Period 1: The script has stopped for the last time. Just for the record, I’m a writer, not an engineer. I have no clue what a script is or what it does at this juncture, nor am I inclined to find out. Thus, I’m going to think for about thirty seconds to figure out what could be causing the problem, and I generalize that websites with large numbers of ads crash the whole browser. Firefox, anyway. Chrome does better, but all my bookmarks are on Firefox. Time to install an ad blocker.

Period 2: My Firefox is really getting fancy. I’m still using the Duck Duck Go search engine (read up on that adventure here if you haven’t already). The Adblock for Firefox I downloaded has its own privacy settings that I’ve enabled, so I’m no longer getting suggestions to post a comment on the news with Facebook, which makes me feel better about my privacy. I spend a lot of time with YouTube, so I’m also very excited to report that after clicking on about ten different videos, ads came up at the beginning of none. Also, the search results don’t suddenly jerk down to make room for two ads that I accidentally click because the intended video dodged. This is great.

Period 3: Hey, look at that. The sidebar ads on news sites are gone. No more ads on Facebook (Duck Duck Go had eliminated the ones that made me feel stalked. Now there are no ads at all). Pages are loading more quickly and without stopping my script. The last hour of Internet without people selling stuff has done wonders for my efficiency (though I admit it could have been even better if I’d been doing organic chemistry instead of looking for political updates and new music). On the whole, a worthy use of the thirty seconds to download the blocker.

So, now that I’ve proven that one can block ads, it’s probably high time to consider whether one should be blocking ads. Stay tuned. That exploration is coming soon.

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