>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.
>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.
>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.
>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.
>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.
>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.
>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.
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>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!
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>Lemmings problem now solved.
>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.
>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.
>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.
>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.
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>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.
>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.
Blocking ads is absolutely not stealing. The ads<>content agreement is between content hosting platforms and advertisers. The only role of the viewer in this arrangement is as the product. We are the product being traded, lured by content, not a party involved in the transaction. At no point was our agreement sought or expected.
If viewers are not watching ads and thus the platform is not delivering product to the advertisers, that’s an issue between the platform and the advertisers. Viewers aren’t stealing anything, morally or immorally; we never agreed to any transaction.
It should also be noted that if you have any usage fees or limits on your connection, any ads will directly negatively impact you, either from you getting charged for the data transmitted to show you ads you didn’t want, or from them eating up your data allowance, forcing you to restrict voluntary usage to avoid fees.
I setup pi-hole with an old raspberry pi 3B in about an hour and stopped having to explain to my mom not to click on the fucking Roku ads. And malicious software clicks have gone from a dozen a day to 0! It has been amazing! Seriously, if you live with a computer un-savvy person it is a godsend.
“A ship can never truly love an anchor.” dude shut up. a ship without an anchor gets dashed against the rocks. it’s useless, completely at the whim of the currents. a ship loves an anchor so much it carries it everywhere it goes. the anchor gives the ship the world to love. dude.
Almost every ex-Catholic I know, myself included, still has at least one saint they like enough to keep around in some form. The number of ex-Catholics still burying St. Anthony in the back yard is not insignificant.
Listen I may not want anything to do with the Church or Jesus or all that, but the saint-powered folk magic taught to me by older women in my family? I’ll keep that part, that part is rad. Especially since priests usually don’t want you doing it.
I’m curious but I’m Jewish so I have no idea what you’re talking about. Saint-powered folk magic?
God, okay, so Catholicism has a TON of little practices that totally qualify as folk magic, often practiced by women, but almost no Catholic granny will actually call it that. Growing up I learned all sorts of “”“prayers”“” that are basically just magical spells. They can vary from country to country, depending on what other cultural influences are being blended with the Catholicism.
For example, burying a statue of St. Joseph (not Anthony; I got my saints mixed up) to help sell a house. It’s also common to make offerings to statues of St. Anthony to help you find things that you’ve lost. Old Catholic ladies praying the rosary to enact specific wishes, things like that. God and Jesus never really enter into it–you’re basically doing fancy rituals to ask the saints to make things happen and intercede on your behalf with God.
And, of course, how could I forget relics? “Let me pray and make offerings to this piece of bone taken from a dead saint, so their spirit in Heaven will entreat God to help me with my problems.”
[ID: screenshotted tags from stargazing-enby that read, “#I never heard of these#But I did hear that if you want good weather you bring eggs to St Claire#catholicism.” End ID.]
[ID: screenshotted comment from fabledshadow that reads, “I carry a St. Christopher medal with me, and I’ve never been seriously injured while traveling. Going to go ahead and hang on to that one lol it makes me feel better anyway.” End ID.]
Also, no one loves candle magic quite like the Catholics. “Light this specific candle in this specific manner while saying these specific prayers” was, like, an entire THING when I was growing up. Candles for the dead, shelves full of offering candles that are never allowed to be blown out (only to burn out naturally), keeping candles lit to represent the presence of Jesus and Mary, baptism candles, advent candles, candles on a buche de noel, on it goes.
This is what scared the shit out of my older Christian relatives. I never met a single Catholic growing up but I heard about some of this stuff from fanatical protestant aunts and uncles, who were taught by their churches that Catholicism is “occult.” There’s a ton of Christians who think Catholics are in fact Satanic witches.
I’ve been a recovering Catholic for far longer than I was a badly practicing one at this point, and Me and Saint Tony? We’re tight.
Don’t really truck with any other sort of god-botherering, but…Tony’s okay.
“Tim Anderson disagrees. He’s the man trying to get the books declared obscene—and, in the process, change obscenity law in the United States. Anderson, a lawyer and Republican Virginia state delegate whose district includes Virginia Beach, will argue the case later this month. (Another Republican, Tommy Altman, filed the petition; Altman recently lost his primary for a House seat in Virginia’s 2nd district.) The petition is a new twist on recent right-wing attacks on materials that address sexuality, gender, and race. Rather than demanding that school boards or librarians remove books, the current case takes the books to court, using an obscure Virginia law that would allow the judge, if she found the books obscene, to ban bookstores, libraries, and even private citizens from selling or sharing them, everywhere in Virginia.”
We told you. We fucking told you.
Start learning to love the word самиздат: we’re going to be practicing it a lot, again.
people misunderstand what ‘gifted kid’ actually means but it’s ok it’s fine it’s cool it’s good
it’s not about actually being gifted, it’s about an initial higher scoring on standardized testing that means little to nothing or being good at learning in the way elementary and middle school wants you to, so you get marked as ‘advanced’. in reality, maybe you had faster development in certain areas, but the issue with being a gifted kid isn’t that “everyone told me I was so cool and special for reading and then I actually wasn’t :(” it’s “I wasn’t properly taught to handle things not coming easily to me, but the adults around me were counting on me not being a ‘difficult’ child in school.”
people who use it as some weird bragging method or interpret it that way are ignoring the way a lot of school systems force certain roles on students to simplify the learning process. If your kid doesn’t need to take notes to understand a science concept bc they get it naturally, well that’s good, but now you’re not teaching them how to take notes and they’re not learning that important soft skill. but because ‘gifted’ kids are easy and don’t show that they’re falling behind in learning in other categories that are harder to quantify, they eventually fall behind after that catches up to them. It’s about the failures of a one size fits all school system trying to compensate in the worst way possible.
And also the thing where ‘gifted’ kids are super likely to also be neuroatypical, which they don’t get screened for because they appear to be doing well in school. Or “You can’t be ADHD/autistic/etc, because you’re doing so well in school!”. Or being shamed for developing mental health issues/generally not being able to keep up with school work later, because you USED TO BE able to do it just fine.
Or the assumption that just because you can read well or you like math class, you’re somehow more EMOTIONALLY mature than your little kid brain is actually capable of being.
Or gifted kids whose parents and teachers put immense pressure on them to Do Great Things and Save The World and you’re like. “I’m 10 and I have no idea how to do that, but everyone is saying that’s my job?”.
This is the best “gifted kid” post out there. I never took notes until college because I didn’t have to, snd when it got challenging I had to literally teach myself note taking at age 18. It also fucks with your perception of asking for help - you’re advanced, you’re competent, you should be able to understand every topic easily. Asking for help/going to office hours/asking for a tutor feels like failing when you were praised in your early years for not needing to do that.
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