#well you should use duckduckgo

[crabbunch]

HAPPY BIRTHDAYY!!!!! clethubs goofing around !

yayyy thank you ^D^ have some clethubs trying to set up etho's gmail account

"Okay," Etho says, squinting down at his shitty old laptop. "I opened the browser, I think, so-"

"Is that Opera?" Cleo demands. "Why are you using Opera? You barely even know what Internet Explorer is!"

"I don't know! I haven't opened this thing in years!" Etho whines.

"Well, click off- this wasn't even on your taskbar! How did you get here?" Cleo demands. "Click the little circle there. It'll be easier to set this up in Google, anyways."

"He could use Firefox, you know," Bdubs says, leaning into Etho's side. "There's better email providers than Google- you never know what data Google is stealing."

"Shut up, Bdubs, Etho doesn't have to worry about that. He's boring," Cleo says, and then pauses. "Well, at least, he won't be using his gmail to say anything worth spying on. Honestly, I have my doubts that his account will ever see the light of day again after this."

"Cleo! You guys!" Etho wails. "I'm right here! And I'm- I'm a changed man! I'm learning all sorts of things about the internet! I'm definitely going to be checking my online mail all the time, so we should really get the best one!"

Cleo and Bdubs exchange a glance.

"I'm right here!" Etho insists again.

"Okay, Etho, let's just start out with something super easy and type something into the search bar," Cleo says,

Etho stares down at the keyboard. "...anything specific?"

"Duckduckgo has a email provider, but considering the lack of transparency they've shown in the past, I'm not sure I'd trust them," Bdubs says sagely. "Proton's pretty good, and anything Swedish is-"

"Bdubs, he doesn't know what that means," Cleo interrupts, and then pauses. "I don't know what that means. Type 'gmail.com' into the search bar, okay, Etho?"

"Okay," Etho says, and then slowly starts pecking out each letter, pausing to find each key.

"This is terrible," Bdubs whispers to Cleo in what he probably thinks is a discreet and private manner.

"I know, but we can't leave now. We've got to face this like men," Cleo says in a normal voice.

"I'm right here you guys!" Etho whines. "And I'm not that bad."

"You really are, dear. Hit enter now, it'll take you to the place where you can set up your gmail account," Cleo instructs him.

"Enter? Got it," Etho says confidently, and presses the enter key. The laptop's screen lags, caught between the search page and the gmail launcher, before suddenly loading a porn site.

A notification pops up in the bottom right corner- virus detected.

"Is that good?" Etho asks. The poor laptop, not designed for such strenuous activity and already years beyond its life expectancy, promptly catches fire.

[alphagodith]

what do we do now?

go get all your vaccines updated asap. they are likely about to be banned.

download all your favorite fanfics from ao3, and any 'adult' content anywhere, as these are likely also about to be banned.

delete period-tracking apps if you have them, get an iud and/or stock up on any other preg-prevent drugs you can, even if you don't CURRENTLY need them. men, get vasectomies. they are reversible and whether you want kids or not, pregnancies can now result in your partner's death far more easily than they should.

if you rely on commissions from online communities, make sure you have many different ways of being reached. diversify.

see if you can get prescription-strength toothpaste prescribed and filled by your dentist. flouride is likely getting removed from water and dental health can directly impact your cardiovascular health as well.

it is now more important than ever to save your money and invest if you can, as social security and other such benefits you may come to rely on in old age are likely going to get canceled. pay off debts early to avoid interest, buy refurbished outdated tech instead of new (it is way cheaper and works just as good if not better than new), don't buy a car that gets less than 45 mpg (priuses do not need to be charged and are lovely), buy used (they work just as well as new, they just don't have useless prestige), buy frozen meals from the grocery store instead of fast food (just as fast to prepare and much cheaper), etc

with public education being abolished, if you have or want kids, i recommend finding and stocking up on educational books and games. you can likely find a lot of them at discount stores like goodwill. even old or slightly outdated texts are better than nothing at all.

get a vpn (i use proton cuz it's free) and switch from google to duckduckgo so you can find life-saving information and help without being tracked by people who want you dead.

[the-state-of-georgia-official]

well hey there, darlin! s'pose I should introduce myself, I'm the state of Georgia official tumblr page! (For legal reasons, this is a joke)

i hope to see y'all stickin' around, and if there's anythin on your mind, just ask away, darlin, alright?

lemme know if I can get y'all anything to eat or drink and I'll see ya around!!

oh yeah also I'll edit for tags as I make em, but so far I think

• #ask georgia for asks

• #georgia speaks for just regular text posts

• #it's alright‚ flor‚ honey‚ i'm just teasin for teasing Florida

• #favorite siblings for my favorite siblings (so far, Virginia/@virginia-state-official, Florida/@state-of-florida-official, Indiana/@definitely-indiana, and Illinois/@unofficial-illinois)

• #siblings say things for reblogs from other US states (and the US Navy I think)

• #reblogs from dad are things I reblog from my dad, @official-the-united-states

• #children of georgia for reblogs from my children (currently just @atlanta-unofficial and @atlanta-official as far as I know)

• #new friend? for befriending other blogs and gimmick blogs

• #but not really cuz it's just the mod ooc tag for when the mod speaks

• #friends of georgia for other blogs and gimmick blogs I'm friends with (Ireland/ @definitelytherepublicofireland, Sanrio/ @its-sanrio-official, @pigeonlikesbread, Cape Breton/ @cape-breton-island-itself, BJs/ @def-bjs-guys,

KFC/ @k-f-c-official, @i-bless-your-heart, Australia/ @true-blue-straya, Russia/ @russia-totallyofficial, @onceinalifetimexperiencebuttwice,

the actual Catholic church [/silly]/ @the-real-catholic-church, the British Antarctic Territories/ @real-britishantarcticterritories, Gmail/ @the-real-gmail, Kroger/ @kroger-fr,

and @irishfry)

• #speaking about siblings for when other blogs or gimmick blogs mention my siblings

• #family of georgia not siblings, not dad, but a secret third thing (other family members in our family tree like @non-tyrannical-usa/my aunt and @100percent-shell-oil/my stepdad)

• #and georgia says bing sucks‚ use duckduckgo instead for the war against Bing because L Bing...and also just in general for reblogging stuff from Bing

• #and georgia says FUCK THE TRANSPHOBES for tagging things about bigots of any kind. Transphobes, homophobes, ableists, terfs, aphobes, etc. Fuck bigots, all my homies hate bigots.

• #a house divided against itself cannot stand‚ but somehow this one is managing- for tagging state feuds (I'm looking at you, @maryland-officially and @ohio-thestate /lhsilly)

• #fellow Georgian 🫵 /lhsillyy is for when I meet/find fellow Georgians...just came up with that today (8/16) tho, so sorry if you're a Georgian and I haven't tagged your previous asks or posts as such...I'll do that next time though ^^

• #georgia polls the people of tumblr for the rare occasion I decide to post a poll

• #I love you a bushel‚ and a peck‚ and a hug around the neck for reblogs from my in character twin, @washington-offical

• #unhinged posts wheel for asks to add to a wheel to spin when I'm bored for unhinged things to post on this blog

• #uwu owo so siwwayy for that time I got uwuified

...wait, now I gotta uwuify all my usual tags- *sigh* hold on...

• #ask geowgia an uwuified version of my usual ask tag

• #but n-n-nyot weawwy cuz is jus da mod x3 an uwuified version of my usual ooc tag

• #geowgia speaks OwO an uwuified version of my usual regular text post tag

• #speaking abyout sibwings ÚwÚ an uwuified version of my usual tag for when other blogs or gimmick blogs mention my siblings (other state blogs and also the US Navy I think...usually for in character stuff)

• #f-fwiens of geowgia uwu an uwuified version of my usual tag for other blogs and gimmick blogs I'm friends with

• #sibwings say fings an uwuified version of my usual tag for reblogging things from other state blogs (and the US Navy)

• #new fwend? OwO an uwuified version of my usual tag for befriending other blogs and gimmick blogs

• #famiwy of geowgia ^w^ an uwuified version of my usual family tag

• #fuck‚ it's memory loss time... for that time @anonymous-thief-of-memories deleted my memories...look, I'm sORRY FOR TURNING YOU INTO A GECKO, BRUH, OK- TT TT IT WAS AN ACCIDENT-

• #nature is healing~ for any posts related to the aftermath of the memory wipe incident

• #what in the freaky friday is going on here /sillyj for that one time an anon turned me into my six year old self...no I'm not kidding and YES I know that's not what freaky friday is about, but I couldn't think of a better analogy

• #High off my gourd-gia for that time I accidentally got high off paint fumes...it's happened before, so chances are it'll happen again-

Also my playlist in case it gets lost in the reblogs:

[ueberdemnebelmeer]

i've been thinking about this post

ever since i came across it because it bugs me so much ghjdfgd so many of the extensions listed there are redundant, either because they do each other's job or their functions have been implemented natively in firefox + the less extensions, the better! it's less surface area available for "attack"

i recommend the electronic frontier foundation's cover your tracks tool to check how well you're protected against web trackers (as for fingerprinting, i know brave combats canvas fingerprinting via filter lists - like firefox - and by randomizing a user's fingerprint, but it's a chromium browser. canvas blockers tend to impact usability. for day-to-day use you might just want to reduce data available to fingerprints, because to avoid that altogether i'm afraid you're better off using tor)

i'm going through the list above after the read more; i'm no expert, i've just spent a lot of my free time looking into how to improve my privacy and security habits and this is what my brain retained + don't believe me because i say so + feel free to point out any mistakes of mine.

🟩 keep

ublock origin. filter lists you should consider adding:

check Privacy > AdGuard URL Tracking Protection

add Actually Legitimate URL Shortener Tool (explained how here)

check out the arkenfox project's github page too!

🟨 optional

sponsorblock (1) & unhook (2) for yt. i personally don't use either because (1) i'm good with the good old dragging the current time indicator past sponsorship sections and (2) i'm also good at ignoring page elements i don't care about, but that's me obvs.

facebook container (& not listed above but multi-account containers too; differences between the two: x, x): total cookie protection (enabled by setting firefox's privacy protection to "strict") already partitions third parties, but these extensions could provide a further layer of isolation. container tabs + "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" + "Manage Exceptions" is excellent cookie management with no other extensions necessary

🟥 don't bother

total cookie protection makes ghostery, privacy badger & privacy possum redundant

you've got ublock origin so adblocker ultimate, ad nauseam & adblocker for youtube are also redundant. if you still see yt ads, remove all custom filters related to youtube on ublock origin and force update your lists

https-only mode has been introduced to all the main browsers so https everywhere is also redundant

trackmenot. it's unverified and indeed i've never seen it recommended in any of the multiple firefox hardening videos and guides i've checked, it's kinda useless unless you're a regular google or bing user. prefer a privacy-focused search engine instead

(e.g. duckduckgo [advanced search tricks here and here] which cleans up bing results and has a lite version too! i've also seen startpage [which cleans up google results] recommended but it's had some controversies. for further info, i recommend checking this)

duckduckgo privacy essentials. i suppose (but i can't be sure) this was installed because when you try to add a search engine in firefox's settings you're redirected to the addons page WHICH IS STUPID OF THEM because you can add them via search bar (i did this with e.g. letterboxd)

don't track me google. for those random google searches you still might need, if you added all the filter lists above to ublock origin you should be fine, and if you aren't you're better off using skip redirect

jury's out on blue blocker because it's unverified. i'm not a twitter user either so i haven't checked it out

[qipsir]

Bill 702 was passed in America. Here's what it means

This is what you're gonna do:

You're gonna go to the app store and you're gonna download Cwtch. It's an end to end encryption app that was developed by Tor Browser, aka the Onion Browser

On your computer, you're gonna download Firefox and you're gonna get all the security stuff you can. I recommend Ghostery and Privacy Badger as well as Facebook Container. You're gonna get a cookie auto-deleter and you're going to go to Google Takeout, download all your data, delete ALL of your files and documents, and find somewhere else to put them. A USB drive if they're memories, LibreOffice or a platform like Reedsy if it's creative works that you are actively working on and/or will need to share.

You're going to use DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, or Oceanhero. I know there are other alternatives search engines, but these three are the best I've found. Bonus that the latter two use searches to fund planting trees and cleaning the ocean respectfully(?).

You're gonna get sliding covers for your phone AND computer cameras, or at least find a way to cover them that's easily removable for video calls.

You're gonna switch from Gmail to Proton Mail, and Proton has a free VPN too. You're gonna get both of those. You're gonna get Tor Browser browser too because you can never be too careful (it has a built in VPN).

You're gonna get MP3 players and download your music from Spotify and YouTube - which also means you can technically separate art from artist because on MP3, you can listen as many times as you want without financially supporting them.

You're not gonna pay for Netflix or Hulu or Disney+ or anything like that anymore. I'm not saying you should use these but there are websites out there like SFlix that have so many movies and shows FOR FREE and you "TOTALLY SHOULDNT USE THEM WITH A VPN BECAUSE PIRACY IS WrOnG". How dare you steal from exploitative, multi million dollar businesses that don't care about their workers smh..

If you are in support of Palestine, you are going to download the app No Thanks!. It has a regularly updated list of all companies that support Israel and evidence/articles to back it up.

If you get a chance, go watch The Great Hack. It's a fantastic documentary that lets you see inside the world of psychological manipulation through the world of advertisement and influence.

Stay safe out there. Please. Every moment that you are alive and thriving is another moment they are losing.

[emmetofthestars]

duckduckgo implementing WHAT

where the fuck should i go for a reliable search engine now

well idk. but duckduckgo is tryyying to do the same thing as google where sometimes its like "do u want our ai to generate an answer for you :)" i dont think they use ai for their search in general but its like. dude shut up lol... but atleast it asks i guess. still dont know why theyre doing that but shrug. idk. im not a valuable source of info on this

[salora-rainriver]

We're talking about Ads Again

Context for those followers of mine who weren't there: I made a post about tumblr ads being weird back in 2016 and it's literally still getting notes to this day. People responded GREAT to it. honestly, despite being like. ass old at this point and written by a literal high schooler, it's still pretty good! I thank my dad being in advertising helped significantly. I had an expert witness.

Tonight, I'm writing the sequel to that post. the sequel is this post.

let's just fucking dive into it or whatever.

why am I doing this?

okay for starters I made that post in goddamn 2016 and I refuse to believe my insights into the marketing world have not improved since then.

Also, the marketing world has CHANGED. Huge swaths of my old post are no longer relevant. What we saw with tumblr ads in 2016 was in some parts a passing fad, and in other parts the harbinger of a new wave of influencer marketing and corporate parasociality (I coined that term just now).

Honestly I've been thinking for a while that I should make an update post, but what with, yanno, adulthood, that's been kinda hard!

Well, I've missed a train, and it's Christmas, so I've finally found the time to do that.

What has Changed?

in my personal life... dad got fired! yeah it fucking sucks. the good news is he and his wife are working towards their retirement now, shifting away from the industry overall. Good news as far as life is concerned, but it does mean I no longer have as clean a connection to the Industry as I used to.

but more importantly, why he got fired. The fact is, dad's old! I know, shocker. More than just being old, though, his field (and my stepmom's field - they both did the same work) represents an older paradigm of advertisement. he did TV spots and posters, not ad reads for Raid Shadow Legends. He was great at his work, but we're in an era of data-driven, maximalist, google adsense, low-barrier-to-entry, super-fast and super-cheap digital advertisement.

Well, more specifically,

We're on the cusp of an extinction event poised to bring said era crashing to the ground.

Pictured: the current vibes in the ad world

Siberia is on Fire and Everything is Dying

So given that my typical source on stuff like this is currently unemployed, I decided to hit good ol google (well, google and duckduckgo. fitting given what we're talking about) to see if I could get any insights into what the current state of advertising is.

and the short of it is that everyone says the end is nigh. check this out:

Digital is dead, and so is TV. God fucking damn. BY THE WAY, I loved these two articles. Chris Gadek, a man I only learned about today, is clearly an excellent writer and his professional insights are probably gonna be way better than my amateur synthesis of the half-dozen different articles I read today, including his.

blatant shilling for random article writers aside, let's get on to my half-baked synthesis, starting with:

What Set Siberia on Fire

In small part, it's the same issues facing most major companies and industries in our late capitalist world: Hubris.

As this New York Times article points out, we've got a low barrier of entry into a gargantuan industry that's increasingly pumping out slop to follow a strategy of 'more is more'. And we've all seen the bizarre mobile game ads and shady scams that have resulted from THAT.

On top of that, we've also got the fucking digital privacy issue shaking up the entire world as consumers increasingly don't like being spied on (imagine that), and the EU starts rolling out heavy restrictions on the data harvesting that was fueling a bunch of this advertisement bubble.

There's also the ad fraud. Oh, you didn't hear about that? Well, it's nothing much, just that lots of bots are clicking ads to falsify click metrics, artificially inflating the effectiveness of said ads. look, it even has a wikipedia article

oh and Facebook did it. Facebook did ad fraud. :)

and I'm not even getting into everything that works to shake up or demolish basically every advertisement channel out there - the decline of cable tv and print newspapers, the increasing use of ad blockers, the crisis of consumer trust, etc etc.

In short we are looking at a multitude of micro-crises all working together to make the environment unlivable for most current forms of advertisement.

in other words: an extinction event!

Who's Gonna Survive

And just like in a real extinction event, whether or not you survive depends on how good you can adapt to the brave new world you've found yourself in. Old school advertising needs to drastically rethink their everything if they're gonna stay afloat, and every field of the industry needs to recreate itself. As my new favorite writer Chris Gadek says,

"These crises show that there are no safe havens. You can’t substitute one advertising medium for another. Rather than pivot, the advertising industry must adapt and learn to effectively use the channels at their disposal (TV included), factoring in the seismic societal and technological changes that have occurred over the past decade and beyond."

and what is that going to look like? what's going to be the new face of advertising?

The field seems torn, at first... but also aligned, at least when it comes to the core principles:

privacy is a big issue. Seems like a lot of advertisers are seeing an end to wanton consumer surveillance, and looking into less invasive ways to gather important and meaningful data

companies that rely on selling ad space and propping up their engagement metrics are going to be relied on less, probably, because the metrics themselves are being seen as less reliable (for good freaking reason)

regaining consumer trust is going to be a massive priority in the future.

overall, we're probably going to look at a massive downturn in ads, as people turn to a quality-over-quantity strategy in an attempt to stop flooding the attention marketplace.

that's the gist I'm getting from reading oh so many different articles of varying quality from so many different sources.

So, yanno, there may be some hope out there. If smart people start leading this industry (lol), we may get to actually enjoy ads.

Yeah. Enjoy ads.

Unironically.

I know, it's crazy.

PS: if you start seeing affiliate links on mainstream TV ads, thank our lord of excellent business analysis Chris Gadek for calling it early. God, that's such a crazy left-field idea and I really want it to actually happen.

[boreal-sea]

De-Googling my life, the Update

So idk when, months or maybe weeks or maybe a year ago, I made a post about wanting to de-Google my life. I have, happily, made some steps forward on this.

I use DuckDuckGo now for 99% of my search needs and it works pretty well for most things, but every once in a while I search for something and I'm just not finding results I know should be there, and I have to cave in and use Google.

For driving, I use a mix of Apple Maps and Waze, though Waze is unfortunately owned by Google these days so it's not really much of a jump.

I've moved most of my personal email correspondence over to to Outlook and iCloud. I still have some google email accounts because my mother will never in a million years remember a new email for me. Plus, I have some throwaway accounts on Google, too. Then again now that I have iCloud, I could create some aliases and vastly simplify my email life. You can create aliases with Outlook as well.

Moving away from a certain email address takes serious effort, if you intend to actually fully close down that address. If you just want to just set up mail forwarding and then never log back in, that works too, though I've been trying to actually close them down for security reasons. Whenever I have the stamina I've been going through my individual Google emails and figuring out which ones are being used for important services (like my taxes, or FAFSA, or my bank, etc) and trying to reset my email on all those websites to my new email. It takes AGES. Again, just setting up mail forwarding is definitely the easier solution.

I have an iPhone now and the only Google app I have is Google Home because, well, I have a Google Home speaker. It was pricey and I don't want to create e-waste by throwing it away, so right now I'm not sure what to do with it. I do actually still use it, but mostly as a timer. I like that it has a screen, which a lot of smart speakers don't have. Anyway, it's more of a waste to throw it away than to keep it at the moment, so for now I'm stuck with it.

[aeide-thea]

tagged by @aldieb! thx for thinking of me, these little questionnaires are like. a cute little blast from tumblr's more interactive past :)

last song: i was going to have to give a sad little answer here about how i don't listen to music nearly enough anymore (never mind sing) and it's very definitely a reflection of my depression, but then i entirely out of nowhere and very urgently was like 'wait actually i have to listen to gordon lightfoot's "song for a winter's night" right now' so then i dashed off and did that and now that's the answer:

if i could know within my heart that you were lonely too i would be happy just to hold the hands i love on this winter night with you…

favorite color: oof so so many!! colors are so important. the signature one has gotta be a really highlighter-vivid chartreuse (🎾), but i do also really love me a good marigold orange? not to mention vermilion, or ochre, or moss green, or really saturated cobalt, or shades of rust or russet…

last movie/show: shetland bbc, which is a quiet well-acted murder mystery series set in a very beautiful very remote landscape. soothing if you like the british isles and can bear to entertain the fantasy of a decent policeman, at least for an hour or so at a time. also i admit to enjoying douglas henshall's face.

sweet/spicy/savory: all the best things are savory and also spicy! like. the jamaican curried chicken i grew up with. indian curries. malaysian laksa my beloved. can you tell i like curry. :D

relationship status: sidebar but this is such an amatonormative question lol. like why are we societally expected to look at 'relationship' and infer 'romantic.' also it seems like a weird outlier given that all the other qs are low-stakes little softballs abt yr tastes. however. extremely single! sometimes i'm sad about it because i miss sexual intimacy and i'm too shy to pursue that with strangers? but honestly most of the time i'm just as glad, because i don't actually know how to love people romantically without making a whole self-abnegating religion of it, so i'm not really convinced that dating was ever really all that good for me, on the whole…

last thing i googled: i use duckduckgo now, and you should too! :) having said that: 'yoal boat.' which is a very beautiful traditional style of shetland boat—apparently descended from a norwegian model?—that the islanders used to use for fishing, and then for storage draw up onto the land into these little prepared hollows called noosts (they have marinas now), which like. obviously i think is the most charming word imaginable. a cozy little noost for a lovely little boat! 🪺

current obsession(s): yoals aside, i guess the thing that best fits this category is that sometime in the last year or so i turned into Merino Guy??? like. even my boxer briefs are merino now (well, a merino-tencel blend) and like. it's so good, guys. comfy in a startlingly wide range of temps, helps me lessen my contribution to the microplastics problem, somehow even makes for reasonable athletic wear in the right weights and cuts: what's not to like. anyway brb, gotta go print out my 'NOT 🐑ISH ABOUT MERINO' bumper sticker. :D

tag 9 people: oof idk, do this if you'd enjoy it and ignore it if you wouldn't? gonna make like west and pull some names from my activity feed: @e-b-reads, @ghostofasecretary, @leatherbookmark, @nathanielthecurious, @obstinatecondolement, @papavera, @quailfang, @tisiphoness, @youcanthandelthetruth

[atmosphericradar]

Found another odd tag — keyed off the word "hiding" — and this time it's a long one!

So, the full tag is:

#blac chyna is hiding true feelings about her ‘rebirth’ makeover – her ‘lip clamps & droops’ are the proof

This sounds like a celebrity gossip headline! And sure enough, this tag is full-to-bursting with this article exclusively.

I got this from the desktop site, because it's wild to see. It's just a wall of the same article, all the way down, for multiple pages.

They're all from early November 2023, and all from blogs with names that end in *-polycom, *-mag, or *news. It seems fairly self-evident that this is the work of some kind of tabloid, but I'm a curious cat. I want to dig deeper.

Digging Deeper

Most of these posts tell you (they don't provide links!) to go read the full article on POLYCOM. Ok, what is a POLYCOM? I don't think it's Poly Inc., maker of video- and teleconferencing appliances, but a few cursory Google and DuckDuckGo searches yield no evidence of anything else.

The most recent post tells us to go track down the article ourselves on "IN TREND", but provides no URL or link. Searching around for "IN TREND" on the web is fairly difficult, returning results for well-known fashion publications, trend analytics, and a brand of clothing called "Intrend". Searching for "In Trend Today" returned more interesting results, including an InTrendToday YouTube Channel and Facebook page. The Facebook page seems to have stopped posting in late 2018, but the YouTube Channel last posted a video on Dec 18, 2023. I'll talk more about the YouTube Channel under the cut at the end of this post.

Some of these posts do have "read more" links pointing to posts on Wordpress, all of which claim to be "on MAG NEWS". Each *-mag blog links out to a separate Wordpress account which seems to be re-uploading the same story. All of these Wordpress Accounts are deleted (for violating Wordpress ToS), and all of these linked posts are gone (here are two examples):

Somehow, I doubt this is some covert arm of the Maricopa Association of Governments newsroom.

Digging down into the results on Tumblr, I found a copy of this post made by the blog vouxsportsnews. They link a Wordpress article from another dead Wordpress account:

BUT, their most recent post on their blog (a gossip article about Zendaya posted on Jan 5, 2024) does have a working Wordpress link, to vouxsportsnews.wordpress.com (clever 🙄):

This is an archetypal internet-based gossip rag. I didn't know these still existed! I guess Wordpress is hunting them down for sport?

The "Read More ..." link in the article goes to a website called top.neotrends.today, which is a sketchy link I will not be clicking on. The "full article" is apparently hosted on www.primesky.media, which I also will not be directly navigating to. I did manage to get a screenshot of the front page of primesky today (Jan 8, 2024) using a webtool:

I blurred the article shown on this page to preserve the privacy of the person it featured.

Primesky is hosted on a Cloudflare virtual private server, and no public info is available on who owns the primesky URL. A search for "redroads amag" on DuckDuckGo leads back to primesky. A search of the same on Google leads to a website at www.clickhere.world, which is immensely sketchy and looks identical to primesky. At this point, I'm going to end my search for a culprit.

Conclusion

I thought I could find the tabloid hydra's body, but I just found more heads. I'm not surprised the operators of a gossip rag bot network on Tumblr are also playing dirty on Wordpress, and covering their digital tracks well. Sometimes it's best to just report spam and go on with your day.

It should go without saying, but DO NOT NAVIGATE to these websites! At worst, they will give you every virus. At best, they will mine crypto in the background of your browser (and rot your brain).

The YouTube Channel Digression

The YouTube channel intrendtoday was created on Oct 4, 2017, and it has more than 53,000 subscribers as of my posting this post (Jan 8, 2024). However, the earliest video on the channel was posted on Nov 7, 2023. That is suspiciously close to when all of these Blac Chyna spam articles went up.

Given that the videos posted get less than 50 views on average, I think the grossly-out-of-proportion subscriber count is evidence of bot subscribers. Maybe the channel re-branded and deleted a prior back-catalog? Archive.org has no snapshots of this YouTube channel, but SocialBlade claims they lost nearly 3.5 million video views in early September of 2023 (indicating they deleted a lot of videos).

SocialBlade also indexes this channel under the name "demattradinginfo", not "intrendtoday". Archive.org doesn't have records of a YouTube URL for the channel demattradinginfo, but a Google search of that name shows results for Demat Accounts, which are a type of financial account commonly used in India to hold securities and trade stocks.

It's possible that whomever is behind the gossip news spam is also in control of this YouTube channel. I wouldn't be surprised, given how frequently people offering financial advice on social media are either scammers or spammers (and sometimes both!). However, I have no proof that the people behind this YouTube channel are the same people behind this social media gossip spamming.

[jellymeduza]

hello! there is a conflict with your walk-in closet woohoo package and a file I have called 'WooHooTeens_6n_Apartment_Life'. Is there a specific load order that could make these work together or will I have to choose which one to take out? thank you!

Hi!

I don't know which mod you are referring to. I don't use that mod, so the filename doesn't give me any clue.

Could you link the mod or give its name and creator next time? I'm not googling (naturally with the use of DuckDuckGo 😉) the mod by its filename.

@loonyjelly asked:

Hi me again, the bar drinks mod also shows a conflict with Utility mod by simler90, I was wondering about comparability for those as well. If I loaded your mod last and lost the charge for using the bar I wouldn't mind if that's possible. :) Thank you

Hi!

I updated More Drinks From Bar by adding a new file: zz_Meduza_MoreTypesOfDrinksFromBars_simler90_UtilityMod.

It's a compatibility plug-in. It should work for both Advanced and Regular versions of Utility Mod.

To install it, keep one of base "more drinks" mod files, keep simler90's Utility Mod and put my plug-in into your downloads. Make sure my plug-in loads after my mod and after simler90's mod. :)

[kattahj]

Get to know me better

Tagged by @brifrischu thank you for thinking of me!

Last song?

Honestly, I don't tend to listen much to music. Most of the time when I have Spotify on, it's a podcast, or I just go to my liked songs and hit shuffle.

I did deliberately listen to Keops pyramid the other day, though. It's a Swedish political song from the 70s which uses the creation of the pyramids, as well as the Tower of Babel, to make a commentary about class warfare. It's not terribly accurate to how pyramids work – the rich people are described as being at the top of the pyramids, and the people below slaves – but it's still a good song!

"So it seems that in every era and among all people there are those who want to create pyramids. Where they themselves are at the top and have the power in their hands, while those who live below obey them. But if those up at the top no longer want to understand, but despise all the people who give them food, the pyramids will end up being their graves."

Favorite color?

Purple and black. Used to be more black when I was younger, now more purple.

Currently watching?

The Eighth Sense, Teenage Bounty Hunters, and the Swedish version of Antiques Roadshow. I've also been watching Last Twilight and Percy Jackson, but I've fallen behind.

Also, the film festival I volunteer with has opened for submissions, so I watch a lot of short films, trying to decide which ones we should show.

Last movie?

I'm halfway through Clue. (*whispers* I don't like it much.) Latest one seen in the theaters was Monster. That, on the other hand, was amazing.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory?

Can I say salty? Otherwise sweet, I guess.

Relationship status?

Extremely single and loving it!

Current obsessions?

I'm kind of between obsessions at the moment. Although, if someone wants to come talk to me about Vanity Fair (the Thackeray novel), please do! I read it over the holidays, and while I haven't had the energy to write a full meta about it, I have So Many Thoughts. I wish we could do it as a Tumblr book club, like Dracula Daily (but preferably not in real time, since the story takes about 15 years to play out).

Last thing you googled?

I use duckduckgo for the most part, but the last thing I searched there was what kind of charger cable I need for my cellphone. (I keep forgetting and need a spare.)

Selfie or another pic you took?

My cat is so much cuter than I am!

Tagging @pocket-elf @the-bookwyrm @lena221bee @stardustviolet @thedooristhebluecushion and whoever else wants to do it!

[anendoandfriendo]

We agree genocide is bad, but please, PLEASE take the time to fact-check as well if you have the time/energy to do that.

There's a post going around we saw somesys reblog about Palestine being removed from google maps with the implication this is a new phenomenon, but the image that was in circulation in particular?

We found that image in an article from 2016 on a WIRED piece, after five seconds of internet searching, on DuckDuckGo, with that exact same image. (Here is a web archive to boot, just in case.)

Like. Ioo, Palestine should be on the map since it is a country and there are people who live there have identify themselves as Palestinian and genocide is very very bad. People have the right to identify themselves as they wish. So. Like. We hope this doesn't need further explanation. :<

But even putting that aside, we take more issue with the implication this is a new phenomenon than the fact that it is one in the first place. Something being removed from the map like that is a very extraordinary claim to us which is what prompted us to take a quick look, and, lo and behold — this is why it's important to factcheck.

[the-jellicle-duelist]

in light of everything that is wrong all the time here is some stuff i have done to attempt to be more anonymous online

if you have your actual name posted on your socials, maybe don’t

no one who can google you should be able to find you via your socials if possible

switch to an internet browser that has better+ more privacy features out of the box

the Brave browser is built on the same shit that makes chrome work, however they are a privacy focused browser. firefox also has many of the same features as well. Chrome is Designed with the express purpose of following you around online and collecting as much data about you as possible

use a vpn whenever possible

some websites won’t work for you the same way, but i leave my vpn on 95% of the time. all the vpn does is connect you to a vpn server, encrypts your outgoing traffic, and then encrypts the traffic that is being returned to you. it’s a middle man for internet connections where both sides are encrypted

most of these are paid services, but Proton VPN has a free, ad free, unlimited data vpn that works on just about everything

switch search engines i swear to fuckING GOD

duckduckgo is the Brave Browser for search engines. no tracking or selling your data to advertisers

there’s obviously more stuff you can do but making these small, relatively simple switches is a great first step to companies harvesting less data about you while you’re online

[girlbosstourney]

just wanted to let you know that while the picture you used for erica slaughter did technically have her in it, it's not really the best pic to use. She's the little girl in the foreground, but the picture is centered on the woman who raised her. It's not a big deal, she's not a very well known character so I completely understand, but I just thought you should know.

And if you'd like, I'd be happy to submit a picture that actually shows erica slaughter a lot better.

Ahh, I wasn't aware! I just grabbed something off of duckduckgo lol.

If you'd like to submit a picture, that'd be great!

[agapi-kalyptei]

On streaming and fumbling

Right now I'm in a horrible mental pain as I'm watching a talented/experienced musician just absolutely fumble in music software he's not familiar with. To be clear: this guy's been a musician for 20+ years, released 15?+ albums, etc. He's not dumb, and I'm not better than him. But.

He just spent 5 cringeworthy minutes looking for a very obvious button, which he didn't even find in the end.

There are two lessons here:

Streaming is hard on the brain

Dunning-Kruger curve is so, so real

Bonus lesson: mob programming is a useful concept that you should incorporate into your worldview.

I'll explain:

(1) On streaming killing your brain

(In this post, I only talk about tutorial-like streams, or otherwise technical, mentally intensive tasks. Not chilling with buddies or shooting aliens.)

One of the reasons - for me at least - why it's so difficult to rewatch your own streams is the amount of cringe you'll inevitably do.

Before I tried it myself, so many times I've watched streams (or unedited video tutorials) and thought "wow you blind fool the button is just 2 centimeters to the left!!! how do you not see it!" and then I tried streaming myself doing something I thought I'm familiar with, and noticed the hundreds of micro-brain freezes where I overlooked something obvious and scrolled up and down 3 times.

(This, coincidentally, is a huge humility lesson for us with ADHD: when you think something takes 15 minutes, it's because you haven't watched yourself fumble for another 15 minutes, alt-tabbing between 20 open windows to try to remember which one you wanted to use.)

Streaming exacerbates any mental hiccups even a healthy person might have on a daily basis, because you're well aware that you're there to entertain and you can't just open a manual or watch a tutorial or quickly duckduckgo something. And even slowly reading right-click menu items one by one feels like wasting everyone's time, so instead the brain goes into ADHD(-like) overdrive. Gotta go fast.

Streamers who talk about serious-ish topics have an even more difficult job, because they're often asked to have opinions on a lot of issues, for some of which they will inevitably not be prepared for. If you can't keep your ego completely in check, sooner or later you'll say something questionable or inaccurate.

(2) You're not immune to the Dunning-Kruger effect

Streaming truly highlights the omnipresence of Dunning-Kruger curve. It's easy to think "I've done a similar thing before, therefore I'm an expert on all similar things".

The music production streamer I mentioned earlier - again, an experienced music producer - opened a dozen software instruments he hasn't worked with before, thinking he can just wing it and learn on the fly. And sure, for a bigger part, he did. But for the mistakes that he made, he didn't know if it's a limitation of the software, or his knowledge, or a bug, or a configuration error in a different software. His stream chat was filled with inaccurate suggestions and opinions.

If this guy who's been making music for 20+ years - including beta testing products, giving feedback to companies that they actually incorporated, doing live shows, releasing albums, making preset banks for hardware and software synthesizers, doing commissions, landing his music in tv shows, movies, ads, etc - if this guy can overestimate his abilities and fumble around looking for a button for 5 minutes - then you will do it too. Humility is important. Expertise is important. But it won't save you from making mistakes.

(3) Mob programming is a good mindset, actually

In programming, there's this relatively unknown method called "mob programming" where at least 3 developers sit in a room and take turns (every 2-5 minutes) in working on one task together.

One person is holding the keyboard+mouse (the "driver"), while the person next to them is the one programming (the "navigator") and that developer tells the driver what to do (but cannot touch keyboard/mouse themselves). The rest of the room (the "mob") can offer advice, but don't have control. Then every x minutes, the responsibilities shift by one seat.

There are many more details on how to make it work, but they don't matter that much if you're not a developer.

The main benefit of this is that every human has mental ups (bursts of energy or inspiration) and downs (like brain freezes, sleepiness), but in a room of 4+ people, there's always going to be someone at peak mental capacity when the navigator has a dumb moment, and they can point out an obvious mistake which would otherwise result in a potentially expensive bug, which would happen if a solo developer was working on their own.

(4) Bonus bonus advice

Don't be afraid to ask for help. Especially when you're only moderately confident in any given skill, programming or art or cooking or cleaning up, having someone by your side to offer their perspective, point out an obvious error, give a helping hand, do a quick fact check, can really save you many hours, and make your life more pleasant.

And doing mob programming-type round robin would make for really fun streams, I bet.