31oct2025

The little book group to which I semi-belong recently read Ryan Holiday's book, Trust Me, I'm Lying, which I missed out on, because my gmail account was not really working during the time they were discussing it, which I failed mostly to notice because I was so busy. But I ordered it anyway, and figured I could give it a go.

My go got up and went by chapter one.

By the end of the introduction, I knew this thing was gonna be an uncomfortable slog, and I struggled to identify why I was so deeply uncomfortable with it. Holiday claims he wrote the book because after running these scams to blow up marketing campaigns on the internet, he felt guilty, and thought to atone by exposing his secrets.

Problem was, I didn't believe him.

That's not terribly surprising, and I think it's perfectly fair if an acknowledged grifter is held to a higher standard for veracity than someone without that history. Thus despite Holiday's assertion that he wrote the book because (he said) he felt guilty about his past behaviour, his current style was giving off uncomfortable vibes.

I mean, in addition to the fact that he was still working for American Apparel and Tucker Carlson, both of which I'd heard bad things for years; not to mention opening his book with a quote from Orson Scott Card. Now, to be sure, I had the first edition, published in 2012, and the big pedo-related controversies didn't come out till the following year. But Card's homophobia was certainly documented, and taken together, his continued support for dicey people and organizations did not exactly reassure.

Nor did his “tone”. I couldn't precisely identify it, but it reminded me, I finally realized, of the preacher-grifters whom Fred Clark of Slacktivist is constantly taking to task. In a fairly recently essay, Slack cites a band member of the Juggalos (of what are magnets/how do they work fame?) as a person who has sincerely repented, who is angry at his former self—for hurting the feelings of some of his audience he'd formerly mocked.

That anger, according to slack, was a marker for authentic repentance. A still slyly acknowledged cleverness in past bad behaviour, otoh, was infallibly a sign that the person still had some work to do. Holiday was twanging that string hard, and I disliked the vibe.

Perhaps one indicator was his cynicism: even after writing this book, it was clear that the author still felt that the internet on which he (formerly) preyed was merely a cesspit of parasites like himself, and rubes. That's a pretty dark way to see the world: I presume that 5%, roughly, of society consists of parasites (or perhaps, people act in grifty ways 5% of the time) but that most people, most of the time, are trying their best. Presuming every one is a crook strikes me as an excuse for one's own bad behaviour.

As I said, I didn't get very far into this book; mebbe the second edition addresses the problems. A quick perusal of Goodreads suggested that a fair number of other readers had similar qualms, and, frankly, it's not really news to me (or any other feminist online) that there's a ton of disinformation artists out there—indeed any relatively powerless group is likely to be the target of these assholes.

I'd rather learn from the victims than the perpetrators, so back to the library this book went. —Compared to people like the author, my little halloween art is hardly scary, but I hope you'll enjoy it as more wholesome horror.

29oct2025

So I was casually(1) listening to Gutsick Gibbon discuss in a video how human ancestors shifted to the wide, flat pelvis that allows us, unlike our close cousins, the bonobos and chimpanzees, to walk upright—evidently one of those 1 or 2 gene changes that had a big morphological impact, which I'd heard about in other evolutionary contexts, but not this one—when the youtuber happened to mention, offhand, that because of our sweat glands we heal three times more slowly than other primates, and I wuz like, wait, wut?

So I looked it up, and it's legit: I've known for awhile that although H sapiens are not especially fast or strong, we do have good endurance, because of our robust cooling mechanisms, to wit, a lot more sweat glands than other animals—we don't overheat as readily. I mean, think about those poor kitties, who can only dump heat through their paw pads or by panting!(2)

The actual paper only cites sweat glands as a possible tradeoff (if I'm reading correctly, and I'm guessing Gutsick is hella better reading scientific papers than I am, so what looks as only a supposition to me might be plainly obvious to someone up on the literature, or perhaps more papers have come out, though this one's pretty recent, just from April of this year) but evolution, being very much a rube goldbergian process, is often a case of tradeoffs—this trait for that advantage lost, but hey, if it means more successful offspring, then even with disadvantages the new trait is likely to propagate.

So that was my TIL (today I learned) moment. Enjoy. Or have a little Halloween inktober bookmark.

(1)Somehow I suspect I'm not the only person to use youtube videos, etc., as a sort of timer to stay on the tidying tasks that have dominated my life for the last two months? Like so many things, I got into this habit during Covid.

This one was organizing my photographic equipment, which means, maaaaaybe, sooooommmmme day, I will figure out why my flash stopped working, and start taking better pictures again? At the very least, I discarded batteries and chargers for cameras I threw out 5 or 10 years ago...

(2)Actually, cats can also cool themselves by wetting down their fur, aka grooming. But there's a reason my favourite pet grooming youtuber watches carefully for signs of heat stress!

27oct2025

Here's a fridayfugly, even though it's Monday, but in my defense, first we lost power on Thursday, as I was writing this page and then our internet connection for most of Friday. No blogging for me! Well, that did at least encourage me to start organizing the garden shed.

This, after weeks of attempting to organize my office, which as also become my defacto mixed media/journalling area, and keeping track of all that paper is—almost—worse than organizing my bead collection.

But the joy! the pleasure! My profound admiration for those creatives who find a messy space congenial, but to those for whom a tidy spare one is welcoming, well, hang in there, cuz the results really are worth it. And if all the assorted productivity hacks/low time/energy/spoons, or honestly, cash to buy the storage solutions that proved to be absolutely essential to these tasks don't allow for this kind of demanding project, give yourself grace—I really wondered sometimes, if I'd ever have a tidy house (and I still don't really, but I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel?), but honestly, my parents didn't really achieve it until their 60s, and I'm halfway through that; it can take a looooooong time to master this sort of thing:)

(So can drawing. I've been doing that for over six decades, and I still screw up regularly. Here's an example.)

15oct2025

Ooooh, art linkies.

This article delves into a small detail of Rembrandt's most famous painting, the origin of the little dog's (pose), in The Night Watch for which the researcher provides a very reasonable hypothesis that the artist basically ...swiped it from somebody else.

This sort of thing still happens—I recall vaguely some controversy over comic book artists “stealing” poses, compositions and the like from each other—but it was a lot more acceptable back then: when I went to the Rachel Rusych exhibit earlier this year, the curators noted a number of details that she and other flower painters borrowed from each other.

One reason this isn't shock! horror! the thievery! is that this dog figure is not only a very small part of a huge painting but it's quite dark; it's meant to help suggest the mood, rather than being a major focal point. Rembrandt may have simply liked the pose, or admired the other artist, or even subconsciously replicated the dog.

But we don't know. As Lenders, the curator, notes, we're still finding stuff out about this painting, and AFAICT, the artist's reasoning (beyond the fact that he liked it) for adding this little motif is still unknown.

Oddly enough, this same painting is referenced in a MIT article about artists and shadows. Western “realistic” painting has a number of conventions the average person accepts without considering, and one is the depiction of shadows. Careful analysis often—usually, even—reveals that artists generalize shadows to simplify their rendering, draw the viewer's eye or otherwise emphasize what the artist considers important: thus, shadows tend not to fall on important figures in a composition, because the assumption is that the human viewers will be far more interested in the depiction of people than the shadows falling upon them.

For the researchers referenced in the article, the way in which artists abstract shadows is a fascinating window in the way our brains assemble (or don't) visual information. For me, it was mostly nice to know that I'm not the only one whose understanding of perspective isn't really up to the task of representing shadows in a rigorous way.

(Let alone mirror images, aka reflections—mirrors are traditionally shown in [western] comics as a surface with a few blank lines, and a lot of art simplifies this challenging task: if you, as an artist, want to get it absolutely right, then David Chelsea's Perspective for Comic Book Artists is the best (not to mention entertaining) manual I've found to learn that sort of stuff.)

But! Along those lines, and pivoting a bit to science, Minute Physics has a six minute video in which he promises—correctly, in my case—to ruin depictions of the crescent moon forever. The teal dear is that, again w/r/t to reflections and shadows, the horns of the moon can never extend past the midline, that is an equal bisection of the moon. To be sure, this made me a bit sad, though I will say in my defense that I never have drawn stars in the ‘dark’ part of the moon, because, duh, the moon blocks the stars behind it.

Minute is scratching his head because the moon is up there in the sky for anyone to see and evaluate, so how can people fail to notice these basic facts? Well, I think it's for the same reason modern artists tend to draw horse legs, especially their hocks, more like the legs of a dog—because while you can certainly look up what a horse looks like, even watch videos of them moving, the average person has hella more exposure to dogs and cats on a daily basis, because most people nowadays live in cities; horses are not the everyday critturs they were a century ago, unless you happen to be, say, Amish or an avid horse person. Look at etchings from the 1800s, however, and horse legs, even by mediocre artists, are depicted far more realistically on average. As is harness, for that matter, and for the same reason—the artist likely rode or drove horses regularly, or if not, certainly saw them on a daily basis.

In a similar way, while we can certainly see the moon, there's a lot of light pollution, buildings and trees that block the horizon, not to mention that most people spend their time indoors. So the long blocks of time to observe the moon, its changing phases and appearance throughout the day, are now cut up into glimpses that are not (for the physics-averse) intuitive to assemble into a coherent framework for how the moon shifts thru the day and night, let alone the seasons.

Aaaaaannnnd here's the quickie inktober sketch I hung this intro upon.

7oct2025

Vox has another article about the need for wealthy countries to reduce their consumption of animal products (I say this rather than the actual ‘eat less meat’ they use because I don't buy much meat, but I surely do the dairy and eggs). It was interesting to me because their reporting aligns with my own memories—I too thought we were poised to (seriously) pivot to fake meats (again, I'm happy to call impossible burgers/sausage etc fake, cuz that makes clear that I'm not eating real animals, and as an animal myself I don't even like being nibbled on by ticks and mosquitoes, let alone killed to make another's meal) but then...the whole thing seemed to stall out and reverse.

That wasn't an accident! The meat industry co-ordinated a lot of campaigning to make their case, and obviously, they've succeeded, at least for now, which bums me out, because the sooner lots of other people get on board buying fake meat, the quicker prices will go down and quality, variety and options will go up.

But here's the thing I'd like to really draw attention to in that whole ‘rich nations must reduce their meat consumption’ report:

Rather than expecting billions of people to actively change how they eat, the commission recommends a number of policies, including reforming school meals, federal dietary guidelines, and farming subsidies; restricting marketing of unhealthy foods; and stronger environmental regulations for farms.

IOW, all those snooty scientists and do-gooding NGOs are not telling you (& me!) personally, to eat less meat (and dairy). They're advocating suggestions to make it easier for you to do good things for yourself—vegan diets are cheaper and healthier, and who doesn't wanna save money and have a longer healthspan? Plus if you have kids or grandkids in your life, you're making the world better for them:)

The Eat-Lancet report instead puts the onus on institutions —governments, corporations, etc—to enable a shift to a more vegan lifestyle. People themselves can still keep buying meat (and dairy and eggs:) but it will be easier and more straightforward for them not to. Kids, whose tastes are perhaps more flexible, who might be eating a traditional meat and potatoes diet at home can be introduced to vegetarian or vegan alternatives at school (and while we're at it, I'd like Japanese levels of quality for school lunches, please).

For example, if the government advocated for soy products in general and soy milk in particular, pushing back on all those male alarmists afraid that soy isoflavones (or plant estrogen or whatever) are gonna turn them feminine/gay, perhaps Costco would start carrying unsweetened soy milk, which tastes more like dairy and has more protein than the oat milk we buy now—fine for chai, but just doesn't cut it as a coffee additive. (Admittedly, I could also give up drinking coffee, which would cheaper, and since the person I drink coffee with the most is moving away in a couple of weeks, then I could revert to drinking it as a special treat, instead of every morning...)

Again, the larger point is that this info is out there, but short sighted greedy capitalists want their profits more than what's best for our own health, let alone the planet's. Boo, hiss. People are more important than profits.

Or, yanno, you could just look at a drawing and call it a day.

6oct2025

Hideho, another page that sat for three weeks before I posted. At least the distance in time made it easy to edit. Plus, I forgot to turn on the link for the prior page. Incompetence all around, sorry!

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The wizard is the best:)

After reading a sample online, and then being too impatient to wait till the ebook showed up in my queue, the wizard kindly purchased & downloaded onto my phone Martha Wells’ Emilie YA novels.

This was originally gonna be a review of a short story the wizard spotted at the same time that he also bought for me because he knew I liked the author, but I'll talk about that later, cuz I realized I had a bit more to say about this omnibus volume than merely that, while competent, it falls into the meh category.

Certainly you can see hints of the psychological insights that make Murderbot so wonderful, as well as featuring a young female protag, who, alas suffers from bystander effect, because she's not really knowledgeable enough to do much, which contrasts rather unbelievably with her preternatural understanding of the sitch, and so are ultimately unsatisfying.

Murderbot and Wells’ other adult protagonists not only have insights, they have agency to do something about them, far more directly than Emilie, who, given her relative inexperience/ignorance, is mostly reduced to making suggestions. She does get to save the day now and then, but mostly with simple stuff, like crying ‘look out!’, bashing enemies over the head, escaping thru hatches too small for her adult compatiots, etc.

There are some other nits as well; Wells absolutely understands that the plot drags if there's no conflict, but some of adventuresome interruptions came up a bit too conveniently (to be fair, one occasionally sees bits of this in the Murderbot Diaries as well—Bujold's mastery of intertwining internal and external conflicts so masterfully is extraordinarily difficult to pull off). Emilie does have character growth, most notably when she's overcoming her terror and inexperience with some act of derring-do or other, certainly progress on what such a heroine would've been a century ago, when she would have had to rely solely upon others to rescue her.

This, because the books are Victorian steampunk fantasy. Book II also features her a-year-younger brother, and we get to learn more about her siblings, from whom she is mostly estranged, but that...somehow didn't quite resolve, at least for me, in a satisfying way. That I can't articulate my dissatisfaction any more clearly is deeply frustrating, but reading various Goodreads (& other critiques) shows me just how lazy and careless I've become; I used to make more of an effort to figure this stuff out.

Best guess is that I had certain expectations of how her dysfunctional family was gonna play out, and those expectations weren't met, one of those, ‘but-I-was-expecting-the-plot-to-go this way-and-it-went-that’ issues. A good author will of course attempt to set up readers’ expectations (before fulfilling, subverting, or perhaps a mix) but at some point, readers will take the bit into their teeth and refuse to be dragged where the story is going, and that's on them me.

The other observation has to do with recurring motifs in Wells’ fantasy: in both these books and in her latest (published) fantasy, there are artificial sheets of water falling, columns, and beautiful, decaying, partially submerged cities. The falling sheets of water in particular have an ominous aspect, trapping as they do the titular Witch King and his cohort in her latest fantasy; while not quite as dire in Emilie, there's still a threatening quality.

These books are written decades apart, making me wonder where this image comes from. —Readers tend to fall into camps w/r/t Wells: fantasy or Murderbot. I fall firmly into the Murderbot camp, though I loved all the different type of peoples in the Raksura books—I thought they'd be fun to draw, like differently coloured dragons or butterflies—and felt Witch King was well-written; I just didn't like the characters as much. You'd think I'd appreciate all the rich description of the fantasies, as I love that stuff in real life, but part of the problem is that my visual imagination is not, actually, all that great: I can visualize stuff, but mostly just hear conversations when left to my own devices. Picturing architectural or other layouts in particular is a strain, to the point that I sometimes find myself skimming over ornate description, or description of ornate places, instead of enjoying luscious luscious prose and/or setting. (I do try, but it's tiring.)

I do, however, tend to notice recurring elements, and figuring out why and how they persist in an author's oevre is a fun kind of meta-exercise in figuring out themes. (Especially when the ostensible story is kind of dull.) Thus, I can say all of Wells’ works that come to mind feature prior, mostly lost civilizations—the aliens’ ‘strange synthetics’ in Murderbot, (not to mention pre-Corporation Rim, which was evidently more technologically primitive, but implied to be kinder and more humane living conditions for most folks), and the lost, often drowned civilizations in both Emilie books (particularly the second) and Summer Palace (?) Halls to which Kai must return for the Witch King’s climax.

Where did Wells see this phenomenon? The most vivid memory I have of something like this is Niagara Falls, when I was a child; but it's not especially ominous. Boats and water are too frequent in her fantasy for her not to have experienced them somehow, and that's interesting to me:)

I don't know that this sort of metatextual reading is particularly common, but I at least get a kick out of it:)

That's a rather unsatisfying way to end a review—yeah, okay, this story is...acceptable, and also it has elements that reappear in other, later books? But, to be honest, that's kind of what today's post is as well—it's not really got an ending.

But there's been some change, at least...