Stranger Things
dirt enthusiast

#extradirty
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Origami Around
occasionally subtle

@theartofmadeline

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
h
Cosimo Galluzzi
AnasAbdin
Xuebing Du
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
d e v o n

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
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oozey mess
DEAR READER

blake kathryn
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@mouthbeef
The Parakeet — one of several polychrome woodblock copies made in ca. 1900 from works by Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800), a Japanese painter of the mid-Edo period notable for his striking modern aesthetic. More here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/polychrome-woodblocks-of-ito-jakuchu-birds
Nude - Artus Scheiner
Wizard’s Challenge (1992) serves the same basic function as Fighter’s Challenge: a duet scenario (that is, one-on-one) that gives a wizard character a chance to gain some experience and history before joining a larger campaign. Unlike a fighter, who primarily hits things, the wizard requires challenges that won’t threaten his fragile physical form so much. So, investigation and problem-solving abound! There is so little combat that the book encourages experience rewards for other outcomes, which, I am not sure that had ever appeared in a D&D adventure module before this point.
There’s a town which is both a base and the venue for some event-based encounters that involve the assassination of local mages. Eventually there is the exploration of a cave and a tower, and a confrontation with the villain. A number of well-developed side adventures fills things out. It’s a nice little package that does what it sets out to do and then offers a little more besides. With barely any combat!
Unlike Fighter’s Challenge, this scenario doesn’t use much from the Wizard’s Handbook, which makes sense as that book has a good deal less utility. It does take its Erik Olsen cover from a color plate from the Wizard’s Handbook IIRC. Karl Waller interiors. These are a bit less exciting (no monsters, mostly) but they are printed darker…I am not sure if there is a correlation there.
There’s Star Quality…
Ampex Premium Audio Cassettes with The Bee Gees, 1981
From The Archives
OSR enthusiasts still debate the best way to map wilderness areas with hex grids, but 1/4"=5 miles was good enough for author Dave Hargrave and mapper Carolyn Schultz in Death Heart: Arduin Dungeon 4 & Overland Adventure (Grimoire Games, 1980).
This adventure takes place in the Mountains of Madness, a name borrowed from Lovecraft. This map also shows the three previous Arduin Dungeons: The Howling Tower, The Citadel of Thunder, and Caliban's Seat, the latter taking a name from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Other references within include a rough stone shrine to "Pukel" by the path (from Tolkien) and a +3 sword named "Black Raiser" (a nod to Blackrazor from White Plume Mountain, published the previous year, another adventure with a non-gridded map).
Light as a Bubble…
Marchant Figuremaster Adding Machine, 1949
From The Archives
Colossus Rex - Outer Space Men (Colorforms)
If, March 1960, cover ary by John Pederson, Jr.
Thanks to Public Domain Review for hepping me to Gautier Dagoty's Essai d'Anatomie (1745). The plates are 2500px wide scans and are gonna make for GREAT collage elements. What a draftsman!
Raymond Biesinger’s “9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off”
I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller Enshittification: catch me next in Miami, Burbank, Lisbon! Full schedule here (New dates just added in San Diego and Denver!).
Raymond Biesinger's new book 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off is a masterclass in how creative workers can transform the endless, low-grade seething about the endless ripoffs of the industry into something productive and even profound:
https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/9-times-my-work-has-been-ripped-off/
Biesinger is an iconic designer and illustrator whose instantly recognizable style and entrepreneurial hustle have allowed him to achieve the coveted and elusive status of full-time, economically secure(ish) artist. But over the years – and even in recent times – Beisigner has found himself in the all-too-common and endlessly frustrating circumstance of being owed money by people who refuse to pay it. The sums involved are typically small by the standards of corporate budgets, but it's what Biesinger calls "needed money" – money that makes a huge difference to the life of the artist to whom it is owed.
Speaking from personal experience, getting stiffed is one of the most embittering things that can happen to a creative worker – or any worker (as the tradespeople who've had their wages stolen by Trump can attest). I remember every time I got shafted by a client and often find my mind returning to those humiliating, frustrating moments.
There was the "friend" who hired me to do some work and then just decided never to pay me the $150 we agreed on. There was the university prof who asked me to speak to his class and promised me reimbursement for the taxi and then stiffed me for 20 quid. There was the international magazine who commissioned a short story from me, accepted it, then tried to cram a bullshit contract down my throat and refused to discuss any modifications to its terrible terms, finally stiffing me for the $500 they owed me.
There was the largest publisher in the world, who commissioned a novella from me for an anthology, promising me tens of thousands of dollars, who accepted the novella, and then "discovered" they hadn't ever finalized the contract for the anthology and canceled it, stiffing me in the process. The fact that I went on to sell that novella several times over, both in book form and as a graphic novel, and for film rights (twice!), making far more money in the process, doesn't make me any less angry about these fuckers who just screwed me without a second thought.
Objectively speaking, there is no reason for me to dwell on these little humiliations. It doesn't do me any good. It doesn't make the dickheads who screwed me feel bad. It is, as the proverb goes, "drinking poison and hoping your enemy dies." But I can't help it.
Neither, it seems, can Biesinger. But unlike me, Biesinger has found an incredibly productive – and inspiring – way to deal with that otherwise pointless seething. In 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off, Biesinger reflects on the nine titular ripoffs, telling the story of how he got ripped off, what he did to get his own back, how he felt about it at the time, and how he feels about it in retrospect.
The book's subtitle ("An informal self-defense guide for independent creatives") sets up this book as a kind of manual for navigating these situations in your own life, and there's plenty of that in here – successes and failures for the rest of us to learn from. These stories are often very satisfying, as the little guy gets the justice he deserves. But the most interesting part of this book is Biesinger's reflections on the meaning of the different ripoffs he confronted, and how they relate to his own work.
Because – as Biesinger will tell you – he rips stuff off, too. All artists do. "Good artists copy; great artists steal." (said Picasso (who was ripping off Faulkner) (or Stravinsky) (or Eliot) (or Trilling). He carefully parses through the muddied ethics of lifting elements for collage, for inspiration, and just because you forgot that you weren't supposed to. Much of Biesinger's early work was collage, and (as a collagist myself), and you can't do that work without developing complicated feelings about creative ownership.
Raymond Biesinger’s “9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off”
I'm on a tour with my new book, the international bestseller Enshittification: catch me next in Miami, Burbank, Lisbon! Full schedule here (New dates just added in San Diego and Denver!).
Raymond Biesinger's new book 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off is a masterclass in how creative workers can transform the endless, low-grade seething about the endless ripoffs of the industry into something productive and even profound:
https://drawnandquarterly.com/books/9-times-my-work-has-been-ripped-off/
Biesinger is an iconic designer and illustrator whose instantly recognizable style and entrepreneurial hustle have allowed him to achieve the coveted and elusive status of full-time, economically secure(ish) artist. But over the years – and even in recent times – Beisigner has found himself in the all-too-common and endlessly frustrating circumstance of being owed money by people who refuse to pay it. The sums involved are typically small by the standards of corporate budgets, but it's what Biesinger calls "needed money" – money that makes a huge difference to the life of the artist to whom it is owed.
Speaking from personal experience, getting stiffed is one of the most embittering things that can happen to a creative worker – or any worker (as the tradespeople who've had their wages stolen by Trump can attest). I remember every time I got shafted by a client and often find my mind returning to those humiliating, frustrating moments.
There was the "friend" who hired me to do some work and then just decided never to pay me the $150 we agreed on. There was the university prof who asked me to speak to his class and promised me reimbursement for the taxi and then stiffed me for 20 quid. There was the international magazine who commissioned a short story from me, accepted it, then tried to cram a bullshit contract down my throat and refused to discuss any modifications to its terrible terms, finally stiffing me for the $500 they owed me.
There was the largest publisher in the world, who commissioned a novella from me for an anthology, promising me tens of thousands of dollars, who accepted the novella, and then "discovered" they hadn't ever finalized the contract for the anthology and canceled it, stiffing me in the process. The fact that I went on to sell that novella several times over, both in book form and as a graphic novel, and for film rights (twice!), making far more money in the process, doesn't make me any less angry about these fuckers who just screwed me without a second thought.
Objectively speaking, there is no reason for me to dwell on these little humiliations. It doesn't do me any good. It doesn't make the dickheads who screwed me feel bad. It is, as the proverb goes, "drinking poison and hoping your enemy dies." But I can't help it.
Neither, it seems, can Biesinger. But unlike me, Biesinger has found an incredibly productive – and inspiring – way to deal with that otherwise pointless seething. In 9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off, Biesinger reflects on the nine titular ripoffs, telling the story of how he got ripped off, what he did to get his own back, how he felt about it at the time, and how he feels about it in retrospect.
The book's subtitle ("An informal self-defense guide for independent creatives") sets up this book as a kind of manual for navigating these situations in your own life, and there's plenty of that in here – successes and failures for the rest of us to learn from. These stories are often very satisfying, as the little guy gets the justice he deserves. But the most interesting part of this book is Biesinger's reflections on the meaning of the different ripoffs he confronted, and how they relate to his own work.
Because – as Biesinger will tell you – he rips stuff off, too. All artists do. "Good artists copy; great artists steal." (said Picasso (who was ripping off Faulkner) (or Stravinsky) (or Eliot) (or Trilling). He carefully parses through the muddied ethics of lifting elements for collage, for inspiration, and just because you forgot that you weren't supposed to. Much of Biesinger's early work was collage, and (as a collagist myself), and you can't do that work without developing complicated feelings about creative ownership.
The former Overamstel prison (aka Bijlmerbajes), Amsterdam, Koos Pot-Keegstra, 1972-78.
Dirty words are politically potent
On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.
Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips, every now and again, you find a word that fits so nice and kentucky in the public discourse that it acquires a life of its own:
http://meaningofliff.free.fr/definition.php3?word=Kentucky
I've been trying to increase the salience of digital human rights in the public imagination for a quarter of a century, starting with the campaign to get people to appreciate that the internet matters, and that tech policy isn't just the delusion that the governance of spaces where sad nerds argue about Star Trek is somehow relevant to human thriving:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell
Now, eventually people figured out that a) the internet mattered and, b) it was going dreadfully wrong. So my job changed again, from "how the internet is governed matters" to "you can't fix the internet with wishful thinking," for example, when people said we could solve its problems by banning general purpose computers:
https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/
Or by banning working cryptography:
https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/
Or by redesigning web browsers to treat their owners as threats:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership
Or by using bots to filter every public utterance to ensure that they don't infringe copyright:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back
Or by forcing platforms to surveil and police their users' speech (aka "getting rid of Section 230"):
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/
Along the way, many of us have coined words in a bid to encapsulate the abstract, technical ideas at the core of these arguments. This isn't a vanity project! Creating a common vocabulary is a necessary precondition for having the substantive, vital debates we'll need to tackle the real, thorny issues raised by digital systems. So there's "free software," "open source," "filternet," "chat control," "back doors," and my own contributions, like "adversarial interoperability":
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability
Or "Competitive Compatibility" ("comcom"), a less-intimidatingly technical term for the same thing:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/competitive-compatibility-year-review
These have all found their own niches, but nearly all of them are just that: niche. Some don't even rise to "niche": they're shibboleths, insider terms that confuse and intimidate normies and distract from the real fights with semantic ones, like whether it's "FOSS" or "FLOSS" or something else entirely:
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss
But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to "enshittification," a word I coined in 2022:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
"Enshittification" took root in my hindbrain, rolling around and around, agglomerating lots of different thoughts and critiques I'd been making for years, crystallizing them into a coherent thesis:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
This kind of spontaneous crystallization is the dividend of doing lots of work in public, trying to take every half-formed thought and pin it down in public writing, something I've been doing for decades:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/
After those first couple articles, "enshittification" raced around the internet. There's two reasons for this: first, "enshittification" is a naughty word that's fun to say. Journalists love getting to put "shit" in their copy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html
Radio journalists love to tweak the FCC with cheekily bleeped syllables in slightly dirty compound words:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification
And nothing enlivens an academic's day like getting to use a word like "enshittification" in a journal article (doubtless this also amuses the editors, peer-reviewers, copyeditors, typesetters, etc):
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=enshittification&btnG=&oq=ensh
That was where I started, too! The first time I used "enshittification" was in a throwaway bad-tempered rant about the decay of Tripadvisor into utter uselessness, which drew a small chorus of appreciative chuckles about the word:
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065
The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave "enshittification" a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of "enshittification" petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.
Likewise: how do I know that the theory needed to be blended with swearing to break out of the esoteric realm of tech policy debates (which the public had roundly ignored for more than two decades)? Well, because I spent two decades writing about this stuff without making anything like the dents that appeared once I added an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to that critique.
Adding "enshittification" to the critique got me more column inches, a longer hearing, a more vibrant debate, than anything else I'd tried. First, Wired availed itself of the Creative Commons license on my second long-form article on the subject and reprinted it as a 4,200-word feature. I've been writing for Wired for more than thirty years and this is by far the longest thing I've published with them – a big, roomy, discursive piece that was run verbatim, with every one of my cherished darlings unmurdered.
I want to pull this part specifically out:
Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners.
This is such an interesting take. I see people online all day talking about the watering down or semantic shifting, but I've never really seen the coiner of a term make this argument. As a linguist, it's kind of a refreshing take. I'm often sort of torn between defending the technical sense of a word and letting people understand that semantic drift is normal and expected, but this is a very interesting thought -- that broad colloquial usage will lead some people to the more technical meaning and the theoretical framework behind it.
As a native Spanish (from Spain) speaker, I wonder if the possible translation "enmierdamiento" produces the same reaction of pearl clutching because of the word "mierda", which we use often but it's not one of the strongest bad words we use on a daily basis. We could use it in front of children of any age and we do, and they use it too, as a matter of fact.
I also know that, at least the Wikipedia article does not translate the title as "enmierdamiento", and I also wonder why they went for translating it as an explanation and ignoring the "shit" part of it. I agree with this translation, partly because as I said, swear words and bad words are so commonplace in Spain that they are not nearly as fun as in English.
Clive Barker (1952-) - The Stichlings Howl
OD&D and AD&D 1e had special rules for subduing dragons in combat so they could be sold, making the dragon itself potentially more valuable than its hoard (Clyde Duensing III, Dragon 134, June 1988)
i’m a simple bisexual. i see a pretty person, i [aggrieved noise]