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the various and sundry creations of sylvus tarn
30nov2022
The wizard (aka my fabulous tech support) fixed my mastodon link (below), so we're back to ranting about vehicular homicide and injury. I had read in comments somewhere (probably on a not just bikes youtube vlog) that people wanting pickup trucks for actual pickup-truck type work were among those unhappy with the modern versions because besides being gas-guzzling behemoths compared to the older smaller ones, their truck beds were so high it was difficult to load stuff into them, but this image comparing old and new style really drives home (heh) how starkly pickups designed for hauling stuff and pickups designed for status have diverged.
In the USA, land of mass shootings, there are—I hope, anyway—increasing calls for gun owners to be licensed and insured just like automobile drivers, which seems like a painfully obvious requirement, but in my view drivers’ licensing could stand to be a lot more rigourous as well—just a couple of Sundays ago, when we had our first sticking snow, as my friend and I were riding along the road (in front of his house, to get to the bike path), some dudes in a pickup told us we should get off because “it's slippery and we might lose control of our vehicle and hit you”, to which I tartly replied that ‘if you can't control your vehicle then you're the one who needs to get off the road!’
29nov2022
Originally we were gonna have a rant about giant SUVs and how they're awful for pedestrians, but the wizard has to update the code for this site so it can handle ‘@’ signs in https links (not just mailto:addresses, that is, mastodon links;)
So how about some interesting looking comics? Please Say It is a slice of life webtoon about being gay in the 80s, and it looks charming.
Also (likely) via bb, Kindra Neely's Numb to this, about the manga-ka's experience with a mass shooting, is almost universally described as “searing”—as well it should. It seems ridiculous that, a decade after Sandy Hook, we're still arguing about guns, but change is slow, and getting people to think about such issues is—frankly—one of the reasons people make art: to communicate, in a visceral way. (N.b., her website is down, so I put in a Marysue link instead of the ubiquitous amazon.)
28nov2022
Eventually there will be some fresher art, but not today!
Like a lot of people I've been watching twitter crash and burn—I do have an account on the platform, though I haven't accessed it in years, because I'm not currently making much of a push to sell my work, and the point of tweeting was to let people know I had new stuff up on etsy for sale.
Frankly, I'm not sorry if its far too wealthy owner is out 44 billion dollars, (though my understanding is that these fatcats usually persuade a bunch of other people to spend their money, and I have no doubt Musk will skate off relatively unharmed by his fecklessness) but I do feel for the politically marginalized folks in repressive regimes that find it vital, others (such as political journalists) who need it, not to mention the people have put their heart and soul into the company only to see their hard work destroyed.
24nov2022
This page was actually supposed to precede the last one, so the link in it should work now:)
Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate it (& a pleasant Thursday to those who don't, and that all have many reasons to give thanks. As I actually made some beads yesterday, and the sun's been shining, I have a lot to be thankful for, even semi-ugly beads as these.
22nov2022
Hey, today is palindromic, at least if you do yy-mm-dd (or dd-mm-yy of course), so I gotta do a page! In fact, not only is it palindromic, the outsides are double the insides: 22-11-22. Just the sort of date Attorney Woo would appreciate. (And by the way, this series is splendid—I've been rationing episodes, I like it so much...)
- Trolling through dpreview (while trying to figure out how—or even whether—my old panasonic LX-100 did video. Spoiler: it does, and what's more, it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to to turn it on) here's a link about a master photographer and some lovely shots of a ballet dancer: never gonna turn that down.
- The Netherlands is a world leader is sustainably grown food, using a combo of vertical farming, humane animal husbandry, and the like. ‘The like’ including cultured meat, but unfortunately the wapo article doesn't get into that, which I s'pose is par-for-the-course for our society's carnivorous bias, but it's still a pretty interesting article, even though it failed to delve into the bits I was most interested in:)
- Finally Toy Story turns 27 today. Ummmmmmm, I saw that in theaters. Man I'm old...
18nov2022
Today's page wraps up this week's series of memory wire necklets with fringe (though there will eventually be more...I know this because I have one already strung up:) and I thought I'd take a break from the endless ranting and link farms for some brief book reviews:
Ed Yong's latest, An Immense World, has been getting rave reviews, and deservedly so. About the only issue I have with this book is the extremely ugly cover, which not only is uninspired and boring: as if someone plopped on a stock photo of a monkey and a butterfly, added some swirls & called it done. Its even greater sin is that it also completely fails to convey (at all) what the book is about, the wonderful ways differing sensory systems constrain—and enlighten—the animals possessing them. (So why, you ask, if the book is so good, are you ranting about the cover? Two reasons: 1) it deserved something handsome & 2) covers are advertisment, and such a good product deserves equally good packaging.)
