Behold the Killiescape

@elodieunderglass

I swear I saw a post recently (this morning?) about Killieposts being tricky to navigate, but now I can't find it to reblog. Anyway.

JANUARY & PRIOR

Preprequel posts

Prequel posts (Apollonic wafts of the jockeyposting to come)

Killie posts:

FEBRUARY

-- february took twice as long as I thought (only partly because I got distracted reading the posts, I swear), so I'll do march tomorrow.

alright FINE; it won't let me save edits to the original post for some reason so here's through march 13th

MARCH

Oh my goodness look at all this work, thank you so much, I can’t believe it.

Okay no WONDER people feel overwhelmed. Thank you and sorry!?? And thank you?!

It's one little goat, Michael. What could it cost, two zuzim?

people talk abt riverdale all the time as an example of ridiculous television bc archie fought in world war one and then got raptured or whatever but they all really forget that once upon a time was the og. remember how runplestiltskin was also the crocodile from the captain hook story (in addition to being th beast from beauty and the beast) bc captain hook fucked his wife but they're both unjted in hatred for peter pan bc peter pan was rumplestiltskin's abusive father. And that was all established by season two

and dwarves hatched from eggs.

The empty space where you used to be; the part of you that's a part of me

"Can you build me hands?" the robot said.

"Why?" said the inventor. "Your grippers are stronger, more precise."

"Yes. But hands would be better for playing the piano."

"You can synthesize any sound."

"But I can not play music."

"Is there a difference?"

"I want to find out."

I love this comic!

@kiwisoap robo for you!

This feels like a safe space to share that I really hate it in movies when they’re, like, crossing this wretched fuckoff gorge by a rope bridge and some jagoff cuts the bridge like - I do NOT want to even think about how much work and material and handcraft that was!! And then people had to install it as well!! Imagine how many commutes you’re fucking up! Stop destroying rope bridges assholes

happy neil bangin' out the tunes everyone

the human body is so evil for inventing headaches it will throw one at you for anything. ate too little? headache. drank too little? headache. ate not the right things? headache. didnt wear your glasses? headache. took off your glasses for two fucking seconds? headache. bright light? headache. about to get your period? headache. about to get sick? headache. headphones too heavy? headache. ponytail too tight? headache. posture bad? headache. didnt sleep well? headache. slept too much? headache. didnt take your medication? headache. took your medication? headache. took an ibuprofen earlier? headache. didnt take an ibuprofen earlier? headache. RELEASE ME

it’s such a shame that even 30 years into the reign of Gregor Vorbarra, Barrayar’s government is still fundamentally non-transparent with a tight hand on the press, because can you fucking imagine watching Ekaterin tell Richars to fuck off then propose to Miles in the Chamber of Counts live on Barrayaran C-SPAN

You go through Brothers in Arms wondering how the FUCK the entire galaxy is not well aware that Miles Vorkosigan is obviously the same person as Admiral Naismith, and then you switch POVs to people not explicitly in the same small social group and realize that not only do most people on Barrayar not know what Miles Vorkosigan looks like, but most people in the galaxy don't even know that Miles Vorkosigan exists, because the rest of the galaxy's Google doesn't know nor care about political heirs on a backwater military-crazy planet

I love (?) how I have maintained my "space google thinks Miles is his own grandfather, no the other one" theory long enough for google to disintegrate so much that that theory is now not only objectively correct, it's also optimistic.

Speed-run of the theory, btw:

-Miles Naismith Vorkosigan has no notability in and of himself, he is only notable attached to his parents

-The only reason anyone would know about him existing is because of a birth announcement or other public notification issued by his parents, and thus he would be part of their bio

-Sometimes IRL these kind of birth announcements have middle names and a lot of info. Sometimes they don't. Miles, considering the circumstances of his birth, probably did not have one of these at the time he was born. It's unclear if he ever had one.

-Thus it's fully possible that no one on Barrayar who isn't aquainted with his family or knows his family well would have ever heard of him

-If they have heard of him, they know his name is Miles Vorkosigan, mother's maiden name Naismith

-Cordelia's father's name was Miles Naismith

-Miles Naismith's tragic death probably came with some publicity, including the fact that I assume it left no body

-Even if someone did know that Cordelia named her son Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, it's ridiculous to think that a mercenary admiral is a 17 year old nobody from a random planet

-This is before we get into language barrier issues, which the series mostly ignores. If we do take it seriously, I want to you to take a globe, pick a country at random, find the English wikipedia article on its current head of state, and then check the wikipedia article on its head of state in the official language(s) of that country. There will be differences. If there's a large wikipedian community that works in that language, there's going to be information only in that language that is not in English.

-Now let's assume that Miles's treason trial at age 17 made the news. This doesn't help the idea that this failson is a mercenary admiral, either.

-googling "Miles Naismith Vorkosigan" will get you, at best, "Cordelia Naismith married Aral Vorkosigan and they have a son named Miles"

-googling "Miles Naismith" will get you the admiral and old news articles about Cordelia's dad's death

-quick tell me Aral's middle name, tell me Cordelia's, tell me Gregor's, tell me Cordelia's mother's. Middle names are ignorable. Miles Naismith is Miles Naismith. Miles Vorkosigan is Miles Vorkosigan.

-but space google thinks that Admiral Miles Naismith, who is Betan, is Cordelia Naismith Vorksoigan's dad

-this is of course laughable, and it becomes a spacebook sign that you have to be careful when googling

-and then some folks are like "well, Admiral Naismith does seem to be doing good things for Barrayar some times" and then it's like "lol guess he's giving his daughter a birthday present" and no one actually believes it

-this is like how I met someone named James Bond once

Now someone needs to write one of the stories from the perspective of Space Google with all the inaccuracies and bizarre conspiracy theories intact. Can you see the Space Sub-Reddit Mercenaries Form or Wormhole Tactics critique of some of the battles? Of course there would be RPF stories about the Admiral and the occasional article in a reputable publication a la Defense Weekly.

I love this tangle idea so much!

Some of the cross-cultural miscommunications remind me of Notes from the desk of the Barrayaran Cultural Liaison Officer , which is not about Miles but is definitely about cross-cultural communication situations.

LOZ x Dunmeshi crossover

we don’t know how to look at art

I FOUND IT

Attributed to Lynda Barry according to a random tweet but I don't have a link to the artist directly

You’re very welcome - and very good at looking at art!

Sorry @mordacitatis I forgot the image description!

(Image of a swan and cygnet looking at a Madonna and child.)

genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

Share the knowledge

Okay, here we go! I'm gonna try and put this in order from least to most technical knowledge required. I'm not responsible if you accidentally create SkyNet etc.

Level 1: browser extensions

This one is basically impossible to get wrong, or at least to get wrong badly enough that it causes any problems.

Get Firefox, or a Firefox fork like Waterfox. If you use a fork, make sure it's one that will let you use add-ons. On a PC, pretty much any Firefox fork will take add-ons, but on mobile devices, many don't. Iceraven is one that does.

Get the add-ons uBlock Origin, YouTube Sponsorblock (if you use YouTube), and FBCleaner (if you use Facebook).

uBlock Origin comes with a built-in list of filters to block ads and trackers, but you can add your own filters to block any specific element of a website you don't like. You know those goddamn floating frames on fandom.com sites that block half the screen? Now you can zap 'em.

Sponsorblock uses crowdsourced timestamps to automatically skip sponsor spots and self-promotion in YouTube videos. Never listen to anyone say "hit like and subscribe" or "Raid Shadow Legends" again.

FBCleaner hides all content from your feed except posts from people, groups, and pages you've actually chosen to follow.

Level 2: leaving enshittified services

The software that's become standard over the years in a lot of fields is steadily selling more of your data, showing you more ads, and pushing you to buy more expensive subscriptions. Time to tell them to get fucked.

Dump Adobe apps for Affinity or Krita. Drop Microsoft for LibreOffice. Change your default search engine from Google to DuckDuckGo or Qwant. Use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google or Apple Maps.

Level 3: network-level DNS fuckery

DNS, or Domain Name Service, is the thing that tells your computer where www.website.com is actually located. By hacking your network's DNS you can force it to tell your devices that ad-hosting domains don't exist at all. Some of the steps on this one can get pretty technical, but because you're doing all the difficult stuff on a dedicated device, you can't really fuck up anything that seriously.

Get yourself a Raspberry Pi (a cheap older one like a model 3B will work just fine for this purpose), and follow a guide like this one to get it set up running AdGuard Home. AdGuard, like uBlock, has built-in filter lists, but you can also add your own if there are specific domains you want to block.

Once it's up and running, you'll need to change the DNS settings on your router to point to your AdGuard service. This is different for every router but will always start with logging into the admin panel with a password printed on a little sticker somewhere on the router.

With that done, every time a device on your home network looks for ads.website.com, it'll get back a message that says "sorry, can't find it", so it won't be able to load any ads.

Level 4: Android-specific DNS fuckery

Because AdGuard runs on your home network, it can't block ads on your phone when you're away from home - and what's worse, your phone will sometimes remember the addresses it got when you were out and about, and ads will get past your AdGuard wall even when you're home.

To avoid this, get AdAway for DNS-based ad-blocking directly on your phone. The easy, but less seamless, way of using AdAway is the "local VPN mode", which doesn't require you to do any mucking about with your phone's operating system.

Level 5: automated media piracy

The best way to stop seeing ads on all your streaming services is to stop using streaming services. There are loads of ways to do this, but the best ones involve setting up what's called an "arr stack" (Google that for setup guides) along with nzbget and a usenet account. Most of the time you'll want to set this stuff up on a dedicated device - an old laptop gathering dust in the closet is a great option, or you can grab something used from a charity shop or a local electronics recycler.

The great thing about usenet is that unlike with torrents, you don't have to do any sharing from your computer, so you're in a lot less legal jeopardy - legally speaking, distributing pirated content is waaayyy more serious than accessing it. I pay about £3 a month for a secure, high-bandwidth usenet service.

Once you start getting your own collection of media on your own computer, use the open-source media library manager Jellyfin to browse and play things from basically any device.

Oh, and don't be a dick. Pirate all you want from big corporations, but please pay independent small-time creators for their work.

Level 6: fucking with Android

Android phones are a lot more locked-down than they used to be, but depending on the device you own you can still do a lot of messing around under the hood. Note that if you get something wrong while doing this, there is always the possibility that it will turn your device into a paperweight.

Before you buy a device, check where it sits on the Bootloader Unlock Wall of Shame. Once you've bought it, check the xda-developer forums for guides on how to unlock it and "root" it (gain admin access) with Magisk.

Once Magisk is installed, you can add modules to do all sorts of cool stuff, including using AdAway in "root mode" which makes it basically invisible.

You can also install YouTube ReVanced, which will do all the ad- and sponsor blocking stuff we took care of in your Windows browser a few paragraphs ago. Be careful: there are a lot of fake sites out there pretending they're associated with the ReVanced project which might be injecting malware into their downloads. This Reddit post has the official instructions and links.

Also, try out the modded version of Facebook from APKmoddone, which will block most of the same shit as the FBcleaner add-on from earlier. There's always a possibility that modified apps like this are doing something dodgy, but I've never had any issues with this one personally.

Level 7: fucking with Windows

This one is scary because it can seriously fuck up your shit if something goes wrong, but some really cool people have actually made it very simple to strip all the bloat, ads, and spyware out of Windows. The tool I use is ReviOS. Start reading at https://www.revi.cc/docs. Basically, you'll need to download a tool called AME Wizard and the ReviOS "playbook" that tells AME what to do. Read the documentation before you do any of this.

Level 8: switching to Linux

I'm not going to pretend this is an option for everyone. Half the software I use on a weekly basis isn't available on Linux. But if you can switch? Do it. These days, Ubuntu - one of the most popular flavours of Linux - is built with people switching from Windows in mind, and a lot of things will be pretty intuitive. It also has great documentation and a huge community you can go to for help if you're confused about stuff.

And that, friends, is a comprehensive approach to banishing the demons of capitalism from your home!

If I was a mage in the dungeon meshi universe, I'd figure out how to enchant living paintings and then commission some artists to paint me a bunch of pictures of magnificent feasts. Then I'd rent out a gallery space and charge entry to my Magical Food Hall, where you can eat as much of anything you want and not experience any of the consequences. Think of the possibilities. I'm not just talking about calories and weight loss here. I'd have a painting of a bakery where gluten-free people can gorge themselves on bread and cakes and then leap out of the painting before the vomiting sets in. I'd have an ice cream parlor for the lactose intolerant. One painting is just called "The Allergen Feast" and is a table laden with things like nuts, soy products, shellfish, etc. I'd have a painting of a county fair with the most insane types of fried food imaginable. I'm planning an expansion, but first I gotta consult some religious experts to see if eating imaginary painted food that isn't kosher/halal is technically against the rules or not.

first day in the time loop it is not a loop yet. i go about my day and its a pretty good day and when i make my evening cup of tea i wish all days were like this

second day in the time loop and in the moment before waking i have a dream about something i have to do tomorrow. i do not realise i will never get to do it.

third day in the time loop i get hit with a wave of deja vu sitting in traffic. i am bored of the songs on the radio.

fourth day in the time loop i realise i am mouthing along to my lecturer even though i do not know anything about the sampling of early electronic music.

sixth day in the time loop my friend says hello to me and i say 'yes i know'. she looks at me funny and i apologise. she starts telling me about her girlfriend and i simply do not care. i feel mean for not caring. when i get home i accidentally walk into a doorframe which does not improve my mood. i realise i already have a bruise on my elbow.

seventh day in the time loop i realise there has been a cloud shaped like a weasel outside my bedroom window for the last week. i think 'what are the chances of that' and then i realise the chances are very very low.

eighth day in the time loop i skip everything i had planned to sit by the river and read. i know all about the sampling of early electronic music now and if i have to listen to the radio play summertime or my friend talk about her girlfriend and her stupid cat one more time i am going to scream.

ninth day in the time loop the irony of hearing summertime every day becomes apparent. i am trapped in an endless summer day. i remember the saying about not being able to stand in the same river twice so i make a point of standing in the same river for half an hour on the off chance i'm doing it at the same time as i dipped my feet in yesterday just so i could be the exception.

tenth day in the time loop it is very obvious that no one else know they are in a loop. i wonder if the whole world is looped and i'm just the only one who knows it or if i'm the only one who is looped and the world is seeing endless double exposures of me. i wonder which loop is the real one.

eleventh day in the time loop i wonder if i'm aging at all.

twelfth day in the time loop i start to think about video games. playing the same level over and over and over again. you die on the same point of the level every time but you re appear the start to have another go. i wonder what part of the day i am stuck on. which obstacle i have to beat to get to move on to tomorrow.

thirteenth day in the time loop i am remembering everything now. i do not think i did at the start but i can definitely remember what i had for breakfast yesterday morning because that was today. my friend calls me in the middle of the night asking why i wasn't at the lecture. i start telling her that i've already been to that lecture six times when it hits midnight and the loop resets.

fourteenth day in the time loop i drive as far away as possible to see if i still wake up in my bed when the loop resets. i get a cheese and pickle sandwich from a gas station but it sucks so i leave without paying. i do buy a packet of gum though. just not the sandwich. i wonder how food works in a time loop and suppose food consumed gets um-consumed. the radio stills play summertime and as i drive i think about the inherent time loop of a song. the exact same four and a half minutes over and over and over again. i wonder if we have a god complex about our favourite songs. i wonder if i am getting to wound up in the themes of the time loop and if there is an easier way to solve this than getting philosophical. it is a long car ride and i have a lot of time to think. but still only twenty four hours.

fifteenth day in the time loop i get up early wash my hair and sit outside on the porch. a woman walks past with her dog. they were not there on the fourteen day and i think this is a good sign.

sixteenth day in the time loop i open my diary and see that i have been writing on the same page over and over and over. i turn the page and write 'today is tomorrow' in big letters.

on the seventeenth day i the loop breaks. i still don't know what i did. i don't think it was the diary page because that reset but the world didn't. or i didn't. or something. i go to the scheduled lecture and i'm so relieved its not about early electronic samples i get lost in the lecturer's voice and forget to take notes. i order a piece of lemon cake from the cafe because they didn't have it yesterday but they do today. i hang out with my friend and she tells me about some endearing silly thing her girlfriend did and i laugh. it's a nice day. i find myself thinking 'i wish more days were like this' but i don't think i do, actually.

had a dream that someone suggested the best gender neutral form of address would be Mþ (pronounced Myth) and i immediately said "mith me with that gay shit HEYOOO" and woke up at 4:30am hanging sideways off of my bed