Linkspam

[melannen]

Okay, I finally got through all the open tabs from the week I was away! Let’s see if I can do this linkspam thing. (spoiler: I can’t.)

These were all linked via my reading page in the week I was offline, and I feel kind of bad that I can’t credit who posted them first, but there is no way I will be remembering that, and also, some of them I had to go through three or four layers of links already to get to the actual content.

• I used the web for a day with Javascript turned off

This is part of a genre of articles with the theme "I tried giving up a terrible internet thing for a day, and it was so hard not being able to do the things that I wouldn’t have been able to do five years ago anyway, so I had to turn it back on." It is one of the better ones I’ve read in that genre though, and it gives real thought to accessibility in particular.

But when I read it, I had 100 tabs open, mostly from crufty news sites, and my browser was so slow that I was spending more time waiting for browser than actually closing tabs. But I got to this one and I thought, wait, I bet if I turned off Javascript all the cruft would go away and the web would actually work again. And it did work again! And nothing of value was lost. Then I discovered that Vivaldi (and maybe other Chromium-based browsers?) lets you whitelist javascript on only certain domains and turn it off everywhere else, so now I have whitelisted about a dozen trusted websites where I actually care about interactive features and/or audiovisual media, and no javascript anywhere else, and you guys, the web is so much more pleasant now.

For some reason a bunch of news websites won’t show the pictures without javascript (no alt text either of course) but all the ads disappear (although more likely to have alt text) and also all of the autoplay video and most of the subscription-blocks have also disappeared, and the article text reads just fine, so I think I’m ahead on that tradeoff. And for the sites where I do want to do something interactive one time but don’t want to bother whitelisting, I just open them in Firefox instead.

Things that were cool enough I went and loaded them in a javascript-enabled browser:

• Ancient Earth map - put in a city, and it shows you how its land has changed over the entire history of Earth. (Alas, only goes in fifty-million-year increments, and much more focused on continental shifts than biogeography, but still cool.)
• Recipes out of Bilibid - there was an article linked multiple times about the way people in concentration camps and prison camps in terrible conditions put together recipe books of foods they remember from home, and that the people who put them together aren’t always the people society expects to make cookbooks, either. This is a scanned version (via Hathitrust) of a cookbook written by an American soldier in a WWII Japanese prison in the Philippines, that’s extra interesting because he made an effort to collect recipes from prisoners from other countries, too.
• River maps from Grasshopper Geography - look, river maps that are actually good! I can see my creek in one of them!

Some fun pop culture things that I missed in my childhood:

• That one time coca cola made a dystopian soda - this one ponders at length about what went wrong with the ad campaign, and then buries the lede that the real problem was that the product was terrible.
• Inside the black market of vintage kool aid packet collectors - interesting also for what it says in general about how collecting, as a hobby, has changed in the past thirty or so years.

Assorted:

• Ravelry has banned white supremacists and those who support them! (using the same basic template that’s been working for rpg.net.) I was going to finally join after reading that but it looks like they’ve (understandably) temporarily closed new accounts.

• skygiants posts about Amberlough, but secondarily about what protagonists can do that are unforgivable even if the canon wants them to be forgiven for it, and the discussion in comments was fascinating.

• Your cheap-ass bee house is probably killing the bees : tl;dr if you want your yard to be bug-friendly just fill it with dead limbs, old sticks, tall grass and brush instead of buying things in stores (luckily that is our strategy anyway)

• The art of no noises - Solarpunk. Also they should do this near my house.

• There is a good omens promptmeme!

• And a Good Omens Kinkmeme!

• I am apparently writing a wip on one of them now! (no I still haven’t watched the show, my thevault downloads won’t play. :(

• It will never not amuse me the extent to which Good Omens is a songfic.

• intoabar is running again! Signups close July 14! Am debating whether to sign up with Good Omens (which let’s face it will probably be half the signups this year) or Rivers of London….

These are all related in that they’re talking about how concepts of family, identity, relationship are all getting tangled in the ways that new technologies about genetics and reproduction are changing how things are conceptualized, and we haven’t really figured any of that out yet. I don’t think any of the three articles really get to the core of it - that we don’t really have workable norms around any of these things in the face of modern technology, and the old norms aren’t working - but they make an interesting set together.

• What does it mean to be genetically Jewish
• The case for social infertility
• The death of the family secret (which indirectly, via me nattering about this kind of thing, led to lannamichaels writing The Tadfield Expatriate Club of Allegheny County about Adam and Greasy and Warlock, after.)

More assorted:

• Why there’s so little left of the early Internet, about the ephemerality of digital content, which got me thinking about how fandom from the very beginning came to the Web with existing strategies for preservation of ephemeral content, and has stayed ahead of the rest of the web ever since. Relatedly, an old post from runpunkrun on Finding deleted fic with the Wayback machine.

• photochemistry beyond the red limit? An article on the ways that some microbes can photosynthesize using a much darker shade of read light than was previously known. Which opens up more of a possibility for ecologies built on photosynthesis in the infrared….

• There are a lot of internet thinkpieces about why America does things that make life actively worse for its citizens, and I always want to yell at them "It’s because racism! Just say racism!" Here is one of them: Why Don’t Americans Use Their Parks At Night?

• America’s first Black radio station: One that is willing to say "Racism" and is good!

• Cincinnati built a subway system 100 years ago. I should probably just subscribe to Atlas Obscura at this point.

• A Core Subgroup of Believers Don’t Just Think Learning Styles Are Real, But Also Inherited And Hard-Wired In The Brain: this one mainly impressed me by being an article about studying whether people believe in a discredited theory about essentialism in how people learn by dividing the study results into essentialist groups of people who learn in different ways, and not appearing ever actually realize how ironic this was.

• Blood feasts and roach vacuums A good article about bedbugs and what to do about them, especially good for the way it focuses on the class issues around infestations rather than scaremongering.

• rushthatspeaks has links to some things you can do about American concentration camps

• To balance that, here is a video of someone scything wheat that I have to re-watch every time I see the link.

• Wallace Stevens, A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts

• Oh my actual god: sara had an Adventure on a Boat.

• What alphabet books did for X before they had X-rays, Xebu, or Xylophones

• Scans of alchemical herbals: this post assumes you’ve been following an ongoing conversation about the history of the Voynich manuscript, but even if you haven’t, the alchemical herbals he links to are really cool to look at.

• Shippers on Shipping: The first results from a big survey about fandom shipping that most of us probably took last year. And here’s where you can play with the graphs. Although TBH so far my main takeaway so far is that the questions that struck me in the survey as badly-designed questions did indeed get them bad data. And that their sample was probably biased a lot more than they’re accounting for.

Comments

[kore]

also all of the autoplay video and most of the subscription-blocks have also disappeared

//stops reading rest of interesting post, rushes to preferences to try this

[melannen]

I hope it is as good for you as it was good for me!

I did whitelist Dreamwidth; it works okay without but I can't live without the on-page cut tag opening on my reading page.

[kore]

I turned it off and am slowly adding sites! Don't know if I will keep this permanently, but no-Javascript Gmail is A TRIP.

[melannen]

I haven't tried that, since I have my gmail going through a desktop client, but I bet! Does it actually work at all??

I had to turn on JavaScript for accounts.google.com in order to be able to log in to Drive, so just make sure you don't ever log out if you want to keep Google javascript-free.

[kore]

It SORTA did in basic view, but I wound up turning it back on. I like my fox teahouse theme too much I'm struck by how basic HTML everything is, all blue links and no bouncy spinny graphics and fake menus and whatever. (LOL, I am no programmer, I just notice the surface.)

so just make sure you don't ever log out if you want to keep Google javascript-free

Oh, LOVELY (is it just me or does everyone seem totally happy with the idea of never logging out of anywhere ever and just letting various places always track you? that honestly bugs me)

[melannen]

I hate it, and if I had a usable alternative to be able to access files on work computers, I would never log in to Google at all. (This is part of why I do have my gmail going through a client.)

But I whitelisted the Accounts and Drive google subdomains for that (and youtube, because I am weak), and so far haven't felt the need to add back anything else from Google.

[kore]

....I spend SO MUCH time on Youtube, I whitelisted that first, heh.

[thenewbuzwuzz]

Yummy links, thank you!

[seekingferret]

That was a better article on Judaism and genetics than I expected, but I still felt it oversimplified some of the halakhic questions involved.

[melannen]

Yeah, it definitely read to me as being more about the one specific situation in current Israeli politics than it did about answering the question posed in the headline generally. But still interesting.

[seekingferret]

Right, it's mostly about the political situation for Russian immigrants, but it doesn't really fairly treat how that problem interacts with the contours of halakha. It cites Seth Farber of ITIM as saying "There is a specific principle in Jewish law... that instructs rabbis not to undermine someone’s self-declared religious identity if that person has been accepted by a Jewish community." And that's true as far as it goes, but it's contravened in situations where there is some affirmative reason to doubt someone's status. That's a hard halakhic question, when are we in a legal regime where we trust someone and when are we in a legal regime where we doubt?.

The most significant halakhic contour of the debate that I felt was missed is that the Rabbinate seems to be using DNA testing l'kula (in order to gain a leniency not otherwise permitted, i.e. to allow a marriage, not to forbid a marriage), but ITIM and Professor Sand (who has a habit of getting quoted in articles like this one) are concerned that this will lead to DNA testing l'chumra (in order to gain a stringency, i.e. to forbid a marriage). But I don't think that follows! If the Rabbinate is seeking kulos by way of a very specific type of DNA testing, that to me says they're sensitive to the problem of Russian-Israeli Jewry and are trying the best they can to use an innovation in the halakhic process in a way that will help them integrate.

And the Rabbinate is also a really messy and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy, so that's a whole other part of the problem.

[jesse_the_k]

I'm grateful that you make the effort to explain these things to me. I come from three generations of secular Jewry, and I'm alarmed and fascinated and reassured and intrigued by the combo of the Guardian article and your commentary.

[melannen]

Ah, that makes sense. So I guess in the specific situation, the halakhic question is whether there is legitimate enough doubt in the first place?

(And politically, whether that question of doubt is being applied fairly to all people it could be applied to...)

Like, if a random American person with no obvious Jewish connections but a family legend that their great-grandma was secretly Jewish wanted to be married as a Jew, you could offer them a DNA test as a way to get around the question of community, and that seems obviously like you're using the genetic testing as a way to be extra lenient.

But for someone who has always considered themselves Jewish and been a member of a Jewish community (like most of the cases in the article) requiring that extra test does not feel like leniency. (Especially because there's always a chance of a false negative.)

I mean, it's not unique to Jewish identity; it comes back to what I was saying about how all kinds of lineage-based communities are facing these questions, and what role genetic (or historical) tracing can play against all the different other ways of defining identity that weren't even possible when the traditions of the group were codified, especially in cases where it gets tangled with state-level legal privileges, like Israeli Jews and American tribal enrollment. And also some of what they're currently trying to do with nitpicking Hispanic Americans out of birthright citizenship.

[seekingferret]

But for someone who has always considered themselves Jewish and been a member of a Jewish community (like most of the cases in the article) requiring that extra test does not feel like leniency.

Exactly.

[seekingferret]

I should also say that the situation with Russian-Israeli Jews is complex- a lot of non-Jewish Russians came over with the Jews in the aftermath of the Soviet Union- per Wikipedia, over 50% of Russian immigrants to Israel in 2000 were not halakhically Jewish. That's a big part of the reason the Rabbinate claims for requiring extra documentation.

The counterargument is that having a sizeable population in your country that's not allowed to marry without facing extra burdens is shitty, not to mention cruel, civil rights policy.

[melannen]

Yeah, I didn't even want to address the question of whether having that the the legal marriage law was a good thing or not. :/

[lannamichaels]

I use NoScript and it's fantastic how few sites I actually have javascript turned on for. I did hit a news site over the weekend that was ad-blocker-locking with JS on, wouldn't show anything with JS off, but I got away with it by opening it without JS and looking at the page code and there was the article for me to read ;)

tl;dr if you want your yard to be bug-friendly just fill it with dead limbs,

...I know what you mean by dead limbs, but :P

[erinptah]

Fellow NoScript user! I briefly tried turning Javascript off completely, but it broke some functions on sites I actively use. Now I whitelist those and it's all good.

(And the failure-to-load on news sites is because they have javascript-powered lazy loading -- the images don't load until you scroll to that part of the article. Since lots of people open the page but don't read to the end, it saves on bandwidth to not deliver the parts they won't see.)

[melannen]

That kind of makes sense, except if they were worried about bandwidth, you'd think they'd deal with the autoplay video that literally nobody wants to watch and the megabytes and megabytes of useless javascript before they started worrying about image load times....

[erinptah]

Well, first they had to come around to realizing that literally nobody wants to watch autoplay video, and that took a while...

[melannen]

Well, I'm sure the other kind are bug-friendly too. :P (IIRC, there are actually some native solitary bees that need carrion to breed, and the relative lack of it in many places is hurting them).

[stellar_dust]

BEDBUGS. GOD. The performative cleansing ritual is way worse than the bites. Luckily, my landlord is good about dealing with things - they just put out cockroach baits last week, too. (Now if only I could do something about the ANTS.) I really hope none of these critters follow me after my move.

The scything video is fantastic.

I don't remember OK soda at ALL. I think it must have been overshadowed by Crystal Pepsi, which apparently was about the same time?

23andme advertises on Pod Save America, and they had to explicitly forbid Lovett from telling listeners about all the new family members they could find by using the service! *snort* They were kind of asking for it by running a Father's Day ad for genetic testing, though, really.

[stellar_dust]

OMG: without Javascript, Facebook shoves you to the mobile page, which seems to be optimized for cell phones ca. 2005. This is AMAZING. It's still usable, but super annoying and extremely limited! I might actually be able to stay off the site except for things I actually need to check! :D :D

[melannen]

W00t! It really does feel like turning off Javascript removes about 90% of the things that makes the internet extra terrible, and leaves you with just what you actually need.

Handy trick!

[jesse_the_k]

My FB bookmark is

https://m.facebook.com

so no matter my Javascript status, I always start on that deliciously plain single-column page.

Re: Handy trick!

[stellar_dust]

Beautiful.

[melannen]

One of the things I liked about that article was the way it was (at least a little bit) talking about how bedbugs are really more about social uncleanliness than actual disease risk - you're probably objectively worse off with a few mosquitoes in your yard, but we don't freak out about that.

But you had still better not bring them here with you. :P

I have a vague memory of OK Soda as a phrase, but the marketing images ring no bells at all. The campaign must have been much more targeted than they're making it sound.

[stellar_dust]

It gets muddled because they're also talking about roaches, which have much greater health risks.

And I suppose that once you have more than a few bedbugs it really does need to be nipped in the bud before it goes from "coexisting" to "infestation," and at least with mosquitoes in the yard, you can mostly keep them out of your actual bedroom. But altogether, yes, we should do less freaking out about bedbugs.

I haven't seen any bugs or bites for over a year, so I think they're gone! Or trapped in my mattress cover. And you really don't need any help from me on the ant front.

[primeideal]

Hahaha I love the X one.

[melannen]

I love really old picture books like that.

[umadoshi]

I haven't used a primary browser for manymanymany years without script- and ad-blocking extensions, and seeing the web without those things makes me twitchy and tempted to scream. It's genuinely upsetting as well as annoying.

(On especially egregious sites with ads strobing in the sidebars, all I can think is "How the hell did the web go mainstream at all if THIS is what so many people experience it as???")

FWIW, I use uMatrix (scripts) and uBlock Origin (ads), although they're both still newish to me, since I was using NoScript and AdBlock for ages. And I use FB Purity to make Facebook less nightmarish, although I still hate it.

[grammarwoman]

I just discovered that uBlock has an option to turn on Javascript blocking; I'll have to see how that goes. :)

[umadoshi]

I hope it works well for you!

[sewn]

I was also inspired to turn off javascript to see what it's like. The only thing it seemed to do was block all the pictures on the news site I frequent, and that... honestly makes it a better experience.

[cyprinella]

Add me to the list of always surfing with javascript blocked by default. Absolutely necessary for news sites these days. I hate that I can't do it on my phone.

My biggest peeve is the sites that don't load TEXT without scripts being on. Like, you're a small manufacturer of kids teeshirts. This isn't complicated.

[batrachian]

A thousand times this. Like, I will grudgingly accept the actual bits of ecommerce and Complex Things that you can't actually do in a static page, but TEXT. IN A COLUMN. IT'S NOT THAT HARD.

[cyprinella]

Especially when their site basically boils down to "We make shirts! You can buy them at Kohl's!" with no e-commerce or anything.

[batrachian]

...what.

(Okay I don't actually miss the web of the nineties? But I kinda miss the web of the nineties)

[cyprinella]

The magic of small business sites on Wix or Squarespace! I work for a trade org and have to dig up info on our members that they don't bother to provide us when asked, like their address or phone number, and I see an unfortunate amount of unfortunate sites. My other favorite thing? Contact information tha't a picture instead of text. And not like even a fancy picture. Like Arial on a plain background. It's the dumbest shit and so infuriating.

[swingandswirl]

Oooh, that JavaScript article is fascinating.

And whoa are OK Soda and Kool-Aid collectors a trip and a half.

Atlas Obscura is amazing, isn't it? It's the highlight of my FB feed, which is VASTLY more usable now I went and unfollowed every single person I'd ever friended and just kept the groups I liked/were useful.