SkyBluePink is my Favorite Color

Artist, Writer.Check out my art and ocs! I also take commissions. my other blogs are fantasy-anatomy-analyst and ava-m-gale woman over 30

[miss-m-winks]

For more of my art and writing: @ava-m-gale and @fantasy-anatomy-analyst

[niidsch]

Not seeing many people talk about this on Tumblr, so gonna spread the word myself: Webtoon is going to start using AI for translations and an AI chat bot with comic characters. If you're against this you should delete your account, and if you are publishing on the website, you should consider moving to other alternatives and especially having your own website to host your comic.

Also needless to say that Webtoon can absolutely afford to hire translators, this is just yet another way to not pay the people who are making the company behind Webtoon absurdly rich.

And for the people who might see this as a good decision:

(+ all the environmental damage that AI is causing)

[everentropy]

I feel REALLY bad for the creators who are stuck in contracts right now that even if they break it won't be able to do that comio for at least 3 years… Highly suggest trying to find the social media of creators you like. Also if you are someone considering getting into webcomics for the first time I highly recommend ComicFury!

Comic Fury is a free, easy-to-use, advertisement free host for your webcomic(s). You can put up your own comics and get a website dedicated

[epicsause-official]

i recently found out what the * * * that sometimes separates parts of a text is called and youre never gonna fucking believe it

[splickedylit]

truly there are incredible and never-before-seen combinations of words to be found on the internet wherever you look. "An aesthetic dinkus takes the form of a dingbat". Stupendous.

[thememedaddy]

[winterinhimring]

OK. SO. When Windows is being a pill about this, what you're gonna do is:

You're gonna open up Resource Monitor (resmon.exe) using the start menu or the terminal, or you're gonna go to Task Manager and click on the Performance tab, where there may be a button to go to resmon.

You're gonna go to the CPU tab. You're gonna expand the Associated Handles section, enter the name of the file/folder/whatever you want to delete and hit enter.

AND THEN. Windows will show you a list of everything that's using the file, and you can either kill those processes manually, or right-click the handles within resmon and kill 'em from there.

You're welcome.

Signed, one very tired computer ghostbuster who has seen this problem way too many times on her own dumb work machine.

(Original instructions and screenshots to be found at https://serverfault.com/questions/1966/how-do-you-find-what-process-is-holding-a-file-open-in-windows)

[badassdemonsword]

Im dryin up faster than lake mead just thinking about it

[chicknparm]

Futures

Made of

Ethical romantasy

[miss-m-winks]

I love healthy romances and I love writing healthy romances, but the "modern sensibilities" line here is just soooooo icky. And the whole post is sooooooo judgy.

There is, I think, a genuine conversation to be had about the presence of sexism and conservative propaganda within the broader romance book genre. It has always kind of been there and there is nuance to explore about the appeal of a fictional toxic relationship and also the way some mainstream popular romances will uplift very heteronormative patriarchal dynamics. Like we can have an actual conversation about that.

There is space to make lists of books aimed at people who don't enjoy reading the edgier darker themed romances and just want the happier fluff.

But that post is not it. The judgemental tone and call for "modern sensibilities" with extra emphasis on things like clear consent makes me think their list is going to be full of shallow stories that keep on jabbing the fourth wall to be like "look how woke this is! Look how often they very very explicitly ask for consent for every little thing and use therapy speak to overcome any hint of tension!" All paired with this implication that if you don't like those books, you must be a bad person because you prefer Icky Gross Unhealthy Romance.

[levunalangs]

conlang relay alert!!!

I should definitely have posted about this sooner but you can join me for the release of the 2026 YOUTUBE CONLANG RELAY* this Monday, August 10th, at 1 PM Eastern Time, or 6 PM BST, or whatever other time that is for you!

Videos will be going live one after the other in this playlist, but you can also just find my video here. It will premiere at 1:26 PM, and if you’re there at that time you can chat with us live as we all find out what the deal is with the relay this time around! If not, the video will be up on my channel after that point. Then, on August 15th at 9 AM EDT, we’ll be chatting about the relay results live on the Conlangery channel.

I had a lot of fun with the translation and making my video. I used Valya this time around, so it was a very different experience than using Sdefa last year.

*A conlang relay is a really complicated game of telephone. One person writes something in their own constructed language and then sends that, plus some grammatical info, to someone else who doesn’t know the language at all. That person uses that info to translate the text into their own language and passes it on in the same way, and it continues from there. Weiiiird stuff tends to happen.

[roselinbooks]

🐦‍🔥 The Eye of the Phoenix 21 Pages, Fantasy

🧚 Fairy Tale 🌈 Queer Romance 💖 Love at First Sight 🗡️ Knight/Monarch 💔 Forced Separation 🎨 Full Color Illustrations

PWYW eBook on Ko-Fi or Itch-io~!

Blurb: A short and sweet fairy tale. Snowe is preparing to leave his service in the imperial palace to study for knighthood, in the hopes of becoming a royal guard. A mysterious gift left outside his door leads him to a fateful encounter in the garden... 

Includes two full-color illustrations by R. Hamlin! 

Content Warnings: Grief, Brief Suicidal Ideation/Attempt

[traderotales]

happy summerfest! (my writeblr is @ava-m-gale, but i can't send asks though a sideblog)

⛈️What is an ideal rainy day for your main character?

[From this ask game.]

I did already answer this question here, but now I'll do it for some of my other ocs! :) Linked in their names is art of them <3

Galisa would find a secluded room in order to work on cuprite machines, as the gemstone and working with it can be very messy, since it also has a dust form. She'd add to her notes as she works, and would probably be in there way past when it stops raining.

Coder I think would watch Phoebe's farm outside of her cottage (that all of Reaper's friends live in) to see if he can catch the plants growing just the tiniest amount. He'd also probably pass the time by helping any of the others with anything they were doing, or trying new cooking recipes.

Phoebe would be baking and probably teach Coder some recipes when he asks. She'd also answer any questions she can about the Plains, since she Awakened there and is thus native to the Biome. Coder has a lot of questions, lol.

Wolf would honestly probably read, or try to make more furniture for Phoebe's house if he does. I know one of his hobbies is architecture/interior design/decorating, but he may just honestly help Coder with cooking if need be, or rest because of his scars.

Valerie, Sam's girlfriend, would totally be trying to drag her away from her work. She'd probably bust out board games for them to play, or help Sapphire by getting Sam to relax. Probably honestly would set up a candlelit warm bath for her and Sam to enjoy.

Caleb, Valerie's older brother, would be working. He works as a paranormal tour guide for haunted locations, and so he'd probably be calling people to set up his next jobs and whatnot. He very rarely takes breaks...biiit of a workaholic.

Unfortunately I don't know anything for the rest of the main good guys of CoV: Ryan and Sebastian, as they're my partner's characters, not mine 😅

[captainkirkk]

What they don't tell you about writing is that as you write, you discover scenes and entire plots that you hadn't accounted for that need to be written. So you can spend two hours writing and editing only to realise you're further away from the finish line than you thought you were when you started

[frogribbit]

random thing but i realized it might be helpful for some people so uh. theres this thingy where you can upload an image and it gives you a color palette based on it ! 

heres an example

and it also gives you the hex code values for them too its p neat !

here’s the link to the website !

[ouroborosorder]

the problem with writing fantasy is that i have to constantly stop myself from having people say "jesus fucking christ." jesus didn't exist here dammit. i need a fake swear that means the same thing i think

[miss-m-winks]

Other swears that you suddenly have to rethink in a fantasy setting:

"Ah, hell" and "goddammit" and even just a nice solid "damn"

Because now you got yourself wondering if your fantasy religions have a hell or the concept of damnation. Which is an annoying bit of logic to have to deal with when you just wanted a snappy bit of cussing in the dialogue.

But on the bright side, sometimes trying to come up with new expletives that actually fit your fantasy cultures leads to some really fun ones like "by the Mountain's great glacial tits" which is a bit lengthy but certainly packs a punch when it's used correctly and also offers some shorter snappy variations like "mother's tits" or the less vulgar pseudo-cuss "glaciers"

[hopegrasping]

Let go of the idea that diy will inherently look shit. All your clothes are handmade you just don't see the people doing it.

[hopegrasping]

One of the best additions that gets my point across better :)

[darqueloaf]

There's a group that makes clothing with ink stained hands to show each time the fabric was touched with human hands to make the garment. The purpose of the piece is to bring attention to the hidden labor of sewists in the garment industry

ABOUT | HUMAN TOUCH

ABOUT

[elfwreck]

To be fair - while all your clothing was made by "a person on a sewing machine," many of those sewing machines

Aren't easily available to you, and

Take a notable amount of training to use (especially, to use without damage to your hands) (Not "months of training." Just. Not "here's the instruction pamphlet; have fun.")

However: The sewing machines that are reasonably available to you, will make clothes you can wear and enjoy wearing. (Industrial sewing machines can sew for 8, 10, 18 hours without breaking down; the one you buy at WalMart cannot. Some industrial ones can sew through 4 layers of denim; you can find a machine that does that but you won't get it by accident and it will cost more. And so on.)

Basic sewing machine - enough to get started making clothes - is under $200. (Industrial machines start at ~$2000 and go up from there.) Super Ultra Cheap version is under $100; not recommended unless you know you'll be able to throw $350 at the hobby in a couple of years when the simple one is just really too limited anymore.

...Anything under $50 (new) is A Gimmick. They're not all worthless but they're very limited. They're more "you can learn how a sewing machine works with this" than "you can make clothes with this." (I mean. You can. But you can make clothes with a needle & thread, too. And while it takes longer, you may be less frustrated than using a $45 "beginner sewing machine.") Some of the gimmick machines are very useful for their specific purpose - they're ultra-portable, or good for repairs, and so on.

But if you are on a very limited budget - less than $50 can get you started on making clothes. And bookbags. And pockets to add to clothes you already have. And hats. Bathing suits, if you decide to get ambitious. (Stretchy fabrics are challenging, esp on a simple machine.)

You can make socks with a sewing machine but I really don't recommend it.

Shifting public thoughts on sewing machines from "every third household has one" to "exotic crafting hobby" is part of how the damn capitalist regime forces people to put up with clothes that don't fit actual human shapes and/or fall apart after 5 washings.

[grison-in-space]

Also, sewing machines are one of those things that is often much better to buy used, because in the old days they used metal gears and now the gears are nylon and don't last as long. If you want to get a sewing machine and dabble, I highly suggest looking on Craigslist or at estate sales for a used one. Mine cost me $30 and would have gone for much more, adjusted for inflation, when it was new. But people inherit sewing machines or want to give them away all the time, so it is very worth checking on the used market near you if you want to get into sewing clothes but aren't sure where to start. You can often get a lot more sewing machine for your buck than if you buy a new one.

[miss-m-winks]

And make sure your sewing machines get cleaned and serviced regularly! Like once or twice a year. Either find a sewing machine reparist in your area or learn how to do it yourself. My mom repairs sewing machines and boy the gunk you find when a machine has been in use for years without maintenance.

[redstonedust]

for the record im not technially 100% anti-AI, in the sense that its a broad category of tech being lumped under one umbrella term so it feels over-zealous to say i hate all of it all the time forever. but i also think trying to discuss what it actually IS good for is difficult right now when i cant take one step without something trying to convince me to use chatgpt to summarize my life and speed up my hobbies and turn my friends into chatbots and optimize my life into oblivion. i am certain there is nuance to the topic but can we stop cramming the square peg into the round hole before you start trying to sell me on the legitimate benefits of the square peg. please.

[ralfmaximus]

Neural Nets have existed for decades and are genuinely useful. It's a form of AI that recognizes patterns, and can do stuff like identify cancer cells, tell whether an egg is fertilized or not, detect fraud, and optimize routes.

Those are Expert Systems, tuned to do exactly one thing. If you (say) ask a medical expert system a question about financial law, it's useless. The autopilot that flies a 787 has no idea how to drive a truck on the freeway. A Coulter Counter is excellent at identifying lymphocytes in a blood sample but can't predict the next card in a blackjack game.

And so on.

The problem with so-called generalized AI (AGI) is that we don't have that yet. It doesn't exist. It MIGHT some day, but AGI has been "10 years away" since the 1980s. The goals keep moving as we learn more about how people and machines process data.

But the current crop of AI techbros have been selling generative Large Language Model AI (LLM) as AGI because generative systems do a good job of faking it. There's no actual thought going on, merely the illusion of thought via predicting the next word in a sentence accurately.

If you let a human toddler listen to 800 hours of YouTube car influencer videos, that toddler might end up sounding like a car influencer. They'd parrot horsepower numbers and 0 to 60 times, mention EV range and MSRP numbers.

But they wouldn't understand any of it.

That's ChatGPT.

And yeah, it's worse than useless because it doesn't even know when it's lying or hallucinating. It just babbles convincingly until you stop it.

But for techbros to make money selling that as "AI"? It's the perfect scam, especially if you don't understand how it works.

I fucking hate it.

[color-palettes]

Original Palette - How To Participate

Thank you to @6-and-7 for the nomination! Tag us @color-palettes if you make anything!

[pangur-and-grim]

Queer Books and Authors are at a Breaking Point

Authors, agents, publishers: every part of the industry is seeing the strain of five years of escalating anti-LGBTQ censorship.

[pangur-and-grim]

if you'd like to show support, here are some upcoming queer books:

When Life Gives You Corpses is a brilliant YA about a cursed praying mantis who falls for a young witch. Yield Under Great Persuasion is a raunchy, but surprisingly sweet story about two men repairing their relationship. Fabulous Bodies is a horror story about a queer rockstar rising from the dead.

This is Where the Future Bleeds is a fantasy set in a vividly imagined land, where two women (who happen to kiss) are the key to healing the broken sky. You're No Better is a story about a teen struggling in the shadow of his murderous parent. Oil on Canvas is about a woman who finds disturbing paintings in the home of her dead mother.

and then here's a list of 26 queer books by Black authors set to publish this year, and a 10 upcoming books by trans authors. if you want to fight back against queer censorship, use your wallet! or (if that's not an option) you can contact your local library and ask them to stock a copy.

[penelopepennington]

In addition: looking for indie publishers and queer bookshops is a great way to find and support queer authors and stories of so many infinite varieties! (The following suggestions are based on my UK-centric knowledge)

(Some) Queer Presses:

Lurid Editions are "a publishing project committed to intentional and conscientious acts of archival repair". They are "attentive to how marginalised histories are forgotten and remembered, [and] hungry to rediscover overlooked queer books". They've just received funding from Arts Council England to engage queer readers in a project to contribute to the archive!

Cipher Press "We’re really keen on the idea that queer and minority stories are for everybody, and we want to make our books – and the stories they tell - accessible to all" (what an amazing mission statement!)

Anamot Press "Anamot [Անամոթ] means shameless in Armenian. ⁣⁣Anamot Press publishes poetry and prose on intersecting experiences of gender, sexuality, race, migration, class, belonging and loss - with no shame."

(Some) Queer Bookshops

Queer Lit Oh man, I remember when this was just a tiny little shop, and now they're the biggest LGBT+ bookshop in Europe! They do amazing work in donating books about being trans to schools and parliament! They have a pay-it-forward board that will make you sob with its notes of love and support. (You can tell I wish I still lived nearby)

Lighthouse For Scottish friends - "a queer-owned and woman led independent community bookshop. We are an unapologetically activist, intersectional, feminist, antiracist, lgbtq+ community space"

Gay's The Word The OG Queer bookshop in the UK. One day I will make my pilgrimage!!

This really is just a tiny snapshot of all the amazing work of celebration and resistance that's being done for Queer literature at the moment. We live in frightening times, but I promise there is still lots of love and joy and hope out there in spaces like these. Support them in whatever way you can!!

[theprofessional-amateur]

link to bluesky post

[theprofessional-amateur]

In addition to how to turn various things, it includes:

Other useful AI Removal/Detection links

How to spot AI Hallucinations like a Reference Librarian (originally on Substack)

Library Freedom Project has a lot of handouts about AI on their Resources page

[exeggcute]

had a minor crisis when 12ft.io went down yesterday and thankfully it's back now but this seems like a good opportunity to compile a list of similar paywall-evading tools in case 12ft ever gets canned for real:

12ft.io: the legend himself. definitely my favorite of the bunch by virtue of being the easiest to use (and the easiest url to remember), but it's configured to disable paywall evasion for a handful of popular sites like the new york times, so you'll have to go elsewhere for those.

printfriendly: works great; never had any issues with removing paywalls, even on domains that don't work with 12ft.io. since this site is literally designed to make sites print-friendly, it might simplify the overall formatting of the page you're trying to access, which can be a good or bad thing. my only real issue is that the "element zapper" (which lets you remove content blocks from the print-friendly preview) is a little sensitive if you're browsing on a touchscreen device, which means you might accidentally delete a paragraph when you're just trying to scroll. but if that happens you can reload the page and it'll revert everything back to its original state.

fifteen feet: basically a 12ft clone, minus 12ft's restrictions. haven't used it much since I only discovered it yesterday in the wake of 12ft's 451 error but it seems to do the trick.

archive.today: an archival tool very similar to the wayback machine, but it also works as a de facto paywall removal tool. (the wayback machine seems to remove paywalls as well, but archive.today has better UX imo and is way faster to use.)

and an honorable mention for sci-hub: only works for scientific/academic journals, not random news articles, but the other sites listed above only work for random news articles and not academic publications so you gotta have this one in your toolbelt for full coverage. pubmed is your oyster.