110% dwarf chocolate

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.

wordle in 2: misleading. you may think that this is the highest achievement, but it suffers from the same disappointment of a lucky guess that wordle in 1 causes. your second guess is a strategic choice, but ending the game this early just isn't interesting

wordle in 3: the peak. your starting word gave you some information and then your second guess contextualized that information into a solvable position. your sharp intuition and restraint is what truly separates you as above average.

wordle in 4: statistically average, par for the course, the baseline against which all other wordles are compared.

wordle in 5: you're sweating. you made a mistake at some point, or your starting word was effectively useless, and it took an extra guess above average to close things out. wordle in 5 comes as a relief.

wordle in 6: crushing humiliation. you have technically succeeded but at what cost. your thirty square grid will stare back at you like barrels of a firing squad. a failure in all but name.

Onychophorans, also known as velvet worms, look almost like a cross between a caterpillar, a millipede, and a worm, but they actually belong to their own unique phylum.

Above: a velvet worm of the genus Eoperipatus

The velvet worm's fleshy antennae, chubby little feet, and gleeful expression might make it seem kind of cute, at least at first glance, but these creatures are ferocious predators that prey on terrestrial arthropods like crickets, cockroaches, and spiders. In order to immobilize their prey, they shower their victim with a remarkably strong and quick-drying adhesive.

Above: another Eoperipatus species

As this article explains:

The velvet worm, a squishy little predator that looks like the stretch-limo version of a caterpillar, has a whimsical MO: it administers death by Silly String.

In the leaf litter of tropical and temperate forests around the world, velvet worms stalk the night on dozens of stubby legs. The pocket-size predator—whose species range from less than half an inch to eight inches long—can barely see, so it bumbles around, hoping to literally bump into an edible bug such as a cricket or a woodlouse. When it finds one, the velvet worm uses nozzles on either side of its face to shoot jets of sticky slime at its victim.

Above: genus Peripatoides and genus Eoperipatus

Velvet worm slime is ejected as a liquid, but it rapidly hardens into a gel as it soars through the air, forming fibers that are as strong as nylon. The substance then solidifies into glassy adhesive fibers as soon as it hits the target, trapping the victim in an inescapable net.

The slime can hit its target from up to 1.5 feet away.

Above: close-up of a velvet worm spraying its slime

The slow-moving velvet worm then approaches its prey, pierces the victim's exoskeleton with a pair of blade-like jaws, uses its saliva to dissolve the insect's innards, and then quickly devours its meal.

Above: the velvet worm's horrifying face as it prepares to feed

Velvet worm slime is quick-setting, strong, dissolves in water, and can also be reconstituted into new fibers. The mechanisms that produce these properties were unknown until just 16 years ago, when an Australian scientist discovered that the slime contains "chaotic proteins:"

The proteins are loaded with amino acids that repel one another, and they’re short of the water-repelling ones that help other proteins to establish a solid core. Rather than folding, they adopt open and random structures that are extensively coated with water molecules. Their watery sheaths prevent the protein molecules from interacting with one another. They can only do so when the water disappears. And that’s exactly what happens when the slime hits its target.

Insects are covered in waxy, water-repellent shells, but the velvet worm’s slime contains fat and detergent molecules that break past this defence. These chemicals, and the sheer force with which the slime is shot, means that it spreads all over the victim. The insect’s struggles seal its fate by drawing the slime into threads. Spread over a large surface area, the water in the slime quickly evaporates, unsheathing the proteins and leaving them to mingle for the first time. They form tight chemical bonds with one another and the once-liquid slime hardens.

Above: Eoperipatus feeding on an unknown arthropod and Peripatoides suteri feeding on a huntsman spider

Velvet worms are some of the oldest terrestrial animals on Earth, dating back to nearly 540 million years ago, when most of the world's creatures were still confined to the oceans. They're older than dinosaurs, trees, sharks, and even horseshoe crabs.

Surprisingly, their morphology has changed very little in the last 400 million years or so -- their fossilized ancestors look remarkably similar to the velvet worms that are still roaming the earth today.

Above: assorted velvet worms

The world's smallest species of velvet worm is Ooperipatellus nanus, with a length of just 5mm (0.2 inches); the largest is Mongeperipatus solorzanoi, which can grow to a length of 22cm (8.7 inches). Velvet worms can have between 13 and 43 pairs of feet, depending on the species

Above: the tiny feet of a velvet worm

The term Onychophora literally means "claw-bearer," which is a reference to the hooked claw at the tip of each foot. Together, these claws allow the worm to travel across uneven terrain, but they can also retract as it moves onto smoother surfaces. When the claws are retracted, the worm simply walks on the stubby little pads of its feet.

Above: Epiperipatus barbadensis

Sources & More Info:

Phys.org: Velvet Worm Slime

National Mag Lab: Cracking the Chemical Code of the "Silly String of Death"

National Geographic: Scientists Uncover Secret of the Velvet Worm's Quick-Setting Slime

Scientific American: Velvet Worm Slime Reveals its Sticky Secrets

Journal of the American Chemical Society: Peculiar Phosphonate Modifications of Velvet Worm Slime Revealed

Onychophoran Website: Onychophora

ZooKeys: An Updated World Checklist of Velvet Worms

iNaturalist: Velvet Worms

Digital files from my "Good News" zine

This work is about the joy and freedom that come with deconverting from an oppressive religion. I hope you enjoy!

"What the fuck?"

no, "Watch the Phacus".

This headdress was discovered at Star Carr, which is an archaeological site located in North Yorkshire. More than 30 other deer-skull headdresses (also known as frontlets) have been unearthed at the same site, all dating back to the Mesolithic period, c.9000-8000 BCE.

Above: one of the other headdresses from Star Carr

According to this article:

The most famous of the Star Carr finds are the enigmatic headdresses crafted from deer skulls, with holes drilled into them and parts of the antlers removed. Some headdresses are smaller than others, and could have been worn by children.

The headdresses are uncommon artefacts, with only three similar objects known elsewhere (in Germany), which raises the question of why there are so many at Star Carr.

Above: deer-skull headdress from Star Carr

The holes that were carved into each skull were likely used to secure the headdress onto the wearer's head.

Above: another frontler from Star Carr

The purpose and significance of these artifacts remains unclear. Some experts believe that they were worn as hunting disguises, while others argue that they served a ceremonial purpose. Those two theories may not be mutually exclusive, as this author points out:

The initial dichotomised interpretations offered by Dr. Graham Clark as to the frontlets’ purpose have characterised their discussion for the vast majority of the latter 20th century as either a shamanic headdress or a hunting disguise. More recently, however, researchers have critiqued this dichotomy, noting that many hunter-gatherer worldviews afford little meaningful distinction between functional and symbolic actions.

It can be argued that as shamans are widely regarded as playing a key role in negotiating human/animal relations and hunting luck, an artefact which aids the corporeal transformation of a human body into that of a deer could be used in both capacities interchangeably. Certainly, the contexts into which the frontlets were being deposited at Star Carr suggests that a complex set of meanings were attached to them.

Sources & More Info:

The British Museum: Headdress

Current Archaeology: A Survival Story: Prehistoric Life at Star Carr

Star Carr Volume Two: Studies in Technology, Subsistence and Environment: Antler Frontlets

Star Carr Archaeological Project: Antler Headdresses

York Archaeology: Mesolithic Marvels: Conserving the Star Carr Headdresses

PLoS One: Technological Analysis of the World’s Earliest Shamanic Costume