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rainecreatesstuff · 4 years ago

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I saw a PJO/dsmp au over on Instagram and I was inspired to make my own so

Here’s the SBI + Bee duo to start :)

(btw all the characters here are mostly based off of their dsmp characters, not the actual ccs)

Tommy- Apollo kid. Can do that loud whistle thingy, and can sing very well. He can play a few instruments really well as well. His weapon of choice is a sword bc he thought it looked cool when he was ten and never looked back. He’s also fairly good with a bow tho bc Apollo. Didn’t really inherent any of the prophecy or healing stuff from his dad. Was orphaned at a super young age and juggled between foster homes for a while before he ran away at around nine years old. Lived on the streets with Tubbo for a while before being picked up by Wilbur and introduced to Phil, and taken into Camp Half-Blood (He took one look at Camp Jupiter and immediately went No <3)

Tubbo- Hephaestus kid. Obviously a great tinkerer, he‘ll spend a lot of time making cool little bots and contraptions. Has made an entire army of robees that help him when he’s working on bigger projects. Can’t control fire, but he does have an immunity to it. Makes him really good for working in the forges. He’s also stupid strong because he works in the forges so often. His weapon of choice is an axe. It was the first weapon he made after arriving at CHB and he’s become very well practiced in fighting with it. Also orphaned, Tubbo’s mom was from New Rome, but died during a monster attack while outside of the city. He was about ten when it happened, and took to the streets in a panic. He was presumed dead by New Rome. Ran around with Tommy for about a year before being found by Wilbur, then followed Tommy to CHB.

Wilbur- Also an Apollo kid, with an affinity for music and prophecy. Technically head counsellor of the Apollo cabin, but lives in the big house as a senior counsellor that oversees all the cabins and handles events and whatnot. His weapon of choice is a bow. His mother was pretty much out of the picture from a fairly young age, she dropped him off at CHB and he hasn’t heard from her since. He met Phil while on a field trip to New Rome, and Phil took Wil under his wing almost immediately. Phil would call him at least twice a week via Iris message, and they would exchange letters often as well. Phil also introduced him to Techno, who became a lot like a brother to Wil, and was soon added to the Iris messages and letters.

Phil- Second generation descendant of Zephyrus, Phil was born and grew up in New Rome. He went to Camp Jupiter when he was old enough, and then travelled for a while before settling down again with Kristin in New Rome. He works closely with Camp Jupiter, patrolling borders and helping with field trips between the camps as a chaperone. Though he doesn’t have wings like his grandfather, he still loves being in the air and has become really good with Pegasi and other flying monsters. He also inherited his grandfather’s generally chill personality, as well as his ability to suddenly become very threatening. While he is looked up to by many, he is also a fairly scary force when you’ve pissed him off. His weapon of choice is a sword, but he is also very good with a bow. He met both Techno and Wilbur while chaperoning events, and while Techno treated him more like a mentor, he fully regarded Wil as his son, and eventually legally adopted him.

Techno- A Mars kid. An incredibly skilled fighter with a terrifying aura. He is definitely capable of leading legions, but has turned down the role many a time because he hates the social responsibility that comes with it. His weapon of favour is a sword, but he is also very skilled with an axe and a crossbow. Stumbled upon Camp Jupiter when running from monsters, and was welcomed in. Met Phil at a sparring tournament when he was eleven, and decided he liked him, promptly challenging him to a duel. Phil defeated him, but was impressed, and became something of a mentor to Techno, though Techno was also always welcome to come by Phil’s house whenever he wanted or needed to. He was introduced to Wilbur when he visited one time, and the kid promptly adopted him as a brother and never looked back. He went to university in New Rome as an English major, dropped out, and started working with Camp Jupiter beside Phil, more as a strategist and patroller than a chaperone though.

Ranboo- An Aphrodite kid. Yes, I said it. Don’t shoot the messenger. While he doesn’t enjoy it, he can charmspeak, very well actually, and had to learn how to hold it back in certain situations. Wears a mask most of the time, simply because he can and it makes him feel safe and cool. After being severely injured by a monster when he was younger, Ranboo experiences memory problems, and cannot remember his past beyond being brought to CHB. This did however convince him to learn how to fight, and while he’s not the best fighter, he is still a very respected fighter at CBH. His weapon of choice is a sword. He has ridiculous luck, alternating between incredibly good and horribly bad; he once went on a quest and came back victorious, almost completely unscathed, and then promptly fell ill for a week with the flu. He arrived at CHB when he was thirteen after being found by a wandering satyr, horribly injured with no memories of his past or how he got injured. He became friends with Tubbo fairly quickly, and by extension, Tommy as well. Met Phil and became part of the unofficial family, and joins in on their weekly iris messages.

I’ll probably do a few posts like this bc they’re fun, and I really enjoy writing them :) I’m not sure which characters I’ll do next, feel free to recommend any tho! :)

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inkribbon796 · 4 years ago

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What We Do Best

Summary: A day where Jim, and Jim-like chaos reigns.

A/N: For the Jims birthday. There will be an egregious use of the word Jim. I’m sorry.

The Jims were simple Jims who loved but three things: being Jim, reporting the news, and chaos.

Some Jims were better at being Jim’s than others, which were just the facts.

Today, two of the best Jims were looking for the best news story, so they tailed Anti. A demon who had killed five different Jim’s trying to find the Jim that had split Lunky from King, but seemed to have gotten his most recent bloodlust for Jim hunting out of his system.

Today he was walking around a part of downtown Egoton, where he was in the wrong territory as usual, with Lunky and Mini. Lunky was in their 3D form and was supposed to be with Anti for “knife-appreciation” practice, Mini was not. The smaller android was nervous about being with Anti, but Lunky had made the older glitch demon promise not to hurt the android, or make him glitch up.

Anti chuckled, but he and Lunky swore on it. So Mini calmed down a little bit, but was still incredibly nervous.

The Jim’s followed Anti, sower of Jim-like chaos, for their next big story.

“Alright kids,” Anti smiled as they walked up to an outdoor café where there was a man in a pig mask over the top half of his face, with long braided pink hair. Several crows were hanging around the area. When the man saw Anti he trashed his drink and walked over to them. “This guy’s great.”

“Hey Anti, could we make this quick?” The masked man asked with an almost deadpan tone, a slight excited lilt to his voice. “I gotta go to my little sister’s dance recital and I gotta make sure I get a good seat so she can see me in the crowd.”

“Sure, sure,” Anti shrugged as he walked over. “Yer[1] usual?”

“Yeah,” he smiled before noticing Mini and Lunky. “What’s with the kids?”

“Ehh, I borrowed ‘em fer the day,”[2] Anti shrugged, ruffling Lunky’s hair. “My nephew got his soul split so I’m taking his spawnlin’[3] on a demon buildin’[4] field trip.”

The man in the pig mask knelt down to get a better look at Mini who ducked behind Lunky. The spawnling looked at Mini with a frown before glaring at the masked man and hissed at him.

“Is that a Google bot?” The masked man asked, his tone stiff. He slowly tracked his head up to look at Anti.

Mini had a minor spark of anxiety, his facial recognition couldn’t track the man or his mood very well.

“I am a Bing Mark 2 Extension,” Mini answered.

“A Bing, huh? Name’s Techno, kid, big fan of your old man’s work,” The masked man smiled, he promptly stood up and looked at Anti, “You got what I need, I got what you need.”

Anti smiled as his hand glitched and a large bag dripping with black gunk appeared in his hand. “Oooh yeah, big guy.”

Techno looked into the bag and gave a giddy chuckle, pulling out a skull, “Ohhh, yeah this is the good stuff.”

“Told you I can get fresher stuff than the last fooker, right? Anti grinned. “So yeh[5] got my shite[6]?”

Techno took out a small box out of his pocket and underhanded it to Anti. “Have fun, tell the world you got this from the Blade.”

Then Techno turned to look at the Jims who were not trying to stay hidden at all and were just recording everything they were doing.

“Hey Jims, want something?” The masked man called out, taking out an orb swirling with cyan and rot-green gas. Techno underhanded it to RJ, who thankfully caught it.

“We like Pig-Jim, he loves to make chaos,” RJ commented in excitement. Then he saw Lunky and gasped, “It’s the Squirrel Prince!”

Lunky let out an excited screech, still unable to summon one of his five knives he’d started getting from Anti and his uncles and aunt. Much to King’s relief because he kept them locked up at home.

At that moment, Mini got a message from Google, “Are you with Anti right now?”

“Yes.” Mini responded.

“Get away from him before he destroys your processors,” Google ordered in texts. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Uhhh, Mr. Anti, dude?” Mini asked.

“Ne’er, e’er call me that again,”[7] Anti demanded, acting like Mini had just insulted him. “It’s just Anti.”

“Oh, okay,” Mini corrected. “Anti, the main Google unit is coming to pick me up because I shouldn’t be with you.”

Techno and Anti looked at each other.

“How about no,” Techno decided.

“I know, Google’s such a buzz kill,” Anti tapped Lunky twice on the shoulder and the spawnling switched to 2D to climb up on his shoulders, and Anti began pushing Mini away. “Come on, let’s go ta yer other dads, they’re the fun ones.”[8]

“Anti!” Google shouted from some speaker somewhere. “Get your hands off that extension!”

Techno got in front of the camera as Anti grabbed Mini and Lunky and raced away. Google charged out of an electrical box and began chasing Anti.

“Glitch! Give me that extension!” Google demanded in an angry fury. The camera barely caught sight of the android racing behind Techno and heard his furious demand.

“Down with the cops!” Techno shouted over Google’s own demands. He took a vial and slammed it on the ground, smoke filling the air and obscuring vision. The anarchist was gone when the smoke cleared and what was in frame was Anti trying to play keep with an android and a demon spawnling as Google was trying to get Mini back into his drive so he could take him away from Anti.

So the Jims were left with an already loud and chaotic scene in front of them, and the orb in RJ’s hand.

RJ blinked and then tossed the orb onto the ground. The instant it hit the ground the orb burst open to look like a cage holding a cyan and rot-green energy and expanded ten times its size. There was a dull groan before a shambling, rotting corpse was spat out.

Lunky let out a confused screech, Anti made an excited cheer.

“Zombies!” Anti took out a set of knives.

Then a second one was spat out. And then a third. And a fourth.

Google made an angry hum, he and Mini immediately making notes on population growth. “The only thing worse than humans, are ones I have to kill twice.”

Mini sent warnings to Bing. Jackie already promised to race over with as many heroes as they could. All in all it only took ten minutes to get the zombie cage destroyed and anyone they’d bitten back to normal. By then fifty zombies had been created by the box and Logan immediately seized the object and any footage of it to determine how it was made.

Lunky and Mini were returned to the base.

The heroes found that the object was made and constructed from magic, from a gang the heroes had found magical trails from before.

Logan had been forced to concede defeat and that his expertise was ill-equipped to handle and handed the object over to Marvin and Roman for research.

Meanwhile the Jims were given a box in the dead of night with various cursed and enchanted trinkets insides. Objects that were meant to cause all sorts of trouble.

A gift the Jims very much enjoyed.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Post N/A: Yes there will be more SMP members in the fic, I’m still getting caught up but that’s okay because I still have to choose what canon I’m going to choose like I had to do with the Egos, Septics, and Egos. Techno was just the easiest to include first.

Heads up: next week is going to be a long fic. Currently it sits at 13 chapters long. Do you guys want me to dump it all at once, or over two days, or do you want one half this week and the next half next week? Either way there will be a different fic with the next half of Friday’s fic if they come out the same day.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Accessibility Translations

1. Your

2. Ehh, I borrowed them for the day

3. spawnling

4. building

5. you

6. shit

7. Never, ever call me that again,

8. Come on, let’s go to your other dads, they’re the fun ones.

#Superhero AU #Masks and Maladies #birthday post #Markiplier #Jacksepticeye #MCYT #Jim Twins #the Jims #Antisepticeye #Lunky #Mini Bing #Technoblade #Googleplier #Jim chaos #zombies #overprotective Google #babysitter Anti #knife appreciation day

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ltleflrt · 5 years ago

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Ltleflrt’s Writing Year in Review

Once again I felt like I could do more this year, so this is the theme for the decade. But I got SO MUCH DONE too! And more than I did last year, so I’m happy to see an improvement :D

Total 2019 Word Count: 215,491 Total 2019 Kudos: 7,581 Total 2019 Hits: 63,620

My 2019 Fics:

Dreaming in Digital: 173,818 words (44,142 from 2019)

When Dean finds a deactivated sex bot, he knows it’s his lucky day.

Set in a Cyberpunk world where global warming and climate change has driven most of the human population into domed cities, Sam and Dean hunt rogue tech and science experiments gone wrong in the shadows, protecting the lives of those the government doesn't care about anymore. On a trip to the dump to scavenge for valuables Dean finds Castiel, an Angel Industries sex bot, which is worth his weight in credits. But when he turns the sex bot on, he learns that Castiel is sentient.

Artificial Intelligence is illegal, and for good reason, but Cas doesn't put off dangerous vibes. That doesn't stop Sam from researching his creators while Dean's off making friends with the android. If there's someone out there creating a robot army unconstrained by the 3 rules of robotics, Sam's going to make sure the operation is shut down for good.

Castiel just wants to exist. He wants to read and work in the Winchester's greenhouse and have movie nights with Dean. But he also wants to understand. Himself. His unexpected reaction to Dean. What it it means to feel.

I started this fic in February 2018, and finished it in April 2019. As of this post, it is the longest thing I’ve ever written. And definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever written. You know that saying about blood, sweat, and tears? So true. (the blood was from a cat scratch when Kitty Cas tried to jump in my lap while I was writing and I got clawed, but it counts!) I am proud of the results, even if I got tired of it and cut out a bunch of stuff I wanted to do. 2020 goal is some timestamps!

Where The Heart Lives: 12,876 words

Home is where the heart is, but it's nice to have a cozy little love nest too.

A collection of related short ficlets without a plot. Just small glimpses of Dean and Castiel being happy and in love.

This was a 30 day art challenge called Cottagetober, that I turned into writing prompts and added a 31st day since it was an October thing and I wanted a ficlet for every day. Writing these fluffy snippets every day made me very happy, and I think I might do something similar in 2020 if I can find a list that sparks joy.

Reunited: 2,681 words

Castiel has changed a lot in the 10 years since he was a shy bookworm in High School. But it seems like few of his previous schoolmates have grown up much, if the revival of the rumor mill as soon as he walked in is any indication.

Dean Winchester certainly grew up, though. And he seems far more interested in Castiel than the rumors.

Written as a prompt from @melilovesmakeup-blog, this little fic spawned much joy, and inspired a prequel from @bendingsignpost, which is honestly so dang flattering. I love this little universe, and I’m heckin’ glad I randomly decided to take prompts.

Cloud Nine: 2,254 words

“Hey, angel.” Dean’s voice is warm with love and pride, and it makes Castiel squirm in his bindings. “You think you can take more?”

I love finding new ways to write non-traditional a/b/o! One day I was driving around, and thought you know what I need? Dom!Omega!Dean and sub!Alpha!Cas. Not a lot of it out there yet, so had to write it myself. And I really want to revisit this and write a prequel. I Have Ideas!

The Git (you) Up: 1,323 words

Dean's been crushing on his new neighbor across the street from afar. When he gets an invitation to a neighborhood BBQ, he's finally going to meet the hottie. Now if only he can get the courage to talk to him.

I saw a ridiculously cute video on the internet and I was inspired!

Burning For You: 1,998 words

Due to their busy schedules, Sam and Eileen hire a wedding planner. As Best Man, Dean steps in to help as much as he can. The fact that Castiel is gorgeous and immune to the dangers of Dean's touch is a bonus.

Another prompt! I do prompts like never, but I’m so glad I did and got this one. I had an immediate, and visceral need to write this fic as soon as I saw the ask, so thank you very much @alessariel! This prompt was for both of us! :D

To Build A Bower: 633 words

Dean decorates his home to attract a mate.

Look. Look. I just really fuckin’ love bower birds okay? Okay. Thanks for the prompt @zarauthforsaken!

Special Delivery: 2,012 words

Castiel accidentally gets a package meant for his sexy neighbor.

Another prompt! From @queenandthree <3

Fun story about this fic, the premise was originally going to be used in Satin and Sawdust, but got discarded. I’m thrilled I found a reason to use it in a short story!

Work Life Balance: 2,227 words

As leader of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of Dean's duties is to balance Order with Entropy, and enforce the will of the Fates. When Castiel's nature as the demigod of War urges him to destroy more than he should, he seeks out Dean's council.

A prompt from @kazshero! I have had Four Horsemen headcanons for years, and could never come up with a story for it until I got this prompt. Super grateful for it! Death!Dean is my jam :D

The Menagerie: 1,452 words

Baby the Pegasus is giving birth to her first foal. Dean and Castiel are there to help her through it.

A prompt fill for @nickelkeep! An excuse to turn Baby into a pegasus! FLUFF! <3

A Trip To The Beach: 734 words

Camp Counselors Dean and Cas take the kids on a field trip to the beach.

Yes, this was definitely based on a conversation I had with @jupiterjames. When I got the prompt from my bestie, I *had* to make it about us lol

Quoth the... Wait that's not a Raven: 930 words

Dean, Castiel, and Sam are paranormal investigators. Tonight's haunted spot is a Pet Store.

A prompt from @purgatory-jar! And to be honest, I may revisit this idea with something longer someday. Writing TFW as paranormal investigators is too much fun to pass up :D

Hunter's Caress: 142,229 words (WIP)

Castiel Jameson won't rest until the outlaw who murdered his brother faces justice, and Dean Winchester is the only man alive who can help him track the villain down. Some say Winchester is a cold-blooded killer himself; others say he'd been wronged his whole life. All Castiel knows is that the desire glinting in Dean's green eyes is even more dangerous than he is. Castiel fights to keep his mind on business, but during the long nights on the trail with the dangerously handsome hunter he finds himself dreaming of yielding to Dean's illicit kisses and losing himself in lawless passion.

Dean Winchester is about to hang when Castiel saves his neck with his crazy plan. But dying might be better than spending day and night playing nursemaid to such an infuriating city slicker. He appreciates the stubborn detective's desire for justice, but he'd appreciate Cas a lot more if he'd stop being a lawman long enough to just be a man. He certainly has all the right equipment. Dean aches to run his fingers through Castiel's dark hair, yearns to know how Castiel's golden skin will feel against him. And before the coming of the next dawn, Dean vows to teach him the pleasures and sweet rewards of a Hunter's Caress.

I’ve had this idea since the first year I started writing Destiel fic, and it’s been sitting in my WIP folder since 2014. I don’t want to be done writing Destiel, but I’ve been struggling with my writing for about 2 years now, and I’m afraid it will only get worse when the show ends and the fandom starts to slow down without new content. I figure if I don’t do this story now, it’ll never get done. And that’s unacceptable, because this has been on my mind for far too long to let it never see the light of day. Of all of my stories, this one is the most For Myself thing I’ve ever written. And based on the way it’s going, it’s probably going to overtake Dreaming in Digital as my longest fic by the time it’s done lol

#oops i ficced #destiel #year in review #2019 year in review #long post for ts

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thesmithfamily08 · 4 years ago

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April 27th 2021

Down to only a month left of school! It is finally warm pretty much all the time and I am loving it! Garden is starting to take off, I've still been dealing with something eating tops of plants though. I've narrowed it down to birds and slugs which I didn't even know could do so much damage but I have a decoy owl and I bought some slug repellent. Hopefully next week the problem with be solved! The kids gardens are doing g pretty good too, Max picked his first strawberry of the year from his garden this morning! If we get a bunch, which it looks like we will I'm going to make jam with him!

I have found a running club and Max is interested in joining! I had told him about it a week or so ago and would have signed him up already but one of the big competitions is the same time as his bot scout camp so I've been waiting. I learned yesterday and at CUE they do track and field days, so Max will get to pick 3 things to compete in and they have a day devoted to a track meet, which sounds so fun, of course parents can't go which boo covid, but I am super happy for him. I hope it gives him a love of track and not the opposite. The kid is a natural distance runner, I see it all playing out well.

Lily did her land run day yesterday, she dressed up as a pioneer and they rode pool noodle horses and staked claim of their land like the OK land run. It is a big deal in Kindergarden. So maybe no field trips this year but at least a lot of normal stuff is happening.

So what else is going on, Disney is getting super close and I'm getting overly excited about it all! Some last minute details to figure out but we are all so excited. I don't think the kids even really know what they are in for. They have never been to a theme park this big, crossing my fingers for a magical trip.

Starting to plan other things for the summer and the summer is getting filled up fast, Rob is like when am I going to work on the kitchen 😄 so maybe I'll scale back a little bit.

Rob and I are both fully vaccinated, we both got the Moderna vaccine. Rob was achy the next day after his second and I felt pretty awful too. Glad it is done, though the kids may be the next in line. I think somewhere around 50% of the population has their vaccine and now no one really wants one. Everyone else is wanting to not get one so they are saying we could all be at square one if no one gets it. 😬 nothing much has changed in the last couple 3 months, still no concerts, or large gatherings, flippin fitting rooms are still closed everywhere. They are talking about movie theaters not recovering from the pandemic. I really hate to see theaters so but I'm not exactly using them all the time. Though in my defense there are like no new movies in the theater.

I am going today with the girls to a girl scout event. I looked up prices online and it seems much more reasonable than cub scouts so I'm hopeful. I remember enjoying it when I was little so hopefully they do too. Actually Lily might be the only one who signs up, Penny isn't sure if she wants to or not, we will see.

My birthday is Friday! My mom is taking me out on Thursday and then on Friday the kids don't have school so we are going bowling then we have a dinner to meet Rebekas family....wait back up, have I talked about her yet?! Jesse and her are engaged!!! And the wedding is in NY so yay road trip!! Also the kids are all going to be in the wedding, flower girls and ring bearer 🥰 I'm so thrilled about it all. But anyway we are meeting her parents on Friday they are coming down, they hadn't yet met Jesse either!

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colorstormx · 7 years ago

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tagged by @starspits ! lov u silv

Rules are to answer all the questions and tag 20 blogs you’d like to get to know better!

Gender: good question. ranges between "no thanks" and "girl, probably?"

Zodiac: taurus! fun fact if i was born like 3 days earlier i'd be like. Ultimate Taurus

Height: 5'9"

Time: does not exist. but if you insist then 6:09

Birthday: may 6!

Favorite Bands: ooooo....tough one. Mother Mother, Caravan Palace, Overwerk? also a lot more

Last Movie I Saw: uhhh we watched Into The Woods in class the other day but the last one i saw at a theater was either Justice League or Thor: Ragnarok probably

Last Show I Saw: i'll say mp100

When Did I Create My Blog: god it was like. 2012. didn't start actively posting until like 2014/15 though

What Do I Post: i ask myself the same question. uhhh it just kinda varies? joke stuff/art/fandom/some political stuff. also Gay

Last Thing I Googled: probably something for school

Any Other Blogs: yeah i'm a url hoarder lmao. i do have an art blog and aesthetic blog though. also @flowercrownfeline

Do you get asks?: occasionally! i've gotten a couple of Weird ones but for the most part they're good and i Love being acknowledged

Why did you choose your URL: fun story! it actually goes all the way back to my warriors phase lmao, Colorstorm was my chosen warrior name, because i loved rainbows and storm just sounded like a good suffix to put it with. however, just colorstorm was already taken as a username on most sites, so i tacked an x on the end. also x just made it sound Cooler. i'm really attached to it now tbh? colorful neon + stormy skies are a hell of an aesthetic and i love it

Types of Blogs you follow: uhhh a lot tbh. mostly people w similar tastes in memes + media? also a handful of aesthetic blogs/plant blogs/fandoms that i'm not in anymore but don't have the heart to unfollow after so long

Favorite colors: blue and gray! electric blue and charcoal gray are my absolute faves, they just work sooo well together. pretty much all shades of blue and dark grays are good? really dark navy blue is also great. + purple, purples are Good

Average hours of sleep: on a school night? really depends on homework load but swings between like 4 and 7, a little less than 6 is probably about average. i make up for it w naps + on saturdays though

Lucky number: i've always really liked 6! multiples of 3 in general tend to be good

Dream trip: going to florida to see my gf? also just like. travel in general is good but i don't really have somewhere specific in mind

What are you wearing?: school uniform + hoodie

How many blankets do you sleep with?: 2, the comforter + a really fluffy bluish green one with pawprints on it that i Love. also a shitton of pillows

Dream job: animator/character designer/something in that field! i wanna do Art Shit for real

Favorite foods: depends on my mood? i'm not picky tbh. sushi is really good? also hot wings

Nationality: american

silver u stole like half my go-to people for tags :U uhhh @guacamole-dragon @solicitant @power-pigeon @mohth @zaneclodon @confusedburritoeater @hurtcat @indiego1314 @emberglowfox @tanzytechgem @p-dot-bot @dumbviet okay i think that’s enough if anybody else wants to do it go ahead

#uuuuuuuuu #you don't have to do this is you don't want ofc #i think i was going to comment on something else in the tags but i can't remember what so oh well #have fun #tag meme #the snowjag speaks

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wendyimmiller · 4 years ago

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The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest

June 26, 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

Well, as your letter writing skills are obviously taking second place to your Facebook overshares, I thought I would pick up the baton (as most women must do in this life), and nudge you with its slightly nubby end.

The bananas are beginning to cook.

I enjoyed your latest Rant about things in the gardening world that you love and loathe, but erased my pithy comment about 600 characters in, feeling it was better to start a new, more focused, discussion on the things that also make me crazy as a gardener and garden writer in a new(ish) digital age.

As almost all of them involve a laptop which is not particularly photogenic, I’ll entertain you with pictures of the garden right now instead.

Bird-sown Petasites hybridus (with violet leaf for scale).

There are many things to love about the digital age of course – my word processor for one, my digital SLR for another. Hell, my iPhone camera at this point. But I know, in a little tiny corner of my mind which I often close for comment, that each is working with the passage of time to make me lazier and less clever. Depth of field nuance? Grammatical flourish? Tricky spellings which tax the brain? All casualties to algorithms and sweet sweet convenience if I allow it. And I so often do.

And these are skills we should be loathe to lose. A writer friend wrote the following on syntax, which I have pinned up in my office on a 3×5 card to remind me of the fun of it all – the reason if you will to turn off Microsoft Editor, and Yoast, and the specter of your fourth grade teacher insisting that you will be pitched into the fires of hell if you start a sentence with a conjunction:

It’s no sin to tax the grammar. If you’ve the skill, then you canna.

The Scots would point out, quite rightfully, that the last word negates the gist of the thing, but I like to feel it is penned in the style of Ogden Nash. Perhaps you might prefer CAKE’s more modern approach with the lyrics of John McCrea in Stabbing Shadows:

Adjectives on a typewriter, he moves his words like a prizefighter. The frenzied pace of the mind inside the cell.

That last line’s gotta resonate with the man who just penned 722 words (I counted) on high octane gasoline.

So if we allow these things to ‘help us,’ will they eventually hurt us instead? Which brings me to the issue of the modern ropes, however silken, that tie us in knots and limit the creative [horticultural] mind. I wonder if you’ll agree.

Echinacea ‘Tres Amigos’ with belamcanda fans – now Iris domestica.

Autocorrect

Do you know how long it takes to thumb-type Aechmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands? Do you know how much I’m forced to drink when I then read ‘Arch fascists’ on a text I’ve just sent to a botanist friend who is probably wondering how much news I’ve been taking in lately – and from which websites?

Wait a minute, of course you do, you’ve got at least a decade on me. At least I can see my screen at this point.

All said, it does tend to limit the amount of times one wants to thumb-type Achmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands. Easier to type ‘urn plant’ and pray there’s only one.

Well, not an achmea, but an ananas. Pineapples in Virginia. So. Much. Fun.

Google dictation

Which, like its evil brother, Autocorrect, does not understand botanical nomenclature and turns a simple task into ten wasted minutes of your life you will never get back. Here’s a great example from today: Tripsicum dactyloides to the folks at Apple is “trips to come back to the ladies.”

And, if I type it in, and forget to hit that top left “Yes, that’s damn well what I typed” word suggestion, I get something equally incomprehensible courtesy of Autocorrect. Unless of course, I’ve typed it before. Or not. Depends. Meanwhile, the tripsicum has spread four inches.

I imagine Dr. Fauci and his lot are struggling with the same issues: “No! I said remdesivir – the polymerase inhibitor, you idiot machine, not ‘REM death severe.’ Holy hell – like the President needs to think sleep will kill people at this point. Somebody get me a new phone.”

Writing for SEO

I do believe I dislike this most of all. Not simply because of the articles that have been butchered by editors with their hungry marketing eyes fixated (quite understandably) on key words and their synonyms awkwardly repeated 16 times in 900 words. Nor because of one-sentence paragraphs that can no longer hold their heads up proudly and call themselves paragraphs. But because of the nuance that is lost when all this happens – particularly when it comes to clever, teasing titles.

Would you rather read “The Necessity of Underwear” to gently introduce you to the painful subject of staking, or scroll through yet another “The One Crazy Trick Great Gardens Have in Common – Sure to Shock You!”

Mixed shrubs made ever so much better by a touch of Cosmopolitan. (Miscanthus sinensis)

Had this SEO nonsense been the norm eighty years ago, it would have completely obliterated most great garden literature, including the scratchings of His Royal Highness, Monty Don. Loathe as I am to mention great British garden writers in light of your sensitivity on the subject, I feel an example is necessary.

One of Christopher Lloyd’s Country Life articles “Shun the Invisible Worm” (found in In My Garden) is a piece about succession bloom in late summer borders; and somewhere, deep in the meat of it, he comes to the threat of introducing the phlox eelworm into one’s garden. Then, just as quickly, back to love of plants, and of hybrid rhododendrons. The worm was just a blip; but in finding it and moving through the article, the reader-gardener is transported deep within Lloyd’s kingdom.

I simply wouldn’t have fallen in love with that garden (or that wit) without that journey. One feels the garden. One begins to know the garden. His articles are a mix of straight-to-point and linger-a-little. Both are necessary.

The great American garden writer Henry Mitchell wrote similarly, as did many others in the days before newspapers threw out their garden columnists onto hard pavement — forcing them to sell their souls in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces.

New 2020 title for Lloyd’s piece: The Terrifying Pest That Will Destroy Your Garden!

Notes from 2020 editor: Remove rhodos and summer border options. Not relevant. Need some keyphrase headers. Can you make the worm more terrifying?

Notes from Lloyd: [annoyed muttering]

Primo Black Pearl heuchera (a long-lived stunner!) with Sun Power hosta.

Those frowny faces say impertinent things like “Keyphrase has been found less than four times.” “42% of your sentences contain more than 20 words.” “82% of your readers have started scanning their Instagram feed.”

I wonder if those who don’t blog or write content for websites (all fifteen of them) understand how much has been lost in a one-inch-deep marketplace. 20 words folks. That’s what Yoast and Google think of our ability to read at this point.

For the benefit of future employers/editors reading this letter, I feel compelled to add that I am fully versed in SEO and will absolutely sell my soul in a world run by Yoast and its little red frowny faces. The pavement is so very hard. Scott, I’m sure you’ll join me in my abject groveling.

Writers gotta hustle in a COVID world.

Exclamation points

Or rather, the new need for us to use exclamation points in texts, emails, or prose — or risk pissing someone off with our disembodied, obviously snotty, tone!

You probably wouldn’t understand because you’re so “good-natured” and “sometimes humorous,” but some of us don’t have to work that hard to make others believe we’re using a snotty tone, so we’re forced to use more exclamation points!

To friends! To colleagues! To people we’ve never met before! I die a little bit each time I do it! To those who flatly refuse – I deeply respect your stance! But maybe you’re grumpy! I can’t tell! And see paragraph above!

I always think I love the red ones the best, then I see the pure lavender ones.

Can we all just agree to stop using them?!? Can we all just agree that an slightly uplifted tone is implied in all correspondence, no matter how short?!? Please!

Insane misinformation, perfectly SEO’d

Insane. And because I have no idea if it is libelous to quote these people, I won’t. Instead I’ll make up something that I may, or may not have recently read, by someone who may, or may not have 45 thousand followers, of whom 44 thousand may, or may not, be Russian bots.

“Plant green healthy taro! The healthy leaves are awesome in the garden! And good for you! You can eat the green healthy leaves in tons of ways! People say the leaves are medicinal – I’m sure they totally are! They just LOOK healthy! And green! Why not try it? Plant medicine is good medicine right? Right!”

Not for salad fixins’

There’s those exclamation points again.

Yeah buddy. You’re right. Taro leaves do happen to be edible. Boiled. Boiled hard. Just don’t make one of those “tons of ways” chomping on the raw leaves with a steaming cup of ashwagandha before you start your sun salutations, or your throat will swell shut. And then you’ll need something other than plant medicine to realign your chakras.

While I give everyone and anyone a free pass to make mistakes in life and in print as we all do, I cannot get over some of the utter horseshit I see out there. I suppose I should be thankful that it’s mostly Russian bots scanning it.

What was my SEO header keyphrase again?

Speaking of plant medicine, it appears to be time to close up this fabulously clever word processor with all of its little demons and frowny faces, and mix myself a G&T – though I know we disagree on the sticky issue of what to pair with one’s tonic. Your penchant for Vodka is unsettling, but I will assume a Vodka tonic pairs well with a Vodka jello square after a long day keeping the elephants off the phlox. Personally I don’t see why you don’t use Everclear and save a bit of cash.

Can we at least agree on Pimms? Don’t tell me your mixer is soda water.

Yours in the sublime brilliance of tonic at least,

Marianne

P.S. Just rebuilt the carburetor on my edger with the help of a friend. I too loathe this gasoline dance we do, but at Stihl’s exorbitant European-esque fuel prices, I’ll continue to use my additives.

P.P.S. The irony of having to mess with the SEO of this letter to achieve Green-Face Nirvana has sent me to my second G&T.

The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on June 27, 2020.

The post The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest appeared first on GardenRant.

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turfandlawncare · 4 years ago

Text

The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest

June 26, 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

The bananas are beginning to cook.

As almost all of them involve a laptop which is not particularly photogenic, I’ll entertain you with pictures of the garden right now instead.

Bird-sown Petasites hybridus (with violet leaf for scale).

It’s no sin to tax the grammar. If you’ve the skill, then you canna.

Adjectives on a typewriter, he moves his words like a prizefighter. The frenzied pace of the mind inside the cell.

That last line’s gotta resonate with the man who just penned 722 words (I counted) on high octane gasoline.

Echinacea ‘Tres Amigos’ with belamcanda fans – now Iris domestica.

Autocorrect

Wait a minute, of course you do, you’ve got at least a decade on me. At least I can see my screen at this point.

All said, it does tend to limit the amount of times one wants to thumb-type Achmea fasciata into a phone with muddy hands. Easier to type ‘urn plant’ and pray there’s only one.

Well, not an achmea, but an ananas. Pineapples in Virginia. So. Much. Fun.

Google dictation

Writing for SEO

Mixed shrubs made ever so much better by a touch of Cosmopolitan. (Miscanthus sinensis)

New 2020 title for Lloyd’s piece: The Terrifying Pest That Will Destroy Your Garden!

Notes from 2020 editor: Remove rhodos and summer border options. Not relevant. Need some keyphrase headers. Can you make the worm more terrifying?

Notes from Lloyd: [annoyed muttering]

Primo Black Pearl heuchera (a long-lived stunner!) with Sun Power hosta.

Writers gotta hustle in a COVID world.

Exclamation points

Or rather, the new need for us to use exclamation points in texts, emails, or prose — or risk pissing someone off with our disembodied, obviously snotty, tone!

I always think I love the red ones the best, then I see the pure lavender ones.

Can we all just agree to stop using them?!? Can we all just agree that an slightly uplifted tone is implied in all correspondence, no matter how short?!? Please!

Insane misinformation, perfectly SEO’d

Not for salad fixins’

There’s those exclamation points again.

What was my SEO header keyphrase again?

Can we at least agree on Pimms? Don’t tell me your mixer is soda water.

Yours in the sublime brilliance of tonic at least,

Marianne

P.P.S. The irony of having to mess with the SEO of this letter to achieve Green-Face Nirvana has sent me to my second G&T.

The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest originally appeared on GardenRant on June 27, 2020.

The post The SEO Garden: A Letter to the Midwest appeared first on GardenRant.

from GardenRant https://ift.tt/2NBihmp

#GardenRant

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ajpinfo-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Everything You Should Know About Machine Learning

Programming Computers: Then and Now I find it fascinating that today you can define certain rules and provide enough historical data to a computer, reward it for reaching closer to the goal and punish it for doing bad, which will get it trained to do a specific task. Based on these rules and data, the machine can be programmed to learn to do tasks so well that we humans have no way of knowing what steps it is explicitly following to get the work done. It’s like the brain, you can’t slice it open and understand the inner workings. The days when we used to define each step for the computer to take are now numbered. The role we played back then, of a god to the computers has been reduced to something like that of a dog trainer. The tables are turning from commanding machines to parenting them. Rather than creating code, we are turning into trainers. Computers are learning. It has been called machine learning, for quite a while now (defined in 1959 by by Arthur Samuel). Other names being artificial intelligence, deep simulation or cognitive computing. However now, it really has picked up and based on the amazing things it can help computers do now, it is clearly going to be the future of what the IT industry will transform into. What made Machine learning reach this inflection point it is at right now? Three things: 1.We now have better algorithms. 2.Drastic explosion in computing power. 3.We as human beings have amassed a large amount of data that the machines can learn from. Formal definition (from 1959): “Field of study that gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed.” Everyday Examples of Machine Learning at Work

Sounds a wee bit like fiction, but it’s all around us. Consider the Gmail’s spam filter, or the way Gmail can sort through your stuff and classify them into primary mail, updates, promotions and social. Have you ever wondered how Google news reads millions of news articles every day and sorts them into categories for you to find? And the way Facebook sorts through thousands of posts and lets only the ones it thinks you would like on your wall? Of which I’m not a big fan.

Note how Google news can gather the similar stories from a number of sources and put them together. This is not the task of a human being, or even a massive team – updating hundreds of such stories every minute. Imagine the number of jobs machine learning will cut!

The best one in my opinion is the way my Google photos app (Play store, Apple app store) can return a picture of “sea” from the photos I had clicked at a beach 9 years ago. Manually, even by using all that I know about my own life, I would have taken hours to sort through my own photos and find it! And Google photos search can sort through thousands of my old pictures, understand which one has a sea in it and show it to me within a fraction of a second. It indeed is fascinating! The best part, it automatically uploads newly taken pictures and can clean your local disk if you tell it to. Plus, you get to store unlimited number of photos (if they are less than 16 megapixels). I no longer store pictures on my iPhone. If you are wondering, let me also tell you, Google did not pay me to say all that. Yes, it is that cool of an app. The Game of Go – Conquered Thanks to machine learning, far more complex artificial intelligence has now learned to defeat the human champion of this game called Go. At the first glance, Go looks like a simple game with players taking turns to put black and white stones on a 19×19 grid. A player get’s to choose from around 200 moves when it is his/her turn (the number is 35 for chess). And if you think about the whole game, the number of possible positions the stones can be put on a Go board exceeds the number of atoms in the universe!

Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind with the world Go champion, Lee Sedol. Go is a game like chess, which unlike chess requires a player to make moves which involve a profoundly complex way of “feel and intuition” which had been hard to make computers understand, until now. Recently, if you had been following the news, you must have heard that an AI programmed by Google’s engineers, AlphaGo defeated the human world champion of Go in the past decade, Lee Sedol, over and over again. The five match series ended in a 4-1 win for AlphaGo. The live streams of all the matches are available for anyone to watch on YouTube. The inner workings of AlphaGo were published in a highly reputed scientific journal. It reports how the Google’s AI bot learned to master Go by combining a variety of techniques such as Monte-Carlo tree search and Deep neural networks that were trained by showing a huge number of past human Go matches to it. And they go rogue too With a mind of their own, machines are no less humans anymore. They learn from us and evolve with us. Thus they are prone to learning from our biases. The very app I was lauding before, Google photos, which has a tagging system based on machine learning, created a furor just last year by tagging two dark skinned people as gorillas. Google engineer quickly apologized for the AI’s f*** up and as a quick fix removed the tag of gorilla altogether. This wasn’t exactly the system going rogue, but needed a long term fix to clearly distinguish between dark skinned humans and primates. Google is working on it.

One major example of an AI going rogue always brings up the example of the Microsoft’s twitter bot Tay. It was designed to learn from the humans of Twitter and start conversing like human beings. It was an experiment about “Conversational Understanding.” Now, based on how people talked, learning from everyone’s micro-blogs, trolls included, the AI in under 24 hours learned to be a racist a$$h0|3. Although not even close to reaching Skynet like rogue levels, this is still a slightly frightening thing about AI. Learning machine learning Far from all of the complex algorithms Google, Facebook and the other large corporations with immense amount of talent can manage to create, I believe everything has a humble beginning. I mean even the individuals who make up the team of AlphaGo must have each started from the bottom because humans are not born with the complete knowledge of machine learning pre-installed in their minds. Agreed, they must have started much earlier, must have amazing brains and a range of other random factors that might have contributed to their superior state. So what? Thus, utilizing the free course ware available to everyone with a decent internet connection, I decided to start learning about machine learning myself. So what if I do not reach that level. The very joy of learning it comes with, is a thing enough for me to stick. In my search for the course material I landed on this springboard page that listed 9 courses, classified into three groups – beginner, intermediate and advanced machine learning courses with three courses in each category. Fascinated by all of these amazing feats that a computer can be trained to perform, I wanted to dip my own toes in it too. With no idea of what this course would cover and if I would even be able to understand it, I bravely started the beginner machine learning course offered by Stanford on Coursera (link). It being a self-paced course, I went all in for the first 3 days. In these three days I covered 3 week’s course material, including all of the assignments and quizzes. Soon I realized that was quite a bit of information. So I spent the next two days reviewing notes and taking up a self-designed project. I will soon be updating the progress on this project here. For the hint, it was an idea I got from my recent Los Angeles trip while I was waiting in line for the Harry potter ride. From whatever little understanding I have about Machine learning, I believe that it is a technique which parents a range of algorithms that can help a computer get trained. To my surprise the first course I am taking involved the basics of what I was already doing during my research – fitting data to curves. Although in my research I had be doing much more complex fitting to get measurable parameters from the collected data, the course inclined towards talking about the actual inner workings of regression in statistics to specifically build the foundation for more complex machine learning algorithms to come later. I never knew that simple regression / fitting was a part of machine learning, moreover an essential building block! In my opinion, anyone who deals with any kind of data must take this course, just for the fun of it. You will definitely learn something useful. My goal for now is to be able to program neural networks at some point in the future. Later, I want to be able to implement neural evolution algorithms, which I suppose is based on a genetic algorithm and allows biology like implementation to computer programs. Extremely fascinating, but then I’m talking about something I do not know much about. http://awesci.com/everything-you-should-know-about-machine-learning/ #ajpinfo READ MORE: