I WANT FOR AO3 TO HAVE A FILTER TO TAKE OUT ALL THE FICS I'VE ALREADY READ CUS MAN I'VE READ A LOT

>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.

Hey did you know I keep a google drive folder with linguistics and language books  that I try to update regularly 

FAMOUS AUTHORS

Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.

The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.

Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.

Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.

Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.

Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.

Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.

Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.

The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.

Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.

Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.

Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.

Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.

TEXTBOOKS

Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.

Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.

KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.

Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.

Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.

MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.

Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.

Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.

Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.

eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.

MATH AND SCIENCE

FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.

Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.

Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.

Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.

FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.

Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.

CHILDREN’S BOOKS

byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.

Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.

International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.

Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.

Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.

Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.

The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.

Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.

PLAYS

ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.

Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.

Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”

ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.

MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE

Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.

The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.

Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.

Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.

Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.

The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.

Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.

John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.

SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.

Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.

ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.

Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.

Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.

Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.

KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.

Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.

Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.

Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.

Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.

Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.

Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.

Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.

CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.

Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.

HISTORY AND CULTURE

LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.

The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.

Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.

Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.

Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.

RARE BOOKS

Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.

Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.

Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.

2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.

Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.

Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.

Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.

Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.

MYSTERY

MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.

TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.

Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.

POETRY

The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.

Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”

Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.

Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.

Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.

QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.

CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.

PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.

MISC

Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.

World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.

DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.

A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.

Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.

ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.

Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.

Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.

in which i recommend books like the netflix algorithm

you wanted it, you got it, babes! caveat: this list is long (seriously, sorry about the length) and i can’t write blurbs for everything, but i highly recommend going and looking at anything that sounds interesting. some books will fall under multiple headings, so i’m listing them twice. i am linking to their purchase pages on bookshop.org, because amazon sucks and bookshop helps support indie booksellers, but if your local indie bookstore offers delivery or curbside pickup, buy it there. and i’m trying to keep this list confined to pretty recent titles, so even though a few older ones might slip in there, it’s definitely centered on releases from the past few years. okay let’s do this.

if you want a book that feels like a primal scream:

godshot by chelsea bieker

the book of joan by lidia yuknavitch

girl, woman, other by bernadine evaristo

her body and other parties by carmen maria machado (short stories)

trust exercise by susan choi

my dark vanessa by kate elizabeth russell

the rehearsal by eleanor catton

indelicacy by amina cain

the answers by catherine lacey

the mars room by rachel kushner

the love affairs of nathaniel p. by adelle waldman

if you want clever social commentary and/or hilarious female protagonists:

you too can have a body like mine by alexandra kleeman

the new me by halle butler

queenie by candice carty-williams

prep by curtis sittenfeld

the idiot by elif batumen

my year of rest and relaxation by ottessa moshfegh

oksana, behave! by maria kuznetsova

where’d you go, bernadette by maria semple

convenience store woman by sayaka murata

nothing to see here by kevin wilson

made for love by alissa nutting

the pisces by melissa broder

the herd by andrea bartz

if you want to start reading the unhinged women canon (not all recent):

mrs. dalloway by virginia woolf

the awakening by kate chopin

we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson

gone girl by gillian flynn

rebecca by daphne du maurier

white oleander by janet fitch

cousin bette by honore de balzac

wide sargasso sea by jean rhys

play it as it lays by joan didion

the piano teacher by elfriede jelinek

valley of the dolls by jacqueline susann

postcards from the edge by carrie fisher

if you liked the secret history:

if we were villains by m.l. rio

social creature by tara isabelle burton

the basic eight by daniel handler

the incendiaries by r.o. kwon

bunny by mona awad

hex by rebecca dinerstein knight

if you like speculative/dystopian fiction:

the dreamers by karen thompson walker

the book of joan by lidia yuknavitch

severance by lin ma

gold fame citrus by claire vaye watkins

the farm by joanne ramos

followers by megan angelo

the power by naomi alderman

the glass hotel by emily st. john mandel

if you want a book that reads like a good fanfic:

normal people by sally rooney

fame adjacent by sarah skilton

stay up with hugo best by erin somers

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo by taylor jenkins reid

circe by madeline miller

the nobodies by liza palmer

evvie drake starts over by linda holmes

if you like dark stories about complex relationships between women:

my sister, the serial killer by oyinkan braithwaite

baby teeth by zoje stage

dare me by megan abbott

eileen by ottessa moshfegh

social creature by tara isabelle burton

the worst kind of want by liska jacobs

the girls by emma cline

oligarchy by scarlett thomas

devotion by madeline stevens

baby by annaleese jochems

marlena by julie buntin

bunny by mona awad

necessary people by anna pitoniak

if you like stories about complicated families:

red at the bone by jacqueline woodson

the care and feeding of ravenously hungry girls by anissa grey

mostly dead things by kristen arnett

bee season by myla goldberg

bowlaway by elizabeth mccracken

everything i never told you by celeste ng

the nest by cynthia d’aprix sweeney

the grammarians by cathleen schine

ask again, yes by mary beth keane

if you like smart and thoughtful books about relationships between women:

my brilliant friend and the neapolitan novels by elena ferrante

such a fun age by kiley reid

gingerbread by helen oyeyimi

the female persuasion by meg wolitzer

the burning girl by claire messud

expectation by anna hope

the animators by kayla rae whitaker

if you want something queer that isn’t YA:

my education by susan choi

permission by saskia vogel

mostly dead things by kristen arnett

real life by brandon taylor

after dolores by sarah schulman

patsy by nicole dennis-benn

wilder girls by rory power

enter the aardvark by jessica anthony

less by andrew sean greer

exciting times by naiose dolan

you just want something good and are willing to take a chance on one of these books i love (these are not all recent, i just like them a lot):

dept. of speculation by jenny offill

the interestings by meg wolitzer

godshot by chelsea bieker

play it as it lays by joan didion

the bonfire of the vanities by tom wolfe

wolf in white van by john darnielle

things you would know if you grew up around here by nancy wayson dinan

sex and rage by eve babitz

wise blood by flannery o’connor

leading men by christopher castellani

saint x by alexis schaitkin

the cosmopolitans by sarah schulman

lake success by gary shteyngart

odds against tomorrow by nathaniel rich

the great believers by rebecca makkai

good citizens need not fear by maria reva (short stories)

US climate with equivalent cities from around the world.

Keep reading

Sims 4 page on Steam. Not to be controversial but I think the CEO of EA should be beheaded for this

Random mansion generator

The Procgen Mansion Generator produces large three-dee dwellings to toy with your imagination, offering various architectural styles and other options. Each mansion even comes with floorplans:

https://boingboing.net/2019/07/12/random-mansion-generator.html

(And read about Jen’s refusal to give the diary back… in her words.)

This is a fucking powerhouse article and I strongly, strongly recommend it. It’s not really “about” 9/11, it’s an article about the faces of bottomless grief. 

an incomplete list of unsettling short stories I read in textbooks

the scarlet ibis

marigolds

the diamond necklace

the monkey’s paw

the open boat

the lady and the tiger

the minister’s black veil

an occurrence at owl creek bridge

a rose for emily

(I found that one by googling “short story corpse in the house,” first result)

the cask of amontillado

the yellow wallpaper

the most dangerous game

a good man is hard to find

some are well-known, some obscure, some I enjoy as an adult, all made me uncomfortable between the ages of 11-15

add your own weird shit, I wanna be literary and disturbed

what addons do you use for firefox? i've just downloaded it to switch from chrome (derogatory)

firefox (affectionate)

UBlock Origin obviously. out-the-box works just fine but has a bunch of extra privacy/tracking/spam filters you can enable

Decentraleyes protects you against tracking through “free” curated content delivery and works alongside UBlock (or any of the other common adblocking addons)

I Don’t Care About Cookies good for EU users where GDPR made it so every site ever in the universe asks you to accept cookies and privacy terms seventeen times a day. will just auto-accept for you. never see an annoying popup again! but only use in conjunction with…

Cookie Auto Delete does what it says on the tin. will automatically flush cookies, cache, and data when you close a tab. those cookies you just auto accepted? they’re gone now. whitelist any sites you wanna stay logged in on and let the rest fucking perish

Don’t Track Me Google removes that annoying link conversion when you copy google results. you know when it changes from “site.com” to “encrypted.google.com/randomnonsensefor200charactersblahblahblah”? yeah. this stops that happening. fuck off, google.

Don’t Accept image/webp blocks sites from using the most useless file extension known to mankind so you can save as .jpg or .gif as god intended. fuck webp. seriously. what even is that.

Bypass Paywalls Clean exactly what you think it is

HTTPS Everywhere automatically adds ecrypted security to any site that supports https (you can do this manually by adding the s yourself to any url but… who can be fuckin bothere amirite? this does it for you)

New XKit …duh

Google Search Filter allows you to remove domains from your searches forever. pinterest? gone. weheartit? nuked. also works on duckduckgo. never type “-pinterest” into a search again.

Simple Tab Groups allows you to group tabs together and shove them out of sight, which is nice if you’re researching something and don’t want 50 bajillion jstor tabs clogging up your normal browsing session