The long fancy-pants word up in the title apparently translates into English as fear of the number 13, which is of course highly apropos, given the date. For those of you interested in the cheesy origins of this most unfortunate of days – and it IS unfortunate, because bad-though-only-mildly-annoying things certainly do seem to happen to me, at least, on Friday the 13th – it apparently has to do with the history of the Knights Templar:
That history is indeed quite a fascinating one. It is the historical precedent that inspired what we know of in the STAR WARS universe as “Order 66”, when the Pope basically ordered the previously holy order destroyed, root and branch.
Why?
Well, money, ultimately – money and power. The King of France needed money. The Templars had money – LOTS of money. They were a convenient target. So, he charged them with blasphemy, sodomy, and all sorts of nasty things, and had their leaders arrested and their holdings confiscated.
The Pope, being a Frog as well, essentially went along with the King of the Frogs, and signed off on the abolition of the holy order. You see, the Catholic Church, despite its strenuous protestations (see what I did there?) to the contrary, has never REALLY been above politics – or money.
Anyway – that is apparently one of the origins of the legend of Friday the 13th.
However, it is fair to say today is somewhat unlucky. If you have not been paying attention, or you have not been graced with this particularly irritating bit of Goolag stupidity, TEH YOOTOBZ is cracking down, HARD, on people using ad-blockers to get past those STUPID ads they now insist on festooning within every single video.
If you have seen those warnings telling you to turn off your ad-blocker and subscribe to YOOTOOBZ Premium… don’t. Just don’t. It is completely pointless. YouTube is the world’s second-most-popular website, but it is also a colossal money-loser. And, though it contains some amazing content, much of it is outright Satanic, and the platform itself needs to be destroyed, one way or another.
There are better ways. Today, I ran afoul of their new Three Strikes rule, which blocks you from watching YouTube videos after you refuse their warning to turn off your ad-blocker 3 times. Well, there are apparently ways to get around this, but they did not work.
[EDIT: UBlock Origin also works well with Chrome/Chromium to exorcise the YouTube ad-daemon, IF you follow these instructions].
The one method that DOES work, for sure, is to download this browser onto your computer, and use THAT to browse YouTube.
I have also found it very useful on my Android phone. If you enable their experimental video settings, you can watch YouTube without the app, with the screen locked, and – most importantly – WITHOUT THE !@#$%^&* ADS.
I try to operate on the principle of refusing to give money to people who hate me – though I have to say, if you try that with the tax-man, that experiment tends to end awfully quickly, and very badly. Nonetheless, hopefully, if you have encountered the same issues, what I have suggested above, will help you get past TEH YOOTOOBZ’s idiocy.
And that is about enough tech news and unlucky stuff for one day. Let’s get to the lovely lady of the week.
That would be one Kristina Bagdasaryan (Кристина Багдасарян), apparently from Belarus, but with a last name like that, I am guessing she is actually Armenian, at least on her father’s side. She is a model, and beyond that, I do not know, nor do I care.
Happy Friday the 13th, all. Try not to let Mike Myers get to you.
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