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the hardest part of writing is when you fall in love with a scene that has absolutely no place in the story

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So I also sculpt, and it's taken over my life in a lot of ways in the last three years, in a "time will pass anyway" sort of way and because it's immensely psychologically satisfying, and it's something I can share with other people in my life who are not permitted a glance at my writing (and let's be honest, social affirmation from your friends/family is a not-insignificant factor...)

Also because I have unlimited free clay and there's no sense of waste. Nothing I make is wasted, and the time spent doing the making is not wasted. If it doesn't turn out right it's still not wasted. If I fire it and the shards are shattered or I don't like the final piece, still not wasted, no more so than the hours a pianist spends practicing. I can throw it in the garden or the burn pit or bury it in a hole to confuse the heck out of a future archaeologist and still, not waste, not a pollutant or a hazard or regretful in any way. Part of the enormous value of "first materials" is they have a nil carbon footprint and are pretty much plastic-free so all the practice/discards are biodegradable or bio-innert and harmless. it's the highest personal value to lowest environmental impact art/craft practice on the planet, and also, usually the cheapest.

My generation and the generations after me are already loaded with environmental guilt to the point of burnout and over-consumption in the art/hobby world, along with unsustainable or downright dangerous mediums, is a conversation; this is the other side of the conversation where you go sit in mud puddles and rediscover a sense of guilt-free playful purpose by re-encountering the building blocks of all human creativity - this is not something anyone can be locked out of- every culture on this planet owes its existence to first materials and everyone has a right to create with them by virtue of being human.

I'm decent at it. Like I knew how to sculpt when I started a couple years ago because I have been doing 3D art all my life and had sculpted quite a bit back in high school and college. But I can look at a "really good" piece from three years ago and a "really good" piece now and see the quite distinct skill improvement that I wasn't conscious of until I set two pieces side by side and went oh. Ok then. That got Better.

(I do this for fun; I am legally barred from selling any work at this time b/c no commercial insurance on the kiln and that is a really big deal to landlords btw. Tho enforced no-hustle hobby is not a bad thing.)

Time will pass anyway. Meanwhile go and do what you want to get better at.

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I'm cautiously optimistic about the murderbot show. But not going to Pay for viewing privileges until it's all done and I know it's worth sitting down for. Hopefully it ends on its feet. I know casting has been a Conversation but for a character whose non-humanity/non-gender is very much central and whose designed-to-be-disposable body is also wrecked over and over in increasingly violent ways I can see how there's no easy answer no matter who got the part.

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Poor Gordon, the morning after. . .well. . .everything. Beat to shit, and awake after prolly 3 days of sleep. First words out of his mouth/hands is prolly 'don't fucking touch me' from all the pain

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She half on my life till i 2

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I can consume media intended for children. I can consume media intended for adults. I cannot consume media intended for a family audience that thinks the only way to make this work is to make its children weirdly mature and its adults weirdly childish.

Looking at you, Terra Nova, Legend of Korra and Star Wars: Kenobi

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The feminine urge to form a platonic cooperative life-bond with a creature of enormous power with whom to share the trials and joys of mortal life

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I can't remember if I've made noise about a ceramics project I'm working on here or not -

I have assembled almost all the molds I need for a planned "conversations" piece between various mythological women whose interpretations vary wildly.

Inspired by the Sphinx as a woman of great wisdom and power who can only be interpreted as a monster by a man less wise, as an enemy by a man equally as wise, and as a useless corpse by a man who can surpass her.

I have the molds for - and this is a wild oversimplification of what could be an entire book about each theme of womanhood and the lies represented by these creatures and myths;

Sphinx - "female wisdom is the monster"

Centauress - "seduction is your only purpose"

Selkie - "family is forced subjugation"

Bird-woman - "your freedom is a threat to be destroyed"

Crone - "with age comes evil"

Medusa - "you cannot escape abhorrence"

Tree-woman - "the man who owns you will kill the man who frees you"

In contrast to the sphinx as a woman whose lion body and wings represent the strength, control and freedom granted by a pursuit of wisdom and learning; the centauress's physical beauty and sensuality as her own gift to enjoy as she chooses; the selkie's sisterhood/solitude as a core of female experience independent of a mate; the bird-woman's celebrated pursuit of personal autonomy; the crone as a source of life-giving wisdom and direction to generations after her; the medusa's quiet withdrawal as complex personal boundaries; the tree-woman's dedication to the man and family she loves becomes her crown of honor.

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he got irradiated a while back

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people are always like “i have face blindness but i’m good with names” or “im terrible with names but i never forget a face” well baby idk how to tell u this but i am . bad at both.

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"dolphins are completely evil" I actually don't think we should assign human morality to animals with no concept of law or civilisation with an intelligence roughly equating to that of a toddler

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Yeah I haven't been on any long fires, just a couple short wildland incidents but I have a lot of community who have done long (multi-day) incidents and I have been on support crew/food services for long wildland incidents. And yeah, please love on your stinky sweaty crabby hungry possibly-incarcerated firefighters.

Don't wake them up. Leave their stuff alone. Bring them lots of free food and re-hydrating drinks. Let them crash and shower in your nearby spaces. Check in with them and always follow their directions. Never ever ever park in their way. Keep your pets and small children safely elsewhere and out from underfoot. Don't expect intelligent conversation. Bring them more food. Offer to run their laundry. Be prepared to gracefully sacrifice useful tools, fences, landscaping, anything that is useful to or in the way of a firefighting effort and don't complain about it. The fire destroyed it, not the firefighters, even if it was the rig that plowed through it to reach the fireline. Don't complain about their mess. Mess left by live humans doing their job is infinitely preferable to mess left by everything burning up. Don't touch their stuff.

Nothing you own is worth more than their lives; they will and are trained to prioritize their own safety above all else. They will do everything in their power to stop a fire but they will let everything burn if it can't be stopped without undue risk to themselves. Their job is absurdly risky at the start of an incident and that risk grows exponentially as an incident progresses in size and time; as people get tired, the job gets more dangerous and the likelihood of a bad call or injury is far, far greater.

Yes they work 24 hour shifts. Most small incidents are long out inside that window but the long shifts reduces the time lag of bringing in and orienting new crews. You have to turn over your incident crews but there is a cost balance between the benefit of fresh bodies and clear heads and the inherent risk of being unfamiliar with the fire's environment, history and recent behavior. It's a tradeoff.

Everyone in a fire-prone area should attend some basic volunteer firefighter courses, either structure or wildland or both, just to have a basic familiarity with what those crews are trying to do and how best to help, or at least not hinder, a rapid response. And to understand that sometimes you truly cannot expect a human to stop a fire.

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ok I think this was a masters thesis not doctoral, it's fairly weak IMO and had a massive Agenda behind the writing (kid wanted access/proximity to location of study, not to study the thing that was there which, fair, I did the same thing in undergrad but that was for class work not graduate work) so he jumps to a lot of conclusions and misidentifies some stuff, and makes out that the location has way more mining potential than it actually has. But he tried, and he took pictures and wrote it down! And I bet he had fun and learned some stuff too.

Me: hello small front-desk persona of academic conglomerate, if you send me A Better Scan of xyz geology doctoral thesis paper, I will send you Odd Crystals from the location mentioned in this paper

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Trying to sculpt a herd of feral horses while also excusing myself from Mustang BLM Drama.

There is in fact such thing as touching too much grass and becoming so passionately and chronically zoned into the scene that you cannot detach and view a complex issue from a complex point of view. People have made one another their enemy to a degree that makes me disgusted with the whole lot of them and embarrassed to even consider this subject matter.

Adulting requirement #101: cultivate the ability to consider a hard issue with a complicated history from a viewpoint that is contrary to your own. If everyone who thinks they're doing "the right thing" is embedded in conflict with their fellow workers, the ideology of the workers has superseded the issue and the issue will only spiral.