Reblog to open a rail line from your blog to the person you reblogged this from

our beautiful rail line... (so far)

BEHOLD!

Public transport!

>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.

In case you lost it - a link to the eSIM donation guide. Even if you feel sick and powerless, you can at least do this. And even if you really, really can't donate, you can always at least share this and remind others.

https://gazaesims.com/esim-purchase-tutorial/

the lowest tier, which costs 9 dollars, offers a week of connection while the very next, 16 dollars, will provide a full month of contact with the world to someone who desperately needs it. this is not some idle step. an entire month is a huge length of time for people who are displaced, terrified, and isolated.

in light of israel's looming invasion on rafah, south africa implored the icj to call for the protection of palestinians with new preliminary orders. the icj denied this request, insisting that its january orders would be sufficient enough in ensuring the safety of people residing in rafah.

we have all seen how israel responded to the icj verdict earlier this month. they have all but intensified their attacks on palestinians, their favorite of whom seem to be children. this will end in a bloodbath. palestinians, already malnourished and living in literal tents, will be bombarded, they will be shot, they will be slaughtered. and when i say palestinians, a lot of them are actual toddlers. the videos coming out of this are proof enough.

at this point, it has been made amply clear that palestinians will never experience safety in their own homeland. a lot of the families in gaza are trying to raise funds to get out of it, because there's nowhere left to go.

there is nowhere left to go. if these people don't get the funds necessary to escape, they will die.

it's vital that you go to operation olive branch's spreadsheet, choose a family that resonates with you, and donate as much as you can to their gofundme. every last dollar counts. one dollar could be the difference between life and death for a family. please don't fall victim to the bystander effect. your contribution counts, however little it may be. and whether you're able to donate or not, spread this to as many people as you can. each second we stay silent is a second an entire family is brutally massacred.

to put things into perspective--just yesterday it was reported that 112 palestinians were killed, and 157 were left injured. in the last 24 hours. this is quite literally time-sensitive down to the last second. i would not be able to sleep at night knowing i lived through a literal genocide and did absolutely nothing about it.

I will protect you, at all cost 🤍

seeing chara undertale get mischaracterized as an evil demonic being hellbent on wiping out monsters in the year 2024

how is this fandom smart enough to have a majority of people know and understand that kris is not inherently evil or malicious and that you’re just the one controlling them and using their powers for horrible things in the snowgrave route and yet simultaneously Not Smart enough to realize you are practically doing the same thing to chara in the no mercy route of undertale. question mark?

people will look at chara undertale and deem THEM as the villain and the ‘TRUE evil’ in the game whose sole focus is eliminating all life ever to exist when in reality chara undertale literally killed themself so that monsterkind would be free . do you remember that. do you remember that chara was a very mentally unwell child heavily implied to come from a background of horrific abuse who came to mount ebott to end their own life only to find a sense of belonging and community and that they died hoping that their act of self sacrifice could free the people they’d come to know as their true family. that with that knowledge it makes zero sense why they would be the mastermind behind all the damage you, of your own agency, choose to dish out in the no mercy route. when asriel says “chara wasn’t the best person” he is very evidently not implying that chara was some demon on this earth that torments anything that moves, he is merely saying that despite their status as a holy sacrificial lamb to monsterkind, they still had flaws as a person. they had vengeance against all humans, not monsters, and maybe if that was better managed it wouldn’t have resulted in them doing what they did. like dude i don’t know how to tell you this but every instance of Chara Being Scary And Creepy are YOUR doing, because when you reach the perfect ending of freedom for monsterkind chara ultimately strived for and then forever strip that away from them by killing everyone they love, they seriously have every right to last out at you for that. like do you not think undertales central theme of viewing people with compassion does not extend to what is essentially a mentally ill child fleeing from a life of violence and mistreatment at the hands of others just because They Made A Scary Face At you LIKE?????? ARE YOU INSANE

and re: chara having an undying hatred for humanity. that IS a core aspect of their character. ANDDDD it DOESNT make them evil. what people Always Always miss is that that hatred for all other people is very common from children from broken homes, like of course when you come to view violence as a means of inflicting power and you’re defenseless to fight back against it you are going to want to have that feeling of power for yourself just to feel like you Are Someone in this world. i feel like a big reason why chara went thru with their plan is that like. evidently asgore and toriel never really tried to dispute the worldview that humans are evil, because they as monsters have always lived in fear of humans. it’s just that they see chara as a child first and a human second. their status as a human being is of less importance to the dreemurrs because they have a child and they know the importance of keeping a child safe and THATS why they’re so compassionate towards chara to begin with. and the fact that asgore and toriel maybe didnt do a lot to quell charas hatred of humanity does not make them bad people and it does not make them evil. it only makes them flawed. tldr Leave This Poor Kid Alone Whats Your Problem

TAGS VIA @phthalomancer <- GET THIS PERSON A TRUE RIGHT NOW

Can I show you my contender for most creature ever?

The Nauta Mushroom Tongue Salamander, everyone

Good news, fellow artists! Nightshade has finally been released by the UChicago team! If you aren't aware of what Nightshade is, it's a tool that helps poison AI datasets so that the model "sees" something different from what an image actually depicts. It's the same team that released Glaze, which helps protect art against style mimicry (aka those finetuned models that try to rip off a specific artist). As they show in their paper, even a hundred poisoned concepts make a huge difference.

(Reminder that glazing your art is more important than nighshading it, as they mention in their tweets above, so when you're uploading your art, try to glaze it at the very least.)

target audience

"Alright, time to see what this animated poetry movie is like-

Oh jesus christ"

To elaborate outside of initial tags:

So this is from 30,000 Miles From Chang’an, which is a 2 hours 47 minutes(!!?) long Chinese animated film that is basically an actually legitimate historical epic and historical biopic (think Gladiator & Amadeus) made into animation, and also passionate tribute to classical art and culture, similar to something like Miss Hokusai or Millennium Actress.

I heard it was decent before, but was not expecting it to be This Ambitious. The Criminally Underrated Champ of 2023 Animation

this is a pretty hilarious interpretation of the actual panel

The twins and their starters may have grown slightly taller, but their love of shenanigans have tripled, no, quadrupled in size.

On that note did you know Eelectrik has a glow animation?? Perfect nightlight eel. Absolute gold standard for creature.

Bonus shitpost under cut ft @birdsaretoddlers’s incredible take.

Congratulations! Your Tynamo evolved into an Eelektrik!

(Bonus below!)

(The eel dog quadrupled in weight)

life isn't all bad, thanks to the faerie festival I finished my dream neopets crosspaint (alien/halloween/darigan aisha based on the dog from The Thing)

Yo would anyone here be able to recommend a good beginner-level learning guitar YouTube channel? or something like that? I wanna learn so bad