you. Even reliable outlets will screw up headlines sometimes – and that likelihood goes way up in times like these. You gotta read the story, not just the headline.

II. Know red flags for bullshit

The factually untrue information that spreads furthest tends to originate with a handful of superspreader accounts. Whether these people are Just Wrong or malicious disinfo peddlers, they share a few characteristics that should trip your BS meter and prompt extra scrutiny:

High-frequency posting

Emotionally charged framing

Posts that purport to be summaries or excerpts from news outlets, but do not include links to the original

The phrase "breaking news" (no one has that many scoops)

III. Don't trust screenshots

Screenshots of news stories, tweets, and other social media should come with links to the original. It's just too damned easy to fake a screenshot.

IV. "Know your platform"

It used to be that Twitter got a lot of first-person accounts from people in the thick of crises, while Facebook and Reddit contained commentary and reposts. Today, Twitter is just another aggregator. This time around, there's lots of first-person, real-time reporting coming off Telegram (it runs well on old phones and doesn't chew up batteries). Instagram is widely used in both Israel and the West Bank.

V. "Crisis actors" aren't a thing

People who attribute war images to "crisis actors" are either deluded or lying. There's plenty of ways to distort war news, but paying people to pretend to be grieving family members is essentially unheard of. Any explanation that involves crisis actors is a solid reason to permanently block that source.

VI. There's plenty of ways to verify stuff that smells fishy

TinEye, Yandex and Google Image Search are all good tools for checking "breaking" images and seeing if they're old copypasta ganked from earlier conflicts (or, you know, video-games). The fact that an image doesn't show up in one of these searches doesn't guarantee its authenticity, of course.

VII. Think before you post

Israel-Gaza is the most polluted media pool yet. Don't make it worse.

There's plenty more detail on this (especially on the use of verification tools) in Brooke Gladstone's radio segment:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-gaza-edition

The media environment sucks, and warrants skepticism and caution. But we also need to be skeptical of skepticism itself! As danah boyd started saying all the way back in 2018, weaponized media literacy leads to conspiratorialism:

https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html

Remember, the biggest peddlers of "fake news" are also the most prolific users of the term. For a lot of these information warriors, the point isn't to get you to believe them – they'll settle for you believing nothing. "Flood the zone with bullshit" is Steve Bannon's go-to tactic, and it's one that his acolytes have picked up and multiplied.

It's important to be a critical thinker, but there's plenty of people who've figured out how to weaponize a critical viewpoint and turn it into nihilism. Remember, the guy who wrote How To Lie With Statistics was a tobacco industry shill who made his living obfuscating the link between smoking and cancer. It's absolutely possible to lie with statistics, but it's also possible to use statistics to know the truth, as Tim Harford explains in his 2021 must-read book The Data Detective:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

There's a world of difference between being misled and being brainwashed. A lot of today's worry about "disinformation" and "misinformation" has the whiff of a moral panic:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10/are-we-having-a-moral-panic-over-misinformation.html

It's possible to have a nuanced view of this subject – to take steps to enure you're not being tricked without equating crude tricks like sticking a fake BBC chyron on a 10-year-old image with unstoppable mind-control:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/28/fog-o-war/#breaking-news

[pumpkinpaix]

You have questions! We might have answers.

What is this collection?

As Maria puts it: this collection is a critical look at some of the things that we, the editors, think have made CQL such a hit around the world. Of course, part of that success comes from the webnovel MDZS and the show CQL themselves—we love the characters, the mystery, and the drama, who doesn’t?! However, the authors in our book also look at topics like translating danmei (both officially and unofficially), adapting danmei for new audiences, and interacting with fandoms and fanworks. The larger argument of the book is that all of these things played a huge role in CQL’s visibility and success, and we wanted to start making those moving pieces visible, especially for audiences who mainly watched CQL in translation.

You keep using the word “academic”—what does that mean, exactly? 

Maria: Ok, not to get pedantic here, but this actually touches on some things that I’m really excited about for the book. Traditionally, academic work is written by people who have a deep expertise in the subject (signified by having a PhD and doing specific kinds of research), and then the work itself is peer-reviewed (i.e., sent to other experts in the field for them to evaluate whether it’s sound, original, and interesting enough to publish, without knowing who wrote it). And both of these things are true about our book—our authors have deep knowledge and the book was peer reviewed—but also. We specifically asked for chapters from younger scholars and from fans who also have deep knowledge about topics that academia doesn’t always know or value enough, and we include an interview from the fan-translator K. who did the Exiled Rebels translation. So the hope is that: this book is academic, and also—more!

Who are you? 

Yue studies adaptation, fantasy, and popular culture texts using a feminist lens. She wrote an early, influential article about danmei adaptations and also has a book about feminist adaptations of Chinese fantasy.

Maria studies fanworks, contemporary fantasy, and genre literature. She’s scrambling to finish her dissertation right now.

How were the chapter spotlights chosen?

Voluntarily! The concept of a small social media promo was kicked around by some of the contributors and those interested in the idea filled out a short interview with what they wanted to share. We'll be posting about 2 introductions and 2 spotlights a day for the next week or so!

Who's running this social media campaign anyway?

Not the publishers! A few enthusiastic collection contributors got together and, with the assistance of the editors, have put this promotion together. We do not in any way represent Peter Lang in an official capacity! We just worked hard and wanted to share. :)

Are you making any money off of royalties from this book? 

LOL not even remotely

What about this promotion?

also no. alas

Where can I find this book? 

You can find our listing on Peter Lang’s website here. As for other retailers, a quick search should turn us up!  

How can I access this book if I cannot buy it from Peter Lang / [book retailer of choice]?

As collection editors and contributors who signed a legal agreement with Peter Lang, we have granted Peter Lang exclusive right and license to edit, adapt, publish, reproduce, distribute, display, and store our contributions, and we must cooperate fully with the Publisher if the Publisher believes a third party is infringing or is likely to infringe copyright in the contribution. 

That being said, these are academic papers, which means that contributors may make copies of the contribution for classroom teaching use! (These copies may not be included in course pack material for onward sale by libraries and institutions). Of course, any linking, collection or aggregation of chapters from the same volume is strictly prohibited.

(FAQ may be updated periodically!) (all posts on Catching Chen Qing Ling)