Spyke

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Middle school removes bathroom mirrors to stop kids from making TikToks

Companies wonder why people use adblockers; this is my experience trying to read this article on mobile without an adblocker:

Picture of the outside of the building.

Three paragraphs, each composed of a single sentence.

Ad.

Two paragraphs, each composed of a single sentence.

Ad.

A teaser block trying to get me read another article on their site.

Ad.

A stock photo of a public bathroom with mirrors.

A teaser trying to get me to follow them on Google News.

A single sentence with eight words.

Ad.

Another sentence, which is a quote from a school admin.

Ad.

Two paragraphs, each consisting of one sentence each.

Teaser block trying to get me to read more articles on their site.

A stock photo of some social media platform logos.

A trending block with links to more articles on their garbage site.

Two more paragraphs, each consisting of one sentence each.

A distracting carrousel of images that are links to more articles on their site.

Two more paragraphs, one of which actually has two sentences!

Links to their social media.

Is that the end of the article? I think so, but I've missed things before, so better keep scrolling a bit just in case.

Related articles section.

Ad.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Link to another article.

Ad.

Comments section.

Editors pick section of articles.

Ad.

Ad.

Okay, pretty sure I've read the entire article now, but let's keep scrolling to see how far this bullshit goes.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

Link to another article.

And then the following pattern SIX times:

Ad.

Link to another article.

Link to another article.

Link to another article.

Ad that looks like a link to another article.

FINALLY a whole bunch of links to other articles, some of which are promoted by Taboola, whatever the fuck that is.

And the entire time there was a red popup for "breaking news" taking up 1/5 of the screen.

For those keeping track at home, the article was a total of fourteen sentences, one photo of the school, and two stock photos. And no photo of a bathroom without mirrors.

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Insanity

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Or the queue could get so long that it is no longer within the allotted space and is now obstructing other passengers. It's true that it is the same for HER if she moves along or waits, but that is not necessarily true for everyone else.

europe

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Is this the end of cheap Europe flights? France proposes EU-wide minimum price

A major motivation for flying is it's faster and that will still be the case, so they'll still have plenty of customers, right? So if an airline can fly a route for 20 euros but the minimum price is, say 50 euros, won't the airline just pocket an extra 30 euros?

Why are flights cheaper that trains, anyway? According to the article and the linked Greenpeace research, trains are 2-10 more expensive (and take longer) because of extra taxes that the airlines don't pay. So, instead of a minimum price, how about we address the root of the problem and either tax the airlines more or tax the trains less?

Maybe in addition to removing some exemptions, we add a pollution tax too (or maybe just raise the fuel tax)? Taxes have been used to motivate the market for a long time, so if we make it expensive enough to pollute, then it will motivate r&d to develop less polluting aircraft. In fact, hydrogen fueled aircraft are already being pursued: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hydrogen-aircraft-developers-are-long-haul-2023-02-09/

In my opinion, France's proposal is like using a sledgehammer to drive a nail.

news

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*Permanently Deleted*

No thanks. Someone walking around with an assault rifle isn't going to make me feel safe. Quite the opposite actually. It's going to make me feel like I'm in a warzone, which aren't generally regarded as safe places.

news

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Full List of Public Figures Defending Susan Sarandon [Nov 22 2023 | Billie Schwab Dun | Newsweek]

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Is that what she is saying or is she saying that Muslims in the US normally get a lot of hate and since many people are upset by Israel's actions Jewish people are now getting a taste of that?

Maybe I'm missing some additional context but it doesn't read to me like she's condoning the hate towards any specific group, but simply pointing out that it exists.

Maybe she's full of crap or maybe she's highly educated on the topic, I don't know. I do know that it appears to me that people are putting words into her mouth. Again, maybe I'm missing something in the story?

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A Proud Boys member who wielded an axe handle during the Capitol riot gets over 4 years in prison

You know, I would like to believe that these people are going to learn their lesson while in jail, but for some reason I doubt it. I don't know, maybe it's the fact that after everything trumpty dumpty has said and done, including saying he's going to be a dictator, and half the country still wants to hand him the country on a silver platter (like everything else in his life)? I don't understand it.

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YouTuber Trevor Jacob jailed after crashing plane for views

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Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but surely you aren't grouping this guy with the likes of Veritasium, Smarter Every Day, Steve Mould, or Cody's Lab (just to name a few)? "Content creators" is a pretty broad brush.

Edit: I think I understand now. The quotes are air quotes; you don't mean all content creators, but ones that create garbage content, like reaction videos, malicious pranks on strangers, etc., and call themselves "content creators", right? If that's what you meant, then sorry for my initial assumption!

For anyone looking for good YT channels, here are some more of my favorite actual content creators: Simone Giertz, Steve Wallis, Matthias Wandel, and Vice Grip Garage.

memes

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The Adblockalypse is coming

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Sounds like a good reason to stop using Google services and products. Some examples (note, I haven't used some of these yet):

Search - DuckDuckGo

Email - ProtonMail

Drive - Dropbox

Sheets/Docs - Zoho

Some of these examples may not the best for everyone, but my point is that we do not have to let Google continue to push us around.