@lierdumoa / lierdumoa.tumblr.com
do not stop talking about Palestine!
there are Shut It Down For Palestine actions planned for Friday, look for one in your area if you can. they're not all registered on the Shut It Down website, so check social media as well as their list.
Pink wants to “Get the Party Started” against Florida book bans — the singer says at her upcoming concerts she’ll be giving away thousands of books that are prohibited in the Sunshine State’s public schools.
Stop! Look! And Hasten! (1954)
It’s time again
“Tunak Tunak Tun” (Punjabi: ਤੁਣਕ ਤੁਣਕ ਤੁਣ) or “Tunak”, is a bhangra/pop love song by Indian artist Daler Mehndi released in 1998. At the time, critics complained that Mehndi’s music was only popular due to his videos that featured beautiful women dancing. Mehndi’s response was to create a video that featured only himself.
also gosh the lyrics to this are actually really sweet & great i never realised
In recent years, Google users have developed one very specific complaint about the ubiquitous search engine: They can’t find any answers. A simple search for “best pc for gaming” leads to a page dominated by sponsored links rather than helpful advice on which computer to buy. Meanwhile, the actual results are chock-full of low-quality, search-engine-optimized affiliate content designed to generate money for the publisher rather than provide high-quality answers. As a result, users have resorted to work-arounds and hacks to try and find useful information among the ads and low-quality chum. In short, Google’s flagship service now sucks.
And Google isn’t the only tech giant with a slowly deteriorating core product. Facebook, a website ostensibly for finding and connecting with your friends, constantly floods users’ feeds with sponsored (or “recommended”) content, and seems to bury the things people want to see under what Facebook decides is relevant. And as journalist John Herrman wrote earlier this year, the “junkification of Amazon” has made it nearly impossible for users to find a high-quality product they want — instead diverting people to ad-riddled result pages filled with low-quality products from sellers who know how to game the system.
All of these miserable online experiences are symptoms of an insidious underlying disease: In Silicon Valley, the user’s experience has become subordinate to the company’s stock price. Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech companies have monetized confusion, constantly testing how much they can interfere with and manipulate users. And instead of trying to meaningfully innovate and improve the useful services they provide, these companies have instead chased short-term fads or attempted to totally overhaul their businesses in a desperate attempt to win the favor of Wall Street investors. As a result, our collective online experience is getting worse — it’s harder to buy the things you want to buy, more convoluted to search for info
Cory Doctorow has a similar concept of enshitification:
Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
…
This is enshittification: Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they’re locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they’re locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit. From mobile app stores to Steam, from Facebook to Twitter, this is the enshittification lifecycle.
…
Enshittification truly is how platforms die. That’s fine, actually. We don’t need eternal rulers of the internet. It’s okay for new ideas and new ways of working to emerge. The emphasis of lawmakers and policymakers shouldn’t be preserving the crepuscular senescence of dying platforms. Rather, our policy focus should be on minimizing the cost to users when these firms reach their expiry date: Enshrining rights like end-to-end would mean that no matter how autocannibalistic a zombie platform became, willing speakers and willing listeners would still connect with each other.
-Cory Doctorow. The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok (archive link)
To add to this, I believe Tumblr has evaded some of this because of it having always had a niche audience and an abundance of porn. But the first steps of enshitification on Tumblr are the 2018 porn ban and the release of Tumblr live. Let’s be loyal to the community and not to the platform.
it does feel a little bit like being gaslit that the internet is slowly getting worse in barely perceptible ways- it’s validating to see an article that says, “yes, it’s not that you’re getting old and somehow losing your google proficiency, GOOGLE IS WORSE THAN IT USED TO BE.”
Amazon literally shows you fewer search results if you sort by user reviews instead of “Amazon recommended”, and I remember that it didn’t used to do that
Sounds like it’s time for me to write up
So like. I know this isn’t what the post is about but like. Firefox is *right* there. And it’s free. And you can add a bunch of extensions like *actual adblockers that work.* And scripts that tell corporations trying to collect your data to go fuck themselves, like Privacy Badger and Privacy Possum. And you can import your bookmarks and passwords with *literally* just two clicks of a button so you don’t lose anything.
So like. You don’t *have* to put up with Google. You can, absolutely, just ditch it. Let it rot in peace while you go make your internet experience habitable again.
Here’s a link to download it on windows. Go do it. And install uBlock Origin. Two clicks again. Thank me later.
What is with people who ostensibly use the same Internet I do who seem to believe Firefox, duckduckgo, and adblockers can undo all this shit? Firefox is not magic.
I use Firefox! In fact, I use IceRaven. I grappled with the extensions-to-mobile Collections project mozilla themselves seems to have forgotten to get back at least *some* of the benefits lost from using Kiwi/chrome re-skinned (hey mozilla no rush but you intro’d this years ago and you still have no built in translation). I’ve got the free version of Blokada on my phone. About:config messed with. F-droid. Phone is (well, was -forgot the damage an update can do) rooted. NewPipe instead of Youtube, xmanager for Spotify. Every single day I force myself to use duckduckgo like I don’t know there’s a 70% chance I’ll have to take my ass to google anyway. Miles of extensions just for blocking ads and content farms
NONE OF THESE TACTICS/COMPANIES ARE POWERFUL ENOUGH TO COMPLETELY REVERSE ENSHITTIFICATION.
What is mozilla gonna do about steam pushing connect 3 and hentai games to my recommendations? Why would all of the other search engines be impervious to SEOification? Did Privacy Badger bring porn back to Tumblr? Did you hear about reddit switching to a paid API model, killing staple make-reddit-usable project Pushshift? Hell, remember when AdBlock Plus was the belle of the ball? A Firefox staple? Only to get - you guessed it! Enshittified.
This is my ongoing pet peeve, like is it an ongoing astroturfing campaign? Gaslighting just for fun? do you even use the stuff you recommend? Because I do. I put more effort into curating my Internet than the average guy so I sit here with a bewildered look each time you guys come here and insist an individual downloading a different browser can overcome a hundred different companies conspiring against them. You are literally on the unfixably enshittified website right now. Nothing you download to your pc will undo FOSTA-SESTA
Thank you for your breakdown zoobus because got damn
Okay so I found the most incredible horse statue while doing research for my job and guys. Are you ready for this. Are you sure you're fucking ready for this thing
*sees 2 notes* FUCK yes let's fucking GOOOO
I saw the opposite of this horse
Fucked up horse statues let's gooooooo
Statue is by Jaroslav Róna
Saw a post about helping people that used the analogy of "if you see someone fall off a cruiseship and theres a life preserver ring on the wall next to you do you walk away or do you throw them the life preserver? Of course you throw them the life preserver." And i dont want to add to or tag the post with any sort of correction because its literally not the point at all but i am desperate to say that the first thing they teach you when you work on a cruise ship is that if someone falls overboard you Do Not Look Away
If theres a life preserver nearby but you have to turn your back to get it, tough luck. If theres someone nearby who can't hear you but you could run and get them, absolutely not. You see someone go overboard you point at them and never ever let them out of your sight because looking away even once could mean losing them forever, so you just have to trust that someone will hear you scream for help but you cant for any reason look away
And maybe that adds to the life preserver metaphor somehow but mostly i just need you to know if you spot someone in the water you point at them and you watch them close and you scream for help
i love you USPS I love you NASA i love you taxpayer funded services that actually contribute positively to society i love you libraries i love you public transport
(this helps disabled people outside of those with sma, but this is personalized for sma.)
Incredible colorised footage from 1929 of construction workers on the Chrysler Building in New York.
I’m just impressed that it has audio
If you wanted solid, definitive proof that the past did, in fact, happen, here it is.
I’m surprised the structure was able to support the weight of every set of BRASS FUCKING BALLS on all of those construction workers. Pre-safety gear/OCEA was wilding man.
The Chrysler Building had zero fatalities during construction. But the osha violations hurt my soul
Many of these men were Mohawk Native Americans! The Mohawk had a reputation as ironworkers and worked on most of the big interwar-era construction projects in NYC, also including the Empire State Building and the George Washington Bridge.
Leather soled shoes…
i’ve literally been here the whole time
the term is "girlie" and it's gender neutral
imagine getting this review
I guarantee that Monica at the front desk has not been able to live this review down and her coworkers absolutely bring it up regularly.
If I were Monica I'd print this review out and frame it
I hope Hank doesn’t find out about my meth business lmao
I hope Hank doesn’t find out about my meth business lmao
I hope Hank doesn’t find out about my meth business lmao
