22oct2024

The linkies, they are piling up, even with closing a bunch of tabs.

Leading off, yeah, Rule of Law is important. Vote, early if possible, please.

• hm, psychedelics (mushrooms) continue to show a lot of promise for folks with that constellation of conditions of interest to me—depression, ADHD, OCD, etc...
• Zoe Bee has been busy while I wasn't paying attention. Here's a juicy 90 min one on the death of media literacy. Still need to set some time aside—say a deep clean of my studio, but this is one of many takes, I'm guessing, on the flood of misinformation currently poisoning online discourse.
• In the genetics and human variation is fascinating & unexpected department, via a FTB discussion on sex and gender, a link to a story about children who “change” from girls to boys at puberty. Has to do with a broken protein, ofc. Genetics and human variation is fascinating!
• Haven't found the definitive video on training a cat not to walk underfoot, (why yes I'm catsitting and this morning I stepped on the kitty's paw as he begged for his morning wet food, why do you ask) but here's a good review on walking on a lead which we're currently working on. Kinda curious to see how his super scary session this morning affects his desire for an afternoon session—up till now he's been crying for outdoors. Fortunately my yard is very overgrown, so we can step back to that:)
• Instagram has been feeding me a lot of feral kitten rescues, and this book about the rehabilitation of Michael Vick's pit bulls —which, teal deer, was when saving rather than killing these animals became the norm, looks to scratch (heh) the same itch.
• BB has a recce for several good looking graphic novels: Indigenous People's History; a story set during the Satanic Panic; and JH Williams’ gorgeous interpretation of Dracula.
• Pushback against the backlash against Twilight. Well, I don't ever remember the critiques I enjoyed being particularly sexist, but that's because they were mostly written by women who enjoyed Twilight (at least on some level) but also were very aware of its problems. Amazingly enough, the links I gathered a decade ago mostly still seem to be live. Reading all this stuff my take is how fast history seems to move—Twilight became huge recently enough that it was big amongst the f2’s generation rather than during my own childhood, and now has come and gone long enough to trigger these sorts of retrospectives. Good lord, whatever happened to all those other internet memes? I can haz cheezeburger? Ceiling cat? Charlie the unicorn? I felt out of touch when this stuff was new, and now it's old and out of date as I am, seemingly. (It's also very weird to read people saying how queer-unfriendly and sexist the 2000s was. I mean, 2000s? What about the 1970s or 80s? Let alone the 50s or 60s...)
• I've been enjoying Wired's ...[x] Support series. This one on the ‘Wild West’ got my support for the guy's framing of Custer's Last Stand. I knew, frex, that there were a lot of Black cowboys (about 25%, actually) but hadn't realized you had to check your guns when entering town. It's more than a little odd (sad, frankly) that the ‘wild’ west had stricter gun laws than we do in modern civilized days.
• Eating and sleeping affect each other, whatta surprise. Not. Especially to anyone who's ever eaten, especially starches, to try and stay awake. I've found that the reverse is also true: I need to stop eating about 4–5 hours before sleeping.
• Speaking of sleeping, yes, you can become a back sleeper. Aside from the backpacking/camping applications, I expect it would be a handy skill for anyone recovering from top surgery.

art...

• this looks to be a good primer on jelli printing;
• And this looks to be a good primer on lino cuts.
• the beautiful four bugs problem from an old Scientific American —my parents subscribed to this mag when I was a child, and it had a big impact on me, even though it was way above my level...also, I find it interesting how a pattern originally featured as a mathematical thing has now become a favourite of zentangle doodlers, in much the way dada collages has become popular amongst scrapbookers:)
• Speaking of change, Daisy Stalls seems to be the it horsie repainter right now...but what was especially intriguing to me was the shift in model availability: when I first got interested in horse model repainting (not counting childhood efforts), it was pretty much breyers or nothing; then folks started creating artisan models to be cast in resin—those are still a thing, but now 3D printing has become good enough that people are modeling the horses in 3D programs (the 3D equivalent of using photoshop/gimp) which means they can print out in a variety of sizes, including some barely an inch high—that's D&D castings size! This means there's a variety of styles out there, some of which I like better than others. Pretty cool!
• This small scale manufacturing also means projects such as open source full frame cameras are becoming more feasible.

Speaking of cameras, the photography (& admittedly, a few of the beads) were my only contributions to this wonderful charm bracelet by Page. Enjoy.

14oct2024

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day:) And oooh, the linkies are piling up...

(This is a rare page in which I actually did the intro first (about a month ago) & am just now adding the main page, &ofc the holiday greeting;)

• a colourized 60fps version of the dance scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. I guess most of the lost bits have now mostly been found...?
• Oooh, an interesting book to read, Richard Rothstein's 2017 The Color of Law, which explores how government mandate contributed segregated housing.
• I've listened to some of Shaun's videos before and found them engaging. Athena Scalzi over at Whatever has curated a collection of her faves if you'd like to try the youtuber out.
• this stir-fry recipe is rather heavy on the oil, but looks yummy. This tofu mayo spread recipe also looks tasty (& a lot less oilier.)
• I think staying in a 19th century cabin in the middle of nowhere sounds like awesome fun. It sounds like all the appeal of primitive tent camping except with real beds and a (turf! moss?) covered roof, though they updated the kerosene lamp with electricity and a toilet. I wanted to know whether there was running water, and if not, how far you had to go to fetch it. (The shower is cold, but again, what I wondered about was laundry...not generally a problem for camping, you just get stinky & wash everything after you get home. But what if there was your home? There was a reason Monday was washday: it was backbreaking, and scheduled while fancy Sunday dinner leftovers were available to take that other great time-suck, cooking, off —ha! the table for 19ca housewives.
• Slate has an article about an orphaned music notation program, yet another variation on people becoming reliant on a closed-source computer program for storing years or decades’ worth of work that is then abandoned by the (corporate) owner. This sort of thing really grinds my gears, and if they don't want to maintain years or decades worth of spaghettified and cruft-heavy code, fine —but release the source into the wild, so people can have access to their own work. The companies don't like to do this, cuz they want you to buy their new, improved product, to which I say, tough. If it's that much better, then people should happily migrate on their own.
• Medieval hair care—less washing, more natural wooden combs/boar bristle brushes. Honestly another vid in which the comments were the most useful, the video is overly long & I didn't finish it.
• Another lay article on colour perception.. Spoiler: pinks and purple are an artifact of human brains, not an actual wavelength.
• Eliminate delayed decisions to declutter long term. One of those simple and effective, but hard-to-do approaches.

And of especial interest to me:

• I really, really would like to try this kayaking trip around NYC.

It's, like, nine hours long, but I'm thinking I might actually have the speed and stamina to do it now...?

Speaking of traveling, here's a collaged souvenir box all the way from Italy. (Some day I will go there...)

11oct2024

Ooooooh, two pages in one week! Part of it, I admit, is that the sun has been shining for the past several days, and that always improves my productivity. Nonetheless, it feels a bit strange to realize that here in the midwest the weather is as close to perfect as could be imagined, while folks to the south are suffering so greatly; at least with Helene, we got clouds and rain, though very gentle, but there was some connection. (Hurricanes are not really part of my ‘weather vocabulary’ but we do get tornadoes, and I wouldn't wish those on anyone: super scary! Seeing all those lightnings and tornadoes on the edge of Milton was truly awe-full, in the original sense of the word: amazing and very, very dreadful.)

I also can't help wondering what got Fred over at Slacktivist riled up buuuuut he mad—this fella is generally way further on the carrot end than stick as a rule; like one commenter I of course believe that the current weather events are natural phenomena, not biblically induced punishments, but also could see the interpretation of “well, we don't care about global climate change affecting all those other people half way across the world” coming back to bite us in the butt now that's it's having an impact in the US as assorted “plagues” (wild fires and typhoons...)

Naturally we need to address all the catastrophes currently in play, but I would like to think that in addition to improving long term emergency planning (always paid for in previous lives) that working on climate change generally will be more of a thing? Pretty please? Cuz I want everyone to have halcyon weather...

Oh, yeah, have some mixed media.

8oct2024

Whoops, sorry about the broken link in the last entry, I forgot to turn the page public—that's what I get for not making these things regularly. Fixed now, I hope. Also, I did not have allergies as a child, which was lovely, but now seem to be slowly developing them as I get older. The ragweed (I presume) was bad enough that I actually broke down and tried fluticasone propionate (e.g. flo-nase, though I have the generic) and wow, it worked in moments. Hurray for modern medicine.

But in a definite boo-hiss category, (via the wizard) The Mary Sue details a horrifying plan in Utah to limit what people stock in their own Little Free Libraries, on their own property. Of course they're cloaking this in that old bugbear, “protecting the children”. Um, why can't these lazy but oh so worried-and-protective parents can't keep their kids off private property? Or even discuss their values in a convincing way so their children aren't ‘corrupted’ by dangerous (oogah-boogah!) ideas not their own?

Abortion bans are continuing to kill women.

And horrid grifters like Marjorie Taylor Greene are spreading lies about FEMA assitance for Helene, or even more outlandish, that the government can control hurricanes (!) because it's in these liars’ interest to get a bit ahead, never mind they're causing 10 or 100x that amount of advantage in damage to the body politic (which is to say, the rest of us): I really do see these grifters as parasites of the most disgusting nature, excepting the average parasite has no control over its behaviour, whereas the grifters do.

It's now less than a month away to the US's election day, and more than ever I want to vote these controlling, lying, perverted assholes out. And as I have my absentee ballot I plan to, today. You probably can too...

Well, that's my rant for today. On a happier note, this is the back of an envelope for a card thanking the hosts to a kayaking party I went to; one of them is a fellow artist, and I thought she might enjoy this little token.

30sep2024

At last, that pile of blank pages I generated last June is used up, and oh yeah, this month I've managed two posts, so go me.

My sympathies to everyone affected by Hurricane Helene. One of my sibs is without power & has no idea when it will come back. The owner of our awesome new locally owned art supply store was nearly beside herself (& certainly not producing art) with worry for her sibs, also in North Carolina. Honestly, the devastation reminded me of some of Japan's disasters.

The northern edges of that storm extended all the way up to my (northern) midwestern state, where we really needed the rain, which for the most part alternated between drizzle, mizzle and mist. Since it was softened by the rain, I spent yesterday weeding the front bed of my sister-in-law's house, probably for the last time, and feeling pretty melancholy about it.

Take care, all. Oh yeah, and here's a winter-white mouse.

24sep2024

Oh, look at me, another 24-24 page, yay!

Except it's been a month since the last post, boo!

But hey, the bathrooms are mostly redone, the hideous green roll vinyl flooring torn up to reveal the original hardwood downstairs, and the hardibacker board that's been silently mocking me (for years) upstairs is now covered over in the mixed tile I've been planning (again, for years...) Bonus is that the upstairs toilet flushes properly:)

The occasion for all this was f2tY and Significant Other's visit, and visitors are always great for an all around clean and tidy, but three days after their departure, I'm still recovering. So that's my excuse this time. But in between bemoaning my exhaustion I watched an interesting OtherWords video on reading acquisition (in English). I'm old enough to have been taught the classic ‘hooked on phonics’ method of reading, which—spoiler alert—is evidently far more effective for teaching reading (to children learning languages with alphabets, at least...) than the “guess from context/recognize by shape” method that was popularized in Australia and evidently imported here in the 90s?

I mean, phonics isn't impeccable: I'm told I didn't truly learn to read until 4th grade, despite having all the advantages—parents who read to me, plenty of books in the home, phonics, even a parent who specialized in the speech therapy for children. I don't recall any of this, really, or even the teacher who finally managed to get me to learn, but the sticking point was evidently reading aloud, meaning all my mistakes were embarrassingly public; once I learned to read silently, off I went and by 6th grade I was testing, so I was told, at college level. This was, I'm pretty sure, an exaggeration, but the point was, once I got basic mastery, I devoured books, animal stories in particular.

But here's the thing: I'm attempting to learn 日本語, that is, にほんご, or in romaji, ni ho n go. The glyphs, or kanji, one could probably learn by shape, but the ひらかな　(hiragana, or syllabary, which [simplified] for the purposes of this discussion is roughly analogous to upper case alphabet just katakana is, again roughly [very, very roughly] analogous to lower case,) I really, really need to have firmly embedded what sounds they make, because if I'm say, trying to read My Happy Marriage in Japanese and I see something like わたしも。。。 embedded in a bunch of other hiragana I'm gonna do something like... ra-ta-shi-mo...unnnnh wa-ta-shi-mo...watashimo, wait, that's watashi-mo, 私も (“I also”)

IOW, I read Japanese so sloppily and slowly I can actually watch my brain doing it, and while I do recognize glyphs such as 私、猫、森、&　雨 at a glance (I, cat, forest, rain) the hiragana I figure out by sounding out and then assembling words (not helped by the fact that, unlikeEnglishJapanesetextdoesnothavespaces—they use the three writing systems, ひらがなとカタカナと漢字 to help break things up, and as you can see all of them look different, just as CAPITALS and lower case do.

So yeah, I can well believe phonics is critical. That said, the wizard taught himself to read with comics, and I can far more easily read 私　than I can わたし。。。let alone 森 for もり, not to mention the fact that I'm also finding manga far less daunting than the plain text. I mean, kids’ books have illustrations for a reason. But that sort of shape recognition, if I'm understanding the video correctly (not to mention my own learning processes) comes later.

Buuuuuut, I have to admit, I would be fascinated to know how written language acquisition works for, say, Chinese (all hanzi glyphs) versus Japanese (syllabary, with kanji to follow on) versus English (alphabets only). I mean, I presume that just as Japanese speakers recognize radicals, e.g., 木 in 森 to give a very obvious example, Chinese readers also recognize assorted chunks in Mandarin or other hanzi based languages. But that's not likely to be an experience I'll have myself: Japanese is already daunting, so the thought of having to learn a tone language with all glyphs seems almost impossibly difficult. (So kudos to all those folks bilingual in a Chinese and English—bear in mind, there's tons of dialects in both;)

In the mean time, phonics for the win. Along with mini-mice, such as this one f2tY selected to take back to Japan:)