shapelessocean

[shapelessocean]

5 Browser Extensions to make YouTube usable in 2025

I have been an avid YouTube watcher for years now. It has effectively replaced television for me. However, in recent times the platform has become a source of numerous frustrations mostly caused by bizarre decisions made by its management and the resulting decline in quality of the website itself.

I use the 5 following extensions to make browsing YouTube a more enjoyable and user-friendly experience.

Please note that all of those are available on Firefox, I am not sure about other browsers.

uBlock Origin

This extension is not specific to YouTube, it is a general Adblocker that works on most websites out there. It is an absolute necessity if you don't want to be bombarded with 5 unskippable ads every other minute. This extension also bypasses YouTube's ban on adblockers, meaning that you won't have the anti-adblock pop up or any negative consequences for that matter.

BlockTube

Do you hate a particular channel that keeps getting recommended to you even if you click "not interested"? Do you want to remove shorts entirely? Want to block certain key words from search results? You can do all of that and more with BlockTube. It has a million options and open ended typing fields where you can specify even more.

SponsorBlock

Automatically skips the sponsor segment on videos, if there is one. Works 99/100 times. Saved so much time.

Return YouTube Dislike

Lets you see the amount of dislikes a video has. It is fairly accurate but can have delayed information sometimes. Has been useful especially for videos where comments have been disabled.

YouTube Redux

Personally, I don't like the new UI they implemented. It is way too oversized and unintuitive. YTRedux simply replaces the new UI with the classic one.

[shapelessocean]

Duolingo - The straw that broke the owl's back (I am DONE!)

Today I decided to return to language learning and knowledge revision/refreshment, as I simply wanted to be more active in this area again. In the past, I used Duolingo to do this, so I downloaded the app again after not having used it in a long time. I opened it up and made a new account, wanting to start from scratch because it had simply been so long. Everything went fine. Until I came to a harrowing realization. I could not set a profile picture. And even worse - it kept pestering me to create one of those ugly "Avatars". I did not want that, of course, so I logged into my old account, the one that used to have a normal profile picture. And then it hit me. The cute stylized cat playing a keyboard was GONE. REMOVED by Duolingo so they just save just another few dollars. This was the last straw. I had many gripes with the app beforehand, the reason for my hiatus in the first place. First, they took the bios, then they took the classic lesson trees and replaced them with a strict, static path, taking away user choice, then they took the forums (that often contained important exchange about grammar and word usage, by the way, you know, things that are integral to learning a language??) and replaced them with an AI (that you have to PAY a comical amount of currency for) and now the profile pictures. And I didn't even mention all of the other changes made to entice people to shove thick bundles of cash up that verdant owl's scrotum. Duolingo seems hellbent on destroying user autonomy as a whole. They seek to control everything, human expression is not allowed on their app. You know, the place that teaches you languages, that are MADE for communication? It used to be alright, but nowadays it's all just soulless, corporate sludge that is continuously forced down desperate user's throats.

The profile pictures were one of the things that made it interesting. I loved following people with cats and funny meme pics. And I do not believe the excuse that it was done because of "inappropriate" pictures. I and many others have never seen such. I'm sure they existed somewhere, but it's not that hard to ban a handful of users. It's a language learning app, not Reddit or 4chan. It can't be that hard to moderate. They did it because of money and everyone knows it.

Greed is what drives them. Greed and the insatiable lust for control. Their goal - eliminating individuality on their platform and remaking their user's public accounts to their liking. It's not optional, profile pics were forcibly deleted and replaced by simple letters. And the lettered accounts are the ones with dignity, because they did not bow down to the owl's demands despite constant pressure. Because once you make an avatar, there is no going back. They are forcing an irreversible change of appearance on the users without telling them it will be irreversible, effectively deceiving them. I guess we can be glad they didn't force a premade avatar, but that will just be the next step. They will probably auto-assign usernames soon too. Duolingo has turned from a fun language learning app to a husk salivating at shiny dollar bills like a rabid dog. And they want to do the same to the users, removing their human expressions and coercing them into adopting a limited, corporate persona decided and crafted according to their own vision: Bland mute paypigs without any semblance of autonomy to blindly finance their increasingly unusable trash can of an application. Of course, once I realized this, I deleted my accounts immediately. I cannot and will not accelt or stand for such a transgression against my own identity, expression and integrity.

Another criticism I have is the increasing manipulation coming from Duolingo. They really leaned into the whole "Duo knows where you live" and ramped up the emotional manipulation by 100% percent. Constant notifications, some of which can't be turned off. And if you somehow manage to, more notifications begging you to turn them on again like a clingy obsessive partner. I've heard that leagues have been shrunk to make competition even more stressful. And don't even get me started on the app icon changing and melting over time when noticing user inactivity. While personally, the bizarre appearance of the cronenowl doesn't scare me, I can understand why it might be off-putting for some, especially younger users.

My tip: If you have other options, use the other option.

Bottom line: Duolingo is a deeply inadequate app that does not respect user autonomy and expects you to cough up coin for basic usability and also manipulates you emotionally if you take a break from it because of its innate dysfunction.

[shapelessocean]

poem I wrote a while ago

[shapelessocean]

Being in certain fandoms/communities really feels like being in a room where everyone is in on the same joke but nobody is allowed to laugh because people are looking in through the window. I'm not giving names but you know who you are.

[shapelessocean]

3 writing tips I use regularly

Hello, today I will tell you about some writing tips I like to use to prevent getting stuck and to keep up with writing in general.

Writing every day

Write something every day. It doesn't matter if it's only a sentence or 100 words or an entire chapter. The important thing is to build a habit. This has helped me enormously with writer's block. Because even if I say "I will only write 2 sentences today because I have no ideas" it will almost always end up being more because I get into the story again.

Disregard style in your first draft

This is a problem I only noticed recently. Sometimes I will sit at my desk and spend minutes trying to come up with the perfect word or with the perfect description. This sometimes makes me get stuck at a certain scene. What helped me was to stop caring about stylistic choices and simply write what is in my head, no matter how stupid or bad it sounds. Getting the story onto paper is the first step, you have all the time in the world to correct style, descriptions and words later. It takes off a lot of self-inflicted pressure.

Don't be afraid to write non-chronologically

For a very long time, I was under the assumption that you have to write a story from start to finish chronologically. This unsurprisingly led to me getting blocked when I got to a boring filler scene that I just didn't want to write. If you want to write a specific scene, then write it. It doesn't matter if it's at the end of the story. What's important is to use motivation and inspiration when it is there. I also started using descriptions like [They go inside, describe interior] to indicate what I want from a scene so that I can write it later.

[shapelessocean]

Is anyone having issues with scrolling on Tumblr mobile?

I have issues scrolling down, it just locks for some reason and doesn't let me scroll further down until I have assaulted the screen with my finger for like 2 minutes. Then it goes down by like 1 cm and locks again. Not the end of posts, just right in the middle.

I have to double tap to "grab" the page again and sometimes even that doesn't work. Has been like this for the past few weeks. I hope they fix it because it make the site borderline unusable.

[shapelessocean]

ok so idk where this came from but my newest whump obsession is a character from a society that doesn't use modern technology being kidnapped by another party that is like really high tech. Imagine like a caveman being discovered and captured by scientists to study his primitive ways. Or like 19th century farmer ending up on an alien ship. Or like a person in a dystopian cyberpunk future choosing to live a simple life outside the city being grabbed by secret police or something. Idk what to call this, "technology whump"?

[shapelessocean]

Just rewatched Tron Legacy...

I used to be absolutely OBSESSED with this movie when I was like 10. I seriously didn't stop talking about it to my parents haha. I was really interested in computers back then so the thought of being inside one was (and still is tbh) insanely cool to me.