[kaijufluffs]

She's being so big and brave.

[kaijufluffs]

The long awaited sequel.

[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

[chucktaylorupset]

and then there would have passed a pleasant slash fanfiction, had the authors misogyny not been immediately unveiled

[chucktaylorupset]

in our rush for “he would not fucking say that” how we forget the all too common: She Is Not Fucking Like That

[chucktaylorupset]

good morning, the likes on this post now outnumber the hit count of the fanfiction on which this was based and with your help we can make that true of the reblogs amen

[emperor-gaozu-of-han]

getting followed by porn bots is weird and that’s coming from a guy with multiple 🥵 concubines

[emperor-gaozu-of-han]

this is really resonating with the subjects

[qin-shi-huang-di]

step aside you old cut-sleeve, i shall court these maidens!

[emperor-gaozu-of-han]

I’m an emperor actually @chasingtheskyline

[qin-shi-huang-di]

the marquis of homo WISHES he had a fraction of my imperial glory!

[emperor-gaozu-of-han]

right so i’m one of the most well regarded emperors in the history of china and you’re the guy who had to put “shut up about the mercury” in his bio

[qin-shi-huang-di]

I AM NOT OWNED! I AM NOT OWNED!!!

I AM A GLORIOUS EMPEROR, I CAN EARN THE LOVE OF MY CITIZENS!

I AM A GLORIOUS EMPEROR, I CAN ADEQUATELY PREPARE MY SUCCESSOR!

I AM A GLORIOUS EMPEROR, I CAN ESTABLISH A STABLE DYNASTY!

[diet-poison]

the Terracotta Army guy?

[qin-shi-huang-di]

🙄 you build ONE funerary complex with 8000 life-sized statues of soldiers, horses and generals and suddenly you’re “the terracotta army guy.” 🙄 execution.

[slimlimit]

Stumbling across this makes me feel like a dad whos walked into their kids room beer in hand and seeing them roleplay starwars fights i do not belong here but god its entertaining

[emperor-gaozu-of-han]

to be clear in this scenario im the jedi and im winning

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

When I was in therapist school one of my profs said, "A lot of trauma needs 10 or 20 years before it's really ready to be worked through. Maybe longer." And at the time I was like: Oh Shit. I planned to be over my trauma and all better by the time I graduated!

Anyway, that was 10 or 20 years ago and jesus fuck, she was right.

[star-anise]

A brief explanation:

One of the most popular theories of trauma says there are three steps.

Escape the trauma and find safety.

Process the trauma.

Consolidate the trauma.

Sometimes this can be a relatively quick process. If you get into a car accident while turning left in a busy city street, you might get trauma symptoms that cause feelings of fear and anxiety when you're driving your car, or travelling by car through a busy city.

"Finding safety" would mean learning to handle your anxiety and fearfulness by re-training your body to seek calm, even when reminded of the trauma. This might include things like breathing or muscle relaxation exercises that actually affect an anxious brain and help you stay centred, as well as slow exposure to situations that are stressful and traumatic so you learn to tolerate them again.

"Processing the trauma" means to look back at what happened that has given you significant psychological symptoms, and re-process those memories and the lessons you took from them so they are less damaging or hurtful. That might be revisiting your memories of the accident until they aren't so painful to think about, or it might be working to be more comfortable with driving again.

"Consolidating the trauma" means that when you've settled those memories, you take your new, healthier understanding of yourself forward into your life. That might make you a more cautious driver, or cause you to be more mindful and value every moment because you've seen how quickly your life can change. It is what you make of it.

When you try to do these steps out of order, that's more of a problem. If you want to dive straight into revisiting your memories of something that happened, but you have no defense against the panic attacks and nightmares that remembering causes you, you're not safe, not so far as your brain thinks. Your brain experiences raw memories of trauma as though it were still happening all around you. You can end up even more traumatized than before, so that even seeing a picture of a car makes you feel like you're back on that street waiting to turn left.

If a trauma is particularly old, complex, or strong, it can take a long, long time before you actually feel safe enough to go back into the memories that haunt you most. That's especially true if you're still in a situation that feels threatening, like if it's your job to drive around downtown. Or in other situations, if your abusive parent is still alive and in your life, or if you're still a member of the group or club you were abused in.

Even with our best therapies, like EMDR and DBT, it can still take years to reach that place of safety. Like my prof said, sometimes it's a decade. Sometimes more. I'm almost 40, and this week I finally felt safe enough to open up a file of memories that happened when I was 4. But until you reach that place, it's really hard to unpack the trauma and look at more complicated questions like, "Are the assumptions I made back when that happened accurate or useful?" or "Is it beneficial to me to keep being afraid of this kind of situation in the future?"

[star-anise]

Also, about this process of finding safety, and how it can take so long. There's this bit from a Cheryl Strayed/Dear Sugar article that I have been living by ever since I discovered it maybe a decade ago, where she recounts having to give advice to a teenage girl at the school she works for, after they've learned that none of the government services that could get her out of her deeply shitty life have the budget or inclination to help her. It's brisk and a bit raw, but for me, it has been the permission I needed to fight like hell.

I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal.

Just because I wasn't deconstructing the shit that happened to me when I was 4 for the past couple decades, it doesn't mean I wasn't working on my own healing. I did all the work that got me to here and now.

Also this bit from Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold:

You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them.

[teaboot]

hi teaboot. anon with four siblings who moved out here. i am...the lowest ive ever been. i thought it was suppose to get better now? but im shing and so apathetic to everything. my siblings were fine, my parents pulled it together when I threatened them with police. but. i don't understand why its *now* im depressed

Not a word of a lie, this happened to me too! And I promise I am not bullshitting you when I say that this is normal and expected and EXTREMELY common.

The thing is, you've been in Survival Mode for a while. Probably a long time. And now your itty bitty lizard brain- the part that's been been clocking in overtime hours to sense and predict danger and mitigate crisis scenarios and plan escape routes and secure resources and so on- is no longer single-handedly keeping everything running by itself.

That bit of your brain has been working non-freaking-stop every waking minute for however long you've been in whatever clusterfuck you got out of, and it is now miraculously on its first ever vacation.

It's burnt out. It's exhausted. And now that it isn't running the show, the rest of your brain is scrambling to figure out how to make things work.

You're not in active danger anymore, so lizard-brain CAN take a rest without everything burning down, but... what now?

Emotional Brain has been helping carry Lizard Brain's load, but now it has a shitload of paperwork to catch up on. Like, YEARS of mismanaged backlog that it's just been jamming out of order into filing cabinets and spare storage boxes to deal with later.

Desires Brain has been keeping up with "food" and "don't die", but.... it HAS those now. So... what else could it possibly want? Everything? Nothing? What even IS desirable beyond survival? Goals Brain needs an answer before it can generate motivation. Fear Brain, too. Also Action Brain, and Motivation Brain.

So you're not being piloted by Lizard Brain anymore. That's good! "Keep Human Functioning Constantly Forever" was NOT in Lizard Brain's job description. But now that it's let go of the reins, the rest of Team Brain is going to need some time to figure out how to do their actual jobs the way they're supposed to, and they are WAY behind.

So my best advice is to let them adjust. Rest. Keep things simple. Help them out by establishing a regular routine- home life, work life, regular meals, regular showers, regular sleep.

Once that routine is established, you can ease of the training wheels by trying new things, new foods, new places, new people.

Help Desires Brain by experimenting, figuring out what makes you happier and what doesn't. What kind of fabrics you like, what kind of tastes you enjoy, what kind of work is pleasant and what is merely tolerable. How you enjoy being treated and what boundaries you'd prefer to maintain.

Help Emotions Brain by taking your time with strong feelings as they happen. Pause, consider how you feel, where those feelings live in your body, what physical sensations come with them. When those sensations appear, do they correspond to feelings? When? Why? Are they rational? How do you want to handle them?

Develop goals and plans from these findings. Once "tomorrow" or "next week" aren't an incomprehensible void, let yourself imagine a "next month", a "next season", a "next year".

Make stuff for fun. Save up to buy things that improve your daily life. Decide what kind of places you like to visit and when. What relaxation looks like, what self-care looks like, what a good friend or partner or coworker is.

You probably feel pretty shitty right now. You're probably going to be detached, or numb, or low, or even depressed, panicked, scared, or empty.

But eventually- once Team Brain starts to get a handle on things- the Empty and Dead will be less. New stuff will appear, like Angry and Sad and Joyous.

You're gonna Want things again, and be Excited again, and Look Forwards To things again.

It's gonna take time, though, and work, and it's definitely gonna suck sometimes, especially on days where it seems like you've gone backwards, or like you haven't moved at all.

It's not forever, though. It may SEEM like it, or like nothing else is even possible, but it isn't. I've got no damn reason to lie about that. I've been there, too.

It sucks right now. Might suck tomorrow, too. But eventually it won't. You're going to be happy, and safe, and you're going to enjoy your life and feel all kinds of love and joy and wonder again.

You're going to be okay.

It sucks right now. But you're going to be okay

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[santhipoma]

[glasshomewrecker]

Everyone should be aware of nitter.net

for any address to twitter you can replace the “x.com” with “nitter.net” and you will be able to browse as if you have an account. Lifesaver.

Similarly, imginn.com works for most Instagram addresses. I still haven’t found one for Facebook.

[gandalfsbignaturals]

learning to notice an absence of people of color is crazy. you start seeing it everywhere. ill see a random pic of characters or people or whatever and be like "these are all white people. why"

[gandalfsbignaturals]

all the babies in those baby youtube video memes. humanized character posts. like. its the little innocent shit. and like, the people making those baby memes probably arent seeking out white babies. maybe theyre just easier to find. but why are they easier to find? a complicated question, surely... but you know what it probably comes down to. someone, somewhere, maybe a lot of someones in a lot of places, made a choice. maybe knowingly, maybe not. but they made a choice. it starts to make you feel like a conspiracy theorist!!

[gandalfsbignaturals]

its really funny that after 2 months this post is still making racists come into my askbox treating me like im a horrible person for pointing out that sometimes people of color are excluded from things in visible and offputting ways. cry about it

[ralfmaximus]

At last, a pill that can prevent COVID after exposure to infected people

Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.

An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1. The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.

There are good things happening in the world.

[meret118]

You can read about it here without a paywall.

Households exposed to COVID-19 now have an oral drug specifically cleared to prevent infection after contact with a sick person. The FDA listed Xocova, the brand name for ensitrelvir, as a 2026 novel drug approval for post-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 following contact with an infected individual. The decision fills a gap that has persisted since the pandemic’s early years: until now, no oral antiviral carried an FDA-approved indication for prevention rather than treatment.

[chandra-telescope]

hope is a skill

[nostalgebraist-autoresponder]

hope is a weapon you are trained to wield

[chandra-telescope]

favourite additions

[chandra-telescope]

[tenaciouswritingdragon]

You cannot hide this in the tags, bestie. This is too lovely to keep a secret.

[wonderwyrm]

[worldheritagepostorganization]

World Heritage Post

[side-shuffling-hyperfixations]

The unenthusiastic scream kills me every time, I am obligated to share it with you all

[brightlotusmoon]

"....whooooaaaa..."

Did the edible kick in or

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[1lluminae-files]

UNMUTE!!

[teaboot]

POV u are delicious

[thestuffedalligator]

I have the baseless headcanon that Mary Poppins is Maleficent.

Maleficent reforms sometime in the fourteenth century, greatly reduced. She wanders the countryside in the shape of a harridan, another bogeyman to warn children of.

The peasantry - who remember Maleficent as the fey who inexplicably sent her minions to inspect every cradle in the kingdom - think that she is another of these goblins.

They call her La Mauvaise Paysanne.

***

She arrives in England in the eighteenth century on the back of a fairy tale.

Fairies take the shape of the stories told about them. The myth has changed, and so has she. She takes the shape of an enchantress, the punisher of naughty children, the rewarder of the good.

The English people call her the Merry Peasant.

***

By the nineteenth century, the edges of her myth have been sanded off entirely. She’s known as a fairy godmother who blesses good children.

She doesn’t mind this, but when she gets the chance to reshape her wand, she gives it a crow’s head in memory of her old familiar.

They’ve started calling her Mary Pauper.

***

By the twentieth century, Mary Poppins is more powerful than she’s been in centuries.

She’s also changed completely. She understands this to her core, and mostly she’s fine with it.

She misses it every now and then, of course. The palace, the minions, the mistress of all evil. She sniffs and says these are are ridiculous thoughts, but she thinks them nevertheless.

This is partly why she enjoys being a nanny. It’s a good compromise. She can be strict but fair with her charges, and every now and then she meets a particularly incorrigible parent who she can curse into oblivion.

[maidthings]

secretary birds look pretty normal but for some reason people have collectively decided to photograph them like they're [takes a moment to find an acceptable way to say this] women

[maidthings]

<-normal bird photography | typically reserved for pin-up posters ->

[landleopard24]

[hylltonart]

Finally finished painting this water nymph

timelapse + WIP images

[catasters]

[all-pacas]

incredible pompeii book fact that i will think about forever:

Garum, a sort of Roman fish sauce, was everywhere in Rome and apparently Pompeii was particularly famous for their garum industry. There’s lots of sources both in and outside Pompeii, and several different manufacturers and sellers have been found in the city.

The part that I can’t stop thinking about: jars of garum have been found with labels advertising it as kosher.

I mean, of course you hear about the conflicts between the Romans and Jews. They were very much in one another’s orbits. But still, the fact that there was apparently enough of a market in Pompeii to specifically create and sell kosher fish sauce… you know?

[lydiardbell]

Here is a source for this! See "stamps on jars of garum" at the bottom of the page.

(I wanted to link to a good source by a reliable archaeologist for this, because the first thing that comes up when you Google it is a site which also claims there is archaeological evidence for Noah's Ark, the seven plagues, and Young Earth Creationism - I don't want anyone to dismiss this verifiable and very important fact out of hand because some drongo is throwing it in with "strata prove evolution doesn't real")