Brinens and Things

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.)

*flump*

[muffled by lying facedown] hello and welcome to the Q4 edition of this fortnightly roundup

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Comments on my own posts:

[cw: illness, medical, food] Status update, morning of 2023-08-01 [four comments]


[arguably cw: apocalypse] Friday Five: August 25, 2023


[cw: food, poverty] Extreme couponing [two comments on Tumblr]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by c-rowlesdraws) The fictional for now cultural symbolism of auroras.


[cw: illness, apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by stumpyjoepete; partly in response to nuclearspaceheater) Air-purifier recs.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by lonelyroommp3) The psychological importance of tidy surfaces.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by sigmaleph) What does "soul" even mean, anyway?


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moonlit-tulip) VPNs and Tumblr shadowbanning. (Update: they *eventually* un-shadowbanned me, several weeks after I contacted them.) [two comments]


[arguably cw: amnesia] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2; Tumblr part 3; Tumblr part 4)] (OP by calware; also in response to lizardywizard) Pi and the overestimation of common knowledge; speaking of senseless, fortunately-lifted Tumblr bans... [two comments, sort of]


[cw: illness] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by rustingbridges) Nipping colds in the bud (maybe) with zinc lozenges. (They *do* sell Life Extension in Canada, it turns out.)

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Links:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by sun-dari, but read the whole thread) Pun translations in Good Omens.


[Substack; Wayback] (by Adrian Hon; h/t wolffyluna) Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser: a LARP event from a post-scarcity (or at least much richer) society that tried to manifest on a world not prosperous enough to support it. (Or at least, that was *my* takeaway from the article.)


[Taiwan Quest; Wayback] (by Zhen-Kang) Discouraging under-the-table transactions via a government receipt lottery.


[strong cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by synecdochic) Modern COVID-testing technique. (Well, the post is mostly about other COVID-related things, but anyway.)


[cw: medical, (arguably) illness] [Ontario; America; Wayback 1; Wayback 2] (h/t cobaltdrgn) Did you know that fat people need a different size of vaccine needle?


[NASA; Wayback] We, the people of Earth, have obtained actual rocks from an actual asteroid!


[Dynomight; Wayback] (by Dynomight) The midwit home: smart enough to be helpful, not smart enough to betray you to the corporate overlords (or just be an overcomplicated pain in the ass).


[strong cw: poison, death] [Los Angeles Times; Wayback] (by Emily Alpert Reyes and Cindy Carcamo; h/t nuclearspaceheater) The terrible hidden cost of engineered-stone countertops.


Laugh rule:
[cw: (fairly strong) illness, (fairly strong) apocalypse, war] [Mastodon; Wayback] (by plaguepoems@mastodon.social)

Darker days ahead
she tells me
for all of us there are
darker days ahead
and as she delivers
this ominous declaration
I’m not really sure
if she means the plague
or the catastrophe
some other calamity
or daylight savings
but regardless of the specifics
I fear she is right.

(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.)

Comments on my own posts:

The one about Recoll

[cw: what it says on the tin] The one about plague nightmares [one comment, not counting the postscript]

[fairly mild cw: war, amnesia] The one about remembrance poppies

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Substack; Wayback] (OP by Evan Þ) If you enjoy my posts in which I express wildly alien intuitions about things, you may enjoy me dipping my toes into a (very polite) discussion of free will. (At least, I assume these intuitions are wildly alien from how often I see people say things that only make sense under different intuition sets. In any case, we are pleased to offer the finest autoxenoanthropology here at Brinens and Things.) [two comments]

[cw: poverty, venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by catchymemes) In which I have a lot of psychological baggage around museums.

[cw: death, aging, apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by treadwells) Cottagecore and a broader view of danger.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) The hole in comparative social-media discussions left by ignorance of Tumblr.

[cw: food, poison, illness, (arguably) death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ultraviolet-divergence) Dealing with the latest big listeria outbreak.

[cw: (strong) illness, (strong) apocalypse, bugs] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by siderea; in response to ewt) The wonders of PPE, climate-catastrophe edition.

[fairly mild cw: corporate bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; in response to bulbous-oar) How to selectively prevent Android apps from accessing the Internet.

[Scribble Hub; Wayback] (OP by wingedcatgirl) Isekais and the importance of caution when carrying irreplaceable otherworldly technology.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by headspace-hotel) Poetic meter and artistic instincts.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by reptile-ruler) Fighting Tumblr's slippage down the slope towards Internet silos.

[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. [two comments, sort of]

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Links:

[Imgur; Wayback] Live wire-sculpture (not to be confused with live-wire sculpture).

[arguably cw: injury, embarrassment squick] [Hackaday; Wayback] (by Lewin Day) False positives on Apple's automatic car-crash 911 calling.

[CBS; Wayback] (by Phil Galewitz) Over-the-counter hearing aids now available in the United States.

(Although I am also having feelings about this sentence:

A pair of prescription devices typically sells for {{USD}}$2,000 to $8,000.

Only if you're getting ripped off, dude. Go to Costco. *So* glad we told the non-chain hearing-aid centre to go fuck themselves when they wanted six grand: the perfectly fine Costco hearing aids were CAD$1,800 *before* the $1,000 government subsidy. (that's not even *counting* the refundable tax credits I might be able to wring out of it))

[Kiwix; Wayback] What is the size of Wikipedia? (Also, your regular reminder that Kiwix is amazing and you should check it out. (And it gets even *better* than amazing after you figure out how to make your own ZIM files.))

[AO3; Wayback] (by Edonohana; h/t Ozy Brennan) The intricacies of tardigrade literature.

[cw: what it says on the tin] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by siderea) Stop relying on Twitter for third-party authentication.

[cw: what it says on the tin] [Science; Wayback] (by Arevalo et al; h/t KelseyTUOC) A 20-valent influenza vaccine, containing examples of every known flu subtype. Works well in mice and ferrets, soon to be tested in primates and--hopefully--humans. In addition to the obvious benefits, it shows promise of providing cross-protection against novel influenza strains.


Three laugh-rule entries:
[cw: corporate bullshit] [Twitter; Wayback] (by rahaeli) Sporking the Cohost terms of service.

[Youtube; Wayback] (by Lauren Lopez and Robert Manion; h/t Blazing Darkness) Bella Swan is sixteen, going on seventeen...

[cw: scopophobia, (arguably) corporate bullshit] [Reddit; Wayback] (h/t trivialagent) It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: discourse, (arguably) apocalypse] The one about AI artists [one comment, not counting the postscript]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Old kitchen appliances (and when to replace them); the wonders of mosquito nets. [two comments]

[fairly mild cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Optimal potato baking.

[arguably cw: discourse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by Anonymous; partly in response to jadagul) The unrelatability of complaints about modernity (or at least these sub-genres of complaints).

(Update: writing that post inspired me to give warc2zim another try, and this time I successfully got it working! (The Linux port of Kiwix can't *directly* display warc2zim files, but it turns out there's a workaround: activate local-server mode and view the file through your web browser.) Mobile access, baby! (*And* it's even slightly more space-efficient!))

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by transgenderer) How to send and receive SMS messages from your laptop.

[fairly mild cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by camwyn) Dutch has some amazing profanity.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by camwyn) The wonders of mosquito nets, disability edition.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by doctorwhoisadhd; in response to itsbenedict) How to play Character Opinion Bingo.

[arguably cw: unreality] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by seat-safety-switch) Solar phone charging, the easy ways.

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Links:

[My Modern Met; Wayback] (by Larisa Crowder) The technology behind heated car seats, now wearable and reversible (that is to say, it can also do cooling). (Kind of expensive and hard to get, but I suppose new devices usually are.)

[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by the United States Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate; h/t siderea) How to disinfect monkeypox fomites, and how not to.

[arguably cw: venting] [The Millions; Wayback] (by Rebecca Steinitz) A personal view of anosmia. (I came across this link buried in an old email, where I was recommending it to others. It's interesting to look back at it now, having developed a very different relationship with anosmia.)

[Mobile Syrup; Wayback] (by Jonathan Lamont) Payment-method optimisation is about to become *even more* complicated. My parents can't keep up as it is.

[Imgur; Wayback] (h/t Marri) Ordinary office worker in the streets...

Laugh rule:
[cw: illness] [Jenneral HQ; Wayback] (by Jenn)

Relatedly, as a #millennial, the whole #supportlocal lifestyle where I go to 4 specialty grocers for specific ingredients instead of one (1) Loblaw is very appealing to me.

(...I admit that this line is significantly less funny after I looked it up and discovered that the singular of Loblaws *is* sometimes "Loblaw", and not *always* also "Loblaws".)

I haven't had much energy to spare lately, but I eventually managed enough to put this together.

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Comments on my own posts:

History-wikiwalk blogging, part 2

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by mortuarybees) Being your own boss often isn't freeing.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by unpretty; partly in response to bending-sickle) Water softeners: highly recommended. (If you are in a relevant area.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[cw: depression, anxiety, (mild) food, (mild) illness] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by fairycosmos) Grocery-store mood whiplash, now with more price-matching.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) I've finally found a moisturiser good enough to keep up with food-service work that *doesn't* cost $40 a bottle! [four comments, one of which is new]

[cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by librarychair) It's tax season! Time to take that official net-income figure and check it against your local income-tested programs! (Update: looks like we're eligible for subsidies on electricity but not bus fare. I'm still gathering up everyone's signatures, but I expect we'll be able to send in the electricity application tonight.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by wolffyluna) Shift-work tradeoffs.

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Links:

[JetPens; Wayback] (h/t Dynomight) I had not seen any of the apparent dozens of people recommending these. I'm not sure I'd find them useful, but--

Conversely, the ink can reappear when temperatures reach below -10°C/14°F.

--I'm charmed by the idea of invisible-ink signage that appears in winter.

[CTV News; Wayback] (by Alexandra Pinto and Jeff Pickel) The famed Ezra Avenue party (an illegal street party "thrown"† by University of Waterloo students each year on St. Patrick's Day, known for attracting crowds of up to thirty thousand people) was *not* collectively cancelled for the third year running. Police attempted to discourage it from returning by putting up barriers on Ezra: students simply partied on adjacent Marshall Street instead, which seems worse for everybody involved (in that normally, if you're contemplating living on Ezra you at least have a chance at making an informed decision). I feel very sorry for the Marshall residents.

†via decentralised common knowledge rather than any explicit organisation, as I understand it

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [Medium; Wayback] (by Thomas Smith) How to build an off-grid solar system on a three-digit budget (home-office scale). (for comparison: two-digit off-grid solar system (phone scale), five-digit off-grid solar system (house scale))

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [Bloomberg; Wayback (Firefox reader mode will show the full article)] (by Debby Wu; h/t Matt Levine) Salvaging semiconductors from washing machines.

[cw: apocalypse, food] [Unprepared; Wayback] (by Josh Centers) Food security in a time of fertilizer shortages.

Comments on my own posts:

Comment and Link Roundup: November 17, 2021

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Comments on other people's posts:

[arguably cw: nsfw text, rape] [AO3; Wayback] (OP by Ysabetwordsmith; in response to Lurker2) Five and a half years ago, I got Ysabet to add a content warning on her story "Touching Moments", which at one point attempts to hypnotise the reader (yes, I was pretty upset to have that sprung on me). Recently someone came through, found my comments on this, and went "wait, what? that's a thing? how concerned should I be about this being a thing?". I gave them some safe-sex lessons. [five comments, three of which are new]

[cw: (artwork of) blood and injuries, (arguably) drugs] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by inz0913; in response to maryellencarter) Sleep deprivation may cause higher reblog rates of fanart depicting sleepy cuddling: further research needed.

[cw: death, apocalypse, unreality] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by quasi-normalcy) In which I consider a creepypasta as a thought experiment.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Hand-moisturising techniques. [three comments]

[cw: Christmas, venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by itsbenedict) Some Christmas-music radio stations, it turns out, are much worse than others.

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Links:

[Matt Blaze's Exhaustive Search; Wayback] (by Matt Blaze; h/t Bruce Schneier) Testing phone-scale Faraday cages.

[Foreign Policy; Wayback] (by Paul Musgrave; h/t Bret Devereaux) The history of Pepsi's relationship with the Soviet Union.

Laugh rule:
[cw: amnesia, corporate bullshit] [Forkast; Wayback] (by Angie Lau, Marta Belcher, and Brewster Kahle)

And whenever we sort of stand around and go and shout and get angry at something, it's like maybe we should be a little bit more Canadian and look and say, I think I'm going to listen to the other side this time.

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

( Read more... )

(h/t Red Flag Deals)

Until tomorrow at 11 AM EDT, you can get Civilization VI for free through Epic Games. I've never played a Civ game (we were an Age of Empires family when I was growing up), but this seems like it could be a good opportunity to satisfy the curiosity.

While I am increasingly uncomfortable with the kind of cloud-dependence and DRM (read: anti-backup measures) involved in these kinds of game launchers, it's not like one is risking much of anything by claiming this game. If they revoke it later or their infrastructure collapses, I'm no worse off than before.