Brinens and Things

You don't realise how much of your income is denominated in USD until the exchange rate goes up 7%, huh.

(I feel like sigmaleph is laughing right now at the idea that 7% constitutes a major fluctuation)

I'd...been thinking of that as an annoyance, paying exchange fees when Americans working the same gigs didn't have to, but I guess it's kind of useful as a hedge.

(And Swagbucks lets you *pick* between [CAD-PayPal at a fixed 1.33 exchange rate] and USD-PayPal, so you can check the spot rate and decide for yourself whether you're better off paying PayPal's extortionate 4% exchange fee. I made the switch and am getting around 60 - 70 extra cents per $10, which is a nice boost.)

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(To give a specific figure: during the last full calendar month (November), 14% of my income was USD-denominated. It varies from month to month, though.)

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: illness] The one about sore throats and impending doom [two comments]


[cw: government bullshit] ""Fun"" fact of the day (March 1, 2024)


[fairly mild cw: illness] 2020s music, part 3

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: corporate bullshit] [Thoughts of Mine; Wayback] (OP by Mabel Schaefer) Fun with cell-phone-plan loopholes. [two or three comments, depending on how you count]


[cw: what it says on the tin] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by slavicafire) Food-disgust test.


[cw: food (with picture)] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by lnthefade) This is a thing that is now, unfortunately, not being offered at Disney World.


[fairly mild cw: discourse] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) A modest proposal for affordable food/housing.


[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by siderea) Changing mask tech for a changing world.

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Links:

[cw: death, (arguably) discourse] [New York Times - Wayback] (by Helen Ouyang; h/t swimmer) The race to reinvent CPR.


[Crystalverse; Wayback] (by Chase) How to grow pyramid salt crystals.

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: food, (arguably) illness, (arguably) heights] I have officially survived my twenties

[cw: illness] Variolation, part 4: Secondhand [three comments, one of which is new]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by itsbenedict) A day in the life of a Tumblr user.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by oak23) The importance of ego-syntonic clothing.


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by nenya_kanadka) How to make Wikia actually usable (and Dreamwidth even more usable).


[cw: illness, medical, (fairly mild) venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by cordeliaflyte) Fantasies about easy solutions to medical problems: not always pleasant.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by eightyonekilograms, though also kind of jv) Tumblr Backup Awareness Week, and a modernised version of tumblr-utils. (Though I ran into enough problems getting the python3 version of tumblr-utils working that I eventually gave up and went back to python2.)


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by thedarlingone) More on the mobile-accessibility updates to Dreamwidth.


[cw: nsfw text] [Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden] (OP by porthole) The distinction between fetishes that can be done in real life and those that cannot (and the grey areas between).


[arguably cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ladiesloveduranduran) Which of these U.S. cities would you be most willing to live in?


[cw: illness, (arguably) poison] [Updated part of WordPress thread (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partly in respose to keynes-fetlife-mutual) Nipping colds in the bud (maybe) with zinc lozenges. [three comments, two of which are new]


[cw: illness, vomit, unsanitary] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by toasthaste; in response to robustcornhusk) Norovirus prevention tips.


[cw: sexism, embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by RaxKingIsDead) Accidental street harassment.


[cw: corporate bullshit, (arguably) government bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by JoshGreenberg27) How to get government-funded U.S. tax preparation. (It's still not 100% clear, but it looks like probably *not* for non-residents. On the ""bright"" side, I'm below the income threshold to have to file at all for 2023, and there's no further stimulus checks to claim by doing it anyway.)


[Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by gummybugg; mostly in response to sacrificedtoatree) I have unlocked a fiction-writing skill tree! [two comments]


[arguably cw: guns] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by trailertrashin) "The Glass Eye - Adult Greeting Cards": a real store that really exists, somehow.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by whatcha-thinkin) Assuming you had access to perfect medical care at no additional cost, which of these fixes would you want most?

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Links:

[strong cw: illness] [Patreon; Wayback] (by Violet Blue; h/t siderea) A list of COVID-19 resources, consisting largely of people doing their best to navigate things on their own because God knows there are no trustworthy authorities left on this. I bought a $4 bottle of store-brand mouthwash (contains cetylpyridinium chloride) because of this post: I figure it's an extremely low-risk bet.

On a similar though shorter/narrower note, https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html

(Update from January: ...if someone who *doesn't* now have a history of COVID infection (or who can otherwise psychologically handle it) can pick through all the stuff in Violet's news roundups about Post-Acute Sequelae Even Worse Than Previously Believed to get at the actionable advice, I would appreciate it)


[cw: illness] [Absolutely Maybe; Wayback] (by Hilda Bastian) Researchers have not given up on creating a COVID vaccine with sterilising and/or durable immunity! Things may still improve.


[cw: corporate bullshit] [PCMag; Wayback] (by Chloe Albanesius; h/t Violet Blue) Obituaries for tech products and services that were shut down in 2023.


[Youtube; Invidious] (by Pope Kallisti; h/t blazingdarkness) A MIDI conversion of "Bring Me to Life".


[Live Science; Wayback] (by Victoria Atkinson) I told somebody in a nuclear-vs-solar argument a while back that I'd care less about solar if ordinary citizens could get household-scale nuclear batteries. There has been non-zero progress towards this.


Two laugh-rule entries:
[Beware The Shadows; Wayback] (by Brett J. Talley) The 56 best/worst analogies written by high school students (or, fairly likely, ""high school students""). (I've seen a lot of these before, but not all of them.)

My favourite is "Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."


[brr; Wayback] (by Anonymous; h/t Jenn) Showering at the South Pole. (This whole blog is amazing, though usually more in a "wow, Antarctica is such a place" way than a "funny" way.)

Comments on my own posts:

Tips on Offline-First Smartphones, 2023 Edition [one comment on Dreamwidth, one comment on Tumblr]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by nuclearspaceheater) General life improvements of weightlifting.


[cw: illness, (fairly mild) venting] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) The spirit (and not just the letter) of mask rules.


[arguably cw: amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by unprettyextra; in response to etirabys) How to help archive Imgur. (Though Imgur has since started its deletions, the archiving project continues.)


[cw: embarrassment squick, (arguably) discourse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by hjartasalt; in response to nuclearspaceheater) American hegemony and (sort-of)-multi-currency cash registers.


[cw: amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by sigmaleph) How to (maybe) know your sleep latency.

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Links:

[arguably cw: amnesia] [Baturin; Wayback] (by Daniil Baturin) A review of a Windows-ripoff Linux distro from 2003.


Laugh-rule entries:
[WordPress; Wayback] (by Bret Devereaux)

This is the third part of the second part of our three(ish) part look at the governing structures of the Greek polis (I, IIa, IIb). At some point I promise I will write a series whose organization does not look like a parody of itself.

[Mastodon; Wayback] (h/t Seebs)

(here's the alt text on that image in case you want to stick it into Google Traduction:

ARRÊTEZ L'ANGLAIS – L'ANGLAIS N'EST PAS CENSÉE ÊTRE UNE LANGUE INTERNATIONALE – DES ANNÉES D’ANGLAIS et pourtant AUCUN INTERÊT parce qu’on peut regarder la version du film doublée par Kev Adams – Tu veux dire des trucs en anglais pour rigoler? On a un outil pour Ça, Ça s'appelle «GOOGLE TRADUCTION» – «Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Will, will Will will Will Will's will? All the faith he had had had had no effect on the outcome of his life» – Indistinguable d'un AVC REGARDE ce que les Anglais te demande de Respecter, avec tous les cours & voyages linguistiques qu’on fait pour les comprendre (Ce sont de VRAIS mots anglais, parlé par de VRAIS Anglais): Embezzling ????? gobbledygook ??????? discombobulated ????????????????? «The bamboozled children skedaddled»
Ils se sont foutus de notre gueule putaingue

[WordPress; Wayback] (by Crow)

In promoting her new book, the author also made a few choice memes. I can’t think of any other way to describe them.



They immediately without context are my kind of humour. Clickhole could post this and I’d send it to all my friends. Levelling is, as a reminder, a sometimes used term to describe killing god. These stock photos are very persuasive in getting me to love god, I’ll admit. I’ll say the unlevel memes are also quite tumblr ‘I dreamed of this meme and now it is real’ style.

[Know Your Meme; Wayback]






[cw: illness] [Armbrust; Wayback] Review of a terrible surgical mask.

"And look at the stare in his eyes. I mean, the woman is intense, but this dude, like something's going on there, man. It's the face of someone actually receiving the coronavirus into their body."

[AO3; Wayback] (by seasparks) I don't go here, I was just wiki-walking, but:

seasons of crappy Netflix that were deemed sufficiently bad to allow Canadian access to them

Comments on my own posts:

[N/A]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tototavros) Recommendations for podcasts (and, more importantly, transcripts) about American history. (Update: AFAICT only the *later* episodes of Presidencies of the United States have transcripts. The earliest episode transcript I could find was "3.28 - The Calming Seas". Still, in medias res is something.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moral-autism; partly in response to analytically) Why use Spotify as a music player when you can use Youtube? (Not to even mention Quod Libet or Odyssey.)

[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Favourite masks.

[cw: medical, poverty] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by rustingbridges) The financial intricacies of dental insurance.

[Blogspot; Wayback] (OP by Michael James) A gentle correction of one of the most important omissions I encountered on my wiki-walk through Canadian personal-finance blogs, RRSP reporting edition.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Hypophantasia and dream accuracy.

[mild cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by TrinCyboid) From the people who brought you mystery melons, we also have 24 liveblogging. (Both are hilarious.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Egg-boiling techniques.

[cw: food, (arguably) poverty] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) More on egg-boiling techniques, now with energy conservation.

[cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moonlit-tulip) Holidays and the value of routine-breaking (or, perhaps, routine-keeping on a higher level).

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by lunartulip) The wonders of "details" HTML tags.

[cw: poison, poverty] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by moral-autism; partly in response to humanfist) The importance of avoiding home radon exposure.

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Links:

[cw: corporate bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (by ponett) BreezeWiki: an adversarially interoperable Wikia frontend that is (unlike the official one) *actually usable*.

[strong cw: illness] [BBC; Wayback] (by Zaria Gorvett; h/t cvirtue) Measles: much worse than previously believed.

[Explain Shell] (by Idan Kamara; h/t Ilzolende) Command-line-to-English machine translation.

[Internet Archive] How to archive your tweets with the Wayback Machine. (The ingest-URLs-from-spreadsheet bit is intriguing regardless.)

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: government bullshit] Personal-finance reactionblogging, part 2

[cw: apocalypse, (arguably) poverty] Greener Bunkers

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by andmaybegayer) Machine A/V transcription has come a long way.

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Links:

[cw: food] [BLDGBLOG; Wayback] (by Geoff Manaugh) Flatpacked pasta.

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)
( Read more... )


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

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Comments on my own posts:

preference utilitarianism ftw, I guess

[mild cw: apocalypse] Comment and Link Roundup: December 23, 2020

[fairly mild cw: politics] why does this have to be hard [two comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by grayestofghosts) In which we grit our teeth and set up Bridgefy (or at least try to). [three comments]

[cw: apocalypse, (arguably) death, (arguably) murder] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by poipoipoi-2016) American tech companies keep setting up their offices in ridiculously dangerous parts of the country, which sucks if you're trying to work for them.

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by soaringsearingphoenix) How to perform feeding enrichment on yourself.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by wingedcatgirl) "Cis" is a Latin prefix, not an acronym.

[cw: embarrassment squick, rape] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by glumshoe; in response to jadagul) The unwittingly erotic games children play, or in some cases freak out about.

[cw: paralysis, (mild) amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by worldlypositions) On writing through coded blinking, and composing posts in your head.

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Links:

[Bloomberg; Wayback crawling forbidden] (by Matt Levine) Breaking news: Money Stuff is back! I haven't had a chance to read it yet because it just came in while I was drafting this post, but I thought y'all deserved to know about it.



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

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