xIKiEA

to quote a friend of mine: i'm radical | minor don't be weird | comms open for £$€¥99999999999999999 | what are the comms? anything if you can pay that much | i fail to make music on a regular basis

[xikiea]

here to make an aesthetic argument for the Virginia redistricting:

The old map is very boring.

Wow, the districts are blobs. No artistry, no compassion or tension, just "yep, the things are the way they are." This map is designed by people who hate life and happiness.

The new map is something worth admiring.

This map is designed by people who love art. All the districts look odd by themselves, but in this tapestry they combine to make a glorious flow from everywhere in Virginia to the hearts of Virginian culture. Even in the Appalachian southwest, the two forks end up pointing towards NOVA and Richmond.

In this way, it almost reminds of Munch's "Scream."

The curling lines in the painting all go towards the man; the painting is all about him. In this chaotic world, there is a form of beauty that it all spirals into the perspective of this one man. In the art of congressional districts, however, there is no need for the boardwalk grounding the image in a form of reality; the districts do highlight the reality of the good places in Virginia.

I'd want to take a look again at the map, but with the broader flow of the districts shown using lines:

Every line flows towards the places that make Virginia matter. It draws the eyes from the broad strokes in the rural districts to the finer details near Virginia's cities. Especially in NOVA, near DC, the detail inherently draws the eyes to where all Virginia's progress comes from. Richmond almost has a spiraling effect around it, and you have to know that an important city is there to appreciate finding the ends of the districts in that region. Last, we see Hampton Roads. On the coastline, it's easy to miss, especially with the commotion leading to NOVA, but there are some subtle details nodding to the importance of the region in Virginian history.

Other notes on district design and beauty after the cut:

This map, now used by Texas, does highlight the good regions, but they must be looked for. Most notable are Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It's clear how little importance Texas places on their cities, as the majority of the action in the districts is happening within the rural areas. However, if you look carefully enough you can see the districts slowly get smaller and smaller as your eyes circle in to Houston. In this case, as opposed to Virginia's new map, the eyes aren't pulled straight to the good areas, but instead gradually drawn in through noticing finer and finer detail.

Dallas/Fort Worth does attract the eyes a bit more directly, especially when reading the map as one would read a book and focusing on northernmost Texas, yielding a district that points directly to Dallas. Unfortunately, this robs us of the ability to follow any possible flow of the eyes to get to the city, and instead must first take a broader look around Dallas to notice northeast Texas all pointing in its direction. This map forces you to encounter Dallas in a certain way instead of discovering it for yourself through any line your eyes would follow.

Austin and San Antonio would have been much more interesting had the detail of the Texas gerrymander not been so fine. It would have to be appreciated from closer, with a larger size so the detail could be adequately captured, and even then the nature of the spirals and surgical incisions around the cities make for a worse viewing than Virginia.

Illinois

This map is one of the most interesting and beautiful I've seen. Obviously, the heart of Illinois is Cook County and Chicago, which you wouldn't immediately have your attention drawn towards if you began by looking straight to the middle. Fortunately, district 13 there (or the flow of district 15's two sections, or the bottom of district 17) leads you straight to the bottom of district 2, which then leads you straight to Chicago and the wonderful mess surrounding it. If you follow the general direction of what I can only call an explosion away from Chicago, you'll end up in district 17, which will lead you back to district 2 to loop again. I colored some of the districts a year and a bit ago (https://www.tumblr.com/xikiea/766177675158192128/illinois-w-its-congressional-districts-are-very), and the reason it could be like this was because of how important Chicago is to Illinois congressional districts.

Real talk, I genuinely do like the aesthetics of the new Virginia gerrymander and ended up making this semi-joke of a post. I have not said a single line here I don't believe, but my appreciation of these aesthetics is separate from my unending support for the Illinois and Virginia maps and my disdain for every Texas Republican.

[xikiea]

Six seven

hello i guess

[xikiea]

isn't it so fucking cool how beethoven just like wrote the moonlight sonata while deaf. like how did he do that entire thing while not being able to actually listen to its performance. i know a lot of ink has been spilled (to use a phrase i learned today) on this topic but i'm having this revelation and sharing it with you all today with much less professional language for some reason. also like the first movement is great because you listen for the harmonic undercurrent beneath the otherwise repetitive rhythm, the second movement is great because it's just funky chords and off-beats (in 3/4 time (wild)) and the third movement is great because holy shit

[i-like-reblog-maps]

What month were you born in?

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Voting ended onMay 28

Doing a final project in my stats class, we have to pick a subject and collect data on it. We need at least 100 data points, and I figured this blog is big enough that a poll on here could get to that pretty easily!

Doing my project on if it’s more likely to be born in certain months :]

I have gotten the OK from my teacher to collect data using a Tumblr poll, btw. I’m also going to have to send her this post as proof of where I got the data from / proof I didn’t just make up the numbers. So. Behave

[teaboot]

The biggest misconception in public schools is that literary analysis is about proving you can be right or wrong about a book you read

Literary analysis isn’t about the book

It’s not even about being right

It’s about performing an investigation and presenting your case to the jury

It doesn’t matter if your defendant killed that guy or not. If you can convince the jury he didn’t, you’ve won

And the incredible life skill of spinning bulletproof bullshit out your ass with a handful of facts and a prayer is soooooooo much more valuable than anyone’s ever gonna tell you

[teaboot]

If the average tweenager knew that good media analysis meant you could force your English teacher to admit that fuckin- (rolls dice) What’s Eating Gilber Grape is a metaphor for (rolls dice again) Why the crack cocaine epidemic is good actually- we would have far better literacy and critical thinking skills as a nation. And I stand by that

[teaboot]

You could develop the magical psychic and illusory power to force the middle aged bitchfuck who makes you raise your hand and beg for permission to take a shit accept the premise that Cocomelon is a subversive and scathing artistic commentary on the pitfalls of modern democracy. Chat GPT essay engines are stealing this from you

[avonsdrabbles]

The most significant lesson I ever received in Literature classes was that everything is actually about abortion.

My regular teacher was out for the day, so the “this guy works here but nobody quite knows what he’s supposed to do” substitute was in for her. His name was Mr. Moony. I suspect, knowing more now, that Mr. Moony was the special education coordinator for gifted and talented students. But that’s all besides the point.

The only thing that mattered about Mr. Moony for this story is that every student knew you never learned anything when he was in, because he was always batshit insane. He would completely disregard plans, throw them away, and tell us to do something different.

When he came in, we had just finished reading Waiting for Godot. We were well on our way to an AP Lit exam, tired and worried, and we had a practice essay coming up based on this play. And he said, “you’re all burnt the hell out, so I’m going to write an essay for you.” We all cheered because, hell yes, a lecture day. We didn’t have to do shit. We could all tune out and stop caring.

And then he started going.

We were enraptured. This man deconstructed the two act play into a masterpiece, quoting ancient literature on theology and God, as well as personal details about the author, to reveal to us all that, actually, Waiting for Godot was the author’s roundabout way to show the anguish behind the politics of the pro-life/anti-choice movements, and the author’s criticisms of abortion.

He went on for a half hour, writing faster than we could really keep up with. By the end of his rant, we were all nodding along. At the end, he slammed his hand on the board and shouted “ABORTION” to really make his point.

“So, do you all think that’s what this story is about?”

The majority of us nodded, myself included. And this man looked at us, scrunched his face like Kermit the Fucking Frog, and went, “no the fuck it’s not. I made all that up.”

There was a beat of everyone feeling like their time was wasted. Some students very frustrated because they were trying to take notes and just realized it all was fabricated. One or two who were angry about being woken up to him shouting abortion.

And then he looked at us. “How many of you only believe it’s about abortion because that’s what I just told you to think?”

Quite a few raised their hands.

“Then I did English good.”

The rest of the time of class was spent with him teaching us various styles of analysis, though sadly my amnesia has claimed most of this part from me. I remember my belief in English being entirely shaken at this point. But at the same time, I also got what he was saying, and it opened my eyes to new things.

There is no right answer in literary analysis. There’s just answers people want to hear, or answers that are compelling, or answers that aren’t those things. The answer that Waiting for Godot was about abortion was not something all of us wanted to hear, but he made the answer sound compelling — and so we were riveted.

My next essay I wrote for that class was about the setting of the play, and how the entirety of Waiting for Godot centers on the anxieties of losing the modern family — and even modern life as we know it — to technology, and via that idea, the climate crisis.

I got a 100%. My teacher highlighted my (thankfully anonymous to the class) essay, particularly because the first sentence was “compelling,” due to my absence of proper grammar rules; I’d started it off by just saying, “trees.”

That was the day I really knew I loved English — not just enjoyed reading and writing, but genuine love of playing with the language. And it’s this love that I try to instill into my students.

[xikiea]

fuck i think i became part of a livestream chat. life is over, i have succumbed to the rot, et cetera.

[beardedmrbean]

this sounds like a party to me

[xikiea]

just remembered i have free will and can just fix simple things that are wrong. the handle on my drawer was installed upside down and i used a screwdriver to put it back. 3 minutes, life instantly 300% better. rate of 100% per minute. who knows what else i could be improving now

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[jadeharleyinc]

hey sorry. can you stand a little further back and we try again

[c3rvida3]

I just learned that a lot of vintage perfumes and fragrances were intentionally created to blend well with the ever-present smell of cigarettes, and in specific a lot of iconic ones that are super musky and floral and civet-heavy were intended to compliment the smell of fur coats or even "refresh" that new fur coat smell, which is one of the reasons (besides just shifting preferences and trends) that a lot of them smell really, really bad to modern noses.

I bet there's some stunning genius diva out there right now who meticulously coordinates her Victoria's Secret body mists with her vape flavors.

[transxfiles]

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

tiktoks with vine energy pt. 8

[mysecretlittletmblr]

You gotta watch this one the whole way through.

[yamainuken]

Quiet Time

There is a specific reason behind this composition.

While the vertical format is great for smartphone screens, I also wanted to use negative space to create a distinct mood.

I believe that negative space can express a character's inner emotions. In this piece, the character is small, and the background takes up about 80% of the canvas. By drawing the character so small, I can evoke a sense of loneliness and solitude.

Another key point is the placement of the cloud shadows. I intentionally kept Caine out of the shadow. You can see the boundary between the light and the cloud shadow. I used this high contrast to make the character stand out and emphasize their presence.

Finally, let us look at Caine's angle. I purposely hid Caine's face and positioned them to show their back. If their expression were visible, this artwork would probably feel cute rather than lonely. I enjoy drawing figures from angles where you cannot see their faces. This approach leaves room for viewers to wonder what the character is thinking.

I hope you enjoy discovering these little details and techniques that I put into my everyday artwork💡

[whenfatecollides]

Xena Warrior Princess 3.05 Gabrielle's hope

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

She dodged a bullet

[funny-tik-toks]

[kayas-wife]

this is from an Australian youtube channel where they go to hat tower and drop things

[white-throated-packrat]

Water doesn’t compress very much, so once it hit it’s terminal velocity, it was basically a solid ball, not a liquid. This is why you can use water to cut things if you have a high enough pressurized jet of it.

[gigglingkat]

The reverse POV of “if you’re too high, hitting the water is like hitting concrete”

[bitchassslytherinsnakery]

Well that's not in one piece anymore

[exhaustedscreen-deactivated2019]

‘The grave of the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke in Novodevichye Cemetery in Moscow is surmounted by a stone on which is engraved a rest beneath a fermata with a triple forte noted at the bottom: A very, very loud extended silence.’

- John Biguenet, Silence (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), p.49.

[specificfuckery]

The fermata suggests the indicated notation (in this case, a rest) is to continue at the discretion of the conductor. When the chosen conductor arrives, Alfred Schnittke will rise again.

[xikiea]

some other time i would have been scared to keep my old bad posts up. but not today. i have progressed as a person from being loving to being hateful and need that documented as thoroughly as possible

[supportnuclearpower]

So I turned 68246 a few years ago and I figured it was probably time I finally get my drivers license so I only have to worry about the pyramid scheme changes not the driving without a license charges next time. I do think those changes are stupid, Ive been driving my car without a license since before cars were invented, but I keep failing the test somehow. So. I was taking the driving test and I figured that I had been failing before because I had been hitting to few people(usually between 20-30), so I went out of my way to hit 93 people. It was a new record for me. But I still failed! So I asked the instructor, “How many people do I need to hit to pass? This is ridiculous!” And she said, with growing horror in her eyes, “None, you’re not supposed to hit anybody. I have to call the police now.” So I got arrested for “vehicular manslaughter.” Which is not real! Car are for hitting people. If you wanted to get somewhere, you would ride a bike. They’re making everything illegal nowadays. Anyways, I was in court earlier today for the “vehicular manslaughter” and I got released! I don’t have money for a lawyer anymore, so I had to call my friend, you know, the one with too many eyes, to look a the judge really hard so she would disintegrate. Worked like a charm yet again! It was, unfortunately, in exchange for my darkest secrets(im running out of them now) but it’s worth it. Then, when I got home to my pit, I found my new drivers license in the mail! Turns out, using my turn signal canceled out the “vehicular manslaughter.” The DMV said they had never heard of anyone use a turn signal before and was really impressed.