I do recall reading about some that can digest plastic a while back… but they weren’t especially efficient at it and if given the opportunity to digest something more conventional, they’d prioritize that. I also don’t recall what the plastic was broken down into.

At the very least it’s a lead, if not actually a solution.

Good to know.

Will follow-ups on this topic be posted here?

Okay, if that’s the case then that is a perfectly reasonable implementation.

I could be convinced that the search engine itself isn’t profiling me.

But if by virtue of loading the ad, the advertiser gains my IP address, MAC address, and a fingerprint based on things like my installed fonts, then that’s not really privacy in any meaningful sense.

Wait… how does that work?

If our searches fund trees, then our searches have to be making them money… and I’m not aware of many advertisers that respect privacy.

I guess I’ll bite the bullet and kick off the Tuvix debate.

Tuvix isn’t the first Trek episode to involve transporter hybrids, and it wasn’t the last; but it stands out amongst the Trek fandom and cemented Janeway as a ruthless executioner.

I maintain that the only reason it’s controversial is because Tuvix was more loved than the sum of his parts.

I personally like Neelix, but it’s undeniable that he’s a contender for one of the least popular main characters in the franchise, and certainly the least favorite on Voyager.

Tim Russ is an amazing actor, but Tuvok is a very subtle character. If you pay attention to him, he’s funny and insightful. But if you don’t focus on him, you can forget he exists.

So, by replacing a despised character and a forgettable character with an outstanding character, you’re left with an audience who has no attachment to the status quo.

If, instead, “Tuvix” was built with popular characters, like Janeway, the EMH, or Seven, the audience would have no qualms about a return to the status quo—or at least not nearly to the degree we’ve seen over the years.

Skip ahead to Twovix

The transporter meat blob was dismissed as non-sentient by Tendi, but it clearly had all the intact personalities of its components. Without further analysis can we be certain of that assessment? Why not send it to The Farm™️?

If we come to the ethical conclusion that the transporter meat blob’s very existence was suffering, why restore the transporter patterns to their components rather than their Tuvix’d counterparts? The simplest answer is that they’re more trouble than they’re worth.

No one cares about the meat blob.

No one cares about T’Ilups and co.

Everyone cares about Tuvix.

We let our attachments dictate our ethics then use logic and evidence to justify them.

What would this mean for the next MacOS update?

The rabbit leaves only bones, and Moopsy just wants bones.

I feel like they could form a kind of symbiotic relationship.

Nah. Luigi had a personality prior to the 3D era. His modern portrayal is, at bare minimum, inspired by the Super Mario Adventure comics, where he was portrayed as the more cowardly of the two brothers. And that’s not even looking into things like the Super Show, which created Toad’s modern voice or the CYOA novels.

He put a voice to that persona, but he didn’t create it whole cloth.

The cutest Metroid ever!

The DS9 episode was handled with such dignity, but the Voyager episode was a fever dream and I am absolutely here for it!

After 3 seasons, it’s surprising to finally have a voice actor for Westlake.

I didn’t know I needed Clarinet Macro Viruses and assimilated Salamander Automatons at the helm, but my gosh did the LD team deliver!

I wonder if the promotion rollout explains why marketing for this season was so sparse.

I LOVED Shaxs talking about his relationship issues with Ransom and the fourth wall lean on the tubes was perfection.

Watch to the end. It has some new stuff. I admit I was misled at the beginning as well.

I think it also helped that we got more character out of Ortegas than we did in “Among the Lotus Eaters” which she dominated the B plot. The cast was all used well.

I’m somehow surprised and yet not that there’s going to be a CYOA type story. I mean, I’m very surprised it’s a thing, but I’m not surprised that Ryan North is attached to it. I highly recommend reading Romeo and/or Juliet. It’s hilarious and absolutely worth reading.

And the pew pews!

The Florida Department of Education says the new standards don’t teach that slavery was beneficial.

However, one of the benchmarks (SS.68.AA.2.3) states students will be taught, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Either this is some very unfortunate phrasing for establishing that people like Phillis Wheatley are required material (and even then it was less ‘thanks to’ and more ‘in spite of’) or something more nefarious is afoot.

I’d argue that Famitsu used to be a notoriously hard reviewer… but with the online age that reputation has more or less dissolved. Perfect scores are significantly more common than they used to be.

TBH, I find it somewhat silly both that there’s a reboot, since the previous games have had next to no story, and that there’s backlash over it… since there’s next to no story.

Okay, but realistically, how can we prevent this from happening in the future?

We’ve already, according to the article, dodged one bullet; but there’s no reason to expect that it’ll be the only one.

Also, due to the nature of the Fediverse being open source, there’s no way to prevent Facebook or other corporate monstrosities from building their own hooks.

I think we need to be prepared to preemptively defederate from the likes of Google, Reddit, Facebook or whatever. Not just this instance, but the greater Fediverse should have a United policy to reject association with those who would consume us and spit us out.

I’ve not tried Adguard, but I was fond of and a user of Ghostery before the reveal that they were blocking ads on one hand, while also reporting to ad tech companies.

As for how to compare all three of them… that’s hard to say. All blockers hit the major eye sores on popular sites like Reddit, Google, and Facebook. Day-to-day you’re not going to notice a difference.

The complication becomes that Blocker 1 may block ads A, B, and C, while Blocker 2 blocks ads A, B, and D. One is not necessarily better than the other, but more that they have different scopes.

Then there’s the fact that some sites refuse to load content if they detect you aren’t loading the ads. It’s not really the adblockers fault even if it’s a consequence of using them.

Unfortunately, running multiple adblockers has a non-zero chance of causing unintentional conflicts where both blockers try to attack the same ad.

Which brings me back to my method of having my cake and eating it too. By using a VPN, a custom hosts file, and a browser extension, I have multiple non-conflicting layers that protect me better than any one solution.