aelaer

[aelaer]

rules for drawing every day

DRAW IN A NOTEBOOK BY HAND SO WHEN YOU MAKE A MISTAKE YOU ARE FORCED TO GO FORWARD ANYWAY

YOU ONLY NEED TO COMPLETE IT, IT DOESN'T NEED TO BE GOOD

DRAW IN A PHYSICAL BOOK YOU CAN HOLD IN YOUR HANDS SO EVERY DAY YOU CAN SEE WHAT YOU'VE ACCOMPLISHED ALREADY

DOING THE WORK TEACHES YOU HOW TO DO THE WORK YOU NEED TO DO

IF YOU CONTINUE, YOU WILL GET BETTER WITHOUT TRYING

[aelaer]

what is it about capybaras that attracts groups of small animals to them? Its not just mammals either its like birds and turtles and frogs too

[aelaer]

Drew My Boy again, this time for @sarcasticfirefighter as a gift in thanks for making the journey to meet me, and also cuz it's now a trend x3 for online friends met so I want to try and continue it. (She's great btw.)

[aelaer]

This is probably my favourite tweet ever hello we are your bank

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Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!

[aelaer]

30-Song Guess Your Age Quiz

Fwiw, they thought I was MANY years younger than I am. Just made me feel good all over. 😊

[aelaer]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[aelaer]

Link to thread

Link to news story

[aelaer]

Worst day of travel. Two of the three Things You Don't Talk About In Polite Company below. But I don't frigging insult whole peoples unlike the experience I had today.

Went to small town. Booked a walking tour. After leaving the town church, tour guide (who is American by birth but left decades ago) proceeds to more or less say that the atheists in this town were more moral and good than American Christians, very heavily implying that the latter are the exact opposite. No "some" or "a few" or any quantifier in any sense. Just. Fucking wide generalizations. Then guide adds comment about how he's so glad not to be in the US anymore. Political comment on top of the sweeping insult.

Now - there's a shit-ton of Americans who are protesting against what they perceive as injustices, because that is their Constitution-given right, and they would not be doing that if they did not think America was not worth fighting for. (And heck, protests happen on both sides of the aisle though of course there have been some really really big ones recently that come to mind, but I am not a political blog so I won't say more on that).

Despite one's politics - that *our home* is not worth fighting for is an insult to those who do. Sure, many leave, but there's so, so many who see the good beyond all bad, the beauty that goes well beyond the ugly, and just all the gems that are in this imperfect but *human* nation. Humanity is imperfect and so are our creations, but it is *ours* to fight for. Dismissing those who still are there and are trying is just - so frustrating.

And the religious comment was so fucking insulting. I *despise* stereotyping. It's stereotyping that led to some of history's worst atrocities. So you just don't go fucking insulting the moral code of over 200 million people. That is just as bad as an idiot that compares a violent extremist Islamist sect to all 1 billion Muslims.

So yeah. I am meant to forgive him if I am to follow what *is* a core tennant of the faith, even if many forget. I went back to the church he casually insulted a country's worth of a religion in front of and just sat there and didn't pray, really (I tend to pray only for like... very very serious things), but rather gathered myself to be the bigger person to forgive the slights of a petty, mean stranger who was unfortunately IRL and not on the internet. The ancient church was a good place to calm down and gather it. And thematically appropriate, and I like thematically appropriate things in RL too.

So. Forgiven. But I am leaving this last post to clear my head, with a dose of chocolate therapy as I wait for the bus that will take me back to the city I'm staying in.

(Also this is the first atheist I ever met IRL who acted like one of those jerks on reddit. After 20+ years of living memory in a very diverse community, that speaks to how the internet is truly a very small loud group. But meeting one IRL... It's mind boggling.)

[aelaer]

*Jingles keys* wowow look I still draw marvel 🔑 🔑

Been trying some different hairstyles on the boy and playing with the idea of that after he went through the loop with Dormammu, the time stone left Stephen’s eyes permanently changed. Like I think he would be a lot more sensitive to light and even after the destroying of the time stone post infinity war, he would still catch ‘glimpses’ of things that could come to be (SU garnet style)

[aelaer]

Idk if I'm just looking in the wrong places but I feel like the most popular type of whump I see is like, where the whumpee is like crying and begging and falling apart with fear, and as someone who prefers stoic and/or defiant whumpees, I am fucking starving out here my dudes

[aelaer]

the secret to organising any kind of trip with your friends is to become the benevolent dictator. do NOT wait for everyone to provide a consensus on things before you book anything. do it and then ask for feedback after. do not ask people what they would like to do just tell them what is happening and let them all nod along like the sheep they are. this is the ONLY way to coordinate a group of adults in their 20s/30s

[aelaer]

Getting ready to turn in, get an alert from LinkedIn, yeah sure, I'll check it out and save some job posts to dig into once I am at home and have a computer.

One ad: we don't follow trends but set them!

Immediately in the next line: we use gen AI.

... yeah. Don't follow trends. Right.

[aelaer]

i’m so upset

I just realized that the reason ghosts say Boo! is because it’s a latin verb

they’re literally saying ‘I alarm/I am alarming/I do alarm!!

I can’t

[aelaer]

this is peak Craigslist

[aelaer]

I feel weird.

Like. A little bit of disassociation? I thought I'd be all weepy and snot-nosed like I was at the Frank house, but other than a couple moments, I was... a whole lot of numb. Which I think is a mini-disassociation?

Unlike most historical graveyards (like ossuaries and catacombs), they permit pictures in all but two rooms (and I think that's a very purposeful decision). Anyway, the camera almost served as a shield in some cases. I 100% tuned out what was being translated a couple of times, though not on purpose. I wouldn't have chosen to do a tour of this awful place otherwise. Or travelled to Krakow at all. That was my entire reason for taking the 8 hour train ride to Poland, which is definitely the pointy end sticking out of my otherwise circled shape of cities I stay in. (And I got to discover other things I never knew about Krakow, so even better.)

(I think my current reluctance of saying its name stems from something disassociated-y, as well, maybe. I just don't want to name it. I don't know why.)

But yeah. Being the history nut that I am, I knew like 80-85% of everything said. One of the women on the tour didn't even realize there were two camps which just baffled me, but she came to learn, so I give her props. Regardless, despite knowing quite a bit, it's 100% different being on the same soil, even if not all the buildings are there anymore and there's grass where there once was just dirt. There's more than enough left. More than enough. And the smaller camp was nearly entirely intact.

The two places that don't allow photos are more than enough for nightmares. They're not like gory. But it's living proof.

(In terms of "haha we can't process this" from my brain, it fucking actually blurted at me while we're walking the long road in the big one "lmaoooo this would be the worst place for a time travel accident lmao lmao" like WTF brain, intrusive thoughts are a very normal part of human psychology but they're usually not so fucking stupid.)

Anyway. I went to the nearest chocolate shop after the 90 minute drive back for much needed serotonin and quiet reflection while I wait for the west coast to wake up so I can give my mom a verbal hug.

I took photos (where permitted) but I don't think I'll post them publicly. To individuals who ask, sure, but posting it like a regular travel blog just... it's too close to resembling that.

But I did what I came to do. I paid my respects.

You know how Disneyland's tagline is "the happiest place on earth"? If the place I'm going now advertised similarly, they'd call it "the darkest place on earth".

Wish my emotions luck. I took like 10 feet worth of toilet paper from my hotel room in case I need tissues.