Thing I Like and whatnot

here are a few other "secret" dashboards:

Posts from your "crushes"

"What you missed" (will be empty if you already visit Tumblr every day)

"Trending"

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

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.

Tumblr has joined the war against advertising on the side against advertising.

Which is.

Tumblr is a Saas — software as a service, this term is important to link what is going on. Twelve seconds of research will show you how cheap it is to add a user to a Saas. It isn’t $0.00 but it’s a fraction of a cent. The big cost is the initial load.

It’s $7 a month to pay for Tumblr Premium.

That’s fucking insane.

It should be $1-2.

You will obviously need a significantly higher volume to make the same amount of cash. I have an idea. Stop introducing shit people don’t want.

I am here on this site because of the perverts and artists and people with interestingly unhinged takes on media and/or life events.

There is no feature I crave on Tumblr beyond maintenance and a “reply via email” because I hate having inboxes outside of my email.

This is a business. I get it. I do not want this site to go under. I want the crew that runs it to be compensated well.

And.

There is no content Tumblr as a business is producing that I give a shit about. I am here still because it is the most convenient meeting ground to be weird and to enjoy weird and discover weird.

Premium experiences are so goddamn overrated and over bloated.

You have lost the plot and gotten way too big for your britches.

Charge fairly, provide the core service intended, and get out of the way for the mechanism that makes your product worth it — in this case, the evolving nonsense essays, comments, hilariously specific and targeted hate mail that feels at least half loving, and comics.

This place is wires and a collection of bad decisions in a group project for a teacher that is themselves about to get fired. It’s special because of the people. Not the fucking software.

Look into my beautiful eyes, tumblr staff.

Ban the nazis.

Stop banning trans people for being trans.

Keep the lights on and the floors swept.

Understand that every feature to compete with another network misses the point that this is place is a dive bar.

You bought a dive bar. You can’t make it into a gastropub. Your attempts to bring in headlining entertainment is going to fall on deaf ears, we are here to see the local folks live their theater kid nightmare orgasm comedy fest.

This brought to you by counting how many ads I had to scroll past on my phone while stuck in traffic where the ad purposefully slowed down the scrolling mechanism.

You are not going to annoy me into supporting this business.

CURRENT PRICE FOR TUMBLR PREMIUM: $7.00

ESTIMATED NET RETURN (($7 x 0.971) - $0.30): about $6.50

This accounts for basic credit card processing fees of 2.9% + $0.30. Something at Tumblr's size should be able to negotiate better, but we are being malicious in our calculations, and saying "you get the basic rate" to prove a point.

SUGGESTED PRICE FOR TUMBLR PREMIUM: $2.00

ESTIMATED NET RETURN (($2 x 0.971) - $0.30): about $1.64

So

I ungenerously estimate the current Tumblr premium gets them $6.50/revenue versus my suggested $1.64/revenue.

Seems bad?!

Let's do a bit more math.

How many users at $2/base ($1.64 profit) would it take to cover the income of 1 user at $7/base ($6.50 income)?

6.50 / 1.64... 3.96341463415

I will uh go ahead and

round up

to 4 users

So. 1 user = $6.50 (6.50 x 1) profit. 4 users = $6.56 ($1.64 x 4) profit.

we'll just let the ol' tumblr keep them there six cents and call it even an even swap

Now.

To be fair.

To make this work.

You have to attract 3 more users (1 versus 4) to pay.

This feels like a lot!

Until it doesn't!

Because personally.

I would pay $2.00/month to keep this site running. Feels like a rounding error in my books.

I flinch at $7.00/month. Feels weird to pay this much for a site that so regularly has "hm, this disasterous new feature is pissing me off."

:)

But

as always

what do i know.

To satisfy my various spoken and unspoken life/art studio ambitions I offer this as a free consultancy lesson to anyone making a patreon or paid newsletter or whatever thing -- where you have a digital product that does not require shipping, handling, etc.

You can make it expensive and aim to have a small audience.

You can make it cheap and aim to have a large audience.

I personally am really fond of cheap digital services because it feels like support when I realize I have not had time to keep up. When I do have time to keep up -- "Oh this is a great value"

And when I do not, I see the bill -- "Ah, I am glad THING exists. Happy to throw them a few coins."

In respect to my soul, please use this lesson exclusively for such things as

art

music

thinly-veiled self-insert fan fiction

non-tax evasion accounting practices

joyous pornography or other erotic silliness

history (all years available)

claymation

cartooning

books (novels or things longer or shorter)

poetry (erotic or non)

coffee

fiction

non-fiction

non-non fiction

non-fiction fiction

and, of course, real reviews of faux products that should exist, but do not, due to limitations of time, space, money, reality, magic, technology, theology, methodology, organic chemistry, biology (marine, terra), cosmology, topology and/or cartography

anything fun

thank you and good night

for at least

the humanity of the AIDS crisis: the ward by gideon mendel

Update February 16, 2026

Here is the sample of the rainbow knight embroidery patch. Super happy with the quality! All 16 embroidery patches are now available for pre-order until March 1st, 2026!

The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.

They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.

The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.

The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.

The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.

Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.

Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.

Tumblrites, the hour has come for us to practice one of our most sacred rituals.