Bogmop - Into The Soup

Skip Google for Research

As Google has worked to overtake the internet, its search algorithm has not just gotten worse.  It has been designed to prioritize advertisers and popular pages often times excluding pages and content that better matches your search terms 

As a writer in need of information for my stories, I find this unacceptable.  As a proponent of availability of information so the populace can actually educate itself, it is unforgivable.

Below is a concise list of useful research sites compiled by Edward Clark over on Facebook. I was familiar with some, but not all of these.

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Google is so powerful that it “hides” other search systems from us. We just don’t know the existence of most of them. Meanwhile, there are still a huge number of excellent searchers in the world who specialize in books, science, other smart information. Keep a list of sites you never heard of.

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.

www.pdfdrive.com is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.

www.base-search.net is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free

Pavel Šimon (son of František Tavík Šimon) - Night on the Karls Bridge in Prague, lithograph, c. 1950.

how do you improve at art so fast?

“people only *think* the economy is bad because of rising grocery costs!” okay but that’s called food insecurity, and I cannot overstate how big of a deal that is. food prices are, historically speaking, the number one thing that people have rioted about.

andrewkarre (2022, Jan 27): In light of a Tennessee district banning MAUS, I'm sharing the greatest two pages ever written and drawn about the importance of children's literature and protecting children's access to books, starring Art Spiegelman and Maurie Sendak. From the New Yorker, September 27, 1997. [tweet]

Ive been saying this for years. You need to understand blue eyeshadow to understand anything at all. Today, blue eyeshadow is regarded as a "choice." Its either trendy or tacky or outdated, depending on the shade and style of application. But for about 30 years in the late 20th century, maybe the 50s through the 80s, blue eyeshadow was regarded as subtle, conservative, middle-of-the-road. Feminine. A "correct" shade to use. Brown or beige eyeshadow was the new thing, too subtle and casual to look like a "full face" of makeup. My grandmother (an enthusiastically conventional woman) has only ever worn blue eyeshadow.

The last 10 or 15 years have seen a real takeover of neutrals, beiges and grays and whites, in consumer goods and interior design. We've all seen the car color chart. Other people smarter than me have discussed the reasons for this, the caution brought on by economic instability. Nobody wants to paint their walls green because their home isnt a place to get comfortable, its an investment that will need to be made palatable for a new buyer (and why give yourself the extra task of repainting when youll have so much else to do when you move).

Neutral overload (and "clean design," with its lack of ornamentation) is aimed at creating a consistent, timeless, elegant look. Its adherents dont understand that this is also a trend. This subtle, conservative, middle-of-the-road design choice will look tacky and ostentatious someday. And necause you value timelessness, this will embarrass you.