I’m actually serious about this, if at all possible, right now is a very good time to request queer books from your local library. Whether they get them or not is not in your control, but it is so important to show that there is a desire for queer books. I will also say getting more queer books in libraries and supporting queer authors are pretty fantastic byproducts of any action.
This isn’t something everyone can do, but please do see if you are one of the people who has the privilege to engage in this form of activism, and if you are, leverage that privilege for all you’re worth.
For anyone who can’t think of a queer book to request, here is a little list of some queer books that I think are underrated and might not be in circulation even at larger libraries:
If you can’t wash it off, paint over it, replace the item, or buff it out, turn a message of hate into one of love!
I would never condone someone to do this discreetly and in mere seconds with a quickly concealed permanent marker, for example on a public bench or bus stop. Certainly not anything like whipping out a tat machine and adding to an unconscious white supremacist’s existing tattoo. That would be illegal! :) And, dear followers, I would never encourage you to do something that’s illegal.
So, please only use this when someone has defaced your personal property to avoid breaking the law! Because that would be illegal, and following in the law is always in everyone’s best interest. :)
Actually, I bet a lot of rich people would be into something like planting and growing their own forest for posterity. Let them make a forest and name it after themselves
Can we make that the next ego/vanity project for the rich? How would we go about doing something like that? Convince them to give their money to forests?
Listen, I feel like a very well executed PR campaign could do the trick.
Like, make it all about ~Legacy~ and having your Name Honored and Respected. Convince them that “investing in” the “primeval forests of the future” will give them a lasting impact on the world centuries into the future. Then give them the ability to “Officially” name their forest after themselves and have it registered and written in some magazine that’s like “The 25 Greatest Estates of the Future”
you have my permission and blessing to start a very erudite sounding organization for this purpose
Most of the wild spaces and original forest in Europe are only there because they were some medieval noble’s hunting lodge land whatever and were preserved as such. If you work in the detail that ancient king what’s his nuts preserved the forest and is remembered to this day because of it, you can imply that your generous investors in this conservation project will be remembered by history in the same way.
Also as long as we’re at it I feel like it’s good to mention that Ducks Unlimited is the single largest land conservativorship in the world with an unbelievable amount of wetland set aside specifically for conservation and the preservation of duck species.
hey instead of bullying or scaring you into switching to firefox, let me tell you why i LOVE firefox and how my online life has improved significantly since installing it
- the setup process is easy, and even fun! if you’re using tumblr rn, you can handle it, and if you’re the kind of tumblr user who likes customizing your blog or tinkering with xkit, you can have a lot of fun personalizing really granular settings and picking themes and extensions and everything, it’s very customizable and i happily spent like 2 hours getting everything perfect.
- you can use a command line entry tool to change specific settings right from the search bar! i did this to make firefox stop auto filling my email information since i use a different password locker (which you should too! try bitwarden!), and it was easier than digging through a bunch of submenus for a setting i wasn’t sure existed. you can just turn shit off!
- there’s a preset theme called aurora that’s purple and VERY pretty
- once you get ublock origin and as many other blockers as you’d like set up, no ads, anywhere, ever! streaming sites, youtube, all the basics, totally no stress and no compatibility issues for me
- in browser screenshot and picture in picture functions!! holy shit i use these every day, the PiP is especially helpful, it replaced an extension i used to use on chrome and it’s leagues better and works on all video content pretty much
- overall better downloads management imo, it’s a lot easier to get to your downloads and find them later
- better bookmark system, with the ability to organize your bookmarks with searchable tags and assign them a shortcut you can type into the search bar to go to
- containers! you can have two accounts to the same website open in two different tabs and switch between them without having to switch accounts. also gives firefox the ability to contain facebook and their trackers, so you can click that party invite link without feeling like you just let mark zuckerberg into your house
these were just off the top of my head, i love firefox a lot and actively enjoy using it, which i never felt with chrome! please download firefox!! you will not regret it!!! where’s your fucking rage!!!!!! go!!!!!!!!!
adding on my extensions starter pack! these are BASICS, there is a whole wide beautiful world of extensions that do useful and silly things. i can save a page im looking at to the wayback machine w a right click! (here)
UBlock Origin - THE adblocker. should come preinstalled w firefox
ClearURLs - removes all the tracking garbage pages add when you copy paste a url, also makes them shorter and less ugly
Cookie Autodelete - deletes unused cookies whenever you leave a page
I Don’t Care About Cookies - according to voices i trust in the security community, this extension was sold to a data seller, remove if if you have it installed
Return YouTube Dislikes - does what it says on the tin, install it and forget they were ever gone!
Shinigami Eyes - applies off of tumblr! will highlight news sources and blogs as anti-trans as well
and if you read through this whole list and still somehow havent yet
being a self-taught artist with no formal training is having done art seriously since you were a young teenager
and only finding out that you’re supposed to do warm up sketches every time you’re about to work on serious art when you’re fuckin twenty-five
someone: oh yeah, do this exercise during your warm ups! it’ll help
me: my what
What’s up I have an actual college degree in art and I was never ONCE taught to do warm ups.
when i was in undergrad, it was kind of mentioned in and offhand way that we should do warmups, but we were never shown what that meant. And, y’know, we were young so it didn’t matter so much.
Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential.
So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’
1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust!
2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:
a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it!
In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support.
I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose
b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me!
c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface
d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)
e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them
f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics.
g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper.
h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more.
And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc.
This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah.
Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks.
so, yeah! that’s a lot of words, but! Warmups are important! Save your joints, take less advil, do better drawings!
How on earth are you supposed to draw from a sholder? might as well tell me to draw from the foot. It makes no sense
we need a universal grocery classification system like the dewey decimal to aid in shelving, so i don’t have to figure out whether you think maple syrup goes with the sauces, breakfast foods, jams, or condiments
More places need to start hosting “goth nights” to boost turnout. Goth night at the bowling alley, goth night at the mini golf, goth night on the local public radio station, goth night at the antiques store, the library, oil change, laundromat, tea shop, etc etc. I am correct.
