Onward to Nonsense

So the IDW Collection is probably the easiest way to tackle the IDW1 continuity, it compiles all of it in a mix of chronological and publishing order. It starts with some big leaps like, the first comic is the 2007 mini series Megatron Origin, followed by two spotlights from 2008 and 2009, instead of anything from 2005 (when the continuity started), but that sort of thing lessens as it goes on. There are still some placements I wouldn't have done like that, but really, the whole thing is comprehensible, it includes everything you need, and is much easier to just read every volume in order from beginning to end that switching between however many comics. Plus, if you read a comic file in CDisplayEx, it will open on the page you were at last time you close it, so the 300+ pages per volume are not a problem.

The Internet Archive has all of Phase 1 and Phase 2 available for download as cbr files and you can download Phase 3 here. Or if you prefer to read them online (and have a good adblocker), here is Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3.

Entertainment

Media

Publications

Sports

Products

Apps

Services

Influencers

“I never remember to take out the trash until my trash can is full, at which point the trash bag is really heavy and the stuff at the bottom has been rotting a while, and it’s awful!”

Small brain: “Try to train yourself to take out the trash on certain days at certain times.”

That’s genius!

But if I take an entire 50 count box of forks and put the entire thing in my lunch box? I *always have a fork.*

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov

>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.

Ad Nauseum is an adblocker that stores the ads it blocks and continuously generates fake clicks, fucking with analytics and costing the ad companies money

TrackMeNot automatically does randomly generated searches on a variety of search engines to obscure your real searches and fuck with analytics, and you can set it up to work with anything that has a search bar (including facebook, twitter, amazon, youtube, etc)

WhatCampaign replaces analytics parameters in links with the string “FuckOff”. I thought there was a similar extension that used random strings, but I can’t seem to find it

Privacy Possum is a fork of Privacy Badger with a focus on costing tracking companies as much money as possible, and idk if my limited tech knowledge is enough to understand what it does but the description does say it falsifies some data so that’s good enough for me

So, you know those spindly basil plants you can get in the supermarket that are all leggy and pale, and you put them on the window-ledge and pick a few leaves from them and then they die?

Here is the hack for

turning it into a healthy plant and

making an army of clones from it so that all your friends can have one too

You will need

one parent plant

scissors for cutting the stalks

enough pots for however many seedlings you want to make

compost

one or two empty bottles

Method

Have a look at your parent plant. You'll see that each bundle of leaves comes out from a knobbly bit in the stem. That knobbly bit is called a leaf node.

Gently take hold of the very top set of leaves and count the leaf nodes on that particular stalk, counting down from the top.

If there are more than three nodes, cut the stalk just below the second leaf node.

The bit that you have just cut off is called a cutting, and it will become a new plant. To do this, we have to get it to grow roots.

Take your cutting and remove all the leaves except the four at the very top.

Fill your bottle with water and insert the cutting into the top of the bottle, with the stem completely submerged in water, and the leaves outside in the air.

Now repeat until you've taken about six cuttings, or you've taken all the cuttings available. Put them all in water-filled bottles. (I use milk bottles which hold about four stems at once with enough space for their leaves to get the sunlight, but if you're using wine bottles it might be fewer.)

Put the cuttings/bottles onto a sunny window-ledge and wait. Within about a week you should see roots beginning to grow. Keep the water topped up to the top, and let the roots grow until they are two or three inches long.

When the roots are 2-3 inches long, fill your pots with compost and water them well. Shove your fingers in the wet compost to make a space for the cutting's new roots and gently insert the cutting into the hole. Put a little bit more compost on top and firm it down, move on to plant the next one.

Providing all your cuttings get over the shock of transfer (and they probably will) you will then have 8 little basil plants like the smallest ones in my picture.

Put them back on the sunny window-ledge to let them get established and begin to grow. Congrats, you now have 8 basil plants plus the parent plant.

The parent plant

When you're taking the cuttings, you must leave at least one leaf node on every stalk. The plant can't create leaves without the nodes, and if it has no leaves it's basically going to die.

You want the plant to create new leaves and thicken up. If a stalk doesn't have more than two nodes, don't make cuttings from that stalk at all. Leave that stalk to grow.

Taking your cuttings will stimulate the plant to grow, and lower nodes which may not have had leaves on them when you got the plant, will now begin to produce them. This will make the plant bushier and stronger, but it will need a bit of extra food to help it put the extra effort in. So give it a new layer of compost on the top, water it, and put it back on the sunny window-ledge as well.

First batch cuttings

Let your first generation of cuttings grow undisturbed for a few weeks. (Water only when the soil feels dry.)

When they start looking long and thin, you want to encourage them to create side-shoots and begin bushing out. You don't want a long thin plant. It will fall over in the wind.

Look at the very top of the plant where you will see two tiny baby leaves developing. If you let them develop, the plant will continue to grow long and thin, but if you take them out it will encourage the side shoots to grow. Pinch out the tiny baby leaves right at the top of the cuttings, and very soon you'll see they start to grow outwards instead of upwards.

Second batch cuttings

After a few weeks your cuttings will look like the larger plants in my picture, and your parent plant will have grown enough to have added extra nodes. Which means that you can now take another batch of cuttings and start the process all over again.

You can pretty much keep this going all summer if you want.

He is played obviously camp and dramatic, for a start, and there is the aforementioned "hate your hair/not likely/yikes yikes yikes/let me guess you have a great personality" summary dismissal of all his potential brides. Then he spends dinner asking Yzma about Kronk ("so he seems nice? He's what, in his late twenties?") and otherwise being slightly obsessed with him.

Then there is the whole Adventure of Doom with Pacha, him being ever huffy about the Kiss of Life, and then the restaurant gag where Kuzco takes to playing Pacha's fake wife and dressing up in ladies' clothing with great gusto (reinforced by the waitress' "bless you for coming out in public" remark when Pacha says they're on their honeymoon). Then when he is finally de-llamafied, we don't see him paired off with the obligatory girl from the lineup earlier, as might otherwise be expected in a Disney movie. Instead he is still single, but goes to found family it up with Pacha, Chica, Kronk, etc, which dare we remark is a very queer trope.

In short, I have no idea how a Disney movie with no white people (all the characters are Indigenous/people of color), a gay king, cross-dressing jokes, and the most offbeat plot of all time actually ever got made (can you imagine the Family Friendly Mouse doing that today? Let us also talk about Kronk because he is a brilliant deconstruction of both toxic masculinity and the musclebound henchman stereotype.) Other than that this was the Chaos Hour of animated movies in the late 90s/early 2000s, and yes.

Please, read this article if you have some time. This story is wild, and involves directors being pitted against each other Bake-Off style and a shockingly intimate documentary created by the wife of Sting who, himself was heartbroken by the decimation of the songs he wrote for the film including cutting a fantastic Yzma villain song sung by Eartha Kitt that is SO DAMN GOOD but would not ever have fit the more nailed-down Yzma we would eventually come to know and love. It’s so catchy though, I’m doubling up on calls to action but please listen now:

Earlier this year I received a letter of notice from a debt collector stating that they had acquired a debt supposedly belonging to me and that, per law, I have 30 days to dispute the debt. I immediately drafted a letter and sent it to both disputing the debt and request validation of the debt as well as possible settlement arrangements had they actually been able to validate said debt

I sent this letter via certified mail. Always certified mail.

About a week after the 30 day period for them to respond expired, I received a Phone call very specifically crafted in a way to invoke urgency and panic and suggest legal action. So, naturally, I called this number only to discover this was a different company that had only just recently acquired said supposed debt. I reiterated to them that I was disputing this debt and required validation in writing.

The initial conversation went smoothly, they then called me back the next day and became aggressive. They accused me of lying and did everything under the sun to try and trick me into validating this debt as mine so that they would not have to legally send me that validation. I, knowing my rights, insisted that I was disputing the debt and that they were required to send me validation despite them claiming that they were not and that they already had and many other number of lies. I refused to continue the conversation until someone had sent me validation to which they continually responded that they would be forwarding this to their legal department and blah blah blah blah blah.

Surprise surprise, I get a phone call today from yet another company, this one claiming to be in the process of forwarding my account to the county clerks office. That was an immediate red flag as the county clerk does not handle debt disputes. They would have to hire a lawyer in my state to handle this case. I asked what company this was as they had not stated initially, and when they told me I realized this was now another company who had purchased said alleged debt and we’re trying to collect on it. this one outright illegally threatening to take me to court knowing they weren’t.

Beyond that, he tried to lie to me and tell me that a debt validation was not what I thought it was and that a validation was actually just a notice that they had purchased a debt so when I received a letter stating that they had purchased this debt that would be a validation.

That is not true! Debt companies are legally required to send you notice of an allegedly acquired debt in writing and you have 30 days to dispute and request that validation. The company then has 30 days themselves to respond and validate your debt or the debt is forfeit. This man tried to lie to me and tell me that a notice was the same thing as a dead validation in order to trick me into paying a debt that he cannot validate that I am actively disputing.

This is now the fourth company that has attempted to collect on a debt they cannot validate. They know they cannot validate this debt and instead have relied on trying to trick me into paying it. These tactics would absolutely work if I did not have a sales background and or know my rights.

And this ladies and gentlemen is why you always always always dispute a debt. The last debt I disputed was immediately pulled from collections and that allowed me to get back in contact with the original creditor and work out a payment plan so that it would never hit my credit and keep my account with them current. This debt is invalid and therefore they cannot hit my credit with it nor can I collect on it or I will sue them.

For anyone that has a debt sold to a Collections Agency do exactly what OP did and request debt validation (Google-able). Most of the time, the Original company you owed debt to did not give them your Social Security Number or your date of birth; just a good phone number and address. In order to be held legally responsible for it and to be on your credit score, they need your SSN or DOB to prove it’s yours.

Usually, they’re initial call will say “Hey so before we can discuss your debt of $Xxxx, we need you to verify your SSN and DOB.” They’re lying. That means they want you to confirm it so they can legally pin that debt to you. If you send a Debt Validation letter VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, that Collections Agency has 30 days to prove you owe the debt and that it does in fact tie to you. Since in most cases they can’t, they’ll send a letter saying “We don’t have the necessary information to collect on this debt. It is now null and void.” Send copies of that to the credit bureaus, and they wipe it from your credit report.

With OP, they did the shadiest thing possible by constantly re-selling the debt, thus starting over that 30 day response period.

But if you asked, “Would you let the statue of liberty burn in order to save your child? your spouse? someone you loved a great deal?” the tune abruptly changes. At the very least, there’s a hesitation. Even if they deny it, I’m willing to bet that gun to their head, the answer would be “yes.”  

The basic problem here is that people have a hard time seeing outside their own sphere of influence, and empathizing beyond the few people who are right in front of them. You’ve got your immediate family, whom you love; your friends, your acquaintances, maybe to a certain degree the people who share a status with you (your religion, your race, etc.)–but beyond that? People aren’t real. They’re theoretical. 

But a national monument? That’s real. It stands for something. The value of a non-realized anonymous life that exists completely outside your sphere of influence is clearly worth less than something that represents freedom and prosperity to a whole nation, right?

People who think like this lack the compassion to realize that everyone is in someone’s immediate sphere of influence–that everyone is someone’s lover, or brother, or parent. Everyone means the world to someone. And it’s the absolute height of selfishness to assume that their lives don’t have value just because they don’t mean the world to you. 

an example: so, as the nazis began war against france, the staff of the louvre began crating up and shipping out the artworks. it was vital to them (for many reasons) that the nazis not get their hands on the collections, and hitler’s desire for them was known, so they dispersed the objects to the four winds; one of the curators personally traveled with la gioconda, mona lisa herself, in an unmarked crate, moving at least five times from location to location to avoid detection.

they even removed and hid the nike of samothrace, “winged victory,” which is both delicate, having been pieced back together from fragments, and incredibly heavy, weighing over three metric tons.

the curators who hid these artworks risked death to ensure that they wouldn’t fall into nazi hands. and yes, they are just paintings, just statues. but when i think about the idea of hitler capturing and standing smugly beside the nike of samothrace, a statue widely beloved as a symbol of liberty, i completely understand why someone would risk their life to prevent that. if my life was all that stood between a fascist dictator and a masterpiece that inspired millions, i would be willing to risk it. my belief in the power and necessity of art would demand i do so.

if, however, a nazi held a gun to some kid’s head (any kid!) and asked me which crate the mona lisa was in, they could have it in a heartbeat. no problem! i wouldn’t even have to think about it. being willing to risk my own life on principle doesn’t mean i’m willing to see others endangered for those same principles.

and that is exactly where the conservative hard-right falls right the fuck down. they are, typically, entirely willing to watch others suffer for their own principles. they are perfectly okay with seeing children in cages because of their supposed belief in law and order. they are perfectly willing to let women die from pregnancy complications because of their anti-abortion beliefs. they are alright with poverty and disease on general principle because they hold the free-market sacrosanct. and i guess from their own example they would save the statue of liberty and let human beings burn instead.

but speaking as a leftist (i’m more comfortable with socialist tbh), my principles are not abstract things that i hold aside from life, apart or above my place as a human being in a society. my beliefs arise from being a person amidst people. i don’t love art for art’s sake alone, actually! i don’t love objects because they are objects: i love them because they are artifacts of our humanity, because they communicate and connect us, because they embody love and curiosity and fear and feeling. i love art because i love people. i want universal health care because i want to see people universally cared for. i want universal basic income because people’s safety and dignity should not be determined by their economic productivity to an employer. i am anti-war and pro-choice for the same reason: i value people’s lives but also their autonomy and right to self-determination. my beliefs are not abstractions. i could never value a type of economic system that i saw hurting people, no matter how much “growth” it produced. i could never love “law and order” more than i love a child, any child, i saw trapped in a cage.

This is also why they think “get a job” is useful advice. In their heads they honestly do not understand why the NPCs who make up the majority of the human race can’t just flip a switch from “no job” to “job.” When they say “get a job” they’re filing a glitch report with God and they honestly think that’s all it takes.

Conservatives view social issues as universal constants that fundamentally are unable to be changed, like the weather. You can try to alter your own behavior to protect yourself (you can carry an umbrella), and you can commiserate about how bad the weather is, but you can’t stop it from raining. This is why conservatives blame victims of rape for dressing immodestly or for drinking or for going out at night: to them, those things are like going out without an umbrella when you know it’s going to rain. 

“But then why do conservatives try to stop things they dislike by making them illegal, like drug use or immigration or abortion?” And the answer is: they’re not. They know perfectly well that those things will continue. No amount of studies showing that their methods are ineffective will matter to them because effectiveness is not the point. The point is to punish people for doing bad things, because punishing people is how you show your disapproval of their actions; if you don’t punish them, then you’re condoning their behavior. 

This is why they will never support rehabilitative prisons, even though they reduce crime. This is why they will never support free birth control for everyone, even though that would reduce abortions. This is why they will never support just giving homeless people houses, even though it’s proven to be cheaper and more effective at stopping homelessness than halfway houses and shelters. It’s not about stopping evil, because you can’t; it’s about saying definitively what is Bad and what is Good, and we as a society do that by punishing the people we’ve decided are bad.