skyasimaru

[skyasimaru]

thinking about when my professor told me how the boards of companies/orgs/etc. will sometimes hire on a CEO/whatever who they know will basically take a chainsaw to existing infrastructure, let them fuck as much shit up as possible, and then promptly fire them as soon as they've accomplished what the board wanted them to do. then they can point the finger at that guy & look like they're the heroes and the problem is resolved because he's gone now. and they still get to keep all the changes they wanted that nobody else did.

anyway I think it's fun and all to watch the two most divorced men on the planet publicly divorce each other. and also. maybe keep that in mind, is all.

[skyasimaru]

One of my history professors in college used to say "Follow the money to get to the truth," and he was right. Additional helpful analysis questions: Who benefits from this information? Who paid for the research? What's their usual agenda? Who conducted the poll and how many people were *actually* polled? (5 out of 10 voters still comes across, statistically, as "50% of voters," using the same language as 50 out of 100 or 500 out of 1000 with considerably less representation.) What were the questions ON the poll? (if it only allows 'yes' or 'no' answers, there's no room for anything specific that might 'skew the data' in a way questioners do not want.) How old is the information? How was the other party interviewed? Were they fairly depicted? (Look at the lighting, the wardrobe selection, the questions given. Were they given time to answer, or were they under pressure from external forces? (ie, is this a casual interview in an office, or are they being yelled at on the street? Are they being cut off constantly, or do they have time to answer in a sit-down?) What is the attitude of the interviewer? (ie, are they hostile, dead serious, calm, or casually joking - even to the point of belittlement?) Did the interviewer angle for a specific answer, using a specific and loaded question, rather than let the person speak freely? When an organization wants to make another organization (or person, or situation, or law) look bad, they will do anything in their power to set up the cards (and camera angle, lighting, wardrobe, environment, questions, polls, etc) to Make them look BAD, even if they are not. Conversely, they will do the same to make a bad situation/person/organization look good, if they stand to benefit from it ("Our cooperate sponsors~"). Pay close attention to how an interview is conducted, how each side is portrayed/set up in a debate, and above all: who is paying for it. Question everything. And follow the money.

[skyasimaru]

Before the computing era, ILM was the master of oil matte painting, making audiences believe that some of the sets in the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogy were real when they weren’t. They were the work of geniuses like Chris Evans, Michael Pangrazio, Frank Ordaz, Harrison Ellenshaw and Ralph McQuarrie ! Forever thank you, to their handmade art and the work of their colleagues, that made us dream of impossible worlds and fantastic places across Earth and the Universe.

There are more background paintings on this article, featuring comments by the masters/artists themselves ! 

Some of the following pieces were made by other artists 2:

[skyasimaru]

If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

[skyasimaru]

Can i say something problematique for terminally online millenials and people born after that point: I think the seeming lack of ability or willingness to call one another and chat on the phone with friends unprompted or out of the blue contributes to whatever hellish loneliness everyone is talking about feeling these days. Say what you want about boomers and old people but those guys mostly knew how to keep in touch with each other. Idk man call a bitch today

[skyasimaru]

[skyasimaru]

I spotted a reply to one of my posts:

And my knee-jerk response was "no, you should hear my friends talk about their lives--"

And it made me remember something.

Back in high school, my IB class did a lock-in-- where the group of students gets locked into one part of the school overnight on a weekend-- and after junk food and video games lost their appeal, we got to talking.

Only I didn't really know anything about almost any of them. They were all friendly enough, but I kept to myself for the most part, so we didn't have much to talk about once standard small talk ran out.

So I asked one of the other people sitting with me: "what's your story?"

Your life story.

And he told me. Sixteen years or so condensed into maybe a half hour. And it was the most fascinating life I could have imagined: the places he'd been, the things he'd done, the experiences that defined him. It boggled my mind.

When he finished and turned the question around to me, I thought mine sounded really boring in comparison, but he listened open-mouthed to the entire thing. Other kids were gathering around us by now, listening in. And when I finished mine, I turned to another one of them and asked the question to them.

And just like before, my mind was blown. A completely different life, completely different focal points, defining experiences, goals the likes of which were deserving of an anime. And the same happened with the next person we asked, and the next.

By the time each one of us had finished telling their story, it was time to go home for the morning. The video games had been abandoned hours ago. None of us had slept. We were too caught up in each other's lives.

All of which is to say:

Thank you. I do lead a very interesting life.

So do you.

[skyasimaru]

Happy Pride Month to Bilbo Baggins and whatever on earth was going on in Tolkien’s The Unfinished Tales. The first slide is a direct quote. What did he mean by this…..Squints 👀🏳️‍🌈.

[skyasimaru]

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.

[skyasimaru]

Past me forgot I did this when setting up my calendar in December, so this was a nice surprise when I flipped over the page this morning. :) Happy Pride.

Very Respectfully,

SkyAsimaru

[skyasimaru]

I love this poem. <3

My dad was eating pistachios so I reached my hand out and he just started peeling them and giving them to me. Then suddenly went “I really hope you find someone who loves you a lot” and I went “enough to peel my pistachios for me?” And he laughed and said “yeah exactly” before carrying on giving me more

[skyasimaru]

learning that addiction is a progressive narrowing of the range of things that make one happy was kinda life changing for me. i apply it to everything not even just addiction i am always checking to ask if i am narrowing my range of happiness or widening it

[skyasimaru]

I would read 100K of this. Adoringly.

[skyasimaru]

[skyasimaru]

In this time. In this moment. You exist.

[skyasimaru]

we seriously need to stop conceding to the personhood trap when it comes to abortion rights. is a fetus a person? thats a spiritual question. i dont care about the answer. should another person dictate what someone can do with their body? simple answer: no.