I’ll be boring and say I’d party like it’s 2025 and Donald Trump has just died before taking the oath for President of the United States. Interpret that as you will.

Cthulu? Is your age upon us?

I tried out Bluesky briefly before it was announced they received major funding from a crypto bro. Deleted my account instantly.

I was never on twitter, so I have no point of reference on how it compares. I will say I liked how much easier it was to find artists on Bluesky than on Mastodon, but the algorithm also sent me a bunch of random stuff I wasn’t interested in.

I’ll say I’m glad people are migrating away from twitter. I know it’d be highly preferable if they moved to mastodon or some other federated platform, but if your sign up process involves instances, or you don’t have a sophisticated, privacy invading algorithm dictating everything you consume, it seems most people don’t want it.

But hey, any effort to bury Musk’s “I’m A Big Boy Now” App is an effort I can applaude for now.

If she was in it for honest love, then I’d be more accepting of what you’re describing. I’m less put off by the age gap and more put off by the marrying for money part. This happens all the time, and it’s one of the many reasons I hate capitalism and consumerism, as it ultimately makes the choice to marry for money a “reasonable choice”.

I understand that “marriage is a business contract” has been a more true statement than “marriage is a love pact” for most of human history. But that doesn’t make it right. Marrying for love, IMHO is the only reason to feel good about a marriage, because ultimately that’s the only actually good thing about marriage. The rest of it is theater and performance.

She’s an adult, she can make all the mistakes she wants, and in our fucked up capitalist society, what your daughter is doing is considered not a mistake, but a reasonable financial decision. And that is what sickens me.

It’s one of those “hate the game, not the player,” situations, sadly. Cuz you can stop a single player, the game on the other hand…

Bring back your Advocacy division. Lower the pay for your CEO. Secure funding from other entities so that you are no longer dependent on Google. Focus more on implementing better security measures on Linux and Android, specifically within the domain of sandboxing your open processes. Keep about:config and manifest v2 options available.

Fair enough. To be clear, I am saying I would not like any of these aspects of humankind, not that they are necessarily in any way equivalent. Nor am I trying to necessarily relate them to each other. On their own, I dislike them.

Lol. Wow. I honestly don’t know how I could have made that many mistakes. My apologies, I am quite sleep deprived. But you can think I’m an AI if you’d like. People confuse my propensity towards overly verbose replies as being AI. Or, yknow, just don’t like it. I edit a lot because I make a lot of typos and catch them later. Thanks for pointing that out. Edited and done.

Rockwell did make attempts to make political work towards the latter part of his career. The hard part about being an artist/celebrity of any renown is that your audience becomes sort of like your golden fetters. You can’t change the content of your work less you alienate your fans and more worryingly, your patrons. I admire Rockwell to some degree for taking a chance to address civil rights in some of his works, but theres a lot of reasons why ultimately throse pieces fell short. Rockwell’'s audience at the time didn’t want him to step outside of his folksy genre he had pigeonholed himself into. Its the equivalent to “I just wanted to watch my football and drink my beer man, why you’d have to bring up politics. I get enough of that elsewhere.”

Additionally, in the case of illustration, sometimes your art style just limits the kinds of messages you can say effectively. Rockwell was an illustrator whose style emphasized and romanticized sweet scenes like from a movie. There’s a reason Disney’s artists take so much inspiration from specific artists and illustrators with a certain romantic flair. Take a look at the sickeningly sweet pastel portrayals of the Victorian bourgeoisie from Fragonard, and imagine that style attempting to address political injustices at that time. It just doesn’t work. Not unless you completely overhaul your style and the way you communicate visually can you convey the message effectively.

Rockwell tried to use his talents to address the civil injustices of his time, but due to the preconceptions he had built up over he years around the kinds of messages that work could convey, he ultimately was unable to convey it as effectively as other artists at the time would be able to.

It may not be a fair comparison to make, but the works of Barbara Jones-Hogu were far more effective illustrative pieces that conveyed the sociopolitical sentiments of the time, partially because she was not pinned down by the limitations of what her previous works conveyed.

Yes. Sorry. Late night posting 😪

Yeah. Please keep in mind I mean no shade at Rockwell himself. I just think he had an unintended negative impact on American culture.

The video in question was part one of a Behind The Bastards Two Parter. Here are the raw links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFBQMEn_0rw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2Jx5WDtzts

Edit: As an aside, if you want to see an artist who I think was equal parts “true artist” and “true illustrator”, I’d look at Edgar Degas.

I have been struggling with this lately. I am staunchly anti violence and anti war, and yet, I am conflicted on how far I truly would be willing to go to cull classism, fascism, racism, transphobia , homophobia, misogyny, and pedophilia from the world.

These things are abhorrent to me, and I wonder how much of my humanity I’d be willing to sacrifice in exchange for even one of these to no longer being in existence amongst the ranks of humanity.

How much good does pacifism give to the world in promoting the better angels of our nature? How much harm does it do when those same principles allow the worst among us to march down our roads and drag away our loved ones in the night?

Two scenes from media I consume have lately continually resurfaced in my mind. One is this scene from Vinland Saga, where the main character’s father confronts him when he finds his sword. The father is about to go off to war, and somberly asks his son who he wants to kill with his father’s sword. This culminates with the father, who again, is about to go off to war, emphatically declaring to his son that he has no enemies, that there is no such thing as enemies.

The other is this scene from Star Wars Andor, in which a high level spy of a burgeoning Rebellion is asked by a compatriot (who wishes to quit fighting the Empire due to possibly being found out), asks what he sacrifices for the fight against the Empire. The monologue he delivers is chilling, acknowledging he sacrifices all things that make him human, he becomes like his enemy in order to defeat them. When he reflects on the question, and asks, “So what do I sacrifice? Everything!”

That…is what I believe I will have to give up in order for there to be a sunrise for the people I love tomorrow. I’ll have to give up my humanity, everything. And I am afraid. I am selfish. I don’t want to. But I don’t know any other way.

The feelings that scene stir up in me resonate because that is how I feel when I think on the fascist cancer that has once again metastasized in America. Having no enemies… if only. Truly. Having enemies robs me of my humanity, because in fighting them I must bury my humanity. And I know that once I do that, there’s no going back. There will be no redemption.

The thing I am struggling with is… am I the one who makes them my enemies? Or are they? And if the only thing we can agree on is that we are enemies…then what choice do we have when they come for me and those I claim as my kin?

Lol. Nicely shitted.

Illustration major here. Art is such an overarching term that it can pretty much be used as an umbrella term for nearly anything and everything. Etymologically speaking, Illustration just means making something clear, to communicate some idea to someone else. The concept was modernized to encompass the use of pictographs, texts, and diagrams as visual aids.

All forms of illustrations technically can be classified as pieces of art, as the definitions of art vary wildly. I’ve always taken art to be anything that evokes an emotion novel to either the consumer of art or the producer of the art or conveys a novel idea either back at the artist or to the consumer of art, or some mixture of these. The key thing to me is novelty, which evolves and changes based off of sociocultural norms and personal experience. Again, totally my personal opinion, and fine artists in particular would be able to nitpick this idea to death. Conversations I still enjoy when I have the energy.

Rockwell comes from a very classic Americana age of illustration. Iirc he is at the tail end of the second golden age of illustration (though my knowledge on the history is very rusty). I always preferred the work of his predecessor, JC Leyendecker, and his predecessor, Alfonse Mucha. Purely from a technical standpoint, mind you. The content of their work, to be frank, I find quite banal.

As per this particular piece, it’s a simple narrative piece, obviously well executed technically in oil. The narrative is classic Rockwell. I think Rockwell has been ruined for me just because his work created a nostalgia for a time that never quite existed in America. Don’t get me wrong , I think Rockwell was a stand up guy, especially for his time period.

It’s just that his influence over the American Art and Illustration scene eventually ended up resonating with people who aren’t looking to art for anything more than familiarity, not novelty. Essentially, it’s kitsch. Rockwell unintentionally created the ideal white American past that boomers currently are nostalgic for. An ideal that has had negative ramifications for those of us who have to deal with people who vehemently insist that this idyllic Rockwellian world was the great America we should all return to.

Sorry to make this political, but art, like anything, cannot be divorced from politics. And intentional or not, Rockwell has contributed to American sociopolitical sentiments in profound ways. He practically invented modern Americana. And while it has its charm, I find it exhausting to see it everywhere.

In it’s worst manifestation, Rockwell’s legacy ultimately resulted in producing Thomas Kinkade, America’s richest, and arguably the world’s most evil painter. People like to say second most, but Hitler was always a Nazi first and foremost. Calling Hitler a painter is like calling Ronald Reagan an actor. Like yes, but maybe that’s not what he should be remembered for?

Anyways, the conflation between Illustration and other Artistic disciplines, as well as with differentiating between illustration and art, is a topic of discussion I find very intriguing and one rife with controversy, due in no small part to the ambiguity surrounding the definition of art in general.

Ah yes, King Vance. That’s not unsettling at all /s.

Same. Best Game Series and storytelling Telltale has ever done.

No, he’s just a sad excuse for a sack of shit, let alone a human being. He’s talked openly about wanting a child bride, amongst other despicable crap that’s oozed out of the hole he calls a mouth.

I appaude this woman and any others that come for him and his ilk. Fuck Nick Fuentes.

Fuck the algorithm. I’ll take word of mouth any day. Forces me to crawl out of my hovel and be social once in a while. Lol.

I need access to his grave please. Gotta pay my respects. I’ll be eating a lot of McDonald’s and laxatives beforehand…as a tribute.

Is it a light read?

I don’t consider people who are unwilling or incapable of self reflection and change to be capable of maturing (at least in any way that is helpful to communities and societies), and thereby don’t constitute having achieved adulthood.

It makes sense if you think about how mean spirited preteens/teenagers can be and how many “adults” never really grow out of that. I consider these people to be “stunted” and/or “stuck” at a particular point in their self actualization where they were unable or unwilling to change their point of view because it made them feel bad about themselves or challenged their sense of self.

Instead of doing the hard work of growing up and reorienting their sense of self around a new paradigm (i.e. one based off of empathy for others of different races), they simply decided to ignore the uncomfortable possibility that they might be in the wrong, and were essentially lazy about challenging their own beliefs.

Again, not very mature, sounds a lot like a complaining angry teenager to me. And yeah, there are A LOT of people I would say are play acting as adults rather than actually being one. But that’s just my not so humble opinion.