Anti-AI: Firefox to allow users to block all AI

Positive news:  Mozilla Firefox is rolling out a major privacy and control upgrade: starting with version 148 on February 24, 2026 

I have been a user of Firefox for decades now.  I trust the browser enough that I use it exclusively on all my devices (PC, phones and tablets).  The extensions have been a Godsend for blocking ads on YouTube and Yahoo Mail, and the Facebook container protected my PC from anything coming through the Meta channels. 

There has been a lot of speculation about Mozilla falling into the AI snare.  At the moment, there are a few tweaks you can use to keep AI out, but with the release coming out later this month, it sounds like Firefox will go full-throttle in providing the ability to block AI content.  

 

Google Gemini AI "helper" on Blogger

I'll be curious - on the Blogger editing window, there is an annoying Google Gemini AI "helper" icon (located at the arrow in the screen shot). I have disabled it; otherwise, it would follow my cursor around the screen offering to insert (crap) into whatever I was typing.  

My YouTube video suggestion screen is routinely flooded, equally, with videos about overcoming AI slop, and videos about how "...WONDERFUL Gemini will work for ME!"... if only I would turn the functions back on.  Yeah, no.  Not going to happen. 

I'll keep you folks posted! 

Rade 

 

Let's Give Women Something To Smile About

 

Thank you, Stephen Colbert!    

It's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights!

"It's time to meet the Muppets on the Muppet Show tonight!"

HOME RUN!  My gosh, for 30 minutes, I was 13 again!  The show hit every note, checked every box - it was exactly what I needed to watch.   

 

 

From the opening number... (video will link on YouTube)

 

 

...to Statler and Waldorf... 

 

 

To the closing sax note... 

 

The whole gang was back; Miss Piggy, Benson Honeydew and Beaker, Gonzo, Fozzy Bear, Rolf, Sam... just marvelous.  It was a GOOD nostalgia; good energy... good (and very much welcome) feelings. 

 

I hope there will be much more.

Onward.

Rade  

 

 

 

Your Daily Meme

 

Your Daily Meme

 

Morning meditation.

 

Caught a tugboat going down the channel, breaking the sheet ice on the bay;

the moon just hanging in the sky above it. 

 

When we first moved here, there was a large coal-fired power plant on the far bank of the bay.  They used the water from the bay to cool the turbines, and as a result, the upper bay was, for a long time, a lot warmer than the lower Narragansett Bay.  They decommissioned and dismantled the power plant about a decade ago, and since then, the water in Mount Hope Bay has gone back to normal temperatures.  So much that in recent years, the bay below us has frozen over on several occasions.  

 

A view from the top of our street.  Ice and snow on the bay. 

This is following a week of temperatures not rising much above freezing. 

 

I have a neighbor who was born and raised in this town, and remembers a time before the power plant when the bay would freeze so solid they would skate on it.  Considering she is just a few years older than me, that does not feel like it was all that long ago.  

 

They have done a remarkable job of cleaning up the bay; the shellfish (clams, oysters, etc.) are remarkable.  We now even have oyster farms a few miles down the coast from our home. Makes me feel there may actually be hope for the planet.  

 

Just a peaceful morning.  Savor them when they happen.  
 

Onward,

Rade 

 

The importance of kindness, consideration, and empathy.

 

 

 

Thank you, Debra of "She Who Seeks" for gifting us a beautiful poem by Danusha Laméris, "Small Kindnesses", on your blog this morning.  

 

This is the second time in as many weeks that fellow bloggers have posted a passage or poem that stopped me in my tracks; made me sit.  Exhale.  Read.  Contemplate the careful words, their order and meaning.  Moving With Mitchell did that for me with his moving tribute to his late sister on "The Kids in the hall" blog post. It made me realize we need more of that. To stop speed-reading passages and posts; to instead read with the heart.    

 

We need more poetry in our lives.  I think the last time I let myself get absorbed in poetry was listening to Amanda Gorman reading her "The Hill We Climb" at President Biden's inauguration.

 

 

Perhaps, through poetry, we can learn to breathe... to heal.   

 

Thank you, Debra and Mitchell!

Rade 

I report only the best news here...

“First president to audibly crap himself on live television,” one commenter wrote. “That’s impressive.” 

Henry Guardina of QUEERTY reports Baby Trump made a boom-boom. Apparently the camera crew from Forbes picked it up on the video feed. Otherwise, I have found no other verifiable source.  

I speculate that someone splashed water on him and he began to melt.  

 

"Oh, but his CPAP machine, Biden is SO old and frail..."