jenthinksharder @jenthinksharder - Tumblr Blog

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buffycaps

Rest in peace to the incredible Anthony Stewart Head (20th February 1954 - 1st June 2026)

RUPERT GILES in BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997-2003)

xenasaur

nods thoughtfully. I hadn't even considered it. am I a bad person?

miniangel

miffy with a pearl earring i adore you

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

beardedmrbean

singing-bowl

thinking about how ursula k leguin said "what goes too long unchanged destroys itself. The forest is forever because it dies and dies and so lives" and how everyday i wake up slightly different and i can feel myself shed the skin of who i used to be slowly, slowly, until i look back and can scarcely recognise who i was... but also she is still a part of me, part of the leaf litter and the humus, supporting me as i send new roots down and new leaves stretching up to the sunlight

speedlimit15

a tshirt that says I LIKE YOU AND I'M TRYING TO UNDERSTAND YOU

userfish

this pride month we’re all going to be radically pro transgender. or else.

samreich

without further ado, let's begin

#I'm gonna paraphrase this at the start of my next project

bringcal

i miss vhs tapes and cds i miss feeding my computers and tvs yummy treats. now theyre eating nothing. theyre being born without mouths

edgar-allan-possum

annabelle--cane

stop. analyse that text through the lens of its author's intentions and original historical context. okay now take the author out back and kill them dead and analyse that text as though it were published by your mutual yesterday and is in direct conversation with the contemporary discourse that's most relevant to your life. okay now pick your favorite angle of interpretation and come up with the strongest possible argument against it. now imagine that the text is your best friend and that it means you well and that you naturally give it every benefit of the doubt because you're on its side and you want the best for it. now imagine that the text wants you dead and it'll eat you if you don't eat it first. now pretend that you found this text locked away in a cave with no evidence of when or where it came from and you have to divine its meaning solely through its internal coherence and nothing else. okay now address the elephant in the room aspect of the text you've been ignoring because you find it boring or confusing or uncomfortable and become the number one expert on it. now spend forty minutes assigning all the characters dnd classes with at least three sentences of reasoning each. okay now do the cha cha slide.

queeranarchism

It's a real shame that online reply guys have made 'thought experiments' into a constant ordeal of 'would you let me say the n-word to save 5 black children?' bullshit, when actually, real thought experiments are important training tools to unlearn acting on bigotry, biased instincts and propaganda.

In life you're going to encounter ethical questions that you've never considered before or you'll find reasons to question ethical questions that you always thought that you knew the answer to. And when that happens, you have to be comfortable thinking the whole things thru from all angles, even though your gut instinct tells you to settle for the easy answer that makes you comfortable.

You have to be able to ask questions like 'but is anyone harmed by the thing that disgusts me?', 'is this about improving the world or just about punishment'?, 'what if my assumptions about why people do this thing are wrong'?

You have to be comfortable not being sure yet what your conclusion will be. You have to be comfortable exploring opinions that differ from what your friends think. Thought experiments teach you this.

If you don't get comfortable doing that, propagandists will trick you into accepting a comfortable answer based on your preconceived biases and whatever new biases they want to slip in there.

queeranarchism

I regret to announce that I need to actually explain to insufferable people in the notes why 'would you let me say the n-word to save 5 black children?' isn't a clever little thought experiment. Let's start with a little story:

I work the door at a feminist club sometimes. We've got a big sign at the door in bold letters reading "No touch of any kind without consent, you will be kicked out". When new guests show up, we point out the rule and ask them to confirm that they'll follow this rule.

Every night, there will be a few guys whose response to this is to immediately put a finger somewhere on my body, like my shoulder or my arm, and ask "not even this?". If those guys are allowed to enter the club, they ALWAYS end up groping people. Their response to a boundary that was put in place to prevent harm, is to immediately push it, test it, see if they can do a little bit of harm, see how much harm we will tolerate. That's what that finger and "not even this?" shows.

In this club, little innocent touches without prior consent definitely happen. It's loud and it can get crowded on the dance floor and around the bar. Shoulders touch, people tap each other on their arm to signal that they want to get through the crowd. No harm is done. But "No touch of any kind without consent" stays up at the door because its an effective filter to keep out the predatory guys.

Social conventions around the n-word are a lot like that. While it is technically true that the sound of the n-word does no harm on its own and it's the intent that makes a slur into a slur, to point that out is to misunderstand why the "don't say the n-word ever" social rule is there. It's a test, like our "No touch of any kind without consent" rule. People who see that rule and respond by pushing its boundaries are telling on themselves. They're showing that they want to explore how much harm we will tolerate.

So you're not particularly clever if you invent a thought experiment that shows that the n-word isn't a magic sound that does harm on it's own. We all knew that already and you're not cleverly exposing purity culture or dogmatic liberal behavior. You're just telling on yourself. The "don't say the n-word ever" social rule is a filter that exists to get people like you to tell on yourself.

queeranarchism

This also branched into a bigger thing about thought experiments: Thought experiments are NOT neutral lenses which reveal inevitable truths. They're artificial realities controlled by their creators, and as such they're extremely subjective.

Clever, insightful thought experiments have no clear answer and challenge us to examine all sides of an issue, to dig deeper until we get to a more complex nuanced understanding of moral issues.

Thought experiments whose only purpose is to create a scenario in which we must inevitably say the n-word, or we must torture someone to defuse a bomb, etc. are not insightful, they just reveal that their creator would really like to be alloed to say the n word / torture. They're blunt manipulations and we have every right to refuse to play that game.

drumlincountry

Why do they even make apps for ADHD. You want me to use my 24/7 handheld immediate distraction device? To manage my 'gets distracted too easily' disorder? Ooooh we developed the perfect tool for managing your anemia. Its hosted in Dracula's castle. 👍