David Revoy | Mastodon | Bonus Timelapse
Transcript
The Degraded Search Engine
A comic in four panels:
Panel 1. Cepper, the gothic sorceress, walks toward a large steampunk machine in the center of the library written “Gooblin” on it, colored letters. The machine resembles a rusty block, with a threadmill on one side, a seat and a typewriter-style keyboard.
Cepper: “A good old ‘search engine’, this is what I need for my research!”
Panel 2. Close up, Cepper types on the typewriter keyboard, looking at the screen.
Cepper: “R.I.N.G. O.F. F.I.R.E S.P.E.L.L.S. enter”
Cepper: “…And voilà.”
Panel 3. The machine spits out dozens of scrolls and books. Cepper reads them.
Cepper: “Wait… Why are these results so bad?..”
Book 1: “(Ad) Ten Fire Spells That Will Change Your Life (You Won’t Believe the 7th!)”
Book 2: “(Sponsored) 15 Spicy Onion Ring Recipes”
Book 3: “(For you) Top 5 Best Engagement Rings”
Book 4: “(ad) How to Start a Campfire: A Comprehensive Guide”
Book 5: “Is Your Fire Spell Not Working? (Try This One Simple Trick!)”
Book 6: “(Sponsored) Cheap Fire-Resistant Panties! (50% Off Today Only!)”
Panel 4. A librarian approaches, their AI Parrot perched on their shoulder, pointing it. Cepper looks defeated, her eyes blasé.
Librarian: “Yeah, they tuned it this way so everyone just uses their Avian Intelligence for searching now…” Cepper: “…How unsurprising.”


You may or may not know https://based.cooking/ already, but it has spawned multiple clones, e.g. https://vegbased.cooking/
Ottaviana’s Kitchen was a website for italian recipes; it is down now, sadly, but can be read on the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20211103034029/http://ottavianaskitchen.com/menu.htm (The best part of this site is that multiple recipes are on one page, e.g. all sauce recipes in one .html file)
The https://www.kochwiki.org/ is only useful if you happen to speak german; but maybe you can find something similar in your language.
Wikipedias cookbook at https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Table_of_Contents has some nice recipes.
Addendum: Of course most of these sites are not as “nice” as the AI generated nice; and especially, the recipes don’t have pictures (most of the time). It is like the old cookbooks our grandparents used to cook. Barely any pictures, but quality recipes. Cookbooks nowadays have huge pictures and below-average recipes.
Thank you so much!