slytherinbookwyrm

[slytherinbookwyrm]

anyone ever: from the get-go

me, nodding sagely: from the gecko…

[slytherinbookwyrm]

we had a true lost in translation moment with flag signalling today

some background: the international code of signals is used as shorthand for communicating important information between vessels until this day. everyone carries a flag alphabet for this purpose and you can raise flags separately or together to indicate conditions and requests.

so when my crew mate informed me that the navy boat we were passing had two signal flags up i asked him to relay me the message because i was busy downstairs.

here is what he saw through the binoculars:

the flag on the left is Alpha (I have a diver down; keep well clear at slow speed) and the right one is Bravo (I am taking in or discharging or carrying dangerous goods.) the vessel most likely had clearance divers out to remove underwater explosives and wanted other's to steer clear.

however, my beloved crew mate only vaguely recalled that Alpha stands for divers and Bravo stands for dangerous. so imagine my surprise when they hesitantly relayed that

"the navy...wants us to know that their divers know how to fight?"

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One of my brothers has this thing where he likes to be included on sibling movie night but he will not sit down or actually join us, he’ll just wander around the house and periodically show up to lurk in the doorway or lean on someone’s seat

And *I* have this thing where I always always know when he’s there, because every time he’s not wandering around like the ghost of bob marley and isn’t immediately visible it’s because he’s stopped moving to watch the film from directly behind me, which makes the back of my neck tingle like a dog sensing an earthquake

Which has on more than one occasion resulted in me interrupting the movie to tell him to just sit the fuck down and stop lurking in the shadows, Jesus Christ, it’s like I’m being haunted by the memory of ancient sins

Which has in turn been shortened to just “ancient sins”, every time I feel him doing it again

So to summarize, sometimes when my siblings and I get together for a movie night, we’ll all be sitting in the dark in complete silence until my ass deadpan announces “ancient sins” and a 90 pound 5’11” Slenderman looking motherfucker emerges from the shadows behind me like a jumpscare incarnate in Batman pajamas pants and informs me that we are out of orange soda

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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.

[slytherinbookwyrm]

i usually like to believe that i'm capable of getting better at anything as long as i put enough practice in. but i've gone to sleep almost every day of my life and i'm still so very, very bad at it

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Some of you are using pov (point of view) when you mean to say mfw (my face when). Get the word out

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Something the AI text boom has made me realize is that "no information" is significantly better than "wrong information."

I just saw Doordash AI describe a gallon of blue cheese dressing as a "sweet and refreshing beverage concentrate."

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it will pass but like can i at least get an eta

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i mean this in the nicest way possible but some of you need to learn how to be annoyed

[slytherinbookwyrm]

My Pokemon head canon is that if you were holding an Aron and she wanted to go down she would do the little cat thing where they wiggle until they leap out of your arms gracefully except Aron is made mostly out of solid steel and would land with the impact tungsten cube, dent the floor, cause permanent structural damage to the foundation, and then stand up and happily trot along like she didn't do anything

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average nate-centric leverage episode: grief & drinking & catholic guilt & maybe sterling is there also

average parker-centric episode: another incredibly traumatic piece of her backstory is revealed

average sophie-centric episode: oops she lied/manipulated/kept secrets too much & backed herself into a corner

average hardison-centric episode: hardison gets into a Situation TM

average eliot-centric episode: what if we made eliot a minor celebrity. again.

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tumblrs ui design is so ass like its so incredibly easy to just misclick and unfollow a beloved long time mutual or follow some cunt instead of blocking them or send someone a random post on accident . and theyre still just like "yeep the only possible improvement our ui could ever use is Make Everything Circles i think. and maybe add a few more buttons nobody uses"

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We live in the dumbest, lamest cyberpunk dystopia possible.

So LA has been — and continues to — protest against ICE. These protests haven’t gotten any smaller or lost any momentum, but social media wasn’t reflecting it.

TikTok users, realizing that the platform/other social media are censoring/deleting/shadowbanning these protest videos, decided to find a workaround.

They’re calling it the LA Music Festival. Ice detention centers and other protest locations are “stages.” The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. “Here’s what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival.”

And it fucking worked.

TikTok has become a proving ground for a lot of new music, meaning lots of labels and organizations have lucrative deals with TikTok to promote their new artists and music festivals. So they absolutely cannot censor the words “music festival” or train the algorithm to ignore it, or they risk endangering that very important revenue.

So now protest videos are flooding feeds again, but it’s the LA 24/7 Music Festival. Truly an incredible timeline we’ve landed in.