#how to remove google extensions

[mokubetech]

If you're looking to remove Fortyfy and Surfsee extensions on Chrome, then watch this video for a step-by-step guide on how to do it. Keep your browser clean and running smoothly with these easy tips!

[ms-demeanor]

Do you have thoughts about the changes to Firefox's Terms of Use and Privacy Notice? A lot of people seem to be freaking out ("This is like when google removed 'Don't be evil!'"), but it seems to me like just another case of people getting confused by legalese.

Yeah you got it in one.

I've been trying not to get too fighty about it so thank you for giving me the excuse to talk about it neutrally and not while arguing with someone.

Firefox sits in such an awful place when it comes to how people who understand technology at varying levels interact with it.

On one very extreme end you've got people who are pissed that Firefox won't let you install known malicious extensions because that's too controlling of the user experience; these are also the people who tend to say that firefox might as well be spyware because they are paid by google to have google as the default search engine for the browser.

In the middle you've got a bunch of people who know a little bit about technology - enough to know that they should be suspicious of it - but who are only passingly familiar with stuff like "internet protocols" and "security certificates" and "legal liability" who see every change that isn't explicitly about data anonymization as a threat that needs to be killed with fire. These are the people who tend not to know that you can change the data collection settings in Firefox.

And on the other extreme you've got people who are pretty sure that firefox is a witch and that you're going to get a virus if you download a browser that isn't chrome so they won't touch Firefox with a ten foot pole.

And it's just kind of exhausting. It reminds me of when you've got people who get more mad at queer creators for inelegantly supporting a cause than they are at blatant homophobes. Like, yeah, you focus on the people whose minds you can change, and Firefox is certainly more responsive to user feedback than Chrome, but also getting you to legally agree that you won't sue Firefox for temporarily storing a photo you're uploading isn't a sign that Firefox sold out and is collecting all your data to feed to whichever LLM is currently supposed to be pouring the most bottles of water into landfills before pissing in the plastic bottle and putting the plastic bottle full of urine in the landfill.

The post I keep seeing (and it's not one post, i've seen this in youtube comment sections and on discord and on tumblr) is:

Well-meaning person who has gotten the wrong end of the stick: This is it, go switch to sanguinetapir now, firefox has gone to the dark side and is selling your data. [Link to *an internet comment section* and/or redditor reactions as evidence of wrongdoing].

Response: I think you may be misreading the statements here, there's been an update about this and everything.

Well-meaning (and deeply annoying) person who has gotten the wrong end of the stick: If you'd read the link you'd see that actually no I didn't misinterpret this, as evidenced by the dozens of commenters on this other site who are misinterpreting the ToU the same way that I am, but more snarkily.

Bud.

Anyway the consensus from the actual security nerds is "jesus fucking christ we carry GPS locators in our pockets all goddamned day and there are cameras everywhere and there is a long-lasting global push to erode the right to encrypt your data and facebook is creating tracking accounts for people who don't even have a facebook and they are giving data about abortion travel to the goddamned police state" and they could not be reached for comment about whether Firefox is bad now, actually, because they collect anonymized data about the people who use pocket.

My response is that there is a simple fix for all of this and it is to walk into the sea.

(I am not worried about the updated firefox ToU, I personally have a fair amount of data collection enabled on my browser because I do actually want crash reports to go to firefox when my browser crashes; however i'm not actually all that worried about firefox collecting, like, ad data on me because I haven't seen an ad in ten years and if one popped up on my browser i'd smash my screen with a stand mixer - I don't care about location data either because turning on location on your devices is for suckers but also *the way the internet works means unless you're using a traffic anonymizer at all times your browser/isp/websites you connect to/vpn/what fucking ever know where you are because of the IP address that they *have* to be able to see to deliver the internet to you and that is, generally speaking, logged as a matter of course by the systems that interact with it*)

Anyway if you're worried about firefox collecting your data you should ABSOLUTELY NOT BE ON DISCORD OR YOUTUBE and if you are on either of those things you should 100% be using them in a browser instead of an app and i don't particularly care if that browser is firefox or tonsilferret but it should be one with an extension that allows you to choose what data gets shared with the sites it interacts with.

[nyerus]

A Masterpost for the Revised Version of TGCF

Due to the amount and frequency of misinformation about the revised version of TGCF, I wanted to make a post to serve as a resource for those who are confused about it, while also helping to debunk some of the sensationalist rumors floating around.

This post will be edited to include new things as needed.

⚠️Spoiler Warning: if you have not finished reading the original novel, or want to experience the new scenes from the revised naturally/fresh, please proceed with caution! I've intentionally kept things as vague as possible, but some spoilers are unavoidable!⚠️

✨ PART ONE: Frequently Asked Questions ✨

🔹What is the "revised" version of TGCF?

MXTX had been working on a revised version of TGCF since completing the original, as mentioned this in her postscript/afterword, and in an online interview (Q.27) done years ago just as she competed TGCF. That's all that was known for several years.

In early 2023, TGCF was finally released in print format in mainland China — and this was revealed to be the revised version! Due to regulations, this was a censored edition. However, in early 2024, the uncensored edition was uploaded to JJWXC (the site where all of MXTX's webnovels were originally published)! It's currently fully available to read in Simplified Chinese.

If you want a more in-depth explanation about the revised, please see my post about that here.

🔹What does the revised change compared to the original?

Several scenes have been added, some removed, others expanded upon. Overall, MXTX reportedly wrote 100k characters (words) of new content. While the overarching plot of each arc and the novel as a whole remains the same, it's a more cohesive and polished story. Pacing in each part of the story has been adjusted to flow better, especially in arcs notorious for feeling slow or disjointed.

Some segments have had fairly significant changes — namely the Bloody Banquet/Fang Xin Guoshi arc. (Though it still plays out much the same way.) Most others have smaller changes.

A new extra was also added, called "the Ghost King Dressed Down," which has been translated by Scarabsi on twitter.

🔹How does the revised version effect characters?

Apart from certain minor characters — such as the child Lang Ying who was removed entirely — there haven't been many drastic changes. The biggest thing was side characters like Lang Qianqiu and Ling Wen being given notably more backstory to further flesh them out. Their characterization itself hasn't changed, however.

🔹Which version is canon, then?

Whichever you want, and you can mix-and-match! MXTX has given fans her blessings and encouragement!

🔹How do I read the revised version in English?

Currently, there are no official or unofficial English translations of the whole revised version. Nor are there any plans to do so for the near future.

However, there are English fan translations of a few notable chapters, which you can read here. There's also instructions on that site on how to read the rest of the updated webnovel in English, using a browser extension.

Additionally, the audio drama is adapting the uncensored revised version, and has been doing an amazing job! Check out how to listen to that with English subs here.

✨PART TWO: Debunking Rumors & Clearing up Misinformation✨

Note that all chapter numbers given will be referencing the webnovel's. The old chapters are also available towards the bottom of the page as "serialized versions."

(Translated screenshots provided are janky because it's just basic google MTL!)

🔸"Mentions of Mu Qing's mother was removed from the revised!"

Not at all! Both his parents are still mentioned, along with how Mu Qing is the primary breadwinner due to his mom's failing eyesight. (Ch. 57)

🔸"The earring scene isn't there anymore!"

The earring scene is still very much there! Not actually sure why this is a rumor at all, when the whole earring thing spans several chapters. Here's the conclusion of it (Ch. 59):

🔸"Characters have been butchered in general, with Mu Qing especially getting scenes cut!"

No character (who didn't straight-up get deleted) has been butchered. Nor has any character been singled out for having their scenes deleted/changed, because that's happened to every character — yes, including Xie Lian and Hua Cheng! — and they also have new scenes added!

E.g. the scene where Mu Qing picks the cherries is removed, because that whole section was changed. (However, it's still mentioned that others are prejudiced against him due to his background, and so on.) Meanwhile, there's a brand-new scene that shows Mu Qing's aptitude in treating wounds, as well as he and Feng Xin having new hijinks as "junior officials" with Xie Lian, and more.

Despite the rumors, characters haven't been flattened to make them more one-dimensional compared to Hualian. Perhaps the idea of certain scenes being cut sounds scary for characterization, but a lot of the original has been retained one way or another. In many cases, MXTX just condensed things, or moved them around. The revised is meant to be looked at as a whole, after all.

🔸"Mu Qing now leaves for no reason in Book/Arc 4, instead of for his mother!"

Mu Qing clearly states in the revised that he wants to leave in order to find a way to improve their situation, since they anyways cannot agree amongst themselves. Just like in the original, he was frustrated and felt there was no point in continuing along the same path. (Ch 152)

And yes, he does not bring up his mother in the revised scene. For context: there is a three year gap between the end of Book/Arc 2 and the start of 4. Which means in the original, Mu Qing didn't mention his mother for those three years. Given the events leading to his departure, and what follows, this causes several inconsistencies.

That is a whole topic unto itself, however. But it's not surprising the revised did it a bit differently.

🔸"Feng Xin isn't as funny anymore!"

Feng Xin is actually one of the least changed characters! This rumor likely stems from the scene where Xie Lian reveals his password, to Feng Xin, who no longer rolls on the floor while laughing. Or maybe it's a miscommunication based on the printed revised, which censored some of his (and Qi Rong's) cursing. But that was only for the printed!

🔸"Ling Wen's character isn't as interesting because of the changes!"

People will really say anything on the internet. She's been given more depth and complexity, if anything. There's new scenes that expand on her background and early days in heaven, and her relationship with Bai Jing has been given a lot of extra attention. Her motivations and actions remain the same, but if the subtext was missed in the original, it could have led to some readers thinking of Ling Wen as certain way. Like a ruthless girlboss.

The revised reiterating that this isn't the case doesn't change or detract from her, as that was one of the points of her story to begin with. Plus, the revised arc gives Bai Jing much-needed characterization.

🔸"Ling Wen's ascension is now due to Jing Wen/not on her own merit/etc!"

Frankly, this rumor might be due to people not properly understanding how ascension works in TGCF, and thinking the revised is adding something that they forgot was already in the original. The revised didn't change anything about the manner in which Ling Wen ascended.

You can actually check out the revised Brocade Immortal arc here for yourself, as it's been fan translated!

🔸"The dynamic between Hualian is different in the revised!"

Their dynamic is exactly the same as before, only reinforced if anything. If the new additions are enough to destroy someone’s image of Hualian or turn it on its head, that’s definitely not a fault with either novel version!

🔸"The scene where Hua Cheng is disguised as Lang Ying and accidentally catches Xie Lian bathing is removed!"

Unfortunately, yes, the bathing scene is gone. However, Hua Cheng in disguise is still there — he's a village kid instead.

🔸"MXTX made changes to side characters/ships because she felt threatened by their popularity compared to her main couple!"

This one just doesn't really make sense, because several side characters were given *more* content — including their relationships.

Lang Qianqiu finally feels like an actual character. Quan Yizhen and Yin Yu have new stuff about them. Shi Wudu has some clever little cameos. Pei Ming’s feelings about Yushi Huang are brought up. Pei Xiu’s backstory is even more heartbreaking. Qi Rong has new scenes that make him feel genuinely menacing. Xiao Ying’s been completely revamped. These are just to name a few, and excluding things already talked about above.

It seems unlikely that MXTX would go through the trouble of adding to her side characters if she didn’t care about them, felt they weren’t important, or thought they were getting undeserved attention. Besides, popular characters like Shi Qingxuan and He Xuan had no cuts to their arc!

Looking at the actual metrics… MXTX has no need to feel threatened by her side ships vs her main ships.

[alltimefail]

Agency Assignments: A comprehensive to-do list for saving Dead Boy Detectives!

I'm very easily overwhelmed, so I wanted to break down all the ways to help "Save Dead Boy Detectives" that I have seen floating around. This is meant to be something you can reference when you feel like there is so much you need and want to do to help, but don't know how or where to start.

Note: I will be updating this post as we go when necessary, so feel free to bookmark it in your browser for easy access, add it to your homepage, whatever! I'll always have a link to it in my Pinned Navigation post on my blog as well!

It is of the utmost importance that we fight as an organized, well-informed front. We need to be on the same page if we're going to save our show, so let's get into it! 💜💀🔎

➪ First and foremost, follow @savethedeadboys! They're going to be our best resource during this fight.

➪ Next, follow @deadboyagency for news and updates: they've been around since the show dropped and have been an invaluable source of information the entire time.

Now for some task breakdowns:

"One-Time" Tasks

➪ Like the header says, these things can only be done once. Once you do them, you don't have to give them any space in your mind.

Sign the petition*

Review & Rate Dead Boy Detectives on Google, IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes. Be sure on IMDB you don't just rate the show as a whole, but you also rate each individual episode! You can also "Like" the show on Google and click "Watched" which helps the show's engagement scores. (If there are other popular sites I haven't listed here, feel free to share them and rate Dead Boy Detectives highly on them!)

Notify Netflix customer service (through their online chat feature) that you're unhappy with the cancelation of Dead Boy Detectives. This is a short, 5-minute task that I wrote a guide on (with an example message) here!

"Repeat" Tasks:

➪ These tasks can become a part of your daily routine; do what works best for you! You don't have to do every single one of these tasks every day if that is overwhelming!

Share the petition* over and over again, on every one of your socials! Make everyone you love sign it!

Stream Dead Boy Detectives!* Keep it on a loop in the background on low volume as much as possible. Try to get others to stream it as well, especially if they haven't watched it before! Netflix cares about VIEWS: views save shows and I broke down the reasoning here. (Bonus: if you post over on Twitter about your rewatch, use the tag #ReviveDeadBoyDetectives)

Talk about Dead Boy Detectives!* You're probably doing that already, but just be sure that you're tagging your posts. Here on Tumblr use the "Dead Boy Detectives" tag at least (to boost our tag to trending) and anywhere that uses hashtags (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram for example) I would recommend #SaveDeadBoyDetectives and #DeadBoyDetectives as those seem to be the most commonly used tags! IMPORTANT: do not use more than 20 tags here on Tumblr! Any more than 20 and your posts might be marked as spam and hidden from the tags!

Create art, edits for TikTok, fics, gif sets, doodles, crafts, analysis posts, and so on for Dead Boy Detectives.* Having fun is important, too! This is an extension of the "Talk about Dead Boy Detectives" point, but it needs to be stated - don't remove the joy from the fight. If a drawing of our boys or a smutty fic with your favorite trickster cat king is what you can bring to the fight on any given day, that is a perfectly valuable contribution! It's not all emails and hashtags.

Daily request a show through Netflix. Bonus if you're signed in! (I do 3-5 times a day)

Send Emails advocating for Dead Boy Detectives (Email list & Email Template). You can do this as much as you want or just one time.

Send Snail-mail (physical letters) to Netflix advocating for Dead Boy Detectives. I also send a copy of my letters to Warner Bros. Studios. Again, you can do this one time or multiple times. There are dates set aside for "mass" mail sending as well, so check out info on that here!

Interact with articles posted about Dead Boy Detectives. Read them, share them, comment on them, thank the writer for writing them, etc. We want lots of press about the cancellation, and supporting journalists and publications will make them want to write about Dead Boy Detectives more.

NOTE: Anything marked with a * means it's extremely important; if you can only do a few things, these tasks are the ones that you should focus on first. Remember to take care of yourself. This is a marathon, not a sprint, so don't burn yourself out!

WE WILL SAVE THIS SHOW.

Say that to yourself as many times as it takes for you to believe it. We're doing this to get justice for the writers, the actors, for ourselves, and assert to these companies that diverse, queer stories are not disposable one-offs; they deserve to be told in full!

Hugs and Handshakes to you all - whatever will suffice. 💜 Always feel free to reach out if you have any questions, whether that be through private message or my ask box. I'm not going anywhere!

- V

[starrgirlella]

Lurking for love? More like lurking for LORE

Hi everyone! Just two days ago, I made some interesting discoveries about LFL by just digging around the website

I'm not sure if anyone else found this out so that's why I'm going to be sharing what I found because it's very interesting

This post is going to be pretty long lol and full of my rambling. If you're interested, please take a read! Do note that English isn't my first language so I may express myself a bit weird 😭

Also IK the screenshots are pretty shitty but I'm lazy oops

To start, I have a habit of checking the sinistershrike website along with the LFL itch.io game page. Why? Well I just like looking if there are any new updates (and its my hyperfixtation so I'm constantly looking for new content)-

And I noticed that on the sinistershrike website there was a new update which some of you may or may not saw.

In summary, the game is getting custom music, prounouns are getting removed so MC is going to be gender neutral and getting called only by their name and most interesting of all: a new main character is getting added, and they're going to be dateable!

Pretty interesting, right? I immediately got curious on who that character might be since they're going to cause drama and more mysteries.

But wait! I'm still not done, hehe

Afterwards, I was just randomly looking at Jacob Alden pics thru google. Again, why? Well, I don't know either lol. It's just a habit that I do when I'm bored and sometimes when I'm lucky, I come across new things.

And this time I was lucky!

So I scrolled down to the end of the results and I saw this post which caught my eye:

What's so interesting about it? Well the fact that the creators website is linked to it. Curious, I clicked on the link and was suprised at what I saw.

(Mind you I still dont know if I'm an idiot just finding this out or not...)

Basically, it's a site containing all info about Jacob! I got really excited when I saw it bc I LOVE learning all the facts about my favourite characters and finding new official content!

When I finished looking through it I noticed two things:

1. The website adress (is that what it's called? Im sorry english isn't my first language)

So when you look at the website adress you can notice how it's linked (basically an extension) to the creators webiste which is: sinistershrike.neocities.org

The thing is; you can't open Jacobs page on the creators site. Like yes, there is a tab which says CHARACTERS but if you click on it you'll get nothing but a scary looking Jacob. Which means to get to this page you have to type the adress in yourself.

So I'm assuming the creator is purposefully hiding this Jacob page (maybe because he wants to finish pages for all characters and more)

And here's the link if you want to take a look for yourself:

https://sinistershrike.neocities.org/character/jacob

2. At the end of the page, you have links to other characters made by the creator.

Not just lurking for love, but other ocs made by him!

Though, if you click on them, you'll get nothing. Maybe they're still being made? I'm not sure.

Now, when you look at the characters for LFL, it's very interesting because we now have info on Sarah's last name AND... an unknown character? Noah Vega.

At first, I was stunned. Who could this character be? Then I went back to the creators website and remembered the mention of a new character, can you see where I'm going?

Noah Vega must be the new character! He was never mentioned before; neither in the game nor in the creators deleted blogs.

And pretty quickly I found proof which helped my theory (I SOUND SO DUMB OMG)

Now going back to the website adress thing.

So I concluded that the Jacob website is hidden from the main website for an reason, hence you can only acess it by finding it yourself. I decided to mess around with the website adress a bit, to see if I could find any more extensions/links.

I started by putting different names in the adress. I tried out: Austin, Sarah, Cedric and Alfred but they didn't lead or anything.

BUT

The only name which lead to an extension was Noah. And holy shit-

I'm finding it hard to express how shocked I was at this discovery

This is a pretty big lore drop imo! So his website shows a pinboard with various notes.

And with these notes we can conclude two things:

1. He has an gambling addiction

2. He is investigating Jacob

He definitely an detective trying to solve an old murder case involved with Jacob. Hence why the mention that the new character will add more drama and mystery to the game.

The three murdered highschoolers must be his old friends mentioned in the game: Steve, Monty and Kenny. Which he claims that they haven't talked since highschool. In reality, they were murdered by him for reasons that are unknown for now.

The website link:

https://sinistershrike.neocities.org/character/noah

And that's about it! I had fun digging around finding this new info and writing this post. I hope to see more of interesting secrets like this in the future because it's fun finding them!

I hope this post was of interest to you :)

[bunberiii]

hi everyone, long time no see. Life has been very, VERY hectic the past year, but I'm hoping to return to making templates again. This is sadly the only one I've done over the past 12 months, but hopefully it's alright :)

𝟏𝟒. 𝕻𝖔𝖎𝖘𝖔𝖓 𝖂𝖎𝖓𝖊

introducing "14. poison wine", a dark red aesthetic in-depth Google Docs oc template designed specifically for characters within a gang setting. This document includes space for general information, personality, and extensive character information such as hobbies and habits, character relationships, gang information, criminal history, and character backstories. feel free to edit this as much as you wish as long as you do not remove my credit.

editing and modifications are welcome once you purchase the template.

all drawings and images in this document are custom created (or in the case of the pictures, edited) by me. If you would like to take elements from this document, you will need to credit me as an inspiration or the creator of that element(s).

resizing or moving objects/images can throw off the document, so be careful.

do not remove my watermark/credits!

please like or reblog this post if you use my template!  ♡

how to use

click the source link above

purchase the template via my payhip

follow the instructions on the downloaded note

once you receive access to the template, go to file  →  make a copy

how to edit

to most easily put in your own images, go to replace image then choose how you wish to replace it (either uploading a file or via the image's URL).

this document includes drawings. Double-click the drawing/image on the bottom left or top right corner, then click the edit tab. this will take you to a page where you can replace, edit or delete features of the image

for the custom-edited photos, I've linked a tutorial to how I created them in the zip file you'll receive after the purchase

[sgiandubh]

I don’t see the post about Sam and Cait attending the Venetian Carnival on the page’s IG or website. It must not be true! 😢

Dear Not True Anon,

Something seems fishy about that one, indeed. The Instagram post is gone, the Insta story is (obviously) gone and not archived. Even the link shared by the FB fan page Outlander Italy is gone, which means Nicolao Atelier replaced it:

The Instagram account follows S and C, but is not followed by them. This could mean nothing, but then it could mean something, after all.

The dead link is still indexed and appears as such on Google, when searching with basic keywords, however clicking on it will take you to the atelier's IG account, which has been sanitized. So this could mean the website's update happened fairly recently:

There seems to be no rule of thumb as to the removal timeframe. It can take anywhere from a couple of days to four weeks or more (if the content's owner did not file a removal request):

[Source: https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-something-to-be-removed-from-search-engines-such-as-Google-after-being-removed-from-a-website - answers differ, but this one stroke me as factually concise]

So I don't know if that is still happening. What I do know, that being said, is that Stefano Nicolao is, indeed, a successful theatre costume designer. That his workshop is situated in the sestiere (neighborhood) Cannaregio in Venice, smack dab into the glamorous thick of things and that the reviews are great:

What I do not understand is why he is nowhere to be found on OL's Imdb credits' page, that meticulously lists even the trainees and the seamstresses: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3006802/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_ov_ql_1

He is everywhere else, in the mainstream press (not clickbait): Le Figaro, for example (https://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/plus-de-15-000-costumes-concus-stefano-nicolao-le-prince-des-tailleurs-venitiens-20241110). And even Forbes Romania, with a two-part exclusive interview, extensively featuring OL (https://www.forbes.ro/stefano-nicolao-maestrul-croitor-din-venetia-i-261127).

The guy sounds legit, but there is something that nags me about this whole thing. I can only honestly bring this to the table as another piece of the OL X-Files and suppose we will end up by connecting the dots, if there are any dots left to connect, in due time.

My bet is either on a change of heart, change of plans or a stupid, stupid marketing mistake. Not a good look, if you ask me.

[berrystainedsue]

Hi, Angel. I saw your post about the dark side of kidfluencing and how much can be covered up. I'm not in the industry, but I have extensively researched it from top to bottom. I also know many people within it, so I have some insight to share.

A significant part of this issue is the legal power involved, which I think is pretty self-explanatory. Specifically, there are copyright laws and the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). This act means that if someone posts a celebrity’s livestream, video, or any other copyrighted content (including music, images, etc.), the owner of that content, or their legal team, can have it taken down very quickly. The person who posted the copyrighted content will be required to remove it.

Another issue is defamation threats. A celebrity or influencer, along with their legal team, could turn a situation into a cease and desist or threaten a defamation lawsuit, even if it might not actually qualify as defamation. The mere threat can be intimidating, especially since they are often willing to follow through.

SEO (search engine optimization) manipulation is also extremely common in the industry. Individuals can pay to bury stories or links that could damage someone’s image or brand. This is done by flooding search engines with positive articles and working with companies that specialize in digital reputation management to remove unwanted links.

Celebrities and influencers also have significant platform influence, which allows them and their legal teams to eliminate anything undesirable. If you're “important" enough, you have access to tools and resources that others don’t.

Distractions also play a role. Scandals often fade when a celebrity or influencer is promoting something. Scandal scrubbing is a common PR tactic, typically paired with a media storm. Nothing on the internet is truly permanent if you have power, money, and good connections.

There are entire secret relationships and affairs that are deeply protected for less-than-noble reasons, alongside leaks and embarrassing material such as sex tapes. If a celebrity (like H or L) didn’t want their leaks online, they could be removed almost instantly. Legal documents, old tweets, and problematic posts can be erased, and even fan theories and conspiracies can be scrubbed from existence. (Interesting 🤨) though I think it’s clear H&L probably don’t want the “theories” about Larry to die. If you want insight about what COULD be covered with HL specifically I can give you some info there too.

I hope this gives you some useful insight. ❤️

hello!!

this is a super super interesting read, thankyou.

i'm familiar with seo, so that part is very intriguing. all it would take is to throw a heap of $$ at some seo optimisation services and you'd be able to boost all the articles you want to the first pages of google.

i'd absolutely be interested to hear more about things being scrubbed from the internet. i've always wondered, if there was a leak or something that could expose h&l or any other closeted celebrity or secret relationship- what would happen? same with someone breaking an nda or something. obviously i would never want them to be outed but its a possibility.

'fan theories and conspiracies can be scrubbed from existence' -> makes me think of blogs that have been deleted from here....

thankyou again for sending this in!

i absolutely love the below quote so im going to make it bold.

"Nothing on the internet is truly permanent if you have power, money, and good connections."

[awwkie]

Alright here's a guide to remove Youtube shorts so you won't have to deal with them ever again

First off: this works both for mobile and PC as of me making this post (may 7th). If you use the application for mobile, you have to uninstall it and watch Youtube from your browser instead. This is not an issue tho, as using YouTube from your browser grants you a lot of customization, and an overall better experience (I promise).

It used to be possible to disable youtube shorts form the app, but this feature is no longer available to my knowledge.

Prerequisites: Ublock Origin and a browser that supports it (basically anything but Google Chrome. I personally recommend Firefox). Ublock Origin is very easy to install, just look in up in you browser extension store. Here's a link to the install page for Firefox)

NOTE: This method relies on custom adblocker filters to work. Ublock Origin is not the only adblocker supporting custom filters, but as these filters were made with it in mind, they might not work with other adblockers. But if you are using something else, like the Brave built-in adblocker, I encourage you to try it anyways.

We'll be using this filters list from GitHub.

Step-by-step guide:

Copy this link:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gijsdev/ublock-hide-yt-shorts/master/list.txt

Open Ublock Origin. How to do this depends on your browser. On Firefox desktop: look at your toolbar. On the right you will see either the Ublock icon, or a puzzle piece symbol: clicking it will show you all your extension (including Ublock). Clicking on it will open ublock in the form of a small pop up in the top right of your screen. Well done! On Firefox mobile: click the three dots in the toolbar -> extensions -> ublock origin

Click on the "Open the dashboard" option. It's the gears icon.

On the top bar go to the "Filter lists" section

Scroll to the bottom and select "import"

Paste the link and press on the "Apply changes" button!

Now you can check if everything works properly!

IMPORTANT NOTE: as of writing this, the filter lists does not work properly for mobile, only for desktop. This will be likely fixed soon. In the meantime, here's how to fix it:

after having followed the previous steps, copy this piece of code:

m.youtube.com##:matches-path(/^(?!\/feed\/history).*$/)ytm-rich-section-renderer

Go on the Ublock Origin dashboard again

Go to "My filters" in the top bar

Check that the "Enable my custom filters" box is checked

Paste the code in the field below and click on the save icon!

Although this fix worked for me, I also made it up on a whim, so I don't guarantee it's the best way to fix the issue. That's why it's best to check if the original filters are working before using mine.

Also please note that it's supposed to be used on top of the rest of the blocklist, so follow the previous steps as well!

[mokubetech]

If you're looking to remove Fortyfy and Surfsee extensions on Chrome, then watch this video for a step-by-step guide on how to do it. Keep your browser clean and running smoothly with these easy tips!

[shelandsorcery]

Etching and Acid Baths and Surrender

(this is another classic from my personal site I'm belatedly resharing on tumblr, ftr)

Friends, I just finished teaching the last third of a course on print production, and between that and the whole thing with twitter's crop changing (somewhere? not for me but somewhere?) I've found myself thinking a lot about copper etching and my relationship with the acid bath.

So, first up, copper etching is an art form where you engrave (through various means) thin grooves into a copper plate, then squeeze thick ink into those grooves, then wipe off the ink on the face of the plate, then soak paper so it's very soft, then push it all through a press.The pressure forces the paper into the ink-lined grooves of the plate, pushing the ink onto the paper, and you thus transfer the image from your copper plate to your paper. It's a magnificent art form you've certainly seen examples of, even if you didn't know! Here, a Rembrandt:

There's a lot of ways to create these grooves in the plate; Rembrandt used a steel point and scratched them in, a technique called drypoint. Later, artists used a technique where a waxy resist would coat the plate, then drew lines in the resist, then soaked the plate in acid.

This is the acid bath of which I speak.

There's a few ways to apply resist to a plate, and they give you different effects when you etch with them. First is a hard resist, which is a thick, firm wax that coats the plate and is removed by using that steel drypoint tool to create thin line work, like this Doré hatching:

You can also use soft resist, a malleable wax that allows you to press textures into it, like Barbara Smith has in her piece "Textures" here:

(my terminology might be a bit off, I'm noticing as I google, but hopefully the metaphor will still stand) 

And the third method, my fav, is aquatint; a process where you add a resist that is .. spotty. Something like a light spray, or a dusting of wax, so that the plate is covered with a rough, dithered dot pattern of resist, with exposed copper in between. Example via Wikipedia:

I decided to try out copper plate etching, also called intaglio print making, after seeing David Blackwood's work, where he works with aquatint extensively:

Aquatint lets you lay down fields of tone, which he uses in great contrast and collaboration with the linework he etches into the plate as well. It's magnificent work, but it's made all the more miraculous when you understand the whole thing with the acid bath. So, when you put a copper plate into the acid bath, anywhere on the plate that isn't protected by hard, soft or aquatint resist (also called ground) is slowly dissolved into the acid, creating little grooves. The longer it's in the bath, the deeper the grooves - kind of.

The acid is fickle, and the more copper already dissolved into it, the slower it will dissolve new copper. And that's a problem because you want to control exactly how deep those grooves go; the deeper the groove, the more ink it will hold, the darker the line will be on paper. Under-etch your plate, and your lines will be faint, hold very little ink, and be extremely hard to get ink INTO when you apply it before making a print.

But you can't know this until you take all that resist off the plate, wash it, and ink it up and print it.

OVERetch your plate, and the acid will start to eat the copper away from under your resist, widening your lines or flattening out your aquatint, so it's easy to get ink into the lines, but hard not to wipe it back out when you try and wipe ink off the un-etched face of the plate.

Again, not obvious until you go and try printing your plate.

And with intaglio, by which I mean copper plate etching, you might want lines of varying darknesses - you might want aquatint of varying darknesses - and so you will be adding and removing resists of various kinds, and etching and re-etching your plate over and over again.

And you can do various things to get the feel for the acid bath's ... acidity ... on the day you go to etch something in it, but depending on the size of your bath, you etching a large plate for a while might change the bath's acidity. Worst is if it's fresh and you didn't know.

So this whole art form, whereby people produce some of the most precise and exquisite pieces in the north western historical canon IMO, is actually an absurd collaboration with a rogue chemical that may or may not do what you want at any point in time.

And by my third year of making work like this, I had concluded that you simply had to think of the acid bath as a rogue collaborator who you handed your plate off to over and over again throughout your process. You had to just take a deep breath and accept chaos as an element.

Yes, you did your best to prepare your plate, get the right resist on it, draw the right lines where you wanted them; and yes you set a timer and kept an eye on your plate and checked the etch over and over again - but in the end you were teaming up with chaos chemistry.

And I loved it! I loved the surprises you got from acid bath, even if they went against what I had planned. I loved improvising around its unpredictability! Once I accepted that it was part of the practice, I found it exhilirating.

And for me, that's the appeal of all traditional media - I can't predict every little thing, I'm not 100% in control at all times, and artwork has to happen despite all that.

And so I expanded this concept for myself out to my larger practice. When I send a file to print? I'm collaborating with a printer; both the person, who I can maybe talk to, and the machine, that will have its own peccadillos. I prepare as best I can and still I may be surprised.I'm not saying I never threw out plates that got way out of hand, and I'm not saying I never had a print run of my work I had to send back or reprint - I'm just saying that my thought process around them has changed, so I allow for a wider range of surprises than I used to.

So when everyone was going on about the twitter crop finally changing, and I realized I didn't really care, I noticed that I had expanded this concept to publishing online as well. I prep a nice jpg and then I take a deep breath and accept twitter's chaos in collaboration.

And that's how I discovered that, to me, twitter is just another acid bath.

Read the full article

[paradoxcase]

How to use search engines effectively in the year of our lord 2025

So, we all know Google sucks now. There are some other alternative search engines, but honestly, switching search engines isn't going to fix a lot of the fundamental issues we're seeing with search engines nowadays. But yesterday, while responding to someone on reddit who was making the argument of "Google sucks now, so really, how much worse is it to just ask ChatGPT" I realized that there is actually a formula for using search engines that I have that continues to work perfectly for most things despite the fact that Google sucks now, so I thought I would share.

First of all, to remove all of the AI bullshit from Google, you can use udm14.com instead, or install the udm=14 browser extension. The method I outline here may or may not work with search engines other than Google, I haven't looked into them deeply enough. udm14.com should be essentially just Google, but without AI.

Then, we have to go back to the beginning and understand what a search engine actually is, and what it isn't. I spent three years of my career working in the guts of a search engine (not Google, or any other web-based search engine), so I should hope I would know what they are:

A search engine is a tool to locate documents.

Google in particular has done a lot to obscure what a search engine actually is by adding a lot of "cool" "features" to their search engine which are not actually within the scope of search engine capabilities. When you search for a question and Google displays a bolded answer that it found on a web page? Not search engine provenance. When it displays its "AI Summary"? Not search engine provenance. When it advertises things to you? Not search engine provenance. When it comes up with questions that "other people asked"? Not search engine provenance. The core competency of a search engine is to find documents (in this case, web pages) from a large collection of documents (the internet) based on their relevance to a query you have typed. Just like people are misusing ChatGPT to do stuff it was not designed for and that it is not good at, using a search engine as if it is a question answering service that can deliver the answer to a question you asked is using the search engine to do something it was not designed for and is not good at.

The search engine is not an all-in-one tool any more than ChatGPT is an all-in-one tool. Research is a multi-step process that involves a search engine, but the search engine cannot do everything for you. Here is the process:

Learn how to identify reliable sources of information. Learn what sites tend to have reliable information about the topic you're looking up. Wikipedia is a good fallback that may give you links to other reliable sources. You can also ask people who know more about your topic for recommendations of good sites. There are also sites that rank the reliability and bias of other popular sites. The search engine's ability to find relevant documents is not super useful when the internet is full of untrustworthy bullshit and is becoming more so as time goes on due to AI-generated content. Just because a search engine returns a link does not mean it is reliable.

Use a search engine to specifically search just the websites you know are reliable for your topic. Google has some documentation about how to do this on their search engine here. There should be a way to do this on any other half-decent search engine, as well, but I don't have the details of how to do it. Now you have limited your scope from "anything and everything produced by everyone who has ever created a Wordpress account plus whoever paid Google to have their site appear in every single search" to a collection of documents that you can trust.

Read the sources that you get back from the search engine. No, seriously. Read them. Don't read Google's "AI Summary". Read the actual sources. Don't read the bolded answer Google put at the top of the results list. Read the sources. Don't ask another AI to summarize the sources for you. Read the sources. Don't just read the headline or title and assume you now know everything that is in the body of the article. READ THE SOURCES. There is no shortcut for this, you have to read.

There was a time when you could get away with being lax about this and just do general searches, but that was because there was an actual limit on the amount of wrong information that mere humans could generate per unit time, and also because Google did legitimately use to be more concerned with promoting reliable sources than with promoting whoever paid them the most money to do so. But that time is over.

Basically, if you wouldn't just type your question into ChatGPT and hope for the best, don't just type your question into Google and hope for the best, either.

[antiplagiarism]

Heads up, HP writers and readers

@reposterforkindle has seen and acknowledged this post. Thank you for removing the plagiarized works. I really hope you will join the fandom with your own stories one day.

We have a serial plagiarist on our hands who knows exactly what they are doing.

"Message me if you want me to take it down. :)"

How cute! How coy! No harm. No foul, right?

WRONG!

You did not write any of this. You are taking someone else's work and using it for personal gain. You are not crediting the OG writers and are violating copyright laws. Yes, even fanfiction has copyright laws.

Don't believe me?

AO3's legal team has done extensive research on this. DMCA can be used for fanfiction by the original writer.

Are you ready for potential legal problems, @reposterforkindle ??

"Reposting" or publishing these to Kindle will also land you in hot water. So all you Kindle peeps may want to check and make sure nothing has made it to the store.

@chippedchina-teacup has already been dealing with this account and another one by the same user. While their works have been removed, many others have not.

Okay, HP community we need your help getting the word out. Do you see a story you recognize? Let the OG writer know then block this account. Do not otherwise engage. Report. Block. These creeps don't deserve anymore of your time.

DO NOT HARASS! I really cannot stress this enough.

In the event of a name change (Imma about to be blocked in like 2 seconds lmao), here's the stolen work currently on the blog courtesy of GoFullPage- a chrome extension.

It's in PDF form on Google Drive. Drop me a comment if you have trouble accessing it and need it.

[itpemod]

Assignments FAQ

Assignments start going out now! Please read the following FAQ and confirm that you’ve received your assignment and read the rules (for example, “Got the assignment and confirming I’ve read the rules”) when we DM you! We broke the links to try to avoid setting off spam filters, so simply delete the colons when you copy and paste the URL into the address bar. 

If we get tossed into spambot purgatory partway through assignment delivery, we’ll switch to one of our sideblogs and failing that, we will start emailing you at the addresses we confirmed with you. 

When are gifts due?

Fully edited main podfic gifts are due on December 17th. We’ll make the gift deliveries on December 24th! Remember, no minimums. The treats deadline this year will be December 22nd.

“Fully edited”?

The default expectation is that you will be submitting a “traditional” podfic that you’ve recorded and edited to remove all flubs (at minimum). We understand that in certain fandoms there’s a sub-genre of podfic commonly called a “cold read” which is minimally edited or completely unedited and includes chatty asides and reactions. Please only submit a podfic in this format if your recipient has specifically opted into/requested it in their Dear Podficcer letter. If your recipient doesn’t mention anything about liking cold reads or chatty podfics, then assume that they’re expecting an edited podfic (though if you’d like us as mods to reach out to your recipient to confirm what kind of podfic they’re expecting, we are happy to do so.)

Who can I tell about my assignment?

Keep it secret! (Keep it safe.) Except for your beta–you can tell them. :D

I’m new. How do I find a podfic to record?

Use your recipient’s letter as a guide in terms of story choice. Try to find a story that hits at least one of your recipient’s likes/wants. You must respect your recipient’s Do Not Wants (DNW). Some participants have suggested stories in their letters or bookmarks or have provided information about a close fandom friend who can help with vetting stories. You can also reach out to your participant via anonymous asks or by asking mods to pass on messages if you have further questions!

When finding a gift to record for your recipient, please follow permission norms in your fandom. That means asking for permission if the author doesn’t have a permission statement. Transformative works policies are often found in author’s profiles on AO3.

You can also use the Fanworks Permission Statements list (https://fpslist.org/) as a resource to find authors with blanket permission in your fandom or download the Blanket Permission Highlighter (https://github.com/BrickGrass/Blanket-Permission-Highlighter). The BP highlighter will automatically highlight any author with blanket permission in green when you’re browsing AO3. You will need to have the greasemonkey or tampermonkey extension (if you’re using Firefox or Chrome respectively) installed first 

How do I submit my gift?

To submit your finished podfic, you will use the Google forms that will be posted next month.

What are treats? 

Treats are gifts that you can make for people who aren’t your recipient. We will be publishing a spreadsheet of all requests next week that you can peruse. Anyone can make treats–you do not have to be signed up for the exchange to submit them. You can make as many treats as you want, and you can gift a treat to multiple people. (If you, as a recipient, do not want to receive a multirecipient treat, please DM the mods or add yourself to the Opting Out tab in the treats spreadsheet.)

Please note that you MUST submit your main gift first before you can submit any treats. We will not be accepting treats until you have submitted a main gift for your recipient first. 

Do you have any other advice for the gift making process?

We sure do! If you’re planning a long, ambitious project, consider making & submitting a short gift early on first. Long gifts are great to give and receive, but sometimes life happens and this gives everyone a safety net.

We also recommend prioritizing recording your ENTIRE gift FIRST. We can find you editing help if needed; only you can record. 

If you think you will need an extension to finish your main gift at any point, please DM us as soon as you can. We’re willing to work with you, but would rather hear from you earlier than later if possible. 

Okay, I’m excited! What are my next steps?

1. Wait for our message (please be patient, we have no idea how it’s going to go!)

2. Write back to us to confirm you’ve received your assignment and read these rules.

3. Squee on your own blog (tag it with #itpe or #informal tumblr podfic exchange) or in the Tumblr podfic community. Just remember to keep who you were assigned a secret!

4. Check back next week for more information about treats!

[s-n-arly]

Fuck Google Gemini

If you have Gmail, you probably got a welcome to Gemini email today-ish (Feb 19, 2025). If, like me, you want nothing to do with gen AI garbage software, you can turn Gemini off. However, as it is an opt out, rather than an opt in, I will never trust that Google won't just turn it back on again. This move shows that they are very much pro gen AI, which means they are pro theft of intellectual property as well as pro fuck-over-the-environment.

You can send Google feedback on how you feel about this. 1. Open the Gemini extension and go to Help in the left sidebar (it's the question mark, if it's compressed). 2. Click Help in the pop up menu. 3. Click Report a Problem in the little pop up window over on the right. 4. Share your feedback.

This is inspiring me to escalate my removal of all content from Google products and pursue different email options. Yay for motivation, I guess. [Screen capture showing icon and path to Help. Followed by a screen capture showing where you'll get the feedback dialog box.]

[genericpuff]

saw this pop up on /r/UnpopularLoreOlympus and I-

Full analysis post that inspired this post can be read here, it's a good read, go check it out!

Now my natural reaction to not assume the worst (shocking, I know) is that what Rachel's actual intention behind making Leto a sun god was due to her being Apollo's mother and her clearly having a stronger relationship with him rather than Artemis. I'm abiding by Occam's Razor here, it's the simplest answer and it keeps my brain from getting too riled up right off the bat LMAO

There's a lot of emphasis put on Apollo being the god of the sun in LO, despite the fact that Apollo is one of the MOST prolific gods in the Greek pantheon, Rachel only ever really focuses on him being god of the sun with some loose references to him also being the god of music (as we see with him playing his lyre). There's really no real referencing to him being the god of medicine though (aside from that scene of him condom-bandaging Persephone's hand in Episode 22 ?? which is silly now in hindsight because she's a fertility goddess who can heal herself but ok lmao and the fact that Rachel established him as a LITERAL DAD with his doctor son Asclepius which ... just feels weird to have in LO tbh) and there's absolutely no referencing (from what I can find or recall) of him being a protector of the young, god of prophecy (for some reason he just magically gives Kassandra the ability to read prophecies... just so she can read his prophecy ??) or archery. Like, he's shown doing a lot of these things but they come across more as just side hobbies or extensions of him being Artemis' brother (like his archery) rather than aspects of his godliness or domains that he presides over. It's just like yeah, Apollo can shoot arrows and bandage people's hands I guess LMAO

All that said, I can see Rachel deciding to make him primarily the god of the sun and then going "oh! let's make his mom a sun god! then she could be a common enemy for both Persephone and Hades!" because Hades doesn't like sun gods yadda yadda.

But... we know Rachel has used front page Google sourcing in her comic before.

(literally the 'source' was copy pasted from a 2004 study guide for Princeton.edu. And we KNOW this was taken right from the first result because it just says 'www.princeton.edu' with no slug attached, which is what showed up back when we first looked into this, the princeton version was deadass the first result with this definition word for word. She didn't even remove the typo where there's no space between Xenios:"Zeus !!!).

And while a bit more into sus territory rather than outright confirmed like the xenia thing above, there's the whole Metis / Métis theory, that has us wondering if Rachel seriously googled "Metis" on its own and accidentally used Indigenous Métis cultural depictions in her version of Metis, the Greek God.

The fringe in her outfit, finger wings, and dark orange/red color really got my attention the first time I saw her design years ago, because she set off so many, "Wait a minute, is that an Indigenous woman???" bells in my Mi'kmaq/Cree brain LMAO And not even in a bad way, but now it feels a little :/ because of how much her character has been assassinated and how clearly accidental it was for her to look like that.

Of course, there's still a more likely explanation that her design was based on this vase:

But IDK y'all. That vase is very distinctly orange while the character itself is depicted in dark garbs and with light skin, so Metis being distinctly red-toned with finger wings and fringe?

While the Xenia thing is definitively copy pasted from the first search result on Google (literally there's no denying that at this point, Rachel's REALLY bad at doing research and then pretending like she was being smart by sourcing it from a university website... completely ignoring the fact that that website literally hasn't been updated since Rachel was working on The Doctor Pepper Show) the Metis and Leto depictions are definitely a lot more up for debate as to what 'research' Rachel did and whether or not they got confused with something else during her searching.

And really, the whole thing with Leto being a "sun god" doesn't make sense really when you think about it. Why is Leto a sun god? It's not even like you could argue there are "some versions" of the myths where she's a god of the sun, or other translations out there, or whatever vague source that could be used like what has been used for other gods like Hades and Persephone. Leto is not affiliated with the sun in any shape or form. Remove Apollo, her eventual son, who didn't exist when she was born and given the title of 'sun god', and it quickly falls apart as to why she would be a sun god in the first place.

She is a goddess of motherhood though, and that's NEVER mentioned in LO. If anything, Rachel makes her a terrible mom on purpose. Because god knows we can't have anyone in this comic be a good mom except for Persephone and Rhea (who are literally just carbon copies of one another). Basically the only thing Rachel gets right with Leto is the fact that she's a Titan and that she had Apollo and Artemis after sleeping with Zeus. That's it.

Unfortunately, unlike the xenia thing, there's no outright proof of what Rachel's reasoning was behind these designs or sources. So I'm not gonna accuse or outright state it as fact that Rachel confused Metis for Métis or ripped the idea for Leto being a sun god from an anime, because the odds of that being true in any way are fairly low.

But they're never zero.