#do it bad

[slushgut]

Still doing it bad unfortunately, but I have a few more headcannons.

For one, Otis is a wild dog that goes more often than comes. He's got a key to Picos place but only shows up to eat all his food and play games on Picos phone. When D moved in, they crossed paths for the first time in the middle of the night and immediately hit it off.

Also, D pierced his ear for him so he could feel just as cool as the older kids.

[fullofmultitudesfullofshit]

i've been thinking about AI a lot lately, and i know a lot of us are, it's only natural considering that it's forced onto us 24/7 by most search engines, pdf readers, & microsoft and apple, but i think what is increasingly making me crazy, as an academic, college teacher, and grad student, is the forcible cramming of it into our everyday lives and social institutions.

no one asked for this technology -- and that's what's so alarming to me.

technology once RESPONDED to the needs and intuitions of a society. but no one needed AI, at least not in the terrifying technocratic data mining atrophying cognitive thought that it's evolving into, and no asked for this paradigm shift to a digital shitty algorithm that we don't understand.

it's different from when the iphone came out and started a revolution where pretty much everyone needed a smartphone. there was an integration -- i remember the first iphone commercial and release news. it wasn't so sudden, but it was probably inevitable given the evolution of the internet and technology that everyone would have a smartphone.

what i know about AI is this: from the first 6 months of ChatGPT's release, they have tried to say it is INEVITABLE.

I walked into my classroom in Fall of 2023 to a room full of 18 year-olds, and suddenly, they were all using it. they claimed it helped them "fill in the gaps" of things they didn't understand about writing. i work with 4th year college students applying to med school -- they use "chat" to help them "come up with sentences they couldn't come up with on their own." i work with a 3rd year pharmacy school student applying to a fellowship who doesn't speak english as a primary language and he's using "AI to sound more American." i receive a text from an ex-boyfriend about how he 'told ChatGPT to write a poem about me.' (it's supposed to be funny. it's not.) i'm at a coffee shop listening to two women talk about how they use ChatGPT to write emails and cut down on the amount of hours they do everyday. i scroll past an AI generated advertisement that could have been made with a graphic designer. i'm watching as a candidate up for the job of the new dean to the college of arts and sciences at my university announces that AI should be the primary goal of humanities departments -- "if you're a faculty member and you're not able to say how you USE AI in your classroom, then you're wasting the university's time and money." i'm at a seminar in DC where colleagues of mine -- fellow teachers and grad students -- are exclaiming excitedly, "I HATE AI don't get me wrong, but it's helpful for sharpening my students' visual analytical skills." i'm watching as US congressional republicans try to pass a law that puts no federal oversight on AI for ten years. i'm watching a YouTube video of a woman talking about Meta's AI data center in her backyard that has basically turned her water pressure to a trickle. i'm reading an article about how OpenAI founder, Sam Altman, claims that ChatGPT can rival someone with a PhD. i'm a year and half away, after a decade of work, from achieving a PhD.

billionaires in silicon valley made us -- and my students -- think that AI is responding to a specific technological dearth: it makes things easier. it helps us understand a language we don't speak. it helps us write better. it helps us make sense of a world we don't understand. it helps us sharpen our skills. it helps us write an email faster. it helps us shorten the labor and make the load lighter. it helps us make art and music and literature.

the alarming thing is -- it is responding to a need, but not the one they think. it's responding to a need that we are overworked. it's responding to a need that the moral knowledge we need to possess is vast, complicated, and unknowable in its entirety. it's responding to a need that emails fucking suck. it's responding to a need that art and music, which the same tech and engineering bros once claimed were pointless ventures, are hard to think about and difficult to create. it's responding to the need that we need TIME, and in capitalism, there is rarely enough for us to create and study art that cannot be sold and bought for the sake of getting someone rich.

AI is not what you think it is -- of course, it is stupid, it is dumb, and i fucking hate it as much as the next guy, but it is a red fucking flag. not even mentioning the climate catastrophe that it's fast tracking, AI tech companies by and large want us to believe that there isn't time, that there isn't a point to doing the things that TAKE time, that there isn't room for figuring out things that are hard and grey and big and complicated. BUT WORTH, FUCKING, DOING.

but there is. THERE ALWAYS IS. don't let them make you think that the work and things you love are NOT worth doing. AI is NOT inevitable and it does NOT have to be the technological revolution that they want us to think it is.

MAKE ART.

ASK QUESTIONS.

STUDY ART.

DO IT BAD; DO IT SHITTY.

FUCK AI FOREVER.

[gotta-draw-em-all-daily]

Day nine hundred twenty 920 Lokix

[rightasrainee]

Just applied to a teaching job

[katenotbishop]

this one's special

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[ftmshepard]

I saw... hummingbird :)

[illicit-centipede]

Love it when a trans person isn't great at a thing they love. Fuck yeah man, be mediocre at basketball! Dance so okay!! Make some fashion statements that are halfway there!!!

[keyn-jender-bite]

The Dark is Getting Darker in The City

part one

It's getting later now in this big, cramped city and I'm awake and on the case. I haven't got a bedtime, which is bad news for the ne'er-do-wells and would-be meanies prowling these damp, cramped streets.

I've got my light pink thermos of dark, creamy coffee in my right hand and my left in my pocket, holding my pocket knife gently.

A tall, worried fiancee named Aurora Hildebrandt wants me to track down his second in a triad and I'll do my damndest, because I've been paid properly and that's all that matters.

Like any hard-boiled private dick, I have access to certain resources in the tightly-packed dirty laundry hamper that is this great big city. My shoes splash in the shallow puddles which gather on the pebbled street, making an echoing clippy-cloppy noise. I've pulled the collar of my coat up around my face and retrieved my well-worn hat from the waste bin. I look the part, now to get some answers.

The bell above the doorway into Sal's Gentry rings out a melodious tintinnabulation as I enter the small grocery store on the corners of 139th and Gasoline avenue. Ribbons the black cat winks at me from his perch atop a stack of pop cases. I give him a quick scritch behind the ears and wind my way to the service counter, past shelves of cans and bags filled with various brick-a-brack.

"Yes?" Sal asks distractedly, not even bothering to look up from the rifle magazine in her tattooed hands.

"Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water." I say gruffly before taking a sip of steaming coffee from my thermos. This got her attention.

"Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill swore revenge on the bastard that pushed him." She replies, folding closed her manuscript and looking up at me. "Detective, what brings you in here on a rainy night like this, all dark and whatnot?"

"Evening, Salisbury. I've been recently visited by a certain someone looking for a different certain someone. Thought maybe you had some information."

Sal smiled a small, thing grin. "That is-incredibly vague. Can you be any more specific?"

"Let's just say that star-crossed lovers get lonely even when we can't see the stars in the night sky."

"Okay, sure. That's very poetic, but there are like, 12 million people in this city without counting the tourists. I'm going to need a name or something to go on. Really."

"It starts with an A."

"Are you kidding? Geez-ok...Astor Pangolin?"

"Is that a real person?"

"I don't know! They could be! Come on, you have got to give me something here!"

"He's fond of the color red."

"The Rouge Moron?"

"That doesn't start with an A."

Sal scowled aggressively and slapped me full across the face on my left cheek.

"Aurora Hildebrandt." I say coolly, taking another handsome sip of my delicious coffee.

"Ah, little Mr. lost his fiancee and wants to be able to make his wedding work on time? I suppose I could have guessed that, given enough time."

"Slapping me seems mean now in hindsight, doesn't-"

"His fiancee is Klevin Morose, the theoretical electrical engineer, did he tell you that?"

The name sounded familiar but I couldn't put my finger on exactly why. "Is Klevin theoretical or the engineering?"

"As far as we know Klevin is real, but the work they were doing was pretty out there. Wild, inventive stuff having to do with neutrons and plutrons and something called a groupon. Here, Thyme did a whole puff piece on them." she said handing me a magazine from two months ago.

The cover was a bit smudged with chocolate fingerprints, but the main photo was legible enough. Klevin appeared to be some kind of wunderkind in the theoretical electrician scene. The main photo displayed them wearing a lab coat with their arms crossed in front of them like a super hero. Their piercing blue eyes were distorted by the thick lenses of their glasses. Their shock white hair was parted on the side and swept behind one ear, revealing a single pearl earring. Their smirk of confidence revealed what I read as a certain self-assured egotism.

"Thanks Sal." I burped, laying down a few chips on the counter in payment.

"Any time, you obscure little wank." she laughed, returning her attention to the firearms in her catalogue.

Stepping out into the dripping exterior, I thumbed through the magazine's wrinkled pages to the interview with Klevin.

"The thrust and details of your work is shrouded in a veil of secrecy, Dr. Morose, but surely there's something you can tantalize our readership with?" the interviewer asked in italics.

"Even if I was allowed to disclose the main thread of my work, which I am not obliged to do, I'm afraid you wouldn't find it edifying in the least unless you're familiar with experimental electrical theory, something I highly doubt that you are. I don't mean it as an insult, but a statement of simple fact. Am I wrong?" Klevin responded. I could almost hear their pompousness through the page.

Skimming the rest of the article one thing stood out to me as plain as day. It wasn't an item of interest so much as it was an unmistakable absence. Nowhere did Klevin mention being affianced to Aurora, or their third person.

Evidently I was in a privileged caste of the few who knew Klevin and Aurora were engaged.

"Interesting." I muttered to myself before the window beside me shattered into a cloud of glass shards.

The gunshot rang out half a second later as I threw myself to the ground, covering my head and showered by the remains of the window.

Another shot echoed just after a nearby streetlamp exploded into a halo of sparks. I crawled towards a nearby vehicle, keeping my body as close to the Earth as possible, dragging myself through the puddles and trash of the street.

"Keep your nose out of places it doesn't belong!" an anonymous voice shouted from an unknown location.

Just as I managed to roll behind the car, the front door of Sal's Gentry slammed open and a hail of shotgun fire erupted from inside, aimed nowhere in particular but effective nonetheless.

"Keep your bullets to your goddamn self you kurwa shit!" Sal screamed, unleashing hellish fire from her firearm again and again. Windows, doors, lights and dead trees blew up in riotous fashion as she leveled the neighborhood in a sweeping arc.

All I could do was shield myself from the flying detritus, pulling my hat over my eyes and praying.

After what felt like forever, when the last shell bounced on the ground near my head, all was quiet. I slowly peered out from the small pile of spent ammunition and debris that had collected around me to see Sal fuming and scanning her surroundings, steam rising off her skin like the smoke billowing from the snout of her gun.

"You ok?" she asked without looking at me.

"I guess?" I answered, slowly dragging myself to my feet, glass and wood chips tumbling off of me.

After a minute or two spent surveilling the carnage, Sal slung her shotgun over one shoulder and turned to frown at me.

"Whatever you've got yourself into, looks like it's heavier than normal."

I nodded, shaking a small tree branch from my ear. This case was already turning out to be more interesting than I preferred.

[sirswooshnoodles]

there will be times you look back on old writings and say "I wrote this?!?!?!?!????" a lot of the time it will be negative, but that just means you've improved, because now you know it's not great.

but there will probably be, once in a while, an instance where you are awestruck by your past self. you thought you couldn't write that good here and now, but you've already done it

its ok to suck

my grammar and spelling are pitiful at best

but i write anyway, even just to get the ideas down, to practice, whatever reason i can find.

and you do get betting with practice!

practicing is probably the best way to improve your writing. the next best thing would be to read more, and read quality writing.

Keep writing! even if it sucks, even if only you will ever read it, even if it will never see the light of day again, even if you'll delete it right away. just do it, for the experience (points). the only way to improve is to learn and more importantly, to try.

you can learn just as much from mistakes as successes, and some would argue you learn more from failures.

so write! you don't have to be proud of it, but make it!

''what if my writing isn't good eno--'' what if it's a reflection of your soul. what if it has a place in this world. what if you write it anyway

[pirateprincessjess]

When I was early on in my transition I got in a Lyft, and the driver was this big country guy. I was a little nervous so I just sat quietly in the back.

After a moment he changed the music on his phone to what sounded like a Hatsune Miku song. Curiosity got the better of me, so I finally spoke up and said “is this Hatsune Miku?”

And he said “Yep. You looked uncomfortable, and I know Transgender women like Hatsune Miku, so I thought it might help.”

I think about that interaction a lot.

[podcastwizard]

my most toxic trait is i fucking love work gossip. i play neutral not to be the bigger person or take the high road but to hear slander and hearsay from every side. two coworkers complained about each other to me in the same afternoon and i nearly blacked out from the rush

[valancedbreakfast]

just in case anyone didn't realize, this applies to ALL art. not just illustration.

music, game design, writing, crafting, dance, theater. you deserve to create and express yourself, even if you're afraid or you think you're not good enough

btw with art when people say 'youve got to do it scared' 'youve got to draw bad' 'youre not gonna know how to do it until you do it' it sounds like bullshit but its true. 90% of art is just getting over the fear that it's not going to be good enough to deserve to be made in the first place. but you're here. you're alive and, with no need to justify that, you're going to make art. it's just part of being alive. you'll spend so long worrying you aren't doing it good enough that you'll look back and realized you didn't live a single day of it.

[izbnart]

Left-handed Ena Dream BBQ fan animation yayyy

[jue-jack]

Kirby is a star!!!

[keyn-jender-bite]

The Evening has Truly Become The Night in this Big Dark City

part one part two part three

The education district was suspiciously quiet when I ascended from the subway platform. I myself never attended higher education, but it was my understanding that university kids liked to party, and party hard. There was nobody visibly or audibly partying anywhere in the vicinity this particular dark and foggy evening.

Did I fail to mention it had become quite foggy? Well, it had. It was the kind of ambient fog a rock-solid private dick like me just craves. We're creatures of the fog, private detectives. It's not just an aesthetic thing either. There's something casually magical about a nice, thick, pea-soup fog that gives us gumshoes strength.

I breathed it deep into my nostrils, pulled my collar up around my neck and began to slink towards campus.

The large brick buildings of the City University loomed darkly in the night, lit scarcely by lampposts, themselves haloed in the fog and surrounded by fluttering moths. My footsteps echoed on the cobbled sidewalks, splishing a little in the shallow puddles gathered between the bricks.

I didn't know exactly where I was going, but I figured I would know it when I saw it, and thankfully I didn't have to wander too long before saw it I did.

The sign in front of the building was slightly obscured by clinging ivy, but clearly enough I could read "Marvin Chestermarvin Laboratory for Applied Theoretical Electrics and Mysterious Plumbing." This must be the place. I circled the exterior, looking for a less obvious entrance than the front door, which might be a bit too conspicuous for the purposes of snooping around.

There are different kinds of snooping. The snooping I partake in is functionally and physically different from the type of snooping that a cat burglar might employ, for example. Their form of snooping usually involves more creeping, skulking and especially sneaking.

I don't skulk. I've never skulked in my adult life and you're not likely to ever find my skulking unless I've fallen on hard times and it's required of me for work. There but for the grace of God and paying clients go any of us.

Around the rear of the building I found the perfect entrance into which I might snoop appropriately. The Lab had a small loading dock with a corrugated lift gate through which I'm sure various pieces of equipment and pallets of raw materials were loaded in. These cheap style of gates were notorious for locking insufficiently, a weakness that I intended to exploit, and did.

Using a nearby crowbar I was able to lever the bottom of the gate up until I could spot the poorly-designed hook latch. Employing a nearby tire iron, I manipulated the hook out of its housing and raised the gate just enough for me to wriggle underneath it like a hag fish in a trench-coat.

I was in.

Fishing the small flashlight out of my coat pocket, I clicked it on with a flick of the button and slowly padded up the stairs of the loading dock, through a heavy steel door into the hallways proper.

The wide, tall halls were constructed of marble, with columns supporting the vaulted ceiling above. The classrooms and offices were clearly labeled with small copper plaques, announcing their room number and the typical use-case for the space within.

An eerie quiet permeated the dark halls. Ghostly light seeped in through the windows to cast wiggly reflections on the imperfect floor. I could nearly hear my own beating heart in the silence.

A placard informed me the theoretical electrician offices were up a floor, with an arrow pointing to a broad staircase. I crept up slowly, keeping my feet precise and muted.

At the top of the stairs was a T-junction. To the right was a large lab filled with esoteric equipment, the purposes of which completely eluded me. To the right was an office door, shut and mercifully labeled: "Dr. Morose, office hours M-W 9-3."

A quick try at the doorknob confirmed my suspicions, the office was locked. Surely it would pose no challenge for me and my little lock picking kit.

Kneeling in front of the door I slid my favorite pick into the key-way, employing a 2 thousandths thick turning tool and a slightly hooked wave rake. A bit of fiddling solved the problem with a gratifying "click", allowing the door to swing freely open with a slight creak.

The air inside Klevin's office was musty and stale, with a hint of something I couldn't yet place. The soft circle emanating from my flashlight prowled the walls and furniture, seeking out items of interest. It was all pretty stock stuff—a desk with a comfortable-looking chair, filing cabinets, book cases, etc.

"Where did you go, professor?" I asked under my breath, scrutinising the books and papers which littered the space. Exploring their desk, I thumbed through the notebooks and folders thereupon, seeing nothing of particular import.

Sliding the primary drawer open, a small black notebook caught my eye. I fished it out and flipped it open. it appeared to be a diary or journal of sorts.

Most of the entries were pretty banal stuff, notes about classes, students and faculty. Petty inter-departmental drama and the like. An entry towards the end of the book jumped out at me for the speed with which it looked to have been scrawled.

"September - I know I'm being followed now. I suspected as much but now I have proof. I don't know to whom I might confess this. I can't be sure who else is in on it. It might have to do with the grant? No. Don't be stupid Klevin, it's the work. It's the EMF Drive. He wants it. I should have known it was him. A and L mustn't know, they would spiral with worry. I have to find more proof before accusing him or I could be disbarred. Talk to JD, they might be able to help."

That was the last journal entry. I closed the book and sat in Klevin's chair, my brow crinkled. Maybe they had been kidnapped by a rival in the college? Were A and L Aurora and their other partner? Who is JD? What on Earth was the EMF Drive and why would somebody want it? And what was that smell?

It was strongest here, at their desk, especially in their chair.

"We warned you, Magistrate!" a harsh voice suddenly screamed from the open doorway.

My reaction time was just quick enough to save my life. I flipped backwards in the chair just as the pistol fired, clipping Klevin's desk and sending a stack of papers flying into shreds.

I ducked behind the large desk, keeping my head down and kneeling. I couldn't see who was in the door, but I could hear them pull the trigger of their gun and the unmistakable sound of a misfire.

"Cribbage!" they hissed, followed by the metallic sliding sounds of a revolver chamber ejecting for hasty inspection.

Now was my chance. I wasted no time, vaulting over the desk head first. In one swift motion, I grabbed a dusty apple sitting on the table top and threw it at the would-be assassin's head, just winging their shoulder.

It was just enough to distract them. "Erk!" they croaked, grabbing their arm and twisting.

I attempted to jump off the desk and punch them, but a small pile of ungraded essays slipped beneath my shoes, sending me forwards ungracefully directly into the bookshelf beside my attacker.

I crashed through three shelves, sending tomes, treatises and various novels spilling onto the floor and at the shadowy figure, who was still stunned.

I managed to kick one leg out from under the pile of books, knocking the gun from their hand. "Hey!" they complained.

"Come here you!" I commanded, trying once more to heave myself into their stomach, only to trip on the same apple I had thrown at them moments before and careen face first past them and down the flight of stairs outside of the office.

My body tumbled head over buttocks down the first flight of stairs where I gracefully collapsed into a heap of books and papers. Struggling to my feet, I was just able to look up to see the figure jumping at me from the top of the stairs, brandishing a large, serpentine dagger.

"Hoooo!" they yelled.

My self defense instincts kicked in and I executed an imperfect round-house kick, tripping on the slick marble floor and falling backwards to perfectly hit my head on the windowsill behind me before blacking out just in time.

When I came to, I was alive. I raised myself up on my elbows, to survey my surroundings. I was still in the stairwell, books and papers were still strewn everywhere. The attacker was suspiciously absent.

Clambering stiffly to my feet, the situation became abundantly clear as I spotted the vaguely person-shaped hole in the nearby window. I peered out the shattered pane to the pavement below. Absent from the pile of glass was a body of any kind, or any other trace of the shadowy figure.

I sat down and rubbed the back of my head where a sizeable goose egg was already growing. Now I had a sliver of an inkling as to what was going on. Some puzzle pieces were falling into place. The shadowy figure had been wearing a long, dark robe, obscuring their features and body. I finally recognized the mysterious smell in Klevin's office as tarragon. The curved knife the assassin wielded was all too familiar in form and function.

I thought he was long dead, but these were the calling cards of my oldest nemesis and his weirdo cultists.

It seemed Warlock Geoff was back in town.