A (northern) Kentucky State Of Mind

Just some of the things I've been pondering. 35.

[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

[simply-a-dream]

“don’t take it personally” how would you like me to take it then? professionally? romantically? academically?

[creative-anchorage]

[suriandtaal]

[pronouncingitwang]

at some point in your life you will be boiling fruit, water, sugar, and lemon juice in a pot to make a syrup or jam. the instructions will tell you to simmer for a certain amt of time. your timer will go off and you will look at the pot and go, "hm, this doesn't look thick enough. maybe i'll let it go for another 10 minutes." this is the devil speaking. it's only so liquid right now because it is at boiling point. it will thicken when it cools down. learn from the follies of my youth and do not let this happen to you

[yokowan]

at some point in your life you will be making a sauce or a stew in which you need to add cornstarch to thicken it. and you will prepare a slurry of starch in cold water and think "this looks like way too little starch to thicken this amount of liquid." this is the devil speaking. cornstarch instantly polymerizes at 95°C and if you add too much it will turn into an impossibly thick goop.

[le-jardin-inculte]

at some point in your life you will be making some sort of cream based dessert that requires gelatin to thicken it. and you will soak some gelatin sheets in water and think "this is too few gelatin sheets for this amount of cream." this is the devil speaking. it will thicken in the fridge and if you add too much you will end up with milk jelly

[shithowdy]

at some point in your life you will be baking cookies. you will take the sheet out after twelve minutes as the recipe instructs and the cookies will still be glistening and soft. "these don't seem cooked enough," you will think to yourself, "i should place them back into the oven until their edges are nice and golden." this is the devil talking. this is how you get dry, overdone cookies. the cookies will continue to bake on the warm sheet for several more minutes and then harden up after sitting on a rack for a while. trust the process. trust the process.

[averagekyjoe]

Land of Dreams

America is a land of dreamsProvided you have the $100,000 buy-inTo invest in a market that isMore than excited to take your fortune for spinWe run this country like a casinoBringing in the disparate and the desperateWho briefly get to rub shouldersWith the high rollersRegulars take their chances at the slotsAfraid of throwing away their shotPrayers sent up hoping they get hotAnd somehow come home…

Land of Dreams

[raccoonmilf]

My therapist: “Well, you found two different types of beer cheese dip you like already, so even if the are both discontinued, logically speaking, that means you must like different ingredient combos that make beer cheese dip.”

Me: “No. All other beer cheese dips are shit. These are the only two I like and will ever like.”

My therapist: “Here, I will show you the ingredients so you can see that you like different things.”

My therapist: …

Me: …

My therapist: “These two brands have the exact same ingredients. They are exactly the same. This is the same beer cheese in different packaging.”

[raccoonmilf]

This reminds me of when I was in 9th grade and I went to my favorite pizza place with my mom and ordered a lemonade and I took a sip and was like “they changed the lemonade. This is Minute Maid. They changed the lemonade. Why did they change the lemonade?” And so my mom called the waitress over and was like “Did you guys change the lemonade to Minute Maid?” And the waitress went “no, it’s the exact same as it’s always been.” And so I start crashing out because I feel insane and I KNOW this lemonade has been changed to Minute Maid. So my mom calls over the owner who she’s friends with and I’m in tears and my mom asks and the owner said she had no idea, so she goes into the back and comes back

Yeah. They changed it to Minute Maid.

[maryschild]

[lavender-annd-lilac]

Nooooo when he did the “omg what if it’s an injured animal we have to help” voice I died 😂😂😂

[jonnyinthewell]

I’m bored and you know what fuck you so here’s historical musicals as people at the neighborhood bbq:

Hamilton: the host of the bbq. Nice enough guy, but won’t shut the fuck up. Everyone likes him, but he insists you make other friends.

Evita: Constantly gossiping about people she hates. For some reason all the stories are from a biased, British point of view.

Come From Away: Life. Of. The. Party. He is dancing. He is singing. He is stealing your grill and jumping in the river. He loves you and you love him.

Chess: We aren't entirely sure he’s the guy we invited. He keeps showing up to these things but he’s completely different every time. We’ve just accepted it at this point.

Assassins: Quiet neighbor standing off to the side with a mini can of coke and a gun. Lectures you about gun safety if you get too close.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson: Young guy who won’t stop cracking jokes. Yeah, he’s funny, but it’s getting a bit self aware and depressing. Wont stop talking about how his life sucks in particular.

Suffs: Loud young woman who is bringing politics into every conversation she can. She may be a lesbian and she’s definitely a feminist and she won’t leave you alone.

1776: Hamilton’s father. Old guy. A hoot. Everybody claims to be his friend but very few a actually enjoy his company. He is aware of this and it saddens him greatly.

Newsies: scrappy teen following Suffs about and ranting about his own political issues. The two of them hype each other up and everyone just kind of lets them do their thing.

Cabaret: Older woman who’s a lot of fun to be around and then she gets a bit drunk and starts traumadumping and saying things that make you extremely uncomfortable, but you have to stick around to make sure she’s okay. Floyd Collins: He’s not here he’s stuck in a cave somewhere. Operation Mincemeat: Funny guy who you soon realize has a lot of layers and complexity, but you never really get to delve into that before he goes back to the snack table.

Ragtime: Older guy wasting absolutely no time in telling everyone stories that really bring the mood down. But make no mistake. We love this guy. We protect him at all costs.

Spies Are Forever: Currently going rogue and announcing the discovery of a kidnapping plot over the karaoke machine

Six: She was too cool to be here. Off filming a TikTok at someone else’s party or something

Bonnie & Clyde: sketchy couple who will not separate. Theyre either codependent, coconspirators, or both

Dead Outlaw: the preserved corpse we brought for entertainment

[spacehippieface]

[spacehippieface]

[cosmicretreat]

[averagekyjoe]

Here's an old 'Good Friday' #Poem from me. Enjoy!

Good Friday

[depsidase]

[findingfeather]

Tangentially related, but: I have observed that a thing a lot of a certain kind of people miss about the Sam Vimes stories is how much time in them Vimes spends:

a) Being wrong. b) Fucking up. GENUINELY fucking up. And suffering consequences of fucking up. c) REALIZING he's been wrong. d) Trying as best he can to adjust to that.

I've noted before that you could subtitle every single Vimes book as "Vimes Finds Out He's Wrong About [Blank]". "Vimes Finds Out He's Wrong About The World Not Being Worth It". "Vimes Finds Out He's Wrong About Affirmative Action." "Vimes Finds Out He's REALLY REALLY Wrong About Golems." "Vimes Finds Out He's Wrong About Klatch And International Everything". "Vimes Finds Out He's Wrong About Dwarfs." "Vimes Finds Out He's Wrong About The Past Being Better/Not Wanting To Be A Commander." "Vimes Finds Out He's STILL Wrong About Dwarfs, and Also Vampires, and Also Trolls". "Vimes Finds Out He's Wrong About Goblins and Is Really Upset About It."

And so on. And that is actually a very important part of Vimes because if he was not both able and willing to realize that he's wrong about shit he would just be a very bad person. A very self-righteous bad person. Captain Swing, in Night Watch, is utterly correct: he and Vimes are very, very similar people. It's just Findthee Swing knows he's right.

And Vimes is actually always open to the possibility he's totally wrong, even if he's not happy about that.

Vimes isn't perfect. Vimes isn't even always in the moral right - Vimes starts out Feet of Clay just as bad as anyone else in the story, Dragon King of Arms included, about golems. He starts his place in the story as casually racist, sexist and everything else ist as is standard for the society around him, and his voyage to becoming something else is through his own failures and it too is imperfect.

My absolute favourite Samuel Vimes moment is actually from Thud! but it's not the one you think it is, probably. It's this one:

The dwarfs were clustered nervously by the duty officer's desk. They had that opulence of metalwork, sleekness of beard and thickness of girth that marked them out as dwarfs who were doing very well for themselves, or who had been right up until now.

Vimes appeared in front of them like a whirlwind of wrath.

You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters! You heads-down little scurriers in the dark! What did you bring to my city? What were you thinking? Did you want the deep-downers here? Did you dare deplore what Hamcrusher said, all that bile and ancient lies? Or did you say "Well, I don't agree with him, of course, but he's got a point"? Did you say, "Oh he goes too far but it's about time somebody said it"? And now, have you come here to wring your hands and say how dreadful, it was nothing to do with you? Who were the dwarfs in the mobs, then? Aren't you community leaders? Were you leading them? And why are you here now, you ugly snivelling grubbers? Is it possible, is it possible, that now, after that bastard's bodyguards tried to kill my family, you're here to complain? Have I broken some code, trodden on some ancient toe? To hell with it. To hell with you.

He could feel the words straining, fighting to get out, and the effort of restraining them filled his stomach with acid and made his temples throb. Just one whine, he thought. Just one pompous moan. Go on.

[...]

"Gentlemen," he said, keeping his eye on the grag but talking to the room at large, "I know all of you, you all know me. You're all respected dwarfs with a stake in this city. I want you to vouch for Mr Bashfullsson, because I've never met him before in my life. Come on, Setha, I've known you for years, what do you say?"

"They killed my son," said Ironcrust.

A knife dropped into Vimes's head. It slipped down his windpipe, sliced his heart, cut through his stomach and disappeared. Where the rage had been, there was a chill.

"I'm sorry, commander," said Bashfullsson quietly. "It's true. I don't think Gunder Ironcrust was interested in the politics, you understand. He just took a job at the mine because he wanted to feel like a real dwarf and work with a shovel for a few days."

"They left him to the mud," said Ironcrust, in a voice that was eerily without emotion. "Any help you need, we will give. Any help. But when you find them, kill them all."

Bolding mine. There's some bits in the middle there where the moment moves from the duty room to his office, etc, but the important through line is that one and it's a double-whammy: not only that in the moment of discovering the loss that faces another father, Vimes is absolutely thrown completely out of his righteous rage and resentment of days despite it being fed by a quasi-demonic force of vengeance?

But also that the narrative does that to him. That it takes us with him in a build up of days and days and days of genuinely infuriating things and GENUINELY the unfortunate enabling of Hamcrusher's bullshit by people who didn't speak out about it (he's not wrong about that!) right up to the attempted murder of his baby and his wife to this moment and then absolutely yanks the rug out from under him and tells him - and us, the readers - that actually no.

No you don't get it that simple.

They killed my son.

Where the rage had been, there was chill.

If you're going to try to have a Vimes, as a creator, and you want them to be anything other than a self-righteous twerp in their own right, you have to be willing to do that part. To have him stumble, trip up, fall over his own feet, and be confronted by his own misunderstandings, mistakes, just . . . his misses.

If you aren't, then you're just writing another self-righteous twerp.

[elodieunderglass]

Sam Vimes is an interesting stalking horse - a self-unpacking teaching mechanism as much as a character. A classic white male detective antihero, he’s a POV character who starts with a mainstream relatable POV that everyone’s seen so many times before, and then goes through tests of character in a logical sequence that change his mind. At the end you must agree with him.

So Sam Vimes can be used as (say) a 20-something-insular-white-boy’s First Examination of Their Own Prejudice. They identify with him at first on the axes that they find relatable (he’s a cool older man, very like them in superficial details; he’s positioned in a classic antihero role in the narrative; he’s jaded and cynical and his thoughts are amusing) and therefore they willingly come with him on his journey.

Anyway, as a tool of writing, Vimes is a fairly unique brain-training mechanism. There aren’t many similar ones. And while his character journeys are incredibly repetitive, especially towards the end of the series - the sheer success of the mechanism, having a POV character designed to reshape the reader’s brain for the general betterment of society, makes it a technical act of prestige, even ten books on. it’s accessible to the mainstream reader! It teaches social justice frameworks while slipping under the guard of the majority, simply through planned character design! It’s funky stuff! Not many writers try it. We may not even need any more characters like them. But what a nice bit of craft.

[dduane]

…All of this. 

[histrionic-dragon]

Yes to all of this.

Also, Granny Weatherwax is similar. This is what made me think of it:

Captain Swing, in Night Watch, is utterly correct: he and Vimes are very, very similar people. It's just Findthee Swing knows he's right.

In Carpe Jugulum, there’s a scene where Granny Weatherwax talks with the Omnian priest and says that religion, true religion, is believing something so much that you burn everything else because of it:

“You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors.” 

(I don’t have the book to hand, so that’s from Goodreads and may be a little off, but that’s the one I have in mind.)

And the priest’s reaction (which I can’t find a quote for) is more or less: if she were to believe, what kind of force would come sweeping down out of these mountains and across the world?

(And the awe of that kind of shakes up his own crisis of faith, which is fascinating but beside the point I’m trying to make here.)

Another quote from Carpe Jugulum:      “The Weatherwax women have always had one foot in shadow. It's in the blood. And most of their power comes from denying it.”   

We don’t get to see inside Granny’s head the way we do Vimes’s, but it’s a similar process, I think. Witches have to have confidence in what they know, but in Granny’s case it’s very deliberately not that much confidence, not that way.

Or maybe with the witches it’s a little more about knowing that you’re right but also knowing how and when to intervene (*cough* “move the privy because ghouls live in it that make you sick,” not because “germs are getting into the drinking water” *cough*) and not just bowl everyone over with pure force of personality, which they could 100% do. See Nanny Ogg and her poor daughters-in-law--but she doesn’t bully them with or about anything magic-related, so that’s somehow OK. Each witch draws her own lines....

[findingfeather]

honestly Granny is much closer to Swing and I think it’s interesting watching Pterry realize that as he goes along in her books and slowly having more and more people check her hard.

It starts a BIT with realizing in Lords and Ladies that she read the signs completely wrong; but it really starts with Agnes|Perdita in Maskerade (I don’t have my copy with me so I won’t try Word for Word quote but there are multiple points where Agnes’ repeated rejection hits RIGHT at home, demonstrated by Granny’s very awkward attempt to connect at the end while digging her new outhouse and her outright invitation of Agnes into the coven) and then gets hit hard both by her own near catastrophic mistake of Stumping Off instead of unbending enough to ASK ANYONE including people who REPEATEDLY RISKED THEIR LIVES ON HER BEHALF, if maybe, just maybe, something unexpected happened to her invitation, and then REALLY hard by Oats. Repeatedly.

Which I’ve found people often miss about Carpe Jugulum: yes, absolutely, Oats learns lots from Granny. But he also builds the ABSOLUTE clearest picture of her as a PERSON, and scores several HARSH hits and just lets her stew with them.

And without him she would NOT have succeeded, and she knows it, and he also absolutely lets her go on presenting herself as invincible and that’s LETTING her, very much, and she knows that too.

That’s why she sends everyone to his service at the end.

And then you see it Most with Tiffany and most importantly with the way that Esmerelda Weatherwax goes out of her way to make sure that Tiffany DOESN’T end up like her.

The way she basically THROWS Tiff at other witches her own age to bond with and at multiple teachers and the way that she notes that Granny Aching was wise enough to not be a witch— Which is to say, not to be LIKE GRANNY.

Alone and frankly often very scared — not of the monsters, but of herself and of BEING alone, being truly unwanted, of the niggling uncertainty of whether all the work she’s done on their behalf IS enough to make up for the fact that honestly she’s often a hurtful bitch to those around her in ways that are unnecessary and counterproductive —even to her own goals.

And it’s in the way the narrative lets Tiffany SEE her. In how the narrative let’s Tiffany see that she’s afraid and alone and to give her a cat, and a beautiful midnight cloak.

It’s an interesting narrative transition and it’s actually one Pterry didn’t manage to do with Gytha; her massive flaws (she’s actively emotionally abusive of her daughters in law, at the least NEGLECTFUL of her own daughters and I have many other bones to pick with Gytha Ogg*) remain unexamined while being wincingly there on the page. But with Granny there’s a clear realization that the biggest risk, the thing that puts her in most danger of going Badly Wrong, isn’t actually her power, it’s the walls she puts up around her fear and the acid of it that undermines her foundations, that arise from holding herself apart from people, better than, and how that shifts but can only shift so far so that she figures out that now she’s found the next “her” it’s probably best to, you know. Not do that again.

*she’s EXTREMELY realistic and well drawn; I know five women like her off the top of my head, and they are treasures and pillars of their community who have done INCREDIBLY important things for many people, and they’re also shitty, toxic parents and family members, and both of these things exist at the same time.

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[creature-wizard]

In The Wee Free Men, Terry Pratchett described the concept of first sight and second thoughts.

First sight is the ability to see what's actually there, rather than what you expect to see.

Second thoughts are thoughts about what you're thinking - why are you thinking this way? Are these thoughts reasonable or not?

Both of these are extremely crucial in critical thinking and resisting undue influence.

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[averagekyjoe]

Proud American

American, I’m proud to say!I love to chant –USA! USA!During the Winter OlympicsMy sweater proclaimsUSA – All the way!But as the fatigued figures Came to stayYou’ll know I’ll tell themTo stay awayICE outGet these hired gun thugs outWe’ll have nice weatherOnce the ICE has been cleared outUntrained angry men are playing dress upCosplaying as military-clad PinkertonsGassed up on patriotism and…

Proud American

[theconcealedweapon]

Remember when people demonized protesters because "What if an emergency vehicle is trying to get through?"?

Well, here we have ICE literally blocking emergency personnel from attending to an emergency.

So, when are ICE going to be classified as monsters the same way protesters have been?

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]