#my fault for using amazon | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

homo-house · 7 months

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hey uh so I haven't seen anyone talking about this here yet, but

the amazon river, like the biggest river in the fucking world, in the middle of the amazon fucking rainforest, is currently going through its worst drought since the records began 121 years ago

picture from Folha PE

there's a lot going on but I haven't seen much international buzz around this like there was when the forest was on fire (maybe because it's harder to shift the narrative to blame brazil exclusively as if the rest of the world didn't have fault in this) so I wanted to bring this to tumblr's attention

I don't know too many details as I live in the other side of the country and we are suffering from the exact opposite (at least three cyclones this year, honestly have stopped counting - it's unusual for us to get hit by even one - floods, landslides, we have a death toll, people are losing everything to the water), but like, I as a brazilian have literally never seen pictures of the river like this before. every single city in the amazonas state is in a state of emergency as of november 1st.

pictures by Adriano Liziero (ig: geopanoramas)

we are used to seeing images of rio negro and solimões, the two main amazon river affluents, in all their grandiose and beauty and seeing these pictures is really fucking chilling. some of our news outlets are saying the solimões has turned to a sand desert... can you imagine this watery sight turning into a desert in the span of a year?

while down south we are seeing amounts of rain and hailstorms the likes of which our infrastructure is simply not built to deal with, up north people who have built everything around the river are at a loss of what to do.

the houses there that are built to float are just on the ground, people who depend on fishing for a living have to walk kilometers to find any fish that are still alive at all, the biodiversity there is at risk, and on an economic level it's hard to grasp how people from the northern states are getting by at all - the main means of transport for ANYTHING in that region is via the river water. this will impact the region for months to come. it doesnt make a lot of sense to build a lot of roads bc it's just better to use the waterway system, everything is built around or floats on the river after all. and like, the water level is so incomprehensibly low the boats are just STUCK. people are having a hard time getting from one place to another - keep in mind the widest parts of the river are over 10 km apart!!

this shit is really serious and i am trying not to think about it because we have a different kind of problem to worry about down south but it's really terrifying when I stop to think about it. you already know the climate crisis is real and the effects are beyond preventable now (we're past global warming, get used to calling it "global boiling"). we'll be switching strategies to damage control from now on and like, this is what it's come to.

I don't like to be alarmist but it's hard not to be alarmed. I'm sorry that I can't end this post with very clear intructions on how people overseas can help, there really isn't much to do except hope the water level rises soon, maybe pray if you believe in something. in that regard we just have to keep pressing for change at a global level; local conditions only would not, COULD NOT be causing this - the amazon river is a CONTINENTAL body of water, it spans across multiple countries. so my advice is spread the word, let your representatives know that you're worried and you want change towards sustainability, degrowth and reduced carbon emissions, support your local NGOs, maybe join a cause, I don't know? I recommend reading on ecological and feminist economics though

however, I know you can help the affected riverine families by donating to organizations dedicated to helping the region. keep in mind a single US dollar, pound or euro is worth over 5x more in our currency so anything you donate at all will certainly help those affected.

FAS - Sustainable Amazon Fundation

Idesam - Sustainable Developent and Preservation Institute of Amazonas

Greenpeace Brasil - I know Greenpeace isn't the best but they're one of the few options I can think of that have a bridge to the international world and they are helping directly

There are a lot of other smaller/local NGOs but I'm not sure how you could donate to them from overseas, I'll leave some of them here anyway:

Projeto Gari

Caritás Brasileira

If you know any other organizations please link them, I'll be sure to reblog though my reach isn't a lot

thank you so much for reading this to the end, don't feel obligated to share but please do if you can! even if you just read up to here it means a lot to me that someone out there knows

also as an afterthought, I wanted to expand on why I think this hasn't made big news yet: because unlike the case of the 2020 forest fires, other countries have to hold themselves accountable when looking at this situation. while in 2020 it was easier to pretend the fires were all our fault and people were talking about taking the amazon away from us like they wouldn't do much worse. global superpowers have no more forests to speak of so I guess they've been eyeing what latin america still has. so like this bit of the post is just to say if you're thinking of saying anything of the sort, maybe think of what your own country has done to contribute to this instead of blaming brazil exclusively and saying the amazon should be protected by force or whatever

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emberwhite · 4 months

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I spent the last 11 months working with my illustrator, Marta, to make the children's book of my dreams. We were able to get every detail just the way I wanted, and I'm very happy with the final result. She is the best person I have ever worked with, and I mean, just look at those colors!

I wanted to tell that story of anyone's who ever felt that they didn't belong anywhere. Whether you are a nerd, autistic, queer, trans, a furry, or some combination of the above, it makes for a sad and difficult life. This isn't just my story. This is our story.

I also want to say the month following the book's launch has been very stressful. I have never done this kind of book before, and I didn't know how to get the word out about it. I do have a small publishing business and a full-time job, so I figured let's put my some money into advertising this time. Indie writers will tell you great success stories they've had using Facebook ads, so I started a page and boosting my posts.

Within a first few days, I got a lot of likes and shares and even a few people who requested the book and left great reviews for me. There were also people memeing on how the boy turns into a delicious venison steak at the end of the book. It was all in good fun, though. It honestly made made laugh. Things were great, so I made more posts and increased spending.

But somehow, someway these new posts ended up on the wrong side of the platform. Soon, we saw claims of how the book was perpetuating mental illness, of how this book goes against all of basic biology and logic, and how the lgbtq agenda was corrupting our kids.

This brought out even more people to support the book, so I just let them at it and enjoyed my time reading comments after work. A few days later, then conversation moved from politics to encouraging bullying, accusing others of abusing children, and a competition to who could post the most cruel image. They were just comments, however, and after all, people were still supporting the book.

But then the trolls started organizing. Over night, I got hit with 3 one-star reviews on Amazon. My heart stopped. If your book ever falls below a certain rating, it can be removed, and blocked, and you can receive a strike on your publishing account. All that hard work was about to be deleted, and it was all my fault for posting it in the wrong place.

I panicked, pulled all my posts, and went into hiding, hoping things would die down. I reported the reviews and so did many others, but here's the thing you might have noticed across platforms like Google and Amazon. There are community guidelines that I referenced in my email, but unless people are doing something highly illegal, things are rarely ever taken down on these massive platforms. So those reviews are still there to this day. Once again, it's my fault, and I should have seen it coming.

Luckily, the harassment stopped, and the book is doing better now, at least in the US. The overall rating is still rickety in Europe, Canada, and Australia, so any reviews there help me out quite a lot. I'm currently looking for a new home to post about the book and talk about everything that went into it. I also love to talk about all things books if you ever want to chat. Maybe I'll post a selfie one day, too. Otherwise, the book is still on Amazon, and the full story and illustrations are on YouTube as well if you want to read it for free.

#books #reading #childrens books #lgbtq #lgbtqia #autism #transgender #furry #therian #art #deer #queer #artists on tumblr #creativity #illustration

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slipper007 · 1 year

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#vent post #to delete #every year is the same bullshit and im exhausted #it feels like nobody pays attention. then you just have to walk on eggshells and either get gaslit or protect their feelings. im so tired.#my mom bough me measuring cups. theyre heavy and metal and cut into my hands. I already have a set i bought years ago #she got tongs to match. a huge butter dish that's nothing near my style.#and she got me knee high chicken leg socks. she spent $20 on chicken leg socks that no one is going to wear.#i gave it some time and quietly asked if we could return/exchange and all i get is #oh you only like what your father got you i really struck out this year why don't you like it oh i guess I'll just return*everything* then #you know what maybe I do like what he got me more. we went to the store and talked about what we liked and didn't like and he remembered.#he didn't just click whatever *he* liked on Amazon and call it a day.#a heated blanket that only works in the car? don't lie to yourself and say you got it for me. you got it for your mother when she visits.#i know it makes me a privileged pos but im just so upset. year after year it goes the same way. i don't know why it still upsets me #i just want her to listen to me without making it about herself or making it my fault she got it wrong and that's never going to happen.#and im so tired of having to be on edge while im here #my parents came up with a game where if you win a game you get to pick and open a little tube that has money/coupon/etc #and I told them it was a bad idea and it made me uncomfortable and I didn't want to participate but they basically said suck it up #my brother proceeded to take the bag of tubes and steal some money. and he got caught. so my parents made a show of giving me what he stole #and now they keep trying to have us do the game except now my brother doesn't get to open tubes. and I just.#im uncomfortable #i don't want to take part #i don't want what he took #i don't want to keep being the fucking standard they hold him to. i don't want him to resent me. but what i want doesn't matter #and even better I got to listen to the no stealing don't make me fuck you up talk after he did it #because slapping him and threatening more violence is always the best course of action. definitely.#and I got to hear the different standards they hold both of us to. glad to know they've been lying to me about what they expect from me #my whole life they've told me that as long as I'm above a C I'm fine but I didn't believe it. now they're saying they've always expected As #thanks for finally being honest with me my senior year of undergrad. really helps to know for sure you've lied for 22 years.#i just.#agh

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ghouljams · 1 month

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I want to send Simon into subspace send tweet

Nah but he'd love the Amazon position, even better if you get tired of his squirming and trap one of his legs under yours so you're practically scissoring. He likes feeling like you're just using him, taking what you want without a care for what he feels. He's still penetrating you but it's you that's fucking him. Thrusting into him as he hears the plap plap plap of your pussy lips slapping against his skin.

You lean forward and the leg over your hip bends at the knee until you've got his thigh pressed against his chest and tell him to hold his knee up. Looming over him to wrap your hand around his neck. Telling him to "stop fucking squirming" because "fleshlights don't move".

He'll be your fleshlight. He'll be such a good toy for you.

Having him on his knees in front of a mirror, wrists handcuffed behind his back as you lift him upright by the column of his throat. Your strap deep inside him as you tell him to look at himself in the mirror while he rides you so he can see how beautiful he is.

Everytime he looks away - on accident, mostly, you just feel so good he throws his head back without realizing - you force him to stop. Waiting until he looks in the mirror again before you tell him "'s not your fault baby, you're just so good at taking my cock you can't think of anything else, can you? Too busy being good for me."

His moans crack and pitch into whines and then sobs as tears paint his pretty face, but you still won't let him move.

"Tell me how good you are. Say you're my good boy and you can move again."

He hesitates only slightly before conceding, he wants to be good for you and make you proud after all. You slowly start again, hands gripping at his hips hard enough to leave marks that he'll undoubtedly trace the next time he's on leave, pressing into them so they stay bruised and hurt enough for him to feel as he fucks his fist at night, so he can almost pretend you're there with him.

"That's it, darling, just like that. You are so perfect for me, aren't you?" After enough times stopping and starting again he repeats you without thinking.

"arrngghh- 'm perfect for you" he gargles out over a moan, watching his own spit bubble and drool out of his mouth and onto his naked pecs in the mirror

"Yeah, my sweet little slut knows how to make me feel good, doesn't he?"

""m y'r swee- hah! Lil' slut- mmmm! I'll make you feel guh- good, it's so good."

"You gonna cum for me, Si?"

He moans and nods, huffing out some words that attempt to mimic your sentence.

"yeah, you're always such a good boy, so pretty when you cum, aren't you?"

"'m pretty- 'm pretty"

He sees your hand reach around and wipe his cheek, smearing his drool with his tears.

"Tell me you're my good boy while you cum, mkay? I wanna see my pretty baby babbling for me like the cock drunk slut he is."

He chokes on a moan and his head rolls back before the hand on his face grabs his cheeks to pull him to look at the mirror.

"Your good boy, 'm your good boy, jus' for you-" ropes of pearly white shoot out of his cock, decorating his chest and falling to the floor and your fist around his shaft. "'m yours, 'm yours, yoursyoursyours"

His eyes glaze over and his vision blurs but he doesn't pull his gaze away from the mirror, even as he succumbs to gravity. Falling forward as you hold his cuffed wrists to stop him from falling into his own spend. Gargling on his own drool as it forces your strap to burrow against his prostate even harder.

On another note, I'm just saying, Simon would 100% want to get pregnant by you if he could. We need to unionize to impregnate this man.

Barking over this, I'm so feral. My desire to have Simon in any of these positions is fighting against the way I've got him characterized in my head. So I will give you this. (Cowboy)Simon getting Pavloved:

It's not often that Ghost is alone these days, but with you away on business he's had to re-figure certain things. Showers alone, breakfast alone, going to bed by himself with just your pillow to hug... Worst of all: sex. Ghost wakes up with a hardon and you're not there to solve it. With a grumbled swear Ghost spits into his hand and wraps his fist around his aching cock. He hasn't had to do this in a while, nice part about living with you, but it's like riding a bike.

He strokes his fingers over the soft skin, rubs his thumb against the head, nice and tight while he thinks about you. Thinks about your pretty pussy that is. Thinks about you every way he hasn't had you in the last few days: in the shower, over the kitchen counter, before bed, crouched behind you to suck at your cunt, holding your leg up to slot his cock into you, pressing you down into the mattress. Every way he can think of, it makes his cock ache, makes him groan against the stroke of his hand, imagining it's your slick cunt clutching at him.

You're always so sweet when he fucks you, always so careful when you ride him, never doing more than he can handle, never pushing more than he can stomach. Ghost tips his head back against the pillows and imagines the phantom press of your hands against his chest, the slap of your skin against his, the soft panting gasps when he angles his hips and hits you just right. He squeezes the base of his cock, tries to mirror the way you clench around him.

A year ago he might have queued up a porno, but now the thought of you is all he needs to have his hips bucking up into his hand.

Ghost groans, feels his lips part to take a breath. It's not enough, not what he's looking for, what his body is craving, but it has to be. It's just missing something.

Fucking hell.

"Good boy," He tells himself, squeezing his eyes shut against the shame of it, "pretty- fuck- 'm a good boy, pretty boy. Good boy, good boy, good boy." He pants it out, chants it to himself to try and subsidy your sweet voice cooing it in his ear.

Christ he doesn't know if it's the words or the flash of humiliated heat that tips him over the edge but his cock twitches and spurts come over his stomach as he strokes himself through orgasm. Exactly what he needed. God. He's going to have to say that every time, isn't he?

#cod x reader #x reader #simon ghost riley #x oc #cod x oc #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost mw2 #ghost x reader #simon riley #simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #f!reader #mw2 ghost #ghost cod #oc: goose #sub!ghost

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ceasarslegion · 5 months

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Whenever people criticize exploitative companies I notice that they tend to target consumers as if everybody using those services always have a choice in the matter, but im willing to bet that a massive chunk of the population that shops at walmart, orders from amazon, subscribe to disney+, etc, are poor/rural people who cant afford any of the alternatives. And what exactly do you expect them to do?

Disney+ is the cheapest option for reliable entertainment for poor parents with kids. Netflix is the cheapest option for that for most others. They still deserve to watch TV when they cant afford a cable package (and yes, pirating still has barriers attached to it. For one, you need to be able to afford the computer, just for starters). Not everyone who has a streaming service subscription is a bootlicker or supports the disney corporation or thinks netflix has the most correct working conditions.

Amazon is the cheapest option for shipping, well... almost anything. And in a lot of places, its the only thing that can reliably get there at all within the month. And when a prime subscription comes with free shipping and a streaming service? That cuts out one major expense AND the expense from the first point, too. Folks still deserve to be able to order things when they cant afford to pay for shipping fees or when they can only afford the cheapest possible option for the item they need. Not everybody with a prime subscription or who orders the occasional thing off amazon wants to personally suck jeff bezos's dick or thinks warehouse workers deserve to be worked to death.

Walmart remains the cheapest possible option for most people in north america, especially in the cost of living crisis right now where groceries cost more than your rent. Not everybody who shops at walmart thinks the workers deserve to be exploited or that unions are bad or that driving out small businesses is a good thing

And im gonna be honest, every single "alternative" ive seen from people acting these ways is WAYYY more expensive and unreliable to poor and rural people than the things theyre telling us to stop using. You absolutely should support small businesses when you can but i usually dont have small business money. I can either buy a few little things to eat that will last me maybe a week or i can get enough for the month for the same amount at walmart, and thats not MY fault.

What exactly do you want us to do here

#some thoughts

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ellabscrush · 3 months

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— driver!ellabs headcanons 🛞

thinking about you being ellie & abby’s passenger princess..

» content; modern hcs, poly relationship, afab!reader, specific hcs, fluff, no smut just slight making out lol. mentions of road anxiety.

» a/n; the middle pic is literally abby and ellie coded. anyways, i felt like making this because is it just me orrrr is driving attractive?? especially when you imagine ellie and or abby driving you around??

divider creds to @cafekitsune

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

ELLIE WILLIAMS

driver!ellie lowkey would drive a used, 2000’s old ass sedan that has a few trash laying around the backseat.

driver!ellie often greets you by giving a peck on your lips, your neck, and compliments you as always.

driver!ellie random smiskis on the dash board you gifted her + glow in the dark star stickers on her sun roof ◡̈

driver!ellie blasts music but would ask you if it’s too loud for your liking.

driver!ellie she road rages SO much. like she has zero chill when it comes to being on the road. even when she’s the one at fault or the other car infront of her is driving the speed limit, she usually cusses them out for no reason 😭

driver!ellie stingy with aux but loves you so she hands her phone over so you could play your own music strictly on queue.

driver!ellie her music playlist covers are soft launch pictures of you.. and sometimes abby.

driver!ellie rests her slender hands on your thigh when she’s not as focused on traffic.

driver!ellie at a stop light, ellie would look over at you and admires how beautiful you look next to her while she caresses your face, “you look good.”

driver!ellie if her girls are not in the car, she would facetime you both while devouring some fast food. she loves you & abby’s company even when you both aren’t there physically.

driver!ellie goes on her phone alot while driving which gives you slight passenger anxiety, but quickly changes that once you mentions it to her one day.

driver!ellie “wanna drive?” asking you with a big ass excited grin on her face.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

ABBY ANDERSON

driver!abby drives a more newer car that is big enough space for her. she keeps it simple and clean with little to no decor. but religiously uses pine air scents in her vents.

driver!abby has a cute polaroid of the three of you hanging on the dash.

driver!abby greets you by saying your cute lil’ nicknames like; “gorgeous, doll, angel, baby.”

driver!abby unlike els verbal road rage, abby expresses. her frustration by loud sighing or groaning in traffic.

driver!abby bought herself & ellie phone stands on amazon when she heard your annoyance with phone in hand while driving. they even let you put stickers on ‘em.

driver!abby tells you “speed bump.. another one” when your touching up your makeup or something.

driver!abby likes the feeling of you relying on her for rides, “can i drive abs?” “no.”

driver!abby grips your thigh hard to “keep you in place” when the condition of the road is harsh but really she’s just a thigh girl (wbk)

driver!abby looks so hot when picking you up straight from gym. strands of hair sticking on her sweaty forehead, her braid messed up a bit, sports bra & shorts combo 😮‍💨

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CAR RIDES W/ ELLABS

driver!ellabs abby often insists on driving the two since her car is bigger.. plus lots of room to makeout in the backseat.

driver!ellabs has a collaborated music playlist with a chaotic group cover pic of you three.

driver!ellabs rushes to open the door for you first like it’s a competition.

driver!ellabs ellie being too lazy to move to the back like a normal person so she just climbs to the back of abby’s clean car with shoes on. “you motherfucker,” the blonde sighs, “my bad” ellie playfully smirks.

driver!ellabs when you choose to sit in the back, you were in awe catching a rare sight of abby holding ellie’s thigh.

driver!ellabs “ladybug!” *ellie shoulder punches the both of you*

driver!ellabs carpool karaoke is always a blast.

driver!ellabs abby purposely putting her big arms behind your seat when reversing while ellie watches.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

#pluralistic #monopoly #seo #dark seo #google #search #enshittification #platform decay #product reviews #spam #antitrust #trustbusting

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tinystepsforward · 3 months

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please tell tumblr staff i appreciate them and i’m sorry their boss is a fucking moron.

(this is about this post)

i'll tell the ones i know <3

i would really love if people stopped tagging staff into angry rants, or using "fuck staff" tags, but i know that's probably not going to happen. more specifically i would love people to stop making threats against individual staff members, especially trans ones!

it's already difficult enough to be where they are now without the weight of being piled on in reaction to something that isn't their fault, that hurts them in ways it doesn't hurt the average tumblr user. i disagree with a hell of a lot of my ex-colleagues about a lot of things and am far more radical than the majority of them but none of them deserve this. it's honestly just fucking weird. like i don't care what the political opinions of an individual amazon employee are, i'm not acting like even the most bigoted shithead working in a warehouse is personally responsible for the way amazon is ruining lives — or that their life isn't one of the ones being ruined.

the one thing matt is right about is that unbridled, thoughtless hostility toward all staff makes it harder to retain people who can improve tumblr. in particular, marginalised staff get enough of this shit in other parts of their life and no amount of wanting to change shit for the better is worth dealing with this for. we burn out faster and harder under lateral violence than people who aren't affected will.

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oreo102 · 1 month

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Saying kerblam is pro capitalism is fucking dumb and you’re wrong. I usually try to avoid telling people their takes of an episode is dumb and wrong(at least to their faces) but this time it is. And I’ll prove it.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s anti-capitalism, but to say it’s pro isn’t right either. Kerblam is pretty obviously a stand in for any big corporation, and since Amazon is, well, Amazon, I’m using it in my comparisons.

We learn early on that kerblam is on a moon and it’s heavily implied that the human workers stay there year round (Dan saying he splurges twice a year to see his daughter) but this isn’t framed as a good thing- there’s no way to frame that as a good thing. It’s framed very obviously as sad, he’s sad he can’t see his kid any more because he has to work.

There’s also a very high unemployment rate, as stated by multiple characters, which again: it’s shown as a bad thing. Hell- Charlie says as much. It’s bad, it’s terrible, it shouldn’t be. And no one argues with him- the doctor agrees! It is terrible that so many people are unemployed, but it’s not the AI’s fault

That’s the moral. AI is not responsible for the people who use it for wrong (please note for this next part: how it is right now, I am not pro-AI, this is from a strictly scifi perspective where the AI has a conscious(?)). AI could be an incredibly helpful tool, but how it’s being used irl and in the epsiode, it’s not good.

Where real life and Dr who depart is that the AI in kerblam is- if not sentient, close enough that it knows to send for help so innocent people don’t die. Which is what would’ve happened! Charlie had a good goal. But how he went about it- the way he decided to try and fix the issue was to kill countless people.

This episode isn’t saying Kerblam is good. It isn’t saying the practices of big companies like Kerblam or Amazon is good. It actively discourages it, actually. It’s saying that AI is not at fault for how people use it, that to make a problem better you shouldn’t murder a bunch of innocent people. It’s not pro-capitalism. Stop it.

And if you have an actual argument with evidence from the episode I’d be happy to hear it! But only if it includes actual evidence :)

#doctor who #new who #13th doctor #thirteenth doctor #kerblam #idk how to tag this #the doctor #anti ai #I’m anti AI plz don’t take this post out of context #anti capitalism #Kerblam isn’t pro capitalism #stop it

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