Brinens and Things

Comments on my own posts:

[fairly mild cw: food] Comment and Link Roundup: August 9th, 2021

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: apocalypse, scrupulosity] [My Own Advisor; Wayback] (OP by Mark Seed) A gentle correction of one of the most important omissions I encountered on my wiki-walk through Canadian personal-finance blogs, climate-crisis individual-action edition.

[arguably cw: bugs] [Mastodon; Wayback] (OP by monsterblue@dragon.style) Today in spreading the good word of PPE: wearable mosquito nets.

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tarhalindur) Laptop recommendations for an erratic-supply-chain world.

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Peaches, the easy way(s).

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Links:

[strong cw: war, murder] [Data Secrets Lox part 1; Data Secrets Lox part 2; Wayback part 1; Wayback part 2] (by Chevalier Mal Fet) I don't read Data Secrets Lox much, but every once in a while I take a look at what's won the Alexander Prize for Effortposting. Turns out in May and June one of the people there wrote a whole-ass history book on 20th-century South Korea, with a focus on the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. Well-written, and a good look into a time period from after most history lessons stop.

(Note: I did not proofread a whole book, but the bits I double-checked seemed accurate.)

[Patagonia; Wayback] (by Sakeus Bankson) Zippers: the bane of high-quality, low-waste clothing manufacturers.

Laugh rule:
[arguably cw: unreality] [gwern.net; Wayback]

The lion-hunting paper was duly accepted for publication, with one editorial alteration: our footnote to a footnote was ruthlessly removed.<sup>4

4</sup>Monsters! —Editor. ↩

[cw: unreality] [Wikipedia; Wayback] Not a laugh-rule link, but it needed to be after that one: while we're talking about H. Petard, take a look at Ong's Hat.



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[arguably cw: nsfw text] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tototavros) Aspects and histories of hypno-kink.

[cw: nsfw text] [AO3; Wayback] (OP by Huitzil) Have I mentioned lately how great The Hentai World of Eilverra is? I'm not even personally into almost any of the sex involved, but the humour and worldbuilding are well worth it on their own.

[cw: apocalypse, (fairly mild) poverty] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by grayestofghosts) Resilient, sovereign computing (comms, information storage/search, crunching, etc) is important across almost any situation, not *just* in apocalypses and not *just* in the Global South. [two comments]

[cw: amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by k-vichan, though not exactly in response to anyone in particular) How to prepare for fanfiction.net's inevitable demise.

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Links:

[MarineTraffic] The bright side of that whole incident with the Ever Given is learning about this neat live map of ships. I did not know you could just...*do* that.

[Nature; Wayback] (by Jessica Morrison) Mantis shrimp likely see *fewer* colours than humans do, not more: their extra colour receptors are for making them *faster* at determining what colour something is. (On the other hand, these are presumably *humans* *telling* us this...)

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [Giving Green; Wayback] Giving Green applies effective-altruism principles to analyse charities fighting climate change, finding the places where money goes furthest. (Note: if you're a Canadian taxpayer (or a Canadian tax-filer who might owe within the next five years) who wants to donate to the Clean Air Task Force, check out RC Forward. They can help you get money more efficiently to some other generally-EA charities too.)

[F-Droid (or Google Play); Wayback] KDE Connect lets you connect your Linux (or *maybe* Windows or Mac) computer and your Android phone. You can receive SMS notifications on your laptop, use your phone touchscreen as a trackpad, and more!

[GitLab; Wayback] (by W1nst0n) Ever wanted to get rid of apps the phone manufacturer or carrier insisted on installing on *your* phone? Don't have the know-how or courage to hack into the firmware and rip them out by the roots? (can't say I blame you: I fucked up the cellular modem on a device attempting to do that sort of thing) Just want to know more about what all the system apps actually *do*?

Universal Android Debloater is a non-invasive built-in-app-removal method. Strictly speaking, it doesn't actually *remove* the apps per se: rather, it seals them off so that they can't run (they also stop showing up in the app drawer). It can unseal any or all of them again upon request, and if all else fails, nothing the script does to the phone runs deep enough to survive a factory reset. The app lists come with documentation describing what every built-in app on every known-to-W1nst0n device does, to help you decide which apps you want to seal off.

Laugh rule:
[Bloomberg; Wayback crawling forbidden] (by Matt Levine, though the part quoted is by Tom Neill)

I thought it would be fun to be the first meme website to sell itself as an NFT. Also to be completely honest, I thought it might make it into Matt Levine’s Money Stuff. Essentially, I was 'doing it for the gram'.

There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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I think my December 2018 self will forgive me for having posted this OP on Tumblr. I still have no plans to make further Tumblr-hosted OPs in the future, but this *particular* post really needs to be rebloggable.

Comments on my own posts:

The one about Signal [four comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by reasonableapproximation) Radical self-expression through clothing.

[cw: embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partly in response to sigmaleph) The confusing proliferation of names in Worm. [two comments, three if you count the tags]

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by BagelofDeath) Honest Chinese food reviews from a Chinese restaurant owner. (Also, advice on how to get good chicken fingers in Canada.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by grayestofghosts) Sometimes reading less is a reasonable response to changing circumstances.

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moral-autism) Some types of professionally preserved foods we highly recommend trying.

[maybe cw: stalking] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by nerviovago; in response to plain-dealing-villain and moral-autism) Hiding secret passageways inside fake clothes dryers.

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Links:

[cw: nsfw text, (mild) death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (by arihi) A new repository for mind-control erotica, one that is *not* built on 90's tech with 90's limitations.

[Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley) I thought this was going to be about priest-based Age of Empires builds, but the thing it actually is is neat too.

Three laugh-rule entries:
[Bloomberg; Wayback crawling forbidden] (by Matt Levine)

Or combine the last two approaches: “At the end of each trading day from now on, the number of Tesla shares will be adjusted, via split or reverse split, such that each day’s closing price is $420.69.” A share of Tesla could represent a variable percentage interest in the company, but always be worth $420.69. Elon you can live this dream if you want it enough.

[Kiwix; Wayback] (by Stéphane Coillet-Matillon)

I wish I could tell you how we did it, but it involved some C++, Typescript, and sacrificing a few chicken. Only two of these three worked, and there’s still some discussion about which.

[cw: politics] [The Guardian; Wayback] (by Lauren Aratani)
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There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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(We've more or less returned to an Errand Day system, so I deliberately postponed this roundup so that Backup Day and Errand Day would be offset rather than piled onto the same day.)


Comments on my own posts:

[cw: discourse, (mild) violence] I personally am missing the part of sexuality that would make me sexually attracted to motorcycles

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by yvannairie) Did you know ruby-tipped styli are a thing?

[mild cw: apocalypse] [Reddit; Wayback] (OP by TheTwelveYearOld) Well, I finally broke down and made a Reddit account. Reddit, while being useful to *read* in some cases, tends to be a bit...harsh, for me to want to participate in. But I found I couldn't just leave the poor OP, not when I *knew* the answer to their question and knew there was a good chance that nobody else would give them a straight answer. (Reddit, as we've seen before, is a *terrible* place to ask for advice on apocalypse insurance. Even r/collapse seems to be generally fatalistic about it.)

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by prokopetz; in response to moonlit-tulip) Utility-belt tips.

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Links:

Two laugh-rule entries:
[Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley) How fast can you die in Crusader Kings 3?

After that, just in case anyone in the church still likes him, he converts to the Lollard heresy, because its name contains the word “lol”.

[mild cw: stalking, death] [mango.pdf.zone; Wayback] (by Alex Hope) Airline boarding passes are much like keys, in that it is much more dangerous than you might think to post pictures of them on Instagram.
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(Alex Hope's other blog posts are hilarious too, and I recommend all of them.)



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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Comments on my own posts:

[none this time]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by itsbenedict) Tumblr is fucking around with non-chronological feeds again. Make sure to turn the setting off.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by mostlysignssomeportents) Bridgefy: simultaneously worse and better than previously believed. Probably still best avoided on the whole, though I think my threshold for "how desperate would I need to be before resorting to Bridgefy" has lowered.

[cw: what it says on the tin] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by mathemagicalschema) The subjective effectiveness of OTC painkillers.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by jadagul) How to get Chromium-based browsers to *actually* shut down when you tell them to shut down.

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Links:

[none suitable for this section]



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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Comments on my own posts:

Doing the hermit-crab shuffle [three comments, not counting the postscript]

Ask me about my special interests [four comments, two of which are new]

Blog formatting skills

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by lydamorehouse) The costs and benefits of smart-home assistants.

[mild cw: death] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by ilzolende) Blog recs.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) The hostile fee structure of Paypal.

[cw: nsfw text] [AO3; Wayback] (OP by Huitzil) Hey, remember that porn-worldbuilding giftfic I got a few years ago? The author wrote a revised and expanded version! I highly recommend it, as well as the chapters that *weren't* inspired by me.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by siderea) Various ways to follow a Dreamwidth blog (in this case, siderea), and the circumstances in which one might pick one over another.

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Links:

[cw: food] [Tumblr; Wayback] (OP is technically by extrajordinary, but the bulk of the thread is by petermorwood; h/t ilzo-misc) Restaurants in ancient Rome.

Two laugh-rule entries:
[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by siderea) The Great Chain of History.

[Bulwer-Lytton; Wayback] 2019 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest, in which one attempts to write the worst opening line for a novel.

(previously on)

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That's right: he's still making new songs *and still getting airtime on contemporary Top 40 stations*.

Bonus fun fact about "Shine a Light", learned while looking Bryan Adams up on Wikipedia just now: "co-written by Ed Sheeran"

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(Though to be fair, Adams is about one decade younger than I'd guessed: he was actually only nine years old in the summer of '69.)