One of the most annoying genres of people on the internet are people who act like they believe science is one single monolithic thing. Like, you'll see an article saying something like "scientists studying the movement of tectonic plates", and then in the comments there'll be several smug people saying "smh why are scientists doing this instead of finding a cure for cancer", like. Why would a geologist be doing that.
“For New York City Pride in 1994 (Stonewall 25), Baker created a mile-long rainbow flag that was carried down First Avenue in Manhattan. During the parade, Baker used scissors to cut segments from the flag to be rushed to Fifth Avenue for an impromptu protest march in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the headquarters of New York City’s anti-gay Catholic archdiocese.
^“At the bottom of the image is the segment of the flag cut for the St. Patrick’s Cathedral protest. Photograph by Mick Hicks”
“Gilbert Baker wearing a white sequined dress (right) and other protestors triumphantly march the cut pieces of the mile-long flag past St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Photograph by Charles Beal”
Alright, everyone in the comments is like "it was closed because of pirating and don't you dare list alternatives because loose lips sink ships"
This is completly false. Rabbit shut down because they had no business model, were making no money whatsoever, and went bankrupt. What Rabbit did (host and stream remote-control virtual machines) is not inherently illegal by any means.
Hyperbeam is the exact same thing and I've been using it for years for perfectly legal activities -- you can display maps for d&d games, have youtube watch parties, play tag-team neopets, whatever you like. It has full access to the internet, so could someone do illegal things? Probably. But you could also do illegal things with your normal web browser. Not my problem.
Unlike Rabbit, Hyperbeam has a side-hustle (main-hustle?) offering more advanced virtual machines to businesses and schools, so they do actually make money and should stick around longer.
Now go experience the world wide web with your friends.
I don't have ms paint but just pretend it is bc no one knows paintbrush for mac but i can assure you it was just as hellish if not worse since theres technically no brushes other than a pixel round brush and the worst looking freaking spray paint
if you vote me for president i vow to make everything the ocean again. no more land only ocean. this will solve all of our problems and replace them with new, far more interesting problems
if you want butterflies, you need to live with caterpillars.
i am not being metaphorical, i work in a garden center, stop buying plants 'to bring in the bees and butterflies' and then immediately poisoning every caterpillar that dares to consume a single leaf
you will not get butterflies if you kill all the things that turn into butterflies! what are you doing!
getting a lot of responses to this going 'ok but it would be good as a metaphor though' so I will accept a metaphorical interpretation as long as you ALSO (!) promise to be considerate towards larval forms of insects specifically and biodiversity in general, deal?
ok so, I approached my local library with a proposal to donate a mural as a way to A: build portfolio/gain practical experience and B: give back to a beloved public institution. The director was very enthusiastic about it and i've been working on it since the beginning of March. Come with me as I endeavor to paint what is in all honesty an excessive amount of birds
I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study
after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines
et voila
and that was a whole week on it's own so next comes the paintin' >:)
my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on
this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏
BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos
the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise
ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!
Also thank you everyone for your kind words and support throughout this whole process, it's been a genuine treat thinking there are potentially thousands of you out there cheering me on while I paint this 🥹
we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos
the 16th is looming in the distance so i'm trying to get thru these as quickly as i can so i can have as much time for the GBH as possible. i still need to do the names next to all of them so i've got about a week and a half to finish everything which is GREAT because i have adhd and nothing gets my ass in gear like a fuckin deadline, let me tell you
power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,
the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis
and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.
Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp
thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream but with 60 clones of the same guy
a small taste of whats to come.
There's now a PART 2!!!
I've been loving the hell out of Living the Dream and I've always had one Mii who I absolutely adore. If you've ever seen my account, you know who I'm talking about considering I draw him all the time; Quit!!!!
^ here he is on my main island.
So I decided I wanted to run an experiment: I would make an alt save with 60 of the same Mii. Every single Mii will be a clone of our beloved Quit (seen above) with the exact same personality, voice, face, dating preferences (all Quits can date all 3 gender options), everything. The only difference is that 20 of them are male, 20 are female, and 20 are nonbinary (because I'm curious on if Mii gender impacts how a Mii forms friends).
It was a lengthy process making 60 of the exact same Mii, but finally...
Welcome to Quitland.
My general rule for this save file is that I must interfere as little as possible with the Quits lives. I'll only give them food, new clothing, treasures, or new housing if they directly ask me for it. I can't force any relationships either (barring the tutorial which forces you to do so). I want to see how these 60 clones all grow and adapt, and how they will eventually differentiate themselves.
I had put all 60 Quits in at midnight so right after doing so I decided to head to bed. I then proceeded to spend the chunk of my morning doing quite possibly the stupidest thing ever:
Creating a giant pixelated Quit to put on the ground.
From there I learned about something kind of interesting. Turns out when you create 60 Miis all at once, with all of them having no little quirks, friends, or really anything to define their AI past their basic personality, they become...
...kind of stupid.
Here are some examples of small groups of Quit randomly choosing to follow one "leader" Quit for no reason. They REALLY enjoy doing this. Its not uncommon for small packs of Quit (usually containing 2-6 members) to just stalk another Quit for extended periods of time. I believe they are developing pack-hunting strategies. This scares me.
They also enjoyed talking. A lot. My entire island is just constantly full of random Quit chatter 24/7.
I'll admit though it is very rewarding just seeing all of them standing about, doing weird Quit things. I feel like a proud father of 60 single-celled organisms.
Also I got quite possibly the funniest Tomodachi Life clip I've ever seen:
There ain't a single brain cell between any of them. Honestly it was really fun just watching them frolic about, like an ant farm made entirely up of brainless homunculus.
In terms of actual development between the Quits, some of them became acquaintances and a few even became friends, but the REAL development was between Quit 1 (known as Original Quit) and Quit 3:
Quit 3 started crushing on Original, and just a few minutes after that Quit 3 surprised me by deciding to just up and confess to Original. This was pretty shocking...so far, every other Quit has been fairly reserved in making relationships. While plenty of them became "like-minded" (not surprising considering they all have the same mind), few were brave enough to become friends, let alone lovers. Perhaps Quit 3 is some kind of deviant Quit???
Well lucky for Quit 3, their boldness ended up paying off...and Quitland got its first couple!
I wonder how long it'll last...
Besides that, only one other romantic event happened. Which was Quit 48 developing a crush on Quit 28. (I know it's hard to tell that this Quit is different from the Quit above...but trust me, its a different guy.)
...could this be considered an example of egomania...? I mean they look identical...
And that was about everything interesting that happened on day 1 of my little experiment. I might post more if anyone has any interest in the Quit ant farm. This is a little different from what I usually post so hopefully the people who follow me just for the art don't mind a bit of a change lol. To end off, here's some group pictures after I finally unlocked the photo mode:
Personally I'm a really big fan of chicken Quit right now.