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.)

(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:

Comment and Link Roundup: April 12, 2021

[arguably cw: apocalypse, poverty] Shining a light on the availability of energy efficiency [three comments, not counting the postscripts]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ms-demeanor) Discord is going downhill, like so many instant-messengers before it.

[cw: death, apocalypse] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by contrarianarchon) The inherent value of life.

[cw: apocalypse, drugs, (arguably) discourse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partially in response to cthulhubert and alarajrogers) Gold and disaster-hedging. [four comments]

[cw: amnesia, (fairly mild) death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by the fittingly-named existentialterror) qntm's fiction is very good at being the kind of thing that it is, and that is the best that can be said about it. (Read his time-travel meta, though.)

[arguably cw: amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by eightyonekilograms) Audio-processing while exercising.

[Blogspot; Wayback] (OP by Michael Mock) Unpacking the references in tea names.

[cw: scrupulosity] [AO3; Wayback] (OP by cthulhuraejepsen) A possible ending to A Common Sense Guide to Doing the Most Good.

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Links:

[none suitable for this section]



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Comments on my own posts:

Comment and Link Roundup: October 21, 2020

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Comments on other people's posts:

(This post was made on June 16th, but I overlooked it while making the previous roundups.) [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by gnabrie) I do know what "burning CDs" means, and someday I might actually have a reason to do it again.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by maryellencarter) Extensions of the self.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by voxette-vk) Big 5 personality tests. [two comments]

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Links:

Laugh rule:
[Memory Alpha; Wayback] The continuity section of the article on one of the least continuous Voyager episodes (and that's saying something).

Tuvok mistakenly has his commander pip in the past. He did not earn this promotion until the fourth season episode "Revulsion". Although this is technically a continuity error, it is actually consistent as Tuvok was mistakenly shown wearing a commander's pip throughout the first half of season one.

{{Also:}}

This brings the total number of torpedoes confirmed to have been used by Voyager over the course of the series to 66, a total which exceeds the irreplaceable complement of 38 that had been established by Chakotay in the first-season episode "The Cloud".

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

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Now that my WordPress is in usable condition, Tumblr comments will have their primary link be to WordPress, with the original Tumblr version in parentheses. I won't explicitly include Wayback links for these, just as I don't explicitly include Wayback links for links to my own Dreamwidth: they'll go into the Wayback Machine in a few weeks when I upload that month's posts.


Comments on my own posts:

Ask me about my special interests [two comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: amnesia, (fairly mild) drugs] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by slatestarscratchpad; also in response to how-about-a-nice-game-of-chess) The moral relevance of dreaming selves.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by lydamorehouse) Unlike Facebook, Dreamwidth-based image hosting works on Firefox by default.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Grumbling about Google CAPTCHAs. [two comments]

[cw: amnesia] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by contrarianarchon) What falling asleep feels like.

[cw: nsfw text (and arguably images) in the link] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by asexualactivities) On setting up a sex-education website in a manner friendly to sex-repulsed people. (With test subject: a masturbation sleeve review.)

[cw: amnesia] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by staff) An update on how to handle Tumblr's latest wave of censorship: tumblr-utils needs some tweaks in order to continue functioning. [two comments, one of which is new]

[arguably cw: fire] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ultrastimpaks) Do you sleep with your door open, or closed?

[cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by siderea; in response to etirabys) More on the importance of storage space and stable housing.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by transgenderer; in response to sigmaleph and pedanther) Even in the age of smartphones, wristwatches are still useful. Even and perhaps especially dumbwatches. [two comments]

[cw: Pyrebound spoilers] [WordPress; Wayback] (OP by theredsheep) Today on Pyrebound reactionblogging: population estimates.

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Links:

[cw: medical, self-harm (ego-dystonic), death] [New Yorker; Wayback crawling forbidden, but paywall is of the type easily circumvented by hitting ctrl-a ctrl-c before it pops up, then pasting into the word processor of your choice] (by Richard Preston; h/t GeneralDisarray) An article about Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, a rare genetic disorder which I had not heard of before.

Two laugh-rule entries:
[arguably cw: nsfw text] [The Register; Wayback] (by Richard Speed; h/t compusever)

the software has been taken up by clients seeking to hand over control of their computer to someone else in exchange for a fee and a promise not to email their partner. The prospect and thrill of the loss of control is apparently an enticing one.
[...]
The Register reckons that same effect could be achieved by putting an unpatched version of Windows XP on an open internet connection for a few minutes.

[cw: murder] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by ficklefackle; h/t consumptivesphinx) That knife was from *what*?!



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Of the four other people who expressed interest, three couldn't make this timeslot.

While two people is enough that we were able to go ahead with the test run, I'd like to form a more inclusive schedule. If you're interested in attending, please fill out this survey. Make sure to set the location to your own timezone, and to press "Send Response" when you're done. (Almost missed that bit myself.)