HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE

Tonight's show is a little different.

Tonight's show is about a man who's not really a man.

He's a doctor, but he's not really a doctor.

Like Doctor Phil, but awesome.

Most people in the United States of America have not heard of him.

He's just like me in that regard.

Who is he?

He's The Doctor!

Level 1: browser extensions

This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.

Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.

Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).

uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.

Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.

FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.

Level 2: leaving enshittified services

The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.

Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.

Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery

DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.

Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.

With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.

Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery

Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.

To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.

Level 5: automated media piracy

The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.

The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.

Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.

Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.

Level 6: fucking with Android

Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.

Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.

Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.

You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.

Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.

Level 7: fucking with Windows

This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.

Level 8: switching to Linux

I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.

MY CHEST SURGERY EXPERIENCES:

Rafe's FTM Page (GeoCities)

" My chest surgery in healing very well.  I underwent chest surgery on December 1, 1997. I had the procedure done in San Francisco by Dr. Brownstein, my hero......hehe. I was pretty well-endowed before surgery, (38C+) so I had what some people refer to as a double incision procedure. That is where they make two longish incisions along the lower edge of the pec muscles and remove the breast tissue. It does leave some scarring, but it contours very nice and works out well for people who were pretty big before. My scars have faded considerably, even for having had surgery recently. Scarring depends so much on your own personal factors, like your age, skin type, how big you were, whether or not you smoke, etc. Fair-skinned people tend not to scar as badly. The following excerps are taken from my journal. They explain a lot of thoughts and emotions that I experienced around my chest surgery.

Sunday, November 30, 1997:

It is one day until I have my chest surgery. It is scheduled for 7:30AM. I have to be there at 6:30AM. Right now, I am feeling very alone. I am staying at a friend's house in San Francisco. I am surrounded by people, but still I feel alone. I feel like I am the only person in the world who would go to these extremes to be the person I truly am. I have often been asked, "Why do you always have to swim upstream?" Sometimes, I wonder this about myself. This is one of those times. But, dammit, I am who I am, and I have struggled hard to get to this very place in my life. And damn everybody who doesn't have to question such basic things as gender, and who just take it for granted. Yes, I am having a very alone moment. I am scared. I wish I had another FTM to talk to who has gone through all of this. Nobody told me that I would be thinking these thoughts before the long awaited chest surgery. They only talk about what a relief it is, and how excited they were. I don't even hate my tits that much, they just seem foreign to me. Maybe, I just didn't try hard enough to like them. What if this is all just a bad mistake. How come no one ever talks about that? Well, enough, I've got to try and get some sleep before this surgery tomorrow morning...........

Monday, December 1, 1997, Day of Surgery:

I went into the hospital at 6:30AM, who's idea was it to start that early anyway? Anyway, I filled out piles of paperwork and soon a nurse took me into a room to change into a hospital gown. "All the better to get at you", she said with a smile. I was wondering if they found her on the show 'Tales from The Crypt'. They came and wheeled me away to another room and I talked to the anesthesiologist for a while. I must have asked him two hundred questions. He was talking about sticking some big tube down my throat, so my throat doesn't close. But, by this time the good stuff was pumping into my veins at a very rapid rate, and all I could say was, "That's nice". I really don't remember much else that day..................

Wednesday, December, 3, 1997

I feel like a cyborg. I've got these gnarly drain tubes coming out my sides, and they are taped to my chest with big bulbs hanging down, filled with fluid. EEEEK! Gross!!! Too bad I'm not grossed out by this at all. It's neat. I'm so flat. The week before this, I had the flu and I was MUCH more uncomfortable then, then I am now. I am surprised it doesn't hurt any worse than this. It felt like a very dull ache the first day and a half, but now, I can barely feel it at all. Doc Brownstein says I can have my drains out Friday, if I'm a good boy. I can't wait to get them out. They actually hurt more at the openings, than the actual surgery did. The pain I felt the most from my surgery was that my back was really sore for lying in the same place on the operating table for about four hours. That is about how long the surgery took. I never even felt nauseated after I came out. The anesthesiologist said that it was because they have a new kind of anesthesia that they keep having to reapply while you are out, and they stop it about 20 minutes before you come out of surgery. He said that this makes 'coming to' a lot easier.

Thursday, December 4, 1997:

Today, I am a little uncomfortable. I think my vest is too tight because at first it felt like my arm was asleep, now it just aches and aches. It is my left arm and it is also painful to touch. I noticed a little black and blueness around the inside of my arm. I called Doc Brownstein, and he said that it could be a little blood clot, which I am pretty prone to anyway. He said I could come in tonight (it was eleven o'clock), or I could just wait until the morning when I would have my drains out anyway. I waited until Friday.

Friday, December 5, 1997:

He took my compression vest off today, in order to take my drains out. I got a first look at my chest. I was surprised it didn't look that bad. I expected it to be very bruised and cut up, afterall, they made two ~ 7 inch incisions under my pec lines, cut out a whole flap of skin, and took my nipples off and grafted them on higher up, and smaller. There wasn't a bruise anywhere. It just looked flat........and stitched together. I was still thinking about how wonderful it looked, when, out came the right drain. OUCHHHH!!!! It was a sharp pain that lasted about five seconds. Damn, that hurt!! Nobody told me about the drains. Then, the left one, the sore one came out. AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! OUCHHHHHHH!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEE! WWWWOOOWWWW!!!!! That was a big hurt. It actually hurt so much, that I was giggling out of nervousness. "Well, what do you expect when you pull something this big (he showed me the part of the drain that was inside me), out of something this small (I looked down at the pinholes at my sides)." I laughed. It was over.

Sunday, December 7, 1997:

It was stitches out day.......yeah! I don't have to be Frankenstein anymore. My arm is still a little sore from the compression vest being too tight, but the pain is going away. Getting the stitches out was easy compared to the drains, and pretty uneventful. But, it was the first time I got to see my new grafted nipples. They looked OK, not as scary as I had heard. I went to look at myself in the mirror, without bandages or stitches. Just me. It was wonderful. I was so flat. Now this is what I'd pictured I'd look like when I grew up. I could finally start owning my body, living inside my body as well as my brain. It was a trip!!

Saturday, April 3, 1999:

I cannot tell you how having my chest surgery has improved the quality of my life........It has been about sixteen months since I had surgery. I have been using this scar cream called MEDERMA to try and heal the scars, and my scars have faded to almost nothing. They are thin, skin-colored lines. Now I can feel the hot sun on my chest while I lie out on a sunny beach in summer. I can feel the cool wind blowing on my chest, making my little hairs tickle. I am more confident than I have ever been. I feel like I no longer have to hide this terrible secret. I do not have to try to prove who I am, people just see me that way. I enjoy the way my clothes fit me now. I feel a lot less shy, while being intimate with people.......now they are allowed to touch my chest. And don't forget some of the less obvious advantages that you would never think of: I can see my belly button now, I don't have to hold my chest down when I run, or go up and down stairs, no more sweat underneath your breasts in the summer, running doesn't hurt, and I can reach over my body and turn out my bedside lamp without having to rotate my whole body or push my breasts out of the way.

Tuesday, October 3, 2000:

House: *lighting a cigarette* "When I graduated high school you were 11, isn't that weird"