America Has A Weird Relationship With Cults Where They’re Terrified Of Small Cults (or Organizations

25 years ago an unknown Chinese protester stood in front of a tank in defiance of the government. No one knows the identity of the man but he was given the nick name “Tank Man”. This is one of the most iconic photographs of the century.

>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.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>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.

>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.

I am mad about cellphone cameras hiding the processing they do, and I am glad about software that lets me control it and opt in and out, and I dictated this rant on insta so I am resharing the images here and will attempt to turn this into a useful text post on my blog in future, when my hand is working better 🤘👍

Red Trees is a very sweet horror story where you search for a monster that’s terrifying a little town.

Read More & Play The Full Game, Free (Windows)

some new additions to my google drive recently ◠ ◡ ◠

lanscape in the mist (1988) dir. theo angelopoulos

the full monty (1997) dir. peter cattaneo

gormenghast (2000), complete series

the romance of astrea and celadon (2007) dir. éric rohmer

the personal history of david copperfield (2019) dir. armando iannucci

belle (2021) dir. mamoru hosoda

yall look at this shit ad*be is tryna pull now on ppl who have outdated software:

(note for context: i’m all for piracy, but in this case my copy of CS6 was downloaded years ago when they were giving it away to students. i got it totally legally.)

rat patootie (bless my soul)

Yes, like in the movie Ratatouille, the recipe so good it makes the evil food critic cry tears of joy. 

I swear this stuff has magical properties but ANYWAY. I’m not about to be that person with the 8 paragraph personal essay before the recipe so here it is

4-6 cloves garlic 1 onion olive oil 1 28oz can crushed or petite diced tomatoes fresh basil and parsley. Like 1/3 of a cup each? 1 eggplant 1-2 zucchini 1-2 yellow squash 5-6 roma tomatoes salt and pepper

1. Get food. Tricky part: make sure the eggplant, zucchini, squash and tomatoes are all roughly the same thiccness.

I finally figured it out: for a 10″ cast iron pan, you want 8-10″ apiece of each kind of tube veggie.

2. chop veggies. This is a fun recipe to make if you like to stab things a lot. Slice the tube veggies as thinly as you can. I can reliably do about 1/8th inch.

3. Preheat oven to 350 and put your pan over medium heat. If you have dried herbes de provence, throw 1-2 tablespoons in the pan and let them toast until you can smell them. If not don’t worry about it.

I put in extra lavender just ‘cause I could.

4. Add 1-2 tablespoons olive oil and plenty of garlic. Never let some catfish tell you how much garlic is too much. Feel it in your heart.

Anyway let that saute for about 2 minutes.

5. Add onions and saute until translucent, about 8 minutes. 

6. Add the crushed tomatoes, half the parsley and basil, 1-2 tsp black pepper and a pinch of salt. Let that simmer for, I don’t know, 5-10 minutes?

7. While that’s happening, mix like ¼ cup of olive oil with another teaspoon of garlic, black pepper, salt, and the rest of the parsley and basil. Set that aside.

8. Turn off the stove burner and start putting the veggies in the pan. Don’t know if it matters but I usually alternate soft with hard, so I do eggplant-zucchini-tomato-yellow squash. 

Keep doing that

I usually do a ring of veggies around the outside of the pan and then fill in the center however works. Most versions of this recipe lay the veggies down on top of the sauce. I’ve always stuck them straight up and down in the pan. Is this better? Who knows, man.

Ratatouille ready to go in the oven

9. Bake for about an hour and 15 minutes. It’s done when the zucchini and squash in the center are fork tender.

10. Spoon the olive oil/herb/garlic sauce over the top while it’s bubbling hot

Ways to stretch it out: Ratatouille is awesome on top of pasta. I usually get 4 meals out of one pan like this. Also, you will have leftover tube veg. I buy frozen pizza crusts and throw the veggies on top with some pizza sauce or olive oil, seasonings, and some goat cheese crumbles or mozzarella.

Anyway, that’s my current “happy place” recipe. It’s never cost me more than $10 in raw materials to make (including fresh herbs and bourgie canned tomatoes!) and is always a crowd-pleaser.

Nom on that

this shit owns it's just a number go up idle game except the idle mechanic comes from you writing JavaScript to automate tasks it seems like the end goal of the game is to perfectly optimize against this little arbitrary system they've created. There's not any plot to speak of so far but even though nothing is happening people send you messages through the computer telling you to trust no one as they all have ulterior motives. Very relatable.

pcgamer

Bitburner is an idle game about hacking that teaches real JavaScript

You don't have to know JavaScript to get started.

how does being punched in the face feel like

Do you have any horror movies to recommend, please? I think I've watched everything though due to quarantined.

Hi! Well, off the top of my hat, here are some horror recommendations that I feel are somewhat less talked about (so maybe you haven't seen them yet?), in no particular order:

Good Manners (2017)

The House That Screamed (1969)

Jigoku (1960)

Hangover Square (1945)

Penda's Fen (1974)

Evil Dead Trap (1988)

Cemetery Man (1994)

The Sect (1991)

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

Blood on Satan's Claw (1971)

Messiah of Evil (1973)

The Wild Boys (2017)

Shiver of the Vampires (1971)

Afraid of the Dark (1991)

Ganja & Hess (1973)

Anguish (1987)

Martin (1977)

Gothic (1986)

Dust Devil (1992)

White of the Eye (1987)

Sweet Home (1989)

Lisa and the Devil (1973)

Blood and Roses (1960)

Queens of Evil (1970)

Knife+Heart (2018)

The Book of Stone (1969)

Laurin (1989)

Society (1989)

Daughters of Fire (1978)

The Haunting of Julia (1977)

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)

In The Mouth of Madness (1994)

Jonathan (1970)

Popcorn (1991)