Everything & Nothing

I'm only here because I was bored way back in lockdown #1 | TERFs can fuck right off

[lgbt-tiktoks]

Description: [A video of a woman riding a galloping horse bareback while holding a large rainbow flag.]

[nattousan]

i felt like these tags really added to the experience, thanks @cynderxdustypaws for your knowledge

[naamahdarling]

This is one of the most powerful images I have ever seen, and I will reblog it every single time because every single time it brings tears to my eyes.

[smol-blue-bird]

I went to a library book sale this weekend and I found a very old book called “Electronic Life: How to Think About Computers,” which was published in I think 1975? I’ve been reading it kind of like how I would read a historical document, and it’s lowkey fascinating

[smol-blue-bird]

There’s a whole paragraph that’s like “okay, find the keyboard. Don’t panic if it has more keys than a typewriter, that’s normal. Really, it’s fine. The extra keys don’t make things harder. It’s FINE”

[smol-blue-bird]

Thought this section was particularly interesting:

Can the computer create something? At first glance it seems obvious that it can. Animated computer graphics, with their fluid transitions and whiplash perspectives, look strikingly new. And if one watches the machine doing animation work, there seem to be lengthy periods when the computer is acting “on its own.”

But if one observes these processes in more detail, it becomes clear that creation is not occurring within the machine. First of all, computer graphics are not unique. Computers have yet to generate anything that cannot be done by hand—and usually already has been done. Second, the apparent ability of the computer to “act on its own” is the outcome of thousands of hours of patient human effort to refine its instructions. The computer can manipulate a shape for us if we have already informed it what a shape is, what the rules for shape manipulation are, what this specific shape is, and so forth.

You can start an automobile engine and it will run by itself, too, but that doesn’t mean it’s being creative. It’s just running.

[theriu]

Somebody in 1975 had a better understanding of why artificial intelligence is not in any way “intelligence” than the majority of today’s intellectual minds.

[cognitivejustice]

WHAT IS A RAIN GARDEN?

A rain garden is a shallow planted depression designed to hold water until it soaks into the soil. A key feature of eco-friendly landscape design, rain gardens—also known as bio-infiltration basins—are gaining credibility and converts as an important solution to stormwater runoff and pollution. Here we’ll show you how to make a rain garden fit handsomely into a landscape and still fulfill all of its environmental functions.

All About Rain Gardens – What They Are & How to Build One

Learn everything you need to know about rain gardens, including what they are, the problem of rainwater runoff, their benefits, and how to i

Refer to the list of links below to guide you through calculating garden depth, garden size, placement, and plant selection.

University of Nebraska NebGuide 1 – Rain Garden Design for Homeowners

University of Nebraska NebGuide 2 – Plant Selection for Rain Gardens in Nebraska

University of Nebraska NebGuide 3 – Installing Rain Gardens in Your Yard

Backyard Farmer Video – Rain Gardens and Rain Barrels

Minnesota’s Rain Garden Workbook for Homeowners

[suzumori521]

アカウント作り直したので過去絵中心にボチボチ更新していきます。

I have re-created my account.

My creator name is Nishiki Suzumori.

I will update mainly illustrations I have drawn in the past.

All illustrations may not be reproduced without permission.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

It's a lot healthier to go for a daily walk than to sign up for a gym membership you won't be using because you hate that kind of exercise. It's a lot healthier to eat a frozen meal than to skip a meal because you were too tired to cook something healthy. It's a lot healthier to take a quick shower than to procrastinate an elaborate routine for days. Don't aim so high that you won't be hitting anything!

[creamypancakebatter]

this is actually really helpful and affirming thanks

[breelandwalker]

[1969chevycamaro]

*in tears* Thanks kitty, I needed this...

[fallbabylon]

Examples of Hooden Horses and Mari Lwyd’s at Maidstone Museum’s Animal Guising exhibition- Maidstone, UK 

[iconuk01]

"The Source"

by Luo Li Rong

View this post on Instagram

[iconuk01]

Yes, this is Luo Yi Rong, who absolutely is the same sculptor from that astonishingly inept self-own by an idiot.

[corvidaedream]

i got sick of how hard it is to find good fashion pics & reference images of fat/plus size people on pinterest, both as art reference and for my silly little character aesthetic boards, so i started just making a whole board of plus size fashion for the sake of my own mental health, including a whole section thats just vintage & historical pics of fat people and now im feeling better about my body

200 People | Plus Size ideas in 2022 | plus size, skinny people, plus size fashion

Jun 13, 2022 - Only drawing/using references of skinny people is ruining my body image. Here’s some refs and aesthetic images of people who

[timidsketch]

I was hesitant to reblog this since Pinterest is famous for almost never having any credit and being stolen works, but this is a seriously great reference from what I looked at for anyone wanting to draw fat people. There are numerous sections for different fashion styles, and that's usually impossible to find. So I'm making an exception this single time and reblogging this.

[fatphobiabusters]

These are a few of the photo categories for an example:

There's not a lot of content of fat men, but there is some. There are also pictures of queer couples, drag queens, historical photos, etc.

Another art reference for poses with fat bodies is the website FatPhotoRef run by @lawlesslagomorph who carefully vets the people who ask for access to the website in order to ensure that none of the fat people who have volunteered photos of themselves will be abused. Donations help keep the website running too!

-Mod Worthy

[slavicafire]

new witcher dlc? ??

[slavicafire]

huh?? m? ?

[musubiarte]

The other day I was surfing the internet and I found this specialized painting colour wheel, it shows how real paint colours relate to each other. 

Outside: the purest/brightest colours.

Inside: naturally muted or earthy colors, like browns and ochres.

The Center: dark neutral tones used for mixing shadows.

The Lines: the lines connect colors that are opposites, if you mix them you neutralize the tone creating clean grays or browns instead of muddy puddles.

I want to share this with you because I think it is really illustrative!

Reference: “Quiller Wheel” by Stephen Quiller

[twiststreet]

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Edited down a long tweet. (x)

[apricops]

that post about “you get bandits when you cut soldiers loose without pay” reminds me of the Thirty Years War, because one could say that beneath all the religious schisms and diplomatic jockeying, the heart of the thirty years war was “what happens when you have a state with just enough capacity to raise massive armies but without enough financial capacity to actually pay those armies” and the answer is that the line between professional armies and roving gangs of bandits disappears and every time you try to raise an army it just becomes another independently acting wildfire devouring the countryside. No matter how bad things get, every day I wake up and thank my lucky stars that I do not live in 17th century Europe. Or 17th century China. Or the 17th century Americas. Or basically anywhere in the 17th century.

[probabilitydirigible]

One of my favorite little anecdotes about ancient mercenaries is that it was tradition for most of history to give your mercenaries two wages- "Bread" and "Gravy." Both were set at a daily value, but where "Bread" was intended to cover regular maintenance and life stuff and therefore paid out frequently (Here's your week's meal and gear repair budget!) the "Gravy" wage was paid out exclusively at the end of the contract as one lump sum. So like, your gravy wage and bread wage might be one silver coin per day each, so you're getting a handful of coins every week to cover food, and then at the end of an 800 day campaign, you get a wheelbarrow with 800 coins.

Employers liked offering this structure because then they didn't have to like, try to guess how long the invasion of spain will take and then carry 800 coins per soldier around the battlefield where it could be captured. It also gives them the chance to budget around the assumption that they take an enemy city and *find* vast sums of treasure even if they don't have the full value at the beginning of the war.

The main flaw of this system is that it's very easy to end up in a scenario where if you have, say, 50,000 guys that have been fighting for 800 days, you now owe 40 million silver to your army, and if the budget has not worked out to a 40 million surplus, you literally can't afford to end the war, but you can probably afford to pay them for a couple more weeks. So then you have to start thinking creatively.

Anyway across all time and history a lot of generals were ultimately beaten to death by men chanting gravy.

[zanmor]

can I get a source on the use of that term, bread and gravy wages?

I assume that's a more modern historian coming up with a clever characterization of army pay, but all I've been able to find is either sites talking about modern fast food wages or else a thousand articles about "why ancient roman soldiers were paid in salt"

if it is a historian's invention I think I wanna read what else this person has to say

[wicker-and-scrap]

Don't know what @probabilitydirigible 's source was, but Bret Devereaux was writing about this subject recently, and mentioned the Classical sources calling them σίτος (bread) and ὀψώνιον (sauce).

(I had a brief moment of recognition reading that, because "opsonins" in immunology are a category of proteins that stick to foreign objects and make them tasty to your immune cells.)

Collections: Ancient Mediterranean Mercenaries!

This week we’re going to take a look at mercenaries in the ancient Mediterranean world! This was one of the runners-up in the latest ACOUP S

[kunaigirl]

Me: "Damn people are REALLY BAD at knowing when to tag their eyestrain art/images...either that or they just don't care about photosenitive epileptic people like me. I feel really sad now." Person: "But Allison, what if they just don't know or understand what qualifies as eyestrain and what doesn't?" Me: "You know what? That could be a factor...While it is always better to be safe rather than sorry (so YES people should always tag eyestrain even if they're unsure if it "counts" or not) maybe you've got a point?"

Anyways! HERE'S YOUR HANDY GUIDE TO WHAT CAN COUNT AS EYESTRAIN! I'm pulling this straight from the Artfight rules page about what needs to be labeled and filtered as eyestrain because it's VERY helpful and VERY accurate! I also know not everybody has an AF account and might not always have access to this handy guide, and this is an important resource; That's why I'm sharing it here! (under the cut)

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

Full eyestrain AF page link

"But Allison! How were you able to screenshot that example if you're so sensitive to eyestrain?"

I dimmed the HELL out of my computer screen and looked away while taking the screenshot and did the same when putting it into this post, that's how lol. BUT YEAH ANYWAYS!!! Once again:

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY!!! THIS IS ABOUT THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF OTHERS!!!

[rightdownright]

by the way this is medical. this could save somebody from a migraine all the way to a seizure. this has always been serious. treat this seriously.

[megacarapa]

ok so this is another long shot but a few years ago there was a twitter post (in japanese i think?) that had measurememts for how to make this book stand thing out of cardboard that you could use to double up books and use up more space on shelves

back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore

if it comes down to it i can just take one apart and get the measurements from there but i would be very grateful if anyone happens to have the original post or something similar??

[megacarapa]

don't mind how long it's been since i made this post, anyway i realized that i don't even need to take one apart to get the measurements when i can literally just unfold it and refold it /FACEPALM

so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!

this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together

and then in the end you put it together like this!!

and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy

EVERYONE START GETTING MORE USE OUT OF YOUR SPACE NOW!!!!

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge, coach John makes the period stretches more accessible

X

[vespertinecat]

This is the most considerate advice for doing stretches I've ever seen??? Initially I started to go, "...but I can't do that with my knee-" then he showed a way I could do it. I was like... whoa. A video for stretching that is actually considerate towards my disabilities. Astounding and impressive.

[meanbossart]

Hello, and welcome to my quick guide about how breasts-do in relation to arm + shoulder movement feat. scantily clad Jaheira. Who asked for this, you may ask? My conscience, mostly.

This is something I occasionally see misunderstood in artistic depictions of women - dreadfully leading to some core misconceptions about where breasts are supposed to sit at all times - and resulting in some truly head-scratching situations where the same woman's chest may seem droopier😱 depending on🤔 the way she's positioned🫨??? Well, fear no more! The mystery has been solved! You're welcome.

[taylor-titmouse]

taylor titmouse's guide for improving your itchio store page

(The Night Guest)

a few years ago i wrote a big angry post about how bad people are at marketing their own work and what they can do to be better at it. since then, the advice about twitter has largely become unnecessary and irrelevant, but the advice about what information you should be putting on your product page is still important and [through gritted teeth] nobody's fucking doing it.

so this post is going to be a step by step break down of what you can do to improve your itchio store pages to make them more informative and customer friendly. you're reading this because you 🫵 want to learn and improve. or you're just curious and/or like it when i yell. but either way taking my advice is your choice and if you don't feel like doing any of it you don't have to, much like nobody has to buy your books. if you've ever lamented why nobody buys your work but you're not making it easy for them to do so, it's 🫵 your fault and you annoy me immensely. take responsibility for your bad business practices.

anyway, let's make you better okay?

(and also note that all the store pages i'm using as examples are for adult works, but there's no explicit images in this post. you'll only see anything if you click through the links)

BANNERS

you probably already clicked and read through that image up there, because it was big and eye-catching and at the top of the post. i fucking Got you. that is, ideally, what the banner will do. while the banner is not strictly necessary, it's a "well, why not have one?" situation. it makes the page look more deliberately designed, and it's a great additional sample of what the customer can expect from your work.

if your product doesn't feature art, simply making an image with the title will also work well, as i've done here for A Hundred Hungry Mouths. that book didn't have enough interior illustrations to justify burning one for the banner, so i left the cover out of the "screenshots" field and edited it to be the banner instead. simple!

(if you don't want to figure out a good banner size yourself, mine are 1120 x 325 pixels with transparent, rounded corners)

BOOK COVER

i think this one is a no brainer. i hope to god it is a no brainer. if your book has a cover, make sure it's set as the first screenshot (if you're not doing the banner tech i mentioned above). i won't advise you on what a good book cover is, because that's a whole other post and wildly subjective. but you should have one. even if it's a sketch collection. even if it's just an illustration from the sketchbook with a title edited on. it will look so much better than nothing.

hopefully you also already know that though, so here's some itchio specific advice. what itchio considers the cover is actually the thumbnail that displays elsewhere on the site. you are much better off making a discrete edit for this rather than uploading the actual cover. compare the thumbnails i made by hand for r/l monroe's books vs the thumbnails for the early books i didn't bother with.

one of these looks professional. one of these looks lazy, and there's a reason that section is relegated to the very bottom of my page. if you don't want to go the length of a bespoke thumbnail, take your book cover (or whatever illustration you want to use) and set your square selection tool to a fixed aspect ratio of 6.3 W to 5 H. find a good crop, then resize it to 630x500. perfect thumbnail.

SAMPLES

this is the thing that makes me the angriest. it makes me SO angry. so many of you are out there making your store pages, trying to sell me prose writing or your comics or your artbooks, and then not showing me any of your work. i'm grabbing you. i'm shaking you. what is your fucking problem. what are you THINKING. have you ever bought a book at the store without reading a little first? would you buy a graphic novel without flipping through the first few pages to see if you like the style? no?

SO WHY DO YOU EXPECT ME TO? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

this is so basic. i should not have to keep telling people this but it keeps happening. PUT A FUCKING SAMPLE UP. TAKE SCREENSHOTS OF THE FIRST PAGES OF YOUR WRITING. GIVE ME THE FIRST FEW PAGES OF YOUR COMIC. SHOW ME AN ILLUSTRATION OR TWO FROM THE ARTBOOK.

they don't even have to be the full thing! with my artbook collections, i'll pick a few crops and make one condensed promotional image. or i'll take one good one and slap a banner over it. i put something. you can check out different examples/styles of this on The Womanulet, Poker Night with the Arizona Dogs, and Return to Shadow.

for all of my prose writing, i include at least the first 1-3 pages of the book. you are actually delusional if you are a prose writer and you're trying to sell your book on the cover and pitch alone. you have to show me that you can write, and give me a chance to tell if i'd like it. i cannot think of a good reason not to. if you're embarrassed to have any of the writing public, you should not be selling it. if you don't want to give any of it away for free, get your head out of your ass. who do you think you are. there is no good reason not to include a sample and i don't know why so many of you don't.

OKAY THINGS GOT A BIT HEATED THERE SO LET'S TALK ABOUT TEXT

we're going to cover sales copy now. it's hard to write. it is absolutely miserable to write. but you have to. if you're trying to sell me a story, you have to tell me what it is and who it's about. who is our protagonist? what challenge are they facing, or what are they setting out to do? who will they encounter, and what might happen to them? you don't have to tell me the whole story, but you should set my expectations. let's break down the example pictured above, from The Night Guest.

Ever since the death of her husband, Mrs. Arakawa has run her inn alone. There's never been a guest the seasoned innkeeper couldn't handle… but she's never had to host a hungry oni. It'll take all her wits and wiles to survive the night in his service--or else she may find herself in his mouth.

in three sentences, i've established who the book is about, the conflict, and the sexual hook. there's a sexy widow, there's a scary oni, and they're probably going to fuck nasty style by the end of the book. that's enough to get the idea of what this is and whether you'd like it. it can be difficult to know how to pitch a story without spoiling it, so this is something that takes observation from other books, and practice. it is hard! i hate doing it! but it's vitally important to getting the reader onboard with your work.

but mr. titmouse! you cry. i'm not selling a story! i'm selling an artbook!

okay. you can still tickle my balls about what's in there. here's another example from my hades 2 artbook Return to Shadow.

Sometimes there are games that, had we been born into a better timeline, would prominently feature awesome sex. Bad endings, romance scenes, flagrant eroticism. Hades 2 is one of those games--beautiful, fun, and with monster designs that deserve to be appreciated for the fantastic fuckmobs they are. Together, we can imagine this better timeline.

it's a bit more slick, a bit more sales pitchy, but that's fine. there is no narrative here beyond 'boy i sure wish hades 2 had porn in it'. i'm enticing you into a space. it's a book of hades 2 porn. don't you also want to look at hades 2 porn? wouldn't that be awesome? i think it's awesome. i want you to also think it's awesome. you (as author) should be convincing your potential customer that what you want to share with them is awesome.

THE INFORMATIONAL PARAGRAPH

whether you find this one necessary depends on the work. i think it's always a good idea to have somewhere to give contextual information about your thing, and if you're working in erotica you've got to have somewhere to put your features and warnings. this is also a good place to put your comps and inspirations--a good way to set your reader's expectations. basically, anything that doesn't fit into the narrative pitch, you'd put here.

here's an example from Chique: The Sunken City:

Chique: The Sunken City is inspired by RPGs and hentai games, and contains three short stories, each an encounter with a denizen of Sodden, exploring different associated kinks and fetishes. Books in this series have no reading order.

tells you what vibe the book has, that there are three different stories within the book, and that it can be read without reading any other books in the series. straightforward, easy to understand. no problem.

for adult books you don't have to be 100% thorough when listing out the featured kinks, it's okay to just hit the highlights. i've become somewhat agnostic about this in the era of "if you even mention a naughty word we'll Get you" internet. but i would suggest you put as much as you feel comfortable revealing, and what would be most attractive to a reader. you don't have to list every individual sex act, just remember that this is part of your advertising. you want the person who's really into what you're cooking to know that it's on the menu.

THE OTHER LITTLE INFORMATIONAL PARAGRAPH

this is self explanatory. please tell me how many pages there are of your comic or art book. tell me the wordcount for your prose. MOST of you are already good about this and don't need me to tell you to do this. but if you weren't already doing this, a) i don't understand you b) start doing it.

I THINK THAT'S MOSTLY IT

you've been so brave and tough for letting me yell at you this far down your dashboard. i hope you've learned something and will change your behavior for the better. i want you to make money. okay? i yell at you like this because i want you to make money. i want to GIVE you money. but you have to make it easier for me.

to wrap up, here are my other general pieces of advice to make your itchio page look and function better

if there are multiple books in the series, put a link to the rest of them somewhere on the page. i put them at the bottom, as you can see on this Roger book from the middle of the series.

i personally prefer itchio pages that are styled for dark mode. black always looks good in the background, and #232323 gives you a nice neutral gray for the text area. however, making the page match the palette of your book cover is also a good choice, so long as you keep it legible. no white text on light backgrounds and vice versa.

bare minimum, make the links the same color as your cover. it will immediately tie the page together and make everything look more deliberate. the less 'i made this in two minutes and left everything default' you can make your page look, the better. have some pride, you know?

not an itchio specific piece of advice but ohhhh my god put your links in your bio. put your links in your BIO. PUT THEM IN YOUR PINNED POST. PUT THEM SOMEWHERE!!!! you cannot expect me to scroll your account to find links you posted a week ago! or even an hour ago! put it in your bio or pinned post!! do not make me work to give you money! you are wasting valuable self-promotion space on DNIs that nobody cares about.

okay that's it. that's everything. you made it all the way to the bottom. i'm so proud of you. slaps your ass. now get back out there and fix your shit.

(if you found this helpful, how about buying one of my freakin' books?)