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Hey you know what sucks is predatory companies that make you enter your email address so that they can harass and advertise to you to access resources you might need to keep track of expenses after a disaster. So, uh, fuck them.

If you need to track the cost of things like hotel stays, pet kenneling, medical care, etc. after a disaster you can use this worksheet.

If you need to create an inventory of your home for an insurance claim (and if you'd like to do this to keep someplace safe before a disaster) you can use this worksheet (two pages, instructions on the first page, worksheet on the second).

And here's a FEMA document with numbers for disaster relief groups and a checklist of documents that you may need to have replaced as well as a description of what to do if you had cash in your home that was destroyed and can possibly be replaced.

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One thing I've noticed about a lot of organizations (e.g., monarchies, militaries) in fiction and especially fantasy is that they tend to have a Main Character issue--namely, that they're written and structured in such a way that, if the main character is removed from the equation, they fall apart.

Of course, this isn't inherently bad or even inherently unrealistic, but oftentimes they are presented as good (not in a moral sense but in an effectiveness sense) and long-lasting organizations that still somehow can't function without the main character, because the main character is The Smartest and The Strongest and The Royal-est and The Most Important.

In reality, one of the most important things for an effective and long-lasting organization is organizational resilience--the organization's ability to adapt to and survive disruptions, including the loss of key personnel. No single person's loss should stop the operations of the organization. Even the president has a line of succession for a reason.

There are whole professions around building and maintaining organizational resilience, and there's far too much to cover in any one post, but if you want to write an organization that's actually realistically effective/long-lasting, here are a few things to consider:

If a character falls in a hole (or is otherwise unreachable/unable to do their job), can someone else do the job? If not, why not (e.g., nobody else has the legal authority, nobody else has the ability, nobody else has the training, nobody else would be listened to in the same way)?

If something stops the organization from doing their job the normal way (e.g., the power is out, there's an earthquake, the sole person who can do it fell in a hole), is there another way for them to do that job?

Does the organization have plans, especially ones that cover what to do in case of emergency?

Are the strategists the same as the people putting themselves in harm's way?

This last one is a little different from the rest, but it's something I see in fantasy a lot--the main character is the one throwing themselves in harm's way but they're also the main strategist for whatever's going on. The problem with that is that, if something happens to them becuase they've thrown themselves in harm's way, the organization has now lost their strategist. Organizations need both tactitians and strategists, and they're generally not the same people.

These aren't the sum total of what make an organization resilient, but they are some things to think about if that's what the organization you're writing is supposed to be.

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For some reason, it never occurred to me that Project Gutenberg would have public domain old cookbooks. This is BRILLIANT. There’s a 1953 cranberry recipe pamphlet and a suffrage cookbook from 1915 and a translation of Apicus’s guide to food in Imperial Rome and a whole bunch of other fascinating old cookbooks, many pre-1800. Treasure trove!

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really helpful technique ^ once you know how to divide by halves and thirds it makes drawing evenly spaced things in perspective waaay easier:

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good news, i found the blog where i got those twisty body studies so i can do more however. it's pretty much all artistic nudes of skinny cis men, so if anyone knows a blog like that featuring women, trans people, fat people, etc etc etc, do tell

specifically being weird with it tho in addition to anything else. cannot how tell you how boring it is to scroll through a blog of ladies just kinda sitting there in the most limp fish nothingburger "sexy" poses 8 billion times

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one thing I learned recently - that seems obvious in retrospect - is that 'being able to recognise intervals and chords by ear' is not necessarily something that you need to just hope will happen automatically if you music hard enough.

if you go to music school there's a specific exercise they do called 'ear training' where they sit you down and make you practice recognising stuff (chords and intervals and so on) - either the teacher will play it or you can get software that plays a thing and asks you to identify it. sorta like the musical equivalent of using a spaced repetition system to memorise vocab in language learning.

there's actually an ear training program in the GNU suite. you can get it here. it's just a python program that hooks into your computer's MIDI.

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Heatwave tip: make a gel icepack by freezing 2 parts water 1 part rubbing alcohol in a freezer bag for a few hours. It stays colder longer than just ice and it's reusable.

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How do you make an image into something that looks pixelated? Like for backgrounds and things

I draw it with pixels at a low resolution

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Eclipse by Ben J

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normalise being bad at roofs in minecraft. normalise not being able to make an aesthetically pleasing roof to save your life in minecraft.

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dealing with the worst case scenario

your condom breaks

you feel a lump on your breast

your friends are ignoring you

you’re stranded on an island 

you got rejected by a crush

you get into a car accident

you got stung by a bee/wasp

you got fired from your job

you’re in an earthquake

your tattoo gets infected

your house is on fire

you’re lost in the woods

you get arrested abroad

you get robbed

your partner cheated on you

you’re on a ship that’s sinking

you fall into ice

you’re stuck in an elevator

you hit a deer with your car

you have food poisoning

your pet passed away

you fall off of a horse

you or your friend has alcohol poisoning

you have toxic shock syndrome

your house has a gas leak