#how to google

[alpaca-clouds]

How to Research Pt. 1 - Google-Fu

Alright. I have decided to make a little tutorial in how to use different ways to access information, especially scientific information. The reason for this is, that... Well, research has found that a lot of Gen Z and especially Gen Alpha struggle with doing online research, mostly due to being so used to use the internet via Apps. And having had to do a research project at university, where my fellow students massively struggled to find anything on the requested topic.

So... Let me start with the most obvious topic: Google.

Funnily enough I gotta say, that even a lot of my fellow Millenials struggle with google. Mind you, Google has become a lot less user-friendly over the years. Ten years ago it was a lot easier to google stuff, because Google pushed less advertisement.

It should be said, that these techniques also work with most non-google search engines. So, let me go through it.

How to Google

For reasons the question I will use to demonstrate this entire thing will be: "How many biological sexes are there?" Just because I had to show research on this in online discussions too often. (Me, that is, as an intersex individuum.)

The most intuitive way would probably be to directly ask google.

Now, on the first glance the results of this search do not look that bad.

Again, I am intersex. I am definitely not a male or female based on my biology. And obviously, as such I have read quite a bit on the topic before.

Now. One of the things you need to do, when doing research, is to be able to judge a source.

Scientific American is somewhat reliable as a starting point, but it is popscience, hence you should definitely not cite it if there is any other way.

The NIH is usually a reliable source. But, if you just look into the preview text (or read the abstract on the side) you will find, that the scientist completely just mixes through sex, gender and sexuality. Which... might not make for the best source.

The next one - from the Arizona State University - also is a bit too much on the gender part, and too little on the sex part. And if you look at the preview, you will also find something else there: Google has marked "gender" as an "exact result" by using bold fonts.

And lastly we have a result that is the private blog of some economics guy. Which... might not be a good source for this.

And if you scroll just a bit further down, you will find openly trans- and interphobic sites like Women UK and Emma.

This is the point where you should realize two things:

Maybe we should change the search

You really gotta be careful with what pages get brought up, when you use your google-fu.

See, here is the thing. Why in the nine hells is the 4th (!!!) result of the search some private blog of some dude? I can tell you: Google is basing the results partly on the SEO of the pages. And it just turns out that some economics blokes are actually really good at SEO stuff. That is search engine optimization.

Other than that, Google also basing stuff on traffic and how many people clicked at what link and probably some other stuff that us normal mortals will never understand.

So, how can you change the results? Well, you use the tools that google gives you.

Using " around a group of words or a single word tells google, that you want this exact group of words in the result and no variation of it.

Using - in front of a word or a group of words marked with " before means that you want to exclude these results.

And using * somewhere means, that a word can end differently and you will still accept it.

So, what have we learned from the other results before? Well, for one: We should definitely tell google, that we want to know about biological sex, not about gender. So we should probably mark "biologial sex" as an exact group. It probably would help also to include something like "intersex" because that way we give google something to go off on. Lastly: A lot of supposedly "feminist" sites will actually push their TERFy agenda. So, to exclude them, I will tag this search also as -"women's rights". And because I am not interested in someone's blog, I will also use -blog.

Hence we get the search term:

And look at the results I am getting:

Now, this might not be perfect - but it is much more like what I was looking for, right?

So, that is a quick primer on how to google-fu.

Tomorrow I am gonna talk a bit about Wikipedia.

[consult-sherlockholmes]

How do you get blood out of clothes?

How to research something in three easy steps that even idiots can follow instead of always asking Sherlock things you could easily find out on your own: 1. Open the search engine of your choice 2. Enter your question by typing it on your keyboard just like you entered the question in my asks (so you should be capable of doing that) 3. Press enter and look at the results

How amazing you just learned something new, a first time thing for you. How about you use that new knowledge each time you have some basic question that you can google instead of pestering me.

[icaruspendragon]

babygirl i sit hunched in ways you’d never fuckin believe

[steveharrington]

i think ultimately the core of what irritates me about the t swift craze is that she’s constantly getting props for things that … literally aren’t true. people act like she’s self made, she is not. people act like she’s a social activist, she is not. people act like she’s constantly going to great lengths to uplift other women, she is not. like if people were just like yeah i love her music :) then okay! but it’s the constanttttt applause and praise and worshipping for things that are just patently false that really makes me feel insane

[wiisagi-maiingan]

What a terrible world we live in where you can google wild plants or bugs because you're interested in them and the first results are all "how do I kill this"

[cardentist]

hey, so people need to be aware that youtube is now (randomly) holding basic features for ransom (such as being able to pin comments under your own videos) in exchange for Your State ID/Drivers License, or a 30 Second Video Of Your Face.

not to pull a "think of the children," but No Actually. I've been making videos as a hobby since 2015 (and I've had my channel since middle school), I was a minor when I started and I'm not sure I would have understood the kind of damage something a seemingly simple as a video of your face can do.

this is a Massive breach of privacy and over-reach on google's part No Matter What, but if they're going to randomly demand a state ID or license then they absolutely should not allow minors to be creators.

google having a stockpile of identifying information on teenagers is bad enough, but the Alternative of recording your face and handing it over to be filed away is Alarming considering it opens the gates for minors who Aren't old enough to have a license.

and yes, there is a third option, but it's intentionally obtuse. a long wait period (2 months), with no guarantee of access (unlike, say, the convenience of using your phone's cameras for either of the other two), with absolutely No elaboration on what the criteria is or how it's being measured.

it's the same psychological effect that mobile games rely on. offer a slow, unreliable solution with no payment to make the Paid instant gratification look more appealing (the "payment" in this case being You. you are the product being offered).

and it's Particularly a system that (I think intentionally) disadvantages people who don't treat their channels like a job. hobbyists or niche creators who don't create regularly enough or aren't popular enough to meet whatever Vague criteria needs to be met to pass.

markiplier would have no problem passing, your little brother might not be able to. and while Mark's name is already out there there's no reason why your little brother's should be too.

something like pinned comments may seem simple, you don't technically Need it. but it's a feature that's been available for years. most people don't look at descriptions anymore. so when there's relevant information that needs to be delivered then the pinned comment is usually the go to.

for my little channel that information is about the niche series I create for. guides on how to get into the series, sources on where to find the content At All (and reliably so). for other creators it can be used for things Much More Important.

Moreover, if we let them get away with cutting away "small" features and selling it back to you for the price of your privacy, then they Will creep further. they Will take more.

Note: I have an update to this post here: [Link]

[velvetwyrme]

aHhh okay so the discussions of Titan!Megatron on @callsign-relic's blog have fully. FULLY taken over my brain and ive been drawing stuff for it for like the last few days nonstop

the tl;dr of this is AU is pretty much "what if Megatron got turned into a titan/cityformer as a form of penance/imprisonment and now roams the empty wasteland of Cybertron forever" plus "IDW Megatron has really fucked up internals so... what if that, but as a City?"

and of course since he's a Titan, that also means he has a cityspeaker... or three. One per sub-AU thing. Theres 3 options. 3 flavours of AU.

i have so much art to make. but in the meantime, for more info! check out the #titan au tag on Relic's blog :]!! (also uhh potential ns//fw warning for the link shfjbdkd)

Hi. My battery is running out once again so design and art notes get chucked here instead of an image.

The cuffs and collar are hardwired into Megatron, so I made the lights the same colour as his biolights!

I imagine that on the tops of his shoulders there are solar panels, even if you can't see them here lol.

I really wanted to keep the swirly bits on Megatron's chest from IDW

Other art notes:

The second picture with the seekers is (loosely) inspired by a discussion about whether or not Megatron gets visitors or not. I thought about who would visit him and well... I think this is as close as Starscream realistically gets to visiting him.

Extra detail about that piece is that Thundercracker and Skywarp are keeping watch from above! Also drawing Megatron took me like 8 hours because I was struggling with his legs really badly kshffkbfkdsbdk,, the background went much faster, funnily enough.

Optimus specifically isn't wearing his Autobot badge any more.

This isn't relevant in this series of images, but Ultra Magnus's eye markings are only on the Magnus armour. His other two forms do not have them :] (... until he begins to discard the armour, that is.)

Megatron is roughly 3200m/2 miles tall. Technically he could have clouds around his knees, but I thought this looked a little bit cooler lol.

Also, height chart! Him big. I didn't even attempt to put a human for scale because that'd be. near impossible with this scale.

[watmalik]

Ah yes, to have Hugh Jackman as your best friend, rival and your wife…

[pilgore]

[gingermintpepper]

I think, perhaps one of the funniest things to come from EPIC popularising the Odyssey is that now a ton of people think Poseidon wanted to kill Odysseus.

In the Odyssey, Poseidon has no intention of killing Odysseus. In fact, part of the whole reason Zeus lets Poseidon do whatever he wants even though he thinks Odysseus is rad and should get to kiss his wife is explicitly because Poseidon had no intentions of killing Odysseus. Poseidon wanted to pay back the suffering/inconvenience blinding Polyphemus would have caused. It's a really abstract thing tbh. How do you pay back someone permanently disabling your son? Poseidon's solution was just to amputate Odysseus from his other half; i.e. Penelope. The end game was never murder, it was always an endurance race.

(Od. Book 1: Zeus reassuring Athena that he is not, in fact, a part of Odysseus Hater-Nation. Trans. Robert Fagles)

Also, for those wondering if there's any sort of in text reason for why Poseidon wasn't around in God Games - at the time in the Odyssey when Athena petitions Zeus to let Odysseus leave Calypso's island, Poseidon was -checks notes- on vacation in Ethiopia. Yep. He left to Ethiopia for a festival and thusly was very much absent for Athena's whole "please let Ody go? Please? 🥺" request.

(Od. Book 1: While Odysseus was suffering, Poseidon went to party in the east)

I am begging y'all to read the Odyssey. It's a comedy for everyone except Odysseus and Penelope who are, in fact, suffering 24/7 365.

[sixth-light]

I have had these thoughts bubbling away in my head for like...eighteen months or so now (it will become very obvious why shortly) but the discussion in this post has pushed me to write them down: I think societally we HUGELY underestimate how motherhood for primary caregivers, particularly first-time motherhood, can be a source of vulnerability to radicalisation.

There is obviously huge cultural variance here, but for a lot of cis women becoming primary caregiver to an infant in a capitalist Western society represents a time of immense vulnerability because in general you are:

Incredibly sleep-deprived (which has well-documented knock-on effects for your judgement, mental health, etc)

If you gave birth, recovering from a significant challenge to your physical health (even in the best-case scenario)

Isolated from your previous networks and communities of people in full-time work

Completely separated from the context of your prior career goals and achievements

Under huge amounts of stress to learn how to care for an infant (don't get me started on breastfeeding)

And on top of this, you are also be experiencing a huge amount of messaging about how all this is natural, wonderful, something you're meant to do, something you should love doing, and something that you must do for the welfare of their child. It's a huge amount of pressure and life change even when everything goes right and there's very little cultural space to express negative feelings about it.

Any group of people who offer community, support, and affirmation to cis women in this situation are going to have a really good shot at radicalising them into some very weird and dangerous headspaces and in fact we see this happen all the time - think antivaxxers and TERFs. It flies under the radar because of the hazy positive glow that associates with motherhood and babies and also because we don't take the radicalisation of women seriously I guess because they rarely shoot anybody, but...yeah. It is such a vulnerable time!

[martyfive]

canon? found dead in a dich far, far away

i bumped it with my x-wing

[bovineblogger]

[egophiliac]

some more Twst pokemon as my brain melts at the impending episode 7 drop tomorrow! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

I went with Gholdengo and Cufant for Kalim, and Seviper and Malamar for Jamil! I went back and forth a looooot on whether to give Malamar to Jamil or Azul, but ultimately I think it just fits Jamil better. (Seviper was a given though)

[ghosted-jazz]

Happy 10th birthday Dashcon!! Get painted idiot