zemkzone

[zemkzone]

TRAT accidental countdown

So, my brain was more than a lil fuzzy this week, so I promised myself time today to check how far along I've gotten in my per-chapter outline of That Rare Arctic Thunderstorm. I did. And... Holy hell.

Posted Chapters: 24 Editing/Clean-up Stage Chapters: 2 In Progress Chapters: 1 To-Write Chapters: 11

There is a CHANCE I might manage to finish this fic this year. Or early next year. AHHHHHHH!!!! IDK anymore how many of you guys are still reading along or waiting to see if/when I ever finish, but yeah, hi, hello. I'm currently working on a lot of stuff IRL, wrapping up my original manuscript, in the pre-hunt stages for a new home, and trying to fix my mental and physical health—such GREAT distractions from the shitshow that is current events—but here, share in my screaming for a sec, yeah?

[zemkzone]

someone on twitter is trying to claim that use of an em-dash is an indication of AI-generated writing because it’s “relatively rare” for actual humans to use it. skill issue

[zemkzone]

This is making the rounds on BlueSky, but I haven't seen it here yet.

Twitter is rolling out a "Recreate this with Grok" button directly on images now when you open them. Also, some people have experienced their artwork getting labeled as 'made with Grok'

I understand why some people have tried to stay but, please at the very least start transitioning your work to other places so at the very least you have a exit without hurting your finances too much.

Twitter is only going to become more hostile towards artists. It's full of poison and it's only a matter of time before it fully erodes.

[zemkzone]

Confession: I use the exact same site for the exact same reasons.

[zemkzone]

Reblogging for the USA evening crowd....

UPDATE: Ch24 of That Rare Arctic Thunderstorm

Happy V-day to those who're celebrating! I'm finally back again with a new installment of Barry and Len trying to do this relationship thing~

For some reason, AO3 links aren't appearing as they usually do on Tumblr, so.... old-fashioned linking it is!

Chapter Summary: On an impromptu shopping trip with Iris, Barry makes some discoveries, a few of which that might be very important for the future. Meanwhile, Len's got enough distractions on his plate, Zoom has a new set of schemes going, and the Trickster learns the hard way that Central City's a different place than it was when he was last on the loose.

[zemkzone]

UPDATE: Ch24 of That Rare Arctic Thunderstorm

Happy V-day to those who're celebrating! I'm finally back again with a new installment of Barry and Len trying to do this relationship thing~

For some reason, AO3 links aren't appearing as they usually do on Tumblr, so.... old-fashioned linking it is!

Chapter Summary: On an impromptu shopping trip with Iris, Barry makes some discoveries, a few of which that might be very important for the future. Meanwhile, Len's got enough distractions on his plate, Zoom has a new set of schemes going, and the Trickster learns the hard way that Central City's a different place than it was when he was last on the loose.

[zemkzone]

Hey everyone, I know it's going to be a busy day for a lot of people, but Google enrolled everyone over 18 into their AI program automatically.

If you have a google account, first go to gemini.google.com/extensions and turn everything off.

Then you need to go to myactivity.google.com/product/gemini and turn off all Gemini activity tracking. You do have to do them in that order to make sure it works.

Honestly, I'm not sure how long this will last, but this should keep Gemini off your projects for a bit.

I saw this over on bluesky and figured it would be good to spread on here. It only takes a few minutes to do.

[zemkzone]

(insp.)

[zemkzone]

Progress can be a ladder or a cage. Verne saw a future of boundless innovation. Orwell saw a world where technology enslaves. We live in both worlds now.

Are we pushing forward, or just tightening the chains?

[zemkzone]

[zemkzone]

Gee, wow, now I've sat up in bed. LOL.

On ONE hand.... Considering Cisco originally made Barry' suit for firefighters, he had to have thought about sweat and anything else relating to high temperatures inside and out. On the OTHER hand, the Star Labs crew also didn't entirely know how to treat a person in a coma, so... *shrug*

I like to think Cisco's bigger problem is collectively the rips, melting, damage to the circuitry (latter season stuff when he added all sorts of stuff to the suit). For regular cleaning, he prolly originally thought "oh, I'll do a better version of the actual specialized washing machines firefighters use for their turnouts"....

And then comes the blood. Okay, that can be washed. But does the team REALLY wanna be dealing with, ah, other stains INSIDE the suit?

"DAMNIT, BARRY, DID YOU STOP TO HAVE SEX WITH SNART AFTER YOU STOPPED HIS HEIST AGAIN?"

me all snuggled up in bed ready to go to sleep: .......

me, suddenly sitting bolt upright: how do they wash the flash suit

[zemkzone]

Memories

[zemkzone]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Leigh McGowan (@iampoliticsgirl)

I don't know how else to boost this, because IG keeps "crashing" when I try to share it on my stories. I'm hoping it's just my internet connection... But yeah, as much as I disapprove of Meta right now, as long as people like @iampoliticsgirl and @mattxiv are able to post there, I have a reason to stick around... and to hope for the future.

UPDATE: FINALLY managed to share the reel on IG.... after about 5 tries... and it took over 10 minutes for it to load.

[zemkzone]

[zemkzone]

Already did... teehee~

if you can't fix him, put him in lingerie.

[zemkzone]

Tl;dr how you can personally make Neil Gaiman lose money (and not be a jerk to others.)

I see a lot of folks upset that NG will financially benefit from residuals and other compensation surrounding his involvement in the adaptation of Sandman and Good Omens (and he will.) But the answer isn’t “rage at the fans who are so emotionally attached to their blorbos because they grieve differently, and then somehow NG will be financially punished.” That’s lower-class/middle-class thinking. NG is too rich and financially diversified to really be hurt by little boycott or a couple of show cancellations (though said cancellations can cause life-changing poverty to the little guys who signed contracts and turned down other opportunities before all of this came out. Boy does NG love women in poverty 🤮)

So if you want to substantially reduce the wealth of someone at NG’s financial level—you need to do it with professional services fees.

Details below the cut:

The firm that NG has apparently engaged for online reputation management (ORM), called edendale, was once paid for their professional testimony in an unrelated slander lawsuit, which was delivered in the form of a report (2) outlining the strategy ORM firms use and (2) just how ludicrously expensive those professional services cost. (Credit to horrornobody77 for digging up the report.) We’re talking hundred of thousands of dollars for a small potatoes case, where NG’s could easily get into the millions for ORM and associated legal fees.

It’s not that long of a read, but to summarize the key action items you can take:

📆 -ORMs wait for the discourse to die down, because active discourse is much more expensive to counter. Wanna cost NG money? Talk about the accusations over time. Set a quarterly calendar event in your phone to remind yourself to post (and otherwise engage on other people’s posts) about the Vulture article. This needs to happens for years, so that NG has to pay for more comprehensive ORM and for longer.

✅-Make discourse that is Google-friendly. Use the words edendale will find concerning (they’re already running fluff pieces with the terms Neil Gaiman Uncovered to try and bury the similarly named subreddit.) If you just post a link without much comment, it’s not gonna be prioritized by search engines. Similarly, if you make a low effort post and then no one else engages with it—it’s not going to make it to the top ten search results. Engage with each other, for heaven’s sake!

🦾-Don’t let the fluff sit unaddressed. If you see random bot posts sharing NG quotes captioning random fantasy art (possibly AI or misattributed /stolen) with the comments turned on? Respond! Make it hard for the bots to understand your comment but easy for humans. “Nice quote! Mega bummer about what NG did, I used to really like him,” is hard for a bot to auto-delete. “Fuck NG,” is practically doing the bot’s autodelete command for it.

✍️ -If/when you post fan works for properties strongly related to Neil Gaiman, leave a lil callout in the author’s notes. Nothing that will get you sued, just a few words like: “I would definitely personally choose to not ever meet Neil Gaiman at a comic con.” Maybe throw in a link to your fav tumblr summary.

Anyway, to the person being paid hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour by Neil Gaiman for professional services—you’re welcome for the extra billable hours 😘

Also Edendale sounds like a law firm in a Good Omens legal AU fic, and I can’t believe it’s real.

[zemkzone]

It is with the deepest frustrations that I must report Microsoft has pushed out Copilot onto Microsoft Word no matter what your previous settings were. If you have Office because you paid for it/are on a family plan/have a work/school account, you can disable it by going to Options -> click on Copilot -> uncheck 'Enable Copilot'.

(Note, you may not see this option if you haven't updated lately, but Copilot will still pop up. Updating should give you this option. I will kill Microsoft with my bare hands.)

In addition, Google has forced a roll-out of it's Gemini AI on all American accounts of users over 18 (these settings are turned off by default for EU, Japan, Switzerland, and UK, but it doesn't hurt to check).

To remove this garbage, you must go to Manage Workspace smart feature settings for all your Gmail/Drive/Chat and turn them off. Go to Settings -> See all settings -> find under "Genera" the "Google Workspace smart features" -> turn smart feature setting off for both Google Workspace and all other Google products and hit save. (If you turned off the smart settings in your Gmail, it never hurts to open Drive and double-check that they're set to off there too.)

Quick Edit: I found the easiest way to get to the Smart Feature settings following the instructions above was to do it through Drive. Try that route first.

Now is the time to consider switching to Libre Office if you haven't already.