#SEO results in 2024

[satireinfo]

FBI to Investigate Why Biden’s Events Keep Showing Up in Google Searches

Google Glitches: Why Biden’s Campaign Keeps Haunting Search Results After He’s Left the Race Kamala Who? The Search Engine That Refuses to Move On Silicon Valley, CA — In an era where technology is supposed to keep us more informed than ever, one might assume that even the most basic facts are easy to find. Yet, for reasons that continue to baffle experts and voters alike, Google—the omnipresent…

[feminist-space]

"A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google[...]

Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

...

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal." -Cory Doctorow

Read the whole article: https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Even if you think AI search could be good, it won’t be good

TONIGHT (May 15), I'm in NORTH HOLLYWOOD for a screening of STEPHANIE KELTON'S FINDING THE MONEY; FRIDAY (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

The big news in search this week is that Google is continuing its transition to "AI search" – instead of typing in search terms and getting links to websites, you'll ask Google a question and an AI will compose an answer based on things it finds on the web:

https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-google-search-may-2024/

Google bills this as "let Google do the googling for you." Rather than searching the web yourself, you'll delegate this task to Google. Hidden in this pitch is a tacit admission that Google is no longer a convenient or reliable way to retrieve information, drowning as it is in AI-generated spam, poorly labeled ads, and SEO garbage:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Googling used to be easy: type in a query, get back a screen of highly relevant results. Today, clicking the top links will take you to sites that paid for placement at the top of the screen (rather than the sites that best match your query). Clicking further down will get you scams, AI slop, or bulk-produced SEO nonsense.

AI-powered search promises to fix this, not by making Google search results better, but by having a bot sort through the search results and discard the nonsense that Google will continue to serve up, and summarize the high quality results.

Now, there are plenty of obvious objections to this plan. For starters, why wouldn't Google just make its search results better? Rather than building a LLM for the sole purpose of sorting through the garbage Google is either paid or tricked into serving up, why not just stop serving up garbage? We know that's possible, because other search engines serve really good results by paying for access to Google's back-end and then filtering the results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Another obvious objection: why would anyone write the web if the only purpose for doing so is to feed a bot that will summarize what you've written without sending anyone to your webpage? Whether you're a commercial publisher hoping to make money from advertising or subscriptions, or – like me – an open access publisher hoping to change people's minds, why would you invite Google to summarize your work without ever showing it to internet users? Nevermind how unfair that is, think about how implausible it is: if this is the way Google will work in the future, why wouldn't every publisher just block Google's crawler?

A third obvious objection: AI is bad. Not morally bad (though maybe morally bad, too!), but technically bad. It "hallucinates" nonsense answers, including dangerous nonsense. It's a supremely confident liar that can get you killed:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/01/mushroom-pickers-urged-to-avoid-foraging-books-on-amazon-that-appear-to-be-written-by-ai

The promises of AI are grossly oversold, including the promises Google makes, like its claim that its AI had discovered millions of useful new materials. In reality, the number of useful new materials Deepmind had discovered was zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

This is true of all of AI's most impressive demos. Often, "AI" turns out to be low-waged human workers in a distant call-center pretending to be robots:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

Sometimes, the AI robot dancing on stage turns out to literally be just a person in a robot suit pretending to be a robot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

The AI video demos that represent "an existential threat to Hollywood filmmaking" turn out to be so cumbersome as to be practically useless (and vastly inferior to existing production techniques):

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

But let's take Google at its word. Let's stipulate that:

a) It can't fix search, only add a slop-filtering AI layer on top of it; and

b) The rest of the world will continue to let Google index its pages even if they derive no benefit from doing so; and

c) Google will shortly fix its AI, and all the lies about AI capabilities will be revealed to be premature truths that are finally realized.

AI search is still a bad idea. Because beyond all the obvious reasons that AI search is a terrible idea, there's a subtle – and incurable – defect in this plan: AI search – even excellent AI search – makes it far too easy for Google to cheat us, and Google can't stop cheating us.

Remember: enshittification isn't the result of worse people running tech companies today than in the years when tech services were good and useful. Rather, enshittification is rooted in the collapse of constraints that used to prevent those same people from making their services worse in service to increasing their profit margins:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/26/glitchbread/#electronic-shelf-tags

These companies always had the capacity to siphon value away from business customers (like publishers) and end-users (like searchers). That comes with the territory: digital businesses can alter their "business logic" from instant to instant, and for each user, allowing them to change payouts, prices and ranking. I call this "twiddling": turning the knobs on the system's back-end to make sure the house always wins:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

What changed wasn't the character of the leaders of these businesses, nor their capacity to cheat us. What changed was the consequences for cheating. When the tech companies merged to monopoly, they ceased to fear losing your business to a competitor.

Google's 90% search market share was attained by bribing everyone who operates a service or platform where you might encounter a search box to connect that box to Google. Spending tens of billions of dollars every year to make sure no one ever encounters a non-Google search is a cheaper way to retain your business than making sure Google is the very best search engine:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Competition was once a threat to Google; for years, its mantra was "competition is a click away." Today, competition is all but nonexistent.

Then the surveillance business consolidated into a small number of firms. Two companies dominate the commercial surveillance industry: Google and Meta, and they collude to rig the market:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

That consolidation inevitably leads to regulatory capture: shorn of competitive pressure, the companies that dominate the sector can converge on a single message to policymakers and use their monopoly profits to turn that message into policy:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is why Google doesn't have to worry about privacy laws. They've successfully prevented the passage of a US federal consumer privacy law. The last time the US passed a federal consumer privacy law was in 1988. It's a law that bans video store clerks from telling the newspapers which VHS cassettes you rented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

In Europe, Google's vast profits lets it fly an Irish flag of convenience, thus taking advantage of Ireland's tolerance for tax evasion and violations of European privacy law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, and it also doesn't fear rival technologies. Google and its fellow Big Tech cartel members have expanded IP law to allow it to prevent third parties from reverse-engineer, hacking, or scraping its services. Google doesn't have to worry about ad-blocking, tracker blocking, or scrapers that filter out Google's lucrative, low-quality results:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

Google doesn't fear competition, it doesn't fear regulation, it doesn't fear rival technology and it doesn't fear its workers. Google's workforce once enjoyed enormous sway over the company's direction, thanks to their scarcity and market power. But Google has outgrown its dependence on its workers, and lays them off in vast numbers, even as it increases its profits and pisses away tens of billions on stock buybacks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

Google is fearless. It doesn't fear losing your business, or being punished by regulators, or being mired in guerrilla warfare with rival engineers. It certainly doesn't fear its workers.

Making search worse is good for Google. Reducing search quality increases the number of queries, and thus ads, that each user must make to find their answers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

If Google can make things worse for searchers without losing their business, it can make more money for itself. Without the discipline of markets, regulators, tech or workers, it has no impediment to transferring value from searchers and publishers to itself.

Which brings me back to AI search. When Google substitutes its own summaries for links to pages, it creates innumerable opportunities to charge publishers for preferential placement in those summaries.

This is true of any algorithmic feed: while such feeds are important – even vital – for making sense of huge amounts of information, they can also be used to play a high-speed shell-game that makes suckers out of the rest of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/11/for-you/#the-algorithm-tm

When you trust someone to summarize the truth for you, you become terribly vulnerable to their self-serving lies. In an ideal world, these intermediaries would be "fiduciaries," with a solemn (and legally binding) duty to put your interests ahead of their own:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

But Google is clear that its first duty is to its shareholders: not to publishers, not to searchers, not to "partners" or employees.

AI search makes cheating so easy, and Google cheats so much. Indeed, the defects in AI give Google a readymade excuse for any apparent self-dealing: "we didn't tell you a lie because someone paid us to (for example, to recommend a product, or a hotel room, or a political point of view). Sure, they did pay us, but that was just an AI 'hallucination.'"

The existence of well-known AI hallucinations creates a zone of plausible deniability for even more enshittification of Google search. As Madeleine Clare Elish writes, AI serves as a "moral crumple zone":

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

That's why, even if you're willing to believe that Google could make a great AI-based search, we can nevertheless be certain that they won't.

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/2024/05/15/they-trust-me-dumb-fucks/#ai-search

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

djhughman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Modular_synthesizer_-_%22Control_Voltage%22_electronic_music_shop_in_Portland_OR_-_School_Photos_PCC_%282015-05-23_12.43.01_by_djhughman%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[hyunebunx]

　く♥︎　― 𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓　!

—﹒♡⃕　i don't allow my works to be translated, rewritten or reposted anywhere else!

( 🫧 - fluff ! ∿ ☁️ - angst ! ∿ ❤️‍🔥 - suggestive ! )

—﹒♡⃕　last updated: 23/11/2024

⊱ ────── headcanons :

𓂃 . “what are we?’ with skz ! 🫧☁️

𓂃 . ‘make me’ with skz ! ❤️‍🔥

𓂃 . late night moments with skz ! 🫧

𓂃 . spin the bottle with skz ! 🫧❤️‍🔥

𓂃 . skz and the reason you aren’t together ! ☁️

𓂃 . show, don’t tell with skz ! 🫧

𓂃 . early morning moments with skz ! 🫧

𓂃 . when you aren’t dating but aren’t just friends either (hyung line) ❤️‍🔥🫧☁️

𓂃 . when you aren’t dating but aren’t just friends either (maknae line) ❤️‍🔥🫧☁️

───── ❝ bang chan ❞ ─────

nothing yet...

───── ❝ lee know ❞ ─────

kissing in the rain (one shot, kissing prompts) — 🫧

───── ❝ seo changbin ❞ ─────

nothing yet...

───── ❝ hwang hyunjin ❞ ─────

painting his nails (one shot, request) — 🫧

morning cuddles and kisses (one shot, request) — 🫧

‘a deep, slow, and deliberately intense kiss filled with passion and desire’ & 'a longing kiss shared after being apart for a while’ (one shot, kissing prompts) —🫧❤️‍🔥

hyunjin messes up and kkami helps him apologize (one shot) —🫧

maybe it’s not our fault (series, ONGOING) —🫧❤️‍🔥☁️

╰─▸ after a nasty breakup that’s left you completely shattered, you’re set on giving up on love forever. That is until, in a surprising turn of events, your respective best friends start dating and one of their main goals is to restore the peace in your broken relationship. Will their plan succeed? Will they manage to play cupid and get you and your high school sweetheart back together, or will it all backfire and result in the end of their own love story?

there is only one way to find out. If only your beloved’s heart wasn’t already broken beyond repair…

you, clouds and rain (and the wine on your lips) (one shot) —🫧

───── ❝ han jisung ❞ ─────

‘a sudden kiss to catch the partner off guard’ (one shot, kissing prompts) —🫧

‘spiderman kiss’ (one shot, kissing prompts) —🫧❤️‍🔥

───── ❝ lee felix ❞ ─────

pies and cuddles can fix anyone (one shot) —🫧

‘a kiss shared during sunset’ (one shot, kissing prompts) —🫧

‘a trail of kisses along the partner’s jawline or collarbone’ (one shot, kissing prompts) —🫧

───── ❝ kim seungmin ❞ ─────

‘a tender kiss on the partner’s shoulder’ (one shot, kissing prompts) —🫧

───── ❝ yang jeongin ❞ ─────

nothing yet...

[probablyasocialecologist]

This week, a 2,500-page leak, first reported by Search Engine Optimization (SEO) veteran Rand Fishkin, gave the world an insight into the 26-year-old mystery of Google Search. “I think the biggest takeaway is that what Google’s public representatives say and what Google search engine does are two different things,” Fishkin said in an emailed statement to Gizmodo.

[...]

King notes that one ranking feature “homepagePagerankNs” suggests the notoriety of a website’s homepage could prop up everything it publishes. Fishkin writes the leak references a system called NavBoost—first referenced by Google’s VP of Search, Pandu Nayak, in his Department of Justice testimony—which purportedly measures clicks to boost rankings on Google Search. Many in the SEO industry are taking these documents as confirmation of what the industry has long suspected: A website deemed popular by Google may receive a higher Search ranking for a query even though a lesser-known site may have better information.

[...]

In a video from 2016, a Google Search representative declared, “We don’t have a website authority score.” In an interview from 2015, another Googler said, “Using clicks directly in ranking would be a mistake.” It’s hard to make sense of these comments now in light of the leaked documents and Google’s response. “This response is a perfect example of why people don’t like or trust Google,” Fishkin said. “It’s a non-statement that doesn’t address the leak, provides no value, and might well have been written by an AI trained on the past decade’s most soulless corporate messaging.” In the era of AI answers, Ruby notes that the way Google ranks web pages is more important than ever. Instead of a series of links to various perspectives, you might just get one straight answer thanks to Google’s new AI Overviews. However, we’ve seen 10-year-old Reddit posts get strange amounts of authority, telling some users to put glue in their pizza. How Google chooses authority is increasingly important, since the top result may be the only one with a voice now.

30 May 2024

[runrlot]

⁺ . 𓆩 ✞ 𓆪 . ⁺ 🪦 ⠀⠀ RULE OF ROSE are a five-piece fictional band that debuted in 2019 under POSER RECORDS. before becoming an official band, rule of rose was originally known as girlfight ⏤ a side project on soundcloud made by trainees onjo, jae, and aries in an attempt to pass the time until they debuted. being in a band, while fun and kept their passion for music alive, was never the endgame plan for them; onjo && aries desperately wanted to be soloists while jae hoped to make it in a girl group. as time went on, and their chances of making it on stage became more and more slim, the fear of never making her dream come true pushed onjo into pursuing the idea of girlfight being an official act. joon, their ceo, caught wind of her attempts and figured that signing an all-girl band wasn't a bad idea after all. there was only one thing holding him back from being completely satisfied with them, and that was his lack of faith that they'd get the proper attention.

going behind the girls' back, joon recruited former candygirl member harley kim in an effort to bring some star power to the table. despite the unwanted addition, girlfight was renamed and soon releasing their debut ep red solo cup season with their title track "a party anthem" on august 2nd, 2019. while their ep didn't break the roof, it still exceeded everyone's expectations, encouraging the girls that they can do better and be better with more time.

while it was onjo's songs that established their sound, it was harley's presence that brought in more and more fans; not only were her performances usually what got a crowd going, but her nonsensical, explicit b-sides were typically the more favored tracks on their albums. this resulted in harley being given the lead on their next upcoming album, upsetting those who preferred onjo's direction as well making people question if she was even good enough to create a title track. in a twist of events, trauma and tiaras was far from what people expected of harley ⏤ the title "where's my teenage dream?" becoming a commercial success and dominating the charts for weeks to come. not only did this cement rule of rose as the idol girl band of all time, it also proved that harley was just as serious about the band as everyone else.

the band continued on an upstream of breakouts and global achievements while the creative control over them often swapped between onjo and harley, and occasionally with jae, too. their fanbase only grew stronger and larger with 2024 being their best year after hex project's phoebe joined them. rule of rose remains one of the top three highest-selling idol bands to date, and they're only just getting started.

⁺ . 𓆩 ✞ 𓆪 . ⁺ 🪦 ⠀⠀⠀ 000. ⠀⠀⠀THE BASICS

⏤⏤ ⠀ SIGNED UNDER. ⠀ POSER RECORDS

⏤⏤ ⠀ DEBUT DATE. ⠀ AUGUST 2, 2019

⏤⏤ ⠀ DEBUT EP. ⠀ RED SOLO CUP SEASON

⏤⏤ ⠀ GREETING. ⠀ HARD TO TOUCH, WE'RE RULE OF ROSE!

⏤⏤ ⠀ FANDOM. ⠀ ROSEBUDS

⏤⏤ ⠀ FANDOM COLOR ⠀ A ROSE'S TEAR AND SILVER LINING

⁺ . 𓆩 ✞ 𓆪 . ⁺ 🪦 ⠀⠀⠀ 000. ⠀⠀⠀THE MEMBERS

. 𓆩 ✣ 𓆪 . ⠀⠀ SEO ONJO, 1997. ⠀ . 𓆩 ✣ 𓆪 . ⠀⠀ HARLEY KIM, 1999. ⠀ . 𓆩 ✣ 𓆪 . ⠀⠀DIME SUPRAYSSA, 1998. ⠀ . 𓆩 ✣ 𓆪 . ⠀⠀ YOON JAE, 1998. . 𓆩 ✣ 𓆪 . ⠀⠀ PHOEBE PEREZ, 1998.

[youkaigakkou-tl]

Yohaji Character Survey 2024

With the release of the anime and the end of cour 1, I figured I'd do the character survey again! You can see last time's results here, which was in Oct 2022

I'll tally the results in about 2 weeks, before cour 2 starts (Jan 7), but the form will still stay open after that

Since last time, over 2 years ago, this blog's gone from around 100 followers to 600+, and I've made a twitter (which now has more followers than this blog. u guys r still my fave tho <3) so I wanna see if I can get a bigger sample size

Some funny numbers under the cut if you like numbers too

The 2022 poll had 22 responses at the time I tallied the results, but I never closed it and it now has 32 responses

Of which, the most recent responses are from.... THIS MONTH????? WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE WHERE DID U COME FROM

Takahashi stan who answered this month i respect u so much. me too same tbh

I don't actually remember how many followers I had at that point, the only milestone I know is 300 because I made this post. I was going to make this same joke for twitter too when i hit 300 there but it jumped from like 300 to 600 in like 2 weeks and I missed my chance lol

But anyway I think it was around 100 because at the time I tallied the results I remember thinking "hey 1/5 of my followers responded! pretty nice ratio!"

Some kinda irrelevant stats: Because I set up google SEO for the wiki, I get to see search trends and stats for it and yohaji in general!

Impressions (purple) is "how many people see the wiki in their google search results", which roughly equals "how many people are searching yohaji-related keywords" because the wiki is almost always on the first page of results anyway

Clicks (blue) is "how many people clicked on the link to the wiki in google search", or rather "how many people clicked on the miraheze wiki over the fandom one, either because google put it above or ppl already knew its the active one"

(Don't actually know what's going on on the fandom wiki nowadays, I don't check on it regularly, and a few weeks ago fandom staff revoked my admin and removed all the links to the miraheze wiki when they haven't cared for most of the year, presumably because the anime is driving up viewcounts for the fandom wiki too)

So sort of unexpectedly, it's actually trending upwards week by week!

For the spike on Nov 26, I have to assume that's because of one of those tiktoks that blowed up

The most searched character (that brought them to the wiki, at least) after Haruaki is..... RANMARU?????

After that, it's Ebisu, Miki, Sano and Oota, in that order, all roughly tied in clicks. Massive spike for Ebisu last week and then this week of course

For a long while pre-anime, 2 of the top queries that showed the wiki were Seiryuu and Suzaku, probably because they snuck into searches for those names from other anime lmao

[seo-julie]

Natsu Kanna - The Child Mechanical God Ep 2

Characters: Kanna, Makoto, Keito, Kanata Release: 25/7/2024 Proofreading: leen Translation: seo-julie

Season: Spring Location: Seisoukan courtyard

✧

Kanna: Sigh… Senpai, you don't know anything, do you?

This is the latest sleeping device I developed, and I call it “Sleep Peacefully Anywhere-kun”.

Keito: What's with that name? It sounds something like that of an unsuccessful comedian's name.

Makoto: (Hasumi-senpai, your straight man¹ act is prompt and precise… I need to learn a thing or two from you.)

Kanna: The name doesn't matter. It's not like I'm the one naming it. 

Based on the latest ergonomics research, this bed is perfectly constructed so that anyone can get a good night's sleep instantly.

In addition, there is also a function that increases the effectiveness of recovering from fatigue by several dozen times. If you doubt it, would you like to give it a try?

It seems like both of you couldn't sleep, just like me. If you use “Sleepy-kun (abbreviation)”, then you'd be in a dream in no time. 

Makoto: Ah, I might be a little interested.

Hehe. I buy all those latest gadgets even when I'll probably use them only once and then throw them into the closet.

Kanna: As long as there are such curious customers, my job will not disappear.

Makoto: Job? If you're at Seisoukan, doesn't that mean you're an idol as well?

Kanna: For the time being, yes. But my main job is something else.

Kanna: Calling myself an inventor might sound shady, but that’s what I do. 

Makoto: Ah, I think I've heard of it somewhere. I see, you're that "Deus Ex Machina²", aren't you?

Keito: What is with that name? It sounds like a name made up by someone with chuunibyou. 

Makoto: (As expected! Your straight man act is so good, please let me call you master!)

Keito: Why are you looking at me with such sparkling eyes…?

Kanna: I didn't come up with that nickname for myself. "Deus Ex Machina" is not a very promising name. 

Keito: A mechanical god…? Are you actually an ingeniously crafted robot that looks like a human?

Makoto: Ahaha, he does give off that same vibe.

Kanna: …People often said that.

Anyways. Everyone, why don't you try using this bed for a while?

As an apology for causing you both concern, I'll give you two a good night's sleep.

Makoto: Ah, as I said earlier, I'm interested~♪ Do I just lie down here? And sleep peacefully until morning?

Keito: H-hey, wait, Yuuki, don't be so careless now–

Kanna: Alright.

Keito: Woah!?

(W-what? I was suddenly pushed from behind…!?)

Makoto: W-whaa, please don't crash on me, Hasumi-senpai! This bed was probably made to fit only one person!?

Kanna: –Good night, seniors.

Please sleep in peace. This way, you'll forget all the troubles of reality.

Location: Makoto's Dorm

Makoto: ……

(Ah, huh? I, was I sleeping? Was it all just a dream?)

(That was such a strange dream… But, yeah, it had to be a dream. It was so unrealistic.)

(I had a weird conversation with a weird kid under the moonlight. It's a dream, and no matter who you talk to, they'll all say, 'So what?' Such a trivial story.)

Ahaha. I must be having all these unrealistic dreams because I play these games all the time. Stop having weird delusions, I need to face reality–

Keito: Yuuki! Are you there?

Makoto: W-whoa, what a surprise!? H-Hasumi-senpai? Is there anything I can help you with?

Keito: Do you remember what happened last night?

Makoto: Yes?

Keito: I wonder if that was a dream after all… A dream is a dream, my memory is getting hazy and I can't remember much anymore.

Didn't we see a strange machine and child last night? 

Makoto: Um… No but, it was a dream, right? But, huh, did Hasumi-senpai have the same dream as well?

Location: Seisoukan courtyard

Kanna: …

(Sigh~... Looks like by interfering with their cranial nerves, I was able to erase their memories, but it seems like there was something I forgot to subtly erase.)

(Not yet, it's not yet perfect.)

(If the results are lower than what the developer expected, if the product does not perform the desired functions, then it is an utter failure…)

(...Just like me.)

(Commercialization would be difficult. There's still room for improvement.)

Kanata: Hm~m h~m?

Kanna: Is there something troubling you?

Kanata: ? Yes, well, you know, I like taking “cold baths³”. But this, “season” is a bit too cold and I'm afraid I might catch a “cold”–

Kanna: I see. Well then, why don't you try this invention.

This is called, “Kettle that Makes Everything Hot-kun”.

(Humans find things that are alike in only appearance to be ominous.)

(This uncanny feeling… Even so, I too want to overcome it.)

(I'm…)

(Not… a machine.)

Kanata: ? What's wrong~?

Kanna: No… Sorry, it malfunctions sometimes.

Kanna: (As of this moment, not yet.)

(But, I'm sure someday...)

¹ The original word used for this was “tsukkomi”. It's from what I think is a troupe(?) known as boke and tsukkomi. Boke and tsukkomi are loosely equivalent to the roles of "funny man" or "comic" (boke) and "straight man" (tsukkomi) in the comedy duos of western culture. Which is why I have opted to use straight man for the tl. ² Deus ex machina is a Latin calque from Greek ἀπὸ μηχανῆς θεός (apò mēkhanês theós) “god from the machine”. The term was coined from the conventions of ancient Greek theater, where actors who were playing gods were brought on stage using a machine. ³ The original word used was “mizuabi” which literally translates to “bathing in cold water”.

Directory

[the-sleepy-archivist]

Favorite Firefox Extensions

Firefox is a very extensible browser - through a combinations of addons and userscripts you can make it behave just about any way you want. The best part is, they're all free. Here are some of my favorites.

Note: if you have an Android device, check out my post about Firefox for Android's new extended support for addons!

Note: if you have an Apple device, check out my favorite Safari extensions here!

Last updated Dec 2024 (added Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy).

Index:

uBlock Origin

Tab Session Manager

Sauron

Bypass Paywalls Clean

Auto Tab Discard

Video DownloadHelper

Highlight or Hide Search Engine Results

TWP - Translate Web Pages

UnTrap - YouTube Customizer

Indie Wiki Buddy

Cookie Auto Delete

ShopSuey - Get Rid of Ads on Amazon and Ebay

LibraryExtension

Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy

uBlock Origin

(compatible with Firefox for Android)

This is the first addon I install on any new Firefox browser. It's an adblocker, but at its core it can remove pretty much any HTML element from a website, and it comes with pre-configured lists for removing everything from ads to cookie banners to those annoying popups that ask you to sign up for email newsletters.

Tab Session Manager

Have you ever accidentally lost all your open browser tabs due to a computer update, or even just accidentally closing Firefox? With this addon you no longer have to worry about that - it automatically saves your open tabs and windows every time the browser closes, and autosaves a restore point of tabs every few minutes in case the browser crashes unexpectedly. Opening all your previous tabs and windows is a one-click deal.

Sauron

Ever wished your favorite website had a dark mode? With Sauron, now it can! Sauron attempts to intelligently figure out how to edit the color scheme of the web page (including text) to make it dark-mode friendly. It preserves the original color of images, but dims them so that they don't blind you. You can disable image dimming or dark mode on a site by site basis too. It's not perfect since it is making guesses about which colors to change, but it goes a long way toward making the internet an enjoyable place for me.

Bypass Paywalls Clean

This addon removes paywalls from hundreds of news websites around the world or adds links to open the article in a wrapper that provides the article text (like the Internet Archive etc.)

Auto Tab Discard

Ever wanted to keep a tab open for later use, but you notice the browser getting slower and slower the more tabs you have open? Auto Tab Discard will automatically "hibernate" tabs that you haven't used in a while so that they use less resources on your computer. It's smart enough not to hibernate pages that are playing media (like YouTube) or that have forms you haven't submitted yet (like job applications). You can customize how fast it puts tabs to sleep too and exclude certain websites from hibernating at all.

Video DownloadHelper

This addon can download streaming videos from most modern (HTML5) websites, and even finds soft subtitles that accompany the stream and downloads those too. Just browse to the webpage that has the video on it, click the icon in the Firefox toolbar, and select the video you want to download and click "Quick Download". For YouTube I would recommend using a YT downloader website (like KeepVid) to download the video directly, but Video DownloadHelper really shines for websites that aren't popular enough to have dedicated downloader websites like that. I've used it download videos from a Japanese film festival streaming portal, news websites, etc.

Highlight or Hide Search Engine Results

This addon allows you to blacklist websites and completely remove them from Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo search results. Don't want to see image search results from AI websites? Blacklist them. Searching for tech support advice and getting frustrated by all the auto-generated junk websites that stuff themselves full of SEO terms to jump to the top of the search results without actually providing any information at all? Blacklist them so they don't come up in your next search. Conversely, you can also whitelist websites that you know and trust so that if they ever come up in future search results, they'll be highlighted with a color of your choosing for visibility.

TWP - Translate Web Pages

(compatible with Firefox for Android)

Does what it says on the tin: auto-detects a website's language and provides a button that can translate it to a language of your choosing. You can also just select individual text on the page and translate just that. Note that this sends whatever text you translate to the servers of your selected translation service (Google, Bing, Yandex, or DeepL), so keep in mind the privacy implications if you don't want your IP address associated with having read that text.

Edit: As of version 118, Firefox now has the ability to translate text locally on your computer, without needing to send it to a cloud service. You can enable this in Settings -> Translation -> Install languages for offline translation. Note that at this time (May 2024), 18 (mostly European) languages are supported. More info here.

UnTrap for YouTube

(compatible with Firefox for Android and they have a Safari for iOS extension too)

This addon lets you tweak the YouTube interface and hide anything you don't want to see. For instance, I hide all the "recommended" videos that come up when you search YT now. They have nothing to do with your search, so they're essentially just ads YT puts in your search results. I also hide Explore, Trending, More from YouTube, and Shorts sections, but you can customize it to fit your preferences.

Note: depending on the particular set of tweaks you want to make to YouTube, you may prefer to use YouTube Search Fixer instead. User preference.

Indie Wiki Buddy

I loathe Fandom.com wiki sites - they are cluttered and filled with ads and autoplaying videos that follow you down the page as you scroll. The organization is also hostile - if a community tries to leave their platform and bring their content to a new wiki hoster, Fandom bans them from the platform and reverts all their deletions/changes. Indie Wiki Buddy attempts to find an independent alternative for the wiki you're trying to browse and automatically redirects you to it, and if one doesn't exist, it will redirect you to a proxy site like antifandom or breezewiki that shows the Fandom content but removes all ads/videos/background images so you can actually, you know. READ it.

Cookie Auto Delete

(compatible with Firefox for Android)

Websites store "cookies" - little text files with info about you - on your computer as you browse so they can track you as you browse the internet. This addon automatically deletes cookies from a website a short while after you close the last tab you had open for that site. You can customize how long it waits before clearing cookies too. Note that this can sign you out of many websites, so you can whitelist any site you don't want cookies cleared for.

ShopSuey - Get Rid of Ads on Amazon and Ebay

Removes the ads/recommended products that clutter up Amazon and Ebay search results and product pages.

LibraryExtension

This fantastic addon recognizes when you are viewing a book on many popular websites and can automatically check whether that book is available in any of the library systems or subscription services you have access to, including how many copies your library(ies) have and how many are currently checked out. The best part is it shows the availability for physical books, ebooks, AND audiobooks at supported libraries. The extension currently supports libraries in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, but it also supports some global repositories like the Internet Archive and subscription services like NLS Bard for the blind and print disabled, Kobo Plus, Libro.fm, Anyplay.fm, Bookmate, and Everand. Great extension for people trying to support their local library and also save money.

Filtering+ for Tumblr

This addon lets you add tags or phrases to your tumblr tag filters with two clicks, without leaving the dashboard. I've been asking Tumblr for this tag filtering behavior on their mobile apps (i.e. press and hold a tag to get a filter option) for at least a year now in asks and surveys, without ever stopping to see if someone had already implemented this on desktop. More fool me. This addon is from the author of XKit Rewritten. Note that the right-click tag filtering only works on the dashboard; it will not appear if you are on someone's blog. Right-clicking selected text to filter the phrase works everywhere based on my testing.

Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy

This addon does its best to re-enable the normal right-click context menu and copy/paste actions on pages that try to disable them. If you run into a site that messes with either of those, select this addon and check "Enable Copy," then try again. If that doesn't work, check "Absolute mode." It doesn't work everywhere, but I find it very helpful.

[doiefy]

mad city // nct series

GENRE: sci fi, biopunk, dystopian, thriller PAIRINGS: features both x reader and mxm fics MEMBERS: johnny, doyoung, jaehyun, jungwoo, mark, possibly more to come!

note: if this series looks somewhat familiar, it's because it is! this is a massive rework of my old 'fight or flight' fic for doyoung, which I posted almost two years ago (pls don't read it, like 69% of it isn't canon anymore and I kinda hate it anyways). it's been a real struggle turning it into something I actually want to write for again (which involved changing the original plotline from x reader to dojae, for which I am VERY unapologetic, don't fucking touch me), but after a year or so of on-and-off planning, here it is. I can't guarantee that I’ll get these fics out super speedily, as I also want them to be very visual and will be spending a shit ton of time on graphics; but if you're interested in a tag list for any of these fics, let me know!

WHAT PEOPLE HAVE REFERRED TO AS THE SPLIT: the fracturing of life as it once was, the steady decline of the natural world, all perpetuating political tensions and rampant crime in two rival cities. 

To the north lies Iameh, an urban paradise of impressive art and culture, resulting from centuries of mining and exploitation—a pristine exterior built upon the hardship of their southern neighbours. In one of their forgotten limestone quarries lies Siacia: Iameh’s shadow, their forsaken history, but a thriving metropolis nonetheless. 

Siacia is all the blinding colours and deafening sound that Iameh is not, boasting citizens with supernatural powers and the most sinister advancements in biotech. From their empty mineshafts and grotesque lifeforms in the quarry lake arises Burner: the Siacians’ fuel, their weaponry, and their only chance against the genetic mutations that plagued them for generations.

But like all things that come out of the ground, Burner is exploited. It is quickly monopolized, used as a drug, turned into a bargaining chip by the Assembly, a loose organization of businessmen and mutants claiming to be Siacia’s ruling government. Those on the streets of the Quarry and its four cardinal faces know very well: what the Assembly demands from them must be given, lest they face their wrath. 

So the fissure spreads and opens wider between the two cities, between all people—only a matter of time before one finds themselves dangling off the edge. 

VOLUME 1: FIGHT OR FLIGHT

pairing: doyoung x jaehyun dark comedy with a side of angst, gay shenanigans and way too many dirty jokes.

KIM DOYOUNG HAS SPENT THE LAST THREE YEARS surviving the Quarry streets alone: hunting bounties for the Coffee Cow (a ruthless contract killing agency despite their name), making poor decisions at drinking establishments, and searching for his missing brother. 

It’s on one trip to the bar that he runs into Jay: a charming, well-mannered businessman from the East Lanes, with a dimpled smile and particular taste for aged whiskey. One occasion turns into two into multiple—the two seeing each other more frequently with slowly-changing intentions, until the truth comes out. Jay, Jung Jaehyun to his close colleagues, is one of the Assembly’s founding members. Which, unfortunately, means he might have something to do with Doyoung’s missing brother, and makes him one hell of an enticing target.

The resultant cat-and-mouse chase across the city is as frustrating as it is exhilarating. But in a shocking turn of events, it reveals a destructive force beyond the both of them, one that needs their immediate attention and collaboration—regardless of who they are to each other. 

anticipated release: summer/fall 2024

VOLUME 2: VIOLET CRAZY

pairing: kim jungwoo x f!reader, johnny seo x reader angst wrapped in drama, tumultuous relationships, a slow but sure descent into madness.

In the aftermath of Johnny Seo’s return, the city of Siacia is not as it once was. Tensions with Iameh are on a steady incline, Assembly politics remain a treacherous game, all while a new strain of Burner spreads through the streets like wildfire. You and Kim Jungwoo are most apathetic to the recent chaos—the two of you like two sides of the same coin, both endlessly spiteful, now embroiled in a feud of your own. For as long as you could remember, your relationship with Jungwoo was one purely of grudge and petty revenge. 

But when Johnny begins his reign of terror, perhaps the two of you are in no position to be idle bystanders. Tragedy strikes Jungwoo’s family, and he has a reluctant change of heart. On the other hand, you remain by Johnny’s side, simply watching his flames burn hotter and rise higher. Merely overnight, your long-standing rivalry with Jungwoo has turned into a struggle for the future of the undercity. The inevitable resurfacing of your past, your forgotten history with Jungwoo, and Johnny’s inexplicable grip on you—it won’t be long before it all reaches a boiling point in the crucible. 

And certainly not long before you’re forced to face the repercussions. 

anticipated release: summer 2025

VOLUME 3: RIDE OR DIE

pairing: mark lee x gn!reader from meet-cute to heated romance. ride or die. madly in love to the bittersweet end.

Breakfast tea with magazines and tabloids. Clay-stained aprons and paint-smeared jeans. Afternoon tea with so-and-so, then back to the kiln and canvases. Dinner party with your fellow curators, handling flawless plates and dainty dessert spoons and immaculate champagne glasses—rinse and repeat, again and again, the routine of an Iamehan artist and socialite. 

Quickly growing tired of all the glitter and glamour of topside, you take a trip back to your roots: the north faces of Siacia, where you can shed all the silk and cashmere in exchange for the nightlife you grew up with. Dancing wildly to rediscover yourself and inspire your art, that’s when you find your muse: Mark Lee, a VIP at the Obelisk Nightclub, blue-haired and bright-eyed, immersed in the stories you tell him. 

You could stay with him forever, seeking thrills and adventure until you reach the ends of the earth. And yet, there is still much more awaiting: the unpleasant and the unideal, and the thwarting of your course by the stars above. 

anticipated release: TBD

VOLUME 4: WHEN THE SUN SETS

pairing: johnny seo x gn!reader psychological horror turned body horror. toxic romance and a tragic end. (!!) mature content, including manipulative, toxic relationships and darker themes some readers may find disturbing.

Johnny Seo is a reasonable man. A patient man, certainly, never reckless, never cruel. Johnny is loving, the perfect lover. Devoted, and devoted wholeheartedly to you. 

In the days and months after the Assembly’s establishment, he keeps you with him at every turn of the road: arm around your waist, head in the crook of your neck, always whispering and promising you better days. A sovereign Siacia is coming, he says. She will be free from the clutches of your northern neighbours, free to do as she pleases. You believe him—until one night, when he comes home bloody and beat-up, furious and unrecognizable. 

Johnny Seo is a meticulous man. A calculated mastermind, certainly, never reckless until he’s perfectly sure, never cruel unless he has to be. Johnny is cunning, the perfect trickster. Obsessive, and obsessed with keeping your memory alive. Obsessed with keeping you with him, an eternal part of him.

anticipated release: TBD

[gacha-incels]

Women Gather in Hyehwa After 6 Years… "We Must Stop Deepfake Crimes Now"

this is an article about the hyehwa station protest. the article is originally in Korean and has been mtl and edited into English. because of this it’s not going to be 1:1 but the basic info should be there. if you see any discrepancies please lmk and I’ll edit it asap. thanks everyone for your help and understanding. published sept 21 2024 reporter: Choi Eun-seo

5,000 Gather to Demand Severe Punishment for Deepfake Exploitation "Repeating Misogynistic Crimes, Women Live in Constant Fear" "Government Must Strongly Punish Illegal AI-Generated Content"

A group formed around women's universities in Seoul, named "Joint Action to Condemn Misogynistic Violence," held a protest near Hyehwa Station in Seoul's Jongno District on the afternoon of September 21, calling for severe punishment for deepfake sexual exploitation under the slogan, "Punish Those Who Created, Sold, and Watched."

Due to the growing issue of deepfake (AI-based image synthesis) sex crimes, women have taken to the streets. They argue that the government’s lukewarm response to eradicating online sexual exploitation and illegal recordings has worsened the situation and are demanding strict punishment.

The protest, organized by "Joint Action to Condemn Misogynistic Violence," was attended by an estimated 5,000 participants.

"This Issue Isn't New… Women Are Giving Up Their Everyday Lives"

The area near Exit 2 of Hyehwa Station, where the protest was held, is the same location where protests against biased investigations into illegal filming took place for six months in 2018. At that time, protesters claimed that the woman involved in the illegal filming case at Hongik University, where a male nude model was photographed, was unusually quickly arrested, arguing that the police were conducting a biased investigation favoring male criminals.

Six years later, women gathered again at Hyehwa Station, shouting slogans like "We told you not to illegally film women, and now you're making deepfakes?" They condemned the repeated misogynistic crimes. The Joint Action stated, "The deepfake sexual exploitation crime crisis is not new," adding that "for decades, women have been continually exposed to sex crimes, with their faces and personal information posted on male-dominated communities." The group criticized the government for downplaying the severity of the issue and neglecting to protect the victims. "As a result, women across the country live in constant fear, wondering if they too will become victims, and have had to give up on their daily lives."

Testimonies from deepfake victims followed. A student, identified as "A," attending a university known to be affected by the crimes, said, "After the crimes became known, female students were trying to understand the situation, but the atmosphere at school deteriorated with remarks like 'Feminists are making a fuss' and 'This is stirring up gender conflict.'" She continued, "The reality is that we have to live in fear of becoming victims every time we work with male students on group projects or participate in social activities," stressing that "before telling us not to view every man as a potential perpetrator, we should blame the society that forces us to be suspicious of all men."

Teenagers Also Call for Prevention… "Government Regulation Is Desperately Needed"

On September 10, Seoul Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kim Bong-sik speaks at a ceremony for a joint response agreement on deepfake crimes involving children and adolescents. The agreement was made between the Seoul Metropolitan Government, Seoul Central District Prosecutor's Office, Seoul Metropolitan Police, and the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education.

This deepfake sex crime issue has become even more severe as most perpetrators and victims are teenagers. According to the National Police Agency, of the 318 suspects arrested this year, 251 (78.9%) were teenagers. About 60% of the deepfake crime victims, investigated over the past three years, were also minors.

A high school sophomore, "B," who spoke at the event, said, "I was afraid to participate in this protest, but I realized that nothing will change if I remain silent," urging action to prevent recurrence. She added, "If we don't put an end to this deepfake crime now, more advanced forms of misogynistic crimes will continue."

There were also calls for the government to take stricter measures against companies involved in related industries. A woman from Gyeongnam, identified as "C," said, "The government must strictly regulate AI businesses to ensure that illegal synthesis cannot occur. Those that do not comply should be severely punished to prevent similar crimes from happening again."

[dmitryswifey]

RECAP FOR THE SEPTEMBER 2024 UPDATE

❗ SOURCE: NVTA\_RC (LINK IS IN THE COMMENTS) ❗

❗Translated from Russian to English using Google and Yandex. Please comment if you notice any mistakes or mistranslations.❗

♡ SONG OF THE CRIMSON NILE ♡

Evthys tries to get in touch with Isman’s Ka, but something goes wrong and she again sees only fragments of her brother's memories, as well as Anubis, who keeps his soul. Having failed to achieve the result, Eva falls into the hands of the epistates who caught up with her. Amen and Agnia decide to make a bait out of her and Livy, because Remmao is somewhere nearby. The mentor does appear, but he is not going to give up to the hunters and allow himself to be tortured. Having set fire to the ibu where Isman's body rests, Remmao cuts his own throat. Set, who suddenly appears, first engages in battle with Amen, but then convinces him that they have a common goal. After a crazy night, Ramesses appears in the tent and is going to tell about his brother and the reasons for his actions…

♡ CHASING YOU 2 ♡

Miss Harrington distracts Ellia from thinking about why she was put to sleep and placed in a stone coffin by telling her that the circus he used to work for has arrived in London. The friends all go to a performance where the heroine walks a tightrope under the hypnosis of two acrobats, Edward and Christopher Cadogan. In the evening, Alexander invites the young investigator to go down to dinner, where, to her surprise, he introduces her to the Queen of England, Victoria, who is also his grandmother. The Queen reports that her sapphire tiara has been stolen and that the guards swear that the thief is the "Glowing Killer" Severin Bastendorff, who has risen from the dead, and who has been written about in the newspapers lately. The heroine takes on the case, promising the Queen complete secrecy. Wanting to examine the crime scene, she, Rachel and Sam travel to the palace, and along the way Sam shares his story of how he was stripped of his rank and exiled from his home country…

♡ W: TIME CATCHER ♡

The cards are revealed, the spy is exposed. The Incineration Alliance decides not to banish the Time Catcher, but to test her loyalty. The witch must steal the Conduit from the Vatican - an artifact necessary for initiation. The heroine turns to Renato for help, who gives her the necessary information. At night, in the company of Shen and Onyx, the witch makes her way to the heart of the entire Church. However, in the place indicated by Renato, the Time Catcher finds a fake Conduit and Praevius, who calls himself Idris. Having assured her that he wants to help, he begins to deceive the witch into draining her life force…

♡ KALI: FLAME OF SAMSARA ♡

Christian tells Devi about his investigation and search for the traitor and finally gives the name - Mohan Prasad. Doran also comes to the same conclusions. The executioner continues to collect information. And de Clare intends to marry Deviya before returning to Calcutta. An old friend of Lord de Clare - Bernard Swinford arrives at the estate with his sister Clara and right-hand man Oscar Fitzwarren. At dinner, the English begin to egg on and provoke the Indian guests. The already tense situation is aggravated by Christian's announcement of an imminent wedding…

♡ GARDEN OF EDEN ♡

Dong-hyun suspects that Mr. Won is hiding something, and helps Ji-yoon secretly break into his office. However, there the heroine witnesses a conversation between Castiel and his father, and realizes that they both visited the Garden of Eden club. The heroine remains unnoticed and only after, in a conversation with her mentor, learns that Castiel's father stopped financing the RK3 group. And it also turns out that Mi-yeon had some kind of secret sponsor – and, most likely, Seo-yoon too. In search of clues, Minhyuk and the heroine make their way to Mi-yeon's house. There they find a secret phone, with which the singer left a voice message to Minhyuk before her death with information that she had found Seo-yoon's killer, but they were following her, and that Seo-yoon's sister would help him understand everything. After returning home, they call the suspected killer's number from Miyeon's phone and hear a melody on the phone…

♡ SOULLESS ♡

Isolde, a siren and Walter/Cynthia's mother, helps the succubus deal with the attacking demon. To continue the work, the demoness goes to her Brother Kang and asks him to unblock her Soulspark account. Kang, interested in the MC's daring behavior, arranges a new meeting with her. The succubus is worried that she has become close to Ava, but is forced to report her to Elliot, and she refuses to do so, promising in exchange to now leak information directly about Kang. Returning home, the demoness receives Ava as a guest and, in a fit of frankness, tells her about her deal with the detective. Ava, disappointed and angry, leaves, leaving the heroine with a deep sense of guilt. Adding to the emotions is Vincent, who examined the torn out heart of an unknown demon and now declares that they need to fly to the old Starling estate together with Threxia/o, and the demoness suddenly feels sick from the accumulated experiences, which becomes a big surprise for both herself and Vincent. While getting ready for the trip, the doorbell rings, and an unexpected guest appears on the threshold…

♡ ASTREA’S BROKEN HEART ♡

The heroine finally decides to admit to not having a license - and it turns out that Astrea has known about it for a long time. Together with Felonia, the MC goes to talk to the father of one of the victims, the owner of an unconventional restaurant, and later, in the company of Cassiel and Raphael, she goes to save the supposed future victim - boxer Harry. The latter is brought to the agency by the company, but he quickly leaves, simultaneously planting seeds of doubt about his colleagues in the soul of the appraiser. The next day, the MC goes to the village to see her friend Ruth, and it turns out that she is a fan of the cult, who specially lured the heroine into the wilderness to sacrifice her to the Beast. Here, the girl again meets Phillip Moore, who escaped from prison and plays one of the leading roles in the ritual. The sectarians almost manage to kill their victim, but then Raphael appears, blinds the villagers and takes the heroine to Astrea. The heroes heal the MC's wounds and erase her memory in order to preserve her psyche. The next day, the heroine wakes up with a feeling of emptiness, filled with strange dreams, and a desire to escape from the agency. She returns to her apartment and spends several days there, and then meets Cassiel and decides to drop in at Astrea - as it turns out, at the wrong time, because the bosses have finally arrived at the mansion…

♡ HEAVEN’S SECRET: REQUIEM ♡

In the ruins found in the tracks of the spawn, the squad members see the torn body of a nun and understand that it was bait to pump blood out of the spawn. In pursuit of another spawn, the heroine falls through the ice, Dmitry jumps after her, and the underwater current carries them to the lower floors of the destroyed Siberia base. The MC and Dmitry are temporarily separated, the heroine hides in a room from an incomprehensible pursuer, who suddenly begins to speak to her through the door in Dmitry's voice. The MC is ready to open the door, but suddenly the general appears right next to her, silently making it clear that there is something else behind the door. Then the involuntary partners find themselves in a strange laboratory. Soon Cain and Anna break through there. Having looked around, they find a couch for research, on which, in addition to straps for hands and feet, there are also straps for wings. A halo flares up in the sky above Rotkov, and the squad, having returned to the estate, understands that the last sacrifice has begun somewhere. Having found a secret passage under the temple, the heroes discover a secret sanctuary, where, among a crowd of infected, Boris is going to become the last - the main - victim and release the original evil into the world, however, he himself begins to turn into an infected. The heroine kills Boris and the squad escapes from the temple. At the last moment, Anna discovers that Dmitry has been bitten. Meanwhile, an avalanche approaches Rotkov and buries half the city under snow. The squad decides to go to the Adam base. The bitten general is in serious condition and unconscious. Bypassing settlements and hiding from the spawn, the heroes make another stop at a railway warehouse. Part of the squad, checking the territory, stumbles upon a car that has driven off the road and a wounded man in it. And the rest, getting inside the warehouse, discover crucified bodies. A new acquaintance assures that these are the victims of cultists. Suddenly, Dmitry appears in the room without a single sign of infection…

♡ 7 BROTHERS ♡

Tristan steals a car to help the heroine and her brother Carter escape from the dealer. Carter is temporarily allowed to stay at the Rosewood club, and soon he receives an invitation to stay on James' private island. At the same time, Ray receives an eviction notice from the apartment. Helping to move Ray's things to her grandmother, the MC reads the notice and recognizes the label - it was James' family company that evicted Ray. At the meeting, FBI agents demand that Carter be returned, and the young student has no choice but to sail to the island and return her brother. Later, Chloe asks the heroine to be with her at a party thrown in her dorm. There, she admits that she has known the guys from Rosewood since childhood, but they must not find out that Chloe is also in Kearney, because she is in the witness protection program and is going to testify against her father …

♡ AND THE HAZE WILL TAKE US ♡

The last sacred oak tree, standing on the edge of the village, began to wither and shed its leaves, which means that changes are coming. After all, the tree is the only defense against the horrors that live in the fog. The heroine, together with Tata and Milon, try to find out what happened to Vereya in her last hours of life, because her spirit keeps appearing to her sister. The high priestess, seeing this, offers the heroine to become a priestess and a student of her grandson, the magus Ozar. The MC agrees. The priests go to the stone idols to make a sacrifice to the gods and plant the seeds of the sacred oak. But during the ceremony, the heroine is stupefied by a goblin who has crept close to the village. And at night, falling into a deep sleep after a hard day, she sees her twin Vereya in her bedroom again…

♡ THE THUNDERSTORMS SAGA ♡

The long war between the Kingdom of Esshai and the Ro'od Empire may finally come to an end. The condition of the truce is the marriage between the princess of Esshai, Fanuel, and the crown prince of Ro'od, Tai. The king of Esshai sends two ladies-in-waiting with his daughter, one of whom is our heroine, a young court sorceress. Representatives of the two peoples meet on the border of their lands, on a mountain pass: here, Princess Fanuel must undergo the rite of entry into the Ro'od clan. The night after the rite, the MC accidentally witnesses Fanuel's conversation with an unknown person about her desire to violate her father's order and not marry Tai. The next morning, the princess is found at the bottom of a gorge with a broken neck. Chaos begins in the camp. The conclusion of peace is under threat, as is the life of the young sorceress: she is threatened with death at the hands of a dragon rider…

STORIES THAT ARE NOT IN THE SEPTEMBER 2024 UPDATE:

DRACULA: A LOVE STORY

LOVE FROM OUTER SPACE

HELL AND HIGH WATER

LOVE, SIN & EVIL (VOLUME 1)

I found this on Reddit!

Credits to: u/euphorheya for the translation

and nvta for the original post^^

Here is the link

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, March 2024

Welcome to my roundup of SEO and marketing news and useful resources for ecommerce businesses, March edition. There is a lot going on with Google, and some really strong marketing pieces this time around, so let's get right to it.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google launched both a core algorithm update and spam updates on March 5, with the spam update ending on the 20th. Core updates now include the Helpful Content algorithm. In early observations, Etsy and Reddit both picked up visibility in the UK. 

The Helpful Content algorithm updates late last year destroyed a lot of sites’ Google traffic. Avoid the things they had in common.  You can read the full study here. 

Ecommerce sites were some of the biggest losers in Google visibility in 2023, with Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Target and Best Buy in the top 10 of sites whose Google appearances slipped. 

New to Google SEO? They’ve revamped their SEO starter guide for people like you. And if you are more advanced and want to learn how to optimize your website product pages, this is a good overview. 

This lengthy article on backlinks for ecommerce websites covers pretty much all the angles, including the really difficult ones. 

Reminder that if you want to rank on Google for a search term, you need to look at what is already ranking, and make decisions based on that content. [video and transcript] This works for most search engines, not just Google. 

Yes, Google crawls “high quality” content more often. I used to refer to this as Google thinking the page is “interesting”, so I guess I will need to change my wording...

While Google sends the most traffic to websites, people spend a lot more of their online time elsewhere. Market where people are, not just where your stats say they came from. 

Sadly, Google has stopped providing caches of website pages in its search results. While you can still see the caches of some pages by using the Google search Cache:[page link] as in cache:https://cindylouwho-2.tumblr.com that will eventually stop working as well. Bing still provides caches, but unfortunately both it and the Wayback Machine do not crawl often enough to give really recent results most of the time. 

Missed Google news in February? Here’s your update. And just in case you are really behind, here is January. 

Not Google

Unsure if your website has enough good backlinks? Bing Webmaster Tools will now tell you if you don’t. 

Yandex - the top search engine in Russia - was sold by its Dutch ownership group to a consortium in Russia. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

A US study of social media use found that the most popular site was YouTube, with 83% of adults using it. Two-thirds of American adults use Facebook, while TikTok is up to ⅓ of the US population. 

Because they do change periodically, here are the latest image and video sizes recommended for the top social media platforms. [infographic]

Bluesky is now open to everyone - it was previously invite-only. 

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta has introduced several changes to its Ad options, applying to Facebook and Instagram. 

Meta had a great 4th quarter in 2023, with revenue, users, and earnings per share up. “Fast-growing upstarts Temu and Shein, which originated in China, have been pouring money into ads on Facebook and Instagram. Li said on Thursday that revenue from China-based advertisers accounted for 10% of sales for the year and 5 percentage points of growth.”

Instagram

An updated post on Instagram's algorithm and how it works. 

Instagram is still beta testing longer Reels for some users. 

If your account is a brand account, you can now run ads on Instagram with coupon codes right in them. (Some Facebook users can already do this.)

LinkedIn

Among other recent changes on LinkedIn, the algorithm is now looking to boost important content longer than just the first day or two after publication. 

Pinterest

Pinterest has its own stats package, called Pinterest Analytics, but only for “Business” accounts. They show how many people clicked on the outgoing links, how many people saw your pin on their screen, and much more. Here’s everything you need to know. 

Reddit

Reddit successfully launched on the stock market this past week, but questions remain about how this will change the site. 

Google is paying Reddit to scrape its content through the API instead of from the web. 

Snapchat

Snap was a little later than most tech companies doing layoffs recently, waiting until February 5 to let 10% off staff go. 

Threads

Threads is so new that the algorithm is bound to change a lot in the next year, but for right now, here is how it works. 

TikTok

There is an overwhelming amount of info out there on the US attempt to either ban TikTok or force its sale, and much of it is incomplete, so I will let you Google to your heart’s content if you want to learn more. If you are relying on TikTok to drive sales, this would be a good time to make sure you diversify your promotional strategy. 

You can now track trending terms on TikTok through the Creator Search Insights section. “Creator Search Insights will highlight frequently searched topics, which creators can organize by category (for example, tourism, sports, science) or tailor to their content type with the “For You” option. Additionally, creators can filter for “content gap” topics, which are highly searched but have relatively few videos on TikTok covering them.“

TikTok may be testing a photo app, which would obviously compete with Instagram. 

Twitter

What? Twitter may have lied about its Super Bowl ad performance? I’m so not shocked. 

Tumblr

Tumblr will be selling data access to AI companies. 

YouTube

This is a pretty decent article on YouTube SEO. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Small and micro-businesses need an email list. An email list is:  

portable (unlike most social media followers or marketplace buyers) 

is available to almost everyone, as we all need at least one email address if we are online

less susceptible to the whims of algorithms (unlike SEO, marketplaces, social etc.)  

I keep seeing people argue that no one opens emails, but the chart in the article above is proof that is still wrong. (My blog email list averages close to a 70% open rate, depending on the topic and the time I send it. My jewellery email list - which I hardly ever send to - still has an over 30% open rate. My click rates are well above the industry averages, usually 30 to 40% of all recipients for the blog list. These are much better numbers than social, and astronomically better than my clickthrough rate on Google and other search engines.)

Gmail and Yahoo both changed how they handle bulk emails such as newsletters in February. Here’s what you need to know on the basics, including authenticating yourself so your email gets through. 

Find out how to get people to read all the way to the end of your content. 

Get ready for April marketing with 5 topical ideas. National Handmade Day is April 6. 

We should all think twice before deciding to use AI to create content. “Circa 2024, generative AI does not produce new ideas or even develop its own conclusions. Rather, it regurgitates information that it has indexed.” Not convinced? Here’s another article. “AI-generated content represents the literal “average of everything online.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google Ads can now be tracked in Google Analytics 4. 

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising were up in the 4th quarter of 2023. 

STATS, DATA, TRACKING 

Google Analytics 4 tracks organic traffic differently than the previous version. Here’s how to figure it out. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

I’ve probably posted this specific article before, but it is worth another read: how to communicate with customers.  For example, “Mirroring your customer’s tone lets them know you’re on their side. If a customer is formal, for example, hold back on the LOLs. If they’re more casual, relax your tone.”

According to a US study, Generation Z is skewing the traditional marketing funnel. “Per Archrival’s data, 77 per cent of Gen Zs and 79 per cent of millennials in the US are actively seeking style inspiration at least monthly, with almost half of those looking for style inspiration on social media. When asked where they learn about new brands, products and experiences, video reigns supreme: YouTube is the most popular platform with Gen Zs, followed by TikTok, then Instagram.”

Trend alert: bag charms are back. 

IMAGES, VIDEO, GRAPHIC DESIGN, & FREE ONLINE TOOLS

Almost all of these 12 video tools are free, and some can be used on your phone. 

MISCELLANEOUS

This is an older piece, but it checks out: IKEA Hacks for Craft Show Displays. A few of these could be done with non-IKEA items. 

Want to stay up-to-date on a nearly daily basis? Follow me on Bluesky or on LinkedIn, or become a member of my Patreon.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

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/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task