si tacuisses

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.

"Literacy is the path to communism!"

what i can tell you is that we have a holiday once a year where we hold the scrolls and hug them and dance around them. what i can tell you is that they are written with love by hand by trained scribes who take exquisite care to make sure each word, each letter, is perfect. when we read from them we do not touch the parchment directly so that it won’t be harmed by the oils from our fingers.

we make beautiful clothing for our torah scrolls, embroidered cloth coverings and shining worked metal crowns to sit atop them or carved wooden cases plated with gold and silver. the torah is to us the words of the living God, the tree of life, the record of who are and where we’re going, and the torah scroll is our most holy ritual object.

the torah scroll never touches the floor. if it is dropped accidentally, everyone in the room must fast for forty days in mourning. the desecration of a torah scroll is the utmost level of desecration that can be done to a jewish community, short of killing its members. nazis burnt and destroyed torah scrolls as part of their campaign of terror against the jewish people even before widescale mass deportations began. in ancient times, the romans wrapped the rabbis who led our community in torah scrolls when they burnt them at the stake.

this past shabbat, in the middle of the night, a synagogue in jackson, mississippi was intentionally set on fire. the library was burnt to ashes and seven torah scrolls were damaged, with two of them completely destroyed.

no one was injured, which i am extremely grateful for. they have several security cameras, so there is a suspect in custody. the details and motivation haven't been shared, but it can be reasonably assumed to be a hate crime.

this was the first synagogue established in the state, the only one that's not hours away, and certainly the largest in the area. two Torah scrolls are destroyed beyond repair, 5 are damaged. the library where children have religious school and morning Shabbat service is held has been completely burnt down, much of that section of the building that's left is covered in soot and ash. the administrative offices were also lost.

our Tree of Life, which was for important life events like bar/bat/b'nei mitzvahs, was destroyed. i was just looking at it this past Tuesday while waiting for a meeting with my rabbi. it was dozens of bronze plaques in the shape of leaves with commemorations on them placed above a trunk. there is a photo of the wreckage that makes me cry every time i look at it.

we have a rescued scroll from Nazi-era Czechoslovakia (it is thankfully unharmed). we have a Holocaust memorial garden. we have names of dead loved ones displayed. memories in and on the walls. there are so many deeply meaningful and largely irreplaceable things here.

my rabbi was out of state for the last several days. i cannot imagine how he's feeling.

im fucking pissed at the police department. they said that they would patrol the grounds more often in light of the worldwide rise in antisemitism. I have not personally seen them once. they let the only area for our community to gather be set on fire.

here are some photos of the aftermath of the most recent fire:

I have been asked about fundraising, so I will be providing a link to donations.