I was able to "buy" 5000 likes for ~$70 with Google Ads on the below video even though it has nothing but a black screen. It even has a >90% like/dislike ratio and >15% like-to-view ratio to appear organic.



It used to be that only views/subscribers can be faked and likes were a way to see real traction, so this came as a surprise to me.  A lot of big YouTube channels are using the same trick, especially corporate ones like trailers. You can tell when the number of comments are tiny vs the likes/views and because the numbers surge only temporarily while the ad is running before flatlining.

It seems like...[More]

Another dream I woke with that could work as a horror movie. One of the few to really disturb me even after I woke up.
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You are wounded on the battlefield with a partly exposed brain.  Someone nearby offers to help you die quickly and painlessly by ripping one of the tubular structures of your brain.  He says it'll cause your body to immediately shut down.

You agree, but when he does it, you stay conscious instead, feeling the pull and tear followed by blood rapidly leaving your head and extreme ringing pain.  You stumble around instinctively pressing your hand against your head until you fall to the ground but still remain conscious, seeing and hearing everything around you with the the throbbing sensation in your head.

Trick for randomizing in FL Studio to make samples more varied/realistic:
Link to Controller > Mapping Formula > SeededRand(Input)

exposed by @mididuck and sofuu (@1sofuu1)

Good Night, Terra by Lappy (@Love_Lappland)

This is something that's happened to me a few times throughout my life. I would wake up in the middle of the night to someone opening my door, but I would be unable to move, only barely making out the shadow on the wall of someone moving across the room.  My body would be completely paralyzed, and I could only hope the intruder does not notice me in the dark until I fall back asleep.

A friend told me it is called sleep paralysis and happens quite often to people. Nothing to worry about.

One night, it got particularly bad.  I woke again to the sound of someone moving on the other side of the room. It sounded like the couch scraping along the floor as it was being pushed. I was paralyzed again and could only see their shadow moving on the wall. I wanted to scream, but I was trapped in my body.

I then woke...[More]

A funny variation of Uno with custom rules - requires the H2O Uno deck. Notes for myself so I don't forget.
1. If you have the same exact card as what got discarded, you can cut in at any time to play it.
2. If someone cuts in on you, you have to pick up the entire discard pile.
3. If you play a zero, you get to switch hands with someone - you give up your win if it's your last card.
4. If someone plays a plus card, you can play another plus card to avoid the penalty and pass the total to the next person.  If the next person also has a plus card, you can keep forwarding this until the last person doesn't who doesn't have one and has to pick up the total sum of all the plus cards.
5. Plus card with splash (H2O) makes everyone draw and cannot be forwarded/blocked.

These are strategies Waterflame and I have refined over the years for releasing to Spotify (preferably via Distrokid).
- Pre-generating the ISRC. Upload the track privately on Soundcloud first, then edit and check the "Create ISRC' under metadata to have an instant pre-generated ISRC to use on your releases (so you don't need to wait for the first release to finish processing to get the ISRC, in case you need to reupload or have multiple releases or whatever).
- Release Radar. Release on Fridays with global release at 0:00 New York time to ensure it gets on release radar (only updates once a week on Friday, so if you miss it by even a second, you're out of luck).  The fastest distributor is Distrokid, but even they require usually 2 days so you want to have the track uploaded by Wednesday at the latest.
- Release Frequency. Your latest release will generally take the release radar away from the previous, so ideally release once every 2 weeks...[More]

Beyond Kingdom's Realm by Jonas B. Ingebretsen (@renderworks)

Smalltown Dreams by Bosa (@JonBabbLiberty)

Waterflame has been wondering why I'm able to share clips from copyrighted content (movies, games), which I thought is normal, and I just realized it's because my computer is too old to understand the HDCP protection lol

I recently put together a lookbook for my horror film idea "Artificial Imaginary" w/ one of its themes being that AI currently lacks a "mind" and how bad it could get if it were stuffed into a robot.  And then news just hit they put ChatGPT in a robot. XD

https://pftq.com/blabberbox/?page=Artificial_Imaginary



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Here's a nifty trick for replacing music on Distrokid without takedown (or at least no downtime on Spotify):

1. Contact Distrokid support and ask to remove the song ONLY from the Flo store (since no one uses it).  Or don't upload to Flo to begin with and you skip having to contact support.

2. Upload the new version of the song with the same title and ISRC.  Pick only the Flo store.

3. Once the new release is greenlit on Distrokid, click it and scroll down to "Add to Stores." Add to all stores like Spotify.

4. Check Spotify in a day or two to see that the song now has a "Other releases" menu on the bottom right of the page.  

5. Once you see that, it is safe to take down the old version of the song on Distrokid, and the new version will seamlessly take its place.

Seems there's not much competition driving down prices for mailing lists! A list w/ 200k ppl on Mailchimp or Constant Contact costs like $2000/mth. Made one for Waterflame on Google Groups instead, which is free w/ G-Suites. Will see if it hits any limits!

Waterflame's new mailing list :O
https://groups.google.com/a/waterflame.com/g/list/about

To create your...[More]

Dreamt I watched this whole thing on TV as a movie...
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A man tries to save an actress/influencer friend from a dystopian psychological ward.  The influencer normally has a very active online presence but recently went missing and silent from social media.  The man finds her at the ward after much detective work, schedules a visit, but she looks different, disfigured, etc but clearly still her.  When the man tries to talk to her, she is confused, doesn't speak, has a blank expression, and does not seem to recognize any of her online profiles/content he shows her on his phone.  It becomes apparent she's either drugged out or mentally incapacitated / disabled.

He breaks her out only for them to both get caught and separated.  He gets held in a separate room and questioned by doctors.  He demands they release her and that he'll expose them, but they seem relatively unphased and largely ignore...[More]

Godzilla -1.0 Score by Naoki Sato (@naokisato_face)

Bosa Classics by Bosa (@JonBabbLiberty)

Instead of using Marquee to notify followers, you're better off just running ads to your own listeners. Doing that gets you about 10 listeners per dollar, while Marquee costs >$1 just to get 1 listener.


Note the end goal is not to drive thousands of listeners through ads but to get the ball rolling so that Spotify's own recommendation algos start driving the rest of the views.

Parasite Eve Yearning Remix by @tKomine

For those who don't have time to hear the full interview of @RobertKennedyJr w/ @joerogan:
https://open.spotify.com/show/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk?si=XMvIWTeCQfKNNU1WmVLgMg&nd=1

I've never actually heard RFK's actual reasoning about before, so it was interesting that it's more about mercury. Apparently the industry uses a misleading 2002 study by Pichichero that shows the ethyl-mercury passes out of the bloodstream within a week, which sounds like that means it leaves the body, but a later NIH study by Burbacker on monkeys showed the ethyl-mercury only leaves the blood quickly because it accumulates in the brain (the ethyl aspect makes it cross the blood-brain barrier more easily).

The mercury is necessary because it triggers the immune response from the body towards the dead virus, so it's unavoidable but the notion it doesn't actually leave the body an interesting concern that I've never heard before.  The mercury aspect seems to something that doesn't get mentioned much (or just handwaved away with the same claim that it leaves the bloodstream, without acknowledging the part about it accumulating elsewhere), so it's something I'd be interested to see more research or information on....[More]