tern-based strategy

i cast spell of Steal All Your Food fandom blogging over at caladblog

[bigbigbigtruck]

A couple weeks ago, on bsky Trung Le Nguyen said (paraphrasing) "if it feels like the wrong people are dying it may be because there are more beloved people than bastards" and lord how I have been clinging to that sentence

[should-be-sleeping]

You are 60% water and every lake, river, pond, swamp, creek, and ocean you encounter wants to reclaim it desperately. Be careful out there.

[should-be-sleeping]

[should-be-sleeping]

Good, I hope it haunts everyone about to enter a body of water so bad that they wear a life jacket. 🙌

[should-be-sleeping]

Every single person I knew (past tense) who has drowned was "a strong swimmer." Water in the wild does not care how good you are at swimming.

[should-be-sleeping]

I mean this with all due respect:

You are not going to pass a skillcheck against a rip current once it has you.

Waves will not bow to your physical prowess no matter how impressive.

Shock does not care that you used to be on your school swim team.

If you hit your head, being good at swimming isn't going to turn you face-up while you're unconscious.

You may be unable to return to shore. Rescue may be unable to find you quickly.

[joanthreatt]

Scheduling this for when weather starts warming up. Be careful swimming this summer

[oberonsson]

Dame Archer kicks McDougal’s Scots ass there in the rain at the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire - August 11, 2018 - Photo by Douglas Herring

[anarcho-wormism-deactivated2019]

😮

[garrettauthor]

Oh NO.

[treacleaergia]

me, a sheltered noblewoman: Pray who is that brave knight? Dame Archer:*turns around* me: gasp! *instantly in love*

[dirtyriver]

Alicia Archer

[ex-sang-uination]

my bi heart………

[ohmightysmiter]

I’VE NEVER SEEN THE ADDED PICS

[hrefnatheravenqueen]

[nyx-belial]

*dies*

[garrettauthor]

Oh shit.

[notlostonanadventure]

GAY KNIGHTS

[unicornofdarknessstuff-deactiva]

Fellas I’m real gay

[thecarrott]

@0hheytherebigbadwolf HELP!!

[0hheytherebigbadwolf]

Every June this inevitably winds up back on my dash. And I appreciate that. And I will reblog it. Every time.

[rockitcat]

Hey, it’s @archerinventive, and the Pride Knights!

[kawuli]

random PSA, I know a lot of people use duckduckgo as a Google alternative search engine, but it always kind of annoyed me when I was using it because it felt like No Name Brand Google

I have switched to using Startpage.com and vastly prefer it. for one thing, instead of displaying an "AI summary" at the top of the search results (unless you turn it off, yes I know), it displays the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, with link, whenever it finds one that's relevant.

also a waaayyyyy better sense of design than duckduckgo

also private, European based, least annoying search I've used lately (RIP old "don't be evil" Google)

[yomikoreadsbooks]

Keeping a list of Google alternatives just in case…

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

i have one of those, scraped from multiple different rec posts:

Search Engines

Infinity Search is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy

DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and are put off by the thought of their every query being tracked and logged. Uses bangs, ![site] for in-page search (sells your data to microsoft and draws from fucking bing)

WolframAlpha is a privately owned search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase, and AI technology.” A data search engine.

Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards. It allows you to search forums and then filter down results by date and language.

Based in France, Qwant is a privacy-based search engine that won’t record your searches or use your personal details for advertising. Uses “&” as a bang search.

Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt, which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked. Metasearch across multiple engines. 

Offering unbiased results from several sources, SearX is a metasearch engine that aims to present a free, decentralized view of the internet. Can be self-hosted. 

Gibiru’s tagline is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers. Requires AnonymoX Firefox add-on for privacy. 

Disconnect allows you to conduct anonymous searches through a search engine of your choice.

Swisscows provides fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. Built-in violence/porn filter cannot be overridden. 

MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymised search. A plugin will allow it to be made a default.

Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers real-time information without tracking your data, keeping you hidden from marketers and spammers. Variety of filtration and refinement options for searching. 

Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the web. By not using any third-party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse. Has a Chrome extension to allow use in toolbar. 

https://search.marginalia.nu/ an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Use old-school searching rather than query-based for the best results. 

https://www.mojeek.com/ 

https://wiby.me/ - It’s goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. 

https://4get.ca/ it works a lot like SearX, but honestly better. It doesn’t have its own index, but pulls from many others. I think it’s the best for research, since it allows you to search for answers from different indexes, is easy to configure, add free, and avoids censorship as much as it can.

https://www.searchenginemap.com/ for more on how search engines relate to each other.

https://yep.com/ is a crawler

https://www.etools.ch/ retrieves from Google, Mojeek, Bing, and Yandex, like Searx

https://www.dogpile.com/ 

https://searxng.org/ (next gen Searx)

https://luxxle.com/ - possibly conservative?

https://presearch.com/ - good for academic?

https://kagi.com/smallweb - free/randomised Kagi.

Other Searchers

www.refseek.com - Academic Resource Search. More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.

www.worldcat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.

https://link.springer.com - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.

www.bioline.org.br is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.

http://repec.org - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.

www.science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.https://cosine.club/ is an electronic music similarity search engine

[bumblebeebats]

The crazy thing is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, if you asked me on any given day "Would like to see a picture of some genitals?" my answer would be "😰 No, that's... No, thank you. I'm okay, actually." I have nothing but the utmost respect for people who do engage with the penis side of the internet, but personally, I've spent the better part of two decades doing all I can NOT to have pictures of dick and balls or sexy bikini babe buttcheeks blasted onto my retinas constantly. And yet... to be denied the penis? To have a jumped up pile of javascript tell me, a grown adult with an air fryer and an outstanding council tax bill, that I cannot be trusted to withstand the sight of a bare nipple unless I let it scan my drivers' license? I will move heaven and earth to see that fucking nipple, friend. I will walk a thousand miles barefoot on hot coals before I give you big brother bitches my passport number. A thousand miles through the desert with five VPNs just to press my face up against the glass and see the last uncensored picture of two My Little Pony Characters sixty-nining each other, and I don't even want! to look at it! But I will! I must! for the sake of our fucking democracy!

[artisanalvoid]

i think that tobacco companies have figured out a way to advertise in the collective unconscious because i just had an Incredibly vivid dream about smoking a cigarette. it tasted delicious. i could feel the heat of the flame from the lighter. i have never once in the real world smoked a cigarette, or spent a lot of time around people while they were smoking, or had the slightest positive association with cigarettes. one grandfather died of lung cancer before i was born and the other was a nasty & deeply unpleasant person with a two-packs-a-day habit. And Yet

[thehmn]

There’s a college in my city that has a rumor that there’s a secret basement below the known basement that can only be accessed via some hidden stairs scattered around the school or by pressing a secret number sequence in some of the elevators. The staff at the school are super annoyed by this and have no idea where this rumor started.

But I know. I think it was me.

In my defense I never intended to start a rumor. Many years ago I worked as a cleaner at the school and one evening I had to transport one of those big floor washing machines from the basement to the second level via the elevator. When the doors opened a very confused looking man stood inside. He was one of those slicked back gym-bro IT guys and made no movement to get out. The elevator wouldn’t fit him, me and the machine so I asked “Where are you going? Up or down?”

He gave me a smug shit-eating grin and said “Down?” in a mocking tone.

It took me a second to realize that of course he wasn’t going down, we were in the basement, but his look and tone annoyed me so much I refused to admit I misspoke and instead said “Yeah, down. I don’t know if you’re going to the second basement”

His smile disappeared “There’s a second basement?”

“Yeah but it sounds like you don’t have access to it so I guess you’re going up? I’ll just wait”

I never thought of it as anything other than a funny story to tell about that time I got so annoyed with a guy that I invented an entire second basement, but it turns out he probably refused to believe a cleaner fooled him and the story spread.

[iravaid]

Visit Original Link

On conservation and survival

[hope-for-the-planet]

This brought tears to my conservationist heart today.

The continued existence of these species is the legacy of so many people whose names we will never know--some of who never lived to see the impacts of their work.

When you count up the flaws of our species, you have to count the good things too--out of the many species throughout Earth's history that have caused the demise or endangerment of other species, we are the only one that tries to fix it out of our fascination and love for other life forms.

(Big thank you to the anonymous asker who sent this in!)

[hope-for-the-planet]

Earth Day reblog of this thing that made me cry.

And I'll add some other recent good conservation news.

•Green sea turtles are no longer endangered

•Giant pandas are no longer endangered

•Panamanian golden frogs were returned to the wild for the first time since they were wiped out by chytrid 17 years ago

•The Eastern humpback whale population has exceeded pre-whaling numbers and many other whale species are showing strong signs of recovery

•Salmon and bison have been returned to their former habitat in multiple parts of the US through dam removal, habitat restoration, and reintroduction

•The Western monarch migration was up 60% compared to last year

•Galapagos tortoises were reintroduced to Floreana for the first time in 180 years

•Attenborough's long beaked echidna was rediscovered after being though extinct for decades

•Five "lost" island bird species were documented by citizen scientist birders in 2025

Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die.

[maxknightley]

being a jack of all trades is dope as fuck honestly. it's like I'm doing crop rotation inside my own brain

[technofinch]

Starting a new sports team called the Tampa Bay Trespassers and they play any sport that they can break onto the field of

[aliasalias]

when i grow up i wanna be a dandelion

[cheese24k]

[ceramicpuppyclown]

reblog for easter

[winemom-culture]

forget april fools day its almost time for the best video on this entire fuckin planet

[scabrrielle]

sunglasses. no sun. it’s cloudy: overcast. 

[thegroovyarchives]

1977 Learning to use your Crayola crayons . . . booklet (via: archive.org)

[indelicateink]

oh my god, that booklet is everything??? click through. it should still come with every packet of crayons by law.

(forgive my quick shitty screencaps. seriously, click through. neat)

[caladblog]

just this week at work i've been called Ma'am and Sir, and been referred to with He, She, and They

which means i've finally done it

i've become An Individual of Mysterious and Indistinct Gender

[artisanalvoid]

been working here over a year now & this still happens regularly btw. and it Rules 🏳️‍⚧️

[kim-jong-chill]

i need feminism because when jesus does a magic trick it’s a goddamn miracle but when a woman does a magic trick she gets burned at the stake

[mattheuphonium-blog]

fabulous 

[tockthewatchdog-deactivated2020]

i mean they did also kill jesus. that was a pretty significant thing that happened. like i understand where you’re coming from here but they very much did kill jesus.

[counterpunches]

#HAPPY GOOD FRIDAY

[artisanalvoid]

Item: A Half-blank Notebook Rarity: ⏶ Common

What video game do you most regret not finishing?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

hmmmmmmm when i like something i tend to 100% it, and i don't tend to regret not spending time on things i don't like

i suppose Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies? i adore Failbetter's writing and art and atmosphere, but the format of those games just failed to grab me. little flecks of story interspersed in large bouts of meditative nothing. i wanted to be super into them (ive been playing Fallen London basically nonstop since october 2017) but i just wasn't.

although A House of Many Doors has basically the same format and that DID grab me... idk

[hippieghost]

This is a tea checkpoint.

Is your tea getting cold?

Did you turn on your kettle and forget about it and now the water is cold again?

Is the tea bag still in?

Did you intend to start the tea making process and forget?

Congratulations! You remember now.