Previously: Part Zero, Part I, Part II, Part III.
Part IV: Web Browsers
While there are dozens of ostensibly different web browsers available to use, there are only three widely used web rendering engines. In essence, the rendering engine is what is responsible for parsing HTML and CSS code, as well as other W3C standards, into the graphical web pages we view and with which we interact. The three major rendering engines are Google’s Blink engine, which is distributed only in the form of the chromium browser base, the Gecko engine, which is developed by Mozilla and forms the basis of the Firefox browser, and the WebKit engine, which is developed by Apple and forms the basis of the Safari browser. This may seem like a trivial detail, but the rendering engine is the part of a web browser that does most of the heavy lifting, and largely what differentiates one browser from another. So for instance, the difference between any two chromium-based browsers is mostly cosmetic and trivial, while the difference between a chromium-based browser and a Gecko-based browser is more substantive. All three of the major web rendering engines are open source software.
The Blink engine and chromium project form the basis of Google’s Chrome web browser. Just as with Android, the Chrome web browser is, by design, a privacy nightmare. Similarly to the way that Google lards up the Android Open Source Project with its proprietary software and services to create the Android OS that ends up on mobile phones, the Chrome browser adds many proprietary bits and additional Google services to the open source chromium base. Chrome should be avoided like the plague. Literally any other browser will be an improvement, or at least no worse. But what about the open source chromium project? Similarly to AOSPand the third party Android ROM community, the chromium project forms the basis of many other web browsers. In fact, most of the web browsers available for installation are chromium-based. Even Microsoft’s Edge browser, which replaced the tragically long-lived Internet Explorer as the default web browser in Windows, is chromium-based. It’s unfortunate that chromium has been so widely adopted, because even in its virgin open source state, it integrates privacy-disrespecting Google services like Safe Browsing and makes many connections to Google servers. Most chromium-based browsers not only leave those problematic elements intact, but compound the problem by adding their own privacy-disrespecting services on top of it. There are numerous examples of this in both desktop and mobile browsers, and discussing each one in detail would be beyond the scope of this article. However, due to its popularity in some conservative and libertarian political circles, I would like to briefly pick on the Brave browser. Brave’s popularity among a certain cadre of conservatives and libertarians seems to derive in large part from the fact that its founder, Brendan Eich, was ousted from Mozilla by a woke cancellation campaign due to his personal, private donations to support Proposition 8, the ballot initiative in California which banned gay marriage in the state prior to being overturned in federal court, and then further obviated by the Obergefell decision. While I am sympathetic to Mr. Eich’s plight in that ridiculous debacle, I can scarcely think of a sillier reason for selecting a piece of software to use, and unfortunately, despite a relentless online shilling public relations campaign hyping it as a privacy-conscious browser for renegades, Brave is terrible from a privacy standpoint. Since the publication of the linked article, some changes have been made to the Brave browser, namely its default search provider, but most of the information is still relevant. Brave is a typical chromium-based browser with all of the inherent drawbacks that entails, plus several drawbacks unique unto itself, and would be best avoided. Of the chromium-based browsers, the only one I would recommend is ungoogled-chromium. Ungoogled-chromium is not a browser per se, but a set of scripts that strip out Google binaries, services and telemetry from the chromium browser at build time. The maintainer of the ungoogled-chromium scripts distributes a finished binary for Linux systems in the form of a Flatpak package. Third parties provide versions for Windows, although I would not recommend using them since there is no way of knowing how they were compiled, and thus no way of knowing if any malicious code has been sneaked into the resulting executable.
Of special note, all chromium-based browsers will be implementing Manifest V3 and deprecating Manifest V2 for extensions within the next 6 months. This change is already beingrolled out in the Chrome browser. In brief, what that means is that ad blocking extensions will no longer work in the same way they do now, because the functionality that allows such extensions to strip elements out of a web page before it is displayed to the user has been removed. For now, the best workaround is to use a DNS-level ad blocker, such as Pi-hole or AdGuard Home. These are actually great solutions for network-wide ad blocking for all of the devices in your home, including those pesky IoT devices, “smart” TVs and appliances, and I highly recommend using them in addition to a browser-based ad blocking extension. However, installing them and setting them up requires a little bit of work that a browser extension does not, and obviously they are only effective on your home network where they are installed, whereas a browser ad blocking extension travels anywhere your browser goes. In any case, unless something changes or the developers of ad block extensions manage to come up with a creative solution, extension-based ad blocking will be severely limited on all chromium-based browsers going forward, so now is the time to start exploring alternatives.
The only major alternative to chromium-based browsers, and the only alternative available to Windows users, is Firefox (and its derivatives). Unfortunately, Firefox has grown increasingly privacy-disrespecting over time. A default installation of Firefox makes just as many unwanted connections as a default installation of chromium. Fortunately, it is possible to mitigate most of the worst tendencies in Firefox and turn it into a relatively privacy-respecting browser with some tweaking. The easiest way to at least begin that process is to use Firefox Profilemaker to generate a user settings profile that you can simply copy into your Firefox user data directory. Firefox Profilemaker has mitigations for the most egregious privacy violations, but in order to do a more thorough mitigation, configuring a custom user.js file is preferable. The Arkenfox user.js template provides a great basis with sane defaults. It is, however, only a template. You are expected to read through it, do some research, and tweak things to your liking. The Narsil user.js is a fork of the Arkenfox user.js with a stronger emphasis on privacy, and is a pretty good way to go if you are lazy and do not want to make your own tweaks to the Arkenfox template. Be sure to read the “known issues” section though, as some of the privacy-enhancing changes made in the user.js may interrupt the functionality of certain websites.
As with chromium, there are third party browsers based on Firefox, and as with chromium, most of them do not mitigate any of Firefox’s abysmal privacy violations, but instead add some of their own. The one exception is LibreWolf. While not quite achieving privacy schizo perfection, LibreWolf mitigates most of the worst tendencies of vanilla Firefox out of the box without requiring any additional tweaking, and also includes the uBlock Origin ad blocker preinstalled. It is available for Windows as well as Linux systems. If you haven’t got the time or inclination to delve into user.js tweaking, LibreWolf is a good option that will, at the very least, leave you just as well off as, or possibly even better off than, the Firefox Profilemaker mitigations on a vanilla Firefox installation.
Regardless of which flavor of chromium or Firefox based browser you choose, there are a handful of useful extensions that I also recommend. The first and foremost is the aforementioned uBlock Origin. While there are a number of ad blocking extensions available (keeping in mind the caveats regarding upcoming Manifest V3 changes in chromium-based browsers), uBlock Origin has been by far the best in my experience. It is less resource hungry than some other ad blockers, has more robust content blocking features which allow you to block any number of elements on a page (not just ads), and more importantly, it does not generate revenue from whitelisting. AdBlockPlus, for instance, generates revenue by charging ad companies like Google to put some of their domains in a whitelist and bypass the ad blocker. If that sounds scummy, it’s because it is. You may be tempted to install more than one ad blocking extension, thinking an extra layer of protection might help. That is not the case. In fact, because of the way they act to read a page’s DOM and strip out the advertising elements, multiple ad blockers will sometimes compete with each other to block the same elements and break the page entirely. Whichever ad blocking extension you choose, use only one. However, it is perfectly safe to use a single browser-based ad blocking extension along with a DNS-level ad blocker, as they work differently and do not interfere with each other’s functionality. I also useand recommend: Decentraleyes, an extension that stores commonly used scripts locally and directs requests to CDNs to those local resources to prevent tracking; CanvasBlocker, an extension that prevents common browser fingerprinting techniques by either blocking the requests or generating junk data so that no reliable fingerprint can be obtained; and ClearURLs, which automatically removes tracking elements from URLs (basically removes that huge unique identifier embedded in your links to, say, Amazon). Bear in mind that while extensions can help to reduce the amount of ads you see and the amount of data you share, they also add to the uniqueness of your browser fingerprint and make you easier to track online. A few well-curated extensions will serve you better than loading up the browser with everything you can find.
We will touch only briefly on WebKit-based browsers, for the simple reason that outside of Safari in the Apple ecosystem, there are very few of them of which to speak. Google’s Chrome browser originally used the WebKit engine, but Google chose to fork WebKit into the Blink engine and chromium browser core in order to take its development in a direction that better suited their goals. While Apple previously maintained a Windows version of its Safari browser, they ceased doing so many years ago, and there exist no WebKit browsers for Windows. The WebKit engine does exist on Linux-based OSes mostly in the form of its GTK port, WebKit2GTK,and there are several relatively obscure browsers that use it, the most prominent being GNOME Web. GNOME Web was previously known as Epiphany, and if you are using a Linux-based OS you may find it so named in your distro’s software repositories. Until recently,WebKit2GTK did not support WebExtensions. However, WebExtensions functionality is now supported in the WebKit2GTK engine and is being added to GNOME Web on an experimental basis. Welcome news for me and the 12 other people who actually use GNOME Web (or my other favorite browser, BadWolf).
And of course, we must mention the venerable Tor browser. The Tor browser is a heavily modified version of Firefox designed to make use of the Tor network by default. Tor began as an acronym for The Onion Router project. In brief, onion routing is a method of routing web traffic through multiple relays in such a way as to obscure its origin. The Tor browser also disables certain features that track you across the web. Tor browser is not a good choice if you’re going to be consuming video streams or other data-heavy tasks as the deliberately convoluted routing makes load times slow, and some sites may break because of its privacy tweaks. And take it form Ross Ulbricht: you shouldn’t rely entirely on Tor to cover your tracksif you’re attempting to do something illegal. Now at this point, some pedantic privacy schizo might jump in and point out that ackchyually it was Ulbricht’s poor OpSec that got him caught. The point is, trust no one if you’re doing something that might draw the attention of law enforcement or the state. Seeing as very few of us are in a Ulbricht or Snowden type situation, Tor is a good option if you just want to make it more-than-trivial for some third party to snoop on you, but do not treat it like an immunity cloak.
So far we have discussed desktop web browsers. Let us now turn our attention to mobile web browsers. Every mobile OS, including AOSP and its derivatives, includes a built-in web browser. For iOS users, this will be Safari. For Android users, Chrome. For AOSP users, the default browser is a simple front-end to SystemWebView, which is simply a version of the chromium browser embedded into the OS itself. On iOS, every browser must use Safari’s WebKit rendering engine. Effectively this means that any third party browser you install on an Apple mobile device is just a reskinned Safari. Android users (including AOSP) have more options. Of the chromium-based mobile browsers, the only one I use myself is the fairly spartan FOSS Browser, which can be found in the F-Droid repositories. Bromite is another acceptable option, which uses some of the ungoogled-chromium build scripts and includes ad blocking and some privacy mitigations by default. Bromite is not available in the standard F-Droid repositories, although you can manually add the Bromite repository in order to manage installation and updates through F-Droid. Mull and Fennec F-Droid are Firefox-based browsers for Android, available through F-Droid. Both are good choices, although I personally prefer Mull as it includes more privacy mitigations to the upstream mobile Firefox code. Helpfully, both browsers support extensions, so you can use uBlock Origin and any other extensions you like, just like their desktop counterparts.
TL;DR: Web browsers based on the chromium project generally do not respect user privacy, and will soon lose support for most major ad blockers. Now would be a good time to consider supplementing your favorite ad block extension with a DNS-level ad blocker, like Pi-Hole or AdGuard Home. Consider migrating to Firefox or a Firefox-based browser, but be aware that they require additional configuration to become privacy-respecting. The Arkenfox user.js template is a great place to start. LibreWolf provides a “good enough” solution out of the box for desktop PCs. On Android, consider Bromite or Mull. On any browser that supports extensions, install the uBlock Origin content blocker. Other recommended extensions include: Decentraleyes, CanvasBlocker and ClearURLs.
Next, “Part V: Video Sharing.“
Nice. How about Opera?
That’s it. Ignore the snarky guy.
Opera themed restaurant?
It sounds like cats fucking?
It’s a browser, whose big claim to fame is that it was loaded on a cartridge and made available on the Nintendo DS.
I knew it was a browser, but had no idea about the Nintendo angle. Interesting…
Chromium-based for quite some time now. I consider anything chromium-based essentially interchangeable.
So is Brave , being Chromium based, fucked as well? I don’t get this shit. (and ya, might make it to reading your other installments but not tonight) I always assume people will be honest unless they are with the government. I am fully aware all the private companies are selling my data, and I am not sure I not ok with that. I knew it when I used their service. When they share that with .Gov is when I get pissed.
For purposes of both spying and for the upcoming chromium-based ad-block-pocalypse, the answer would be yes. Brave’s one redeeming feature is that they at least give users the opportunity to cash in on the spying by way of their shitcoin.
I suspect that sharing with .com is the same as sharing with .gov, sadly.
sharing
with .comis the same as sharing with .govGoogle Chrome already has an incognito mode you paranoid nutcases. In combination with Google’s comprehensive privacy policies I’d think it’s all good.
I am going to try LibreWolf on the old Raspberry Pi test box. FireFox is brutal for that little processor.
I take that back. AMD64 only. Sad.
I thought Rasberry Pi was x64?
No, it is am ARM. The latest one is 64 bit- ARM.
I knew it was ARM, but that’s not x64?
Huh, apparently they are two different thing.
Correct – x64 is the set of 64-bit extensions to x86. ARM64 is a 64-bit RISC ISA. You can emulate x86-64 (x64) on AMR64, which is essentially how Apple Silicon maintains some degree of backward compatibility with Intel-based Mac software, but the CPU in the Raspberry Pi is not all that powerful, so emulating another ISA entails a pretty big performance hit.
Thanks Pat.
Sometime in the near future I’ll give LibreWolf a try.
Thanks for the final TL/DR paragraph. I tried and got somewhat into it, but started glazing quickly. I do like this series a bunch.
#MeToo on both counts.
Well goddamit. I recently migrated away from Firefox. Vivaldi being built on Chromium gave me pause, but I figured it would be OK. The internet is so frustrating.
Yeah, Firefox is bloatware. Got away from using it and I’m good with Brave.
*Now I will go read the article.*
Heh.
History shows again and again,
How Nature points up,
To the folly of Man.
Godzilla!
Funny you should mention Godzilla. I finished that Ancient Apocalypse series on Netflix. Turns out Godzilla wiped us out 12,000 years ago. He’s one bad motha-
Hush yo mouf! /falsetto
Awww, you know I’m talkin’ bout Godzilla!
I can dig it.
I just finished it as well.
I enjoyed it a lot but I can’t figure out why it’s so controversial.
And Godzilla is the best.
My main complaint so far is his lack of rigor, and how obvious it is when he’s hiding facts that don’t align, instead substituting insinuation and assertion while not addressing alternate interpretations of the data.
I may be harsher on him because I recognize that I would love for his idea to be true, which is why I don’t want an attention-seeker looking to cash in souring the well.
The internet is so frustrating.
Yes. I switched to Brave because it was supposed to address this shit. SIgh.
I dropped Firefox like 12 years ago it turned into such a pig.
“Whichever ad blocking extension you choose, use only one.”
I have abp, ublock & ghostery. They seem to block different stuff. Not sure how to get ublock to do everything.
I wonder if the LibreWolf for Arch works on Manjaro?
They use the same package manager and packaging format, so it will work. Unless you want to massively screw up your repositories, just download the Arch package locally and install it with pacman -U
So, pacman got over his eating disorder and is working in ‘supply chain management’?
His redemption arc is legendary.
(Flatpak is also an option)
I’m no Chrome fanboy, but the Mozilla foundation’s initial sorry not sorry to this debacle made it clear they care more about money than privacy.
https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/18/mozilla_mr_robot_firefox_promotion/
It took them like two weeks to properly apologize and it made me realize a default install is far from private.
Truly, fuck ‘em
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/retrospective-looking-glass/
At least I know explicitly I’m the product when I use services from Google.
For me it was the We Need More Than Deplatforming article that was the last straw. But using Google because Mozilla supports censorship is like joining the Bolsheviks because the Tsar was so repressive.
That letter is what ultimately pushed me to Vivaldi.
Holy shit I was not aware of all that.
Fuck mozilla.
LOL I still have that U2 album that Apple gave us and I still have no intention of listening to it.
Mammary Monday is like statistics: what it reveals is compelling, what it conceals is vital.
https://archive.ph/BkJ7l
Where’s my GlibFit babes?
OT: There is a new Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie called “Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F59B9xfWQb8
Stay Boston Strong!
https://www.polygon.com/22910754/aqua-teen-hunger-mooninites-boston-bomb-scare
The first one was pretty awful.
I’ve got a hunch there’s a reason the TV shows were only 15 minutes long.
Did you see the shorts they made a while back?
No, but at some point, there will be a nerd-fueled viewing of that, the movie and the Beavis and Butthead film I missed. No doubt the wife will choose to “go shopping “ that day.
Since Ted’S doesn’t appear to be around:
https://youtu.be/JsntlJZ9h1U
Ted’S only plays shitty music.
Apparently so does Tundra.
Look fat, sure they’re no Steely Dan but H&O rock 🤘🏼
If I was forced to listen to one, I guess I’d pick Hall and Oates.
I mean, if suicide wasn’t an option.
You could also chose The Little River Band or America…Anything on the middle shelf here from The Beach Boys to Jimmy Buffet.
You had me till Beach Boys and Jimmy Buffett. 🤢
You’re out of touch.
Private Eyes is ass, though.
Now, Sarah Smile…
Lol 🤘🤘
To continue the theme….
Morning, Glibs.
::checks watch, looks out window, accepts that everything she knows is wrong and decides not to worry her pretty little head about it::
Wait, it’s not 10 in the morning?
Well, that depends. What time zone are you in? Did you suddenly get a wacky notion to go visit Pie?
Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to write these up, Pat.
My pleasure, my treasure
Any Windows options in that space? These are for Linux.
AdGuard Home has a Windows version available. Pi-Hole was originally designed to be deployed on its own dedicated Raspberry Pi hardware, but has since been containerized, so you can deploy it in Docker.
I have pi-hole installed on my linux fileserver, I just point the windows DNS at that.
I run the Docker version on my media NAS on a vlan and point my router’s internal DNS to it so there’s no per-machine configuration.
I might have set it at the router, since that’s doing DHCP. I think earlier iterations had it on the windows boxes. I forget since I’m not fiddling with it very often.
OK. I see lots of hoops to jump through. The hoop to benefit ratio seems too high for me, for now.
It’s not as complicated as it probably sounds, and the good news is that once it’s set up you don’t have to think about it much. You’re basically just setting up a DNS server with its own hosts file drawn from a database of blocklists and pointing your router or individual machines to that server instead of your ISPs (or Google or Cloudflare) DNS.
I’m sure still collecting a paycheck too.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-non-binary-nuclear-official-charged-stealing-womans-luggage-airport
My friend and recovered alcoholic says he always jokes that the minute you get called into HR and feel like you are about to be shitcanned you say, “I have a drinking problem and I need help”.
That headline… what a timeline.
In too local news:
North Dakota transgender women to flee US, form group to help others do the same
Whoa, that language isn’t very lady-like
The USA “article” is unsurprisingly full of eye-rollers.
“Welcome to Thailand. The queens THEY use would not excite you.”
I’m not even mad you put that earworm in my head.
Man, mid-coke 70’s must have been something else:
“We wanna make a musical about chess!”
“Sounds cool, here’s a bunch of money.”
You’re welcome! (she trilled)
It is on a regular rotation of my ringtones. I never get tired of that song because it’s so lyrically dense.
(My ringtone right now is Foghorn Leghorn “Go away, boy. You bother me.”)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Tiffany's_Universe
A friend of my dad’s was dating a tranny way back in the bad old days when Bill Clinton was still in the white house and there existed no federal or state legal privileges for it. She/he not only survived, but got some extra privileges and a pay bump at the union aluminum plant where she/he worked, in what was then a strongly Republican-voting town.
Are they moving to Qatar to help the locals understand love?
“protections for trans people, including medical coverage“
One of these things is not like the other.
Not giving is taking.
She may not like the medical alternatives in Canada.
I don’t usually care about commercials but this one where the guy and gal are dancing down the road turning everything into snow just has me completely confused.
selling freezers?
My best guess is ear-buds, maybe some streaming service.
Well that seems nonsensical. Watch better commercials.
I’m pretty sure that one is for boner drugs.
Gotta get that blood thumping, even though they worry about the pressure.
F Google, that is all.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/fbi-google-geofence-warrant-january-6
Ugh. My devices are tied to Google. Mail and everything. At my last job we even had to sign into maps to ensure that we were actually visiting the sites.
I finally left the house for a beer run today. Unfortunately the second-best looking girl always serves. Poor old Festus, always the Marina, never the Dot…
I see many things, hear many voices. It is like needles sticking into my skin at all times as the seemingly endless flow of chaotic info flows through me. But where it all ends, that I can see distinctly and clearly. There is a great plane filled with sand. Two masses move towards one another. On one side, a small but great host of Firsters. The last of their kind, great and fearsome, filled with a courage never before known in all of history.
Across from them, though, is a great host that extends beyond what anyone can see. It is the seconders descending upon the last great gathering of the Firsters, determined to once and for all to destroy them. Their numbers are incalculable. Intermixed with them are terrible fowl beasts, large and terrifying giving off odious noises and smells. There are elephants with towers and dogs and beasts that seem deformed and twisted from anything that The Great Firster ever intended. The seconders are cloaked in greens and reds, assless chaps and leather tank tops and masks of indigo. Before the seconders are the thirders on leashes making their worst guttural growls and shrieks, dressed as deviants with many showing their meek manhoods with no sense of shame. Not one in this host would be anything on their own, but they come in such great numbers that the Firsters in their golden capes face seemingly insurmountable odds. Above them all is a black cloud that threatens to cover the entirety of the sky, blocking out all light.
The climax of this battle, I cannot see. It is hidden from me. Is the ending not yet written? I pray to The Great Firster for answers. I search through all time, looking for the string of Firsts that can turn the tides of the battle. The First That Shall Change Everything is the only thing that I feel can prevent the barbaric host of seconders from overwhelming the Firsters.
Everything has led to this.
You saw me in your dreams?! Cool!
I no longer dream. At all times, I truly see. You couldn’t comprehend it.
I feature “The Fowl Beasts” as a flock of chickens, ducks and geese.
You’re about midday Agile Cyborg with this one. Keep up the good work!
I was thinking the same thing.
I should mention I got bored with AC’s style and wound up skipping or skipping or skimming his stuff.
No, probably not. People seem to get angry when someone says they didn’t read X, Y, or Z from a community contributer.
I don’t get angry. It’s a little annoying when someone who doesn’t read/comment on other people’s contributions then complains that no one is reading their own stuff.
AC completely drove off the few libertarian-leaning folks I recommended try the site. He only confirmed we libertarians are completely depraved and perverted.
AC was a sometimes interesting often tiresome nutbar.
I liked him.
It took me a while to get the hang of reading him, but he warmly welcomed me over at TOS, and so I made an effort. The way he strung words together to evoke an image was truly epic. I only wish I had that imagination.
Are there actually any aircraft that can fly carrying that much weight?
There’s those firefighting planes that carry water.
So….any thoughts on the DuckDuckGo “browser” on android? I use that without any major issues that I’m aware of – is there a windows version?
The Android DDG browser just uses SystemWebView for the backend. SystemWebView is the version of chromium (or Chrome, depending on Android version and handset) built into Android that’s used for system tasks that require a web interface. So it has the same drawbacks as any chromium-based browser, including the upcoming Manifest V3 ad block neutering.
As an addendum: If you have an older Android model that is no longer receiving OTA updates or security patches, the version of SystemWebView will likely never increment, so those Manifest V3 changes may not affect you.
Pat, as ever, thank you for this series.
I have the technical chops but I get lazy about this stuff…
On that note, I recently enabled the Duck Duck Go app tracking protection feature[1]
Wow, some apps are just unbelievable.
AFAICT, you can’t tell on Apple who is being blocked, you just have to take their word for it. Seeing the (insane) number of tracking attempts is eye-opening.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/16/23462053/duckduckgo-app-tracking-tool-beta-android-users
If only you knew how bad things really are.
RIP Ranger Trivette.
I am getting fed up with people expressing astonishment that humans have always been very good at moving very large rocks with the simplest of implements.
ALIENS
“Hey lets visit that backwater and get the locals to stand up really big rocks to confuse their descendants in a few millenia”
If I were a teenage alien and my dad just bought me my first star cruiser why not. Or an alien trying to get into a fraternity at space college
“Alien Frat Boys” – Band name or an upcoming GlibFlick feature?
Great write up,Pat.
I just want my ElonPhone.
(I fear that everyday, Elon Musk moves further up the Kill List. Just in the past 2 days, he’s endorsed DeSantis and taken a very public stand against child porn and “minor-attracted persons”, not only kicking them off Twitter, but noting (quite correctly) that there was significant overlap between the pedos and it Antifa.
I hope he’s smart enough to have serious security around him.
At least we know he’s strapped.
You’d think growing up in SA would prepare one for a hostile environment, but you never know how many people take those lessons to heart.
With what? The flintlock? Or the Prop gun?
Flintlock would be better of the pictured two but hopefully his Glock isn’t in the picture because he’s carrying it.
That explains why it looked so weird… I thought it was just an electric hole punch or something. 😛
/notafirearmsexpert
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCWeINtAUgQ
An actual good take from REASON- but they are basically agreeing with Milton Friedman, which makes their job a little easier. Still a based take.
Morning.
Morning.
https://i.imgflip.com/3anki8.jpg
Good morning Sean, U, Lack, Stinky, hayek, homey, and Roat!
Only progress made on the sofa cushion project yesterday was happily finding a large spool of thread of the right color and a matching full bobbin, then threading the regular sewing machine and successfully testing the stitching on a scrap of the fabric I’m using.
Fun fact: Many fabric marking pens actually use a disappearing ink that vanishes in as little as 24 hours.
Including mine. ***SIGH!!!*** So the seam lines I’d drawn Sunday evening were gone. Back to Hobby Lobby or Joann’s for a pen/marker whose ink will wash out but not disappear of its own accord.
I have some water based paints that you’ll never get out of the fabric…
I was sorely tempted to redo the lines with a Sharpie but for the danger that the ink might bleed through the fabric either immediately or when the cover got washed.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5UXnulANF8g
🎶🎶
https://www.wgal.com/article/woman-kidnapped-as-a-baby-reunited-with-family-after-51-years/42089678
That’s unusual.
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2022/11/nj-beginning-murphys-long-promised-review-of-how-state-handled-covid-19.html
Blah, blah, blah. FYTW.
And nothing else happened.
FPM.
The report has already been written.
“We have thoroughly investigated ourselves and find that we handled everything perfectly. Unfortunately many died due to fake news spread by science deniers.”
suh’ fam
whats goody
good morning
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/home-invasion-robbers-pointed-gun-at-child/
Home carry.
https://news.yahoo.com/green-sprouts-stainless-steel-baby-200130046.html
“The bottom base of the products can become detached, exposing a solder dot that contains lead, according to the CPSC. Lead is a toxic metal that can cause poisoning if ingested by children, the CPSC said. Lead poisoning symptoms in children can range from abdominal pain and vomiting to developmental delays and learning difficulties, according to the Mayo Clinic. ”
A solder dot!
In my day we played with lead painted Tonka trucks and we liked it goddammit! Other than my 80 IQ I turned out fine.
:If you take it apart, somewhere inside is something that is bad for you if you swallow it.”
BAN ALL THE THINGS!
https://fox4kc.com/news/beware-of-porch-pirates-on-what-could-become-taking-tuesday/
I don’t like that they named the day. 😒
Tuesday?
Not my favorite name for a day either.
Just use numbers?
Two’s Day?
very Slavic
How do cops like their coffee ?
Black with a couple shots in it.
Pro assisted suicide message from our northern neighbors (actually from a retail chain there):
https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1596866746442747904
What the fuck Canada? I guess getting rid of the angst ridden will save on state provided health care but this is encouraging suicide from beyond the grave (it’s the voice of a woman who offed herself using the program).
So assisted suicide is really part of their commie health system? And not just for those with terminal physical diseases? If so, it might actually be a GOOD thing if you had to wait months the way you have to for actual medical care.
If someone has terminal whatever or even a nonfatal but extremely debilitating, think Stephen Hawking, disease I’m OK with it after a rigorous weeding out process is applied. This is just too much.
I almost think of it the same way I think of the death penalty. Yes, I can come up with many situations where it’s justified and maybe even the best option. But in practical application, can it be implemented in a way that will not be inevitably abused and corrupted? I’ve pretty much come to the position of the death penalty should not be on the table in the legal system because the state can never be trusted in its administration. This likely has even more slippery slope potential.
Now imagine assisted suicide for prisoners.
I agree, I can foresee circumstances where it’d be appropriate but it’ll definitely be used where not appropriate too. What I find particularly troubling is the shift from rare but legal to glorification of suicide which is what that ad is.
the shift from rare but legal to glorification
Shout your abortion! Celebrate your mental illness! …
👆👆👆
We see many suicide attempts that go awry and the attemptee is grateful to stay on board with the living/loving.
Fading out with “All is Beauty” on the screen. Nice touch. That is a 30 second exposition of evil Incarnate.
Telling customers to drop dead?
I reserve the right to off myself if I see fit to do so. I see no moral argument for promoting the practice, particularly through mediums that will be viewed by young people.
Right now if I decide to go out, it will probably be in a blaze of glory, a massively futile effort to end the Fed.
WITNESS ME
🎶🎶Romeo and Juliet
Are together in eternity🎶🎶
And I should point out that it matters not if suicide is legal. In fact, if it remains illegal, it’s probably preferable as dissuasion to those on the fence about it.
Everyone is asleep at the wheel this morning!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODV6mxVVRZk
Mornin’, reprobates!
Good morning, ‘patzie! How the heck are you today?
Yo, GT!
Lovely day in paradise. Found the youngest patzer’s winter coat on the reck, he left it here when he went back to Scranton Sunday. He thinks he will make it to mid-December without it. He might be comfortable in places like Minnesoda where they have real winter.
Morning! Got meetings starting in thirty minutes so I gotta drink the coffee fast.
I have fallen so far behind on this painting challenge I set for myself.
I’m currently working on issue 5 (having only basecoated Issue 4) and my box goes up to Issue 24. 🙁
Morning GT and all Glib friends,
Good to see more and more early folks, I get up early but until I’ve reconciled that this is as good as it’s gonna get I’m hunkering down.
Thanksgiving is a weird time for me. Mom passed quietly at 11:29 AM on Thanksgiving day in 2003, two days before what would have been her 73rd birthday. We then drove from the hospice to my brother’s in-laws for Thansgiving dinner. Happy birthday mom, wherever you may be.
🕯
My Mom left T’giving Day 1990. We took some relatives out for dinner and remembered the T’giving days passed