Brinens and Things

[Freedom Mobile] also now has a $5/mo plan with 100MB of data, two hours of talk and unlimited text.

holy shit???

I got used to ignoring Freedom back in the day, but they've expanded their network coverage over the past ~few years and aren't effectively city-only anymore

(that's 120 minutes of *outgoing* calls, BTW: incoming is unlimited)

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Oh, that reminds me:

Hey, remember the IRS Free File program?

Yeah, it was *looking* pretty useless at first, but upon careful inspection there turns out to be exactly one Free File participant that accepts self-employed non-residents: OLT (OnLine Taxes). It's a pain in the ass to wrangle into a Canadian shape, but it *can* be so wrangled, and it costs approximately 215 CAD less than doing my dad's taxes through even the relatively cheap expat service.

I suspect that I may need to do one year through ExpatFile after each substantial change in our tax situation, but for years where I can compare OLT's output to the previous year's return to check if I put stuff in the right places, it's a boon.

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I ended up waiting to post this until I actually tried the Freedom Mobile plan.

Signing up was difficult, but if you do it in-person (*not* online) and make sure to specify you want prepaid and *not* postpaid, you should have an easier and cheaper time than I did.

The free roaming in the United States (and also Mexico) seems potentially handy, though I don't have any active plans to go there.

I think it's still worth it even after the hassle and extra signup fees, but only if you have housemates on other providers: these days you're allowed to *sign up* if you live outside the city, and they won't charge you *extra* for it, but it turns out you'll still be spending most of your time on their partnered Rogers network and I think we're all very aware by now of how dangerous that is. As long as Dad stays on Bell or Telus networks, I'm willing to take the risk to save ~$125/year, but I'd never want to put *all* our SIM-card eggs in the Freedom basket.

(though if you have non-Rogers-based home Internet, that might be okay)

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.)

This comes up in conversation every so often, and my last public-facing inventory is now over five years old and noticeably outdated. Here, then, is a copy of my private inventory tracker adapted for public viewing:

( Read more... )

I did not *buy* a bag of softener salt yesterday--it was an upscale grocery store (with an excellent sale on cheese), and I did not want to pay upscale prices--but I lifted it into my arms, just to see how it would feel.

It was not *easy*, as such. But five weeks ago, lifting a 40lb softener-salt bag was at the very limits of my ability, and now it is merely *somewhat* difficult.

(There's quite a bit to catch up on here, so I've added extra line breaks between entries to make it less of a jumble of text.)

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Comments on my own posts:

[fairly mild cw: embarrassment squick] I didn't *make* any comments on my own posts this round (apart from postscripts/tangents written alongside the OPs), but I note that I did receive two comments on "I continue to live in an alternate universe" through Tumblr.

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: what it says on the tin] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by flaxseedthot; partly in response to rustingbridges) Disney World during 9/11.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Second-generation hyphenated surnames.


[arguably cw: medical, unsanitary, apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by akaanonymouth; partly in response to sigmaleph) Household logistics, safety nets, and the importance of spare toothbrushes. [two comments]


[arguably cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by seaglass_takechan) Reporting a violation of the food/pretty-rock binary.


[cw: nsfw text, apocalypse, (arguably) drugs] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by femmenietzsche) In which Brin has second thoughts about whether "I could see myself using [AI-powered writing commissions] for pornography, but even then only because I have very narrow tastes" would be a good idea in practice.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by sigmaleph) Email usage patterns and organisation.


[arguably cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) High-quality socks (and how sometimes the cardboard-sole boots are the better deal).


[cw: illness, apocalypse, (arguably) amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by eightyonekilograms; partly in response to sigmaleph) In the future, "zoonosis" will be a word everyone knows; knowing *where* they learned it is another matter. [~three comments, one of which is new]


[cw: food, illness, poverty, (arguably) animal abuse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by augustheart) If lab grown meat became widely available and easily affordable, would you eat it? (At least two people were too quick on the ball and read the draft version of this that I posted slightly too soon, so if you read the non-postscripted version of this do note that there *is* more.)


[cw: unsanitary, (arguably) violence] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tanadrin) The relative merits of fear, shame, and anger.


[cw: aging, injury, poison, death, (arguably) illness] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by sigmaleph) Independent wealth vs a chance to remake your body.


[cw: illness] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by thearchivebaby) Decorated respirators and the Glorious Transhumanist Future.


[cw: corporate bullshit, nsfw text, (arguably) illness, (arguably) apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by soolagna-meow) Mourning broken tools, and searching for aligned replacements.


[fairly mild cw: death, injury] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ultirex) How would you do if dropped at a point on Earth outputted by a random coordinates generator?

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Links:

[fairly strong cw: illness] [Mastodon (Twitter); Wayback] (by librarianshipwreck) I know it takes time to get over things.


[cw: corporate bullshit, apocalypse] [WordPress; Wayback] (by librarianshipwreck) What Y2K can teach us about Twitter. Particularly notable quote:

And in the wake of Y2K proving to be something of a non-event—thanks to the efforts of the legions of people who got to work fixing the problem—the sort of introspection that Y2K called for did not occur. Instead, people and societies only deepened their reliance on computer technologies and by extension the executives and companies that controlled those systems.

[The Intercept; Wayback] (by Nikita Mazurov; h/t Bruce Schneier) Some image-manipulation programs--including, but not limited to, the one in Google Docs--leave the original image data inside the file of a cropped image, allowing the recipient to uncrop it and reveal bits that you specifically did not want them to see.



Three laugh-rule entries:
[cw: (strong) rape, (strong) nsfw text, amnesia] [Read Only Mind; Wayback] (by scifiscribbler) I did not *like* this work, and I shudder to think how low the author's standards must be to think that *this* constitutes "wholesome", but that opening line is amazing:

The television was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel.

[arguably cw: theft] [Vice; Wayback] (by Joseph Cox) You know how with sci-fi shows we're always yelling at the screen about "why are you people still using voiceprint authentication as if it means anything when you also have good voice synthesis"? Yeah.

To create the voice, I recorded about five minutes of speech and uploaded it to ElevenLabs (for the audio clips, I read sections of Europe’s data protection law).

[cw: what it says on the tin, nsfw image] [Substack; Wayback] (by Sam Kriss)

they’d got the impression that I was one of those people who really has his finger on the pulse. I told them that I definitely wasn’t, I just made things up with enough confidence that people believed me, just like I’ve made up exactly 45% of everything I’m writing here

Also the rambling manifesto containing "谷歌翻译应用程序". (It's funnier if you *can't* read Chinese, though I expect it's still funny if you can.)