FIX THEIR HEARTS OR DIE

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.

it took me asking three more times before she finally told me she wanted me to leave the fans where they are instead of moving them to my room or something. and I said oh! I had no intention of doing so but thank you for letting me know what the expectation is.

"You left your dish in the sink." > the hidden request is "please clean your dish, preferably right now." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my housemate thinks I forgot about it. so I reply "oh, I know." housemate thinks i'm sassing her and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the dish in the sink.

"There's hot soup on the stove." > said to me while I was preparing a sandwich. the hidden request is "please eat the soup." since it's phrased as a statement of fact, I don't immediately intuit the request and instead think my mom thinks I didn't see the soup. I did see it, but I wanted a sandwich instead. so I reply, "I saw it, thank you." mother thinks I'm being rude and gets annoyed with me. only then do I realize she was asking me to do something about the soup (and furthermore is offended I am eating a sandwich instead).

"Your bread is on the counter." > the hidden request is "please remove your sliced bread from the counter and store it elsewhere." since it's phrased as an observation, I don't immediately intuit the request and think my roommate thinks I meant to store the bread elsewhere and forgot. when I reassure her I know it's there, she gets annoyed. only then do I realize she wants me to do something about the bread on the counter.

"You can turn up the heat, you know." > said to me while I was scrambling eggs slowly over low heat. this one really confused me because of course I knew I could turn up the heat, but I had no reason to as I was only cooking for myself. when I ignored the statement because I was focused on my task and had nothing to say, my mother added, "the eggs will cook faster if you do." sure, I'm aware of this too, but I don't want to cook them faster. I won't get the texture I want. when I reply, "I don't want to, though," mom thinks I'm being rude and gets irritated, then asks me how long I'm going to take. only then do I realize she was telling me to cook faster (because she wanted the stove), instead of simply informing me I could.

"There are donuts in the break room." > a more benign example, but similar outcome. once again I hear this as a piece of information being given to me, and thank my coworker for telling me. when I don't immediately leave my desk to get donuts because I'm finishing a task, my coworker hovers and says, "well? aren't you getting some?" only then do I realize there was actually a hidden invitation, and I was supposed to respond to the hidden part and say, "I'll come get them in a minute," or "no thank you I don't want any."

as I said, I've learned over time this is something many allistic (non-autistic) people do (as well as high masking autistic folks who have learned the social rules and wear themselves out following them rigidly). despite what I've learned, my default autistic response is pretty much always to take the words at face value (especially when I'm distracted or multitasking), before remembering I have to translate them. and while I can make a decent educated guess in most cases, sometimes I just cannot and simply ask, "what are you asking me?"

unfortunately, many allistic people suffer from an inability to take words literally just as much as they struggle to speak literally, which can further obfuscate communication. this is why I emphasize gentle reassurance that you are not criticizing them, but asking them to help you, a person in need, by clarifying their intent. people generally like to be helpful and I have had moderate success with this approach.

"I'm putting the kettle on." (not just announcing what they're doing, they're expecting you to affirm whether you want tea or not.)

"Boy the trash is full." (not just voicing an observation, they're expecting you to take the trash out.)

"If you leave your window open, bugs will get in." (not just giving you information to decide what to do with, they're expecting you to close the window.)

Any variation of "do you want to do [unpleasant task]?" (you aren't actually supposed to say yes or no, they aren't asking your opinion, they're telling you to do it and saying you don't want to is rude.)

"Let me show you how to do something." (they want you to do it this way, they aren't just sharing an insight that you can choose to incorporate into your habits or not)

"Mm that food smells good." (might be complimenting your cooking, might be hoping you'll offer them some.)

"What are you watching/playing?" (might be curious about your interests, but might also want you to invite them to join.)

"Company's arriving in 15 minutes." (this one was from a mom to her kids and she wasn't just giving them a heads up, she was telling them to clean up.)

"Sorry my desk is such a mess." (APPARENTLY this was NOT a comment on her own desk but implying her COWORKER'S desk was messy and she wanted them to clean it??? sorry to the commenter who shared this one but that sounds genuinely deranged and you can't convince me this is common even for the most indirect allists out there)

to everyone saying this is simply a direct vs indirect culture issue, yes you can have communication breakdowns between people with differing degrees of directness, regardless of their neurodiversity status. what I am trying to illustrate is that autistic people in indirect cultures will miss these indirect cues at much higher rates than others, because we do not pick up on social norms at the same rate or proficiency as everyone else, because of our autism. essentially making us "direct-culture" people by default. some autistic folks do learn and practice those norms (some of us are literally traumatized into doing so), but it's something we often must remind ourselves to do, manually, and it can take a lot of extra effort. this is why high maskers end up in burn-out if they cannot learn to unmask btw.

So this is what a Goblin Shark actually looks like…

Her first 28 years are fairly tame, until we reach 1987's Canadian Mountie Barbie. Reasonable odds for a cop, even if they're not a USAmerican cop.

in 1991, we get US Air Force Pilot Barbie, US Marine Corps Sergeant Barbie, US Navy Petty Officer Barbie. There's also 1992's US Army Barbie, if those guys were feeling left out. I'm also ignoring the 1989 US Army Barbie because that one is 100% a stolen valour runway look, not a uniform.

Going to run my autism over those four.

US Navy Petty Officer Barbie is wearing quartermaster's rating insignia, so no combat for her.

US Army Barbie is wearing an airborne maroon beret with no rank insignia that I could see, but she's loaded down with medical supplies, so I'm gonna say combat medic, but only as many kills as her other medical endeavours.

US Air Force Pilot Barbie is wearing a jacket that looks like a Top Gun tie-in. The unit patch is just the USAF coat of arms, and the name patch says she's a Captain. VERY confusingly, the plane on the box art is an F-5, which had just recently been retired. But its USAF usage was almost all in the OPFOR Aggressor squadrons, which is... "come play enemy planes for our training exercises".

US Marine Corps Sergeant Barbie is wearing E-5 Sergeant's insignia, and three medals (she's in dress uniform). To my eye, and allowing for badly printed colours, looks like Navy and Marine Achievement Medal, Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, and the South West Asia Service Medal. The first two are fairly obvious "Barbie Is Well Behaved" stuff, but uh. That last one though?

USMC Barbie was in Desert Storm.