The Eclectic Thoughts of a Bipolar Bookworm

in b4 95% of all websites in june 2024 announce that "for security" they will only work with browsers that use manifest v3

Just use Firefox.

The more people who use Firefox the better! It's got versions for the desktop, android, and iphone, all free. In addition to ublock origin there are thousands of addons. You could also consider using one of Mozilla's paid products, such as their VPN, or donating to the Mozilla Foundation, in order to ensure they're able to keep going.

Not to be Old on main but I remember this exact thing happening in the late 90s and early 00s. I remember it very well. Microsoft pushed out all the browser competition with Internet Explorer, at which point both browser and web innovation stagnated for years because why fix something that's broken if everyone is using the broken thing anyway because there are hardly any other options. If you want to know how bad it was, Internet Explorer did not have browser tabs and it certainly did not have any sort of adblock. And everyone just lived with it.

I am watching the exact same thing happen with Chrome in real time today and that's why I always reblog these posts and sometimes am extra annoying and add on to them. I don't want to see it happen again because it sucked. Please use Firefox. Use it on mobile too (it has browser extensions!!! Including ad blockers!!!) And reminder that Edge/Brave/Vivaldi are all built on Chromium and you should not be using those either. Those browsers will show up as Chrome on tracking analytics and it does not help the overall project, which is showing web developers that Chrome is not the only browser people are using.

Your passwords and other useful things transfer to Firefox, btw. Go make the switch. You have nothing to lose.

Most websites that tell you they need Chrome to work are lying, even if they block you from accessing them if you're not using Chrome. They just do not want to support the dev work to optimize for anything else, or may have a special deal with Google.

Fortunately, there are Firefox extensions that just basically tell websites "yeah, I'm definitely Chrome. don't worry about it"

Please note I have not used either of these, because adblockers and script blockers are good enough at disabling those annoying messages.

love that period in the late 2000s and early 10s when being able to competently use google was considered arcane nerd knowledge

This vanished not because everyone learned how to use google competently, but because google degraded so badly using it competently is no longer possible.

Why I won't read your (or anybody's) fan fiction. Because there are people out there who will decide that I stole their ideas, and who will, against all sanity, sue.

yeah ok but what does weaboo even mean

like who just said one day 

“YUP AND THEY WILL BE CALLED…

…the WEABOO.”

and everyone else went along with it

ok quick history lesson

so on 4chan the word “wapanese” was used to refer to dumb anime nerds. white boy wannabe japanese. makes sense.

A mod got pissed at it being used so much and said that the next person to use it would get banned, so the boards decided to use a silly nonsense word to replace it. 

by complete general consensus, the boards picked the word “weeaboo” from a perry bible comic.

henceforth, “weeaboo” was used in replacement of “wapanese”. 

the end.

I have learned so much

this should be taught in history class

I love memetic communication when it gets to the point of being incomprehensible because can you imagine showing someone this picture

And asking them what Greek god it represents

#my favourite part is the people in the notes being like 'the god of children's hospitals' to be contrary#because the ball is Red#bc like. do. do they know what one of Apollo's areas of Being The God Of This Thing are?#healing and diseases#also he's like#the god of Youths#so like.yeah.#Apollo IS the god of children's hospitals actually Via @mothmammoth​

I often see posts about curating your own online experience that make the point, “content creators aren’t your parents.” And, yes, that is absolutely true! And I try not to be like “as a parent,“ but as a parent…

EVEN PARENTS ARE SUPPOSED TO ENCOURAGE RESPONSIBLE READING/VIEWING BEHAVIOR. NOT filter everything ahead of time for their kid.

When my kiddo was 5, his pediatrician was asking him the usual Well Child Visit questions (“What are your favorite foods? What do you do to get your body moving? Do you know what to do if you get lost in a public place?” Etc.) and she asked, “What do you do if you see something on TV that scares or upsets you?”

I piped up like, “Oh, he doesn’t watch TV without one of us in the room,” which was true at the time and is still largely true now. She said, “Yes, but that won’t always be the case, so make sure you’re talking to him about what to do if he sees something that upsets him.”

So we started talking to him about that, and the answer is simple: “Turn it off or leave the room, and talk to someone you trust about what you saw and what you’re feeling.”

The answer is NOT “Ask your parents to make sure you never see anything upsetting again,” because that’s just not possible — and ultimately that would be doing the kid a disservice, since sooner or later he’s going to be out in the world where we can’t control what he watches or reads. That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make sure he’s watching/reading age-appropriate stuff, it just means that’s not the only safeguard he has — and that’s a good thing.

So yes, content creators aren’t your parents and aren’t responsible for making sure you never see anything you don’t like — but also, your own parents should have taught you what to do when that happens. So if they didn’t, take it from me, your internet mom:

Turn it off.

Walk away.

Talk to someone you trust about how you’re feeling.

And leave the person who created the thing that upset you alone.

When my oldest kids were small -- about 6 and 8 - I bought them a Video (the VCR kind) of John Waters' Hairspray, a film they loved, and, getting home at 3 am, left it for them with a note. They woke me up the next morning. "It's not Hairspray. It's something scary with a car." Due to a mislabelling error, the videotape was Stephen King's Christine.

I mentioned it to friends and a day later got a call from a tabloid journalist who wanted to know about this terrible thing that had happened to my family. "It's not a story, " I told them. "My kids know where the off-button is and how to press it, and the moment they knew they weren't watching what they wanted to watch, they turned it off."

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, that's terrifying on a whole new level.

"they should teach media literacy in schools" english class "they should teach students how to spot misinformation" it's english class "they should teach kids critical thinking" it's called english class

sexualizing your fav characters? Nah mate you got me wrong, I’m asexualizing them, that one’s demi now

two very good fictional relationship dynamics:

1. i would find you and love you in every universe. our love is inevitable and transcends reality as we understand it

2. this is the only universe where the dominos fell exactly right so that we could fall in love. we have something unique and we have overcome so much to get here

you know how all those applesauce packets were recalled for lead?

well. it turns out the cinnamon used in them may have been laced with lead on purpose.

fun times in the united states food industry right now am I right folks

In case you’re a buffoon (like me) and thought someone was out here meticulously hand-poisoning applesauce:

We love cutting corners to maximize profit at the expense of our consumers

hand-poisoning applesauce would be too tedious. these applesauces were poisoned in bulk for maximum efficiency

Turmeric is also frequently affected by this. A lead compound with a bright yellow color can be used.

I'm not gonna dox myself by saying precisely what I do for a living, but I am involved in public environmental health, and in the past have conducted home investigations in child lead poisoning cases. For years, foreign spices have been a problem, particularly for immigrant families who visit relatives overseas and bring spices back from south asia in particular.

During and immediately after covid, however, we started finding domestically sold spices coming back from lab testing with high lead results. Sam's club, wal-mart, etc. We used to tell families to buy domestically instead of bringing things back from India, Pakistan, etc, but even that isn't safe anymore.

You might - might - be safer with higher end organic products but I really just don't trust anything anymore. This isn't a new issue, but it's definitely becoming more widespread.

is there a reliable way to test spices for lead at home?

if the spice you're using is water-soluble, you can mix it with water and then use a water testing kit. they sell water-testing kits at the hardware store; ones that you send off to a lab are more reliable (but also more expensive).

you can also buy lead-testing swabs on the Internet. some of these are not reliable, so I'd recommend testing the lead-testing swabs. use a swab on something that you know is lead (a fishing sinker, a car battery, etc) and another swab on something that you know is lead-free (most things in your home, hopefully) and make sure you get the expected results.

note that lead-testing kits are not food-safe, so you should not just put pipettes / test swabs / etc into your spice jar. spoon out a small amount (onto a plate or whatever), test that small amount, and then throw that small amount away. (and then wash the plate.)

gonna add this consumer reports investigation from a couple of years back that made the rounds. they looked into a bunch of american spice brands and found that this is a huge problem across brands, regardless of whether or not it's organic (exact quote: "CR’s tests could not determine whether one brand was consistently better or worse than any other. And organic products did not have consistently lower levels than conventionally grown ones").

summary of the results, which tested for things like lead, arsenic, and cadmium beyond safe limits:

fun!

buying indulgences from the nerd pope so i can keep drawing my cartoon dicks

The older i get the more i realise i don’t wanna be around drama conflict or stress i just want a cozy home good food and to be surrounded by happy people

the worst thing that could possibly happen to ao3 is it being put on the app store so please stop asking for it because you don't understand what would happen if that went through. ao3's whole deal is it archives EVERYTHING, while the apple app store's whole deal is keeping everything clean and safe. so if ao3 were to have an app all of the 'bad' stuff, including nsfw in general, would have to be censored at best or would be purged at worse. the google play store is more lax but who fucking knows what GOOGLE would police if they got their hands on the archive. do not ask for an app. do not use third party apps. it's on mobile browser functioning perfectly, just fucking use that before you ruin everything for everyone please.

I think the people who keep asking for an app are only doing so because it's a sneaky way to get their way about removing the content they deem "problematic" without outright saying it. It just seems innocuous and totally innocent to say "there should be an app! it'd be more accessible!", relying on the ignorance of people not realizing the website is far more accessible than an app can ever be.

hmm. ublock origin no longer seems to reliably work on youtube for me. unfortunate!

manage extensions> ublock origin> meatball menu> options> my filters> paste the following:

youtube.com##+js(set, yt.config_.openPopupConfig.supportedPopups.adBlockMessageViewModel, false)

youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.adBlocksFound, 0)

youtube.com##+js(set, ytplayer.config.args.raw_player_response.adPlacements, [])

youtube.com##+js(set, Object.prototype.hasAllowedInstreamAd, true)

then hit "apply changes"

new hat :)