You don’t realize how much you are being tracked, until you can see it.
Thank you, Ghostery. A simple browser plugin that does a great job at showing just who is tracking your web browsing habits.
Even if you don’t use it to block anything, just to see how heavily you’re tracked is enlightening.
(h/t emartin)
Stuff From Hsoi 
/etc/hosts is where much of my ad and tracking blocking happens. I sorely miss it on my iPhone.
Flash cookies go to /dev/null.
Ad Block Plus and NoScript handle the rest.
Combined, these make the Internet not suck. I don’t know how some people live with IE. It must be hell.