If you read rec.sport.disc via Google Groups or some other spam-laden interface, I worked up an alternative with Yahoo Pipes. Here is a spam-filtered pipe of new RSD topics, and here is a spam-filtered pipe of all RSD messages.

Both those pages include various other subscription options, including RSS, e-mail, and others. Clicking any headline will bring you to the post in Google Groups, where you can read as usual. If there are certain authors you want to filter out you can use my Toadless script.

Another cool thing—and this is key—look for the “Clone” link on the filtered results above. This feature allows you to make your own version of the pipe (it has a nice, non-technical interface) should you want to filter out particular authors, or if the spammers change habits and stuff starts sneaking through. You can customize it to fit your own needs, and then use your cloned pipe instead of mine.

So far, the above plus Toadless pretty much fixes RSD for my purposes.

P.S. What you REALLY want is to subscribe to the pipes above using a newsreader. They are great for keeping up with various Ultimate weblogs and RSD at the same time (and any other sites that offer newsfeeds, for that matter). Google Reader is a great one, here’s a little intro from Google.

If you read rec.sport.disc via Google Groups, which lacks a killfile that you’d get with a dedicated usenet reader, and wish you could see less of Toad, I wrote a little script that hides his posts. You have to use Firefox with the Greasemonkey extension installed. If you are, click (toadless.user.js) to install my script, and it will hide Toad’s posts when you view a thread. Actually, it replaces them with an innocuous little placeholder, like so:

Also, you can pretty easily update it to hide posts from any user that you don’t want to read anymore. To do that, right-click the monkey in the lower-right corner of Firefox, and go to “Manage User Scripts” -> Toadless -> Edit. Scroll down to line 50 and follow the instructions there.

You might want to also check out my RSD spam workaround. Between this and that, RSD is readable to me again.

UPDATE 7/21/09: The script looks a little different from the example above, but the idea remains the same. It now plays nicer with Google’s expand/collapse code, and you can click any hidden post to reveal it, on the off-chance you need/want the context.

I had a couple relatively funny spam subjects in a row containing the word “pants,” so did a quick search of the 3,000+ or so spam GMail caught for me recently. 16 feature “pants”:

• Hold the enormous manfullness in your pants.
• Suddenly you feel that your pants have steel inside them.
• Your pants will be in order all the time.
• If you think that power in your pants is not good enough, check this pill out.
• US senator crapped his pants!
• A big equipment in your pants brings big fruits for hot chicks to pick up.
• You feel like a giant comparing to the midget in your pants?
• Feel your pants expand with the new formula
• The vigor in your pants will be unbreakable.
• More inches in your pants – more attention from female friends.
• Get king-kong in pants
• Change the turmoil in your pants with the blue pill.
• Now you don’t have to turn off the lights when you take off your pants.
• Chicks will be at a loss for words when you take your pants down.
• Unzip your pants knowing that you have a real treasure there.
• Your little friend in your pants is capable only for visiting toilets.
• The hard friend in your pants will look up into the sky.

“Manfullness,” I must work that one into my vocabulary.

“Are your pants in order all the time?” really wants to be a new way of asking somebody if they’ve got their shit together.

“Suddenly you feel that your pants have steel inside them.” Oh no… Can’t. Bend. Knees…

I do NOT want to know what medical condition “turmoil in your pants” alludes to.

At least a couple of these would make for good fortune cookies.

I’ve never used Ask Metafilter before, even though I paid them the $5 lifetime registration fee* over a year ago. Yesterday, finally, I asked my first question, “What was the first movie to feature an altered studio/production logo?“, and it’s been getting great replies. Being able to tap into the hive mind when you haven’t managed to attract a hive mind of your very own is incredibly cool. Terrific community they have over there.

* (Genius move on their part, not as a moneymaker, but because it turns out trolls are deterred by an incredibly small barrier to entry. By way of illustration, check out the Metafilter comments vs. YouTube comments side-by-side.)

How a Massachusetts psychotherapist fell for a Nigerian e-mail scam:

Still, Worley, faced with an e-mail that would, according to federal authorities, eventually lead him to join a gang of Nigerian criminals seeking to defraud U.S. banks, didn't hesitate. A few minutes after receiving Mbote's entreaty, he replied, "I can help and I am interested." His only question was how Mbote had found him, and he seemed satisfied with the explanation: that the South African Department of Home Affairs had supplied his name.

I just received an e-mail with the subject "74% of our members got laid." I'm sure they meant "paid". Goodness, what an embarrassing typo!

I just got an e-mail with this subject: "Single Christians in Your Area Are Looking For You."

It does not say what they want. It sounds ominous.