2026-03-11 02:44:00
I discovered BearBlog last week and I'm impressed with this platform. It's simple, organized, and clean. It's filled with interesting posts and blogs. I'm loving to discover new blogs. Since last Friday, I've been spending a lot of time reading blogs and editing my theme.
I was using Blogger, but when I saw this platform, I immediately created an account and started transferring my posts here. I didn't have much there, so it was easy. I wasn't satisfied with Blogger for several reasons, but mainly because it belongs to Google.
I think the biggest advantage of BearBlog is how easy it is to find new blogs. On Blogger, it's much more difficult. There are many interesting blogs out there, but most of them aren’t being updated anymore. Here we have the discovery feed that shows the most recent posts and also the most popular ones, so you end up discovering active blogs very easily. Updating the discovery page is my new hobby.
The lack of a comment section is also a great idea. The fact that you have to stop to write an email or create a reply post filters out half, or maybe more than half, of the people who would comment nonsense on your post and saves you from reading nonsense in other people's posts as well.
Simplicity is what I like most about bearblog. It's awful when I visit a page that has buttons everywhere. I ask myself, Where am I supposed to look at? How nice it is to enter a blog that the main focus is the text.
2026-03-11 00:57:05
I have no problem with dogs. from a distance.
Living in the Midwest US means that most people love their big ass wolf-dogs and they treat them like children. Not liking dogs is abnormal here.
Last month I learned I was allergic to them. It was my first time spending more than 1 hour in a room with them. My throat was closing up.
My manager had invited our team to her house for a valentines day thing. She has two dogs, both big as hell. I fear them. They can smell fear. I was fine until she opened the gate to let them into the dining room. Where we were sitting.
"Oh they're friendly!"
Not to me. And I am not trying to be friends with them. I'm trying to eat my pink, heart-shaped cookies.
If you're having new guests over, it's curtesy to ask them if you can bring them into the room. Especially because people can be allergic. But also because I do not want to eat my v-day cookies while a dog is licking my hand. I don't want him to lick me at all actually.
Do you like when people sneeze on you, Ms. Manager? That's what a dog licking me feels like. Saliva on me. Same with cats, except they tend to avoid you if you're a stranger. Dogs will jump on you. And smell your labia...No thanks I'm saving that for marriage.
The people who argue with me are the same people who can't seem to understand that humans are diverse when it comes to opinions on animals. It's like an extreme vegan who can't comprehend that I will not stop eating eggs because they don't eat eggs.
At the end of the day it's a culture difference. Hygiene culture is a thing. In my world, (large) furry pets should not be anywhere near the kitchen counters, or dining table when food is being prepped or served. I know you can't always prevent it, but training and/or pet gates will solve that issue.
My cookies had dog hair. I'm never going to her house again.
2026-03-11 00:05:00
As I'm sure no small number of you are aware, Proton recently was asked to turn over information on someone the US government wanted. I unfortunately recently signed up for their paid service and now feel like I've been had just a little by their promises. While they never fully violated their claims, I should have done more reading between the lines and also actually worked on checking to see if their protections extended properly to non-swiss citizens.
This does bring me to whole new line of thought, why am I as a human, not able to sign up for something in a way that is guaranteed to be fully anonymous and just use it most of the time? I feel like that's one of the truest perks of being online is that you can be anonymous and not have to worry that if you signed in using an account tied to X email that you're now being tracked on services A, B and C even though there's no account you made on those sites. I think that end of day I should be able to just fully not be monitored online without my express consent at ALL times, not out of a desire to do evil or to commit a crime, I just do not understand how we got to the point where the assumption should be that every single thing you've ever typed is in a big file somewhere on a server owned by one of the least scrupulous billionaires out there.
Remember to thank your Town Manager for a job well done!
2026-03-10 22:00:00
WhatsApp claims it uses end-to-end encryption to secure the content of your chats. You might interpret this as implying that WhatsApp does not know who you contact through its app, but they do. Only the content is encrypted, not the fact that you contacted someone. Morever, the name of group chats are not end-to-end encrypted. Worse still, WhatsApp actively polices this information.
How do I know? I’ve experienced this first hand by being member of a group chat where one of the members decided to rename an existing (5+ years) group (15 members) to Condolences register for Ali Khamenei. The group was banned on the same day.
I am not here to defend or attack the taste in humor of others: de gustibus non est disputandum. What I am here to defend is the privacy of everyone, as the lowest common denominator applies. In this specific case, the actions of one group member resulted in the banning of a group and, in all likelihood, the inclusion of everyones phone number on some (hopefully only internal) grey list kept by WhatsApp. In the best case scenario, this information will only be shared with the relevant authorities upon their explicit request.
Any intentional holes in end-to-end encryption which are only there to facilitate monetization can and will be used for other purposes. Even if you believe you have no need for privacy for your own actions, guilt by association might only be around the corner. If you can, use Signal.
2026-03-10 21:51:00
English is not my native language, but I will do my very best. I am bored with my blogosphere and social media. I need something new and a break and a place where I can write on my own, without thinking about other people. Nobody in particular. Just write and read.
I just want to write down my experiences and whatever comes to mind.
2026-03-10 21:01:00
I should have anticipated that this would happen considering I was writing about the "discourse of the day", but it still is a little jarring that my post this morning managed to get into the Trending page.
I used to be anxious about this, after a long involvement with the Discourse on multiple social media platforms. I'm one of those people that find that I'm braver about voicing my opinions online than I do in real life - whether you find that cowardly or you can understand the reasoning behind it, that's up to your interpretation. That doesn't take away the fact that it's scary — and honestly online discourse on social media would absolutely do that to you, I think. The possibility of saying something and being greeted back with a lot of slurs and scathing opinions, the risk of becoming the "main character of the day" and having entire strangers assume things about you from a singular post gets rather anxiety-inducing (and I'm saying this as someone who has been forged from the fires of Twitterjaya - what we called Malaysian twitter - and fandom).
However, I'm almost surprised to find that I don't feel that anxiety when I saw my post up there in the Trending page later today. The inherent risk of putting your thoughts out there to a hostile online world is always great, but I guess I felt safer to write what I genuinely think here because at least here, it's a lot easier to filter out the noise. It's easier because at least with a blog like this, you have a choice to just not look at the Discover pages.
That's not to say I don't appreciate how many people resonate with that post, however. I'm glad it did strike a chord with so many people.
May you have a wonderful week ahead! (And do look at my art page while you're here maybe?)