You Know The Bit In The Door That Holds The Door Closed? I Opened A Door, Went Through, But Lost My Balence.

had a minor crisis when 12ft.io went down yesterday and thankfully it's back now but this seems like a good opportunity to compile a list of similar paywall-evading tools in case 12ft ever gets canned for real:

12ft.io: the legend himself. definitely my favorite of the bunch by virtue of being the easiest to use (and the easiest url to remember), but it's configured to disable paywall evasion for a handful of popular sites like the new york times, so you'll have to go elsewhere for those.

printfriendly: works great; never had any issues with removing paywalls, even on domains that don't work with 12ft.io. since this site is literally designed to make sites print-friendly, it might simplify the overall formatting of the page you're trying to access, which can be a good or bad thing. my only real issue is that the "element zapper" (which lets you remove content blocks from the print-friendly preview) is a little sensitive if you're browsing on a touchscreen device, which means you might accidentally delete a paragraph when you're just trying to scroll. but if that happens you can reload the page and it'll revert everything back to its original state.

fifteen feet: basically a 12ft clone, minus 12ft's restrictions. haven't used it much since I only discovered it yesterday in the wake of 12ft's 451 error but it seems to do the trick.

archive.today: an archival tool very similar to the wayback machine, but it also works as a de facto paywall removal tool. (the wayback machine seems to remove paywalls as well, but archive.today has better UX imo and is way faster to use.)

and an honorable mention for sci-hub: only works for scientific/academic journals, not random news articles, but the other sites listed above only work for random news articles and not academic publications so you gotta have this one in your toolbelt for full coverage. pubmed is your oyster.

If you pledged to James Somerton's Patreon, go CANCEL YOUR PLEDGE before you get charged and REPORT HIM TO THE PLATFORM!

He reactivated his page today with no update to notify his patrons that he'd done so, having scrubbed all but two posts, under the claim that this is to allow everyone to pull their pledges before they get charged in January. The problem with this explanation is that nobody would be charged if he hadn't reactivated the page in the first place, and a creator can remove patrons from their end at any time—and yet, all 3600+ supporters are still attached to the newly-reactivated page.

James didn't do this to let people revoke their pledges, he did it in the hopes that people wouldn't notice and he could get at least one more month's worth of income from the platform.

Do not give this man another penny of your money. Revoke your pledge and report him to the platform.

today in "google AI is fucking useless because it hallucinates things that never happened", i bought a couple CVS thermometers that have both been acting up, tried to search if there had been a problem with the whole product line:

there is no record of this product recall. it did not happen. the date "feb 8 2024" is the date someone listed a thermometer for sale on ebay.

ironic right wing shit will erode your mind without fail. I don't touch that shit

My 3 AM thoughts were me thinking about how my country fucked itself by leaving the EU (guess).

And I realised that they are doing Brexit way more extreme than they said they would. Just like

Leave: Oh yeah, we'll stay in the European Economic Area, and I guarantee food and other standards will remain at a reasonable quality.

Solving a debate my mother and sister have been having recently

Remember to reblog for a bigger sample size

From now on, all of my intrusive thoughts will be voiced by Waluigi.

I remembered, a while ago I went to Naples.

And they deep fried a calzone? Just put the poor bastard in hot oil cause why the fuck not. Was this a thing I just didn't know about? Was the restaurant on crack? Both?

I need to know why this exists.

You ever just realise that your lack of self confidence is so utterly crippling you find yourself unable to talk to people you like about things they might possibly percieve as negative?

Cause yeah.