im just going to pretend i can control reality with my thoughts

happy neil banging out the tunes day to everyone who celebrates

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

fastest reblog in the west

Yeppers. :)

reblogging for study later AND to spread the info.

Seriously, get and run PiHole if you can. It changes your internet experience so much for the better. I get shocked when I visit a website when I'm someone else's network, by just how many ads the internet is flooded with now. Take back control.

At their core, these people are bullies. The cruelty is the point.

sobbing and crying at the woman who stole a meth addicted kitten from her dealer and then she and the kitten got clean together

thats love baby!!

TUMBLR STORY TIME.

I volunteer for my local shelter and when the weather's good, we do a free vaccine clinic every Friday. Free distemper, free rabies, cats and dogs. We hand out free food from the pet pantry, we give people leashes and collars, we do whatever we can to keep people's animals at home and healthy. Every animal that can stay home and be fed and be vaccinated is an animal that we can keep out of the shelter.

We get all kinds of folks, sometimes we even get backyard breeders but we don't do any judgment, because we want people to come and get their dogs vaccinated, because one parvo case costs $7000+ and the whole year of Parvo vaccines for hundreds of dogs costs less. It's just harm reduction, everything we do is harm reduction.

So anyway, this one day this woman comes up to the vax clinic and she is high as fuckin' hell, just obliterated fucked up, smoking a joint in line, and she has this TINY pibble puppy with her, maaaaybe four weeks old. This thing is so fuckin tiny and wormy and lethargic, and she's like, "Hey I heard I can get her shots." and we're like, oh fuck this puppy is gonna die. Like straight up, we were all like, fuck that dog is gonna die. So we gave her wormer, we gave the first distemper shot, and I put together a whole care package: wormer to take home, puppy milk replacer, puppy wet food, a leash, a harness, some blankets, toys, we gave her instructions on how to get the puppy eating food, and we told her to come back in 3 weeks for the follow up vaccine. And we were all like, well fuck, that puppy's gonna die, goddamnit, that's so fucked up. But you know, we did our best, and we hoped we'd see her again.

And in three weeks, you guys, she showed up. And she was still high, but like, half-high this time. Smoking a cigartte in line but like, could focus, could ask and answer questions. And she'd taught that tiny puppy how to SIT and had her walking on a leash. We found out that it took her three buses to get to the clinic, and she told us all about how she got the puppy eating right, got her stool solid, she was taking her on walks... The puppy looked so good, you guys. I almost cried, it was so big. Really happy puppy. At the end of the visit, we were like, ok, see you in three more weeks for the next distemper.

So three weeks later, she shows up, and she's sober, and she told us, "You know, I was really fucked up the day I bought that puppy, I wasn't sure I was going to live, and I bought that puppy and she was too young, and I didn't know what I was doing but y'all were so nice to me, and you helped me so much, and I knew that I had to give this puppy the best life I could, so I moved back in with my grandma, and I'm getting clean, and I'm on methadone, and I'm going to rehab next week, and when I get back, I'll come back and visit you guys again."

So I just wanna say. Sometimes it's hard to find a reason to get clean for yourself. Sometimes you gotta do it for a little critter that depends on you.

Lyra, my beloved cat of 13 years, passed away this year on Father's Day. She's been by my side through very difficult times and was my little rock of steady and unrelenting love. I struggled a lot drawing this, and struggled a lot posting it, but I know I would've wanted to read a comic like this that validated my grief for her when I lost her.

Wherever you are, Lyra my little summer star, I love you always! Thank you for being the best thing in my life.

Thank you for posting this. I don't often comment outside of tags, but this brought tears to my eyes. It reminds me of Lobster, my sweet little boy, who passed away at 5 just a week before I graduated highschool. I miss you, buddy. I hope you miss me too

Been thinking of Lobster and I know wherever he is, he loves you so, so much still

fuck i don't wanna post about politics but its scaring the absolute shit out of me the story of the guy from Maryland with no criminal record who was accidentally sent to an El Salvador mega-prison where inmates are beaten, tortured, and dont have proper hygiene or medical care

like this guy had NO TRIAL OR ANYTHING they just fucking kidnapped him off the street and sent him to a foreign torture prison

El salvador has tens of thousands of people in prison and the leader brags about how horrible conditions are in there. Hundreds of people have died in El Salvador prisons according to the second link up there.

And what's more, the guy originally ran away from Venezuela because there were gangs trying to kill him.

And it sounds like there's other people been sent there too and the republicans are defending sending people to foreign torture prison WITHOUT TRIAL??? And Kristi "puppy-shooter" Noem visited the megaprison to film and show off the inmates' dehumanization and misery

here's a pdf of a document filed by the ACLU with a lot of information on how they're making decisions about deporting people

in the first few pages you'll see they have a "guide" on how to recognize gang members and it's total bullshit. They have a gallery of tattoos that are supposedly "gang tattoos" but they legitimately just regular tattoos that anyone could have.

and they're like "members of the gang are usually young men 18-25 who wear clothes associated with sports teams"

i read article about it and some dipshit had commented "don't you get it? We DON'T CARE if illegals get sent to prison or what happens to them. They're rapist murdering terrorist thugs. We DON'T CARE. We DON'T CARE."

That was when I felt the most horrible sense of dread. The display of cruelty and dominance in Kristi Noem's videos, the luxuriation in humiliating and dehumanizing another person.

It reminded me of when my mom showed me a clip from Tucker Carlson speaking, saying "Watch this. I know this sounds crazy, but I almost think he has some sort of demon in him." Tucker Carlson was describing a metaphor of Trump as an angry father coming home to his disobedient teenage daughter to beat her. "This is going to hurt you way more than it hurts me!" Tucker Carlson said in the clip, with pure satisfaction and glee. He was experiencing such gratification by this fantasy of humiliating, dominating, and causing pain to someone else, and this fantasy was his political ideal. It really was just like looking a demon square in the face.

A political ideal of domination. Of inflicting pain. Of punishing and hurting and crushing. A politics that craves to see other people suffering and humiliated and treated as lower than shit. And I think the pleasure they take in that feels to them sort of golden, like justice.

We can't let this thing live in us.

Like I keep thinking of that quote that went around a couple times that talked about the author hearing the statement "Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher." and instantly feeling this pit of dread open in their stomach with its truth and how dark and horrible that truth was. I wish I could find it again because it had the same effect on me.

To me, the most chilling thing about this whole thing has been that a federal judge ordered the man brought back to the US and the administration's response was "as a judge you don't have jurisdiction over El Salvador so it's not our problem". The Supreme Court just ruled within the last hour or so that this is bullshit and they do have to get him back, but it remains to be seen what, if anything, the administration is going to do to comply with this.

Also! If they can get away with accidentally sending someone legally allowed to be in the US to El Salvador, they can "accidentally" send anyone to El Salvador! They can send protestors, they can send LGBT people, they can send someone who gets a little snippy with their city council rep complaining about an ordinance!

It's fucking terrifying.

I'm trying not to be like "They're gonna deport CITIZENS next!" because it's bad enough that they sent this guy to torture prison based on lies without a trial, whether he was a citizen or not. He's just a guy and we're just guys and we're all vermin to a fascist administration.

But there is nothing stopping them from disappearing whoever they want if they can get away with this. Plus they're literally deporting refugees that went through rigorous screening and were legally allowed to be here. They're revoking student visas. They're not checking to make sure it's legal before they're disappearing people. Why the hell would a citizen be any different?

it's frankly incredible how, at the root of modern conservative politics, is a belief that demons are real and on Earth and the only thing that can stop them is rich white christian men.

keep that in mind whenever you hear a right-wing propagandist talking about the economy or tax plans or some other otherwise normal political topic. their position, however rationally they might present it, is largely informed by trying to win an imaginary war with the literal christian devil and his infernal army of the supernatural. imagine the kinds of acts that they are comfortable justifying if those are the stakes to them, and imagine how silly it is when they try to pretend to be moderate in a holy war against satan.

this is also why it's not actually reasonable to "agree with some of their positions" when it comes to conservatives.

their ideology is built on this, blind hate for The Other, and nothing else. there is no secret truth at the heart of this. they've been putting immigrants in concentration camps because they hate them and think they're haunted by Satan's Legion of the Damned. all of their arguments are just window-dressing to try and make the tactics of their imaginary war on the supernatural seem reasonable to people who do not believe that the literal christian devil is trying to destroy Western Civilization with Woke.

now, am i saying that all conservatives whole heartedly believe this? no. but, if you are told to go fight in a war against elves, and you go to fight, but insist you don't believe in that crazy elf stuff: you are still fighting the war against the elves. you are in the elf war on the side of people who believe in evil elves.

But the DOW bounced back now so I guess everything is fine forever again. Market manipulation? What's that?

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Scrolled past this agakn and just can't get over how much I love it. We need to make things beautiful again and this is such a wonderful example. The beadwork on the wires of a utitarian object, contrasted with the grey concrete.

those are wire crimps used to make the design. This is fabulous

(Sound on.) We’re all doomed.

Well fucks? Get to it!

41.7k notes and as of 7th April, the signatures are only 14,817.

The deadline is 9 July 2025.

Trans rights are always wavering in safety and are not stable and well protected in the UK. Please sign.

Trans rights in the UK is my rights.

I know folks have been sharing this link on other posts, but &udm=14 works well:

You can add it as an extension to Firefox now: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/udm14/reviews/

В трампа немає якогось хитрого мастер-плану. Він тупо як мавпа з бітою все псує

Google translation:

Thanks, @ukrocorvid!

Source

Source

“Detainee under 18”