DDG has been solid for me, and I rarely use g! anymore. I certainly can find better things to do with a hundred dollars than spend it on something I don't need and that other services do just as well for free.

How much money do you spend per year that you wouldn't otherwise due to brand advertisements? Answer: you'll insist it's 0, but it's impossible to know.

How much money do you spend per year that you wouldn't otherwise due to clicking one of the first few links and paying more for some service, often without realizing it's an ad? Again, the answer is that it's impossible to say.

Google is commonly said to own a "money-printing machine" on here. How can they print all that money without extracting any from you?

That doesn’t mean DDG is anything special, only that Google has become incredibly bad.

Creator here. You made some good points. Ledger of Life actually does try to address intention and positive reinforcement, though it's not explicit. The journal encourages keeping it on you and logging whispers in real time, which requires consciously priming yourself to notice (that's the intention part). The weekly review also helps set clear intentions for what to watch for the next week.

As for positive reinforcement, I agree, it’s not just about knowing when to decompress or apply a virtue garnish, but also about rewarding yourself for noticing at all. That’s something that could be highlighted more: just catching a whisper is a success worth a mental pat on the back!

g: Criticism is the price for success?

Sorry to be clear: I want to reinforce my belief that this ad you've posted is profoundly stupid.

What would my virtue garnish be for that?

If you want to reinforce your current beliefs do the opposite. Write nothing down. Do what comes to your mind first. You do you.

If I had a garnish that turned anything objectively stupid into something that has objective value it would probably revolutionize chain-of-thought reasoning.

I find the military saying "pain is weakness leaving the body" effective for workouts. The slogan is short and sticky, and I tend to exercise harder when I think of it.

Sometimes its cartilage leaving the body.

Hah yes or broken down muscle tissue in the case of rhabdomyolysis.

As I've gotten older I've had to discard this kind of maximalist thinking with exercise and think of every workout as just a smidge more than the last, after an appropriate period of rest and recovery.

That's the kind of toxic masculinity platitude that causes men to not seek medical help when they are in pain, which causes worse outcomes for things that are preventable.

I don't work out as much as I should. I'm generally a creaky guy, so any exercise for me is borderline painful.

Is there a word for the good kind of pain that comes from healthy exertion?

I tried it and wanted it to work, but it only translated a few sentences on the page for me. On the highest level of difficulty, the whole page should be highlighted, don't you think?

One more recommendation: collect emails for people like me who want to see how your project develops over time.

I tried it with Polish,but even at the most difficult level it highlighted only a few random sentences on the page.

Customer-wise, I'm right in your wheelhouse. However, the price is too high for what it does. If your app performed better, I would grit my teeth and subscribe anyway, but as it is I'll wait.

I'm using bookmarkos.com and it serves my needs. The dev is responsive too.

Bluesky is nice, don't get me wrong, but it's also boring. Most users don't update their feeds. The Brazilians will get bored too and leave once X.com resolves the ban.

X.com is where the action is at. It's where the news makers and shakers are.

I like the white space and the look. It has personality.

There's also Letterboxd.com. It's like Goodreads but for film buffs. I enjoy that site immensely (I'm a Patron there) and I think this one will compliment it nicely.