Bear Blog Trending Posts

are "no AI" disclaimers really necessary?

hidden (basementcommunity) — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:18:00 +0000

I wrote a post on the forums about whether people should disclose their use/non-use of LLMs (https://basementcommunity.com/threads/671).

I'm conflicted: on one hand, it's nice to see a "no AI" disclaimer so I don't have to do my own detective work and can spend my brain power simply appreciating your work. Alternatively, it's pathetic that we've come this far that everyone feels the need to specify that they didn't use LLMs.

I think the onus should be on the viewer to hone their skills in separating authentic work from something that was generated. And I agree with one of the replies in that thread:

"If someone thinks my art/writing is AI-generated then that's either a reflection of their poor evaluation or my poor craftsmanship"

If someone thinks my work is LLM-generated, then my work is probably shit and doesn't have a distinct voice. It's boring. And it might as well be AI because the difference doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

My advice would be this: if you're worried about publishing something online that other people may think is AI-generated, then ask yourself "is my voice/style embedded in this piece of work?" If not, then keep working on it until it is. If so, then publish it.

send me an email!

Sex is better with Bear

hidden (futureperfect) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 23:47:00 +0000

Found this ad at one point and felt it was totally appropriate for a post on here. Powered by Bear 😂

I started a "dirt notebook"

hidden (pinewind) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:55:00 +0000

I love taking notes, but one problem that I have is that that I start cherishing every notebook that I start. I can't seem to keep my notes messy. Eventually, I start structuring the notes, doing cleaner handwriting, adding a cover or some stickers ... and before I know it, the notebook is too well-organised for simply scribbling into. This, of course, raises the hurdle for taking more notes and makes me start a new notebook, where the same process repeats again. It's a vicious circle. It won't surprise you that I'm somewhat enamored with the concept of shitty / messy notebooks, like this or this.

In an attempt to change this, I've started a dedicated "dirt notebook" now. I've nicknamed it "The Drainage Channel", because it's just a place for whatever is going through my head right in that moment. I'm using an old, empty notebook that I found lying around the other day. The paper quality is pretty bad; every kind of fountain pen ink bleeds through so I'm forced to use cheap ballpoints and it doesn't open flat, which makes it hard to take clean-looking notes in. I've been writing in it for about a week now, and it's been a lot of fun. I've used it to write down random quotes from podcasts that I've been listening to, ideas for stories, memos on my life and how I want to change it, new things that I learned or want to learn about more in the future ... with no elaborate structure, all just scribbled down next to each other. It's been interesting going back at the end of the week and re-discovering thoughts or things that I had almost forgotten about again.

My goal for now is filling this first "dirt notebook" and learning to embrace the messiness. Once I've gotten used to it, I could see myself switching to better paper and fountain pen ink again.

Re: An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop

hidden (onlinegoddess) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:55:00 +0000

Just saw this over on Bubbles and had to reply because I so understand how this blogger feels!

Gavin writes about his Photoshop frustrations in An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop.

I had also been using Photoshop for years. I admit that way back around the mid-90s, when it was totally unaffordable for skint bloggers like me, I used a pirated version. I didn’t feel bad about this as I would never have paid for it anyway.

Let’s just say that while I don’t pirate software anymore, Adobe is one of those companies that I would feel no remorse for doing so.

Anyway, Adobe ultimately released Photoshop Elements, a more affordable version for home/personal users. At this point, having enjoyed using it and appreciating its worth, I bought it. I became a happy, licensed user with my shiny physical CD that meant I owned it.

I periodically upgraded to newer versions until along came Creative Cloud. Hmmm… a subscription. However it offered the “full” version of Photoshop at an affordable price point of £9.99 per month and included Lightroom (which I didn’t use) but also access to Adobe’s massive font library. Now this was exciting. I was also now using Photoshop for work, so it made sense to have the latest and greatest version and I could claim it as a business expense too.

This is how things rolled for the next decade. The price would occasionally sneak up a bit and the software would feel more bloated. But I stayed because everyone uses Photoshop and I didn’t relish the thought of having to learn something new.

One day, I happened to be looking at data going through my firewall (Little Snitch, I love you!) and noticed Adobe was phoning home constantly, even when Creative Cloud wasn’t running. I blocked it, then decided to see what else it was doing.

Firstly, I discovered that multiple versions of Photoshop were installed. It doesn’t remove old ones when it updates! So in the bin they went.

Looking at the system activity log was eye-opening. Adobe was running all sorts of processes and goodness knows what they were doing. No problem, I’ll kill them and disable everything Adobe-related on startup. Rebooted the machine and…..

All the processes were back! I killed them and rebooted again. Same result. How the heck was Adobe doing this when none of its software was even running?

I do not like software that does this. It’s pretty much immediate grounds for uninstallation. But what would I do without Photoshop? I needed an alternative.

I tried a few options, including GIMP (hated the interface) and Pixelmator Pro (awesome but Apple only, so husband can’t use it on his Windows machine).

Then I discovered Affinity Photo. A single payment of £159 across multiple platforms and actually a pretty impressive bit of software. It wasn’t quite as polished as Photoshop, but the core functionality was there, including being able to use my historical PSDs, and it looked close enough to make the learning curve minimal.

I tested it for a while alongside Photoshop, making sure it could do what I needed it to do. The answer was yes, though I have found it a little clunkier and slightly less intuitive. Perhaps I’m just too set in my ways.

There was a brief hiccup. Just as my trial was ending and I was about to make the switch permanently, there was news that Canva (Affinity’s new owner) was about to make a major announcement regarding the future of Affinity and had paused all sales. I literally couldn’t purchase it!

Around a month later, Canva announced that Affinity would be completely free! Of course, suspicion kicked in because nothing is truly free and I wondered what the caveat would be. As of now, Affinity has remained free, with an optional paid plan for advanced new features. Ultimately, this version may turn out to be stunted and I’ll have to take out a subscription again. But for now at least, I’m enjoying paying absolutely nothing for my photo editing software.

Having now left the Adobe club, I uninstalled Creative Cloud and Photoshop. Or so I thought. It took me several hours of researching how to manually uninstall the tendrils it left all over my system. Which really solidified my decision to get away.

My husband went through the same uninstallation headaches on his Windows machine, but apparently it was even more tedious.

Also, I was nearly victim to the monthly-plan-that’s-not-actually-monthly issue that Gavin had, but luckily I was in the 11th month and so I just cancelled at the end of the year with no penalty. Adobe tried to lure me back a with an offer of £1 a month for 3 months, but with all I’ve learned there’s no chance I’ll be doing that.

Bye bye Adobe, you will not be missed.

Bear Blogging - unanswered questions

hidden (loveisverbing) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 13:49:00 +0000

These may be due to a lack of digging on my part, and it may be that the ‘not knowing’ adds to my joy of exploring.

Nevertheless, I’ve been asked the first question below and since I’ve just learned about #bearcats and am a huge cat-lover, I’m allowing my feline curiosity to get the better of me…

How many bear blogs are there?
Is there a hidden group of ‘bear villagers’ which ever gets together some place?
How do most bear bloggers discover bear?

I arrived via Derek Sivers.

I’m going to ask Herman (and Robert Birming since he seems like a wise owl bear). And regardless of any answers, thank you Herman.

It’s fabulous being a ‘baby bear’ blogging from here.

#bear #questions #blogging #appreciating

Nothing to Anyone

hidden (householderkarl) — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 15:50:00 +0000

So much of our existence is paradoxical. The desire for freedom is inherent to human nature, yet we willingly sacrifice it in exchange for meaning. “To love is to suffer,” says poor Boris – a truth known deep in the bones of any married man. With our very first breath, we begin to die.

Here I am, on a rainy Saturday morning, wondering if freedom actually exists. Between love and isolation, pleasure and pain, is the semblance of choice merely an illusion? Something to comfort ourselves with on the long road to old age and death?

I’m enjoying the thunder and dark skies. Perhaps that’s all there is to it.

Neocities Intimidates Me

hidden (sweaterpockets) — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:43:00 +0000

I’m going to be honest, one of the reasons why I joined Bear is because I’m not quite ready to develop my own site from scratch. I’m not knowledgeable about HTML and CCS. That would be a big task to take on. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll finally sit down and learn to create one. I have seen plenty of sites other people have made, lots of them are very vivid and interactive! I imagine my site would be more simple, minimalistic you know? I tend to gravitate towards cleaner designs. I guess that’s why I like the default Bear theme so much!

Making my own website is something to consider—since the internet is becoming more confusing/difficult for artists. Developing a place made for myself doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I’m aware of the age verification laws, the feeding of everything to the generative AI machine, it’s all very exhausting. I couldn’t imagine myself settling for any trendy sites anymore (X, TikTok, etc). Maybe avoiding them is for the best. I’m getting too old for all that online drama anyway. Most of us probably already know how harmful algorithms can be. The art community has expressed disappointment towards Instagram more often within the last couple years. Understandably so, I deleted my account ages ago.

Neocities will be my “break glass in case of emergency” option. It’s always good to make plans in advance. Now to end on a positive note, I’m going to link a few of my favorite sites here!

♡ sugarblush

♡ sealdeer

♡ wondermap

The Paused Web

hidden (binarydigit) — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 04:09:00 +0000

For ages now I've been having guilt about not blogging "enough". I know there's no such thing as enough, but I still feel it, and I'm kind of tired of it. I posted about what fun I had making my Neocities page, and it dawned on me that I might just need a home on the internet to have fun and have static content that I update now and again, rather than trying to make it dynamic by updating it twice a month and feeling bad about it.

Post by @binarydigit@social.lol

View on Mastodon

Hollie and cygnoir (Halsted) responded and felt the same, which comforted me. I asked them to join me in my "static webpage journey". Halsted then mentioned it's like the slow food movement, but instead, the "Paused Web", which I loved the name of. I then thought of the idea of creating a webring for it, which would be tons of fun and make us all feel better about not keeping blogs anymore. 😆 I'll still keep my domain, RSS feed, and small updated pieces, but they will be slow, and keep the spirit of the indie web after all. Maybe I can make a sort of "notebook" without date stamps. We'll see.

Time for a weekend project! . . .

Update: 3 days, 13 hours ago

I did it! Thank you @hollie and @cygnoir for the encouragement and idea! I need a couple of people to test it with if you're willing - Please let me know if you'd like to be added, so I can iron out any issues if any!

Retro computer advertising memories

hidden (basic) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 16:18:00 +0000

I have fond memories of computer magazines from the late 80's and into the 90's. The large full page and double page ads with words and images that I never skipped. These were informative to me as a young mind absorbing everything I could to share with my friends in our discussions of which computer was better.

I had a fascination with every brand and never had a favourite. Back then, there was competition and each brand had to present their own platforms. Screenshots were a big deal to prove they also had software that could match IBM compatible versions.

Each company had their own idea of advertising. Some were fun and others were very descriptive. They poked fun at each other too with claims of being toys.

It confused consumers too, especially parents investing in a platform for their children. At the time, schools were taking chances with Apple and IBM compatible computer classrooms. I recall my own school constructing a new building addition just for IBM PS/1 systems. By 1989, I could see the writing on the wall for other brands because schools were not investing in Atari, Commodore or other computers. Not even my friend's parents took a risk any longer and stuck with IBM compatible computers.

I saw less advertising in computer magazines for those other brands and eventually those companies disappeared. It wasn't until 1998, when Steve Jobs coming back to Apple would we see a new world of advertising for fun colorful computers and accessories. The 2000's became all about Apple and no one wanted a beige or black PC.

What were your favourite memories of vintage PC ads?

Let's call doomscrolling what it is

hidden (saiyanshinobi) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:38:00 +0000

Drowning.

We used to surf the web. Now we're trying not to drown.

I said that this morning to my brother, then realized that's a whole thought iceberg on it's own.

Especially since I grew up with the special interests of entrepreneurship, marketing psychology, and sociology. Couple all that with being a full on Millennial Netizen of DeviantArt, Tumblr, Gaiaonline, Newgrounds, Habbo, Runescape, and even cringey IMVU...then you get someone like me wondering why people are classifying meditation as 'rawdogging boredom'.

Image screenshot from Spill's "Millions deleted TikTok..."

Being bored is fun, if you know how to do it.

I forgot how to be bored after March 2020 hit my community into COVID lockdown measures that never fully went away socially.

I got to watch in real time people creating the coolest shit I've ever seen because a majority of us were all collectively bored at home at the same time. And as soon as lockdowns lifted, it was back to neocities and spacehey for me.

Why? It was very noticeable when people stopped posting the wholesome trends born from becoming acutely socially disconnected. Remember when we'd be lucky enough to post 'got ninja'd today' after seeing a friend scurrying away after dropping off a care package?

...Trends. When did we start classifying 'being nice to others' as a trend?

Man I miss the language of the early netizen days; there was always a sense of exploration. This new language based off how we feel online is such a drag.

Think about it for a sec with me, the difference between surfing and drowning in online content:

Surfing

You choose where to go.
Pages have ends.
Sites have personalities.
Leaving is normal.

Drowning

The feed never ends.
Every swipe is another wave.
You don't decide what's next.
Looking up feels like you're "missing something."

Thinking about it around 2015, I know I was happiest as a kid being online, but now it's when I'm most unhappy. What changed? Language.

Looking even further back 20 years ago, 2006...internet usage was commonly described as:

surfing the net started by boarding through a disc to have your PC scream for a few minutes before you signed into Angelfire, or Geocities, or Piczo to check on your little weird corner of the internet. Then it was off for a good round of
visiting your neighbours! Not followers, not customers. Neighbours. Were they down the road or in Zimbabwe? Who knew? Who cared? Did they sign your guestbook or nah? While waiting for someone else to join the chatbox, you'd be in another browser window,
browsing a topic! Which topic? Who knew? Google didn't. That's how we ended up always
wandering into a new place. Not another algorithm. If the place was interesting enough, you'd click around and end up
digging into information that made you wonder 'what the heck?' until you were
falling into rabbit holes for a few hours until suddenly, you're
hitting an iceberg of deep lore that you must immediately sink all thoughts and goals for the day and find out what's at the bottom.

Words that all imply curiosity, tell a story of how you 'went online'. You went, then you left. You still can. Why should we want to leave the internet? Because today's modern terms are telling a much different story...

doomscrolling starts first thing in the morning, usually before the first bathroom break of the day, just to check in on bad news updates, the rage-baiting bots farming for page revenue, the ads between every two posts on all five websites making you forget which app you're on for a second. To avoid the ads, we buy subscriptions to satisfy the urge for daily
bingeing on either the latest Netflix series or whatever Youtuber has the best background noises to watch your phone scrolling. All while wondering if your
addiction to the internet is caused by algorithms, or your own lack of tech discipline. But that doesn't last long because Big Al is designed to reclaim our attention by creating looping
engagement with a simple UI switch to stop reaching the end of a page, so the platforms we're engaging on can increase their
retention of your attention, so you're easier to market to if the transaction feels inevitable. If you're the affiliated content creator, that retention matters as much as your
personal branding ...which used to be just unapologetically yourself, consistently. You are the niche platforms commodify on, while your old corners of the net only asked you to be yourself.

See it yet? All those words imply compulsory transaction for either attention or money, and expected optimization. Since we are the internet, it meant our vocabulary as creators changed too.

After seeing these patterns emerge from myself, that changed how I use my internet time.

The real first step was calling it "internet time" not doomscrolling lol. Stupid simple, because reframing is what will remind you that you can turn any time block into a place to be, not just get through.

Nobody building GeoCities pages in 1999 sat around asking, "How do we improve session duration by 18%?" They were asking, "How do I make this cursor sparkle?" or "Why is guestbook not using the scrollbar hex I just put there?" 😄

The Default Mode Network thing is no joke people. Being bored is one of the only times you can truly connect with it, and if your default isn't known, then something else will decide for you what your default will be next. Forever.

I'm rambling now, but if you really can't stop short form content consumption for quick dopamine release, learn how to create little things for yourself. Learn how to create that weird art trick you saw doomscrolling. Try out that weird keyboard shortcut on a real keyboard again.

I mean, if we're going to waste and rot hours of our days away, it should be redirected into what we want to see online.

That's how my stupid ass channel started: out of boredom.

The internet is the most immediate way you can 'be the change you want to see in the world' and if we're all living digitally anyways, change your digital world.

My only social media is Youtube comments, my new blog i built on bearblog, and status cafe for sharing quick updates to no one. turning off the status defaults on all your socials to "me only" when you hit post scratches the itch too.

I say this all as a recovering doomscroller who still often bedrots a night away with my dog after a long day. But it's now with a book that left me on a cliffhanger, a habit I thought I lost after gradution.

After ignoring all my socials for nearly 7 months now in favour of just building things for myself again...never been mentally sounder since 2020 lockdowns ramped up my doomscrolling.

Not saying I have any answers to the mess the internet has left us all in; but maybe there's something to being a loser with too much time on their hands.

Comments:

Have a thought you want to add? Sign the Bingo Book 🍃

Consider getting me a dango 🍡, or checking out my channel :)

rootring months later

hidden (elmcat) — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Months after its launch, rootring is still evolving and growing. At the time of writing, 169 blogs have joined the ring. Far more than I ever imagined!

A lot has happened since launch, so I'm using this post to go over the biggest changes and additions.

Search the Archive

This is probably the biggest addition to the original webring idea. When a blog joins the ring, I try to include all of its historical posts, which is something most RSS feeds don't provide by default. That gave me enough data to build a search engine around the archive.

It has most of the common features you would expect from a search engine. It's not perfect yet, especially when searching for partial terms, but it gets the job done. It's very easy to lose track of a good post, so hopefully this makes it easier to find one again.

Only 719 cat results? We can do better

Link Tracking

Another major feature is that rootring tracks when posts link to other posts from blogs in the ring. This provides some neat statistics, but more importantly, it helps with discovery.

The Explore page shows posts that have been linked across the ring over different time periods, making it easier to find posts that are being actively discussed or included in link roundups and newsletters. There is also an option to show lightly linked posts that have only received one or two links, which helps keep the page from becoming purely a popularity contest.

The explore page!

The Latest page also includes a small resurfaced interlude. It highlights an older post that was recently linked by a newer post in the ring. It's a small addition, but it means discovery isn't limited entirely to whatever was published most recently.

Blog Identities

The brickwall has been there since the beginning, but it was previously somewhat hidden inside the directory. It now appears on the homepage and is much easier to discover. I'm very happy that so many blogs are participating. The wall keeps growing with wonderfully designed little 88x31 buttons.

Just look at this beautiful wall!

I also redesigned the individual blog pages. They now show more information, better navigation to other blogs in the ring, and support for a small web banner (468x60px!). This gives each blog a little more visual identity. When no banner is provided, rootring generates a simple SVG banner automatically.

Don't be shy! Create a banner!

To add or update a brick or banner, you currently need to contact me through email, Discord, or socials. I can update it for you, or give you access to a self-service page. The self-service option requires an email address though.

Announcements

I decided to deprecate and remove rootring’s announcement feature. The original idea was to use it for blog events such as bandwagons or challenges but in practice it felt awkward and didn't fit naturally with the rest of the site.

I may revisit the idea later as a more dedicated service, similar to the separate search site, but don't hold your breath. This is a maybe, if I feel like it situation.

Consolidated Feed

The feed provided by rootring has also changed. It is now a consolidated Atom feed containing recent posts from across the ring, including summaries where available.

Several people requested this. I had originally assumed most readers would simply subscribe to the individual blogs they liked, but apparently an all-ring feed is useful too. Who am I to argue? I'm not personally following the feed in a reader every day, so if anything looks broken or unusual, please let me know.

Still a Webring

Rootring is still, first and foremost, a discovery tool. It indexes enough information to help people find, revisit, and follow interesting posts, but the destination should remain the blogs themselves.

The goal isn't to replace independent sites with another platform. It is to make those sites easier to move between.

Future

Behind the scenes, I'm continuing to expand the admin dashboard so that I can eventually add trusted users as fellow admins or moderators. The ring is growing, and many people seem to enjoy it, so I want to make sure the project doesn't simply live and die with me. Once I'm happy with the moderation tools, I plan to bring a few helpers on board.

In the meantime, I'm making daily database backups. You never know.

I also plan to make the code open source. At the moment, development happens in a private git repository, and I intend to create a public mirror at some point, although I have been hesitant about using the usual hosting platforms. rootring isn't really designed to be self-hosted or copied as a standalone product, but having the source publicly available still seems valuable as documentation or as a backup.

At some point, I would also like to improve the search engine by using a dedicated search library or service instead of relying entirely on postgres full text search. I've also considered allowing blogs to opt into the search index without joining the ring itself. I don't want to simply scrape arbitrary blogs, so the process would remain opt-in. But the more blogs included, the more useful the search engine becomes.

Join the Ring

The current approval policy is fairly simple: you need to have a blog that's at least somewhat focused on ttrpgs. It doesn't need a high post count, nor does it need to be especially active. It can't, however, be excessively commercial—or run by a shithead, as judged by me and the community.

A note to anyone who applied and never heard back: some early applications were affected by email problems, and some included contact methods I couldn't use, such as social accounts with closed DMs. If you are still interested and never received a response, please contact me directly or apply again with a working contact method.

Another note to everyone I approved who is still stuck at the adding webring links to your blog stage: this is your gentle reminder! Take your time, though. It's okay. Just let me know once you've added them. If you are stuck or have questions, reach out as well. I can likely provide tech support :)

But yea! Join the ring!

RE: quick and easy covers/posters/etc. without genAI

hidden (rnotte) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:12:11 +0000

original post by skaetlett. i read this and i HAD to reply to it, because i'm sick and tired of AI-generated promotional graphics and cover arts, too! well, i'm sick of gen AI in general, but its use in covers/posters/etc. in particular.

every time i see such a poster, i think, "come on you cheapskates, are there REALLY no artists in your town that you can work with? you couldn't even just type it out on microsoft word and attach a relevant clip-art? you couldn't just take a photo or video with your phone? are you THAT lazy? well now i'm no longer interested." these AI-generated graphics don't even look good! they're garish and overstimulating, and they hurt my eyes to read. but most importantly, they don't tell me anything about who you are.

it's easy to create these assets when you're strapped for cash, using the methods outlined in skaet's blog post. we've always been able to do it ourselves without asking chatGPT to do it for us, for years. like, look at this. i made this in realworld paint (a free raster graphics editor) in like 10 minutes:

sorry for the shameless plug, but you see? it's easy! don't make excuses for using the environmentally-destructive plagiarism machine. there's nothing wrong with putting in at least the bare minimum of effort. skaet's post will help you out. be a human, be silly, be authentic, and be you.

How I Collect Blog Statistics, Respectfully

hidden (onlinegoddess) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 17:15:00 +0000

Ever since I’ve had a website, I’ve been curious to know who is visiting it and what they do while they’re there. Am I posting into an empty space, or is somebody actually reading?

I don’t need (or desire) to write about the development and ethics of the analytics industry - we all know what Google is doing with our data. Instead I want to write about collecting data with respect for our readers. Because it is possible.

The biggest attraction to me is knowing what parts of my website people are viewing. This is easily done by simply logging the number of hits to a given page. Good old-fashioned raw access website logs can tell you this, though they aren’t always user-friendly and certainly not pretty¹.

Critically, I don’t need to know who is viewing the page.

Other useful stats can still be collected ethically:

Referrers - very useful for knowing how people are finding your site.
Devices and Screen Resolutions - to help ensure your site design fits your audience.

And then there is data that simply satisfies curiosity, but can be a breach of privacy:

Location - always fascinating to know where readers come from, but not a necessary statistic and many people are understandably sensitive to this being collected.
Personally Identifiable Information (PII) - any data that has potential to reveal the identity of an individual. Could be their IP address, a username or email for example. Definitely not cool to collect this info!

To me, collecting data should have two simple outcomes:

To give my audience the best experience viewing my website.
To build a picture of how people arrive at, and view my website, not who.

In addition to keeping things this simple, it’s important to ensure any data collected is kept somewhere safe. At this time, with GDPR being one of the most stringent forms of privacy legislation, most ethical analytics services are based in the EU or at least host their data there.

In my early days of running websites, I was blissfully unaware of the reasons companies like Google offered their services for free. In 2010, I switched to a paid service called Clicky, which did much the same thing but was more privacy-focussed. However, it does have some features which called that into question, like the ability to spy on users in real time (it is literally called Spy!) and it does collect IP addresses.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been using a German-based service called Pirsch. which I chose because it’s more feature-rich than others at the same price-point. I also use it for work and it’s been especially useful there, even helping identify issues that could have prevented my customers from purchasing anything or logging in. But I was also impressed but Pirsch’s attitude to privacy, complying not just with GDPR, but a whole host of other strict laws.

Pirsch gives you the website insights you need — page views, referrers, campaigns, and more — without cookies, without consent banners, and without ever touching your visitors’ personal data. Fully compliant with GDPR, CCPA, PECR, and Schrems II, and built and hosted entirely in Germany under strict European privacy law.

Full privacy statement can be found here.

It pays to do a bit of research into analytics companies because buzzwords like EU-hosted and privacy-friendly don’t necessarily guarantee they can keep visitor data compliant with strict EU standards.

Some services will offer you fancy extras, like having custom domains for your dashboard, the ability to theme it, or API access to track very specific activity. For bloggers, this is definitely overkill, but I will admit I like to theme my dashboard!

I do have session-tracking in my setup. This shows the path a visitor took and information such as referrer, location and device info. Each session has a unique ID which expires after 24 hours. If the same person returns after that time, they are treated as a new visitor. Here’s an example:

I haven’t the faintest idea who this person is - is it their first visit or their 20th? I’m very happy to know they read my facts page though!

Analytics services don’t catch every visitor and there’s nothing you can do about that. If someone has JavaScript disabled, the Do Not Track option enabled, or 3rd party script blocking, they won’t be seen. Same goes with anyone using your RSS feed². So you have to accept that the data you collect will not be representative of everyone that visits your site, but it’s still plenty enough to tell you what you need to know.

This was more of a deep-dive than I intended, but hope it has given some food for thought. With a little care, website owners can collect useful information that doesn’t invade visitor privacy.

And if you want to know exactly what I see, my Pirsch dashboard is publicly visible, so feel free to go on over and have a nose around.

Bear’s built-in analytics reminds of these logs. Very basic logging of specific statistics with no linking to individual users.↩
Those aforementioned raw server logs DO catch every visitor because they don’t use any scripts. Some analytics services will let you setup a custom domain, which fools browsers into thinking it’s not a 3rd party script and therefore logs more visitors. But still never 100%.↩

Re: Revival of Independent Physical Video Rental Shops

hidden (untangled) — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:50:00 +0000

Thanks to Paul from Defiant Sloth for bringing two more video rental shops to my attention—I literally just learned about The Video Shop Mpls yesterday.

And thanks to Robert Birming for encouraging the JulyReply challenge.

—

My husband was laid off from his job eight months ago. Money started to get tight. Non-essential items, starting with streaming services, were getting cut from the budget.

We don’t watch a lot of TV to begin with, but we enjoy our Friday night ritual of baking a frozen pizza and a watching a movie with the kids. We pick out our shows intentionally and watch a handful at a time. But without streaming services (and without a blu-ray/dvd player) we didn’t have a ton of options.

We were lucky: we were gifted a pre-owned blu-ray player around the holidays. We borrowed dvd collections from friends and family. I started attending estate sales, perusing personal collections and picking out old favorites at $1/piece. We were starting completely from scratch, since we switched to a fully digital library in 2013. But because of our little community, our collection slowly started to grow.

Above: the first estate sale I visited had a huge collection to choose from. I think I paid $30 and brought home 30 movies and 10 box sets of shows.

Our collection isn’t big, but it’s good for now. We still stream once in a while, but only have one service at a time (right now we’re watching most of the Apple TV+ catalog).

I think people are really craving ownership—I know I am. I’ve talked about this before. People are tired of buying digital movies and games, only to have them disappear. Sick of paying the ever-rising cost of streaming services, only to face licensing changes. Endeavors like Sloppy Discs, Saturn Video, and The Video Store MPLS are only just the start.

It’s really encouraging to see a growing interest not only in physical media and ownership, but also in third places, places to go that aren’t home or work. Libraries, parks, cafes, gathering spaces where we connect with our community. It’s never been more important.

Are you seeing a trend in video rentals in your area? What’s your favorite movie in your collection?

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Unemployed

hidden (toska) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 01:51:55 +0000

I've been unemployed for a week now. For the first time in my adult life, I have no authority that tells me how to occupy my days.

This wasn't by choice. It's all Donald Trump's fault, to be honest. If not for this regime, I would be living in a different city right now working on something in science policy. Then things got even worse, and due to continued pressure, my advisor can no longer fund me.

I'm kind of in a honeymoon phase because I can get by this month thanks to my last paycheck. But the reality is that the job market here sucks, and I'm geographically restricted until spring. I probably won't find a job for a couple more months.

So what to do in the meantime?

Try to not feel bad about myself. Never in my life did I expect to have to file for unemployment shortly after finishing a doctorate, but such is life. It's hard to not blame myself though.

I try to remind myself that I've been fairly efficient in my twenties. My PhD took a bit longer to finish than expected, but besides that, I took no meaningful breaks beyond the occasional summer preparing for another phase of school. And even then I usually worked some type of job.

I'm trying to embrace the idea of unemployment despite my financial circumstances. I had a really stressful period recently with little time for my hobbies or relaxation, so at least I have more time for those. I'm also pouring more energy into my relationships: seeing my best friend more, even trying new things like dating in the short term.

I'm someone who takes her hobbies very seriously, almost to a fault. So, naturally, I'm not one to enjoy taking breaks.

So, I'm viewing this as a lesson in taking a break to rediscover myself and dabble in new things. I hope I can find a decent job soon.

On Loving a Senior Dog

hidden (jedda) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 20:02:09 +0000

No one really prepares you for this chapter of loving a senior dog. At least no one has prepared me.

I thought the hardest part of it all would be the frequent vet visits, the scheduled medications, or the peppering gray around her muzzle. Those eventually become part of a routine. A difficult routine, but a routine nonetheless. What I wasn’t prepared for was watching my super independent dog slowly lose some of that independence.

Right now, we’re limiting Cocoa’s movement so she can hopefully heal¹. She isn’t allowed to roam the house the way she used to, and we can tell that she doesn’t really understand why. She looks at us, wanting to do the things she’s always done. Having to keep her in place is harder than I ever imagined.

Caretaking for a senior dog wears on the soul. You find yourself noticing EVERYTHING, from the way they get up, to how slow they’re eating compared to before, or whether today feels just a little better than yesterday. You celebrate the smallest wins while quietly carrying the weight of what tomorrow might bring.

Cocoa isn’t just my dog. She’s my soul dog. The only way I’ve ever been able to explain it is that it feels like, in another lifetime, we were one soul that somehow found its way back together again in this one.

Maybe that’s why everything just feels extra heavy lately. The thought of mortality doesn’t just feel like a heartbreak. It feels like imagining a part of my soul being torn away.

But she’s still here.

I’m trying not to grieve tomorrow while we’re still living today. I’ll keep helping her heal, maintain her quality of life, celebrating the good days, and loving her through every moment we still get to share.

Because I honestly have no idea what else there is to do.

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Her neuro vet has unofficially diagnosed her with IVDD.↩

On K-pop and generative AI

hidden (gogumapizza) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 07:01:00 +0000

In August, Red Velvet is finally coming back as a full group after two years with three dates of fan concerts and a new mini album titled Velvet Summer. But uh oh, seems like their comeback schedule was made with generative AI, and the Gemini watermark is even sloppily visible if you look closely. Of course this is going to start a fuss among international fans given the intense anti-AI sentiments among much of the international audience.

They really don't check their work at all, do they?

This isn't even the first time that generative AI has been used in something Red Velvet-related, and the K-pop industry is rampant with it now in 2026, at the very least on a visual level. But somehow it feels like international fans are still surprised by this?

South Korea loves AI. Whether it's for slop videos or "legitimate" uses, they're on board with far less pushback or controversy than in places like the U.S. A lot of the underlying reasons may be economically and socially driven, as Michelle Kim details in her piece for the MIT Technology Review:

Addicted to their screens, trapped between unemployment and dead-end jobs, and priced out of marriage and homeownership, 46% of South Koreans in their 20s have used a chatbot to read their fortunes, [...] ChatGPT, she believes, is her portal out of reality into a better future. Despite how fond she is of the chatbot as her shaman and financial advisor, she fears losing her job to AI. She still uses ChatGPT feverishly at work, as all her coworkers do, afraid of falling behind.

So it's very natural that it would make its way into K-pop, even as far back as 2023. After all, it's not like the Korean music industry is alone in this - generative AI is likely being incorporated in all aspects of much of Western popular music, but unlike in South Korea, there's a far greater anti-AI sentiment so they're just more quiet about it.

This debate of its use in K-pop is not new, as Tamar Herman noted back in 2024. While I don't agree with much of the piece, this part rang true back then and it still rings true now: "If K-pop fans really want to organize, this is the time."

But I'm not sure if I'm convinced this is happening. AI use in K-pop has steadily become the new normal, even if fans don't notice much of it. And these companies will only get bolder, and we'll start seeing more of those completely out of the industry attempt to use AI to generate the idols themselves, if not the existing companies themselves given their heavy investment into AI.

So if they're not happy with the use of AI, what can K-pop fans really do? Unfortunately there's only one answer.

Realistically the only thing is to boycott. Sure, fans can make noise online and complain, even to the idols themselves (even though this likely wouldn't accomplish anything at all - international fans admonishing idols is a whole another topic). But if they're still spending money on music, on merch, on tours, then any sort of anti-AI sentiment won't really accomplish anything at all. And that ties into another difficult aspect about K-pop, with its infamies of idols who go years without being paid a dime even with perceived success, as profits go to "repaying debt" for expenses stretching from their trainee periods to the actual production of music and videos if they even end up debuting. Do fans cause the idols to suffer over something they, particularly in the case of groups that haven't been around for several years or longer, have little to no control over? This has to be something that fans have to accept with any sort of boycott: veteran idols could see their value tarnished with the possibly incorrect attribution of lower sales to a lack of popularity, and rookie idols - well, they possibly won't even get opportunities to shine at all.

K-pop has only become more competitive over the past decade, with its international success leading to more and more new companies attempting to cash in on the hype. Dozens and dozens of new groups and soloists debut every year, most of which remain unknown both in and out of South Korea. Most of these hopefuls end up disbanding or abandoning the industry within a couple of years, understandably so. There just isn't room for most of them in a shrinking domestic market, one that has always been relatively small with a population of just over 51 million and isn't in love with K-pop as many foreigners believe. Over the past decade that led to many groups attempting to cater almost primarily to their international audiences, such as in the case of a group like ARTMS.

In the context of generative AI use, that ultimately has to be utilized by international fans as an advantage in this battle. With the bulk of income being from international markets, fans have to band together and effectively boycott an artist and/or their company if they want to enact change, hand in hand with messaging by loudly saying this on social media and elsewhere. Messaging alone doesn't accomplish anything, such as in the recent case of Mystic Story's plagiarism debacle with a wishy-washy pledge from the agency to "not utilize generative AI in any form that could compromise the quality or completeness of our work throughout the production process". Yeah, that's not a promise to not use generative AI. So you have to hit them where it hurts with a sizable portion of a fandom choking almost all of their income.

As Brian Jenkins explains in a piece by Taylor Glasby regarding K-pop's "AI problem":

The K-pop machine, like all machines, can be broken. No one in K-pop, says Brian Jenkins, even the seemingly indomitable Big 4 labels (YG Entertainment, SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and HYBE) are infallible [sic] to failure when fandoms close their eyes and wallets. “It’s happened to all of them. As much success as they’ve had, they've also had quite a few duds. If fans don’t like AI and don’t engage with it, it’s not going anywhere,” Jenkins continues. “K-pop puts out tons of music every year, and a very small portion of it succeeds and a lot of it doesn’t because fans decide they didn’t like the group, whether it’s the music or look, whatever it might be. AI will be judged by the same harsh glare that everything else is in K-pop.”

So the problem then becomes: can K-pop fans actually come together to do this?

While there have been many weak attempts at boycotts or threats of boycotting for all sorts of reasons throughout the decades, there are relatively few examples of a K-pop boycott actually working. One such case is that of LOONA and BlockBerry Creative, with the company eventually crumbling to pieces and after some time all members of LOONA getting their contracts terminated to freely continue their entertainment careers elsewhere. But this was a very specific situation: the group was heavily reliant on its international fandom, the company had little other sources of income, most of the fandom was aligned on how they felt given the deceit and fraud that the idols went through, and there was a clear divide between the agency and the group. Given all that, it's relatively easy for an actual boycott to occur.

This isn't the case with the broad use of generative AI in K-pop. Opinions on its use and acceptability and tolerance wildly differ, even among international fans. Many use it themselves for all sorts of reasons. And it's less likely that the idols take issue with the use of generative AI in the output, so fans aren't able to use the idols' well-being or health or artistic intention or whatever as a definitive cause to support any boycott effort.

Aside from the general complaints about the use of AI, I certainly haven't heard about any such earnest and sizable efforts at boycotts targeting any artists or their companies. With regards to Velvet Summer, I have read a few comments that claim they will not buy the album if generative AI is used on the album cover or any artwork within (although it certainly seems like the album artwork is made using Gemini), but those are relatively few. Even my own position as a generally anti-AI person has been gradually moving towards a reluctant tolerance of it in the media I choose to consume, and I imagine this is what the actual majority of AI opponents will end up doing, at least as the "AI-ness" gets close to imperceptible. Or maybe more importantly in the case of K-pop, well, many of us still wish to support the idols we already like in their efforts, even if in 2026 generative AI is most certainly used in some form in multiple aspects of their output.

The unfortunate reality is that a boycott with participation from most of a fandom is really the only substantial action that fans can take. No engagement on social media, no purchasing of albums or merch, no attendance of their tours. Will enough fans be able to do that for generative AI? I have my doubts.

The tab I've had opened longest in my browser

hidden (lauram) — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 05:48:00 +0000

I was introduced to fruitsticker.de through Mike Egan a very long time ago - February of 2025, I think - and it's been an open tab in my browser since then for reasons not even I can fully explain.

This website catalogs fruit sticker scans from all over the world. All these stickers seem to belong to a guy called Angelo. It has a sticker exchange community and can be browsed in 31 different languages. Any time you want, day or night, you can just go on here and see any one of 65883 unique fruit stickers from 116 different countries, 47 different fruit categories, and 31 different vegetables. There are loads of stickers here for fruits I have never even eaten, like horned melons and atemoyas. There are eight different durian stickers and only one rambutan sticker. I recommend checking out the giant grid of fruit types plotted against countries. It's so weird and cool that this exists!

There is also a PLU explorer here which allows you to take any fruit sticker with a number on it and figure out what kind of fruit it came from. Since I don't collect fruit stickers, I've never had the experience of finding a lone sticker without the fruit... but I can imagine the use case for a collector!

The site hasn't been updated since 2016 and hasn't had a news post since 2017. I really wish I knew why! I wonder how many people on the page of sticker traders still trade fruit stickers? I love looking at the guestbook page, which does contain some proof that the operator continues to check the site. He's responded to some of 2025 and 2026 posts!

I've had this open on my computer for a long time because I wanted to say something about it but couldn't think of what to say, other than "wow," and "it exists." I have had it open for long enough now - checking it out about once a month, sometimes only for a minute or two - that maybe this is the story. Here is an ancient, lightweight, highly specific website that you can keep open in your browser as some kind of mental altoid, looking at it only long enough to give yourself time to say, "wow! it exists!" before moving on. Thank you, fruitsticker.de, for your service to the world!!

QUICK & EASY covers/posters/etc. WITHOUT GenAI

hidden (skaetlett) — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:44:00 +0000

AI posters look like what Christian rock sounds like.

Overly compelling yet creatively bankrupt. All the eye catching colors and fonts without any of the charm that actually captivates. Posters that look the exact same; glossy album covers where artists decide the thing to cut corners on is more art; and creative decisions that ultimately alienate their audience.

Some of the arguments you may have heard for AI art might be:

"We don't have time to learn how to draw/paint/graphic design/etc, so we're gonna use AI"
"It's just for the poster, for promotion! You have to come to the actual event to see the artists!"
"It looks passable, so what's the harm?"

Well... aside from the environmental damages along with the plagiarism of actual artists, it's lazy. Why would I want to go to your event when you can't even set enough time aside to make a compelling poster? Why would I listen to your CD when you couldn't even put in the effort to make a proper cover? Use of AI isn't just lazy; it's rude and insulting to the people whose attention you want.

But how do you make a compelling piece without AI when you're strapped on time and skill?

First off: I think I speak for most when I say we prefer you make something crappy-looking yourself than turn to AI. This is one of the best promotional posts I've seen following this trend:

It's not what I'd study in graphic design school, sure, but it's miles better than any AI slop ever "created". But if you really want something that looks good without AI, without paying any artist a penny, here's a quick tutorial you can use for anything. All you need are royalty free graphics, the free version of Canva, and this image blending website I found in 2 minutes of searching.

"This just looks lazy"

Wrong. AI "art" is lazy. Bad graphic design is something worthy of reverence and endless praise: it is stupid (complimentary).

Let's make a poster easy peasy lemon squeezy

You can do this in two to four layers, dubbed the following:

Background
Texture
(optional) Subject photo
(optional) Text

For a subject, let's do uhhh, a Spring-themed craft fair. I miss Spring in the midst of these goddamn heat waves.

Planning

What comes to mind when you think of Spring?

Small flowers growing on trees? Easter bunnies? Sunshine? Groundhog day? Butterflies? Spring cleaning? Gardening? Wind chimes? A hellish academic year coming to an end? Any of those or something else? Pick one or two and let's go. Ultimately planning is in large based on instinct. You know your event, your art, your craft best.

Background

I like flowers so let's do that. Let's use lilies for no ulterior motive whatsoever.

Now, when you find your images, you want to find something that is royalty free. I'm no lawyer, but basically this means you can use it for promotional and/or commercial uses (AKA event promotion and/or album covers). You just can't sell the image without changing anything. This is also called plagiarism, something ChatGPT is quite adept at, and if you play your cards wrong you can end up with a nasty lawsuit on your hands.

There are many websites you can use, but I like Unsplash the best. I'm just going to look up 'lilies' and hey look at that; a ton of images I can use for free! And I only had to type one word for it!

(note: the ones with a "+" by it are premium.)

I like this one, so I'm gonna use it.

Texture

This doesn't literally mean texture like a paper texture or how fabric feels. You can simply use a different photo as a means to make the first one more compelling. Typically I find using a pattern of some sort or a scanned texture works best.

I'm gonna try one that's a black and white flower pattern. With the Multiple option, this is what I got:

Now, download your blended image once you like it, and upload it into Canva.

Blending Modes

You don't need to know what any of the specific blending modes mean; you can look it up if you're interested. All you need to know is that you can look through the blending modes until you find one you like for your poster. 'Multiply', 'Soft Light', or 'Overlay' are easy and my favorites.

Subject Photo

You can also add a subject on top of (or in between) your blended images. This might make it more compelling, or it might make it too crowded to read. Ultimately, do whatever you want.

Since we're doing a market flyer, I found this photo of a girl smiling:

Typically, removing backgrounds is a premium feature on Canva and elsewhere, but you can use this background removing tool on delphitools.

Here's what it looks like. I forgot to document this, but I decided to change the image of the woman to grayscale. It looks fine without the grayscale, if a bit too much of a contrast.

Text

The most important part of text is probably if you can read it. Typically, this is why you won't see yellow text on a white background. If you're struggling to read it, chances are people won't bother to look. You can look up text accessibility tips and find some options. If you're experiencing AI withdrawals by now, you can even ask your old friend ChatGPT.

I put in some basic text and this is what I got:

Voila. A poster for your event without AI.

(Yes there's a typo, it can easily be fixed. Please forgive me; at least it doesn't use AI.)

"I can't do any of that!"

Please just try. I'm not asking you to make the Mona Lisa of event posters; I'm simply asking that you give it a try. And if you don't want to, or you try and you hate it more than these goddamn heat waves, hey - I'm just a gooner on the internet. Ultimately this blog post's purpose is twofold: shitting on AI, yes, but encouraging people to be creative. It's so much more worthwhile than typing a generic prompt into ChatGPT.

If you really are so allergic to graphic design, though, sure thing; here's another way to make a better poster than you ever could with AI:

But make your work stand out from this compilation of AI-generated posters for spring markets. Ultimately, the more different it looks, the more heads you'll turn. More eyes mean more sales, more attendance, whatever you want.

And hey, small bonus - you won't be using the environment-destroying plagiarism machine. Just as a fun extra.

the internet is becoming increasingly hostile towards VPNs

hidden (basementcommunity) — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 16:39:00 +0000

Last week, I installed OpenVPN on a server I was already renting for file backups, so I could "surf the seas" and download some music from a retired Myspace musician that doesn't offer his music for sale and is only available through Spotify. Maybe this is wrong on my part, but seriously, if you have a product that I would gladly pay money for, and only offer it through a subscription service, then fuck you I'm finding other means. I also have this beef with Pimsleur, a subscription-based, language-learning audiobook site. I could either pay an egregious monthly fee, or find their audiobooks at my local library and rip them from there. Just offer the audio files as a product I can purchase and own! What is so hard about this!

Anyway, that's not what this blog is about.

I decided to keep the VPN installed, even though I was finished using it. I figured I would just leave the VPN enabled on my personal laptop and phone and see how I liked it, but it turns out, browsing the Internet is impossibly difficult these days with sites taking a full-on offensive approach towards bot-like traffic, for obvious reasons.

I can't access most popular websites, which I thought was annoying at first. I usually like to read the r/ExperiencedDevs subreddit to commiserate with other people in my industry who are also experiencing AI fatigue. I don't post or comment, but I like to read the horror stories.

reddit blocks me to due "network security" reasons

But after a few days of this, I'm thinking that this might be a good thing. Reddit fucking sucks and is full of humans using LLMs to draft their posts and actual bots making bot posts. And I think it's a net positive for my brain to not go looking for content that makes me feel bad. Having the VPN enabled gives me some time to think about whether I actually care about reading Reddit or if I'm just bored. It only takes a second to disable the VPN, but it's enough friction to keep me away from the site entirely.

However, it's not just slop social media I can't access. The blocking also applies to useful things like Imgur, the image hosting site. Whenever I'm on the VPN, I can't see most images that people post online because many of these image hosting sites are trying to protect their bandwidth. Which is completely understandable, but is frustrating when trying to read a blog or article where the images are a required part of the reading.

imgur gives me a generic 403 Forbidden error

Personally, I think some of the arguments people make against AI are completely performative such as "AI is killing the planet." Most of the people who die on this hill probably don't give a fuck about any other environmental issues, like Tijuana dumping sewage into the Pacific Ocean and making the water toxic and un-swimmable for residents of Southern California as one example. But here's an argument that I genuinely care about: AI is bad for the open Internet and is especially bad for users who are trying to protect their own privacy online.

Having a VPN is becoming more and more popular these days. So many YouTubers are sponsored by VPN providers such as NordVPN, and I think it's great that there's more education available about protecting yourself online. But if half of the Internet is virtually unusable to people who are just trying to anonymize themselves, then I think there are some dark days ahead.

Or maybe I'm totally wrong and this will usher in a golden age of people retreating back to the indie web, and we'll reclaim the Internet through personal websites and blogs once again. Who knows.

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