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.)

Comments on my own posts:

Today's the day! It's happening! [one comment, *including* the postscript because the postscript was written late enough to be easily missed]

[cw: (strong) fire, unreality, (mild) illness] Happy...new...year? [one comment, not counting the postscript]

Today's the day, part ~2: House Community Grid

[cw: bugs, (fairly mild) death, (mild) unsanitary)] The one about fly math [one comment on Tumblr]

English is a bullshit language (like all the others)

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: food, (fairly mild) apocalypse, (arguably) poison] [Substack; Wayback] (OP by Nicholas Weininger) Induction stoves vs gas stoves vs electric-coil stoves. [two comments]

[cw: (strong) food, (arguably) nsfw text] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by andaisq; h/t moral-autism) Sociological specfic about a world where people view food with the same sense of profundity and privacy with which we view sex.

[cw: illness, needles (picture in Tumblr version, but not in WordPress version)] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by syellowtails) The latest additional info on COVID-19 bivalent vaccine timing, mostly but not exclusively regarding the United States. (The most recent thing I've since heard is that, while the Ontarian government continues to *recommend* six-month intervals for most triage groups, it's possible to get a vaccine dose only three months after your previous one with a bit of additional hoop-jumping.)

[cw: poverty, illness, (arguably) venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by Lucy Liu) Updates from future-me on how my situation has changed since 2018. [three comments, one of which is new]

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by snakestack) The seat of a computer's soul.

[cw: venting, (mild) poison, (arguably) illness, (arguably) scrupulosity] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by albertvancouver) Unrelatable complaints about city design.

[cw: discourse, unsanitary, aging, medical] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by boeing747) *Extremely* unrelatable complaints about the "oversanitization of popular media".

[cw: food, embarrassment squick, amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by robustcornhusk) Way(s) to make Jewish apple cake, and how they've evolved over time.

[cw: nsfw text]
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[cw: nsfw text] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by cryptotheism; in response to sigmaleph) I was planning to wait for this roundup post to talk about the above, but I was having too many emotions and they leaked out into a post. Sorry for leaking my emotions onto your post, Sofi. [two comments]

[cw: illness, (arguably) discourse, (arguably) amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by discoursedrome) The past, present, and future of public mask cosplay.

[cw: food, (arguably) discourse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Excuses for holidays. [two comments]

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Links:

[cw: food, (arguably) trypophobia]
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[Imgur] (h/t Sonata) A book with a built-in lectern.

[cw: (fairly mild) trypophobia, (arguably) body horror] [Twitter; Wayback] (by jonty; h/t Xom) Bugfix for multiocular O.

Three laugh-rule entries:
[Twitter; Wayback] (by Foone; h/t ericvilas) Can gender run Doom? For that matter, can visual static run Doom? (I won't spoil the final punchline, but do read to the end. I think I've even coaxed the Internet Archive into making their version readable start-to-finish.)

[Youtube; Wayback] (by Lou & Peter Berryman) A car drove by blaring "Sweet Home Alabama", and it got me thinking about this song again (it's not "Sweet Home Alabama").

[cw: corporate bullshit] [Mobile Syrup; Wayback] (by Jonathan Lamont)

Locking the doors, on the other hand, will probably just frustrate customers (and if they’re going into a Rogers store, chances are they’re already pissed off).

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: apocalypse] A future that may ask a lot of you

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: rape, discourse] [Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden] (OP by feotakahari; partly in response to random_thought_depository) Sex and emotional bonding. [six comments]

[cw: what it says on the tin, amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by etirabys) The masochist's path to enlightenment.

(although upon reflection I should have specified "pain and power-exchange" rather than BDSM, since I do kind of have a thing for safety harnesses and I suppose that technically qualifies under B)

[cw: politics, (arguably) discourse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by timemachineyeah) The difficulties of pre-Internet information-gathering, and/or the difficulties of childhood information-gathering.

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Links:

[cw: what it says on the tin] [Nuclear Advice; Unprepared Life; Wayback part 1; Wayback part 2] (first link by Rob Wiblin; second by Josh Centers) Some guides to surviving a nuclear strike, for those of us who have been wondering.

[NASA; Wayback] "NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has established an extraordinary new benchmark: detecting the light of a star that existed within the first billion years after the universe’s birth in the big bang – the farthest individual star ever seen to date."

Two laugh-rule entries:
[A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry; Wayback] (by Bret Devereaux)

when Caesar had himself proclaimed dictator perpetuo, an office he held for all of two months

[Tumblr; Wayback] (by Team AC) I'm not familiar with the context here, but it's a neat medium.

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.

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Comments on my own posts:

[cw: venting, (mild) kidnapping] The one about emergency alerts

[mild cw: injury, war] One man's modus ponens [no new comments from me unless you count the tags, but worth noting these comments from rustingbridges]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by YuckyTom; in response to jadagul) How to instantiate supposedly-nonexistent kitchen appliances.

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Links:

[arguably cw: unsanitary] [Region of Waterloo] A virtual tour of a landfill and recycling centre.

[fairly abstract cw: discourse, war] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by togglesbloggle) I'm not sure what I think about this post (about culture war and Twitter poisoning, with Go metaphors), but it's interesting.

Four laugh-rule entries:

[cw: what it says on the tin] [Anchor] (by Jess and Sam)

Jess: Mindless Matters is an 18+ podcast that features live inductions. Please, do not listen while you are driving. Do not listen while you are doing important things that [need necessary focus?], don't endanger yourself...you are *responsible* for ensuring your own safety.

Sam: It's called "not safe for work" for a reason!

[Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley)

Enter Wartales, then, which maddens me with the urge to append "woo-hoo" to its name every time I type it.

[Incognito Money Scribe; Wayback] (by Jacob Schroeder)

In other words, the $1.50 hot dog is synonymous with the Costco brand. The money-losing frankfurter is a part of the company’s identity. It is a staple for customers to recharge after buying five pounds of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, 50 rolls of toilet paper and a coffin.

(Wait, do people actually eat at the Costco restaurant? ...I was gonna say "well, I guess of course people must or Costco would have shut it down", but, uh, it kind of sounds like they're running a food stand for the Aesthetic, so maybe they *wouldn't* have shut it down for mere lack of business.

Is the food any good?)

[strong cw: corporate bullshit] [Wall Street Journal (paywalled, but apparently my university alumni account still gets me Wall Street Journal access)] (by Jeff Horwitz; h/t Matt Levine)

Other flubbed enforcement actions were taken against the accounts of [...] Mr. Zuckerberg himself, whose live-streamed employee Q&A had been suppressed after an algorithm classified it as containing misinformation.

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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