Montreal public health is putting a hold on the Quebec decree to exempt children and educators in day cares who have been in contact with a positive Covid case from isolating.
The army is back to help with vaccinations, or at least to make a reconnaissance.
QMI is, I think rather evilly, reporting that migrants crossing at Roxham Road are testing positive. But so is everybody!
An SUV has been pulled out of the Lachine Canal after a collision with a tow truck. One passenger is dead, the other is in critical condition.
The Gazette outlines the EMSB’s plans for resuming school in January. It’s getting harder and harder to follow any Gazette story, with brief paragraphs of text strung out among massive, visually noisy ads. (Yes, I do realize this is how they pay the bills.)
I used to try to not use ad-blockers on sites that I wanted to support (the Gazoo never made that list, though). But ads have gotten so bad that I now just block them wholesale, across my entire network (so it also applies to mobile devices, where ad-blocker extensions are more difficult to install). That Gazette story loaded just fine for me.
But I wonder how they will be able to pay the bills if more and more people stop clicking on links to Gazette stories or stop using the Gazette as a source of news because they know they’re going to be subjected autoplay videos and noisy ads. Reading it on desktop isn’t too bad (although, not great) but their mobile site is completely unusable.
Reader view or epaper is the only way to read the Gazette website.
Here’s that article in it’s “natural” form vs. Reader View in Firefox:
https://blork.org/pix/FFReaderView-Gazette.png
I think the Gazette website is the first place I’ve ever seen a pop-up on top of a pop-up.
I don’t have much sympathy re:”That’s how they pay the bills” because I feel like they’re shooting themselves in the foot by beating us over the heads with it. They’re driving readers away because they’re not doing it smartly. CTV News is an example of a site I NEVER go to unless there’s a specific link I want to follow. Otherwise it’s my last choice of a place to go for info because of all the clutter.
And the goddamn videos! Sure, put a video in your news story. But don’t make that video break out of its frame and stay on the page after you try to scroll past it. They all do this now, and I hate them all for it.
IF I WANT TO WATCH THE VIDEO I WILL WATCH THE GODDAMN VIDEO, BUT DO NOT MAKE THAT VIDEO FOLLOW ME DOWN THE PAGE WHILE I’M TRYING TO READ!!!
Sorry for shouting.
Just say NO to The Gazette
If you have ad-blocker, Global News, instead of giving you an autoplay video, in its place says that you have your ad-blocker on. It’s nice and not-as-distracting.
In general, there seems to be a recent trend towards websites having too many things moving around on them. I hate image carousels, or whatever you call the images that change every few seconds. But that’s not really on news sites.
I sympathize with the plight of any local news trying to pay the bills, but… this isn’t it. Filling the screen with persistent, obtrusive ads-on-ads is the worst. I have an Apple News subscription that I rely upon when I need to read the Gazette, Atlantic, NYT or any other paywalled/ad-supported news (except FT, which is simply too bougee for third-party distribution). It works to a point. It still has ads embedded in articles.
For a totally ad-free experience, I mostly rely on non-profit news. I use an app called Reeder on all of my devices, and through it I consume the RSS feeds for CBC, NPR, PBS and Propublica, as well as CultMTL and mtlcityweblog.com. I’ve been reading the news about twice a day for a year with this setup, and it’s really not bad.
Also, NPR has a text-only version of its website, that’s pretty good:
CBC has something similar:
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/trending-news
In fact, here’s a list of text-only news sites:
https://greycoder.com/a-list-of-text-only-new-sites/
Has anybody else found the images that accompany news articles to be completely useless 90% of the time? With text-only versions of articles, you just get the meat. More protein and less carbs
What maddens me is that I have a digital subscription to the Gazette and still get the pop-up videos. Shouldn’t they provide a better experience for those who pay to read? This is what The Guardian (UK) does. Because I subscribe, I can read their app completely ads-free.
Firefox on mobile hast Adblock extensions.
If anyone feels like tinkering, this is the solution I use:
https://pi-hole.net/
It provides ad-blocking for your entire home network, at the DNS level.
I used ControlD. Blocking works well. Ads on the Gazette website simply say they haven’t loaded yet.
dhomas, I’d use that, except that I do some web design and maintenance work, and I need to know what I’m seeing has not been interfered with upstream.
So I use Chrome for personal stuff, with an ad blocker for comfort, but Safari for the blog, with no blockers, because I need to see what’s really there.
I also use Opera and Vivaldi at times when I want to launch a browser that I’m confident has not been caching. Also, there are a few payment systems that won’t work with my copy of Chrome, presumably because they include some code that invokes the ad blocker, so I use Opera as an alternative.
Opera’s a good browser.
I understand your requirements, Kate. My pi-hole does indeed sometimes block too much. It has a feature where you can disable it for a set amount of time to get around this. I’m a bit of a geek and an automation aficionado so I’ve actually set it up so saying “Hey Google, disable pi-hole” to my smart speakers will temporarily disable my network ad-blocker for 5 minutes. (I also have it as a bookmark on my PC and a button on mobile).
As for browsers, Opera is a good browser. I used to use it as a daily driver. If you’re looking for a privacy focused browser, I can also recommend Brave Browser.
Must thank the gazette for being so crap that it forced me to find alternate local news sources eventually leading me here.
Here’s the official list of curfew exceptions, updated.
Raised a slight eyebrow at CBC’s headline Montrealers protest […] curfew. A mere 75 people were at that protest, don’t make it sound like everyone in the city turned out.
In general, our media are happily manufacturing dissent against the curfew: Global’s Civil liberties association condemns curfew, CTV’s More harm than good and others I will add.
For some reason, Newsweek covered the fining of protesters on the weekend.
I flinched at that headline as well. Clickbait I guess? Although you’d think something circus-like (“Come gawk at a bunch of freaks and feel better about yourself”) would be catchier.
Montrealers love a good protest. You’d be hard-pressed to find ANYTHING that wouldn’t get a couple of dozen people out. At least the photo isn’t misleading about the scope of it.
Because I’m pedantic, I find it amusing that going to/from the hospital is an exception, but apparently only going *to* the pharmacy. (Then I have to stay there until 5 AM?) Yes, yes, I know it’s implied…
I disagree with the curfew — honestly most people I know don’t like it, think it is theatre and not actually going to help, and that it’s trying to cover up for his shitty decisions in Nov/Dec, including allowing secular tree day to go on as usual but announcing on Dec 30 that NYE had to be cancelled. (Should it have been? Maybe. We did the max-6-people meal at noon instead because what else do you do with the groceries.)
I don’t think you can say they are manufacturing dissent when it’s very likely that a majority of Montrealers oppose the curfew. Just because most of us aren’t willing to risk a massive fine or attend protest with a bunch of conspiracy clowns doesn’t mean there is support for this measure. (I’m sure the CAQ’s suburban/rural base likes it just fine, though.)
The curfew IS meaningless theatre.
At this point, so is contact tracing.
Quebec screwed the pooch in delaying boosters and not locking down in mid December.
The half-measures announced since then are not enough to protect the unvaccinated.
I literally know no one that supports the curfew. I’ve asked friends, family, coworkers, they all oppose it.
Corona is endemic, some have not got that into their heads yet. If the covid-zero people have their way, we’ll never have all our freedoms back.
Thanks for the anecdotal evidence Chris!
I honestly don’t have a problem with a 10PM curfew in January. I might change my mind in May.
Chris
The idea of Covid zero stopped in April 2020.
Governments chose to burn out medical staff during the past two years while fiddling instead of actually working to build capacity or educate the public.
We have been at the edge of healthcare failing for two years, and the next few weeks are looking worse than anything that has come before.
The virus probably is here to stay. A few things consider:
1) The virus will continue to evolve, vaccines may or may not keep up.
2) We will all age into increased vulnerability.
3) Most of us will pick up various “co-morbidities” along the way.
Given that, we probably won’t get all our ‘freedoms’ back, in the same way that we’re not free to empty chamberpots onto the sidewalk or eat at restaurants that don’t pass health inspections. We just have to think about which measures we’re willing to accept, long-term, and which ones we’re not. I hope we don’t end up with a permanent curfew and can one day get rid of masks for most interactions, but things like decreased international travel, vaccine passports, more spending on ventilation, no more crowded indoor bars and restaurants and shows, might be things we have to adapt to.
Diseases become less dangerous because we adapt our behaviours. It’s what we do as humans.
For anyone looking for some positive Covid news, some folks in Texas have made a low-cost, patent-free vaccine and India has given it the green light already. https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/3/patent_free_vaccine_in_texas
Tim, why put “freedoms” in quotes? You don’t think being forcibly confined to your home for 1/4 of the day is not a limitation of your freedom? I don’t think many are satisfied to “hope” that we won’t have a permanent curfew. Acceptance will continue to fall the longer it exists.
Sorry to sound harsh, but trying to stop anyone from dying of covid by forever staying masked or locked at home is just not going to fly. Just like we’re not willing to save everyone from dying of car crashes or air pollution because we prefer the freedom of personal transportation.
If car crashes were contagious I think we would treat them very differently.
Chris, all of human civilization is a balancing of individual freedoms and rules we have to follow. The balance changes in response to events, of which COVID is one. Freedoms are not, and never have been, absolute: hence the quotes, because you’re using the term in a way that isn’t the way I would use it.
I don’t know if curfew is an appropriate part of that balance. I hope not. But the balance will have to change. Deal with it.
Tim S.: Nicely put. There are whole philosophy books that dance around the idea you encapsulate in three sentences.
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