Tempest - an alternate version of Petra, transformed by unquenchable grief or fury. If Petra is a cleansing rain, Tempest is a hurricane. For when the balance and sanity of a spirit is broken, the only recourse is primal wrath.
The reference I used was this image of Vicar Amelia by Atenebris: https://www.deviantart.com/atenebris/art/Vicar-Amelia-651879449
Hey. If people aren't aware, Microsoft admitted they know who you and where you are at all times and will give your info to the police.
They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.
Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.
You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.
This article specifically notes:
For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.
GDID is the persistent Windows ID that helped FBI trace a Scattered Spider hacker despite VPNs. Here's how it works and how to limit it.
Other important quotes:
What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.
Two things back that up:
There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.
Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.
Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.
You can get and use windows 11 without logging in with a microsoft account, as of five days ago. I am a local user on my computer. Don't ask me how to do it, because my computer repair guy did it when he reinstalled windows, but there are tutorials out there. Refuse to connect to internet until you're set up and can use the computer freely.
Refusing to connect to the internet doesn't help. You have to open a Command Prompt (Shift+F10) and typing start ms-cxh:localonly (and pressing enter) during installation when you get to the sign in/create stupid ms account screen
For comprehensive deets, tomshardware explains
Maintain only a local account on your Windows 11 PC.
Unless there's really really specific reasons to subject yourself to windows, please consider installing linux mint instead.
Human Is is a 1955 Philip K. Dick sci-fi short story where a guy goes to another planet for work and when he comes back to Earth his personality has flipped from an asshole to a sweet, kind, considerate man. Everyone's immediately convinced that an alien has taken over his body, this goes all the way to court, and in court his wife testifies that she's noticed no changes at all and so the charges are dropped.
And then there's a bit right at the end of the story as the wife and the husband are walking out of court:
Jill turned abruptly. "What is your name? Your real name."
The man's gray eyes flickered. He smiled a little, kind, gentle smile. "I'm afraid you would not be able to pronounce it. The sounds cannot be formed..."
Jill was silent as they walked along, deep in thought. The city lights were coming on all around them. Bright yellow spots in the gloom. "What are you thinking?" the man asked.
"I was thinking perhaps I will still call you Lester," Jill said. "If you don't mind."
"I don't mind," the man said. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. "Anything you wish. Whatever will make you happy."
And I. God. There's something there. A soupcon of monsterfuckery. To tell your partner in a moment of intimacy that yes, you're something so inhuman that the lips you're stealing can't speak your actual name. You're a parasite that not only had the ability to burrow under this man's skin and take over his life, but you were so desperate to escape a dead, dry, blasted planet that you did.
And for your partner to then turn around and go "I know, I've always known, and I love you" is just. God I know it's not a great Dick story but something about it is making me lose my mind
Also it's explicitly stated that the guy's consciousness is still alive and preserved on the alien planet. Jill is told this and then proceeds to defend the alien anyways, ensuring that her husband's brain is stuck in a jar on a desert planet. You love to see it
The most mind-blowing moment, not only for De La Mata but the scientists too, came when they managed to actually record the sounds that she heard in her ears – which now appear as ‘Left Ear’ and ‘Right Ear’ which begin sides A and B on the album – and in doing so opened up questions about the nature of tinnitus itself. “The NHS definition is that it’s a phantom sound that your brain is creating, that it isn’t something ‘real’, so you should try to ignore it.” By having De La Mata place her ear into an anechoic chamber, with an ultra-sensitive microphone perched in her ear canal, they were able to provide significant evidence to the contrary. “After the first recording of it, it was ‘There’s no way, this isn’t possible.’” They tried again with her breath held, and again with her tensing her ears, and again with other members of staff, but each time it became apparent that yes, the noises De La Mata hears are seemingly something physical.
My first artfight attack this year - revenge of Marsa by Morganic Foods (https://artfight.net/~morganicfoods)
I'm running behind this year because I tried to start with something really ambitious and then proceeded to get burnt out... I might not have much time left, but I'm going to try and finish at least a couple more attacks before the end of the month!
There’s a really good book about this exact thing called Severance (no, not like the tv show). Its about continuing to go to work during the zombie apocalypse. Its also lowkey predicted the pandemic 2 years early
Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.
Myra Cheng et al. "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence." Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).
Perhaps I’m being dramatic, but it almost feels as though the original phrasing (that I see being reflected quite heavily in the comments) focuses on Cheng’s inspiration from AI-generated breakup texts. The article goes much further than that; Cheng and her team clearly spent time acquiring data and then processing it to tell the story of how AI-dependence is fundamentally shifting how people interact with others. This change in human interactions didn’t happen overnight. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in how we interact with other people and a simultaneous diminishing of how long people will spend on any given task. Focusing in on the more click-worthy problem of breakup texts overlooks the underlying issue that, after being discovered, can actually influence policy change as Cheng discusses
You know how wealthy people turn into stupid arseholes by surrounding themselves with vapid yes-men? ChatGPT is vapid yes-men on tap. Now you, too, can subject yourself to the phenomenon that we've all long known turns people into giant toddlers who are impossible to deal with.
Commission Done 🐉
A custom dragon character commission, painted with a realistic fantasy style. Thank you to my client for trusting me with this project!
A dragon illustration, inspired by space! The idea was to have the horns as half moons, the spines on its back like the craters on the moon and have the colors reflect that! Really proud of the gradient from the purple and blues to the grey of the moon.
Made with colored pencils, watercolors and watercolored pencils. Finished July 2026.
The hellkin tell their children stories of a terrible calamity visited upon them long ago, making caverns tremble and stone melt into glass, killing all but a few lucky survivors. But that's just a legend...
Come to think of it, it really is insane that my entire country is burning alive and literally no one in the rest of the world cares. Thousands of Indians are dying every day from the heat, it's 45+ degrees in multiple areas, the government couldn't give two fucks, we're getting severe warnings and red alerts, and not a soul outside of South Asia is speaking about it because why would you ever care about brown people