WraithGlade

By the way, this week of June 9th to 15th is national forest week. I meant to send out that reminder for fellow nature-lovers a while back but I forgot since I've been busy working on a project. Anyway though: I've always found that nature is the most reliable source of peace and comfort. Enjoy it!

The article is on my site under "My Creations" and is just a plain PDF that is directly viewable and savable.

Those of you who are looking for a replacement for Windows or Mac, given recent trends towards not respecting user's personal preferences in recent years will likely find my article useful!

I wrote a ~10 page article on my thoughts on the state of modern (often user-hostile) user interface design and my suggestions for Linux disros and desktop environments.

The past 2-3 months I've been testing out distros and identified seven that seem to me to combine ease of use with freedom best.

Does anybody know?

It would be useful if they were treated as equivalent by the system I think.

(Anyway, all that aside, have a good night everyone. 🌃)

Perhaps instead of referring to our modern devices as "Personal Computers", we should start referring to them as "Devices for Installing Spyware and Controlling Others" (DISCO). That would seem to more accurately reflect what they have become. Done much computing with "your" "computer" lately? 🕺🪩

Nice elegant #samurai like drawing!

Most of your #artwork is wonderful, indeed practically all substantial pieces you've posted are.

I'm not sure why you don't get more likes for them. The internet's distribution of attention has gotten "odd"/"arbitrary" in recent years.

Personally, I like the natural grass-enclosed multi #sculpture one (upper left) most. The other natural one (lower left) is also good.

I have a serious #Bluesky question for everyone: Does it matter if I use #underscore_tags versus if I use #CamelCaseTags?

Personally, I find underscore-based tags to be vastly easier to read honestly, and more flexible too.

If I had my say then the two tag formats would be equivalent on #bsky! 💡

Who else here misses traditional #forums such as #phpBB based ones and such? I certainly do. I feel like the environment of forums is more conducive to in-depth and nuanced discussion and builds stronger communities. Coincidentally, I also wrote an old PDF article about this same thing a while back.

Excerpt #3:

"... Others are not our stepping stones.

Like candles in the dark, only a river of light can mirror the tapestry of the stars. Isn’t such a world, a world bejeweled by wholesomeness, worth fighting for? Thus: I am here, as are we all — to be another candle in your dark, and likewise."

Excerpt #2:

"They say that less is more, that cutting away creates freedom — but why then has the prevalence and trendiness of minimalism most often only ever made me feel suffocated and censored, as if pulled down by crabs that insist that if they can’t leave the bucket [...] then neither can I?"

Here's an excerpt, to get a sense of it:

"I’m not convinced that the PhD is worth more than the bumpkin, nor that the person who likes gardening is in any substantive sense a different kind of person than the gamer or the jock or the socialite. I’m not convinced that the character is the actor."

I wrote an interesting #article a few days ago about the ways that #minimalism and #censorship overlap in modern #society in ways that harm #diversity and #freedom. The article is called "Oneself as Intended, Not as Packaged" and is under "My Creations" on my site. I really like how it turned out! 🦉

That bodes ill for Discord. Somehow I'm not surprised though. Corruption and "enshitification" seem to be the defining traits of "tech" in the past decade.

Very few platforms can truly be trusted and it is bizzare that just a few viable platforms exist compared to how many could/should exist.

It's been "interesting" how my #trust in #technology platforms in recent years has plummeted and is now ~0 (or negative, arguably). There's been this uncanny pervasive sense of #censorship and #narrative_control. I didn't used to remotely feel that way. Good outcomes for humanity require #freedom.

This artwork reminds me a lot of the aesthetics and mood of one of the best point and click adventure games of all time: Machinarium. 😎🎮

It is one of my old favorites from many years ago (2009 according to Wikpedia). 🗓️

The music is amazing too, one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard. 🎶

Agreed! Freedom of thought is critical, especially now, because without that none of the other freedoms can be protected, nor can the future of humanity.

Intellectual diversity (a diversity of ideas, a culture of authenticity, etc) is the most important form of diversity and should be protected! 🍀

Same here! Rain is the best! I've never understood why people associate rain with gloomy moods. Rainy weather is so invigorating and refreshing. 😁

Also, it's good to see the word "petrichor" in use in the wild. It's been a while. It's one of my favorite obscure nuanced words. 🏞️🌧️

One square mile of forest contains more true wealth than any person’s wallet ever could. All of time — eons of life’s resilience — is etched on every fiber of every rustling leaf.

Life itself is the only real thing we have.

So, remind yourself what real wealth is.

#EarthDay #EarthMonth #Nature

Merry Christmas everyone! 🎄🎁

I hope you all have some wonderful and refreshing holiday time this year! 😄

Love the retro style of your #pixelart here. It has a strong sense of coherence and mood and is charming.

In hindsight, the #SearchEngine and/or #SearchEngines tags may have been a better choice than the #AlternativeSearchEngine tag I used for the above post.

It is surprising how little-known the alternative search engines are. The only way any competition can ever arise is if people are aware of them.

Google's search monopoly endangers humanity's freedom. Here's some #AlternateSearchEngines I've been trying lately: Mojeek, Stract, Greppr, Marginalia, SearchMySite, Teclis, OldaVista, Wiby, The Old Net, IndieSeek, Alexandria, Right Dao, DDG, FrogFinder, and Ecosia.

Less Google → more freedom! 🔎💾🌎

a surreal blood-red staircase-like object leading up into a small egg-shaped arched chamber, all in the style of a hybrid of pixel art and sculpture

Here's another #PixelSculpture (hybrid #pixelart + #sculpture) for you all, entitled "Hellish Pseudo-Staircase".

I make these by first creating a digital sculpture (in #3DCoat in this case, but #ZBrush or #Blender sculpt would also work) and then resizing and using Krita's "palettize" filter. 🎨

There. It looks as essentially as intended now. It's a shame about the data bandwidth waste. Bluesky should add a feature for choosing what rendering method to use on any image(s) submitted to the site. That'd save a ton of internet bandwidth for all pixel artists. Correct me if there's a way. ⚙

a pixel art and digital sculpture hybrid image entitled "Deepwood Mask", which depicts an otherworldly green mask from the front

I'm reuploading a new version of the prior #PixelSculpture post here because the prior pixel art became blurry. Bluesky seems to apply filtered rendering to images, which wrecks #pixelart. Thus, this time I've upscaled the image but kept it blocky (via nearest neighbor) and that should fix it. 🍀🗿

Hmm... the Bluesky website's image renderer is trying to render the image using bilinear interpolation or something like that, causing it to look blurry and not as intended. Pixel art images need to be rendered in a pixelated way. Perhaps uploading a smaller image will do it. This one is 128x128.

a pixel art and digital sculpture hybrid image entitled "Deepwood Mask", which depicts and otherworldly green mask as small 128x128 pixel image

I am wary of posting my art online (b/c of AI-based #plagiarism), yet have little choice for sharing creations with a broader audience than to do so. At this moment I wish to share a special hybrid art style— #pixelart + #sculpture: #PixelSculpture. Want to try too? Resize + Krita "palettize" helps.

In general though, my account isn't intended to be limited to philosophy. I am a creative generalist and I intend my account to likewise cast a wide net onto many subjects, but usually of a creative, intellectual, and/or wholesome nature. I've published books, coded, sculpted, dabbled in art, etc. 🎨

My 2nd post will be #philosophy too, but #Stoicism. I recall reading a phrase from (if I recall correctly) Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: "A rock thrown in air / gains nothing rising up / and loses nothing falling down". That struck me as the essence of confidence, though it was not framed that way.