Once there was a dutch man, his name was Johnny Verbeck. He mad the finest sausages and sauerkraut and spek. He made the finest sausages, the world had ever seen. And one day he invented a sausage making machine. A Thing in my Possession: Pocket Games I wrote last week about how I don't play a lot of board games with people in person any more, but I also realized that I don't let that stop me from wanting to. I went to see a play with some friends here in person, and even thought the afternoon's activity was already planned, there was the possibility we might go out for coffee or dinner afterwards. So I slipped a couple games into my pockets. In this case it was Pairs and Love Letter. Two simple games that pack a lot of fun into small packages. Tiny games are maybe my favorite sub-niche in the hobby. I love the idea of having something that would become part of your everyday carry that includes a the possibility for fun. Sure some folks carry a pocket knife, or a stack of 3x5 notecards held together with a binder clip, but I carry a game or two when I go out (which is rare.) 90% of the time I don't end up puling them out, but I like the comfort of the possibility. And when I have pulled them out it's been worth the initial awkwardness, because we've had fun that the others I was with didn't expect to have. I think more people should carry games in their pocket for when boring things happen. I have plenty to recommend! Poorly Organized Thoughts about: Search Engines I don’t really do new years resolutions. But I kind of fell backwards into one a few weeks ago. I was thinking about how bad search engines have gotten lately. I generally haven’t used google for a few years, because their company motto some time ago stopped being “don’t be evil” and started being “don’t? Be evil!” between the tracking and advertising and I’m still mad about them shutting down google reader. My primary search engine has been Duck Duck Go, which doesn’t track users (yay!) But I have also noticed how bad search results have gotten over the years. More often than not when I search for something specific on any given search engine, I get garbage instead of anything useful. Every blogpost I find there feels full of filler trying to masquerade as content specifically designed to juice whatever search algorithm is being used to serve up these pages that mostly exist for advertiser dollars.
I think it started with the glorification of recipes. You know that thing where you have to scroll past a 2 thousand word story just to find out what ingredients you need to make a cake? I don’t think that happened on accident. I think for whatever reason those pages did well in search (possibly because they appeared to be made by actual people?) and then the feedback loop started. You have to write pages like that so that they show highly on search engines, but then why bother actually writing anything real on them, just churn out some spicy autocomplete garbage and slap a generated recipe on the end too. I don’t think this was inherently malicious on anybody part, but instead the result of competing automations and prioritizing page rank over actual usability. Why do you need a good page rank? So people will see the ads next to your content and you will make a few cents.
I started noticing that whatever page I ended up on felt like it was specifically designed to look like a human made it, but without any of the touches of an actual human behind the keyboard. I don’t think I could put into words specifically, but then someone else went and did it for me. This article on the Verge goes into great detail in helping me understand what happened to search, and in particular how it has made all websites feel the same. Once you start seeing it, it’s everywhere. Like seeing the code in the matrix.
So I quite using search engines. I’m not the first person to try doing this, which I know because I got the idea from the internet’s resident Linux Mom Veronica Explains. She hasn’t yet posted a video about the experience, but she has posted a bit about it on her mastodon account, where I follow her. I thought it was a cool thing to try and so for the last month or so I have done everything I can to avoid any search engine.
And honestly? It’s been pretty good. nine times out of ten I can just go to wikipedia for a quick piece of information on a topic, and if I need to go further I can always check the sources there. I even updated my browser’s default search to start there instead of DDG to break myself of the habit. I hadn’t realized how insidious having a search engine in also in the address bar really was for changing my behaviors. It really made DDG (or google or whatever) the default behavior for interacting with the web, and ultimately that gave them more power over my browsing than I would have if I thought about before now.
The other thing that I’ve rediscovered in this practice is the ability to flex my own research muscles. I have to ask myself where a given piece of information might exist, rather than offloading the work to a computer. When wikipedia doesn’t suffice, I have to think about where the information might exist. Often I’ll start by trying to remember websites I have visited before, which works pretty well, but I’ve also just guessed at websites and gotten where I need to go. I complain about the death of websites, but a lot of companies still have them, with at least basic support information. website’s built in search functions are often better than you might expect, and help limit the results to what’s actually in the site. Youtube is still a useful resource, and I’ve gone back to using reddit more, just because too much of what is there has actually been written by a person. Reddit has’t been the most useful, so usually it’s a place of last resort. I’ve also started using bookmarks again! You know those things where you save a website to come back to it later? They’re great and I’m kind of mad at myself for not using them more. I used to have dozens of websites bookmarked, and now I have maybe 6. Which is more than I had when I started this process. But I’ll probably have more soon.
Here are some of the things I have found without a search engine: A liquid soap recipe My doctors office The solution to a weird problem I was having with an obscure piece of software (thanks forums!) That above article about how google changed websites (I hadn’t saved the link) song lyrics for Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
And those are just the things I can remember while writing this. It’s been a fun experiment, and the longer I go without using search engines, the more I realize I don’t really need them for most things.
Stuff I'm Reading: I dove back into Joker Moon, the 29th book in the Wild Cards series. Wild Cards is a fun series, set in a world where in the 1950s an alien virus swept across the globe. It killed a lot of people let some completely unharmed, and for an even smaller population it mutated them beyond humanity. Almost nobody who mutates does so in the same way, which led to naming the virus the Wild Card. And when your card turns, you could end up as a relatively normal looking person who can lift very heavy objects with no effort, or fly, or turn your body into a swarm of insects(an Ace), or you might wind up as a giant mutant snail or some other hideous thing(a Joker). With 30 plus books in the series, there's a lot to explore, but most of them are standalone and can be read in any order. Most of them are also what they call Mosaic Novels, where a handfull of different authors tell stories from different characters' POV over the course of the book. Soone character will have 1-6 different chapters in the book about them, written by one author, and a different character will tell their character's part of the story in other chapters. Joker Moon, the one I'm currently reading has nine different authors telling the story of a young man with too much money who decides to build a refuge for all Jokers, where they can get away from their harsh treatment on earth. By moving to the Moon. I generally enjoy the Wild Card books I've read so far and this one is turning out to be quite good. I actually picked up two more at the library this week so I"m ready to jump back in once I finish this one.
