OMG

[conuly]

I got an email from the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, three concerts.

This is how each concert has a title, but for the link text to buy tickets to that concert, somebody carelessly put in lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consectetur. Which actually makes this the second time I've encountered randomly inappropriate lorem ipsum in the past week.

*********************

Researchers discover an evolutionary stepping stone to beet-red beets

Their Coffee Is World-Renowned. Now More Guatemalans Are Actually Drinking It

150 People Attempt to Draw World’s Famous Logos Completely From Memory

Behold the 50-Year-Old Can of Soup Someone Donated to a Food Bank

Greek transgender community hopes new law will improve lives

Catalonia, Spain’s Biggest Problem

The Movement to Bury Pets Alongside People

Diversity of large animals plays an important role in carbon cycle

After 3 Years Under ISIS, Mosul's Children Go Back To School

'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

How Transit Use Could Rise in Rural America

Rethinking Beauty and Race at Dominican-American Hair Salons

I keep going back to this interview Larry King did w/Bill Cosby where spiking women's drinks came up. Take a listen. (Content note: Turns out, in the 90s, it was okay to admit to this on national television and nobody reacted. Ew, gross.)

Puerto Rico: US officials privately acknowledge serious food shortage

For Puerto Rico's Children, Finding A 'Safe Place' In The Few Schools That Are Open

FBI is now going after "black extremists" (0.o)

AP PHOTOS: A Rohingya boy's struggle to reach Bangladesh

“I Hate Everyone in the White House!”: Trump Seethes as Advisers Fear the President Is “Unraveling”

Trump suggests challenging NBC's broadcast license

Inside the CIA's black site torture room (ALL THE WARNINGS)

“Cooking Them to Death”: The Lethal Toll of Hot Prisons

Comments

[peristaltor]

Completely-esque off-topic, but… I've noticed in the last few [units of time] that your links are gapped. I thought it might be some weird pagination, but it seems now (due to the non-sequitor comments following links) that the gaps are redacted links.

For example, on this page I can read only six links, with big gaps in between most of them.

[conuly]

Can you show me a screenshot? I'm not following what you mean exactly. All links are showing up and leading to the correct sites on this end.

[rachelkachel]

Do you have adblock or something similar that might be hiding them?

[peristaltor]

AdBlock! That is a likely suspect, especially since the links are not direct. Thanks!

[peristaltor]

Sure.



Link to same.

AdBlock as been suggested, and it's a good suggestion. I am curious why your links are not straight to the content, but rather to a surrogate.

I mention this because some newspapers have a despicable habit of either counting the number of articles you have "available" each month, or shutting you out of their service entirely unless you either subscribe or "shite-list" your blocker.

Full disclosure: I have produced a podcast for the last three years or so about how vehemently I detest advertising (and why you should, too!), so no, I will not shite-list anything.

Just curious.

(Sorry for the delay; health issues.)

[conuly]

That IS weird. I've got adblock running as well, but it's not blocking any of my links. Why block only some of them?

Oh, I bet I know. The links that are blocked are the ones that redirect from bit.ly whateverwhatever. The ones that aren't blocked redirect from specialized subdomains. I wonder if you can just set adblock to allow you to see those links. That seems like a better idea than disabling it for my page only. (Though that is also an option, I suppose.)

I am curious why your links are not straight to the content, but rather to a surrogate.

Habit, mostly. Some of my friends have a weird browser issue where too much text in the link causes the page to stretch ridiculously, which is part of why I also cut off the link after a few words.

Also, I really like being able to stop at bitly and see that 500 people have clicked my links in the past day or whatever, and which links, and I don't need to set anything up on my end to do that. That's why I don't use tinyurl. (And bitly also used to let you see how many other people had clicked on links to that same article/site from other people's links, though they don't do that now, or if they do, I can't find it. But I enjoyed that.)

[conuly]

I mention this because some newspapers have a despicable habit of either counting the number of articles you have "available" each month, or shutting you out of their service entirely unless you either subscribe or "shite-list" your blocker.

Well, I suppose they need to make money some way. But you know what? Most of those have shit, and I do mean shit paywalls. When I run into them, I just delete all my cookies for those sites in one fell swoop. Problem solved!

Alternatively, a lot of them don't put up the paywall notice until the page stops loading. Easy solution? Stop the page from loading all the way. Thank you, Washington Post!

And even now, some of them let you bypass the paywall if you come via google or social media. Just shove a /utm? something or other at the end of the link. Voila.