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The Enshittification of the Internet
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Rants
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This was a phrase I'm pretty sure was coined by Boing-Boing, and refers to the way that everything that used to be good and fun about the internet has become shitty through the relentless pressure to have ads.
For example, YouTube used to be a content option. Now, set up a playlist and there will be an ad between every song. I've even tried listening to longer pieces, Mozart, Chopin, etc, 17 and 30 minutes symphonies, and - believe it or not, 3 or 4 minutes in I'll get an ad. And if you're not handy to your phone that ad will play for longer than the symphony...
This is peak-enshittification, make the experience so grueling that you have to buy a subscription.
Boing-Boing as of late has done much the same thing, sadly without the self-awareness that should come to a site that coined the phrase...the site, so infested with ads that you're unable to scroll without being taken to a sponsors website, on a slow connection the site - the content - takes forever to load, ads must load first (after all), and for the most part all you're getting is a rant similar to this and maybe an outward link to another site. Nothing is provided there that isn't better provided elsewhere.
And, in a masterstroke of web-understanding they now offer a subscription - $5 a month, and they'll pull the ads for you. What a bargain. The subscription option is a particularly annoying pop-over that you need to close before you can see their round-up of days news and opinion.
They've kind of proven the phrase that if you live long enough you'll see yourself become the villain...
A Woman heard voices in her head telling her she had a brain tumour...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
- Hits: 5
An interesting read, the title of which does it no justice.
A woman hears voices in her head telling her to see a doctor. At first she ignores them, until...
Anyways, read for yourself. Fascinating in the extraneous bits of information the voices provided her that she shouldn't/couldn't (??) have known...
To the Antique Dealer again and trifling progress
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 8
Yesterday, first a trip to the Antique shop, part with a pile of things I'd unboxed - 100 pairs of cufflinks, more candlesticks, other things. The flat - as always - is extra-messy following the pilfering of the locker, if I make a single trip a week I could be done with it all in a year.
That, at least, is the hope.
Then a box of costume jewelry, some sales to a couple of the local consignment shops, very interested in the rest only business hasn't been so good.
List the big items, the Mennonite blanket chest, Teak Apothecary Chest online, my barbells prove to be the most popular and sell within minutes. And today a message on FB; someone committed to the Teak Apothecary Chest, meaning I'll have to get to the locker and find a way to free it from where we boxed it in.
This morning, again, another trip to the Antique shop. I've become his bread and butter.
****
So, that's it, things are selling, finally, and while the Antique shop promises me I'll have a huge payout it hasn't yet happened.
Tomorrow, a trip to the locker to grab all the buttons. 100 litres of buttons, colour-sorted, and I suspect these as well will sell...
Which takes us to the moment. Work tonight, a text message this morning telling me that our head chef has left, a shame, I liked working with him, he was pretty chill and calm. Hopefully I see him around town. And now - back home, find a way to put away some of the mess I've made, take out some garbage, do a bit of painting and then to work...
Moving Shit from There to Here
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 22
...
Monday night, OK, Tuesday, a peaceful day only broken up by the owners coming in to the restaurant to have me try a half dozen new cocktails for our new menu.
Which, as they're mixing them at full strength highly discombobulates me, not a feeling I like at work.
In the evening the boy's arrived with a 14' truck filled with the last of my locker. So I need now to get another locker and we can unload it.
Wednesday, outside cold, 1 degree, and after coffee in the morning we head down to get a locker at the junction - $170 per month. 8X10. And we look in the back of the truck and begin unloading. I still have a lot of stuff, and bad news, somewhen in the past couple of years the locker sprung a rooftop leak and clearly many of my boxes of books have suffered catastrophic losses.
I find things that I might need and organize them beside the truck things I might be able to sell, drop off at the antique shop, and so we organize the new locker by what I might need (by front door) and what I can deal with later (in the back). The goal is to one day not have a locker.
2 more boxes of candlesticks, 24, these to the antique dealer. art supplies out my yin-yang, cufflinks - 100's of sets, and the small box with a dozen of my favourites, luck would have it, was directly below the leak, all the gold-filled has turned green and with a few of them, later in the day, no amount of Brasso will repair.
Cloths, 100lbs, these we pile beside the van as well. And then it begins. The rain, snow, wind, it's the wintriest day of all winter on this, my moving day.
Everything is soaked, through and through, myself included. And those books not soaked in the original flood are quickly getting so in the gap between truck and locker.
3 hours later and it's done. Absolute shit-show of a miserable fucking day but at least it's done. Now a huge pile of stuff to be moved through my apartment on the way to the antique shop....
On a hunch we swing by the shop - he's usually open Thu-Sat, but for some reason he's there today.
This is the sole silver lining...
God damn! and so we unload the antiques...
Then home, and 4 or 5 loads of shit up to my apartment where I begin doing laundry - 4 loads; to clean all the locker clothes that were soaked in the deluge. Dinner and then the boy is off; there's a blizzard forecast for Calgary and he wants to get home before the snow, and I'm left polishing cufflinks, sorting through the boxes of shit I brought into the house, some treasures, for sure, but these treasures will later today find their way to the antique shop, for this lifetime at least I've had my fill. 4 loads of laundry later the closet's overwhelmed, and I'll need once again to do some sorting, take some shit to the thrift shop, but that can be done later. There's an inspection in May and I'd better be ready...
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