A storage room in the basement of my parents’ house had a huge amount of liquor and wine. They weren’t alcoholics, professors just always bring a bottle of something with them when they come over for dinner. Because they weren’t alcoholics, most of it sat there for years. I remember they had cans of Michelob from the 70s when I was in high school in the 90s. They still had pull tabs instead of pop tabs.
I stole a lot of that liquor as a teenager, but I left that beer alone.
One set of foster parents I lived with had a bar in the basement. My foster brother and I used to sneak shots of the hard stuff, then top up the levels with water to make it look like it wasn’t touched. Thankfully they didn’t really drink either so we didn’t get busted for a long time doing that.
Mike (my foster dad at the time) had decided to relax one eve and have a drink when he noticed it was looking a lot lighter colored than it should as he was pouring it and commented on it. (It was probably nearly 50% water at that point, as were several other bottles.)
Of course we denied any knowledge of what could have possibly happened but he pretty much figured it out on the first sip. After his screaming rant he ended up grounding us for I think a month(?) (I was in grade 7, this was a long time ago.) not that it mattered to me… I was a bit of a dick back then and just wouldn’t come home after school anyway. I lived there for a couple more months before my foster mom had a nervous breakdown (not entirely related to that particular incident) and I was shipped to a different home outside the city.
Thanks for sharing. I can’t imagine the challenges of going through the foster system. I would have had my ass handed to me if I tried something like that.
There wasn’t anything in foster care that could surpass the reasons I was in foster care to begin with. I kind of liked it to be honest… I could swap out foster parents/group homes whenever things got rough, and I was kind of a tough kid to deal with. After 7 homes, I ended up living on my own since I was 17.
Putting a tool in a powered coil will magnetize it temporarily but I don’t think it will stay magnetic or at least not for long. They sell little magnetizers that you can get cheap that will last a lot longer though if that’s what you’re looking for…
I have one like this around somewhere that worked well when I tried it.
I’ve had good results discharging a 450V 1kJ capacitor bank through several turns of 10 AWG wire. If you don’t have a capacitor bank laying around, one of those magnetizers will work just as well.
Depending on the coils number of windings, and the size of the tool it will magnetise it pretty well. I used to do this to screwdrivers before they came pre-magnetised. And they will stay magnetised for a very long time.
Most of the time the reason for becoming demagnetised is due to dropping the tool several (many) times.
Solving problems that don’t exist, the American Way.
DuckDuckGo only achieved any meaningful userbase because of QAnon conspiracy theorists and I find it hilarious that anyone would recommend that jank-ass search.
For me personally, nothing, apart from “I use it on other devices so I’ll use it here too”.
Moved from Google to DDG a few years ago, I have no reason really to move to another search as i’m satisfied with duckduckgo, but i’m eyeing Kagi.
DDG has been fast, responsive, works fine when proxied via a datacenter IP (unlike other services that start throwing capchas at you), looks familiar/like Google to the untrained eye, and image search works as you’d expect. If you’re coming from google, to be honest there’s no reason to pick it specifically, there are a wealth of search engines to choose from.
Approaching it with google-style searches often yields shit results. My search style adjusted over time, and now I find it much better than Google for my use.
As a sidenote, I’ve found Searx and Yandex are better for niche/unpopular sites (especially those with user-submitted content), as well as 🚢🏴☠️.
I tend to like the “bangs” feature that DuckDuckGo offers when it’s set as my browser’s default. Basically by putting !+prefix it automatically redirects your search to a different website. !g will do Google, !b will do Bing, !yt will do YouTube, etc… And it’s quite extensive. Currently, DDG claims to have 13,564 bangs you can use, so if there’s some website with a search bar, chances are it can be banged from DDG.
The search engine from my use over the last 4-6 years generally provides me with “good enough” search results and I enjoy the interface itself, as well as the sorting options when searching images. Every now and then, if i don’t get the results I want, I can just bang a different search engine (I’m just starting to realize the repercussions of using “bang” as a verb…).
I think there are browser extensions that offer pretty much the same functionality but it is something.
I actually found that for me anonymous search result Just kinda suck. When i type [fastfoodbrand] i want the delivery closest to me, not in California or wherever. When i look for a purchase i want web stores that actually deliver where i live.
As a privacy enthusiast i hate that thats my truth, but the truth it is. But with the downfall of reddit, worsening all Results, most trusted sites being bookmarked and the rise of chatgpt* being just as good if not better then google+reddit. i do find i am way less incline to search the internet at all.
*Be as critical ofIt as much as your supposed to be online with strangers anyway. Its a tool and only as smart as you are able to prompt It.
Oh yeah, I reckon there’s a good number of extensions for it too, probably something I should check out as well in the future.
And yeah, it’s definitely a tradeoff of sorts. Denying a browser or search engine access to all personal information, including GPS, might lead to irrelevant results, so I imagine it’s a matter of giving as little information as possible for the maximum relevance in results. GPS is one of those compromises I’ll make as well, though only at the zip code level most of the time, since most apps/sites don’t need to know my precise location.
While I do try and stick to my trusted sites as much as possible, the things I often want to find online are beyond the scope of the sites I have bookmarked. Though bookmarking more sites that I trust and opting to use them over a regular search seems like a good habit to get into
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