What a Day

Nerd with nerd hair. Comics, art, too many literary refs, random good deeds, and social commentary. Whatever makes me happy that might spread joy. Or just memes. This blog lacks tags now otherwise I'd never reblog anything and people deserve recognition dammit.

[shadowen]

I'm scrolling Tumblr. I pause to watch a video of Amaury Guichon. He pours chocolate into a mold, then carefully removes the shape of a human head. There are time lapse clips of chocolate being formed into a body, limbs, and hair. As the final detail is finished, he steps back to reveal the figure of a beautiful woman, uncannily lifelike. He steps forward and places a delicate kiss on her lips. The figure, now a living human woman, stirs and looks around in wonder. Amaury Guichon looks into the camera with a wide smile and holds out his arms in presentation.

"Fucking chocolate guy," I mutter to myself before scrolling to the next post.

[rederiswrites]

Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

It's rude.

[katsdom]

The above is doubly true if the content of the email is something that will be important to the person receiving - especially something that affects them negatively. They see that this thing that affected them so much didn't matter enough to you to write it yourself. I was a bystander to such a thing not long ago and it was just awful.

[anonymusbosch]

concept: clothing brand which advertises on its price tags both the retail price of the item and the amount paid to the person who sewed it

[adiantum-sporophyte]

concept: labeling requirement

[anonymusbosch]

for example:

Patagonia, which trumpets its Fair Trade and Fair Pay for Labor policies, states on its website that ~1/3 of its garment factories pay a living wage or more, 1/3 pay between 50% and 80% of a living wage, and 1/3 pay less than 50% of a living wage.

Patagonia has one supplier in Bangladesh. It acknowledges that this supplier "has made meaningful progress towards living wages". Patagonia advertises its support for raising the minimum wage in Bangladesh to 23,000 taka per month ($196 USD). The current Global Living Wage Coalition estimate for the living wage in urban Bangladesh is 27,900 taka per month ($238 USD). The current minimum wage in Bangladesh is just 12,500 taka per month ($133 USD).

A single hooded puffer jacket from Patagonia retails for $289 USD.

[nattousan]

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' >:)

[nattousan]

and now, the birds

Birds 1 and 2/14: Red Winged Blackbird, Male and female, Agelaius phoeniceus

[nattousan]

Bird 3/14, American Robin, Turdus migratorius

[nattousan]

hoo boy, ok *out of breath*

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

this guy took me about 4 days to completely finish, all of those freakingk coverts were a bear to render

[nattousan]

speaking of obnoxious coverts:

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

the friggin stripes almost got me chat, i may not make it

[nattousan]

Madam....

[nattousan]

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

pleasantly simple to paint! next is the flickerrrrr

[nattousan]

*melts into goo*

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

nothing but pain and suffering, i'm sure hope the next bird will be much easier and with FAR less barring :)

[nattousan]

in other news, I am losing my mind hairline

[nattousan]

SHE'S DONE!!

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

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 🙏

[nattousan]

*does a little jig*

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 🥹

[nattousan]

aaaand another one bites the duck,

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

[nattousan]

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

[nattousan]

thanks for the reminder, kid

[nattousan]

at long last, we've reached the end...

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

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.

i'll see y'all soon :')

[todaysbird]

that’s a whole man.

[starsinfight]

you can't leave off the photo the sawmill worker took of the kiwi

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[tiktoksthataregood-ish]

[feministfandomforever]

Can't help but giggle is my favorite genre

[correctopinionhaver]

[beardedmrbean]

they used to let kids have real fun

[afriendofblahaj]

There's an xkcd for that :3

Side note: polonium-210 is a very dangerous isotope, however it "does not pose a radiation hazard when kept outside the body", as the alpha particle it emits have very little penetration power and cannot pierce even the outer layers of dead skin. It has still killed countless people, though, not because of children's rings, but because of tobacco. Polonium latches onto and concentrates in tobacco leaves, leading to heavy smokers being exposed to more radiation than survivors of the Chernobyl disaster.

It's always wild to me seeing comments about different toxins like this on information about random things in the past, but it's never discussed when it comes to cigarettes.

[kimmycup]

Like I don't think you guys comprehend what happened in Poland just now but everyone needs to be talking about it.

A random influencer decided he'll listen to an anti cancer song on loop. People liked it enough times he ended up listening for 9 days.

He raised 90 million in these 9 days, and then 160 million more over the last 10 hours, for a total of 250 million.

Hundreds and thousands of people signed up to donate marrow.

Hundreds of celebrities shaved their heads in solidarity.

The Foundation receiving this money had to create a special commission to figure out how to distribute the money.

The national TV stations got highjacked to stream this for hours because it was better news than anything happening in the world.

Because we broke and DOUBLED the world record for this kind of thing.

They raised about as much as the biggest running charity event in Poland did in a whole year with three decades of tradition and a goddamn army of people.

And they did it on a goddamn amateur set up in a shabby room sitting on folding chairs.

[kimmycup]

Little update: people keep donating despite the stream being over. We're at 280 million in the fight against cancer.

Łatwogang refuses to collab with companies that only reached out to him now because of popularity or give interviews. He said any medals people wanna give them should go to the doctors and nurses and the cancer patients.

Someone offered to renovate that shabby little flat for him as a thank you. He refused.

Someone counted up how many people appeared in that room during the whole thing - it was 319 total.

[belladonna-rx]

Love to hear it. Love news articles too.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/polish-nine-day-charity-stream-breaks-records-support-kids-with-cancer-2026-04-27/

Just love this headline phrasing.

Streamer crushes MrBeast charity record with $70 million raised for kids with cancer - Dexerto

Polish streamer Łatwogang’s charity livestream has raised over 203 million złoty for children with cancer, breaking the charity stream recor

[beaswellgirl]

yep, pretty much

[occudo]

I tried drawing random animals from memory in 2 minutes (based on a spilled ink video) but at the elephant I realised I'm really not good at it :'D So I ended up redrawing them with references just to see the difference, and ended up spending way too much time on it.

[occudo]

Part 2!

Went back and finished the video. There were more animals I never saw before (and one where I accidentally drawn a different one :"D ) but it's all done!

[monkeysky]

Minotaur is not a species

The Minotaur was named that because he was the son of King Minos. Anyone with a bull head has to be named after their dad, like the Kyletaur or something.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

[notjusthespongenextdoor]

For a city to be walkable. It must also be sittable.

[notjusthespongenextdoor]

#every time I read this phrase the same thing happens#I read it as shittable and go wait that can't be right#oh right they were talking about public benches that makes more sense#but public bathrooms available without fees should also be a thing tho#cities should definitely be shittable#it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME

it must also be shittable

[iguessweallcrazyithinktho]

Imagine being in your 80s and looking this good 😭 they so badass

[suzie-bee]

he's a 14 year old in 2004 he's allowed to say that to his arch enemy