As part of my quest towards DOT technology, I’ve been trying to find an easy to install text-based web browser. But it is a challenge to find one on Mac that isn’t terminal based or require a lot of tinkering and 3 hours spent installing Python dependencies or whatever.

While I continue searching for one that “just works when you install it” (like any normal standalone Mac app), I have been enjoying a Firefox extension for the time being called Image Video Block.

I’ve been wondering if this is a form of iconoclasm, the breaking of the icons or images (with long historical precedent). The refusal to be governed and held sway by images being fired at high velocities and high brightnesses into your brain constantly, and the subtle continuous violence that tends to do to your thinking, without you being always constantly aware of it.

I disabled in that extension images, video, “media” (whatever that means), Flash, SVG’s and canvas (I think that’s a reference to HTML5). It’s weird to get used to a little at first, but interestingly also…. it’s NOT that weird to get used to. Some little buttons might be missing on certain sights, but browsing the web without all the junky image garbage seems liberating, refreshing. And, of course, you can allow-list certain domains, like I did for Wikipedia (where it now is slightly shocking to see images show up, after browsing around mostly without any elsewhere).

There’s a rant I want to go on about computers, cell phones, screens greedily gobbling up one’s “visual cone” (leading to obsessive and repetitive behaviors) but I’m still working out my thoughts on that. But breaking the images, dulling down all the shiny surfaces, turn off the colors, radically reducing functionality and intentionally adopting limits with technology seems to me right now like a Narrow Road to Happiness™. Probably won’t work for everyone not willing to let go of a lot of the things technology promises as “good” (but which are actually bad – like always-on notifications), but it works for me, right here, right now.

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