Art of Natasha Simms

Seahorse colored in neon pastels with a black velvet background

Mood lately after being unemployed basically all year and not being able to afford to move to place with more work

I was a skeptic about the import of the Epstein files.

But 3 invasions of cities, one military buildup outside Venezuela, a government shutdown, and so many other things meant to distract have me convinced whatever’s in there is the biggest presidential scandal in U.S. history.

Paying $653 to See if I Had the Disease That Killed My Mother Written by Mara Wilson / Illustrated by Emily Flake

Some of you may remember my rant about getting surprise charged $653 for a medically necessary ultrasound to screen for the cancer that killed my mother.

Well, I wrote about it, and now my bad experience has been made into a cartoon for The Out of Network Network!

open.substack.com/pub/outofnet...

An important life skill is knowing when you want to have an argument to have your views challenged, when you want another person to have their views challenged, and when you want to just make fun of an asshole. 9 times out of 10 only one of them is an option at a time

It's 2025 and our economic model is still reliant on maintaining a decent bufferstock of unemployed people. This model was *designed* to ensure that employers have the upper hand (and labour could be uberised). Govt distract us from this reality by bashing beneficiaries and abdicating responsibility

It sucks that all my amazing artist and writer associates constantly have to beg for cash. It's nice that we can come together and support them as a community but it would be better if some sort of government body took a small portion of everyones income and basically distrubuted it universally

commit exactly one heinous crime that haunts you for the rest of your days. never tell a soul. this will allow you to look brooding and mysterious when you sit alone at a bar table in the wee hours of the morning.

When I was a kid, I saw diversity all over the media I consumed because we all understood it was a good thing. Now suddenly any display of diversity is considered dangerous. Wonder why.

YouTube video by MTGGoldfish Why Magic is How it Is in 2025 and Why Everything Changed

So this is rather dire. Magic the Gathering is responsible for 82% of Hasbro's profits as of last year, and *over* a 100% of its profits for the first part of 2025.

In 2015 it was at most 11%

Magic is going to get so much worse before it gets better.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNNq...

Colored in mandala with purple, brown and orange gel pen

“Other polls say the opposite…”

“Which one?”

“Uh … I don’t know. But the poll you cited is clearly biased….”

“How exactly?”

“Uh … which poll was that again?”

This is how it’s done.

It’s very easy, and it gets results, so if an anchor isn’t asking basic follow ups, that’s a choice.

Idiot marketing knumskulls on LinkedIn putting boards up at traffic lights about cyclists jumping red lights

Thousands of road deaths a year caused by motor vehicles, speeding almost completely ignored by authorities, drink and drug driving at record highs and this is how you choose to spend your time, boasting about your stupid stunt and your shit marketing company on LinkedIn. Pathetic.

"If your supply chain uses AI coding, you should assume it’s dangerous trash put out by morons. If any of your upstream dependencies has a .cursor folder, you need to assume they’re not competent, and remove that dependency pronto."

Suspending one of my mutuals, Link, for his action of pointing out the inappropriate behavior of BlueSky staff, was a choice by BlueSky staff to signal that they will not tolerate any questioning and opposition to their authority. It is tyrannical, authoritarian, and oppressive. This is really bad.

How apple cider vinegar cured everything — until it didn't A headline-grabbing study touting apple cider vinegar for weight loss has been retracted. Other claims for the internet-famous remedy are also under fire.

A headline-grabbing study touting apple cider vinegar for weight loss has been retracted. Other claims for the internet-famous remedy are also under fire.

Mutual Aid in the Age of Fascism - Boston Review As people are being deputized to do violence, building connections is political resistance.

"A fascist society is one in which some people are deputized to do violence, and everyone else is forced to defend themselves. Those who have lived under an authoritarian regime know how it weakens collective self-defence." www.bostonreview.net/articles/mut...

Tl;dr: in the United States, with very limited exceptions, you cannot sue the federal government without its consent. It's a vestige of the divine right of kings. And it was adopted by the founders for multiple reasons, but one was so enslaved people couldn't sue the federal govt for their freedom.

I will never use facial recognition on my phone, but it would be kinda neat if they had a feature where facial recognition is just a backup. So you have to input a code to unlock, then if the phone sees a different face you have to input a different code to stop it from wiping its memory.

ICE aren’t real cops nor are they real federal agents.

Go small, or go home.

Index motor tax to vehicle size & weight please @darraghobrientd.bsky.social. If people want to drive big, they should pay big. And any EV subsidies should favour small vehicles.

#RoadBloat

please stop referring what people make as "content" unless what they're making is so inconsequential that literally no other label works better

call art art, music music, performance performance, dance dance... boiling everything down to a catch-all is insulting and devaluing

“Patient reports near-continuous high level anxiety, intrusive thoughts, expresses belief that they and their loved ones are in danger from the government and others. Appears lucid, thoughtful and reflective on own situation, and cognitively intact. No abnormal findings.”

We've been in a constant state of planning reform for at least an entire lost decade of economic growth. Maybe try something else?

Too many people think memorization is a basic skill anyone can just “get better” at. I’m sure it is for the typically wired brain, but I have major struggles with my short-term memory.

A fight that punishes me to such a ridiculous extreme for that is so very not fun.

lol

When I worked on social features for online games, my favorite test for whether we were taking player safety into account was the "Ex-boyfriend Test", as in:

If I was your ex-boyfriend, how would I use this feature to make your life miserable?

I'm going to be more pointed.

"If you can see anything as not a person, you can see anyONE as not a person" is so incredibly and clearly wrongheaded I don't even know how you get there. You have whole parts of your brain and cognitive process devoted to this very problem. No, it doesn't all blend.

Reminder if they do this that every single coin is a pump and dump scheme

All of them

You will not be the one making the money in the dump, because you won’t be in the group chat when they decide it’s time