[segamascott]

[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

[dragontologist]

New exciting term for you all: Astroturfing!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing (My date this weekend didn't know what this was when I mentioned it, so now I get to share it with EVERYONE) Astroturfing is an artificial version of a "grassroots" political campaign, but it's also expanded out to include fake reviews, artificial advertising through social media campaigns, and more.

Normally, a grassroots campaign is where a community of people band together to advocate for a change in law or policy. This includes most of the progressive movements through the last century, and it's generally considered a "bottom-up" method of organizing, avoiding entrenched power structures and putting participants in the lead.

Astroturfing, on the other hand, is where someone creates something that LOOKS like a grassroots campaign, but is actually designed by a marketing team or the Powers-That-Be. This includes everything from propaganda to marketing to fake reviews to justifying why a politician can create racist policies. The abuses involved in astroturfing are why you're supposed to say whether you're promoting a product and whether you got it for free.

Astroturfing is "purposefully designed to fulfill corporate agendas, manipulate public opinion and harm scientific research" [Cho, Charles H.; Martens, Martin L.; Kim, Hakkyun; Rodrigue, Michelle (2011). "Astroturfing Global Warming: It Isn't Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence". ].

It is literally the reason that the internet sucks right now.

[rpfofficial]

levels of mutualship :

the closest thing to real soulmates you can find

we fought in the same trenches and have a warrior's bond that carries over into every stage of life

friend i sit next to in every class and pass notes to/whisper to constantly

academic peer/colleague that i respect and have a little intellectual crush on

neighbour in the same apartment block that i say hi to on the stairs

neighbour across the street who i wave at every morning and evening

we're regulars at the same bar

i can't even remember who you are but if you weren't here there would be something fundamental missing

[canid-sys]

which mutual is prev?

the closest thing to real soulmates you can find

we fought in the same trenches and have a warrior’s bond

friend i sit next to in every class and pass notes to constantly

my little intellectual crush

neighbor in the same apartment blog that i say hi to on the stairs

neighbor across the street who i wave to every morning and evening

we’re regulars at the same bar

i can’t even remember who you are but you’re fundamentally important

nuance/prev is bald/tags

Voting ended onMay 30

i polled it 👍

[dragontologist]

A mask I made for larp

[beardedmrbean]

[wolf-tail]

Did you know that you're allowed to call a fat girl hot? Did you know that you're allowed to be attracted to her, in fact , you are allowed to be attracted to her because she is fat? You don't have to tell her "greek gods would go to war for her", or that "she looks like she gives good hugs". You can just say she's sexy.

[stlamb]

serge jupin, visual processing

[dragontologist]

[a-book-of-creatures]

Stop saying “like” as a space filler in sentences. Use “reblog” instead.

[a-book-of-creatures]

This is, reblog, basic conversation skills.

[ristay]

Sorry if it’s a little cramped- had to make this all fit in ten photos. Hope you guys like it….. and again…. sorry Andrew

Follow me on Webtoons

[ruby-white-rabbit]

The window visual did me in I’m wheezing

[floralpopie]

NO

[greatmountainfloofsquatch]

WELP

[doctor-seamonster]

I haven’t seen this in years and yet it is burned into my memory forever.

[anotherdayforchaosfay]

This is on the short list of Eternal Reblog because it’s fucking legendary.

[magrowette]

An honourable candidate for the @hellsite-hall-of-fame

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

The really funny thing about "snakes aren't mammals your snake girl shouldn't have breasts!" is like yeah. Neither should your cat girl.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

The fact that this is the line drawn is really funny! Human breasts are actually incredibly rare among mammals! We don't know exactly why humans have big bazongas but it's probably sexual selection, which presents the really funny problem

If your snake women having sex with people is normal and expected...then yeah, they're ALSO probably going to have something resembling breasts. They might even just have breasts in all but function.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Like yes, non-mammals don't make milk, but you actually don't need the whole kit that humans do in order to make milk. Arguably its not even the important part of the breast to begin with.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

You also don't need to justify it at all you can just be a pervert about it.

[swiftrunnerfelidae]

We actually have another theory why human breasts are like that, and it's because of our flat faces.

Most mammals have, compared to humans, an elongated jaw. So a little tiny bump of a mammary gland is fine, just enough to get the nostrils away from the teat, and the young can freely breathe while nursing. However, as humans started using fire more and more to cook food - which softened it up, rendering powerful jaws less necessary - their jaws began to shorten, resulting in the development of the chin and other unique facial structures as the face flattened out.

This, of course, meant that babies could suffocate while nursing, which would obviously be bad. But what if... what if nipple further from chest? Bigger bump, so baby's nose have spot to go that isn't directly into mommy's chest? Oh, turns out that works! Of course, as more and more fat stores become dedicated to growing that breast mound to keep baby from suffocating, it becomes harder and harder for the mother to reabsorb that tissue when not nursing (as many other mammals do), so they just... don't. Knockon effects from there, and bam. Tiddies.

Which means if your cat girl has a flat face she probably should still have boobs but if she's got the full muzzle, not so much.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

That's actually really interesting honestly.

[dragontologist]

Important additional option: top surgery

[beardedmrbean]

[medievaljournalist]

wait wait wait before you use sunder armor please consider how much this outfit cost

[eroscestlavie]

Why am I finding out just today that Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo

[eroscestlavie]

????

[eroscestlavie]

Hey. What

[trash-slvt]

"relax. sucking does not kill" would make for a fun shirt

[dragontologist]

Dali say relax

[cilceon]

Did you know that there are 58 tortillas in space right now and that number dwindles as the hunger of four astronauts grows

[montymollusk]

please please please remember that no matter what your manager says, it is never that serious. unless you are literally performing surgery or defusing a bomb, it simply is not that serious

[montymollusk]

last november i stopped working at an office job that was so deeply Corporate™️ it seemed like the setup to a bit. like, every joke you’ve ever heard about a miserable, soul-sucking, completely pointless pencil-pushing job was modeled after this place. management was so afraid of people having personalities that male employees were not allowed to have pierced ears per company policy.

as is somehow Mandatory for jobs like these, anyone in a position of power made it their job to make everyone else’s lives as miserable as possible with constant micromanaging. like, i got told in a strongly worded email to reorder the $2 plastic shelves in my cubicle that i used to store spare paper. it was fucking dire.

but anyways. the reason i quit has to do with what im talking about in the original post. despite the fact that i was consistently at the top of our department leaderboards (yes, we had those, they were emailed out daily) my manager decided that because i couldn’t stay late one day because of a doctors appointment, i needed a Talking To.

he spent an entire day hounding me about this single event, saying that it was a “growing pattern of careless behavior” and that i “forced [my coworkers] to stay until 6 pm”

obviously i felt awful. i was friends with everybody on my team! i didnt want to inconvenience them!! even thought i knew that he was being too harsh, the guilt trip still got to me. but every time i tried to defend myself and explain what was actually going on, he would double down and make it an even bigger issue. this kept going and going until the situation got spun into me being a terrible employee who needed an Action Plan, and i was Ruining The Department, and Everyone Was Going To Stay Overtime Because Of Me.

while i was dealing with this instead of, yknow, actually doing the work that is apparently so dire, i realized… it wasn’t that serious. like, not even fuckin close. the things my coworkers had to do overtime to complete? folding papers. and while yes, it was shitty that they had to stay so late to finish up, i wasn’t the one who made them do it. my manager did! and there were literally dozens of other options to pick from instead, including just leaving the work for me to do the next day! the work we did was nowhere near time sensitive, and certainly not worth the overtime the company paid.

but because i wouldn’t just roll over and accept a chewing out that i didn’t deserve, my manager decided to keep laying on the pressure until i caved. man was assigning legitimately apocalyptic levels of intensity over folding papers. i went from being an asset to the team to getting yelled at by both him and his manager for my “poor performance.”

so i quit. because it’s not that serious.

this whole shitshow is a standard tactic that employers use to trick you into signing away more of your life to the job. make you feel stupid, make you feel like the menial tasks you perform have these dire consequences that simply do not exist. ramp up your anxiety over nothing. they will punish other people because you aren’t slaving away hard enough, and then say that it’s your fault in the first place. you’re not being a team player! you’re not pulling your weight! don’t you see that everyone else is doing their part? don’t you understand what will happen if you don’t contribute?

it is absolutely fucking vital that you don’t listen to any of it. it is even more so that you don’t fall for it when they try to pull this tactic to get you to turn against someone else. the most effective tactic to get someone to fall in line in a workplace is social ostracization. don’t be a tool for your boss to use to manipulate someone else.

it is never that serious.