marionette blues

Dee living in london, working in publishing. floating around writing fiction. "And though she be but little, she is fierce."

[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

[animentality]

[bushpropaganda]

unrealistic male beauty standards: power, strength, protector, big strong man, superhero, literal god

unrealistic female beauty standards: weak, prey, helpless, porn star, sex object, sex symbol, sex doll, fetish, porn, jerk off material

damn it seems only one sex is held to a standard of outright dehumanization purposefully created by their oppressors who only see them as walking objects to masturbate to. gyns which is one worse im stumped here

[honeyblankets]

men and anti feminists refuse to acknowledge that the patriarchy is actively enforced and women are actively oppressed. it’s far easier to believe your actions/porn addiction/beliefs have no consequences but yes the global push for women to become literal breeding stock to ‘save’ the population is patriarchal propaganda in response to the rise in women rejecting the oldest and most successful patriarchal system worldwide. yes the push of choice feminism-tradwife-i’m just a girl-rhetoric is patriarchal propaganda. yes the rise of porn depicting violence against women is patriarchal propaganda. you live in patriarchy. you contribute to it everyday.

[sirenalpha]

I’m seeing some of the comments on the Langdon and Santos situation and spilling over to Robby and Garcia and I feel like some of these comments are missing a few factors

-a lot clearly don’t know anything about rehab for doctors or how physician health programs like Langdon’s in work and I’m not saying become an expert before you talk but you can at least read the web page of PA’s program

-a few people are acting like Langdon’s received no consequences for his substance abuse issues but he was out of a job for 10 months, he was in rehab, he has to pay for rehab and now has that debt on top of whatever he has in terms of student loans, what do you think those are if not consequences?

-it’s not fair that Langdon has a path to getting his job back and others go to jail after substance abuse, but do you want them to have Langdon’s path or the go straight to jail path? Or Louie’s path? The reason doctors and other health care professionals have this path back is because it is a career that involves many years of study and training and is high risk and demanding and with high rates or mental health issues and substance abuse, do you think the healthcare system can afford to never offer a path back to anyone who falls off the wagon in any way? It can not that’s why there’s a system in place for this situation (which is not to say it’s perfect either)

-the Langdon and Santos issue did not come from nowhere, he did not just decide to be a dick and yell at her, Santos repeatedly broke protocol by performing medical procedures without clearing it with someone more senior to her like one of Langdon’s and Santos’s first interactions is her coming up to report that she had performed a procedure before getting the all clear, Langdon’s reaction to this first protocol break was shock and going don’t do that in a perfectly appropriate way from a senior resident to an intern over a low risk procedure, but she escalated to procedures with side effects that could have killed patients and he escalated in turn and crossed a line as someone higher in the hierarchy and supposed to be teaching her but he was not initially wrong to be critical of her

-Santos is also a dick even unrelated to Langdon, no she doesn’t have seniority over as many people so she has less opportunity to harm her fellow coworkers and she does have moments of empathy, but she is a dick and especially in s1 very arrogant, she gives mean nicknames to the med students and Mel who is an R2 and above her in seniority, she did not follow protocol in s1 and didn’t take feedback from Langdon and nearly kills a guy with bipap, her threatening a man is a cool moment and shows empathy for the daughter but it is very hostile behavior and she has no proof beyond the mother’s word that he was abusive which is not to say her heart is in the wrong place but just an example of her cowboy behavior which is not really a good thing in medicine, and in s2 she’s still very sensitive to potential abuse cases and was wrong about the abuse this time, still using nicknames coworkers don’t like, she’s also been downright whiny to everyone about the work she has to do (and this is not about saying she is dealing with an appropriate amount of work she’s not I think doctor’s schedules and so on are absolutely not healthy it’s about how inappropriate/unprofessional she is behaving) and punishes Ogilve and Whitaker with the impacted bowel, she’s not a very good teacher to Olgilvie when she was monitoring him, and she was a dick to Harlow over her disability

-Robby is just as dangerous to himself, coworkers, and patients with his level of mental health issues as Langdon was while abusing benzos, his breakdown in s1 was harmful to him but his reaction to Langdon abusing benzos and yelling at him was just as unprofessional as Langdon yelling at Santos, he did not react as a boss and a teacher to Langdon, he reacted as someone personally betrayed by Langdon after earlier in the day denying and rejecting Langdon’s friendship, he owes Langdon as much of an apology as Langdon owes him and Santos, and in s2 we’re really seeing the depths of the consequences of Robby going untreated like he should also have been in a PHP like Langdon for the last 10 months

-I’m seeing all kind of mess on the Langdon apology front like some people being like aren’t you not supposed apologize to people it would harm and I’m pretty sure that’s more about people you’re no longer in contact with not your coworkers you need to function with day to day, and both Robby and Santos were avoiding even giving him the opportunity, the emotions for Robby and Santos avoiding Langdon are expected and reasonable but it is still unprofessional and on Robby’s end he’s also in the wrong and should be apologizing to Langdon especially as the attending to a resident he was supposed to be training, and Santos does not need to like Langdon, be nice to him or go out of her way for him, but she needs to maintain professionalism but she’s clearly finding that difficult outside of Langdon and it is his job to teach her and she is inappropriately in front of patients refusing to let him do that, it’s a thorny emotional situation and Robby and Santos are not even allowing Langdon an opportunity to attempt amelioration

-Garcia idek she’s not a major enough character for me to get a read on her and Santos and she’s also a dick but if she was clear and set up boundaries that she wanted casual and she did not want to talk about Santos’s beef with Langdon (because she does seem to genuinely like Langdon) and Santos tries to keep stepping over that then yeah I get why she’s annoyed and she may not be equipped to deal with Santos’s emotional issues even with just Langdon and she’s clearly unwilling to do so and she’s therefore not wrong to suggest a therapist to her but the way she did it was certainly mean

[cheruib]

that comment about how you should not borrow grief from the future has saved me multiple times from spiraling into an inescapable state of anxiety. like every time i find myself thinking about how something in the future could go wrong i remember that comment and i think to myself: well i never know, it might get better. it might not even happen the way i think it will and if it does happen and it is sad and bad ill be sad about it then, when it happens. and it’s somehow soo freeing

[1dietcokeinacan]

[kingofthepitt]

the pitt s02e06 / hour six

[itsays]

no i dont think women starving themselves and reconstructing their entire faces with makeup and plastic surgery is feminism and female empowerment

[stroebe2]

How to become normal under 48 hours

[yankeeblue]

[deeranddog]

Mamdani Shuts Down NYC's Disastrous AI Chatbot

New York City's new mayor is unplugging a disastrous government chatbot that encouraged small business owners to break the law.

And the funniest part?

[fabiansociety]

this framing really winds me up. no knock on mamdani, but a lot of these key changes are the result of a tremendous amount of unsung work by the DWCP and other agencies and lawmakers. he’s not flipping switches that other politicians have refused to touch, he’s arriving at the moment those switches are ready to flip.

there’s just something off about giving all the credit to a charismatic socialist and ignoring the collective work that made these things actually possible, y’know?

[boltstuck]

This is exactly what bothers me. Changes like this take hundreds of people and thousands of hours of work to pull off. Everyone wants to sneer at the idea that important things take time, effort, and money to implement, and use Mamdani as evidence that everyone who claims it can't be done in 5 minutes with some elbow grease is a scam artist and a liar, but it's flat out not true.

In Mamdani's own speech, he says:

"Under President Biden, the FTC took sweeping action to go after junk fees and they delivered change. Under Chair Leader Khan, they instituted a junk fees rule that they estimated would save Americans 53 million hours a year that they would otherwise spend searching for the true price that they would have to pay, or $11 billion in time savings over a decade. We are going to deliver similar action on behalf of the 8.5 million New Yorkers who call our city home."

Lawmakers and agencies have been working to eliminate junk fees since at LEAST 2023, when Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning junk fees in California. Biden then took up the work with the FTC, targeting hidden fees on live event tickets. Biden went on to work with the CFPB to remove junk fees on banks and credit cards. The CFPB is continuing this work, which you can learn more about over here.

Even with the Chatbot thing -- Mamdani didn't just turn it off. He (and especially his crew) worked up a report to show where funds were being wasted in city government, and then did a presentation on it where he pointed to the specific failure of the Chatbot. He still had to go through a process to prove why he was taking action, it just so happened that this was comparatively quick fix, on account of being one single program running on one single government website.

[schniggles]

#stop ignoring the work #it has to get done #there is no loophole #there is no perfect person who can just make things happen #there are only people doing the work #and people continuing the work until it is done (via beezelbubbies)

[thenightgaunt]

Yes to all of this.

BUT, and this is important, there has to be a leader who wants to do the damn work and who wants these projects enacted.

Yes hundreds of people worked on these, but you wanna know why these things weren't happening under Mayor Adams? Because he didn't care. So he didn't order them to work on it. Because, and this is important, government employees arent going to work on a project unless ordered to. Especially when they've been assigned to work on something else.

Leadership matters. Anyone claiming otherwise hasn't been paying attention to the world the last few years.

[lizardlicks]

I had a more sustinct version of this in one of my reblog tags, but basically yeah. People can do all the work they want, but when the person holding the reigns of the budget tells them the pound sand, that work comes to nothing but wasted effort. Both the hard effort of people on the ground floor and the coordination and cooperation from the people in power are needed for effective change. If one or the other is missing, we get what we've had the last couple decades: stagnation and regression.

Please for the love of all things good and true in the world, remember this!!! The progress DOES actually take time and budget! Drill it into your head as we go into the midterm election season!!! There are already people in the comments of this very post comparing Mamdani to encumbant Republicans because "he's just breaking things". That's not what is happening here!

Anyone who bleats about socialist Democrats being the same (or worse!) than conservative Republicans is either an idiot or a psyops. Block them, drown them out and remember that progress is a journey made one step at a time.

[depsidase]

[angelbumbum]

i am once again experiencing urges and desires

[txttletale]

for the most part the epstein files don't demonstrate anything not already demonstrated by the polanski letter or the subsequent elections of donald trump then joe biden then donald trump again. the world is not ruled by a secret organisation of child abusers—the abuse of women and children just isn't a deal-breaker to most people seeking useful social and financial connections in a misogynist society

[txttletale]

you can observe this dynamic at play in microcosm very easily by becoming part of literally any art or hobby scene or getting a job

[innerchildabortionclinic]

"billionaire pedophiles single handedly shaped our belief system" factoid statistically wrong. YOU personally ended up having the same views on women and minorities as billionaire pedophiles and can't cope. some of us were dedicated tumblrina sjws

[liss-99]

life is fun when your top two Bridgerton ships are Kanthony and Benophie

[jennalouisecolemans]

Based on this post

[namtan]

THE PITT 2.02 | 8:00 AM

[honeyroots]

i’m a ‘frank langdon can make girls on antidepressants cum’ truther