Everybody wants A change, nobody wants To change

Let me write about AI, tech, and the internet once again. Today, I chatted with some online friends. On the off chance that those online friends may see this, this is not a targeted attack or insult to any of them, but rather my observations and personal beliefs about my generations actions. 

With these online friends, we chatted about AI slop, videos, and images. I relayed my frustrations with how my parents consumed lots of AI media, A lot of them agree, as they are artists: and it turns out the general consensus is one that is not too rare and commonly heard: AI has its uses, and images and videos are not one of it. Eventually, the topic got to one of my most interested: complacency regarding AI use and tech monopolies. I recall hearing a couple of these friends express how tech monopolies are so ingrained within our lives, and how AI being shoved down our throats was a result of the disproportionate reach these tech giants have. I personally agree a lot. I value consumer choice a lot: I want the decision to use this or that. I voiced that people should be more aware of what they consume, buy, and use. But this is where I branch off in this discussion. 

While we discuss this issue, I notice a sort of helplessness within my friends’ words. Tech giants are massive, therefore we can’t avoid it, we can’t stop it. Here is where the title of this blog comes into play. As I recommend DuckDuckGo (because I love shilling for duckduckgo) I explain that DuckDuckGo allows you to turn off AI overviews and pushes significantly less Reddit than google search. This is where I faced pushback. A lot of people value the Reddit results, because of its convenience. Even after I told many about the OpenAI and Reddit partnership that sells user data to be trained, people couldn’t give up the convenience of it. I even explained that Reddit has not been good for years, because companies have long used bots to promote their products on Reddit, and Now do it with AI, but to them this was something not able to give up. 

This is where we end the online friend conversation, and into my own thoughts. A lot of young people are aware for a need to change, and even are the frontlines of advocating for change. But they don’t want to change. The idea of losing their convenience, their entertainment, their luxuries, is scary to them. And I really hate to be that nerd emoji guy once again: but we all hate windows and microsoft, but nobody wants to try alternatives. No one wants to try Linux, because Valorant or League of Legends won’t run on it. No one wants to delete TikTok or Instagram, because the content and media it provides is too entertaining. This is despite everyone unanimously agreeing that short form media fries your brain, your attention span or whatever. We see so many people talk about how evil social media is, how evil Meta and X is. But we don’t delete the apps, and stop using the apps. Why? Those same advocates who want change are waiting for someone else to do it for them. For now, they will just wait and reap the spoon fed convenient rewards while someone else makes the change. A part of me can’t blame people for being sucked into these things, whether AI, short form content, or even Starbucks. These are things socially engineered to be addictive and to become habits. But that excuses the old boomers who are blissfully unaware. What about the aware, but complacent in their learned helplessness? A corporation, company, is only as powerful as it’s consumers, its customers. If the consumers move, if they stop consuming, the corporations fail. It’s oversimplified, but this is what I truly believe in. I am a libertarian type of person, I know you may not agree with me; maybe you’re more of a socialist, but at least we can hold hands and stop consuming slop.  

I’m not a saint, and I know how this writing comes off as. I have used AI to do my homework before, and I have laughed at tung tung tung sahur or other slop before. I used to be a instagram doomscroller, with probably 2-3 hours on the app daily. And while I’m still not on any social media, I’m still on YouTube where I watch YouTube videos everyday, and embarrassingly so watch “Family guy funny moments” which are definitely content farms. And I still have an iPhone. Don’t make your life hell. You can’t degoogle everything or completely remove yourself from corporations we hate. But it’s the perfect time to be aware of what you use, how you use, and how you want to use. My recommendation to a random reader on where to start: deleting one of your social media apps for a day and seeing how it affects you. 

If you are someone who wants to talk about social media, how it has affected you personally or affected those you know, I genuinely would like to hear and I love hearing other perspectives about it. If you’d like to chat, send me a email at akiaki31725@proton.me.

How to make windows 11 look like “Aero”: customizing windows 11

A blog ago I ranted about frutiger aero. This blog I'm teaching you how to push windows 11 to it's Microslop limits, and how to make your windows 11 look like this. 

 

 

 In this little guide, I'll sort the modifications into things that are easiest to do and safest, to stuff that that requires more work, and could be dangerous if you don't want to mess around too much. 

NOTE: All software/programs I've listed are trustworthy, and may flag antivirus because they mess with windows registry. However, always use your best judgement and make sure you download everything from official github wikis and run your own background checks. 

1. Retrobar

Retrobar is by far the safest and easiest modification. It replaces your taskbar, and covers all the main options except Win7. Retrobar will not break on you and is really easy to install and configure. 

My favorite settings are: Taskbar -> Windows Vista Aero, Advanced -> Allow blur behind transparent taskbar OFF

2. Openshell: Start Menu and Taskbar

Openshell gives you the start menu from windows 7. This can be customized heavily. 

 

3. Win11Debloater 

While not a customization mod, windows 11 debloater is heavily recommended because it gets rid of stupid stuff you likely don't want like Copilot. It's very trustworthy and simple, and heavily recommended for everyone. 

That's all for the "easy" and unbreakable mods. This next section is for slightly more effort but also pretty unbreakable and generally reliable. 

4.  Geckium: firefox mod to make it look like old chrome

 

Geckium is very easy to set up. But it's not a one click install button like the others are. Also, firefox recently released an update where you can revert the firefox icon to previous renditions. 

5. Windhawk 

Windhawk has a lot of community created mods that can be hit or miss. But usually, if you download ones made by the creator (who goes by m417z), the mods will probably work fine. Most of these mods I've listed are explorer.exe mods. 

- Windows 11 Taskbar styler - tons of taskbar changes, including Win7, Vista, XP, macOS. Probably the second best taskbar mod behind retrobar. 
- class context menu - file explorer changes
- classic explorer navigation bar - file explorer changes
- legacy file copy - changes your right click to not bring up the new windows 11 right click
- windows 7 command bar - file explorer changes 

Now for more difficult/Use at your own risk mods. I heavily recommend creating a restore point before continuing with these.

-  to create a restore point, press the windows button -> type in "Create a restore point" -> click "Create" -> then name it something like "before mods XX.XX.XXX"

1. secureUXtheme - lets you use themes
- aero10.1 seven theme - this is what really makes things change: changes explorer.exe, adds title bar buttons, background, etc.

2. OpenGlass

Gives the titlebar "glass" and also adds the borders back (check the "disable modern borders". Can be pretty finicky but looks nice.

3. 7tsp-gui - patches windows icons

I used "updated sevenifer by luximoz - icon pack" for my icons. Please note, 7tsp has some dependencies (.NET framework 3.5) that are required to be installed before you start patching. Also before you start patching, you should make a restore point. Sometimes, windows updates will "unpatch" the icon pack and you will need to repatch. 

Honorable mentions/other things to use

Winaerotweaker: good for a lot of general windows tweaking stuff, like fonts, etc. 

DWMBlurglass: similar to openglass, makes the titlebar very nice and transparent. Don't use DWMblurglass and openglass at the same time though. 

UltraUXthemepatcher: similar as secureuxtheme but seems to work better on some windows 11 versions. Freeware that is not open source. 

WORST CASE SCENARIO: HOW TO RESTORE BACK TO DEFAULT WITHOUT WIPING YOUR COMPUTER FOR A FRESH RESTART:

If you run into issues, especially when modifying dll files and using more risky methods, you can restore your windows to default without wiping your computer. This is not the same as a factory reset, and will not delete your files/programs, but will reset windows settings to defaults. 

Step 1: uninstall all modifications. 

- Turn off everything in windhawk

- uninstall secureUXtheme by going into Settings > installed apps > secureUXtheme > uninstall. (Reboot after) 

- go to 7tsp GUI and click “restore” then click “restore to before 7tsp was used” (should be the first option) reboot after. 

Step 2: Recovery

- go to windows settings (windows key + I)  > system > Recovery > fix problems using windows update > reinstall now. 

 

This reinstalls windows using the latest windows update version. It will take 2-3 hours, maybe even longer. Wait for it to get to 100% then restart. Everything should be fixed and you should have stock windows 11 back. 

I hope this helped! All credits to original creators/communities, make sure to always double and triple check anything you install, make sure you are getting things from official sources. If you had an issue, or are more experienced and want to give me better recommendations, please email me at akiaki31725@proton.me

 

Troubleshooting + issues I ran into:

Windows defender false positive: 

Detected: Trojan: Win32/Bearfoos.B!ml

Detected: Trojan: Win32/Bearfoos.A!ml

These are both are known false positives that have to do with windows security's machine learning (the !ml tag in the end). It almost certainly has to do with 7tsp's patching icons. If you don't want to deal with any of this, I'd highly just recommend not patching icons with 7tsp. You can do it yourself manually for icons you want patched. 

Winaerotweaker flagged as malware:  

https://winaero.com/defender-flags-winaero-tweaker-1-64-2-as-a-trojan/

Minecraft launcher / Microsoft store bugging (can't log in): 

Likely due to a combination of win11debloater and 7tsp. Avoid 7tsp if you have had this issue.  

my home servers: whats in it?

This summer, I created my own home server(s). 

I got into self-hosting due to a friend I met through the indieweb (hello kliaagu) mentioning it once. My first server was a raspberry pi 4 and an ssd enclosure plugged into it. It was rough, but it's a server! Raspberry pi's are great to use if you have them laying around, otherwise it's not worth the current cost. This model is a pi 4 with 4 gbs of ram, my uncle gave it to me a long time ago. I installed ubuntu server on it and ran mainly jellyfin. The ssd in the m.2 enclosure is a 1 tb ssd nvme. With how the prices of nvme ssd's right now, it felt like a waste to use it like this, but fortunately I checked the drive on crystal disk info when I removed it, and there were no flaws, it still said it was at 100%. 

 

I then upgraded came from a secondhand computer I had laying around. The motherboard is an hp elitedesk sff (small form factor) which means the motherboard came from a small desktop pcs. These guys are perfect because they are built to be power efficient. The CPU is a i7 4th gen, which is miles more powerful than the pi. I put in 32 gb ddr3, two 2 tb hdd, and it runs on a 256 gb sata ssd. 

 

By the way, I was completely new to linux before my pi server, it was over there where I learned how to use debian based unix in the command line with ubuntu server. During my time in taiwan, I brought a thinkpad laptop I had that I installed Kubuntu on. I was having a lot of fun ssh'ing into my pi server and playing around with light docker containers. But now with a way more powerful server, I set up Proxmox and laid out my server like this.

Proxmox
+-- vm100(ubuntu server lts)
|    +-- docker
|    |    +-- ngnix proxy manager (forward 443, dns-01 challenge because isp blocks port 80 lol)
|    |    +-- Jellyfin 
|    |    +-- plex (amp)
|    |    +-- authentik
|    |    +-- crowdsec
|    |    +-- Nextcloud    
|    |    +-- dashy
|    |    +-- immich
|    |    +-- portainer
|    |    +-- cadvisor

|    |    +-- borgbackup
|    +-- crafty controller (minecraft server)
|    +-- notes
|    +-- glances 
+-- vm1000(lxc tailscale)
+-- vm101(debian12)(off)
+-- vm102(windows11)(off) 

I really should use more lxc, but I don't have a need for them right now, besides tailscale, because I only have 1 primary vm which I do everything through. Heres a breakdown of all my services and what they do:

Services:

  

Jellyfin! One of the best services you can self-host. Downloading my own media like movies, tv shows, anime and streaming it from my own hardware. No need to pay annoying streaming subscription fees. Note: all media I have on my server is acquired legally without tormenting (hehe).

 

Plexamp is my spotify replacement. I use both plex and jellyfin because Plex is for music, mainly because plex has a mobile app. Plex has been going downhill-ish which is why I stray away from hosting media there. But plexamp has been great so far. If I eventually replace plexamp, it's because I've been using mp3 players to listen to music instead. 

 

Immich is google images replacement. The UI looks just like google images. 

Nextcloud is same as Immich, but for general files. Like google drive! 

Crafty is my minecraft server dashboard.  

 

Security and reverse proxy:

The only services I have revealed to the public are Jellyfin, Nextcloud, and immich. I run them through Ngnix proxy manager which was trivially easy to use and setup. I only port forward 443 on my router, because my ISP doesn't allow port 80 to be revealed unless you call them up. Because of this, I can't use standard http-01 challenge to get a ssl certificate with let's encrypt. Instead, I use dns-01 which is perfectly fine for me. 

My security is: crowdsec for ip-banning and monitoring bots that port scan, http probe, and potentially brute force attacks. Authentik which lets me set up multi factor authentication: password, one time password. And after that, a login page to nextcloud. Authentik mainly protects nextcloud and immich. After that, I use fail2ban for login bans. It's redundant to have both fail2ban and crowdsec but I'm just lazy and don't feel like removing fail2ban yet.  

 

 

Dashboard and monitoring:

I eventually want to have prometheus and grafana for really nice charts and dashboard monitoring. But something that I don't like is the UI for self-hosted apps is always kinda ugly. I'm not talking about minimalist, creator didn't feel like investing time in GUI ugly. I'm talking about vibe coded claude UI ugly. As of right now I have use dashy as my main dashboard because it has custom CSS, and of course I had to hop on it. 

 

Ignore the errors right now I got lazy and didn't feel like fixing it haha. And the ip is a tailscale ip so you can't do much with it. I also have uptime kuma, which my pi is running and constantly pinging my main server, and if anything goes down, I get a notification on my phone on either discord or an app called ntfy.  

 

Just yesterday, I also added qbittorent and komga (self-hosted ebook reader)! And while a bit silly, my favorite part of this project is the fact I got to learn how to really use the linux terminal. Terminals always have that "hacking into the mainframe" idea stuck to it. What makes it great though, is 1. I am able to control a computer from hundreds of miles away, because text is very easy to send over the internet vs GUI, 2. You are controlling a computer the old fashion way, 3. It looks cool :3

 

Why I hate frutiger aero

The title is a lie. I love frutiger aero. One look at my neocities and personal website design philosophy will instantly prove it. But I hate what it's become post-2020; frutiger aero has become bastardized by a wrong form of nostalgia and a tiktok-isque community. Terms like "the future we were promised" and short form clips of a collage of frutiger aero images set me off. 

The other day, I was hate-watching this youtube video called "Frutiger Aero: How a Cruel Lie Stole Our Future." I've seen it and heard it all before: the video starts with praising the mixture of beautiful glossy design elements, with nature, and technology. It's a "throwback to a time where we were optimistic, and hopeful about new technology!" But alas, this was a lie, because now we have superflat design and awful new tech because of evil evil tech engineers at Microsoft! 

What makes me so irrationally mad at these slop videos that all parrot the same opinion is that I almost agree. I hate Microsoft and windows 11 with a burning passion, and I love frutiger aero in design principle so much I want to make my room, my computer, my electronics, all of it frutiger aero. What makes me so mad is the defeatist and hopeless attitudes that come from mass psychosis social media users. The same people who love frutiger aero so much that they are mass liking and scrolling on tiktotk, buying temu/tiktok shop (made by some child in china) products that are "frutiger aero themed" are the same ones who virtue signal about the environmentalism motifs in frutiger aero. The irony being, being on tiktok itself, buying slop things you did not need, is arguably one of the worst things you can do for the environment and is the opposite of the frutiger aero essence. 

People on tiktok and instagram reels are most tied down by their desires. The frutiger aero tiktok fanbase thrive off of little slop trinkets instead of playing around with operating systems on their computers. Have you met any of these people who treat frutiger aero as an "aesthetic" who actually have tried reinstalling windows xp, vista, or 7? Or even downloading linux desktop environments (like my favorite, KDE), following a tutorial on how to turn it skeuomorphic? Or even try window managers like enlightenment e16 or even window maker? 

There are companies, and there are mindless consumers. Companies love mindless consumers. Those who will just buy buy buy and use use use without a second thought. In capitalism, you get the option to choose your product. When I don't like the product, I don't buy it. Or I pirate it. Or I buy secondhand. The problem in the west, is that everyone is so rich, they throw their money and attention around like its nothing. And I don't want to hear the "You live in society, yet you participate in it" getback comic people always bring up. Tiktok is a luxury, starbucks is a luxury, temu is a luxury. You don't need any of these things in society. 

Corporations are only as strong as people make it. Corporations sell products, and since they clearly don't want to listen to us, then why not stop using... their product? If 10% of windows users just felt like leaving because their product fucking sucks, microsoft would have a full blown meltdown. You hate google? Try duckduckgo or brave. You like frutiger aero? Try any linux distro with KDE in a VM and give ricing a shot. 

I guess a better title would be "why I hate the frutiger aero community." I remember checking out the frutiger aero archive forums. And once again, I see the same problems. People all have the same 2 opinions. People talk about how awful the present day is, how much better the past was. Folks see frutiger aero as a sort of political/cultural movement, while what it really should be is a consumer movement. Quit throwing around phrases like "the future we were promised," because there is no divine intervention, if you want frutiger aero, make it yourself. You don't ACTUALLY trust microsoft to do it for you, do you? 

Begun sophomore year of college, considering transferring colleges

I just moved into my college. I'm starting my second year now, and I don't... believe I'm in the right place. I've been considering transferring since last year, in the middle of the first semester at this college. A wise man once said, "if you start thinking about transferring, then you're not satisfied with your current college, and you should probably transfer." My "I hate my uni" phase has long ended, but I still don't like this place very much. I attend a 4 year state school for Engineering. The main reasons I don't like it are: I don't fit in with the people/school culture here, it's not that good for my major, and I don't feel like I'm getting value for my money.  

So why did I pick this college? Unfortunately, the reason I picked this one is because I naively cared about the "college town" and "social life" this university "had." For any upcoming american college students that may read this blog: I learned quickly that when college students say "social life" they're talking about parties. And when they say "college town" they're talking about frat houses and bars. I don't care if people like partying and drinking, I enjoy both too. But a lot of students at this school center their entire social lives around partying. That's not really "social life". 

Regretfully, I fell for another college marketing traps: "prestige" and "selective-ness". My college has a low acceptance rate, and as a high school senior then I guess I thought "hard to get into = good". That's just not true for colleges. I got into another state school which has twice the acceptance rate but has one of the best programs for electrical engineering, and they gave me a scholarship. 

So where am I going now? I'm going to apply transfer to a couple state schools. One being the aforementioned school with a good electrical engineering program, and another one that is in my city and would allow me to live at home, basically cutting all the cost needed for dorming (I'll call it school B). My mom hates school B. She thinks it's "downgrading." I've been trying to explain to her that, it's not a "prestigious" school but it provides pretty good value for the price, and I'll be able to work real jobs for experience during the year. I'll be a commuter, so yeah "social life" will be nonexistent. But tbh, I don't think I'll see a difference, because my social awkwardness has been skyrocketing, and I've struggled to make friends for years. 

On better note, I got an internship for this fall! It starts next week, and I'll get paid 19-20 an hour. I'm planning on working 15 hours a week. 

Back from taiwan: beauty in taiwan mundane

I came back from taiwan 2 days ago, here's my obligatory return afterthoughts blog

Taiwan was fast this year... I was there for 5 weeks, and it passed in the blink of an eye. I think I did a lot on this trip. A lot of things I wouldn't traditionally do, like cafe hopping with a laptop and work on schoolwork/website/server. It was really mundane, but I really tried to enjoy every last bit of it. I wanted to enjoy the mundane little things and simple personality taiwan has. I don't actually like visiting very crowded and popular places like Ximending in Taiwan. My mom and sister actually went to Japan together for 4 days for a vacation while me and my dad stayed in taiwan. My sister is a part of the Jirai Kei subculture so she was happy to go and spend money lol. She's also my biggest influence for fashion since we have similar varying fashion tastes. She bought me some subcul clothing too! 

My sister asked me why I didn't go with them, well the main reason was that I was in class and school, but then something in the back of my head also caught my attention. I don't think I would have gone because the golden route of Tokyo (shinjuku, shibuya, akihabara), Osaka, Kyoto don't really interest me, it won't really feel like Japan. Similar to how Times Square is not NYC, Ximending is not Taiwan, and Paris is not France. 

This ties back into how I expressed feeling more enjoyment in the mundane things; like going to a local breakfast store run by kind elderly taiwanese at 6 am who will serve you the best 蛋餅 (egg pancake), 蔥油餅 (green onion pancake) 蘿蔔糕 (radish cake) and soy milk for great prices. Walking around my local area before the sun rises too high and it gets too hot to walk around. By the way, I personally believe Taiwanese breakfast should start being spread around the world. I love taiwanese breakfast, you have many options and many of them are bread-y with egg, meat, and plenty of good flavors. I like the taiwan that is not trying very hard to be something else. Taiwan has an identity problem: a country that was native, Chinese, Japanese, and then Chinese again. When going to the Financial district, you can see a lot of western influence, while going to Taichung, you see Japanese influence. Sometimes, I feel like Taiwan is trying to hard to be Japan, or trying too hard to be China. Taiwan is far too rude to be Japan, and Taiwan doesn't slap LEDs on our deteriorating buildings and call ourselves Cyberpunk to be china. And that's good, because there is a perfect imperfection in Taiwan. Yes, the ugly buildings and ton of power lines, make taiwan seem very frozen in time. Like it is still the 90s. And that's all great.  

 

 

 

 

A month in taiwan, petty pet peeves

 I've been in taiwan for nearly a month now, which is crazy to think about how fast time went. The classes I'm taking are very easy. For the most part, I spend most my time with my family like it's a normal family getaway. When I was way younger I would return to taiwan and stay there for way longer. This place is a second home to me, it's really different from the city I live in america because I live in a more rural area in Taiwan. But it only takes a 15 minute bus ride and I am in the main bustling city of Taipei! 

Now... some of my pet peeves...

First of all, goodness the heat. I can never get used to it. Since my mom was a teacher we came back during summer break during the american school year, which is the months of June, July, and August. Also known as the hottest months of all time. Taiwan heat is especially awful. Daily temperatures of 90-100 F (33 to 36 C) and 70-90 % humidity. Your sweat will stick to you. Now, I can wear long pants in taiwan, but when I was 5 years old I threw tantrums a lot. Thinking about it now I feel very bad for my mom. Because of the heat and where we live, there are a lot of bugs too. Certain bugs I don't care much about, but roaches I can't stand. Thank god for AC nowadays tho! A lot of places blow strong AC. 

And then, old people can be very rude. This is very common for asian countries, particularly those with any sort of Chinese Confucian influence that old people can be quite the assholes! In my experience, all the old people who just chill at home or going on walks in your local area are super friendly and will say good morning and chat, especially if they recognize you. But the moment you get on public transport and the main city, it's like completely different group of old people. Pushing, shoving, staring. 

Anyways I don't have internet at home (My parent's don't pay for it because they don't need it), so I've been enjoying going to cafes and libraries, getting free wifi and torrenting anime and music in Taipei. I've been torrenting anime to add to my server database, and selfhost a media server using Jellyfin. As I write this, I'm sitting in a Louisa Coffee and coding. By the way, I've been experiencing with Linux a lot. On this laptop, I'm using KDE Plasma on Linux Mint (weird combo, I know.) Linux is great! On my thinkpad T490s, everything runs incredibly, and the terminal, which I used to be really scared of, is now my best friend. The terminal is just super powerful. Anything from converting videos, downloading videos, moving files (moving 30 gb folders in an instant), sorting files, accessing my server from 7000 miles away, even updating my website on neocities, it's just really easy to do on the terminal. And most importantly, the terminal looks really really cool! 

 

Use duckduckgo!

The other day, I was peeking over at my dad's phone when I noticed that when he searched something on safari, he didn't get any "AI overview" like what has become commonplace on google. I noticed he was using Duckduckgo, and I asked him about it. He told me it felt nicer to use so he has been using it. Here are some of the pros and cons for me as I've been using it on my phone and laptop for the past 2 weeks. 

The first main features that I think will make most people very excited is the ability to turn off AI search overview AND filter AI images. Duckduckgo allows you to set how often you want AI overview to pop up. That's the best part, that you get the choice. You're able to completely turn it off or leave it on demand, or just show up naturally. The next part, is the ability to filter AI images. As far as I'm concerned, this feature relies on users reporting images as AI, which is a good reason why I'm writing this blog. It would be great if people read this blog, became users of Duckduckgo, and passively reported images that are AI during their time using it. 

Also, duckduckgo pushes significantly less reddit that google. Something I've noticed after using duckduckgo is just how much google pushes reddit. The first or second result on google is almost always something on reddit. Reddit is no longer the "front page of the internet." It's one of the most polarized platforms of all time, with plenty misinformation, bitter people and mods with superiority complexes on it, and a lot of bots. Not to mention, a lot of AI is trained on reddit (reddit sold tons of user content to OpenAI to train with). When searching something on duckduckgo I usually get an article that would've been the 4th or 5th result on google search. It feels like how old google was, when it worked. 

Duckduckgo also prides themself on privacy. In all honestly, I don't completely trust that any search browser doesn't have some sort of trackers in it. It's just how search engines and SEO works. Despite this, Duckduckgo still feels miles ahead of Google and Bing. The best bet is to use uBlock origin alongside duckduckgo for maximum security. You also get customization options too.  

 

The primary con is people use duckduckgo less. Because of this, search results might not be as polished as google. Google is simply the default for a lot of people now. So google simply has more traffic and can fine tune their searches exceptionally. 

Switching to duckduckgo is really easy too. For my phone, all I needed to do was go to safari settings and switch my primary search engine to duckduckgo. On my laptop, it's even easier. I use firefox, and the option to switch is right there on the search bar. If you're reading this, give duckduckgo a shot for a day or two! You likely wouldn't need to download anything, because most browsers have a setting you can switch to it instantly. 

Highschool was the worse

I would do a lot of things to be able to go to high school 10 years earlier. 

There are a lot of things I would sacrifice to be able to go to high school without the existence of instagram, tiktok, mobile smartphones. Having now taken the full step to not just delete the instagram app, which I did 4 months ago, but to also deactivate both my accounts, let me write about just how shit highschool was; and how long I have been lying to myself. 

I started my website and subsequently my blog in my senior year of high school. In my earliest blog posts, you can see the remnants of phony optimism in the words I typed. I say 'phony', because I still consider myself pretty optimistic, but in those posts I can clearly see me lying to myself in order to feel a little less of a loser. 

Yeah, high school was the worse. I was invisible. I wasn't even a background character. I was non-existent. To other people, I may have been just okay to be around in school, wanting to do anything outside of school with me was not even a consideration. And no matter what I did to at least become background character B, it just was never really my time to shine. High school is always portrayed as the best time of your life. Even before I was in high school, I already knew it was all bullshit, there was no high school musical, and I was fine with not having a flashy, eventful life. But what really hurt, was not having any of the mundane. There were no train rides chatting with a friend home. There were no detours to stop by a place instead of going straight home. There were no spontaneous hangouts, stopping by a friends house, or late night chats. No long text message conversations right after something happened, and no phone calls. At least for me. Normal highschool activities, I feel like I completely missed out on. 

I lied, actually, in my first year, there was train rides, detours, hangouts, and chats. For about 6 months in freshman year. I still had friends from people who went to the same middle school as me. And then I didn't. Calling it a falling out is too dramatic, but calling it drifting away is too understated. It wasn't a falling out because there wasn't some big fight that split everyone, and it wasn't a drift away because the group continued to be relatively close. It was just me. I don't know what started it, but one day you aren't invited to a hangout. Then, the group chats you're in go silent. Then, when you ask what they're doing they go silent. "The best years of my life" are words I thought of when I tried to invite one of those 'friends' to a christmas hangout, and he just starts walking away faster and faster. I never really celebrated my birthday. I hated that day. Opening my phone and seeing no notifications. In modern teenage culture, on someones birthday, people would post happy birthday wishes on their instagram stories, and tag the person. That person would then repost it. It was always a force of flaunting to me. "Look at how many friends I have, who want to wish me happy birthday!" 

I can't even blame them for not wanting to be friends with me anymore. I was awful to be around. Always angry, always negative, always insecure, and argued with everyone over stupid shit. I was not interesting in the slightest, I had zero hobbies or interests outside of studying and playing video games, and being on discord. I probably deserved it. 

To be split from that group was one thing, but I think I rather have just spent my entirety of high school alone than to know that for the next 3 years, they were laughing at me. Because of how insecure I felt about this, I tried to compensate in other ways to lie to myself that, I was doing ok. In the rare times I hung out, it was mainly to convince myself that "see! I'm doing normal high school things too! Like hanging out with friends!" Needless to say, I didn't enjoy those times. I did not like the people I was hanging out with. I tried clubs. Forced myself to stay in the godforsaken high school building for another 2 hours just to try to see if I would fit in. It was even worse because I knew it was bad, but I kept telling myself that it wasn't. I found myself within the fence of many groups. Not really particularly part of any of them, but just there so I could be less lonely during lunchtime. I didn't have that much fun because I had 0 connection with any of these people, but I pretended and adjusted to every single conversation, every single person, just to feel like absolute shit at the end of it because they would never reciprocate the effort I put in. Any efforts into hanging out was just "I'm busy." I never talked to them outside of the 45 minutes of a lunch period. Yeah, I ate lunch alone for most of high school. Actually, I didn't even eat lunch for the first half. I was far too insecure to take off my mask in freshman and sophomore year. That's how I dropped to 90 pounds. There was a retarded social media thing called "mask fishing" where people would say you looked way better with the mask on and ugly as fuck with it off. Insecure me, who was already insecure with my face since elementary school, started to get more and more pimples, and there was just nothing I could do about it. 

I'm still in a 6 year battle between me and my skin. I have some of the most painful and bad hormonal acne, face, chest and back acne, that I can't do anything about. I've been using tretinoin for my face and body for 2-3 years now, where it did help clear up the worse of my face, but my body is still left awful. Some of my old shirts have blood stains on the back because of my acne. The derm said it typically lasts up until 19-22. 

High school was the worst. I hate smartphones. Every interaction was spent between the phone. Sometimes they'd get distracted as we talked and start scrolling. Get a notification and start texting. Instagram and tiktok made it hell. It was always about who's attractive, who's smart, this and that. I never had tiktok, and not having it felt like being 10 miles behind in a marathon I didn't want to run in. It interfered with everything. It changed everything. People didn't even have hobbies anymore. All they wanted to do was scroll.

Interestingly, the year after I graduated they banned smartphones in schools in my state. I was in support of it, but everyone else I knew complained. They need it. The ban is a good thing 

I wish I could restart highschool. Click play and restart as many times as I want to. In particular, choose a time, any time before smartphones. It ruined me. It changed everything. It changed how people talked, how people treated each others, how people viewed things. I wasted my high school years, having nothing and in denial about everything. I was never happy and hate myself so much. So many actions I wish I never did, so many words I wish I never/should've said. Hearing how my millennial cousins describe their time in school made me so envious. Is the grass really always greener on the other side if the grass on my side is dead and withered by famine, and the other side so luscious and gorgeous? 

In Taiwan

I'm in taiwan now, I'm gonna be here for around a month. A combination of study and here for my mom to take care of family things. I was gonna write this blog about how I am glad to be away from people and making my own server (very exciting!), but I think it's ok for me to air out just how absolutely stupid everyone, excluding my mother, is in my family on my mother's side. 

I like staying anonymous online, and while I would've been worried about the possibility of my family finding this blog, the chances of such are slim to none, and they don't understand english anyways. In my immediate family on my mother's side, my uncles and cousins are troubled and all have criminal records. In short this is because of the way they were raised. They were very spoiled and bailed out always by my grandfather, who paid to get them out of debt among other things. One of my uncles, who I actually know and love despite him being not very intelligent, died very recently. His death was very abrupt and very likely shaken his two sons, my cousins. This came very quickly after the death of my grandfather, who died also recently. 

But a really dangerous thing is that just two weeks ago, the other uncle (my mom's other brother) got out of jail. He went to jail for something really pathetic. Robbing a 7-11. My mom said in her own words, "Robbing for pennies! 7-11 at midnight doesn't even have any money!" After getting out of jail, he has to come back to the house my cousins live in, because there's no one else to take him in. I don't really know this uncle at all. I can't remember his face. I met him yesterday, I don't know him. Frankly, I don't trust him. We bought food from the night market, and my mom brought us to drop it off. When he looked at me and my sister, I think he was shaken up because of how much we had grown. He probably met us when we were babies. But then, my mom told us to leave and go back to our home (we live seperately in another home nearby.) I'd assume it's because they had some serious business to talk about. And today that was confirmed when my mom told me that he was basically saying useless stuff like "I am so poor" and "When I die no one will care about me" my mom straight up told him "Yes, no one will care about you, you should be grateful for having a home to come back to, and you're poor because you never worked a day in your life." This is true by the way, apparently he was a handsome young man and was able to trick a lot of girls into giving him money. Jerk. 

But yeah, to me the most frustrating part is that it seems like this uncle and even my cousins who now have jobs (both were unemployed with on and off jobs before this) don't understand the value of money and how money works. What do I mean by this? Well all of them basically have one of the biggest burdens alleviated from them, which is having a home to live in. They inherited the family home from my grandfather, so they don't need to pay rent or mortgage at all! But despite this, despite the fact they probably have a significantly higher take home pay than most other people in Taiwan, they spend so much money on stupid things, gamble it away, and just aren't aware of the real world. And they keep asking my mom for money too. To give my cousins credit and understanding, they had very rough upbringings. They did not have a mother, because she ran away, and their father (my uncle) was not a good father figure. My mom raised them herself. The oldest one is the one who has a bad criminal record, while the younger one doesn't have a record but has psychological problems. Even though we are cut from the same cloth, I've always been very wary about money: I hate spending money at all, and I always save. I barely touch my savings at all, I'm a very boring person. It makes me mad to no avail, I wish I could scream sense into them, but my mom has been doing so for the last 30 years, and it only took "The tree being cut from under them" for them to understand. She's a tough person, and it makes a lot of sense why she cares so much about me and my sisters education. Because of how none of her nephews and brothers finished high school let alone consider college. 

This is it for this blog, I just wanted to get this off my chest. Incoming blog about me creating my server and also my personal feelings about being in taiwan and stuff in general.  

First year of college

I finished my freshman year of college 2 weeks ago, ending it the way I started it. Getting sick and having a 101 F fever. That marked the 5th time I've gotten sick in around 8 months of college. Last week, my grades came out. I'm happy to say my effort paid off and my grades are good right now. 

In this blog from 4 months ago, I wrote about not fitting in and not having energy for anything. Much of that sentiment stayed the same. I remember hearing "try to stay in your dorm as little as you can" from some silly instagram post before my first semester, so for my first semester I forced myself to be in the library and events I really just didn't want to go to or do. On my second semester, I stayed in my dorm a lot more, which I think was better for me. Because I got to relax and be more comfortable. I really only spent energy on stuff I cared about or wanted to do, like a robotics club and also the smash club that hosts tournaments (though that was way later down the line). 

I think I gave up on trying so hard and was ok being in solitude. I deleted all my socials a quarter way into the semester. I was tired of a lot of things and one of those was people posting their fake lives with their fake friends and fake groups with fake personalities. My resentment was growing, so I just deleted it to get away from it. In the months following, I was definitely way more calm. It didn't solve all my problems but it was a good change. 

I think I was pretty "locked in" in certain ways. I was pretty consistent with piano practice, and someone I know helped me with a gym routine. I began going to the gym 3 times a week to take care of my physical health. Every one yells at me to gain weight (including my gymrat friends), gain muscle, but honestly, I don't give a crap about that. It actually kind of annoys me. I'm at a healthy weight, even if it's at the lower side. It just annoys me everyone has a picture of what a man should look like, especially with the 2020s explosions in gym content. Going to the gym is great, but not every guy wants to pursue bodybuilding. Focusing on being healthy, getting stronger, and being more athletic is my goal. And mogging xd

Though something I have to complain about is when I need to talk to people at the gym. I always went to the gym alone, and when it was packed I HATED it because I would need to talk to people and ask to "work in" with them, or share equipment. I really did not want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to blast music at max volume and do what I want and leave. Our college gym is pretty small too so this happened often. 

I was being more of a delinquent, skipping a LOT of class (I'm a smart skipper though, I only skip when I know it won't affect me), and someone I met was honestly a stoner and got me to try stuff. It's ok because he respected my boundaries and never pushed me to try anything. I tried smoking weed for the first couple times. I tried it, but I couldn't get high. It was only until I tried edibles I got it, but I didn't have a good trip at all because I was sick during it. I also tried nicotine, hated it, and will probably never do it again. I still like drinking alc over anything else, but I reserve drinking for special occasions. Some of the people I met, goodness they were gone. Hitting the vape like every 20 seconds, telling me they get withdrawal symptoms. 

With the exception of these stoner friends who I didn't hang out with all that much, I really hated social interaction at all. Even when someone I loosely knew said Hi and had some small talk, I wanted to leave within 10 seconds. I couldn't help but hate how fake it all was, and I struggled to even remember peoples names. My social anxiety got to an all time high because sometimes I would see someone I talked to in class walking around and I had no idea if I should say hi or not so I either pretended to not see them or just looked down so I literally did not see them. 

I hate hate hate being perceived. Especially when I'm walking around trying to get to class and someone, or a group of someones, pauses to look me up and down and just think unwarranted thoughts about me. I'm not that important, and psychology says my mind is just extending that millisecond glance into multiple seconds. I don't care though. Stop looking at me. Stop thinking about me. I do not want your thoughts about me. Why do you care? Am I strange enough to look at? Keep talking with your friends.

A new pastime for me now is to watch Vtubers. Streamers always felt boring to me, I don't understand people who watch Kai Cenat or HasanAbi for hours on end. But a few too many youtube compilations and now I put on a fuwamoco stream in the background while I do something. I was always dissuaded from Vtubers because there's this guy I knew from middle school who was super cringe about them. Posted like NSFW fanart on his instagram close friends story. This is the part where I'd say they aren't like that. But reading through youtube comment sections, lurking in some reddit posts, yeah these guys are fucking weirdos lmao. Unfortunately, I'm a rare fan who knows they all play a character, and I'm not a retard who believes that the streamer loves me. There's actually a term for that kind of vtuber fan I learned, it's called "unicorn." 

For me, watching hololive is very comforting. It melts away a lot of my stress even if it's just for a little bit. I like watching it like it's a reality TV show, minus the drama and cancer. Some people care so much about their personal lives. I couldn't care less, just seeing a bunch of people play video games and do stupid stuff together is enough. It makes me happy. I'm glad I stopped caring about being a loser. 

Once again, in previously mentioned blog from 4 months ago I said I didn't hate my roommates. And that's the truth, but it also does take another 4 months for you to get prettyy fed up with some of the things your roommates do. For one, I'm in a triple room, and my room is pretty cramped. We have a small-ish room, then the bathroom with piss poor ventilation, so a lot of times they'd take a shower (or take a shit) and the steam from the shower would make the room super stuffy. So I would always be the one to open the window,  then close it, and monitor all that stuff. We only got our bathroom cleaned once a week which is pretty crazy in my opinion. If it were any other teenage boys, that shit would be a steamy hot pile of shit. 

And it's not just the shower too. One guy was super addicted to ramen noodles to the point he was making it 4 times a week, and he would use his rice cooker for it because he had no other way to boil water. And then the room would now be steamy and now have the smell of shin ramen, so again, I was the one who was opening the window, spraying the room with Febreeze. Additionally, while one of my roommates was pretty aware about smells, the other, just wasn't. I brought to the room a lot of those plug in Febreeze so the room would never stink, but this guy bro. He'd put his sweaty clothes into a bag that he put into his closet for it to ferment. We had to tell him so many times that he should NOT do that. (Also he'd come back from a day and without washing himself just hopped into bed? I mean it's not my bed, so whatever, but I don't think I saw him wash his sheets). The main saving grace is that all of us were chinks and chinks don't have the worst BO, though it can absolutely get really bad. 

That wraps it up for this blog entry at least. 
Bye 

I've been killing slimes for 300 years...

 

Link back to manga page: https://hym.neocities.org/more/manga# 

Synopsis 

You know, of the all the isekai anime/manga I've had the displeasure of watching, two of my favorites have slime in the title.

I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level! starts pretty typical. An overworked office lady in Japan, Azusa Aizawa, DIES and is reincarnated as an immortal witch. Hmmm... where have we heard this plot before? But all she wants to do is relax and live a cozy peaceful life without working. She has no problems doing this, facing no hardships in her life. Azusa kills 20 slimes everyday for 300 years until she discovers shes the max level, super overpowered, and one shots dragons. All the sudden, people start showing up to her doorstep after hearing how powerful she is. One is a dragon, another an elf, and then two children that claim they are her daughters who were born as slime spirits from all the slimes Azusa killed over the years. Her family keeps on growing.

Despite being a generic isekai, it's instantly is on my good side for being a yuri-bait and having the main character be a girl. It's the purest form of yuri-bait. The best blueprint for yuri bait. What do I mean by yuri bait? Well Azusa keeps growing her family, taking new girls under her wing like a mother. It's heavily implied that Laika, one of the first characters that shows up and joins Azusa's family is very in love with her. We don't get to see any developments in any romantic relationships very often, the author kind of just implies to us that "These girls live together and are practically married and everyone else in the house they live in are their children"

Likes and Dislikes

As I've already said, I love the comfyness of this. Everyone likes comfy, cozy stuff because of how unproblematic it is. It's a simple blueprint. Azusa goes on adventures after sticking to herself for 300 years. She's super overpowered, so typical isekai challenges like strong monsters and boss battles are not a problem. There's very little conflict in this world, the demons and humans are best friends to the point some of the strongest demons are best friends with Azusa and also part of her yuri family. The story focuses way more on the characters and their quirks and world-building. If I have to hand something to every isekai author out there, its that despite literally using the same blueprint of (You die in japan and get born in medieval magic RPG world) it's cool to see the kinds of twists they put on the worlds they create. The characters are somehow really memorable, because they all have their own stories and reasons for staying with Azusa. The fact that the main character is a women literally makes this series 10x better than if the main character was a guy. If the main character was a guy, it would be a standard harem and be really, really, really fucking boring. But since we get Azusa instead, we get to see how she treats everyone in her adoptive family well, whether it be making snacks for her daughters or solving her (wife) Laika's red dragon and blue dragon conflict. 

Like how it's hard to be problematic with cozy anime, it's also really hard to.. do anything. You can't create conflict without ruining the vibe. Most conflicts and plot points in the story only exist for new characters to be created, and then basically be taken under Azusa's adoptive wing. And only so many characters can be created without it getting boring. As of following the manga for 4 years, and watching both seasons of the anime. I haven't gotten bored, but I'm not exactly remembering every character by heart either. Usually, I only remember characters when they show back up in a chapter and I think to myself, "ohhh, I slightly remember that girl's existence!" Yet to most of the target audience, none of this is THAT much of a problem. But you want to know what's a problem?

Isekai mangaka have an obsession with food. It's honestly annoying. So many times, these mangaka spend entire chapters just letting their characters chase ingredients and cook food that subtlety resembles Japanese dishes, just so they can feed the isekai world people the food and then they have a food wars "ouhhh, ahhh, I've never tasted something this good before!" moment. If you have zero idea what I'm talking about, I'll lay out how this always plays out. 

    Main character: "This world's food is good, but I really want to eat rice!!!"

    Conveniently shaped rice paddy suddenly appears

    Main character: "Great, but now I want curry!"

    Conveniently created character that just so happens to be from a nation that closely resembles Japan provides MC with curry

    Main character: "Perfect, now I need katsu, but this world has no pigs!"

    Convenient pig replacement exists

    Main character: "Great! Who wants to try this katsu curry that doesn't exist in this world"

    Everyone: "ohmygodthistastesogoodyouresotalentedatcooking"

 I don't even hate these food scenes that much, but they just appear so often it's kind of annoying. The author has the opportunity to showcase some food that could only exist in a magical world like rainbow meat or something like that, but they always default to Japanese food that everyone around them glazes to no avail. 

Final rating: 8/10. It's hard to give a bad rating to something so cute.  

Manga review: Gal Oshi JK wa Gal ni Naritai

Link back to manga page: https://hym.neocities.org/more/manga#

Gal oshi JK is a very brief 1 volume yuri that I started following last year. It’s a very lighthearted manga that is mainly about a Gal/gyaru who is a “gal otaku.” Meaning she really loves gals and gyarus, to the point she’s an otaku ABOUT gals. (Mangas really like to stretch the definition of gyaru, because I personally would barely classify Yuuhi as a gal, but that’s for another time) Mimiru (main character) goes through a high school debut, studying up on fashion and makeup to look like a gyaru in high school. In high school, she makes friends with other gyarus, joining a friend group of gyarus. She meets Yuuhi, who’s a tall “cool” type who doesn’t show much emotion, but she’s always thinking “Mimiru’s so cute” in her head. They basically love each other.

The art is beautiful, and I’m a sucker for any kind of school slice of life yuri. But the pacing is very slow, and the ending is incredibly boring. Spoilers here, but we didn’t get a kiss, or anything official as a matter of fact. The way it was paced, I’d assume the author wanted to write another 3 volumes, but it randomly ends at 1. The main assumption for why it ended so quickly is that the author probably got bored. It was a web comic, so it likely didn’t get axed in the traditional way, but just didn’t get enough attention that the author wanted. A mangadex commenter put it best: 

Final rating: 6/10

Still cute, lighthearted, amazing art, if it didn’t have those it would be a 4/10. The main issues in my opinion is the lack of gyaru/gal knowledge and of course the ending. 

My first Smash tourney

Oh my god! Suddenly nearly another month has passed before my last entry

Today I went to my first Smash tournament. I would barely count it as a real tournament though, because it was just my universities club setting up a tourney for Smash Melee and Smash Ultimate. Even though I knew it wasn't really a big deal, I was still pretty nervous because of the.. social interaction. I think it's time for me to admit to myself that I am very introverted. People get misconstrued that introverts are just people who hate talking to anyone and prefer being quiet 100% of the time. But that isn't the case. Actually introverts can love talking to people, having friends, and be in social events. For me, I always get nervous because I'm scared of being around people I don't know and being awkward. 

Background: I met some of the people earlier this week from another event I went to. It was for Smash Melee, I had to swallow my awkwardness and force myself to go because I really really wanted to play Melee with a gamecube controller on a CRT. I don't have a gamecube controller, adapter, or even Wii to play Melee on my own so this was the only opportunity I could get. It was so worth it because I had a bunch of fun AND I got the peak experience of the "gaming room" which is a room on campus the smash club uses in the basement of one of the main buildings. It looked like it was straight out of 00s (probably because it's a neglected room the university doesnt give a shit about). and Yes the people in the club did pass the smell check, which I am very glad about. I told them it was my first time playing Melee and I wanted to play jigglypuff because I like Hbox and I play jigglypuff in Ultimate. One of the guys was excited because "No one else wants to play puff even though she's so good and cool, so I'll teach you." 

Fast forward to today, I was pretty scared walking in but the people who I met called out to me instantly so I felt more comfortable after that. I kind of awkwardly sat behind the guys playing Ultimate, waiting for my set, until people started striking up conversations with me. Of course, like most clubs in college clubs are already friend groups where it's hard to interfere (looking at you asian culture clubs), but unlike gatekeepy, cliquey clubs I think the people here were very happy to see a new person show up and want to talk and play some games. Anyways, about my sets, in Ultimate unsurprisingly I went 0-2 round 1 0-2 losers, that is not surprising to me. I played Game and Watch round 1 and we went random in losers to troll. (all the really good players were going random because apparently they were partying too late and got no sleep and didn't want to play hard). But very surprisingly in melee, I actually went 1-2 round 1 and 0-2 losers. I won round 1 against another jigglypuff where I landed 2 rests in the first game. It was very hype, but then I lost the two other games (albeit pretty close, we got to last stock on both). In losers bracket I lost all momentum and steam and got rolled, but that's ok with me. I ended up playing some friendlies with some ppl after and watched the bracket end to see who would win. 

I think I was just so glad to finally be able to talk to other people who just liked the same stuff I did, and also to get to play against someone else, because whenever I play smash I only play against one guy. It was refreshing to meet “real nerds” (I say this in the nicest way possible) because nowadays we just be letting ANYONE say they are a nerd but when someone with actual nerdy interests outside of valorant show up it’s cringe and stuff. I’m gonna be entering another tournament on Weds, I’ll keep updated!