The Willing Well

>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

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

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

the tags above actually aren’t true, and i think we can, and should, dispute this argument without misrepresenting it: the op-ed in question states that chelsea mitchell “lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-new england awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to transgender runners,” and “was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two transgender runners,” although i have to say i find the choice of verb there pretty fascinating—‘was bumped,’ mitchell writes, as though she were a royal who’d been demoted from the position she believed to be her birthright, and not merely a runner who hadn’t run fast enough that day to earn it.

really, i think a more salient point here is one i’ve seen others make before, which is that ultimately, biological advantages are the name of the athletic game—as someone who’s 5′6″, i was never going to have the mechanical advantage of rowers who were 5′9″, 5′11″, even 6′ in some cases. that’s just physics! should i have turned around and said, the women outperforming me don’t count as women, they’re too tall and i’m going to sue to have them excluded from competing with me on that basis? what a gross, pathetic move that would have been.

as one of the trans girls who beat mitchell in that 2019 race, andraya yearwood, observed at the time: “one high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” she said. “one sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster.” there are an enormous number of factors that shape athletic performance, and very few of them correlate directly to so-called ‘biological sex’—i’m AFAB, and plenty of cis men are shorter or slighter than i am, including classmates i had in high school.

but if we’re talking about testosterone, which tends to be at the heart of athletic gatekeeping: both yearwood and terry miller (the other trans girl mitchell is subtweeting) had started HRT before ever lining up against cis girls, and had, according to court documentation submitted by the ACLU, “circulating hormones… comparable to the hormone levels of non-transgender girls.” what’s more, as the ACLU motion further specifies, neither yearwood nor miller were undefeated in their track careers, nor did either have dominant race times among high school girls nationally—in fact, mitchell herself beat both yearwood and miller at the connecticut state championship in 2020! so clearly the supposedly-insurmountable advantage enjoyed by transfeminine athletes is in fact wholly surmountable, and arguments to the contrary nothing but petulant, entitled prejudice.

but enough of all this—let’s end on a sweeter note. here are miller and yearwood in 2019, at an awards ceremony honoring them for their courage:

my friend gotta hottub and we alllllll benefit!!!!

wheres an arc where the hero gets morally corrupted by a villain and switches sides and becomes an even bigger threat as a result

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