Sparkly Shiny Magpie

Hi friends!

It has come to my attention that the character and pairings tags on AO3 have consolidated Aziraphale with New Universe Asa, Crowley with New Universe Anthony, and A/C with Anthony/Asa. I have put in a request to AO3 to have these tags separated out. But currently, if you search for A/C pairings, you will get fics that are new universe Anthony/Asa even if they are not tagged with A/C.

However, there is a way to fix this in your own searches.

When you search for fics with Aziraphale, and/or Crowley, and/or Aziraphale/Crowley, you can filter out anything tagged Asa and/or Anthony and/or "Fellony." You can, of course, do this yourself by simply setting the search parameters as such (e.g. if you wanted all Aziraphale fics and no Asa fics), but I thought it might help to provide you with an easy link for the pairing search.

This is a search for Aziraphale/Crowley fics that excludes fics that are tagged Anthony/Asa (either solely or additionally).

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Aziraphale*s*Crowley%20(Good%20Omens)/works?work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=New+Universe+Anthony+Crowley+%28Good+Omens%29%2CNew+Universe+Asa+Fell+%28Good+Omens%5D%2CNew+Universe+Anthony+Crowley%2FNew+Universe+Asa+Fell+%28Good+Omens%29

Stay safe out there!

Open the “apps” section in your settings (it’s usually at the very bottom), go to photos and scroll until you see “Enhanced Visual Search” and then turn that shit off. Then go to “Privacy and Security”, scroll until you see “Analytics & Improvements”, and turn off “Improve Siri & Dictation” as well.

​I am an artist with hundreds upon hundreds of my artworks in my photo album. I also have plenty of photos with not only my own face, but the faces of my friends and my family. I do not appreciate that being used to train AI without my consent, and I’m pretty sure it’s the same for others too.

I’m so tired of big companies.

Friends, in case some of you, like me, are published authors or illustrators or creators of any kind, and you are still using any Google service (Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Classroom), please consider deleting all your material from Drive and moving it to external harddisks or something similar before it turns into a catastrophic problem like mangaka Masahiro Itosugi just experienced:

I really hope this comes as no surprise to all of you and you were already taking precautions about it, but I know for a fact that 100% of my colleagues in the academic field back their papers and their books up on Drive, and that most of our institutional email addresses and some essential tools (for example Gmeet, that we are required to use for remote teaching or to record conferences) are based on Google Workspace (including crucial stuff like uni department documents, scientific journal archives, publicly funded projects contracts and so on).

Now they could be flagged for copyright infringment and lose access to their entire accounts for uploading back up copies of THEIR OWN work on Drive, because AI systems are apparently unable to recognise the legitimate owner of copyrighted material (or they have been intentionally set up to not recognise it so that tech corps can steal people's work).

The complete automation of the scraping-scanning-banning process, that Google has now delegated entirely to unchecked AI, with no human review, is coming for us quicker than I thought, and while there may be some things that I fear we can't disentangle from this mess anymore (I'm thinking of Gmail specifically), we can still pull our work from Drive before it's too late.

I'm not sure how to properly tag this, but if you know people who may need this warning, please help them understand how serious things are becoming.

There's a horribly sexist thing a lot of organizations do, and that's put a woman in charge of something everybody knows is going to be a dumpster fire. Heads the org wins, tails the woman loses; if she manages to turn it around everybody smells of roses and inclusivity, but if she doesn't, oh well, it's only a woman who takes all the flak and whose career gets tanked.

It's called the "glass cliff," and I think it may have been done to Rachel Talalay. Douglas MacKinnon is not to blame, if so; he had every right to up stakes and walk away. No, I am directing a laser glare right at Amazon HQ, with a small amount of secondary WTF at Rob and Rhianna.

I’m 33 now, and I still discover a new joke every time I reread it.

*starts thunderously knocking on the doors of heaven*

In the UK, the book of the peerage is called Burke’s Peerage. Burke sounds like berk, which means a silly/annoying person. So Terry took ‘twerp’, another word for a silly or annoying person, and replaced the e with u. 

Trans silvas very simply translated into german would be über den Wald

Trans silvas -> Transsilvanien -> Überwald

The Venturi Effect is a scientific term referring to the acceleration of a liquid through a narrow tube (like a jet).

Selachii is a classification of sharks. (I discovered this when my stepson got really into sharks)

The Malleus Maleficarum is a very real, very nasty and absolutely batshit insane book from late 15th-century Germany, basically laying out the procedure for catching, torturing, and executing witches. Its title translates to The Hammer of Witches. The other titles are Pratchett's inventions.

When Tony Crowley — accountant by day and webcomic artist in his free time — forgets to return his library books, he runs afoul of his local branch's formidable champion: Library Administrator Fell.

✨New Klikandtuna one-shot!✨

(It’s 16.7k words. Anything is a one-shot if you just don’t use chapter breaks!)

I know several of us have tackled the prompt of “Aziraphale the authoritarian librarian”; this is my take. Rated E! Hot and sweet and funny! Includes several illustrations! Happy Tuesday!

Overboard

Based on the 1980's romcom Overboard, Crowley is a carpenter who has a not-so-great first encounter with the rich and snobby Aziraphale Archer.

After Aziraphale falls off of his yacht and loses his memories, Crowley comes up with an epic plan for payback. He will trick Aziraphale into believing he is his husband and the father of four rambunctious children.

Can Crowley stick to his plan and give Aziraphale the payback he deserves? Or, will he find out that Aziraphale is much more than he first appeared to be?

*It is not necessary to have watched the movie to enjoy this fic!*

Blind Date

Crowley’s best friend has arranged a blind date for him with a mystery man named Gabriel. Or Jim. He’s not exactly clear on the details.

It turns out to be love at first sight.

Just not with the man Anathema had intended.

Behind Closed Doors (and Locked Ones)