Yoooooo!!!!

lmao adobe/pantone charging a subscription fee for color palettes & replacing those colors with black on old pieces of artwork if you don’t pay up

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

tumblr allowing titties again is cool and all but are they gonna do anything to un-blur all the accounts that have been blurred for things like titties.

to all my researchers, students and people in general who love learning: if you don't know this already, i'm about to give you a game changer

connectedpapers

the basic rundown is: you use the search bar to enter a topic, scientific paper name or DOI. the website then offers you a list of papers on the topic, and you choose the one you're looking for/most relevant one. from here, it makes a tree diagram of related papers that are clustered based on topic relatability and colour-coded by time they were produced!

for example: here i search "human B12"

i go ahead and choose the first paper, meaning my graph will be based around it and start from the topics of "b12 levels" and "fraility syndrome"

here is the graph output! you can scroll through all the papers included on the left, and clicking on each one shows you it's position on the chart + will pull up details on the paper on the right hand column (title, authors, citations, abstract/summary and links where the paper can be found)

you get a few free graphs a month before you have to sign up, and i think the free version gives you up to 5 a month. there are paid versions but it really depends how often you need to use this kinda thing.

I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.

I wish kinky sex ed wasn't so stigmatized even among left-leaning "sex positive" circles. Everyone's all "uwu I'm a sub I'll do anything you ask" okay mommy wants you to read The New Bottoming Book so you learn how to sub without hurting yourself since your sex ed up to this point is porn and your ex boyfriend Jared who liked to choke you incorrectly

How do you go about getting such high quality scans of your art?

ok bear with me cuz this is going to be a lengthy post since I see a lot of people struggle with this and I think I could help by detailing my process.

before anything else I have to remark, this whole process only works with paper, loose canvas and any other media that can at least bend and warp a little in order to properly fit into a flatbed scanner, if you're working on on hard/non-maleable surfaces like wood pannel or mounted canvas, I recommend these tutorials:

Now, the first step is the most crucial: USE A GOOD QUALITY SCANNER! a scanner that's capable of obtaining photographic quality images is crucial, as there's no amount of editing that can salvage an image that has been overexposed, burnt, and artifacted to hell and back, here's an example: on the left, a scan of one of my paintings taken on the scanner of a cheap all-in-one printer. on the right, the same painting, scanned on a dedicated HP Scanjet G4050 flatbed scanner, which is the scanner that I still use to this day.

The difference might seem minimal at first, but when you start getting up close, the differences become REALLY apparent, not only are the colors washed out and muddy on the all-in-one scanner; there's some heavy artifacting on its scan as well as random blurry spots that makes the image look much worse, and the overexposure has completely killed the paper grain which is much more visible on the flatbed scan.

it's worth pointing out that both images you see here are what they looked like /AFTER/ adjustments and corrections in photoshop; the first one, as bad as it looks, took me several hours to of tweaking to get to that point, while the latter took me about 10 minutes of saturation adjustments to make it look as close as possible to the original painting. the reasons for this stark difference in quality are very simple: all-in-one printer-scanners ARE NOT made for scanning art, they're made for scanning documents, so the quality needed for that is much lower than the one needed for a painting or a photograph, so what you need instead is a dedicated, photographic quality flatbed scanner. One that I could recommend, not from personal experience but from recommendation from my peers, is the Epson Perfection V550/V600 Photo Scanner, BUT I don't want you to think from this that you NEED to shell out the big bucks into the most expensive and latest equipment in order to be able to get decent scans of your art, the previously mentioned scanner that I used is a lower-mid range device and is almost 10 years old, so if you ask me, it is perfectly acceptable to buy a pre-owned, used, refurbished photo scanner, as long as it's in decent shape and works as intended, you will be able to get what you need out of it. (***EDIT*** Another tumblr user with experience in professional media scanning has pointed out that while these scanner models are great and very advanced, they are very expensive and most of that pricetag is related to photographic scanning features that are not useful for anything that isn't photo negatives or digitizing of documents, their suggested model instead is the Epson Perfection V19, because "it's running the same photo scanning firmware as the higher-end models, has the same bit depth and still scans up to 4800 dpi. They run ~$70 brand new, even cheaper if you find them on sale or used.") Ok, I have the scanner, what now? the first and most important thing to consider when you're going to scan your work is: SCAN AT THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE QUALITY THAT YOUR COMPUTER CAN HANDLE, most if not all scanners give you the option to select the dpi (dots per inch) measurements at which you want to scan. the standard for "decent" quality images is 300 dpi, but I personally find that extremely insufficient, yes, it will give you decent-ish images to post on social media, but if you want to do anything else with your images, like making high quality prints, posters, or high quality closeups of your work, those 300 dpi are going to fall really short and become extremely limiting. personally, I scan ALL my work at 1200 dpi, I could go higher than that all the way to 2400 but honestly, I've yet to find a use for an image size that big, at 1200 you already have enough quality to print a house-sized poster with a pretty decent looking final product, so unless you plan on hanging copies of your work to the side of the Empire State building or if you're trying to scan EXTREMELY small pieces, 1200 dpi should be enough, the file sized you're going to get out of 1200 are already almost ridiculous (yes, this image is over 1 GB in size)

Next, to address the elephant in the room: What do I do if my painting is bigger than the flatbed of the scanner? well, you're gonna have to learn to scan in parts like I do! the trick to scanning in parts is that every section you scan needs to cover a little more area than it should so that when you start stitching the individual scans together in your preferred image editing software, you can erase the sections warped by the edges of the scanner bed and cover them over with the extra area scanned in the other images, for example, here's a little chart I made on how I scan a medium sized painting in 4 parts:

make sure to NOT rotate the painting while scanning it, simply slide it across the bed to match your desired section, always with the top, bottom, left, and right pointing always to the same directions, if you start rotating the painting you run the risk of warping the whole scan, or warp it in less predictable ways, and it's gonna be a bit of a nightmare to stitch together. I also recommend to instead of closing the top of the scanner to make it flat against the scanner bed, keep it open and put a few books on top of the painting that are a 1 or 2 cm smaller than the scanner bed, the reason to do this is because closing the scanner cover and letting that flatten the painting, the fit between the top and the bed is so tight that you risk bending and damaging the paper/canvas when scanning, giving it some space at the edges when scanning lets the paper/canvas curl naturally with the material's own flexibility, so the risk of damage is much lower. if your painting is bigger than that, you will essentially follow the exact same process but just divide the painting into more scans, personally I've done up to 9 scans per a single painting on my biggest pieces, any more than that can get a little toooo complicated to stitch together, but not necessarily impossible, especially considering that a lot of image editing softwares nowadays have automated stitching functions, which CAN get over the edge warping on their own, but I've personally found that you'll still get better results if you can eliminate that warping and let the AI work with the best sections of the scans only. PERSONALLY I don't use the automated functions and prefer to do it completely by hand in Photoshop because I'm a neurotic perfectionist and I tend to zoom in into the paintings and notice every little microscopic smudging and bad overlap the AI does between the scans that 99% of people won't notice, but hey, that's just me, absolutely feel free to use the automated functions that the software gives, you don't need to be as extra as me! I think that about covers most of my process there, remember this is a process that might take a little practice so don't give up if your first scans don't look that great or look wonky when stitched together, you have plenty of room to finetune and adjust everything to your liking. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask and I'll try my best to answer. Also if you found this small tutorial useful, maybe drop me a tip or checkout my patreon and store to support me ;) ***edit*** noticed someone added a flashing imagery CW so I modified the gif so that it blinks slowly and it's hopefully less hard on the eyes!

Okay I’m currently furious that migraines are often so blindly easy to treat and I had to find this out myself at the age of 26 when I’ve been to a neurologist since I was 11 lol so I’m about to teach you two neat and fast little tricks to deal with pain!

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

If any of this information helps you I’d love to hear it btw! It’s so so fast and easy to do. Good luck!

hey. don’t cry. crush two cloves of garlic into a pot with a dollop of olive oil and stir until golden then add one can of crushed tomatoes a bit of balsamic vinegar half a tablespoon of brown sugar half a cup of grated parmesan cheese and stir for a few minutes adding a handful of fresh spinach until wilted and mix in pasta of your choice ok?

some dracula / other vampire story related articles on jstor (for my own reference but the rest of u can see them too i GUESS 🙄)

- feminism, sex role exchanges, and other subliminal fantasies in bram stoker’s ‘dracula’

- brides of dracula: from novel to film

- repossessing the body: transgressive desire in ‘carmilla’ and ‘dracula’

- ‘dracula’: stoker’s response to the new woman

- vampiric seduction and vicissitudes of masculine identity in bram stoker’s ‘dracula’

- vampiric typewriting: dracula and its media

- racialization, capitalism, and aesthetics in stoker’s ‘dracula’

- the narrative method of dracula

- canines, women, and deceptive docility in bram stoker’s ‘dracula’

- the novel as nightmare: decentering of the self in bram stoker’s ‘dracula’

- the face of evil: phrenology, physiognomy, and the gothic villain

- gender and the struggle for narrative authority in dracula

- pollution and redemption in ‘dracula’

- a century of draculas

- gender and inversion in bram stoker’s ‘dracula’

- the ambiguous nature of violence in ‘dracula’

- bisexuality, homoerotic deside, and self-expression in bram stoker’s ‘dracula’

- attention, predation, counterintuition: why dracula won’t die

- being there: gothic violence in frankenstein, dracula, and strange days

- voiceless outsiders: count dracula as bram stoker