Where's My Giant Robot Car?

Call me Specs. I have a degree in Digital Arts and Animation. dubious doodles is my art tag. Feel free to say hello!

[hoppip]

In the end, it’s about not worrying from the beginning!

[movementnudge]

Movement nudge, hand mobility! 🙌

X

[ruffboi-mags]

1) do this even if you're under 40. seriously. I definitely should have been doing something like this for years and I only turned 40 a month and a half ago

2) if you're like me just now trying this going "oh god i've only done 15 and i think my hands are cramping" start lower than 30 and increase by 5 once whatever number you're doing no longer makes your hand cramp up. I can manage about 15 per exercise at the moment.

[creations-by-chaosfay]

If you're hypermobile, be especially gentle.

[wigglybunfish]

in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.

*Nüwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.

thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.

[drawn for the prompt: an AU of ART and MB's first meeting and conversation - e.g. another look at their first meeting from a fantasy, historical, or (non-canon) sci-fi lens! Any perspective is fine. The only constraint is that it cannot be set in the canon universe. Any visibly non-canon AU- fantasy, human, historical, etc. - anything goes!]

[andhumanslovedstories]

There's something about lazily studying Mandarin Chinese that's made language learning seem far more approachable. It would be cool to be fluent one day, but I've always been clear with myself that I don't have an actual goal with this besides maintaining a streak in my language app for a certain amount of days. I can quit whenever I want, which is remarkably good at making me not quit. Sometimes I have days where I study Chinese for hours because I'm having a good time, but mostly I'm lazily plucking at this language for sometimes literally a one minute a day. After a year of doing that, even though Chinese is so difficult and different from English, it turns out I can still get from knowing absolutely nothing to knowing slightly more than nothing in a pretty short period. An incredible jump in knowledge with not that much work. In fact, the gap between English and Chinese is so vast that microscopic progress feels incredible. When I have to write out literally any pinyin by memory, and I get 75% of the letters and none of the tones correct, I feel like a genius. Today I almost spelled 音乐会/yīnyuèhuì correctly on my first try, and I wanted to call everyone over to see how I effortlessly nailed two-thirds of it.

It's much more encouraging than any of the "easier" languages I've studied. My primary emotion when studying Spanish was embarrassment that I was still so bad at Spanish. Meanwhile, now I'm like, "If I can suck at Chinese, I can suck at anything," which is very inspirational because doing something really, really badly means that you are in fact doing it. I saw an ad for Hebrew language learning course and had the realization that I could probably get really, really, really, really bad at Hebrew in what, a couple months? The thought made me very excited. I could get horrendous at any language in a couple months. I could get horrendous at anything. With a little time and not that much effort, I could nail two-thirds of shooting a basketball. The sky's the limit, but if you don't care about getting all the way up there, one inch off the ground can still be pretty impressive.

[androdragynous]

there is a screen reader / magnification program that is the only one the low vision clinic knows of with these features and it is $650 Canadian Dollars behind specific approved vendors that require you to be geographically close to them and get government approval of a degree that I am only just now reaching after being visually impaired for going on seven years. I feel normal about this

[androdragynous]

if you can code a program that does any or all of the following:

Magnifies a display beyond standard options with keyboard / mouse movement inputs or voice commands,

Can read text on the screen,

Has different color filter options for text / background distinction,

Can change and magnify the cursor beyond standard amounts,

Works on Windows or more than just Windows,

Has a keyboard echo (says the character you've pressed on the keyboard out loud)

... there is a genuine, GENUINE need for you to code this and put it at a more accessible price point than $650 Canadian Dollars which I also just learned is a SUBSCRIPTION FEE AND NOT EVEN PERPETUAL. if you are reading this and able to code I am begging you. would genuinely change lives

[sunnyfiny22]

“No, it is Captain Harcourt,” she said; her face was pale, and her spray of freckles stood out prominently against it, but she was clearly determined to defend her rights; she gave Rankin a strangely defiant look as she spoke.

Naomi Novik, His Majesty’s Dragon

Captain Harcourt of Lily, in colour.

[marinolta]

Howard Buehler Collection: Misc Family Photos 50s-80s

[uptownthots]

“it isnt something you have to read critically” well 😭

[uptownthots]

this technically is true but I think this also perfectly encapsulates why I am inherently distrustful of like. “”cozy”” “turn your brain off” fiction lmfao. like okay WHO gets to turn their brain off and who has to suffer through bigoted caricatures of themselves while everyone else is having cozy silly no brain time 😐

[sepublic]

I do think it’s interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. It’s very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isn’t to say the stories of Olde didn’t have fun with loopholes either though).

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

So yeah. Dracula isn’t stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like… That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and aren’t even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century he’d probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldn’t help.

[bebs-art-gallery]

Albert Square, Manchester (1910) by Adolphe Valette | Contemporary Art (2015) by Emily Allchurch

[bread-making-vikings]

the top is an original, from 1910, the bottom is a new version painted in 2015

[spacedouterri]

THE BOTTOM IS A PAINTING????

[open-sketchbook]

also does a really good job reminding the view just how much air quality has improved since we stopped burning coal in every building lol

[macgyvermedical]

Homemade Electrolyte Mix

Guess what, folks! It's summer! And it's gonna be a hot one, because they all are, recently :(

Did you know you can lose about a liter of water, a gram of sodium, and 300mg potassium in an hour of profuse sweating? If you're working outside in the heat, or even just existing in a very hot and humid environment, you're gonna want to replace the electrolytes you're losing, and you're gonna have to be purposeful about it.

But electrolyte drink mixes, while convenient, are surprisingly expensive for what they are. So I'm going to give you a top secret recipe that you can whip up for literal pennies that will replace what you're losing in sweat.

1 liter of water

1/2 tsp table salt (about 1g of sodium)

1/8 tsp potassium chloride salt substitute (about 350mg potassium. NuSalt is a popular brand, it's sold near the salt at the grocery store. If you don't have this, replace 6oz (180ml) of the water with orange juice or eat something high in potassium, like a banana, each hour you're sweating)

6-8 tsp of granulated sugar (you do actually need this and not a no calorie alternative- sugar helps speed up the absorption of electrolytes in the gut. You can omit if using orange juice for your potassium source, though!)

Lemon or lime juice for flavor, optional

Mix together and drink 1 liter for each hour you're profusely sweating. Adjust your intake so that your pee is light yellow.

If you want to make this mix ahead of time, put 1x the recipe of salt, sugar, and potassium, along with unsweetened Kool Aid powder or crystalized lemon or lime juice, in a small baggie. I do not recommend putting multiple servings worth in a baggie, as the ingredients settle differently and you might not get the right ratio.

NOTE: like any electrolyte drink, it works better if you sip it instead of chugging. If you chug it, you end up pooping out a lot of your electrolytes, even with the sugar.

Source: Where There Is No Doctor by David Werner

[headspace-hotel]

I had mistakenly absorbed so much bullshit about sports drinks being "unhealthy" that I learned the hard way that when you work outdoors chugging plain water will NOT rehydrate you properly. great resource thx

[lastoneout]

If you want a fun snack version of this you can put that salt and potassium in with a box of jello and make a nice rehydrating snack that also cools you down! Jello is mostly water, and the flavor and sugar help mask the salt/potassium flavor if you have sensory issues or otherwise struggle with strong flavors—I can taste that gram of salt no matter what drink I put it in and stuff like liquid IV/LMNT packs and sports drinks are far more hit than miss for me—and so it's a good way to get your elecrolytes in, and it's also fun :D I get blue raspberry jello and put it in little mason jars and call them my mana potions.

[romanceyourdemons]

an interesting thing about clothing in late medieval and early modern europe is that, while lower class people generally did wear brightly colored clothing instead of muddy brown clothes, there were very distinct differences in the color of clothing people of different classes wore. clothing was done with all natural dyes, of course, but they were either dyed locally with cheap and easily accessible ingredients, or they were dyed in holland, italy, the ottoman empire, or even further afield using a jealously guarded secret combination of difficult-to-access ingredients, including (crucially) better-quality fixatives. this means that not only did expensive imported fabrics maintain a dark, rich tone much longer than a locally dyed one, which would get a washed out look after a couple of years, but there were also certain colors that a working class farmer literally couldn’t afford to wear, and even though the difference between a cheap local lincoln green and an expensive imported popingay green might seem subtle to us people then seem to have been very sensitive to those differences. that’s also why the colors puritans tended to wear seem uncharacteristically bright to our modern eye—black was such a rich and expensive color that it would be inappropriate to wear to anything other than a portrait sitting, but the colors orange and kendall green were deeply humble in their origins

[junkfoodcinemas]

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) Dir. Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert

[geeseareassholes]

[wigglybunfish]

in which murderbot is a very normal terracotta soldier and ART the dragon spirit of a chinese junk who dwells in the ship's keel. they meet in the ming dynasty perhaps, when ppl are sailing places extra willy-nilly.

*Nüwa is the mother goddess in chinese mythology, known for creating humanity from yellow clay and repairing the sky.

thank you @mutualrapport for hosting the event! original prompt below.

[drawn for the prompt: an AU of ART and MB's first meeting and conversation - e.g. another look at their first meeting from a fantasy, historical, or (non-canon) sci-fi lens! Any perspective is fine. The only constraint is that it cannot be set in the canon universe. Any visibly non-canon AU- fantasy, human, historical, etc. - anything goes!]

[catchymemes]

[applesforthis]

[Image ID: a social media post from user Colin (@colinarmis) reading "the best graffiti i have ever seen in my life at the library today" with a photo showing a close-up view of what seems to be a light-brown reshelving cart inside a library. On the end of the cart, in black fine-tip pen, someone has drawn a picture of a dachshund with tiny little feet, a happy little smile and huge, outstretched, winglike ears à la Dumbo the Elephant. The dog appears to be launching themself into the air as if taking flight. In the background thin grey carpet is visible on the floor, and library books on a white bookshelf. /End image ID]

[vinelark]

hmm my former landlords are trying to deduct a frankly off the rails amount of money from our security deposit…my time has come once again

[vinelark]

i was chatting with a coworker about this whole saga today and someone nearby popped into the convo to be like “you know, you can use chatgpt to write a demand letter!” and i sort of blinked and went, “okay. i did it myself, though.” and she was like, “yeah but it can tell you what laws and stuff are relevant” and i was like, “i also did research myself.” and she was very well-meaning but she said “chatgpt” like six more times before she left and it was genuinely baffling to me, this insistence on it.

and in the one hand, did i enjoy spending hours researching housing regulations in my state? not especially. drafting this email was stressful. but on the other hand, did i learn a lot by doing that research? yeah, i did. i’m more prepared for my current and future leases. i used some of that info to make decisions about a new renter’s insurance policy. i already told three different people about things i learned that are relevant to their leases that they didn’t know yet. (pro tip: see if you’re supposed to be getting annual interest payments on your security deposit! also look up what specific appliances your landlords must legally provide as of 2026.) i also got to reconnect with my cousin for a bit because her job gave her specific insight on part of the situation, and i’d much rather do that than have a chatbot make shit up for me.

also, i drafted that email with the power of friendship (friends angry on our behalf) and spite (from landlords telling me not to do my research). chatgpt could never.

(we got the money back, by the way 💪)

[chantylay]

Please never use generative AI tools for any kind of legal dispute. It does not know what laws or court cases are. It will make up something that sounds favorable to you, and you will get crushed. There are free resources out there to learn this stuff. And sometimes attorneys will offer free consultations or volunteer at a free legal clinic. OP didn't just do it themselves to do extra work or some shit. This is really the only viable way to do things short of hiring a professional to do it for you.

ChatGPT is not easier or faster in matters like this. It is a shot to the foot.

[mommahoney]

Lying Liars

YES!

[gaeliclass]

Law to make it illegal to lie in elections passed in Senedd

Welsh parliament agrees law to outlaw lying in future Senedd election campaigns.

[katiedingo]

I had to check this wasn’t The Onion