Today is the Ides of March | Hacker News Reader

Today is the Ides of March

infoplease.com

14 pointsgrellas8 comments

I have a weird tic where I double-click words on a page and select paragraphs at random. This page, though, takes a double-click to mean "take me to a new tab, and search for more stuff about this particular word".

It's something the NY Times does as well, and I don't like it very much. Does anybody else notice this?

I have the same tic. It drives my boss crazy. I loathe the New York Times for this. Very frustrating! I also tend to draw squares with my mouse on my desktop. I don't know why.

Huh, I do this as well. It bothers me a lot if the "wrong" UI element has focus.

A couple of years ago (? -- how time flies), I followed someone's suggestion to use Adblock to block a specific .js file from the NYT that implemented this "clicky/do-y" feature. This was shortly after the new NYT site behavior appeared. The suggestion worked great and continues to do so.

(As for Adblock, I don't mind some non-invasive adverstising, but moving graphics and the like completely distract me. The only way I can use a site is to get such out of view.)

P.S. Adblock Plus, actually.

P.P.S. I'd been removing distracting items from page views on a case by case basis (attempt to use page; remove anything thereupon overly distracting me, on a one time basis using another Firefox extension). I no longer recall for certain, but it may have been the NYT's new behavior that finally tipped the balance and brought me to try Adblock Plus. As I think back on it, an interesting, if anecdotal, reflection on the perhaps unexpected incentive effects of site design.

Wikipedia paraphrasing of a related Shakespeare scene, which is one of my favorite ways to remember an important lesson:

Caesar saw the seer and joked "Well, the Ides of March have come," to which the seer replied "Ay, they have come, but they are not gone."

Interesting to know that the Ides of April is actually the 13th, which is too bad, because it's my favorite way of referring to tax day. Although I am prone to pedantry, I think I'll still keep referring to it that way.

Very informative, I had learned this long ago but had forgotten what "ides" really meant.

Beware.

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