@RickiTarr I have conducted surveys in academia and I always leave a comment field option for this question for people who express themselves in a way I haven't presented for them to choose. Every so often someone comments a version of "THERE'S ONLY 2 GENDERS". Ironically, that means they haven't selected their gender above, so that makes the statement they made to be their gender. And that fucks with my stats analyses way more. Maybe I should label these folks as "none of it"!

@rl_dane haha, that's hilarious and unfortunate at the same time. I went for my first undergrad following my passion, and the uni sucked all that passion out of me (could be just the reality of stem though). I found higher levels to be at least more meaningful, since you really delve into knowledge application. But depending on the major, the grad school's workload can be absolutely crushing. I once haven't showered in 3 weeks. As a GIRL. But you bet I submitted those assignments, haha.

@rl_dane sorry to hear about your experience in academia! I've studied in several countries and I must say that culture makes a huge difference. For example, I prefer flat-hierarchy structures, so I really struggled in Asia. I also need accountability, so my Italian supervisor's 2-month vacation sent me into panic. Yes, academia is overall competitive, but your working environment differs enormously from place to place, so if you ever wish to come back, don't let this defer you :)

@zenkat there could be many reasons for that though; not having to worry about covering you basic needs isn't necessarily a pipeline for such character development

@sidawson hence my careful wording :) From the ethical standpoint, I genuinely don't know what's best. I was glad to get my mom off google, but there's no way she'll use something like searXNG as her daily search engine. If I tried forcing it on her, she'd just revert back to google. Is google more ethical choice than kagi? Personally, I don't think so. Does it make kagi the ethical standard? Also no. But maybe a better option in this climate. Still, thanks for bringing this into the discussion!

@ElliesSurviving if you have money to spare, try kagi (they also have 100 free searches I think). purely from the search experiene perspective, I found it refreshing