#well you should use duckduckgo

[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 pay off debts early to avoid interest, buy refurbished outdated tech instead of new (it is way cheaper and works just as good if not better than new), don't buy a car that gets less than 45 mpg (priuses do not need to be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 even old or slightly outdated texts are better than nothing at all.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,

@irishfry , and Medford Oregon/ @medford-oregoppenheimer )

• #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 / @washington-offical-2

• #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-

• #anon hates peaches for the anon hate saga. I wanna keep it in case I wanna look back and giggle at my responses :3 ...or cry if it's anon anti-hate BC y'all are so nice to me- 🥺🥹

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

[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!

[aston-axo]

Sponsorblock is great.

Not aware of TrackMeNot so can't comment on it.

uBlock Origin is the adblock god killer and the prime reason Google is now killing adblock, remember to refresh caches on browser startup. No other addon can compare in complete effectiveness.

Not aware of Unhook, so I can't comment on it.

Ghostery is not needed if you have uBlock Origin and has had shady dealings in the past. It is highly advised you never stack adblockers as that will make them function worse.

HTTPS Everywhere is redundant and not needed as its behaviour now handled natively in Firefox.

PrivacyBadger is not needed if you have uBlock Origin.

PrivacyPossum is not needed if you have uBlock Origin.

Adblocker for YouTube is not needed if you have uBlock Origin.

Adblocker Ultimate is not needed if you have uBlock Origin and implements ad whitelists for companies that pay them.

AdNauseam is not needed if you have uBlock Origin.

Blue Blocker is great if you're still tolerating Twitter.

Not aware of Don't Track Me Google, so I can't comment on it.

DuckDuckGO Privacy Essentials isn't really needed but sure go for it.

Facebook Container isn't really needed but sure go for it.

My extra suggestions:

Cookie AutoDelete will automatically wipe cookies and all other browsing data about sites once you leave them. Very deeply customisable.

Behind The Overlay Revival adds a single button that will allow you to remove overlays for sites that don't trigger adblock detection. It's not an active script so won't distrupt uBlock Origin.

Bypass Paywalls Clean has to be installed from its file on Gitlabs because it worked so well to remove paywalls that Firefox deleted its store extension without notifying the owner. Should be used over 12ft io which take bribes from sites to whitelist them.

ClearURLS removes the long, unique identifiers and referral codes from the ends of links that can be used to track where, when, and who the link is being used by.

ViolentMonkey is the open source and better alternative to TamperMonkey that lets you run incredibly useful scripts such Anti-Adbock Killer or Simple YouTube Age Restriction Bypass if you're in Europe where Google demands access to your government ID to remove age gating.

DeArrow removes clickbait titles and thumbnails via community vote.

Return YouTube Dislikes is self-explanatory.

hello google chrome refugees

don't use any of these browsers, they're also chrome

Here are my favorite firefox plugins for security/anti-tracking/anti-ad that I recommend you get

please get off chrome google is currently being investigated for being an Illegal Monopoly so get outta there okay love you bye

[mandokero-eboy]

GET RID OF AI NONSENSE FROM YOUR GOOGLE RESULTS

Like you, I used udm=14 for a bit to get rid of the AI generated shit in google. Sadly it doesn't get rid of shitty search results. It also breaks other parts of google like image search, so it's not a very good solution.

BEHOLD!!!

A filter list for uBlockOrigin and uBlacklist that blocks out google search results for a lot of websites known to post generative AI content The only way we stop this shit now is if we find automated ways to deny them traffic, so you should share this.

If you find any AI shit that isn't on this list you should contribute to it as well

While you're at it, install adNauseam. It's uBlockOrigin but it silently tells the website that you're clicking on every ad while it blocks it. Of course this gives money to the website with the ads but what's important is

a) it wastes money from the ads provider b) doesn't allow them to profile u based on ads you click

Personally can't wait till you tell all your friends about this AI filtering tool and in order to use it your friends also have to download the ad blocking tool that makes Google actively waste money. Google is going to love that.

While we're at it

This is another list that blocks a bunch of spam websites that do very aggressive SEO

And this other uBlacklist filter for various kinds of miscellaneous spam

I can't stress enough, the only thing that's convincing tech companies to back down from this shit is if having AI automatically gets them less engagement and it gets everyone to start installing adblockers and other shit that hurts their core business model.

Oh and while I still have you here, delete Facebook, Instagram and Threads. Should've done that before but especially now.

[journeythroughbible]

Wobble At The Earth's Poles

Ok, what do we know about our earth? Honestly, not much, but I have a wild-ass thought involving catastrophic events. What if there have been massive crust shifts over the life of our planet?

Follow me here; there is evidence of glacial activity in warm places. There is evidence of massive floods and water being in places it should not be if everything remained static. There is evidence that the continents were once all adjoined. How did we get to where we are today?

I was thinking about how a massive crustal shift would cause all the evidence to occur. And how would this happen? Then, an idea hit my head. We see evidence of a wobble in the pole, so how would this happen?

The poles have ice accumulated over time. The distribution is never even, so this causes a wobble. As the wobble gets larger, the distribution gets more uneven until the other incredible force we live with eventually kicks in. That force is the earth spinning at over 1000mph, depending on where you sit. This rotational speed creates a massive centrifugal force that eventually may throw the ice packs on the poles to the equator.

What does that do? It would cause the ice pack to melt immediately and flood the earth. Also, the shift against that force may cause everything to get shifted around, including the oceans, which may move at 1000mph over the lands, destroying everything in its path. It would be bad! FWIW, it's the same with the WIND since a Category 5 hurricane has 157mph wind (less than the 1000mph breeze that may happen)!!

Also, it would bury most living things in a mountain of mud, fossilizing things. How can a fossil be complete if we never see this in nature? All observed animals that die in nature turn to chaos and dust in a year. No, to get fossils, you need a catastrophic event. Also, what about mammoths that get frozen with warm weather vegetation in their bellies? That could NEVER have happened without a catastrophic event. This evidence has been found in the ice pack. The massive crustal shift explains this event neatly.

So, am I predicting this may happen tomorrow? Nope, I'm just making an observation. Also, consider how the rotation speed at the poles is near 0mph and then increase as we move out, so using F=ma, the mass needs to be huge before we see this happening.

By the way, after writing this, I checked DuckDuckGo, and this is confirmed (and shown to be already considered). CLICK HERE. I also found an incomplete article from 1885 that suggests this as well. So as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 1:9, "there is nothing new under the sun"

[bluemanedhawk]

I recently found out how to really enable all warnings in GCC: this answer on StackOverflow gives the following command. It outputs a string that can be directly fed as command-line arguments to GCC, and it also reminds me of the title text of xkcd#1638.

gcc -Q --help=warning,C \| sed -e 's/^\s\*\(\-\S\*\)\s\*\[\w\*\]/\1 /gp;d' \| tr -d '\n'

(The “,C” in the text above is not in the original answer. It can be changed if you're not using C.)

However, it's explicitly noted that this can make it impossible to do anything because some of the options are contradictory and most of them are things that are not worth caring about ever, meaning that chances are you're going to need to append some -Wno-s to the output or sprinkle your code with #pragma GCC diagnostic.

Findings so far include the following:

Append -Wno-system-headers or else the output will be flooded with problems you can't solve or even control.

You need to prepend -Wformat because of certain options that are contingent upon it, but are output before it because the options are outputted in alphabetical order.

Unless you're targeting extremely old compilers, you can append -Wno-traditional and -Wno-traditional-conversion.

Unless you're targeting C++ as well as C, you can append -Wno-c++-compat.

If you use any extensions at all, you should append -Wno-pedantic.

Twice i've used pragmas to disable -Wsuggest-attribute=format because it suggested using gnu_printf instead of printf as the third argument. I didn't turn this off at the command line because, though once is happenstance and twice is coïncidence, it is only coincidence, not thrice's enemy action or quadrice's GNOME Project official policy.

The -Wabi warning requires an argument; either respecify it and give it one or use -Wno-abi.

There's a warning called -Wunsuffixed-float-constants that warns about floating constants that don't have a suffix. This warns about all decimal double constants. There is no elegant way to suppress this because this warning is intended for codebases that use the _Decimal_X_ types.

Signal handlers can be static. It's something i'd never thought about, but makes sense now that i do.

There's a warning called -Walloca that warns on any usage of alloca, even with the appropriate header file. I tried searching DuckDuckGo for why this is and it got philosophical.