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...

15sep2025

Ah linkies. Happy Monday everyone, it only took me two weeks to summon up the gumption to actually post this. Sheesh.

• How to stop a dog attack in three seconds or less seems to be the real deal, and as I have unfond memories of packs of dogs roaming my old neighborhood, a frequent enough issue I sometimes carried dog treats when I was out jogging, this grabbed my attention. (Also, I know many people are afraid of dogs, and it seems to me the best way to be unafraid of them is to know how to cope with one that attacks you.) This approach—grabbing the dog's collar and pulling back and up against the hinge of its jaw—strikes me as more effective (& way less dangerous) than ramming your fist down its throat, which is the (evidently wrong) urban legend/suburban myth.
• I had no idea people bought hermit crabs as pets. It's not a good idea unless you're willing to put serious aquarium-keeping-chops into the mix.
• My fave author, Lois McMaster Bujold, recommends Prof. Stephen Ressler’s new Great Course Understanding the Marvels of Medieval Technology with a “Aha. I have finished my first run-through, but definitely not the last...Best. Great Course. Ever.” —Quite the recce, there:)

Wishing you a delightful tail-end of summer.

1sep2025

Today is Labor Day (in the USA, at least...)

Labor, is this country, used to mean working 10 or 12 (or more hours) a day, in dangerous conditions that imperiled limbs, eroded health or even ended life; we owe those protestors a great deal for the 8 hour day, the 40 hour work week; I note the wikipedia page doesn't seem to go much into the costs paid by the protestors.

This page was inspired by a post by a Slate author bemoaning the loss of heaven, er, wishing she could unlearn the secet to Finland's happiness. Why? Because the state of happiness is so much more frictionless there. Here's the money quote heart of the article:

My life is pretty good, as lives go. I’ve been able to stay in the same rental apartment for three years, long by London standards. I have a job I like, a partner, friends, family, relatively good health. But I am also often tense and harried by a thousand little frictions that exist at home that just … don’t, in Finland. It can feel like life in the U.K., and as I understand it in the U.S. too, is overarched by the sense that, far from existing to support you, the state is out to punish you for any tiny infraction. Want to have a child? Pay most of your salary for their care. Need medical attention? Good luck. Can’t afford a home? Live on the street.

But I read this article several days ago; this page was inspired now by my own, personal frustration...

Among other things, one of the joys of living in Finland is everyone's proximity to forests, which provide a connection to contentment that's hard to describe, but nearly universal for anyone who camps regularly (& even for a lot of people who don't.) I was miserable and depressed when a proposed weeklong trip had to be cancelled, even though I was relieved as well, and so much more upbeat when we finally got to do a different camping getaway—complete with beaches, stars, sunrises and sunsets and—bonus!—trying new stuff, building on old skills, making friends, or at least acquaintance, even the unexpected langniappe of geeking out over art with other people.

Awesome. Even better, I get to do it again in a couple of weeks, if I can just get my aches and pains on board. So I made an appointment, went to PT, (eventually) downloaded the app for my home exercises, clicked on the video to review them....aaaaaaaaand fscking youtube refused to show it to me because I hadn't signed in, even though I have their stupid app on my phone, even though I was logged into the program with the exercises.

If ever there was a first world problem, this is it. I can circumvent this frustration, not to mention already having the resources to get care in the first place, since the US medical system strictly limits even physical therapy (never mind the other kinds) which is not something a lot of people can say. But it's a barrier to care, and a stupid one.

It is, in a word, yet one more niggling irritation of late stage capitalism.

Late stage capitalism is evil, I have concluded, because it seems inevitably to lead to fascism. This was driven home by Lindsey Ellis, who along with HBomberguy I consider to be the best youtube video essayist in the (English speaking, at least) world, returned to that loathed platform with an introductory plea for Miss Amy (Mr Roger's current incarnation, evidently), help for the children of Gaza in particular, and resistance to fascism in general.

She's not the first to note that a few people will be horror shows, a few can do no other than resist in any way possible, and the rest of us bystanders put our heads down, hoping not to be scythed by the creeping horror.

I've known for years that I'm part of that cowardly 75%.

But courage, like so many other things is a skill. It can be learned, and therefore practised. Toward the end of Ellis’ heartfelt video she notes those bystanders eventually have to make a stand: join the resisters, or...the perpetrators.

Both the Talmud and the Koran talk about saving a life as ‘saving the world entire.’

I think all of us can point to little ways in which we've made people's lives, tiny minuscule things that, added up, might, in some way, added years (or months or days or even greater meaning to some of those years or months or days) to others’ lives. I've alluded to a girl whom I gave five or ten minutes’ advice on how to get the most menial of entry level jobs; last summer, I might have ...actually saved someone's life. Maybe.

The water was barely 5’ deep, not even enough to completely cover his head. He was just practising his underwater breath. (But he had a heart condition.) All I did was stretch out a paddle for him to hold onto, and gently paddle back to shore. (So easy, and it had the added benefit of keeping me safe, too.)

I mean, maybe he wouldn't’ve drowned ; maybe those other swimmers would've noticed (though as far as I could tell, they didn't, and why would they, busy with their games with each other?) But. He did seem to be exhibiting the symptoms—he couldn't get enough air in his lungs to talk or cry out...I was deeply thankful that, at a kayaking conference a little while before, a teacher had described some drowning folks he'd helped rescue from a sinking rowboat—while sailing, actually. (My parents were sailors, and so was I, as a child. I still have a soft spot for sailboats;)

I didn't have to do anything drastic, like mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; I just stayed with him for awhile, then found his wife, who was swimming at the other end of the beach, and told her I thought her spouse had nearly drowned. I wasn't quite shaking with reaction, but I felt I'd done something all out of proportion to the gentle easy movements that were my contribution to this process.

On average, I can't say that I've done much for the world. Mostly, I'm just trying to get through my day, succeeding here, failing there, hoping I'll do better tomorrow.

I've tried to show a semblance of kindness, or at least be polite to those who come within my orbit, mostly because that's how I want to be treated myself, and I feel better if I do. I do my best to treat those closest to me—the wizard, the f2’s—with respect, even love, especially after reading that so many treat strangers with respect, but not their own families and I agreed, yes, that was gross. But that day, I felt I'd earned my existence.

Most of the time, my efforts are far more mundane. Frex, I post to this website in the hopes that someone, somewhere, finds some little bit of it useful, perhaps even inspirational.

Resisting fascism is scary, at least the bits that involve violence, which, once a fascist regime is in place, seem to be inevitable. I'm so timid... At the end of Ellis’ video, Mr Rogers says ‘there are so many ways you can be helpful...ways that don't hurt you or anybody else.’ That's doable, surely? My mother—the last of my household's parents (which, gulp, now makes me the senior, wise generation)—said she became convinced that, if nothing else, you could try to at least make the lives of people around you better and not worse. I can do that.

It's not much. It's not enough. But many days, it's all I have. This drawing is not that good. It's not exciting, it's certainly not groundbreaking. Many times, the frictions of our society means hours, days, even weeks go by in which no art gets made. The idea of dying by resisting fascists frightens me deeply, but courage can be practised, and making art...is one way for me to practise.

I can't offer much. Like the expert the author of the Finland happiness article consulted, like Lindsay Ellis, I believe much of our ills are structural, fomented by those at the very top. But I know we need to fight despair, to keep going.

So. One foot in front of another.

14aug2025

Hello all, another little watercolour sketch from a trip earlier this year, and to go with the feline subject matter, a link to a fascinating new mutation in cat coat genetics, a variant in which the fur is white tipped; not surprisingly, it's recessive, and particularly dramatic in black tuxedo cats, resulting in the term ‘salmiak’ —a type of salt covered black liquorice in Finland, where the mutation was discovered in feral cat populations about twenty years ago.

I knew of smoke, shaded, and chinchilla variations —black (or other colour) tipped white hairs, but this is the opposite.^[1] Pretty cool!