ericadoesthings

[ericadoesthings]

If you like frogs. Or possums. Or cool builds. Or happiness. This is the video for you.

[ericadoesthings]

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

[ericadoesthings]

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

[ericadoesthings]

Something I don't think we talk enough about in discussions surrounding AI is the loss of perseverance.

I have a friend who works in education and he told me about how he was working with a small group of HS students to develop a new school sports chant. This was a very daunting task for the group, in large part because many had learning disabilities related to reading and writing, so coming up with a catchy, hard-hitting, probably rhyming, poetry-esque piece of collaborative writing felt like something outside of their skill range. But it wasn't! I knew that, he knew that, and he worked damn hard to convince the kids of that too. Even if the end result was terrible (by someone else's standards), we knew they had it in them to complete the piece and feel super proud of their creation.

Fast-forward a few days and he reports back that yes they have a chant now... but it's 99% AI. It was made by Chat-GPT. Once the kids realized they could just ask the bot to do the hard thing for them - and do it "better" than they (supposedly) ever could - that's the only route they were willing to take. It was either use Chat-GPT or don't do it at all. And I was just so devastated to hear this because Jesus Christ, struggling is important. Of course most 14-18 year olds aren't going to see the merit of that, let alone understand why that process (attempting something new and challenging) is more valuable than the end result (a "good" chant), but as adults we all have a responsibility to coach them through that messy process. Except that's become damn near impossible with an Instantly Do The Thing app in everyone's pocket. Yes, AI is fucking awful because of plagiarism and misinformation and the environmental impact, but it's also keeping people - particularly young people - from developing perseverance. It's not just important that you learn to write your own stuff because of intellectual agency, but because writing is hard and it's crucial that you learn how to persevere through doing hard things.

Write a shitty poem. Write an essay where half the textual 'evidence' doesn't track. Write an awkward as fuck email with an equally embarrassing typo. Every time you do you're not just developing that particular skill, you're also learning that you did something badly and the world didn't end. You can get through things! You can get through challenging things! Not everything in life has to be perfect but you know what? You'll only improve at the challenging stuff if you do a whole lot of it badly first. The ability to say, "I didn't think I could do that but I did it anyway. It's not great, but I did it," is SO IMPORTANT for developing confidence across the board, not just in these specific tasks.

Idk I'm just really worried about kids having to grow up in a world where (for a variety of reasons beyond just AI) they're not given the chance to struggle through new and challenging things like we used to.

[ericadoesthings]

Describing Terry Pratchett’s books is difficult. Someone asked me what the book I was reading was about, and I had to tell them it was about banking and the gold standard, but like in a cool way with golems and action. 

 I don’t think they believed me.

[ericadoesthings]

[ericadoesthings]

I think it would be really fucking funny to write a piece of fiction set entirely in real life but using lazy fantasy worldbuilding talk. I gather coin* for the road west** - I will need it to enter the Capital.***

* two quarters and two dimes

** Interstate 64

*** Richmond, Virginia

[ericadoesthings]

Inadvisable Dungeons & Dragons character #137: greatsword-wielding barbarian who refuses to give up their sword when entering areas where weapons of war are banned on the grounds that, owing to certain specific details of the construction of its blade and hilt, according to the laws of the land their sword is technically a pocketknife. They are willing to explain the particulars at length.

[ericadoesthings]

they should invent a january that doesn’t make you go through every emotion known to mankind every day

[ericadoesthings]

[ericadoesthings]

I read an AITA post a few weeks back about a woman who liked having snacks in the bath when she's had a long day (a result of residual trauma iirc - the bath was her safe space). Her brand new husband of three weeks, a man twice her age who had no job, made her pay all of his bills and do all housework, and spent all day every day gaming because he wanted to make it as a Twitch streamer, had always been fine with this; but, on the day in question, had whisked her bath snacks out of her hands as she was on her way to the bathroom and tried to bin them, telling her it was time to 'break her of that filthy habit in his home'. She told him if he ever actually paid anything towards the house she owns outright he might get a say, took her snacks back, and had her lovely bath. He was since giving her the silent treatment.

(Obviously the judgement was an avalanche of 'NTA and also he's abusing you', which she agreed with, and decided to kick him out, so happy ending.)

Anyway I told my husband about this and he was outraged. "I would never do that!" he told me, furious. "I would find it adorable if you had bath snacks!"

Since then, every time I try to have a bath (which I only do as a rare treat) after about ten minutes there has been an anxious scrabbling at the bathroom door.

"Elanor!" he says. "Do you have bath snacks? Do you need anything?"

My answer is irrelevant. He brings me wine and poptarts. Now I have bath snacks. I'm a bath snacks person. Last time he was literally sleeping on the sofa when I went for the bath. Somehow this still happened. I now have an eager bathroom butler. How did this happen. I have never been so decadent yet bewildered.

[ericadoesthings]

Has anything actually gotten better, for all the work you talk about doing? Or is it just treading water in misery forever?

Anon, ten years ago gay people couldn't get married in large parts of the US. AIDS was an almost certain death sentence when I was in high school. I was looking at job boards the other day and found a part time gas station job that had health insurance as a benefit, which NEVER would have happened 15 years ago. When I was a kid, hitting your child was extremely normalized in the US and my parents were the weird ones for not doing it. There is a vaccine for chicken pox. I didn't meet anyone who had transitioned until my 20s because it was so uncommon to transition in the aughts, and now there are some states that protect your right to have gender affirming care provided by your health insurance. It's not all states, but it's better than the number of states that had it in 2010, which was zero. THERE ARE TENANTS UNIONS NOW. WE HAVE A VACCINE AGAINST CERVICAL CANCER.

And all of that has been the work of a lot of individuals and organizations and research teams and activists.

[ericadoesthings]

[ericadoesthings]

you know, the thing that leaves me completely out of fucks for "don't vote" arguments, more than anything else?

the 2000 election

Bush won by Supreme Court decision. If they'd counted all the ballots in Florida he would've lost, but he successfully sued to stop the count.

We all learned what a "hanging chad" was. It was awful.

Less than a year later, airplanes flew into a bunch of big important buildings.

Nader got near record green party votes. Al Gore was the famously boring VP for Clinton, the guy who decided the way to win was to be a Democrat who acted like a Republican. Clinton and UK PM Tony Blair were the champions of neoliberalism.

why in the fuck would you want to vote for that guy? the dumb kid of the old president didn't seem too bad, anyway. he was a Compassionate Conservative! is that really so much worse than neoliberals?

it's hard to play alternate history with this stuff, but imagine if Al Gore had been president on 9/11. We probably still get a war in Afghanistan, everybody wanted that one except Congresswoman Barbara Boxer, D-CA. I think it's a pretty good bet the US doesn't invade Iraq.

Can you imagine how much better off we'd be if instead of 8 years of a climate denier president we'd gotten the guy who wrote "An Inconvenient Truth"? If we'd managed even to do the wimpy version of cap and trade?

You can't KNOW these things. That was one Trouser of Time and we're down a different one.

But 537 votes in Florida made a hell of a lot of difference. I don't want to be one of the 600 or so people who were running late after work and didn't want to wait in another goddamn line.

Because you just never know what's going to happen

[ericadoesthings]

These turkish delights have turkish ends

[ericadoesthings]

No, Google Docs, there is a distinct difference between "cussing" and "cursing."

[ericadoesthings]