Via Ethan Luck

“Removes all known adware from your Mac. It is very simple to use, and should clean up your system in less than a minute, from start to finish. Just open the app, click the Scan for Adware button, and remove anything that is detected. That’s it!”

“Privacy Badger is a browser add-on that stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web. If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser. To the advertiser, it’s like you suddenly disappeared.”

Unfortunately, not currently available for Safari.

“HTTPS Everywhere is a Firefox, Chrome, and Opera extension that encrypts your communications with many major websites, making your browsing more secure.”

Nice workup on getting off the Google train. I still have a Gmail account, but never use it. If I didn’t have my own domains, and e-mail to go with them, I would be on FastMail. I have heard nothing but good things about the service, and US $40/year for 15GB of storage, plus all their other features, is a great deal.

I’ve been using DuckDuckGo exclusively as my search engine for quite a while now. The service has gotten much better from its early days, when I still had to go back to Google some times to find the link I was looking for. My backup these days is Bing. Microsoft is slightly less scary than Google only because they are not interested (yet) in selling my search data to advertisers.

thislifeofleisure:

To commemorate the demise of my Facebook account, and the myriad of questions people usually have about why, here’s some of my favorite quotes on Facebook:

“Facebook seems like a terrific way to stay in touch with people who don’t have the sense to quit dicking around on Facebook.” - Merlin…

Unfortunately, there are people I truly care about scattered about the land, and Facebook remains, for all its ills and evils, the only place to interact with some of them.

For me the biggest challenge that I face while trying to write my book is to not get stuck in the middle of the story. Usually I love writing the first few chapters but then all of a sudden it gets…

I can not stop laughing.

Dallas or Fort Worth -> San Antonio might be a fun trip with the boys the next time we head down there for vacation. Of course, then we’d have to rent a vehicle…

The Dove ad may have caused some dust to get in my eyes…

tbridge:

Since a friend of mine had a data loss incident and is now struggling without a good backup, I thought I’d remind everyone how important good backups are:

There are many schools of thought on this, and many levels of paranoia concerning your data. You don’t have to take all my advice to have a…

I sit on the ground with her, this woman in the brightly printed dress and crow’s feet from the Widow’s Village in Rwanda.

She sits with a thud, because the genocide has that kind of impact–it has robbed her of her husband and her children–and she has been listening to another woman tell her story and the memories–they’ve just collided and shoved her down.

So I sit there with her in the dirt, a child in my lap and the village around us.

“God is good,” she whispers.

tiffanyb:

“A guide comparing Associated Press style and Chicago style for editors, writers, teachers, students, word nerds, and anyone else who gives a dollar sign, ampersand, exclamation point, and pound sign about style.”

This. Is. Everything.

comixology:

If you saw #GuardiansOfTheGalaxy and loved Rocket Raccoon, please take time to learn about his creator Bill Mantlo.

ruckawriter:

Found at Gizmodo.

Here are just a few of the most horrific facts of life for migrant workers at a camp a half-hour drive from Doha, Qatar’s largest city:

• No access to toilets or clean water: “There was an overpowering smell of excrement as we arrived. There were no Western-style toilets but holes in the floor. Others washed themselves using buckets of water. Salty water was used for drinking and washing.”

• According to a labor representative, employees are more likely to die from heart attacks or heat stress than industrial accidents: “He said men as young as 25 were dying from heart attacks because of their working and living conditions.”

• The workers are trapped due to Qatar’s kafala system: “Workers cannot change jobs or leave the country without their boss’s permission. Some revealed that their employers had not paid them for months but they could not change jobs. Many have not seen their families for years.”

• And perhaps the most depressing fact: Per capita, Qatar is the richest nation on earth.

And a link to MP Jim Murphy from the Sunday Mail Scotland reporting from Doha.

As we Americans constantly are reminded, more of the rest of the world plays soccer than we play any other sport combined. So where is the world’s outrage over this?

nerddotis:

jimmymarks:

Kevin Clash was a young black man from the projects of Baltimore who only had one dream: To work in children’s television like his hero Captain Kangaroo. Through hard work, dedication and talent, he f …

Kevin Clash isn’t Elmo, nor is Elmo Kevin Clash. But putting that aside: it’s interesting that his exoneration gets no major press, which his accusation did. Hope he can go back to Sesame Street now.

I used to work at the Walmart Home Office, where the Saturday Morning Meeting is a long-standing cultural tradition, often featuring celebrity guests. Many employees bring their children, and never more than when Kevin Clash appeared a while back along with Elmo. Many celebs would get flown in on a company jet late the night before, and sign a few autographs after the meeting before hitting the door to get the heck out of Arkansas as fast as possible. Not Kevin Clash. His response to the overwhelming number of children who were there to see Elmo was to stay until every last child had an opportunity to greet, and in most cases hug, their favorite resident of Sesame Street. Kevin Clash is an excellent person, and he takes the responsibility he has to children very seriously. I’m not surprised he has been exonerated and I will make sure everyone I know hears about it.

lettersandlight:

Are you tackling a writing project that isn’t a brand-spanking new novel during Camp NaNoWriMo? Good news! We’re compiling lists of everything we know about nonfiction, editing, and scripts. We revisit editing while it’s fresh in our minds from the “Now What?” Months…

For future reference.

ruckawriter:

Four new species of carnivorous sea sponge have been discovered in a place where ridiculous adaptations for sourcing food seem about as widespread as horrific ways to die – the deep sea.

Yes, you read that right. Carnivorous sea sponges.

Alright, ocean, you win. Everybody out.

writewild:

via

“The title you give it will have a life of its own. It is the first thing a reader will notice. You need to think about agents and editors, plot and characters, the reader, and market trends.”

1. It should suit your genre.
2. It must have something to do with the plot.
3. It should be easy to…

An estimated 30 million people around the world are living as slaves, according to the new Global Slavery Index study.