Something I made while dealing with my own stuff and hoping drawing this would pick me up somehow. Maybe it worked.

FT my cat. His name is Mischief

Guys, it's time to drop Google.

Google isn't the only search engine in the whole internet, there are others! And we need to diversify our search engine usage or we're gonna end up where we were a decade and change ago with the Internet Explorer issue. We can't let a single brand monopolize everything! This is why Google Search can afford to suck so hard: because people use it regardless! And there are alternatives.

A little bit about search engines, there are 3 types: crawlers, which work by scraping the web and developing their own indexes; metas, which get their results from the crawler-type search engines and therefore depend entirely upon them; and mixed, those which have their own (small) index but also pull results from the crawlers.

Right now, there are a couple of independant crawlers apart from Google, Bing (from Mycrosoft) and Yandex (the Russian one): this are Mojeek and Wiby.

Supporting independant crawlers is the easiest way to fight the shittyfication of the internet.

Mojeek.com is an independant british search engine with its own growing index commited to fighting internet censorship. It's small, and therefore it's usability isn't as good as that of the Big Three, but it doesn't censor, it's fairly respectful of people's privacy, and it doesn't drown you in adds. For those old enough to remember, it's a lot like early 2000s Google: you can find what you need, but if you write "dig shelter" instead of "dog shelter", that's what it's gonna search for. That said, please try to use it and support it as much as you can before we end up entirely dependant on Google, Bing and big corps adds. [click here to go to Mojeek]

Wiby.me is a new indie project that is literally dedicated to bringing back the old-school web. It's goal is to index as many personalized websites as possible, and NOT commercial sites. So, for those of you who can't find any answers to technical questions beyond highschool level because Google buries them under a gazillion commercial sites and other meaningless shit, keep an eye on this project! It has a lot of potential. And, if you know of any personal websites that have great stuff but have been murdered by Google, you can go over to Wiby and submit it to their index. [click here to go to Wiby]

Aside from those, there are also meta search engines you can use to ween yourself off Google and search for random, day to day stuff.

Qwant.com is my go-to here—it has its own index and pulls from Bing, has relatively little censorship, and is fairly private. This is the one I use on my phone for everyday stuff. [click here to go to Qwant].

Historically, DuckDuckGo has always been a go-to for those who want a search engine that respects your privacy and doesn't censor. Personally, I've never been a fan, and there have been a LOT of scandals in recent years. It supposedly has its own index and pulls from Bing, much like Qwant, but I don't know. I just don't like it. Still, I've added it here for completeness' sake.

If you have Firefox Mobile browser, you can set any of these search engines as your default search engine and you can also add the others as secondary search engines and switch quicky from the navigation bar. If you don't have firefox mobile though, what are you doing with your life??? Go get it!! It is So. Much. Better. You can have add blockers and watch YouTube add free, for free! You can have reader mode and dark mode add-ons! You can have the world oh my goshhhh, drop Chrome!!

4get.ca is my last recommendation: 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 reaserch, 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. It's also very privacy conscious, so that's an other plus, and it has that late 90s / early 2000s vibe that I totally dig. [click here to go to 4get]

If you wanna learn more about the topic, you can over to the Search Engine Map [click here] which shows you a bunch of Search Engines and how they relate to each other. Or you can also go over to this one dude's personal website whose done A Lot of reaserch into the topic (way more than me) and seems to be pretty legit, if a little extra. [click here to go to digdeeper.neocities.org] Hope this infodump is useful to someone =D

PS: here's to hoping all the links work!

EDIT: eliminated the "read more". Figured there are enough mega long posts in tumblr, one more won't make no difference lol (tho the version w the read more has been reblogged already, in case you'd rather)

You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

it's probably from assholes making asks a minefield of trolling/harassment for years with no real blocking ability, which turned people off from allowing asks on their blogs so as a whole the site moved away from it

but now that we do have better blocking, we should try to revive it.

Reblog if your ask box is open.

Um no I'm pretty sure those are both switches

CHRIS EVANS attends the Newsmaker Luncheon at National Press Club on January 29, 2024 in Washington, DC

You ever have a random thought that's not intrusive, but somehow simultaneously so instinctive and so detached from your regular everyday life, that you vaguely figure it was probably just an ancestral spirit possessing you for a second?

I was baking an apple pie for fun, freehanding cardamom by vibes alone. And a thought pops into my head, must not be wasteful with them, spices are expensive. And I had to halt right there for a second. Why would I feel financial guilt about the amount of seasoning in homemade goods, when I spend money on far more frivolous shit every single day? My own weight in cinnamon would cost less than my rent.

Thank you for your concern, Maarit from the 1600s, but trust me, we're good. I can measure this cardamom with my heart and not the scale.

Time to buy more King Arthur Flour!

If you need more reason to support them, they’re worker owned.

Also they actually are working on regenerative agriculture:

Also they do blog articles about adaptive baking:

Did they ever reveal how Captain America was thawed? Because I’m picturing a bunch of Shield agents with hair dryers and I don’t think that’s quite right.

I don’t think they’d want to microwave him so hair dryer is really the only remaining option. That’s how I’d do it.

badscienceshenanigans

Do you have a sciency way to accomplish this task?

Well, let’s see.  To thaw a 1.5 metric ton colossal squid frozen in a block of ice (the only way the fishermen who trawled the thing in could bring it home before it went bad), scientists put it in a big vat of brine just above 0 Celsius/32F. That allowed the fresh water to melt while still keeping the squid as cold as possible. Essential, since for a giant corpse with tentacles, certain parts are bound to thaw days before others and could become quite rotten before the rest comes out of the ice block if you’re not careful.  HOWEVER Captain America was still alive, which complicates things. On the other hand, even supersoldiers are significantly smaller than this record-setting colossal squid. This helps thaw logistics somewhat. Much like the squid, Captain America would have to be kept at a consistent temperature throughout his body in order to be thawed successfully. If his extremities were to thaw more than a minute or two before his heart and lungs were thawed and reactivated, the tissue wouldn’t have any oxygen and would quickly die. What a shame to bring back Steve Rogers only to have him be the poster boy for gangrene. Brain tissue becoming metabolically active before the cardiovascular system began functioning would be even more disastrous— possible permanent brain damage.  And the GH-325 project was born To keep his temperature as equal as possible across his entire body, something like the squid brine or (more likely) an antifreeze solution would be used. Immerse the Capsicle in brine until the entire unit is within a degree or two of thawing* to begin Phase II. *Note that due to presence of salts, fats, protein, etc, the freezing point of meat is actually 28-29F. Apologies to non-US readers, sadly I only work with American meat and don’t know the freezing point of corpses/beef in Sane Country Units. That being said, Steve Rogers is 100% American meat. Fahrenheit shall be considered the appropriate unit for this project.  At the thawing point, it’s important to consider life support functions. I don’t know how fast human tissue uses up oxygen at refrigerator-range temperatures, but I’m going to assume that the sooner you have oxygen circulating the better. A heart-lung machine would be needed to oxygenate and move the blood around for a while before the heart gets started back up.  Meanwhile, because Captain America’s last un-frozen moments were spent deep underwater, there may be decompression issues at play. Whatever gas bubbles may have been present in his tissue are currently frozen in place, but when he thaws they can move about and create embolisms —> the bends. Better put him in a hyperbaric chamber just in case.  Since Captain America regained consciousness in a recovery room rather than during the thaw process, it may be safe to assume that he was sedated and/or placed in a drug-induced coma during thaw.  So at this point we’ve got a giant bathtub of brine, a heart-lung machine, oxygen canisters, lots of drugs, plus all the necessary monitoring equipment all inside a hyperbaric chamber. After thawing the antifreeze bath could be replaced with gradually warming water or saline solution in order to bring Captain America back up to normal body temperature. So many machines! This is US medicine at its finest. Forced warm air blowers (hairdryers) are needed after Captain America is fully thawed, organ systems are reactivated, and he is brought back to normal body temperature. At this point it becomes necessary to dry and style Captain America and put him in period-appropriate jammies to sleep it off in a vintage hospital room. If you think hearing the wrong baseball game tipped him off fast, you should see him wake up with bad hair. 

THIS IS THE BEST POST IN THE HISTORY OF EVERYTHING.

That being said, Steve Rogers is 100% American meat. Fahrenheit shall be considered the appropriate unit for this project. 

CANNOT STOP LAUGHING.

“Much like the squid, Captain America…” - a sentence I never thought I’d read

It’s funny because this is so well thought out and yet Hydra just pulled Bucky out of the freezer and left him to defrost on the counter.

Chris Evans | National Press Club's Newsmaker Luncheon in Washington, DC | January 29, 2024

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