The fake Yelp review SEO problem

 A long time ago, almost certainly pre-pandemic, I stumbled upon a little hole-in-the-wall place that had an above-average grilled cheese sandwich, worth coming back for.

I recently found myself thinking about that sandwich and wondering where I found it and if the place was still open. I could visualize it (counter service, maybe in a food court or subway station or tunnel or similar indoor location) but my memory couldn't zoom out to see where it was or remember what it was called.

 

So, just on the off chance the algorithm would be on my side today, I googled grilled cheese near Yonge and Eglinton.

 

And got a Yelp page claiming to list the best grilled cheese near Yonge and Eglinton.

 

There were 10 restaurants on the list, which surprised me - restaurants around these parts tend to go for more elevated menu items. Some of them struck me as places that would never have grilled cheese (dessert cafes, sushi restaurants, etc.). However, the Yelp page quoted specific reviews explicitly mentioning grilled cheese, and some of them explicitly stated that the words "grilled cheese" appeared on their website, so I decided to click through and look at the menus.

 

Zero of those restaurants had grilled cheese on the menu. Zero of them. 

It was all SEO nonsense.

 

How does this help anyone?? How is it useful to Yelp to provide such clearly fake reviews, therefore rendering it so conspicuously unreliable as a source of reviews? How is it useful to the restaurants to have people looking for grilled cheese visit their websites - or perhaps even go there directly - when they don't have the grilled cheese we're craving??

 

If this had never happened to me, I'd still think of Yelp as "a website with reviews", and might still visit it or click through on search results from time to time. Now I think of it as a site with too high a density of falsehoods to be worth clicking through on, and it if it comes up in my search results I'll disregard it, even if it seems to have exactly what I'm looking for.

Horoscopes

Toronto Star: You don’t run away or give up on something just because it’s hard. Instead, you lean into the challenge. You’re adept at solving problems and creating actionable plans. Others often look to you for advice, leadership and support. You enjoy showing up for the people you care about. You know how to keep everyone grounded and safe. You’re patient, reserved and discerning. You know a good thing when it’s in front of you and waste no time in seizing the opportunity. This year, money may not buy happiness, but staying true to yourself and your values will.

 

Globe & Mail: For best results this year you need to be more of an observer. Instead of rushing into every new thing that comes along try standing back and watching what other people are doing. Learn from their mistakes and then do it right!

 

 

I love how these are almost opposites!

"Birds and animals, lots of different kinds"

I have this song stuck in my head that I remember from a childhood TV show, and I can find no evidence of it on the internet.

The lyrics:

Birds and animals, lots of different kinds

Wild ones and tame ones

On the farm and in the jungle

In your home and at the zoo

In the pet store too

Even dinosaurs from long ago

The tune is here.

 

I remember it being sung on close harmony by both male and female voices in a way that made me first think it was Sharon, Lois & Bram, but I can find no evidence that Sharon, Lois & Bram sang it. (Although as I replay the song in my head, I can only place two voices, one male and one female. However, that aspect of my memory isn't necessarily reliable.)

 

I'm nearly certain it's from a TV show, so it would have been a TV show available by antenna in Southern Ontario in the 1980s. 

It's highly unlikely that I imagined this or wrote it myself (it wouldn't have occurred to me to write a song like this without a rhymier rhyme scheme). Anyone have any idea where it did come from?

 

Discoverability is not morally neutral

I tend to learn about books/TV series/other creative works because I've seen it around, people are talking about it, it seems vaguely interesting, I think I'll check it out.

 

Occasionally, when I do check it out, I fall in love with it. Most creative works I don't fall in love with, but occasionally I do. I tend to have one primary fandom that I'm absolutely in love with going at any given time. I have no control over when this happens, and I have no control over when and how it switches to another primary fandom. 

And every once in a while - although certainly more often than I'd prefer! - I learn, long after falling in love with a creative work, that the creator is a gross person, which makes me no longer want to be a fan of the work. 

 

People in this situation often get rid of their books via used bookstores or libraries or little free libraries.

 

But the problem with that is it increases discoverability by people who might be like "Yeah, I've heard of that, it seems vaguely interesting, I think I'll check it out!" but aren't into it enough to know why the creator of the work is gross.

 

Which could then lead them into this very unwanted situation of falling in love with the work, and being in love with a work by a gross creator.

 

This is a problem. Discoverability is not morally neutral - especially when the creator is still alive and using their money to do harm or protect themselves from the consequences of harm they've done.

 

As a reader/viewer, I don't want to be emotionally attached to works by a gross creator. It has happened entirely too often! I would very much like product labelling and curation norms to protect me from this by making me aware of the issues before make the decision to read/watch.

 

***

 

What do I mean by "protect me"?

 

An example of this is the societal norms surrounding labelling/classifying/marketing/curating sexual content.

 

I have certainly in my life encountered sexual content that I'd rather not have seen, but in every instance, I felt like "Well, what did I expect?"

 

When I was 11 I had the chance to stealthily watch an R-rated movie, and quickly became uncomfortable as it referenced aspects of sex that were far too advanced for me to even think about. Well, what did I expect? It's 18+!

 

Sometimes I've clicked on questionable links and seen thoroughly unappealing porn. Well, what did I expect? I clicked on a questionable link!

 

Some (but not all) of the sexual content aspects of Monty Python made me uncomfortable watching as a teenager (and others made me uncomfortable watching with my parents in the room). Well, what did I expect? It was introduced to me as irreverent, boundary-pushing humour written by a male comedy troupe!

 

This sense of "well, what did I expect?" is useful! I want that every time I come across something I didn't actually want to see!

 

However, this sense of "what did I expect?" doesn't seem to work for other types of content that I might want to be warned about. For example, I didn't anticipate the racism in Monty Python. I'm not able to explain why I was able to anticipate the sexual content but not the racism, but something about it didn't end up working out for me the way I wanted to.

 

This needs to be fixed somehow. We need a way for audience members - especially ignorant audience members - to be effectively forewarned, like we are with sexual content. 

 

The big problem for me with racism and Monty Python is that I wasn't worldly enough to perceive it. But if I had gone in forewarned, and if I had decided to watch it anyway (Teenage Me might have watched it anyway to see what the big deal is), I would have kept an eye out, asked questions (I would have been comfortable asking my parents and they would have answered), and come away more informed.  

But instead, I stumbled upon something I didn't even know was racist and went around gleefully talking it up to everyone who would listen for decades.  Much like how, multiple times, I've stumbled upon - and become emotionally attached to - works that I would never have given the time of day if I had known in advance that the creator was a bad person I don't want to support, and gleefully promoted those works to other people.

 

***

 

I don't know what the answer is for the problem of unwanted discoverability of gross creators. I don't want to burn books or ban books. I just don't want to fall in love with any more works by gross creators without being aware of the problems.

 

Maybe a useful approach would be to treat works by gross creators the way you would obscure reference books. They aren't the shelves, but you can pull them from the stacks or order them on request - not because they're banned, but rather because there's higher priority for shelf space. That way, people won't accidentally stumble on them and innocently fall in love with them - you have to know about them to ask for them, and, if we normalize this approach, the fact that they're not on the shelf might lead people to think "Oh, what if this is problematic?"

 

I'm sure other people who are smarter than me can also think of other useful approaches. And hopefully some of these people are in charge of curation and discoverability.

Bring back the Canada Post Comparison Shopper to help Canadians buy Canadian

In 2010, Canada Post introduced a tool called the Canada Post Comparison Shopper, which let you compare prices and shipping costs from a huge range of different online retailers.

 

Here is a news release from when the Canada Post Comparison Shopper was first launched, and here is my blog post from when I discovered it.

 

This tool helped me discover all kinds of new stores I never would have come across on my own and get amazing deals that I never thought possible. I mourned the day it was discontinued - I've never found a replacement that's anywhere near comparable!

 

As Canadians work together to disentangle ourselves from the United States of America, the time has come to bring back the Canada Post Comparison Shopper.

 

It could be a quick, easy way to search Canadian retailers for the specific product you're only been able to find on Amazon, or for a Canadian alternative or non-US alternative to the American product you've been using for ages. 

They could provide options to filter for Canadian-made products, or filter out US-made products, or filter out foreign-owned retailers.

 

Currently, the comparison shopping tools available to us are controlled by American oligarchs and run on algorithms designed to enrich them.

 

The Canada Post Comparison Shopper was a public good designed to benefit Canadians and Canada. In this, our moment of need, it's time to resurrect it.

When writing alt text, answer the question: "What am I looking at here?"

A common piece of advice when writing alt text is "How would you describe it to a friend?"

Building on this, a variation I've found useful is to imagine your friend responds to your post with "What am I looking at here?"

 

For example, suppose your post is:

What an asshole!

[img]

 

Your friend replies with "What am I looking at here?"

The answer might be "The white truck somehow managed to take up four parking spaces!" or "That guy's hat is ridiculous!" or "Remember Jim who used to beat me up in middle school? That's him walking down the street!"

Suppose your post is:

I had a visitor today!

[img]

 

Your friend asks "What am I looking at here?"

The answer might be "A tiny little floofy bird perched on my window ledge and let me get super close to take a picture!" or "My friend who's been living in England came over to visit!" or "I'm babysitting my baby cousin!"

The phrasing of the alt text wouldn't be precisely the same as the phrasing of your response to "What am I looking at here?", but your answer to that question helps you pinpoint what needs to be included and emphasized in your alt text.

How I excised dessert forks from my life and from my memory

I was recently pondering why a standard silverware set has two sizes of spoons, but only one size each of forks and knives.

Googling around the idea, I discovered that commercially-available silverware sets do in fact have two sizes of forks - regular forks, and smaller dessert forks.

But why doesn't mine have those?

Then I remembered why I swore off dessert forks...

Once upon a time, back when we were small children, my sister was setting the table. She put a regular fork at every place setting except mine. At my place setting, she put a dessert fork, saying it's a smaller, baby fork because I'm a baby.

I didn't want to be a baby! I didn't want the humiliation of eating with a small baby fork when everyone else is eating with proper grownup forks!

So I stopped using them.

When one appeared at my place setting, I'd swap it out for a normal fork. When we were having cake, I'd use a normal fork. I never once touched or even thought about dessert forks.

 

Fastforward 15ish years.

I was preparing to move into my own apartment by appropriating kitchenware from my parents' kitchen. I took some forks and some knives and some big spoons and some little spoons, and didn't take any of the other irrelevant objects in the cutlery drawer.

I start out with what I appropriated from my parents, building my cutlery drawer over the years with a trip to Kitchen Stuff Plus whenever I ran out of something before the dishwasher got full. I never sought out new types of cutlery because I never had any reason to, just kept buying more of the same.

 

 

And after approximately 20 years of proceeding this way (and, perhaps, with the help of a head injury), my brain at some point deleted and overwrote the very existence of dessert forks.

All because one time my sister wanted to mock me via the medium of silverware.

Hotel Hollywood (elementary school play)

When I was in elementary school (so sometime between 1985 and 1990), my school put on a school play called Hotel Hollywood.

I wasn't in the play, but it really stuck with me - I even mentally wrote what I didn't yet know was called fanfiction about it.

However, I'm not able to find any evidence of its existence on the recorded internet.

So here is everything I can remember about the elementary school play called Hotel Hollywood, which I encountered in the 1980s, but might be older than that.

- There was a character called Quiggley and a character called Quiggy. I remember them as being unaffiliated with each other, although in retrospect that seems less likely. (Although I also remember experiencing the emotion of being surprised that Quiggley and Quiggy were unaffiliated with each other, so perhaps it was a deliberate red herring.)

- One of the characters was a Shirley Temple expy with her hair in ringlets.

- One of the characters was a girl whose father made her dress up as a boy so she could be a partner in his business. (The play was set in the non-specific (to my child self) Olden Days when a girl couldn't be a partner in a business.)

- When the girl dressed as a boy comes out as a girl, she sings a song that starts with "I'm a girl, I'm a girl, I'm a girl, I'm a girl, I'm gonna let my hair flow free."

- The only other song I remember from the play:

We're gonna be in the movies

We're gonna be in the movies

A Hollywood motion picture show

We're gonna be in the movies

We're gonna be in the movies

A Hollywood star that everyone will know

I want to sing the latest love song

Step the latest dance

Be a hero! Be a clown!

Comedy or romance

We're gonna be in the movies

The glitter glamour movies

A Hollywood motion picture show!

"Movie star, gonna drive around in a fancy car"

 I have a song in my head and the internet is failing me. 

The line I remember is something very similar to "I'm gonna be a movie star, gonna drive around in a fancy car"

I've made an approximate rendering of the tune here, although it doesn't make sense from a music theory perspective so one or both of the higher notes might be a semitone off.

I remember first hearing this song in childhood (so sometime between 1980 and 1990, although it's possible it's older). I remember the singer as being female. It may have been a song in a cartoon.

I have a vague impression that it's from Jem and the Holograms, but none of the titles on Wikipedia's list of songs from Jem and the Holograms match this song.

 

It is not "Drive my Car" by The Beatles or "I’m Stoned in Love with You" by The Stylistics (or any cover thereof).

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

Wanted: a shared experience that makes it feel like life is getting better

When our library accounts finally came back online, I could feel a frisson pass through both Internet Toronto and Real-Life Toronto. The news ricocheted through the city, we all dropped everything and ran to be reunited with our holds lists...and promptly crashed the site!

Still, the spirits were high - "We hugged it to death!" squeed one redditor - and millions of Torontonians spread the news, rejoiced, and did a happy dance while they waited their turn for the 503 error to go away.

I hadn't felt that very specific emotion in quite some time, and, after some thought, I realized what it reminded me of: vaccine hunting.

When COVID vaccines first became available, everyone rushed to sign up and promptly crashed the site. But we spread the news enthusiastically, shared tips for finding an appointment, and squeed at each other as we got in.

It's a very specific emotion: a shared experience that makes you feel like life is getting better.

I haven't felt that in so long - not since I was queued up for a mass vaxx clinic at the community centre - and I didn't think I'd ever feel it again.

In the first year of the pandemic, I was confident I'd feel that feeling again. Everyone was working to make things better, we were all in this together, surely one day we'd delight in the shared experience of things being better again!

Except...they never got better again. Those in power just stopped addressing it, and in fact took away some of the tools we can use to address it individually.

So I wasn't expecting to experience this solidarity of life getting better ever again, which made it a particular delight to experience when the library came back online!

But...the only reason we got to experience this feeling of something getting better is because someone did harm by cyberattacking the library!

Is there any hope for things to get better for everyone without getting worse first??

***

Some people are able to experience this feeling of a shared experience of life getting better through activism, but that just doesn't work for me and hasn't for a long time. Activism seems more and more about desperately fighting to stop things from getting worse. It feels like victories aren't even improvements any more, just temporary respites.

When I try to think of examples of activism resulting in things actually getting better rather than just stopping them from getting worse, the most recent thing that comes to mind is the legalization of same-sex marriage, which was over 20 years ago.

Is stuff getting better for everyone without first getting worse even a possibility any more? Because I sure wouldn't mind experiencing that emotion again!

How to open the pump on Dove Advanced Care hand wash

Dove Advanced Care Deep Moisture hand wash has been a lifesaver as the eczema on my hands has gotten increasingly sensitive since this past summer. I'm no longer dreading washing my hands! (Although I still do have to be diligent about moisturizing after each and every wash.)

However, I find the pumps nearly impossible to open! I rotate and rotate and rotate them, but they just don't open like every other pump bottle I've ever owned has.

So after extensive trial and error, I've discovered how to actually open these bottles.

 

Where to grasp the pump

1. Unscrew the lid and pull the whole pump and tube out of the bottle.

2. Grasp the tube under the lid, where you can see a spring inside the tube.

3. Twist the top of the pump counterclockwise as directed.

4. Once the pump pops up, you can put it back in the bottle and put the lid back on.

 

 

Somehow, with this specific kind of bottle and pump, taking it off the bottle and grasping the part lets it open easily where my usual ways of opening these kinds of bottles don't work.

However, it would be better if the Dove corporation could adjust the kinds of pumps they use so they open like normal bottle pumps.

Firefox's translation feature needs to be suppressed on pages that already have an official target language version

Recent versions of Firefox have a "translate this page" function that pops up if it detects that the webpage is in a language other than the preferred language indicated in your settings.

They need to figure out a way to stop this from automatically popping up when an official version of the page exists in your preferred language.

 

For example, if I, with my default English settings, end up on the French version of the federal government's COVID wastewater monitoring dashboard, a conspicuous "Translate this page" bubble pops up front and centre. 

This is a problem, because an official English version of the page exists. You can access it by clicking the English link on the top right. And the automatically translated version is never going to be as good or as authoritative as the official English version.

Screenshot of linked page, with the English link at the top right highlighted

 

People outside of translation/language intersection spaces don't always know that pages with multiple language versions exist, but they are common, especially in institutional (government, education, etc.) spaces that provide official information.

 

Firefox's translation feature needs to avoid distracting these uninformed users from the existence of the official multilingual versions that they may not even know to look for.

So how do you do that from a programming perspective?

Preliminary idea to build on: what if the translation feature could detect the name of the target language in the target language? If the user has English set as their default language, it detects the word "English" on the page. Perhaps it could highlight it? Perhaps the translation feature could say "An official version may exist"?

This wouldn't catch every instance. Some websites use abbreviations (en, fr, de, es, pl) and some websites use flags. However, there may be a finite number of ways that these are coded, or commonalities to the scripts used to switch the language, or indicators in the metadata.

Another possibility would be to have the pop-up appear elsewhere on the page (maybe towards the bottom left of the visible portion?) so it's less likely to cover the link to the official version. 

In any case, however well-intentioned this automatic translation feature is, it needs to avoid making it difficult to find the official version of the page in the target language.