Related Recs

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learn to scrape the internet

you people seem cool so i try to avoid too much nerd/code/tech talk but here we go anyway. 🤓 one of the most useful skills i have acquired as a coder is the ability to steal things from the internet. there is so much stuff on the web that you ostensibly are supposed to pay for, but with a little coding know-how you can scrape the relevant data, download it to your computer, keep it forever and never pay a dime for it. Or maybe pay for it once but be able to cancel your ongoing subscription to it. I have used this skill to steal / borrow / archive: - workout videos from a paid yoga app - cocktail recipes - food recipes - music - library books - instructional materials - graphical source material for making art Depending on what you’re doing, this can require more or less technical skill, but likely less than you expect. this is also a thing that chatgpt is very good at walking you through, if you ask it for help. it feels especially rewarding to learn a new skill in service of saving yourself money, too. Even if the content in question is free, it’s nice to know you’ll have it for eternity even if a provider goes out of business, and it enables you to search/organize/manage the content however you like (with no ads, paywalls, etc). it’s a useful exercise in digital literacy that demystifies a little bit of the technical world that surrounds us, and it always gives me a thrilling little frisson of “civil disobedience” or at least naughtiness.

@heumann

Apr 28, 2024

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Old school internet

My family moved back to Japan in ‘97 🫣 and the military base commander held a town hall. The subject? The base’s residents having American cable or the internet. We mostly watched old ‘70s and ‘80s U.S. tv shows while occasionally receiving current U.S. shows a season or two behind. Overall, having internet won. I was excited since it meant freedom outside our bubble and better educational experiences. I remember the day my dad finished building our new internet accessible computer–my sister and I fought over who could use it first. I won. First sites I hit up and kept coming back to: Hotmail.com (had to set up an email account to email my friends) MSN.com HotBot Excite Ask Jeeves Lycos (was mainly used to search for music videos) AOL/AIM BBS (early forums) about various subcultures A lot of times I randomly ended up on some Geocities site dedicated to whatever obsession the site owner had. Some of them were pretty cute and cool, while others were questionable (the internet wasn’t censored back then). And I couldn’t read half of them due to it being in a different language and/or because the site was so badly designed. But I didn’t care–I had the whole world at my fingertips.

@edina_x_patsy

Apr 10, 2024

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it's the internet we lost

i feel like i'm back in my 2003 website i coded with tables and iframes and it's the best thing

@kimmybartle

Feb 8, 2024

Top Recs from @deardoveswings

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thinking of u guys as my neighbors

liking ur rec = saying hi when we go to get our morning papers from the end of our driveways (picture me doing so tony soprano style)

@deardoveswings

Aug 12, 2024

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remembering that you would be cool in the eyes of your childhood self

she can’t see my bank account so it’s ok.

@deardoveswings

Mar 21, 2025

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ChatGPT

started writing this a few hours ago when i first saw this ask, then decided against posting but i've since changed my mind. there really is no justification for it outside of entitlement. even from a selfish lens, there's no long term benefit to its usage. it harms the world and culture in more ways than one. a.) the water and energy usage that isn't a secret at this point. "no ethical consumption under capitalism" yadda yadda and yeah corporations are extremely culpable in the state of the environment but there really is no need for chatgpt and the planet is already too delicate at the moment. b.) the exploitation of workers in the global south. this program is not just a computer figuring it all out, there are in fact humans behind it. it reminds me of the acceptance of fast fashion and how people have the tendency to divorce the idea of the garment worker from the garment they wear when all clothing is handmade in some way, shape or form. you need hands to man a sewing machine, you need human eyes to moderate content. also, content moderation can be a thankless job with psychological repercussions. c.) the erosion of social skills, humanity and media literacy...this one is very personal. like, you have a cushy email job but can't write an email? you need a computer and a worker in kenya to get paid a dollar an hour to figure out a daily routine for you? i've seen the program churn out blatantly incorrect information. fine tuning a prompt or chat or whatever to give you the exact (possibly incorrect) answer you need isn't really that much less work than sharpening your research skills by cracking open a dictionary or using boolean search keys in google. again, the main issue with this kind of stuff is the entitlement to convenience, with no thought towards the repercussions within and outside of us. we are losing major recipes (critical thinking and media literacy) here, people! i probably did an iffy job are coherently articulating my thoughts here but i am in fact, human. and that’s the beauty of it all.

@deardoveswings

Oct 1, 2024