theboomr
Nita nodded
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Latest Posts by theboomr
Just a local update
For those who'll be wanting to know how I'm doing: I think right now the line from The Right Stuff is probably apropos. I'm "maintaining an even strain."
I sort of have no choice, because there's a lot of bureaucratic stuff surrounding Peter's loss that has to be dealt with, and there's not really anyone else to fall back on: in terms of local legalities; this burden falls on me. (shrug) So, I'm keepin' on keepin' on. It's not easy, when half your world has ended: but there's nothing else to do.
Just repeating the news that I just edited into the original post about all this: the "funeral expenses" issue is now handled.
And I want to thank EVERYBODY who so incredibly generously has stepped up to assist. You are all, every one of you, in my heart right now... not least due to the many, many kind things you've had to say about Peter. Current events mean I'm going to be backed up on the thank-yous for some days yet. Please bear with me.
For those who feel inclined, the Ko-Fi account here is open as usual for those who might simply want to drop something into the pot tagged "GNU Peter Morwood."* I'm looking into his notes about his preferred charities so that I can split all such donations in those directions. (For example, P. lost a beloved cousin to childhood leukemia, so I'm looking around for appropriate cancer charities. ...But more of that later.)
In local issues: I'm still waiting for word from the coroner as to when Peter's post-mortem will be happening. (I had hoped it might be today, but there's no news yet.) Not much to be said about this except that the sooner that's all handled and resolved, the happier I'll be. Then other adjacent issues can start being dealt with.
At the physical end: I haven't been sleeping terribly well, but that's probably no surprise. My appetite has been almost nonexistent, but that at least is very slowly starting to recover (to the point where at least food is no longer a source of "no interest whatsoever" or of active distaste). Right now it seems I get better results from eating out instead of cooking in: so that's the way things will go in the very short term.
But for now, pretty much all I can do is sit tight, try to keep household business from getting out of hand (why does it suddenly take so much energy just to do the dishes? ...like I don't know perfectly well why), and wait for Forces Beyond My Control to get moving.
Meanwhile, let me take a moment here to thank everybody who's expressed concern about the state of my wellbeing (and that at a time when I care a whole lot less about it than usual). It's heartening, and I very much appreciate it. I promise to do my best to do right by myself, on all of your behalf. (Behalfs? Behalves? Pfft.)
Thanks again, everybody. —D.
*People are also reminding me that the financial health of the household's still-living member in the immediate future is also an issue here. 😏 Heaven forbid I should argue the point. If you want, tag such donations as "DD" and I'll note that. ...And thanks again, all. I can always count on y'all to look after me. ❤️
maskerade (1995)
Peter Morwood
I am so sorry to have to tell you all about this. None of you, I suspect, will ever have any idea how sorry.
I am in utter shock and terrible pain to have to inform everyone that our friend, my dear husband and creative partner of nearly forty years, Peter Morwood, passed away suddenly early this morning after a brief illness that as late as yesterday (when his doctor saw him) had seemed to be on the mend.
I'm not in any position to say much more about this situation now, as you'll understand my current mental state is not up to the task. (I keep expecting to wake up from a bad dream, but it shows no sign of breaking.) I will let people know more about this in coming days.
There will be a postmortem shortly to determine the exact cause of his death. I'll share what details of this are appropriate as they become clear.
Meanwhile in the short term I'm very much going to need assistance with the expenses that in the days that follow will inevitably surround what's happened. For those people who want to assist, please feel free to use the Ko-Fi account here, and simply tag the associated messages, etc, "P expenses". ETA: Please choose the Stripe payment option at Ko-Fi rather than PayPal, as PP seems to be having some kind of obscure difficulties at the moment. I have disconnected PayPal until this is resolved.
My love will wait for me, I know, however long it takes. He's never minded waiting. (the saddest smile) My job now is to make sure he's not forgotten while I go on.
Meanwhile, can I just say to all of of you: I thank you all ahead of time for all the support and fondness for Peter that I know so many of you will express. He'd blush over it, I know. (He always did.) Please forgive me for being unable to do much in the way of answering messages, just now, in the wake of having to get to grips with this sudden and awful change in my world.
But also let me say, so urgently: Hug your loved ones now, while you can. Eventually a day will come when, expected or not, your opportunities end.
Thanks, friends.
--DD
Boss is asleep, cannot stop me from frogposting
glad to see those spreading the truth
Ha a lélek vándorlásában hiszünk, el kell fogadnunk hogy ha zenészek voltunk, zenészek maradunk akkor is, ha négy lábbal újraszületünk..
ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself
All throughout childhood, while my peers were socializing and making friends, I studied the blade read so many books that I am now almost legally blind, which left me with vast and deeply instinctual understanding of English grammar - and next to no ability to explain how it actually works. Friends will often ask me to proofread their writing and then get very mad when I say things like, "You need to completely reverse this sentence and cut this clause entirely; no, I'm sorry, i don't know why, I just know that the way it is now ITCHES 😭"
Now, what I want to see is a fantasy story where this plays out with MAGICAL grammar. Someone from a backwater town deeply steeped in folk magic arrives at Wizard Uni where all their fellow students are like "What do you mean, we should add another '𝞯∘⋇𝞿' to the incancation because it 'sounds better'? What do you mean, 'it could just be a regional thing'?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'THIS SPELL JUST FEELS LIKE IT NEEDS A LIVE RAT'????"
Northern light cats ₊⊹✨｡⋆
Arctic wolves traversing deep snow...
Did not know this was in the works and I am extremely EXCITE
Hi Diane, I was wondering if the audio books for your Young Wizard series would eventually be available for the Australian marketplace on Audible. I found some of your books on my regional Audible but sadly none of the Young Wizard books. 😢
I don’t think they will be, at least for the time being, as the YW publisher doesn’t hold any audio rights but those for North America (and the Philippines: one of those weird postcolonial things). Sorry not to be able to be of more help on this.
I’m making initial plans, though, for a read-by-the-author series, and those will be available internationally, as I’ll hold rights on those personally and will be able to publish them where I please. Investigations into the costs of studio time and other aspects of production are ongoing at the moment. I’ll post about it here when it starts to happen.
Anyway, thanks for asking!
Apparently they're selling post content to train AI now so let us be the first to say, flu nork purple too? West motor vehicle surprise hamster much! Apple neat weed very crumgible oysters in a patagonia, my hat. Very of the and some then shall we not? Much jelly.
If people are sad about The Wizard Facism game coming from someone you used to look up to and admire, may I suggest an author whose books are filled with nuanced characters and strong, dynamic women?
Tamora Pierce has been writing since the 80’s and has two worlds of magic and fantasy and bonus!!! Isn’t a transphobic POS.
click this..
then click your blog(s)
scroll all the way down and click this..
profit?
As we continue tweaking prices at the store, and in the wake of the recent price change on the "All The Wizardry" bundle, it made sense to adjust (downward!) the price of the 9-volume New Millennium Edition box set.
So we've done that, reducing it to USD $24.99. (Yay!)
Don't need all the wizardry we've got, but just want the first nine books in the main sequence? The link above is what you want.*
And as the nice men in the commercial used to say, "Thank you for your support!"
(PS: please note that since Kindles don't take Amazon's old .mobi format any more—they've finally finished switching over to the industry-standard .epub format—that's what our Kindle box set now contains. Just in case you were wondering. But if for some reason you prefer to have .mobi files, we can still supply those: just drop us a note via the store's support email.
*Assuming you're not in the UK, as—unfortunately—due to Brexit-related BS, we can't sell directly to you any more. Details are here.
Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you.
AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.
Here are the important details:
We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner.
We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.
To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.
For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc.
Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.
If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.
Hi Seanan! The Glasgow Worldcon just sent out the instruction email today to remind people to nominate things for the 2024 Hugos. With the ... everything ... that's going on with the Hugos right now, are you still wanting your works from last year nominated? And if so, is there any place you've listed which works of yours are eligible for which categories, and which you'd most like nominated? Thank you!
What happened with the Chengdu Hugos was a travesty, and I am heartbroken, on a whole bunch of levels. For the people who were unfairly left off the ballot; for the losers; for the winners. There's an asterix on that award now, and none of the people on the ballot are responsible. We didn't do anything wrong.
That said, I truly and genuinely love the Hugo awards. Like so many writers in the SF/F community, I grew up reading past winners and dreaming of one day having an award of my own to hold and hug and go to bed with at night (I don't actually do that--it's a foot-tall metal stick, I would hurt myself). And then, in high school, I became the foster child of a working Hugo Administrator, who taught me how to run the awards myself, so I'd always have a place in fandom. I love the Hugos. The awards themselves are not to blame for the bad behavior of the 2023 administrators.
What I have eligible and would truly love to see nominated:
Best Series, October Daye. Best Novella, Lost in the Moment and Found. Best Short Story, "Family Game Night," Magic Story. Best Graphic Story, Soul and Stone, Boom! Comics. Best Related Work, Overwatch: Declassified. Best Game Writing, Magic: the Gathering, Wizards of the Coast.
And please consider Grace Fong, Amy King, and Emily Smith for Best Fan Artist, and Manda Cherry for Best Fan Writer.
What is this about the tumblr staff wanting to sell art data to midjourney?
An ex-colleague of mine mentioned yesterday that there may be contacts between Automattic and midjourney in that direction, but nothing is public yet and I don't have any more info. They probably won't have anything specific to share either, since they left the company weeks ago too. That being said:
I have no reason to doubt my ex-coworker word, they are a trustworthy person.
Tumblr's CEO has been absurdly enthusiastic (comically, even) about AI, and is a big fan of LLMs and 'AI' companies.
A deal with midjourney could solve tumblr financial issues (not the same company, but openAi is paying up to 5 million/year to news companies to use their content as training data... tumblr generates several orders of magnitude more content than any newspaper or any media company and it only would need a 20 to 30 million per year deal to be profitable)
So I don't have any extra info yet, but I'm keeping my ears open.
Tumblr Code.
The newest bundle at Ebooks Direct.
The newest bundle at Ebooks Direct.
Source
CDC Wastewater Viral Activity Monitoring
BreatheTeq
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Not the most relevant but what's funny is how "Swype" is what some of us use as the word for swipe typing on mobile despite the actual Swype keyboard having been defunct/dead for years now (it is actually literally incompatible/does not work on Android 14 now 😩)
this can't be true can it
The newest bundle at Ebooks Direct.
he has so many opinions to give
just ask him, please
Ok, but now how about they codify this into law so it's not so easy to flip back and forth just based on who is currently appointed to the FCC :/
this is going around twitter and i thought it'd be a fun little thing to bond over
in the tags as usual