A Microblog in Plain HTML

How loaded is the word 'conspiracy'?

It's just one word away from 'conspiracy theory' which evokes the imagery of a schizophrenic bound in a straitjacket. Some people just say 'conspiracy' as shorthand for 'conspiracy theory'.

On the Wikipedia page for the Reckless Ben vs Bricks and Minifigs scandal, the page will mention a 'Mormon conspiracy'.

According to Schneider, the officers and new owners of the Keizer franchise, Johnson and Best, are all Mormons,[6] leading to speculation on social media that BAM and the American Fork Police Department are part of a "Mormon Mafia" conspiracy.[26][27]

I've yet to hear 'mafia' straight from Reckless Ben, so I'm attributing that entirely on the social media chatter. But it's funny that Kotaku still counts as a credible source for Wikipedia.

This is likely the segment they are referring to:

https://invidious.tiekoetter.com/cxZPfj8AlmY?t=1289 (I got arrested over legos by Reckless Ben, 21:30)

where Brian Mansell phone calls Ben about the shared religious affiliation the police have with Bricks and Minifigs.

More on 'conspiracy', it does appear that a lawyer can build a case for Reckless Ben on that.

https://yt.chocolatemoo53.com/kopCqn8YPZM?t=809 (The Lawsuit American Fork Police Doesn't Want by America's Attorney. 13:28)

I think I just watched a YouTuber destroy a corporation's brand.

Been watching the Reckless Ben vs Bricks and Minifigs series and some commentary from 'lawyertube'.

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=9Nb6r6Q4xME

TL;DW: Bricks and Minifigs' C-suite tries to pull Scientology-tier levels of lawfare, only to find out too late that their target is a YouTuber and has thoroughly documented the situation. But they're not Scientologists, they're Mormons.

Ordinarily, a working class nobody would get bullied into silence or bankruptcy. Here, it completely backfired because Reckless Ben was getting more views and money in the process. Of all the lawfare and police intimidation demonstrated throughout the series, it reminds me of cancel culture and crybullying especially with accusations of harassment and pretending to be a victim. Difference is the legal system is slower and more expensive than an online moderator.

New features coming up for the microblog (v1.1.1).

I've been writing and testing changes to the 'likhoblog' code. Already on my blog, there are relative navigation links for next and previous pages.

The other ones has to do with hashtagging. If you don't like how hashtags look when they're written on their own line (not included in a sentence), there will be an option to hide them disabled by default. Also the parser will have extra logic to handle hashtags and punctuation like #programming...?!

You can track `likhoblog` updates with this RSS feed.

https://git.32bit.cafe/likho/likhoblog/releases.rss

Or similar feeds on 32BitCafe's Forejo instance.

AI is shitting up my web browsing experience.

I started browsing the web on my phone with an obscure browser called monocles. The cool thing is that JavaScript is disabled by default, and I can press a button to enable it: simpler than NoScript on FireFox.

The bad thing is that LLM scrapers are aggressively making requests to some of the websites I visit. Even if I re-enable JavaScript and cookies then complete a CAPTCHA, I get blocked because non-mainstream browser = bot as far as Cloudflare et al are concerned.

related:

https://drewdevault.com/blog/Stop-externalizing-your-costs-on-me/

Also, ArchiveOfOurOwn now has an anti-scraper gate because #fanfic‎tion is good enough training data for LLMs despite being known for misspellings, poor editing, and OOC?

Neocities got taken down by Namecheap on Friday because of an Indian court order targeting completely different matter.

We're working on the DNS outage. It's not technical - someone is trying to legally attack us and Namecheap took down the domain. More details later.

Early this morning, we received an email from @namecheap.com that the domain neocities.org was being suspended because of a court order from New Delhi, India (a jurisdiction we don't operate in), which was for an unrelated court order about a sports streaming site on a different domain.

So while #neocities was offline I had two thoughts floating in my head.

1. If I ever get a domain name, don't register through Namecheap.
2. There ought to be a law that protects hosts, registrars from liability, so the web hosting world isn't "guilty until proven innocent".

I say the situation resembles "guilty until proven innocent" because generally a platform getting taken down means people missing out on revenue, jobs, downloads, w/e. I know Neocities is low stakes compared to places like Patreon, Twitch, Etsy, but that's why I underlined 'generally'.

IT'S ALL FACEBOOK'S FAULT.

I noticed there had been "age verification bills" popping up with some pretense about "protecting children" (bullshit). Has nothing to do with porn companies having to verify the age of their actors or viewers.

Rather, it has more to do with access to hardware e.g government mandated middleware in operating systems. Given this political season, there are plenty of reasons why powerful people want to be able to identify the person behind an online post.

To go straight to the point, Meta apparently spent 2 billion dollars lobbying the government to push these bills, traced by u/Ok_Lingonberry3296.

https://redlib.perennialte.ch/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f

Not a surprise since Randi Zuckerberg has opened her mouth and said, "Anonymity on the Internet has to go".

https://archive.is/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-anonymity-on-the-internet-has-to-go-away/

So right now I feel totally justified for not being on social media platforms and blacklisting META, Amazon, just about anything Big Tech from my stock portfolio. If you're feeding the beast, you should stop.

32-bit Cafe nuked everything?!

I noticed they replaced Gitea with Forejo. In the process, it looks like they also deleted my old account and repositories. Since I have to republish the repo, I've taken the opportunity to rebrand the microblog project as 'likhoblog' because a generic name like 'microblog.py' wasn't doing many favors such as a period in the name and url.

The new url is up here:

https://git.32bit.cafe/likho/likhoblog

And I ought to update the README and the page introducing it.

I started writing #hazbinhotel #fanfic

After the Season 2 finale, Charlie finds Vox in a box delivered to the Hazbin Hotel.

TRUST US With Your Redemption

Charlie finds a package delivered to the hotel or what turns out to be an unsealed cardboard box and a little sinner stuck inside.

archiveofourown.org

A one thing different from the other fics I've written is that I actually tried writing poetry and song. The songs are transformed from the existing soundtrack for Vox's situation within the fic.

Also it's the only fic on ArchiveOfOurOwn tagged 'Computer Networking' and 'OSI Model Layer 3' until tag wranglers find something similar.

If you care less about the show and more about the nerd humor, a song is 'Don't You Forget (No Internet)' on Chapter 4 and is based on

https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=aljv1mbIYBQ

(Alastor)

Don’t you forget!
No internet!

(Vox)

You say when DH-CP
serves a lease
or if I disconnect!

I won’t forget…!

(Alastor barging in)
No link, no stream, no data sent!

(Vox complains)
Not one ICMP packet.

No PAT, no port,
no outbound path
On your decree,
they’re lost by Layer Three.

I won’t forget.
I’m denied a NAT.
Looks like the most
I get is localhost!

Someone actually took my code bounty!

Thank you `eloiter` for creating a pull request at my repository!

https://git.32bit.cafe/likho/microblog.py/pulls/4

I merged the branch way back in September, and I got a crazy backlog of things to microblog about.

Season 2 of Hazbin Hotel is airing with two new episodes every Wednesday of November, and I'm watching it. Here's what I think about it so far.

Hazbin Hotel Season 2 Review

Likho reviews season 2 of Hazbin Hotel, a continuation of the Princess of Hell's endeavor to free sinners from Hell & her struggle against a media corporation.

likho.neocities.org

YouTubers that talk to Prime Ministers?

https://archive.is/https://thegrayzone.com/2025/09/12/charlie-kirk-netanyahu-israel-assassination/

I never heard about this guy until he got shot in the neck. Last month, Charlie Kirk ("conservative youth leader") was killed while holding a booth at a college campus.

I don't expect a streamer to do much other than sprinkle in terrible opinions over whatever footage they appropriated, but apparently this guy chats with the prime minister of Israel so the American right wing continues to send tribute aid? remain an ally?

Apparently not even Charlie can approve of the bombings on Gaza, and Netanyahu had to say that Israel didn't assassinate him. (Some suspect that Charlie's neck wound is an exit wound; the bullet came from behind, from the turret disguised as a camera.)

Testing how opengraph blocks look on RSS.

The Mortician and The Reaper

A recently graduated mortician starts working at a small town mortuary and has the attention of a flirty grim reaper.

archiveofourown.org

Thought about slash pages.

https://slashpages.net/

I noticed the IndieWeb community has >3 different overlapping pages like

/pay

/tip

/junk

/sale

/pricing

That are roughly about trading.

They didn't come up with /trade or /shop.

Between the two, /trade is more flexible than /shop because /trade can involve favors, not necessarily buying and selling items.

But it's not like I can tell them that as I'm not part of the "IndieWeb". More specifically, they look like decentralized self-hosted Facebook: posting real names, selfies, and their location.

I heard an article from VICE was taken down over a controversial subject matter. The author of the article Ana Valens announced on Twitter that it was not because of "journalistic complaints".

https://nitter.net/acvalensVT/status/1946992236853399758

According to the article, a combination of payment processors and feminist organizations have successfully pressured Valve into removing "harmful content" from Steam. "Harmful content" appears to extend beyond adults-only and H-games as the group also targets Detroit: Become Human and Grand Theft Auto.

This isn’t the first time Collective Shout has used misleading language to target a video game for censorship. In 2014, the organization called on Target to remove Grand Theft Auto 5 from store shelves, sharing a petition that claims the game “encourages players to commit sexual violence and kill women.” Collective Shout described GTA as if it was a misogynistic funhouse, stating the game lets players “enact their fantasies of committing extreme violence against women, including punching women to the point of unconsciousness, killing them with a bat, gun or machete, running them down with a car, and setting them on fire as they continue screaming.”

This reminds me of Anita Sarkeesian's coverage of Hitman where she misrepresented the game's objective as attacking the girls in the strip club. (Like any other game, the female NPCs aren't invulnerable.)

https://inv.nadeko.net/WuRSaLZidWI?t=143

Other than the falsehoods used to promote petitions, it looks like feminism is being used as a conduit for financial censorship (again?). Overall, I don't agree that it's a moral failure ("harmful content" that warrants censorship) to portray crime or create crime fiction especially when the games target young adult or mature audiences.

Changing upstream git repositories.

I moved over to:

https://git.32bit.cafe/likho

NotABug has a problem most of the time I try to access a repository.

Now, `microblog.py` is set up on 32bit.cafe's gitea instance. I also put up an open issue for augmenting the Atom/RSS branch which still isn't merged to master even though it's getting old by now.

https://git.32bit.cafe/likho/microblog.py/issues/1

Would be great if and when someone creates a pull request. Otherwise, I could take feedback on writing code and issues other people can understand. I also put up a bounty on ğchange.

https://www.gchange.fr/#/app/market/view/AZgHum1NJfaiX9OXiYbR/contribute-to-my-python-project

Word of the day: vranyo (враньё)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B2%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%8C%D1%91

With a barebones translation, it means 'to lie' (nonsense).

I've been looking for a word that describes the phenomenon in that someone from a position of power asserts a lie to a subordinate who is forced to accept or repeat it, otherwise incurring a consequence.

The people involved could be the forum moderator and the forum users, the government and the public, cancel cult leader and the target, etc. The situation could be the enforcement of a systemic lie or coercing someone to concede to a contestable claim.

This could be close?

(Would have to read Russian literature.)

Some online explanations describe the word to mean 'a lie that other people go along with' which illustrates convenience rather than intimidation. However, compliance for the fear of consequence lies in the overlap between convenience and intimidation.

I posted a bounty on ğchange.

I'm looking for people who know French (ideally a native) to transcribe and translate a video lecture on economics by Stéphane Laborde.

https://www.gchange.fr/#/app/market/view/AZUugZHOlbpvhqQLdP3L/french-english-translation-of-a-video-conference

Visit the video I'm talking about directly:

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=WRq2197FlMw

The first 10 minutes has already been checked over. I'm flexible, so portions of the video can be worked on as opposed to the entirety.

Side note: It looks like #invidious instances are disappearing.

It was a very political season, and I'm going to get it out of the way entirely.

I read

https://archive.ph/https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/migrant-hotel-king-on-course-to-become-first-immigration-industry-billionaire-385191/

which describes a billionaire made so because of immigration in the United Kingdom.

Taxpayers are paying between £127 and £148 a day to house them, which is a total of £8 million per day.

Basically, when immigrants come, they get housed at this guy's real estate. Also I had no idea that £44,000/yr boarding schools existed. That must be some top-tier education.

"He said that."

"She said that."

I took a longer than anticipated hiatus from the web.

November 5th was US Election Day, and the most painful part was the reaction to the results.

Flashback before Election Day, I had caught news about Donald Trump saying he isn't going to touch abortion and that he supports IVF. This caused outrage among Christians (a huge chunk of the right-wing). (Christians don't like IVF because it involves "murder" by their definition. If 5 eggs get fertilized but 4 get discarded, it's quadruple-abortion to them.)

https://archive.is/https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/09/pence-slams-rnc-platform-abortion-00167169

About the month right before Election Day, there appeared to be panic from feminists because Kamala Harris brought up abortion. It went as far as a red cloak cosplay campaign, but I assumed it was astroturf.

(Side note: the Democrats were in power during COVID-19 and favored draconian vaccine requirements when investors needed exit liquidity for Pfizer stock.)

Like any Election Day, when the results come in, the losing side expresses extreme disappointment or anger. There was no schadenfreude to be had. Rather, I thought it was painful to read the influx reddit posts from misinformed people.

"He wasn't going to touch abortion," is what I could explain in 5 threads before I lose patience.

After reading enough posts behind the glass wall (I don't post), I realized they were Kamala voters, and they think this way because they believe what Kamala Harris says and won't believe what their political antagonist says. So on that day, I reinforced why I don't join political discussions.

I found hay in a needle-stack (warning: it's 4chan).

https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/482594707/

Thread titled "MAYOR OF SPRINGFIELD, OHIO ROBERT RUE IS MAKING MILLIONS OFF HAITIAN GIBS" by Anonymous details situation in Springfield, Ohio.

Mayor Rob Rue is evicting residents of Springfield, Ohio and then bringing Haitian illegal migrants to the tune of A THIRD of the cities population to rent out his properties to Haitians using Housing Vouchers which are paid for by the federal government.

He then raises the rent to 3, 4 or 5 thousand a month and the Government Gibs go straight to his bank account!

I don't see the topic discussed anywhere else, but it's an interesting possibility. The business record links appear valid. The relationship between the government and real estate investors through housing vouchers seems plausible.