Noel

These days I'm pretty ok with it, and mostly happy to be asked, but oof, being 12 and dragged up to the front of a classroom to have someone use me like a doll to show how my joints moved was kinda traumatic.

I dealt with teaching hospitals and cutting edge surgeries when I was a kid, and omg. Sometimes it was really cool being able to show off how weird I was, and sometimes it was like being an object put on display.

This. Omg, so much this. Writing is mostly me figuring out how to clarify what I think and more specifically why I think it. Much of the time I'm learning that as I write.

Many times I will do that and then immediately realize it does need saying out loud, but now I know it and can build on it.

Did this piece for a class and it drove me mildly bonkers. I got a say you really nailed the face.

Eight small miniature bases with a multitude of cat miniatures on them.

Finished these little guys up a couple of weeks ago. Nice to have one less thing poking at me to get it done already.

Currently working on the still life flat. Just needs to be matted and that one will be finished as well. Something about this time of year produces a spree of finishing projects.

I feel like I need a list of 1980 and 90's movies that I can point people at at go "this, only worse"

This looks excellent. Do you know where I can find something like this for Lake County?

I admit I was thinking more in relation to board games and somewhat lesser minis games. But there are a lot of RPGs where if they don't have a good index the book is unusable, and that feels like a problem.

Not just explaining, but explaining to people with no background knowledge. Sooo many games treat their rulebooks like technical manuals, it's nuts. A good rulebook should feel like a demo script not a textbook.

As someone who has done a lot of teaching and demoing of games, the number of times that I have desperately wanted to rewrite a rulebook is more than I can count.

Agreed, and because of that I wince every time I read a poorly written rulebook. Newbies have a hard enough time without having to bounce across 16 pages of dense reiterative language that could be condensed down to 8 and some pictures if the writer had any sense of clarity and brevity.

I've been pretty uncomfortable with calamari ever since I started learning about octopi. On the other hand the more I learn about chickens the more fine I am with eating them.

Lived in Santa Fe for two years. Had regular conversations with my mother about how if you paint the sky the way it actually looks it would be called unrealistic.

I am deeply tired of people saying they can't make art. I'm even more tired of people who obviously don't *want* to make art, but seem to believe they are entitled to it anyways.

The appetite is absolutely there. It's just that they've all been gobbled up and gutted. The closest thing in my area is Shaw, which is awful. The FB groups and such are currently serving the need, but feel more like the old grocery store bulletin boards than real news outlets. It's all so scattered

I have a deep rooted belief that people are both absolutely awful and incredibly amazing. These are not contradictory beliefs, and are more than often both true of any particular individual.

📌

I know a lot of people deeply upset with how the last shutdown went. And while I get that, having seen the first hand effects of SNAP not going out on time I believe it was the right call.

This is a good explanation as to the why and how this one is likely to go including the likely break points.

It's -10°F here. No one is opening their windows in this weather, or at all if it's below 40° or above 78°. Also it's called "airing out the house" in American English, not house burbing..

Oh my God, I would stab something. That's absolutely awful.

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Hmm, thinking on it "I didn't ask for this" is 1) a lot different from I didn't want to do this in the first place. And 2) Almost always incredibly whiny and self serving.

Greatness thrust upon you doesn't make someone more deserving. It just means they did a good job in a shitty situation.

Maybe it depends on the story but I mostly see refusal of the call portrayed as being petulant or selfish, then the character is changed out of those characteristics by the process of the journey.

That feels like a weird take on it. Mostly it marks him as stuck in his ways, or more charitably content with life. I don't see how that ends up making one more deserving outside of some weird protestant contexts. Unwillingness to go do the things that need doing is not a virtue.

I never saw the refusal of the call as being about humility. I always saw it as being unwillingness to move forward without outside forces pushing.

Your output is gonna be a lot slicker if you can put more money into it, but as a hobby experimenting is cheap. There are a lot of arts where start up money and studio space is a bigger factor to just making anything at all. Glassblowing in particular comes to mind.

This just isnt true. Even as kids in the 80's and 90's we had access to home video cameras. Today cell phone cameras fit in our pockets, entire sound studios fit in our closets and inexpensive home editing software is better than much of the post production software that existed back then.

I remember being a kid and being physically unable to fall asleep until 2-3am every night and then having to get up at 6am to catch the bus. It's no wonder I was sick all the damned time.

It would take a two-word amendment to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to subject ICE agents and other federal law enforcement officers to the same liability for constitutional violations that local and state officers currently face.

If Congress actually cared about what it's seeing, it could pass that overnight.

Painted bas relief of a table worth of veggies and flowers.

Nearly finished. A few minor tweaks to the paint and I need to decide on the framing before I go and cut a full mat for the piece.

Shout out to @distractable.bsky.social for the mini easels. They are great for this.