autobiography of a ghost

Here it is, the poster for World Eel Day 2026! It's time again to celebrate eels of all sorts in any way you can!

Oh? "How do I part-eel-cipate?" you ask? Well, from the eel man himself:

"There are lots of ways to get involved with World Eel Day. Your eel inspired activities, photos, resources, art, outcomes, thoughts or messages can be shared online on all social media platforms with the hashtags #WorldEelDay2026 #WorldEelDay

For example, you could organise an eel event , draw or make an eel or write a story or a poem. Remember to tag or collaborate with @eelsuitcase on instagram"

People get really into bird watching but here's a secret: bugs are WAY easier to find than birds and they let you get a lot closer.

I was homeless. I was homeless as a child and as an adult. That shit sucks believe it or not.

The uncertainty. The ever-present grimy feeling from lack of access to running water. Having nothing to your name. The shame you feel is asking your fellow man for the bare minimum. Just so much shame, man.

"Unhoused" is so clinical. A technical term. Sure, its not incorrect, but it doesn't properly convey the emotional and psychological impact homelessness has on you.

You say "house", I think of a structure.

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

Did you know if you have an mp3 player that supports ebooks, you can put all your favorite ao3 works on it?! I just learned this, so know I must share!

Here's how to do it:

1. Have an mp3 player that supports ebooks. If you don't have one, they are relatively cheap on Amazon.

2. On your computer, go to a work on ao3 and click the 'Download' button on the top right. Download as an .html file, then open the file.

3. Select the whole work by pressing ctrl+A, then 'copy'. Then paste into a separate document. If you want, backspace all the tags.

4. Save the document as a .txt file.

5. Connect your mp3 player to the computer however you do. Create a new folder 'Books' (or whatever you want). Move the .txt file to that folder.

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.