#subjective theory of value

[eaglesnick]

“You know you’re priced right when your customers complain—but buy anyway.” — John Harrison

Dynamic pricing is not new but it has not been widespread up until recently.

We all know about train fares being more expensive during peak times and parents know that holidays cost more during school breaks than at any other time of the year. Airline tickets are subject to dynamic pricing and there was a trend towards off-peak electricity tariffs at one time. This summer we saw tickets for Oasis concerts subject to dynamic pricing, resulting in massive spikes in the cost of a ticket.

Dynamic pricing is when a company changes their pricing to match demand and supply. Hence train journeys are more expensive during the rush hour than in the middle of the day when demand is lower. Holidays are more expensive during school breaks because demand is higher from families with children.

Few of us like this traditional method of dynamic pricing but we have accepted it as part of our way of life. The old fashioned dynamic pricing model was fairly unsophisticated and based on the time of day in the case of rail and airline tickets and specific weeks and months of the year in the case of holidays.

This is no longer the case. Artificial Intelligence allows companies to literally change prices in line with changes in demand every second if they so want. Some of the companies using AI to set prices are Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Tesco, Ocado and Sky. Amazon is said to reset prices every ten minutes.

The days of “fixed pricing" are fast disappearing. Long gone are the days when a company added up all of its production costs to work out the cost per unit and then added a little bit more in order to make a profit. This was basically what is known as the objective or labour theory of value. This has been supplanted by the "subjective theory of value" (STV).

According to the subjective theory of value a products worth (price) is not determined by how much it costs to produce but by how much people are willing to pay for that good at any given moment. At its worst this means that ALL goods and services should be sold for maximum monetary return regardless of the cost of production. No wonder supporters of neo-liberal economics favour STV.

At one level this doesn’t really matter. Oasis concert tickets may have doubled in original price due to dynamic pricing but not being able to afford a concert ticket is not a matter of life or death. It is however, symptomatic of a growing social problem.

The assumption of neo-liberal economists and their support of STV pricing is that individual choice is paramount in all economic transactions. For the neo-liberal societal values do not exist, there is only individual choice. Mrs Thatcher, the woman who championed neo-liberal economics in the UK, famously said: “There’s no such thing as society”. Many Tory's still believe this to be true but they are demonstratively mistaken.

During Covid we all stood at our doors every Thursday night clapping and banging pots to applaud the bravery of our dedicated health professionals. Yes, we did this as individuals but also as a society. When the England football team were progressing through the stages of the European cup we watched each game as individuals but also as a nation. The same is true of the recent Olympic and Paralympic games.

Ironically, some of our most ardent neo-liberal Tory MP’s have been recently admonishing us for not being proud of our English identity. Robert Jenrick, a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party said yesterday that English identity had “started to fray” due to mass immigration and public institutions “dismissing our history”.

Sorry, the neo-liberals cannot have it both ways. Either there is an entity called English society, with its own history and set of values, or we are just individuals all acting according to our own individual needs. The fact that latter view is obviously mistaken does not deter the advocates of dynamic pricing. For them the goal is maximisation of profit regardless of social cost.

A thousand reasons why dynamic pricing is good for the consumer will be rolled out as more and more companies adopt this system of pricing, but the bottom line will always be making more profit. And in a system where pricing is determined by what price the individual is willing to pay rather than the actual cost of production, in the end it is only the rich who benefit.

South West Water has recently introduced the cruder form of dynamic pricing to their customers. They will be charging more for water use in summer than in winter. Consumers were given no choice about this and they have yet to be told what the charges will be. This “trial" will last for 2 years.

This is the spin:

“These pioneering trials are designed to make sure that water bills are fairer and more reflective of individual consumption patterns and are part of our wider commitment to making customer-first decisions in everything we do.” (CornwallLive:19/09/24)

Note the emphasis on “individual consumption". To my mind water is a public good, a societal necessity. As such I want to see pricing evened out over the whole community. Under dynamic pricing  the rich can consume as much water as they like because they can afford to pay, while the poorer members of society will have to suddenly become use conscious. While the rich fill their swimming pools and have the lawn sprinklers on day and night, the poor will have to think twice about how often the toilet is flushed, how often the washing machine is used and can they afford to shower everyday. The poor pensioner will be calculating whether or not they have enough money to water their beloved garden.

Ok, my pensioner being unable to afford to water the garden is a hypothetical scenario. The cost of music venue tickets isn’t, neither are the prices you pay for an Uber, a holiday let from Airbnb, the food you buy from Tesco or Ocado. Even the price of a pint is now affected by dynamic pricing.

“A campaign group representing pubgoers has criticised the move by Stonegate, Britain’s largest pub company, to raise the price of pints during its busiest trading hours in some of its venues by 20p..."  Financial Times: 12/09/24)

If the price of a British pint of beer is now subject to dynamic pricing then nothing is sacred!

More seriously, when the market economy becomes the market society, when those in power promote the value of maximising profit for the few at the expense of the happiness and well being of the many, then, as a society, we lose all sense of humanity, morality and common decency.

There has been much theoretical discussion of late about the threat of Artificial Intelligence to humanity. I would argue that maybe we should be more concerned about those  humans using AI to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

[ceramicbeetle]

Desperately trying to make sense of Alex's motivations in Season Two and you know, I do eventually have to wonder if maybe Alex wasn't actually lying in the majority of those tapes.

Like, we tend to assume that Alex's motivations have been a consistent throughline since the college years, but do we actually know that that's the case? Do we know for sure that Alex was acting in deliberate, calculated ways in 2006; or could it be that he's telling the Truth on those olds tapes when he says he's blacking out and can't remember what's happening to anyone? After all, if we're assuming that Season 2 Alex's motivations are the exact same as his motives in Season 3, then it doesn't make any sense at all that he spend months working with Jay to try to find Amy; Season 3 Alex would have attempted to kill Jay like, on sight just to get things over with as quickly as possible and contain the spread of contamination as best as he could.

But, maybe, if Alex really had been separated from Amy after the events of the 04-04-10 tape, and if he really doesn't know where she is, then maybe that could make things start to make more sense. Maybe he really had been watching Jay's channel, and seeing Jay start going through the same things he went through in college without things devolving into violence and disappearances, and wondered if things maybe could play out differently this time. Maybe he really did send that tape to Jay to ask him for help, maybe he really was just trying to find Amy.

But then, instead of actually being helpful, Jay makes it extremely clear that he's a lot more interested in stalking Alex than he is in finding Amy. Alex asked for help, and instead there's a bunch of masked dudes on Jay's heels that keep attacking him, Jay is breaking into his house, stealing his things, leading the Operator right to him all over again, keeps trying to get other people (namely: Jessica -- if Alex is being honest when he says that his call reassuring her that Amy had been found was an effort to make Sure she stayed away from everything that was happening) involved; and instead of anything getting better, instead of anyone finding Amy, things are just getting worse all over again.

It's not until after the incident at the tunnel that things seem to start rapidly devolving. Rather than a calculated attempt to finally follow through with his need to curb the spread of contamination, this is very clearly an outburst of rage and terror. Alex's "I told you not to follow me" line in conjunction with Jay speculating that Alex didn't know who that guy was, to me, pretty firmly seems to speak to Alex having mistaken that stranger for Jay. From his point of view, Alex knows that Jay and totheark know where he live, have broken in before, he suspects that Jay stole a key to make it easier to get into his house, and he's been followed on the daily for months -- Alex is sitting at the tunnel because he doesn't know where else he can go without being constantly surveilled, hunted, and assaulted. And instead of getting a moment by himself to breathe, Jay followed him out there all over again (it feels like Alex looks directly at the camera in Jay's footage of him from this day; he knew for a fact that Jay was there), and then to make matters worse now 'Jay' won't even keep his distance anymore.

So Alex lashes out. And it's not until afterwards that he looks down and finally recognizes that this wasn't Jay -- it was someone completely innocent. Things have finally reached the low point he was at in college all over again; maybe even worse this time. If Alex doesn't remember attacking anyone in college, but he was at least partially conscious of it this time, then things have reached an entirely new rock bottom, they've reached an absolute point of no return.

He has no idea what happened to Amy, and he's spent months trying to find her with no hint of where she could be; he doesn't know where Jay actually is or what additional trouble he could be causing at this point; he does know that now innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire (in regards to the stranger in the tunnel, and also Jessica now that Jay has her phone number, and the untold number of people Jay got involved when he started posting videos to the Marble Hornets channel); things are spiraling out of control and there's no one left to ask for help. The situation isn't getting better, it's getting worse; things aren't getting easier to handle, they're just getting more out of hand; the negative impact is spreading and who knows how much further it can still go?

So, Alex decides to go scorched earth. He disfigures the body with the rock either to hide evidence or to make sure the guy would actually stay dead and not just get back up to start his own cycle of contamination in a few years. He tries to give Jay one last chance to back off, and Jay instead admits he's been talking to Jessica, acts obstinate and lies about not having Alex's spare key, and then breaks into Alex's house a second time (minimum). If Alex doesn't stop him now, who will? Alex met with Jay planning to kill the others, and then himself, so he could put a stop to this once and for all and keep things from getting any worse than they already were.

Maybe it makes a lot more sense if, rather than being a strangely incomprehensible detour on what should have been a straight path, the events of Season Two were the breaking point that put Alex on that path to begin with.

[skrunksthatwunk]

dreadful post just put on my dash im logging off forever (will be back in like 5 minutes bc i forgot i was mad)

[dkettchen]

me, procrastinating on one project with another one: it's fine they're both for content I do this for the people and the people will receive SOMETHING sooner by me working on either one 😤

[softshuji]

y'know it's a night when hal sits and eats cereal in the dark room at 1.30am.

[t00thpasteface]

my theory is dragons kidnap princesses for the same reason they hoard gold and other treasure, which is the perceived value and the bragging rights thereof. however, unlike precious metals and gems, human attractiveness is way more subjective, so you end up with dragons calculating the most valuable princess to nab and getting frustrated when their math doesn't check out...

[sokolygrandaananeva]

Feminine Beauty in Art: Evolution and Aesthetics

Throughout the history of art, the concept of feminine beauty has been in a constant state of transformation, evolving alongside the many artistic movements that have defined different epochs.

[thinkwellassumenothing]

History the Data Set of Political Theory

History is the dataset for which political theory generates hypotheses. Political science generates testable hypotheses, which give more reliable results about matters of limited scope. Historical data ad nauseum Limitations of Experimental Science History by hypothesis This leaves the interpretation of experimental results dependent upon more encompassing conceptual frameworks — theories or…

[sailorsleepymoon]

How say “I miss you when you’re not around” to your friends without actually experiencing emotional vulnerability

[freepassbound]

50,51,54,59

50: What do you expect from a friend or partner?

My first reaction is that there are some very different aspects to those two things - though also, since I would want a partner to be a friend (indeed, a best friend), there is some overlap as well.

My second reaction is that 'expect' is a bit of a loaded word? What can any of us expect from one another? Everyone will be in different places and be able to give different things and different levels at different times.

So what can anyone expect?

Kindness, and love, however they can offer it in that moment.

51: What question could you ask to find out the most about a person?

Anon, I'm afraid you've come barking up the wrong tree for a useful answer to this question. 😅

I'm on the spectrum with significant social anxiety - I can barely ask people for directions to the men's room!

However, I will share an anecdote, and then have a go myself:

The first (and thus far only) lady I dated asked, as her first question on the dating site, what my biggest kink was. Which (given that I somehow actually managed to answer, and answer honestly) was certainly very informative - and revealing - about me! 😅

In the event that I were going to ask (and able to ask) someone a single question to find out the most about them...

I think I would I would ask what they thought the best and worst class they'd ever taken was, and why. I don't know that an answer would tell me the most about them... but I think it would tell me some things that would be very illuminating about them.

54: Can humans really understand the complete nature of the universe, space and time?

I can only concur with J.B.S. Haldane:

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

But what a great joy it is in trying to understand!

59: What do you think the next era of music will be like?

Well, I don't know that I'm the best person to answer this question, given that I know as much about trends in modern music as I do about the cyclical valuation of the Algerian dinar (which is to say: absolutely bupkis). 😂

But... from what knowledge I have acquired, it seems there are two basic possibilities - one pessimistic, one optimistic (though in fact they may not be mutually exclusive).

The pessimistic outlook is that popular music will essentially come under the control of algorithmic generation (currently more commonly known as "AI"). Beats and hooks and everything else will be thoroughly analyzed for their ability to draw and hold a listener's attention, and computer programs will generate 'music' designed to maximize listenership - probably for 15-30 second chunks (all the better to sync with viral social media videos). Songs themselves will continue to get shorter in length (something that's already been happening) as a result.

Some artists will fight against this trend - a few, already too big to fail, will succeed; most will experience brief success by putting out unique, personal music - but, with streaming not providing sufficient royalties to live on while also creating a fanbase too diffuse to make touring feasible, won't be able to maintain it.

(Like I said, it's a pessimistic outlook)

The optimistic outlook is the idea that the diversification of popular music - already ongoing with genres like reggaeton and Afrobeats - will continue and expand, and the fusion of genres will create entirely new types of music, adding incredibly to the richness of music globally.

[ronearoundblindly]

Big Pharma

Steve Rogers x doctor!Reader

Written for @stargazingfangirl18's Birthday Bonenanza--HAPPY BDAY, SIRI!--using the scenario prompt ~quick, frantic, secret sex in an almost public place + babe's hand over your mouth to keep you quiet~ and the dialogue prompt "goddamnit, will you just f***ing let me do this for you?" with free use kink for good measure. Why not?

Summary: The extreme drug cocktail you devise to save Steve Rogers has one major side effect.

Warnings for smut 🥴, sorta dub-con because it's like sex pollen, F E E L S, Steve being the most chivalrous gentleman while railing you (do it for your country, babes 🫡), completely unintentional dirty talk from Steve but 😮‍💨 we'll allow it, Tony being Tony, and--as always-- terrible puns. (There are no mentions of any medical instruments, except an IV, which is not used.) MINORS DNI. This is a mature gift work; see my Light Masterlist for all-age fanfic that is fine for minors. WC 2k

The constant photoflash burns into your retinas obnoxiously, and you’re not even the subject of the paparazzi.

Captain America is alive—all thanks to you—though he could easily have been six-feet under by now. The mysterious infection was so bad and spread so far, the drug regimen you administered constitutes one of the Avengers’ biggest Hail Marys to date, but it’s working. That’s all that matters…to the world. Behind the scenes is a different story.

As Captain Rogers turns to the next hand he must shake, his sharp blue eyes find you, twinged with a familiar fear.

This stupid event scheduled by Stark to boost morale, to show Cap is just fine and back in fighting form, has gone on too long. It’s happening again.

You worried Rogers might not make it when suddenly Stark showed up hours earlier than the initial, planned press conference—because, of course, there’s meet-and-greets, quick interviews, and these damn handshakes. He’s only gone so long between treatments for the last week.

You nod at Cap and make your way in the small crowd back to Stark. You tell him you’ll need a room, somewhere private to put in the IV, and at least thirty minutes to administer the huge dose. Rogers’s super-metabolism makes it necessary to use approximately forty times the prescription average for antibiotics and steroids. In theory, the side effects are well worth his speedy recovery.

Well, the only side effect.

Stark looks horrendously annoyed. “Can’t you just shoot him up with it and be done?” He doesn’t need your lecture repeated though. “Fine, there’s a greenroom thing over there, but you’ve got fifteen minutes at most, you hear me?”

“Twenty-five, Mr. Stark. He’s not a water balloon.”

“Twenty or he can wheel the damn thing around with him.”

You gulp in nervousness, but the problem isn’t Stark’s attitude. Rogers isn’t going to like rushing this. He feels shame enough already.

“I’ll make it work,” you assure the stubborn playboy. If he only knew…

“Good. A team player. We value that here.”

You have no fucking idea how ironic that is, you scream internally, but you follow him to a door off a back hallway, a room that shares a wall with the space all those people are gathered, and thank Stark.

“Oh good, he’s heard the dog-whistle of treat time,” Tony quips, and you swivel to see Cap trailing behind you.

He’s already made his excuses to step away, too. It must be bad.

You’re sure to pull out your props of a saline drip and tubing from your bag while Tony can still see, but you drop the act the instant the door clicks shut.

Cap take one step forward to flip the lock, immediately unzipping the fly of his iconic leather suit.

See, the only side effect of the drugs is Rogers gets hard, often, and can’t find relief from his efforts alone. Through trial-and-error, the clear solution has been help—discretely—from the only medical professional allowed around him until his condition improved.

Of course, he fought it. Of course, you wanted to preserve his dignity. Of course, you tried to keep it as perfunctory, methodical, and uninspired as possible, but the thing is, that didn’t last.

The more distant and cold the experience, the faster he became desperate and wanting again, and now you have just twenty minutes to make sure Captain America can hold out for hours.

Steve, you remind yourself. He prefers you not use respectful address when engaging is what he deems entirely disrespectful behavior. 

You need to get him off in essentially no time at all, so you’ve decided: go big or go home.

Bag tossed to the floor, you unbutton your pants and shimmy out of everything from shoes to panties, letting the longer tail of your dress shirt barely cover your modesty.

Steve looks dumbfounded. It’s bad enough he has to run to you for a handy every few hours, but this?

“Doc, no,” he breaths.

“I understand the procedure,” you say calmly, echoing his harrowing consent from that first night he needed you.

Steve’s brow furrows in strain. “We shouldn’t…”

‘We’ are way past ‘shouldn’t,’ buddy.

“Can’t ask you to…“ but he also knows time’s a wasting.

He’s already fisting himself, struggling to be the gentleman he never stopped being, which at the moment is a huge problem because both of you need to get through the day—you without losing your job and him without popping a boner on national television.

It’s your job to break him and break him right now.

“Goddamnit, will you just fucking let me do this for you?”

There’s a flat smack on the door.

“Do whatever the lady wants and then get back out here,” Tony yells from the other side. “Put us all out of our misery,” he ends with a grumble.

That is by far the most helpful thing Stark has said in the last week, so you mouth “see” and begin undoing your blouse from the bottom, giving Steve his first peek of you. His hand speeds along his length, adam’s apple bobbing in concentration.

“Here, I’ll make it easy for you,” you whisper. You walk to the far corner of the room, put your hands up, shirt rising over your bare ass, and face the wall. Your voice is soothing, pleading even. “Just take what you need.”

In some ways, you feel responsible for his predicament. You are the prescribing doctor, he isn’t in a relationship where a partner could assist, and he insists no one else know. He doesn’t deserve to be poked and prodded more than necessary, and you can’t give him any other meds in combination. None of it is his fault same as none of it is yours. You only intended to heal him.

Truthfully though, none of this is just about his release anymore, much as you’d like to dismiss your feelings.

You can’t deny, however, that each time the air gets a little thicker with tension, the body language a little more intimate. Steve has kept his eyes open, clutched your free hand to his chest, rolled his hips open, and thrust up into your fist. The greater the satisfaction of his climax, the longer he retains control.

“When this is over…I swear,” he grits out, getting closer word by word until his deep voice is right by your ear.

He tugs your shirt up to dip his fingers between your legs. “Been smelling you for two days. Can’t do anything until—” Steve growls, feeling how slick you’ve become in anticipation “—you’re ready for me.” 

His concern washes away when two fingers easily breech you to the knuckle and are immediately replaced by the blunt head of his cock dragging between your folds.

You didn’t expect him to give in so fast. You didn’t expect him to have known this aroused you. The idea he might want to continue, to go further, races down your spine, following the opposite path of Steve leaning into you. His forehead presses your occipital as yours presses the wall. The heat of him makes you arch in luxurious proximity.

Steve fucking forward to enter you in one smooth motion makes you forget to be quiet, but before the whole shout of ecstasy escapes, his hand covers your mouth.

“Shhh, Doc,” he breathes at the base of your neck. “Be good for me.”

That only gets you moaning into the seam of his gloves.

His hips start a staccato rhythm, a second of loud friction for each second of silent, fulfilling pressure.

Steve slips his still wet fingers under your shirt and beneath the cup of your bra to swirl a smooth pattern over your nipple. Instead of voicing your approval, you shove yourself back into him faster.

You notice the muffled chatting of Tony and someone else outside while your eyes roll. The slap of your skin against the Cap suit becomes the loudest thing in the room, but that’s not what Steve minds.

He pulls out and spins you around, pausing to see the cream you’ve created at the base of him drip to the carpet below.

Deep sea eyes meet yours through golden lashes.

“If I can’t hear you…” Steve hoists you up to his waist, threading one arm through the bend in your knee, spreading you wide and diving in swiftly.

Your body curls forward automatically to grasp at him and smother yourself in the leather of his shoulder pad. This pace is much faster, purposeful, utterly unravelling you. The position delivers more range of motion, all of the buildup and less of the noise, with the added benefit of his tool belt nudging your clit repeatedly.

Tony pounds on the door. “‘Bout done in there, guys? Let’s go.” How apt, the unknowing jester.

Steve pants, open-mouthed, against your temple.

You smile but can’t stop your own ruin.

A groan gets buried in your disheveled hair. “Are you…close?” His hips snap brutally. “Are you—“ he sounds wrecked “—you gonna…come on my—uungh.”

You tip over the edge, clutching him tight and fluttering for him in every way. The detonation of your orgasm burns red behind your eyelids like camera flashes, a dirty snapshot for you alone.

“Mercy,” Steve begs, gripping your ass to rut into you, desperate to join. His neck tenses as he spills inside you, pulse throbbing in time with his cock. 

He leans against you and the wall, his steady weight stilling your shaky legs. Slowly, your feet are guided to the floor and Steve steps away to wipe away any evidence of his ‘therapeutic treatment.’ His breathing settles much faster than yours, and by the time he’s tucked back in with his suit righted, you’re simply sliding down the wall to catch up.

He hurries over to the small vanity and mini fridge—usually ‘guests’ for speaking (or interrogating) wait here—to bring you supplies.

A box of tissues is set by your side.

“So…” he hands you a bottle of water “…maybe…dinner tonight?” 

You set the water down in favor of cleaning yourself, glancing up to offer a reassuring dismissal. “This morning was your last dose,” you remind him. “It should be over soon.”

Steve may not need this anymore, may never need you again, but he doesn’t miss a single beat.

“I’d like—I want to take you some place nice, but…” He chugs his whole water then quickly unclasps the glove on his left hand, rolling up his sleeve, veins jumping over a thick forearm.

“I don’t know what food you enjoy.”

Arguably, he knows a few other things that you enjoy.

There’s another impatient bang at the door.

“I—“ Your heart soars with the soft sincerity of his face, no trace of fear left behind, no hesitation. “I’m gonna need a minute.”

Steve stands, smoothing a hand over his hair. “I’ll lock it behind me…and, um, thank you, Doc.”

It’s the first time he hasn’t apologized this whole week.

“You’re welcome, sir.”

Steve flashes you a dopey smile and shakes his head. “See you out there,” he chuckles.

You can’t be seen when the door opens just enough for Steve to step out, but he makes a show of rolling the suit’s sleeve back down like he really did have an IV infusion, selling the lie like a pro. He keeps Tony talking while shutting you back into your debauched bubble.

Through the wall, you still hear “could you have gone any slower?” followed by a curt, “yes,” and have to stifle a laugh.

“What’d you do, blow a vein?”

You’re picturing an incredibly ironic look on Captain Rogers’ face.

“Just be grateful she puts up with us, Tony…” and their voices disappear down the hall.

His treatment may be finished, but Steve wants you to stick around. He wants you.

Would having dinner with that man really be so terrible? No. Not at all. Even the ‘worst’ of this situation has been a great fucking experience. You don’t want to give that up yet.

It seems you’re both addicted now.

[Main Masterlist; Steve Rogers One-Shots; Ko-Fi]

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

[ldknightshade]

morality: a character creation guide

creating and understanding your oc’s personal moral code! no, i cannot tell you whether they’re gonna come out good or bad or grey; that part is up to you.

anyway, let’s rock.

i. politics

politics are a good way to indicate things your character values, especially when it comes to large-scale concepts such as government, community, and humanity as a whole.

say what you will about either image; i’d argue for the unintiated, the right image is a good introduction to some lesser discussed ideologies… some of which your oc may or may not fall under.

either way, taking a good look at your character’s values on the economic + social side of things is a good place to start, as politics are something that, well… we all have ‘em, you can’t avoid ‘em.

clearly, this will have to be adjusted for settings that utilize other schools of thought (such as fantasy + historical fiction and the divine right of kings), but again, economic/social scale plotting will be a good start for most.

ii. religion + philosophy

is your oc religious? do they believe in a form of higher power? do they follow some sort of philosophy?

are they devout? yes, this applies to non-religious theist and atheist characters as well; in the former’s case… is their belief in a higher power something that guides many of their actions or is their belief in a higher power something that only informs a few of their actions? for the atheists; do they militant anti-theists who believe atheism is the only way and that religion is harmful? or do they not care about religion, so long as it’s thrust upon them?

for the religious: what is your oc’s relationship with the higher power in question? are they very progressive by their religion’s standards or more orthodox? how well informed of their own religion are they?

does your oc follow a particular school of philosophical thought? how does that interact with their religious identification?

iii. values

by taking their political stance and their religious + philosophical stance, you have a fairly good grasp on the things your character values.

is there anything they value - due to backstory, or what they do, or what they love - that isn’t explained by political stance and religious and/or philosophical identification? some big players here will likely be your oc’s culture and past.

of everything you’ve determined they value, what do they value the most?

iv. “the line”

everyone draws it somewhere. we all have a line we won’t cross, no matter the lengths we go for what we believe is a noble cause. where does your character draw it? how far will they go for something they truly believe is a noble cause? as discussed in part iii of my tips for morally grey characters,

would they lie? cheat? steal? manipulate? maim? what about commit acts of vandalism? arson? would they kill?

but even when we have a line, sometimes we make exceptions for a variety of reasons. additionally, there are limits to some of the lengths we’d go to.

find your character’s line, their limits and their exceptions.

v. objectivism/relativism

objectivism, as defined by the merriam-webster dictionary, is “an ethical theory that moral good is objectively real or that moral precepts are objectively valid.”

relativism, as defined by the merriam-webster dictionary, is “a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them.”

what take on morality, as a concept, does your character have? is morality objective? is morality subjective?

we could really delve deep into this one, but this post is long enough that i don’t think we need to get into philosophical rambling… so this is a good starting point.

either way, exploring morality as a concept and how your character views it will allow for better application of their personal moral code.

vi. application

so, now you know what they believe and have a deep understanding of your character’s moral code, all that’s left is to apply it and understand how it informs their actions while taking their personality into account.

and interesting thing to note is that we are all hypocrites; you don’t have to do this, but it might be fun to play around with the concept of their moral code and add a little bit of hypocrisy to their actions as a treat.

either way, how do your character’s various beliefs interact? how does it make them interact with the world? with others? with their friends, family, and community? with their government? with their employment? with their studies? with the earth and environment itself?

in conclusion:

there’s a lot of things that inform one’s moral compass and i will never be able to touch on them all; however, this should hopefully serve as at least a basic guide.

[centrally-unplanned]

Academic History YouTuber Premodernist released video recently on "State Flag" discourse, and flag discourse more wildly, that I thought was pretty good! I agreed with 50% of it. For those who don't know, there is a longstanding movement in the vexillology community to push for more simplified flag designs, and they hate the state flags of the US as their antithesis; a movement that catapulted into the internet mainstream when YouTuber CGPGrey released a video riffing on that debate and grading all the state flag designs.

That video is great by the way (it's hilarious, CGP Grey is just very talented as a performer), and the biggest thing Premodernist is wrong about is that the state flags do suck. But what he gets right is that the so-called "principles" briefly referred to in the video are themselves pretty weak; some are fine but others do not hold up to much scrutiny. The state flags largely suck for the boring reason that they just suck; they are shitty designs and often repeat each other in a domain where "standing out" is the point. Like what the fuck Montana:

This is something a 5th grader whips up in PowerPoint for a class presentation. Helvetica Bold?? "Mandated by law in 1985" yeah I didn't need Wikipedia tell me this decision dates to the 80's.

But that is boring and subjective, right? You can't just say they suck. So you had to make a theory about it - and I won't go into too much detail but it generally boils down to:

Make it simple, "something a child could draw"

Make it "distinct at a distance", since it is a flag you are supposed to see it at a distance

Three colors or fewer

No words on flags

Which I think you can get the philosophy for. These principles, which CGP Grey outlines, actually come from the work of Ted Kaye, who is a big figure in the aforementioned flag reform movement and the focus of most of the video. As part of the original CGP Grey video I just rolled with that, but I did remember him showing Utah's newly designed flag at the end which embodied these principles, and uh:

This is kind of mid? Like it doesn't suck, but it looks like a corporate redesign of a hockey team logo or something. A bit of a red flag (hah) if your front-and-center case is weak.

Anyway this is what Premodernist digs into in the video. The stuff I agreed with the most are the parts where he just ???? at some of these rules. "No finicky bits", a "child must draw it", "distinct at a distance"? None of these actually track for say this one:

A child drawing the US flag does not draw 50 stars and 13 stripes unless they are a budding librarian; you absolutely cannot tell if this flag has 50 stars on it from a distance, and that level of detail is clearly some kind of finicky. Of course your response is "okay sure but still, I can tell what the flag is from a distance, I can't count the 50 stars but I get the gist". But that is true for almost all flags!

It's a fern and a peace pipe and a brown thing and the word "Oklahoma" below it, you absolutely, 100%, will be able to tell what this flag is at a distance. You don't need to count the leaves to get the general shape, and when you think about it, it is actually kind of silly anyone would claim otherwise. There just isn't any need to appreciate the tiny details on a flag to understand whose flag it is. (the only valid critique here is that everything should be bigger - too much dead space)

Not to mention the "see from a distance" thing even being a metric. That isn't how you encounter flags most often today? Maybe in the 19th century on a battlefield that was (and even then you had battle standards), but it isn't now. You see it in textbooks, on your computer screen, as an icon for a football game team, right next to you in a government office. Why privilege distance? You just made that up as a value. 99% of "flag consumption" is not seeing it at a distance.

The "only use ~3 colors thing" is the funniest, you can just argue this with...no? No you don't. You don't. What? No. You can...you can just use more colors? Here is an example from the "manual" Ted Kaye wrote on the subject:

And the 5 bands on the chinese flag are fine! They are not "hard to look at" or whatever. Also, I am screenshotting a tiny corner of a youtube video, this image is like 240p, and I can tell its a dragon - and that isn't even the color point it is trying to make, dude just deviates off into another critique. Meanwhile the Amsterdam flag looks like a traffic warning sign. Chinese flag needs to not have the white stripe connect into the white seal background, that is an error, but otherwise I prefer it.

It is annoying how many of the state flags are a blue banners with a round seal in the middle. That does make them hard to distinguish from each other. But that isn't a problem with seal-on-blue, that is just a collective action problem! Flag-reform-favourite the tricolor can run into this too - here are the flags of the Netherlands and Luxembourg:

Like one of your needs to go home and change, that is ridiculous. Though if you had a complex seal in the middle that might avoid this problem! Funny that.

Even the "no words on a flag" argument, which I am more sympathetic to, doesn't hold up too well because too often you find yourself going "unless it is good" which just isn't a rule. The Iranian flag is the stand-out he mentions:

The middle crest is a stylized rendition of the name Allah, and the cursive lining on the tricolor bands are text as well - God Is Great, 22 times, marking the anniversary date of the Islamic Revolution. Stylistically beautiful, also words on a flag. The state flags just didn't try to do anything artistic.

I think the best point Premodernism mentions is a sort of stylistic unity Kaye & Co are pursuing above all else - everything sacrificed for corporate minimalism. Kaye's book will say it respects history and symbols should be meaningful, but then hates any symbols that require complexity. He singles out Turkmenistan as an ugly flag for example:

And as I said I only 50% disagree sometimes, I do think there is a complexity limit, and this flag goes over it, that is too detailed. Though the main reason this flag is bad is the weird choice to not put the banner at the edge, and have the crescent just...float off center? If it was this:

Two seconds in paint, already better, you can play with it. But anyway, you can say the symbols are too complex, but if you also say you care about historical meaning? Turkmenistan is a nation of traditional semi-nomadic tribes, who populated the Silk Road and made textiles as their ultimate expression of art. These carpet guls are traditional symbols used in those carpets that represent the five major tribes that compose the country. You can't just invent new symbols that have equal meaning to these, right? Like you can try if you want, sure, new symbols become meaningful all the time. But a rule that says "all art from before 1950 is tossed in the dumpster because it wouldn't pass muster as a Pepsi logo" is a weird rule to adopt if you say you value historical meaning. Turkmenistan does not have to look like France, and it is weird to want every national symbol to be aesthetically coherent to each other. Let 100 flags bloom! It is certainly "distinct at a distance" lol.

Anyway that is enough summarizing of a YouTube video - as I mentioned, he actually likes the state flags, I don't, I do think you have to balance a lot of this with just "general design principles". Never have your name on a flag in Helvetica Bold, amazing I had to write that one down for you. But a lot of these flag-specific rules derived from Kaye's work I often see bandied about are silly, and I was glad to see someone point that out.

[starrysunbeam]

astrology observations 9

˚₊‧꒰ა ₍ᐢ. ̫.ᐢ₎ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

•leo south node/aquarius north node people need to feel special. they spent past lives in upper society (some even come from royalty), or having some sort of status symbol. they need to learn about different walks of life in this incarnation, & help society progress as a whole- moving from self-centeredness and embracing community.

•pisces moons make up some of the most prolific artists and creatives - elvis, frank sinatra, michael jackson, leonardo da vinci, edgar allen poe, patti smith, joni mitchell and robin williams. these natives aren’t just creative visionaries, but also rather receptive to collective energy, making them skilled at capturing cultural dynamics.

•aquarians make up many true crime content creators. this makes complete sense to me as they are adept with technology and are intrigued by subjects that are hard to fully understand (i.e. true crime, the paranormal, cryptids, conspiracy theories, etc)

•moon in sagittarius or the 9th house🤝running away from home (even if temporarily)

•most taurus moons and mercuries make up their mind about their values early in life, and don’t like their views being challenged by others.

•virgo midheavens get depressed when they don’t have a consistent & productive routine. they also constantly want to get better at what they do, very high standards for themselves.

•in my opinion, those with afflicted mars placements (especially moon-mars aspects) tend to have physical reactions to heavy emotions - aka psychosomatic illness

*reminder, all astrological health observations should be taken with a grain of salt*

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

is Jewish Voice for Peace actually Jewish? I've heard a couple different things about that but no sources

@gryphistheantlerqueen also asked:

Whooo boy. So this has been sitting in the inbox for a few months, I wrote up a draft, and then it just sat... until this past week, when some new JVP BS hit the fan and gave me the kick to finish it.

Sooooo...

Verdict: Not Actually Jewish

(updated verdict after finding out about the “self-managed conversion” and “teacup mikvah”) Jewish, technically, and that "technically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and is actively debatable without access to a detailed breakdown of JVP’s actual membership rolls. 

In general summation, JVP is a far-left radical antizionist group that is headed by a few visibly antizionist Jews and whose membership rolls are either a strong minority or outright majority of non-Jews, based on variable statistics that they've released. Although they claim that the “majority of their members and staff are Jewish”, this seems to be both statistically unlikely and actively suspicious due to their noted tendency to instruct even non-Jewish members to speak #AsAJew on social media, and their instructions to do “self-managed conversions”.  However, due to their title, they are very popular with people who want a Jewish Stamp Of Approval for demonizing Israelis and Zionist Jews as a result. In effect, they are Jewish in the same way that people like Candace Owens and Hershel Walker are Black—as self-tokenizing minorities who throw the rest of their ethnic group under the bus in exchange for power and political access.

And despite the claims that they are “inspired by Jewish values and traditions” (as put on their website) and “oppose anti-Jewish hatred,” JVP routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric, up to and including blood libel and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and acts as a shield against non-Jews who also engage in antisemitic rhetoric so long as the non-Jews in question remember to shout "For Palestine!" first. This is not an exaggeration. 

The primary example of their in-house antisemitic rhetoric is their "Deadly Exchange" program, where they explicitly and conspiratorially blame Israel as being responsible for American police brutality and militarization. However, for all of their fearmongering and blame-casting on the subject—as if American cops needed outside help in brutalizing minorities or gaining military-grade handmedowns from the Pentagon, both of which are explicit claims of the "Deadly Exchange" program—they have a hard time actually identifying specific deaths associated with the international training seminars they're holding up as responsible.

One of the the closest they've come to a specific allegation is claiming that "former St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch trained with the Israeli military three years before Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising." (Note: this was in a video that appears to have since been made private.) But Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson PD, not the St. Louis PD, and Fitch retired months before the killing. So he was in a completely different police department, and this is the closest JVP comes to pointing to specific deaths or acts of brutality that they blame on Israel. Everything else is literal fearmongering--up to and including the classic conspiratorial tropes of "secretive Jewish governmental influence".

JVP has also happily supported the words of white supremacists like Richard Spencer, taking his “You could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people," statement at face value, using it as the basis for entire articles where they compared Zionism to White Supremacy as a deliberate misrepresentation of the ideology that is common on the extreme political Left (you can compare that treatment again with how Candace Owens treats the word "Woke" on the Right). Even when the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march happened, JVP wasted no time in comparing Zionism with the very ideology fueling the people chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us," saying that Zionism is "Jewish racial supremacy" and calling for a universal condemnation of the ideology as a form of White Supremacy... which was the exact sort of message that many of those same White Supremacists would have happily agreed with.  So JVP is essentially siding with literal White Supremacists,  even as they claim that "Jews are not the primary victims of White Supremacy."

JVP also engages in Holocaust revisionism, such as with this lovely quote from Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of JVP, “I believe it is critical to situate the genocide of Jews in a broader context, and not as an exceptional, metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also targeted for annihilation.”

(another quote, from an article by Surasky, which compares Netanyahu to Hitler.)

This is just straight revisionism of the entire Holocaust and the unique fixation the Nazis had on the Jews. Literally, even when they were losing, they were diverting resources from the war just to kill more Jews. Quote Hitler himself, "Jews must be prevented from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations." The very basis of the Nazi ideology paints Jews as an existential threat to the human race's peace and security—a far cry from JVP's claim that the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust wasn't unique or exceptional.

Additionally, JVP ignores or re-envisions Mizrachi Jewish history. They call the very term Mizrachi “Zionist rhetoric,” and refer to Mizrachi “immigrants,” (“Deadly Exchange,” pg. 16-17), and claim “the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim” (“Our Approach to Zionism”) as though those weren’t the direct result of the mass expulsion of and violence against Jews in MENA countries. These weren’t immigrants, these were refugees. 

And as for the question of “Are they Jewish?”, well...

Statistically, they are not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, 90% of whom identify as some degree of Zionist in the sense of “Supporting Jewish self-determination.”  One does not need to be Jewish to join JVP, as they proudly state on their website. Their membership rolls are also extremely obfuscated, and the fact that they encourage their followers, whether Jewish or not, to post and speak “as Jews” on social media makes it even more difficult to figure out what percentage of their membership is actually Jewish.  Furthermore, they have instructions for their members to engage in “self-conversions” that are not acceptable to Jewish law or tradition, and misuse/appropriate other sacred Jewish traditions to the point that “blasphemy” is an accurate description, with their instructions on the mikvah (a sacred bath) being outright offensive.  

(note that one has to be completely nude and bare of any adornment or makeup to use the mikvah, which is a pure pool of collected rainwater to be immersed in, for context on the above... misuse.  Trying to claim this as being “in line with sacred Jewish tradition” is like trying to claim to be Catholic while also saying that the Pope is the Antichrist and that using beer and a doughnut for the Eucharist is acceptable. For more information on mikveh, see: The Jewish Virtual Library, Aish, myjewishlearning, or Chabad.

There's also no altar.

The irony of asking people not to appropriate while doing this is astonishing.)

It’s also telling that they straight up say they are “claiming” the practice as their own.

Furthermore, JVP has hosted panels on “antisemitism” in the past... headed by people who are not only not Jewish, but who have been credibly accused of antisemitism in the past.  

JVP has also endorsed The Mapping Project Boston, which was a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) subsidiary, listing every “Zionist” organization in Boston, Mass. This included Jewish schools, elder homes, community centers, disability centers, and more; all of them painted with scary and misleading “links” to non-Jewish organizations to insinuate Jewish control of the state and city governments, invoking age-old antisemitic tropes of a conspiracy of Jews as they did so:

(first image is the Mapping Project, the second is a 1938 Nazi political cartoon)

The Mapping Project also, and this is my personal favorite, accused Harvard University of doing “racist science” for engaging in archeological and genetic studies of Jews and Jewish history.  Tellingly, BDS actually disavowed The Mapping Project (albeit for bad optics, not for the rank antisemitism they were promoting)... but JVP has not, even though the Mapping Project’s entry for the ADL reads as follows:

Masquerading as a “civil rights” group, the ADL is a counterinsurgency and espionage organization whose mission is to protect the mutual interests of the US and Israeli governments, and to eliminate solidarity among oppressed peoples, especially concerning Palestine. The ADL spies on and criminalizes activists (using its connections to governments, police, schools, and corporations) while undermining their work by pushing its own state-sanctioned, pro-“Israel” agenda. And while the ADL claims to represent Jews and to fight “antisemitism” on their behalf, the organization has supported anti-Jewish state violence and sanitized Nazis. The ADL cannot be reformed: it must be dismantled and whatever resources it has should go towards repairing the many harms it has done. (Emphasis added.)

Of course, JVP has also engaged in similar conspiracy-toned antisemitic dogwhistles, such as this fun bit from their first Deadly Exchange video:

So clearly (to me at least), they have no problems with The Mapping Project’s tone and presentation.  

And this isn’t even going into JVP’s routine promotion of blood libel, their egregious double standards, their approving of pogroms, their active support for Hamas terrorists and demonization of Hamas’ victims, their attempted revisionism of Jewish history, their abject rejection of Jewish culture, and their other actions that show not just bias, but outright hatred for 90% of the world’s Jews.  

As one commentator put it, JVP as an organization is very much like Autism Speaks is to Autistic people--a thinly disguised hate group that views the people they’re supposedly speaking for as the problem, and themselves as promoting the Solution.  To this moderator, they’re the equivalent of the Association of German National Jews, who were also known as the Jews for Hitler; they wanted to abandon Judaism and embrace Naziism... and they got sent to the gas chambers anyway.  

Mod Joseph

Sources:

www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peace

www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mikveh-Guide-for-Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Outlined.pdf

(and also just... a general experience/exposure to them on social media, where even the most progressive actions taken by Israel, such as the recent ruling regarding queer Palestinians being able to claim sanctuary in Israel, being labeled as “pinkwashing”)