#543 - #544 - #545. As Venipede evolves, its carapace becomes a dull cocoon as its insides liquify, and if anything tries to break it, it'll stab them aggressively until dead. It regains its lustrous carapace after evolving and becomes docile, giving rides to smaller pokémon and humans it meets.

Sponsored by @madsk3tch. Design process under read more.

NUDIBURSUS

A new story! In a world where sea slugs and humans live side by side, two adventurers discover Molly Doris- a sea slug from 2 million years in the future. He joins them on their trek to Kennedy Space Center, facing harsh dangers along the way... perhaps not everyone is really cut out for the wilderness survival life?

These are the first 23 pages- the rest of the whole 87 page story is free and available to read directly on the site linked above.

Credit to @scoliwings for help with the ASL!

☕- https://ko-fi.com/peytonpartyhorn

i made a deaf tropes bingo, for any media with deaf characters in it

Image description: Bingo card. Top row - Angry deafie; fix the deafness with technology; friendless; innocent deaf character; Music!. Second row - Side deaf character; written by a hearing author; spoken language is superior to signing; I was faking it!; Deaf character dies. Third row - (slams piano keys); Nobody else signs; Free space; Only one universal sign language!; Pity for deaf character. Fourth row - Inspiration porn; Completely reliant on lipsreading; Made-up gestures & gibberish; Incorrect sign language translations; White. Final row - You're lying, you can hear; rapant audism; I can fix them with LOVE (isolates them even more); Zero Deaf involvement; INcredibly depressed deafie.

i made a deaf tropes bingo, for any media with deaf characters in it

hi!!!! i wrote a poem!!!!!!! go check it out here!

about talking to strangers as a deaf person!

the david zwirner gallery and the felix gonzalez torres foundation in the smithsonian removed the descriptive plaque for portrait of ross in la by felix gonzalez-torres. the old plaque explained portrait for ross' origins as the artist's partner's aids related death, and replaced it with a plaque with absolutely no information about the piece itself, who ross was, or who gonzalez-torres was either. portrait of ross was also reeranged to lay on the floor long ways instead of in a pile as it typically is situated, and the plaque outside the exhibition FOR GONZALEZ-TORRES omits his sexuality, as well as his aids related death. i'm in utter disbelief

If this is something that concerns you, consider calling the Smithsonian or filling out their contact form here:

You might want to mention their very own video explaining the exhibit, found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iiLMJru7SY&t=15s

THEY TURNED IT INYO A DIFFERENT FUCKING PIECE

LIKE PAINTING OVER THE MONA LISA

what the FUCK

Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens, i.e. “choosing what to ignore, learning how to resist low-quality and misleading but cognitively attractive information, and deciding where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities”.

This article is good but a bit dense, so here’s a quick and dirty summary.

Distracting and Low-Quality Information

Targeted Outcomes : Better Self-Control, Reduced Screen Time, Improved Well-Being

Behavioral and Cognitive Strategies for Critical Ignoring: Self-Nudging

False and Misleading Information

Targeted Outcomes: Improved Judgements of Information’s Credibility

Behavioral and Cognitive Strategies for Critical Ignoring: Lateral Reading

Trolls and Malicious Actors

Targeted Outcomes: Minimization of Online Harm and Negative Experiences Behavioral and Cognitive Strategies for Critical Ignoring: Do-Not-Feed-the- Trolls Heuristic

Lightly edited quotes I found interesting/useful, comments in square brackets are from me:

This week on Runaway to the Stars: Idrisah passes the lame excuses baton to Talita, and Talita works off some stress by running at highway speeds. Catch up with pages on runawaytothestars.com! Read ahead on Patreon!

So… I got a notification from the State Department at like 8 PM Pacific that my passport was approved, and I was quietly thankful and stunned bc my legal gender in Oregon is listed as X, or undeclared, and that's what's on my passport. I'm pretty sure someone(s) worked late to get the X passports done today.

I was already really grateful to whoever in the Seattle Passport Office worked late to get these things processed on the last Friday before That Man gets back into office... and then I got a notification that my passport shipped at fucking midnight Pacific and whoever got that shit out the door so it couldn't be picked up on Monday and like, denied and shredded?

They're my fucking hero.

So... I heard from a friend of 20+ years who works for the State Department who confirmed to me in so many words that they can assure me, without specifics, that "all of the suppositions you have made here are true."

So... yep. Passport folx at the State Department really did work incredibly long hours this week just... shoveling every passport out the door (and prioritizing the ones that might be A Problem come Monday) and yes, they did On Purpose make sure that all of them weren't just DONE but MAILED and out the door and in the hands of the USPS so that they can't be told to pull those passports back and deny/destroy them.

This also means they got the OK for the mountains of overtime from the Biden administration to get that done.

This is what I mean when I say that the Good Work is often not glamorous and that we have to prioritize things which actively and immediately better the lives of our siblings. The State Department worker who was still in the office last night at midnight Pacific time stuffing my passport into an Express Mail envelope and making sure that it was in the hands of USPS has done more liberatory work for the trans movement than 100 people endlessly auditing the language others use to describe their lives ever will.

These next years are gonna be real hard. Find something tangible to do for yourself and others, however small, and do it as hard as you can.

god, is that why I've been processing a trillion passports at the post office for the last few nights? well now I'm retroactively less annoyed about it.

That means you're also my hero.

Of these small uncelebrated deeds is greater justice made.

thank you, I appreciate it.

hey, just a heads up, it looks like they are not currently issuing gender corrections on future passports, have cancelled any unfulfilled orders, and some organizations are recommending people not submit requests for corrections. If you were hoping to get a corrected passport in the near future, it is probably best to not even try right now: not only will it not be fulfilled, but them knowing you want it changed might not be in your best interests for the next couple of years.

The big thing I'm getting from that thread is that they may be confiscating supporting documents, which in the case of renewals would include the current, valid passport. I would definitely not recommend someone submit a gender change order right now. Hang on to your shitty, out-of-date passport.

Canceling valid passports is a bad fucking sign.

You are the Dark Queen—the most powerful being of your entire universe. Your lair is breached by an aspiring hero—a pitiful thing, easily crushed.

Except they keep coming back.

PLAY ON ITCH.IO

This is an absolute delight.

authors! go to your ao3 dashboard, click on statistics, look at your totals and tell me how many hits you have?

Ha! In a way I love this confusion, because it makes sense: the sign *does* reference a satellite orbiting a celestial body, but the satellite in question is Earth (around the sun) :) Many ASL signs are indeed gestural like that!

It also bums me out a bit because YEAR is one of the first signs you learn and is very recognizable, so if more folks knew just a little sign they'd recognize it! But, you can fix that! Handspeak (above) is an excellent resource, and here are some others I like:

Whatever you choose, make sure your teachers or resources are in the Deaf community - the One Big Rule is, don't go paying hearing people to teach you ASL. A good ASL 101 class is as much Deaf history/culture as it is language. Any reputable community college should have Deaf professors, but I don't know what's going on in every corner of the world.

Also! If you want more ASL in really good comics (albeit less indie/scifi), check out Matt Fraction's run of Hawkeye - it leans into Hawkeye's background and hearing loss, and uses ASL in really interesting ways that really lean into the medium of comics, and add layers if you know a little sign. Very cool.

These are good ASL resources 👆

Though I'd also like to add, if you live outside the USA, check what sign language your local community uses. Even if you're in an Anglophone country, it might be very different than ASL. British Sign Language and its descendants (Auslan, South African SL, New Zealand SL) for instance don't resemble ASL, as ASL is part of the French sign language family.

If you want to learn sign, I highly recommend prioritizing your local sign language, because then you're more likely to have people to talk to with it!

Just me?

I come back here every now and then to lurk and realise y'all are STILL blowing this up, over a year later lmao

I think at some point in time we need to sit down and start explaining to artist who want to make a career out of art that there are FAR more options than just "living off of commissions" and "posting my art online and praying I get paid for it".

There's also far more options than joining a specific, difficult to get into industry.

I don't know where this idea that the only way to make a living off of your art online is to simply do commission work, become a social media star, or join an industry comes from. I've fallen into this pitfall before as well, but I don't understand how it came to be.

I broke out of this mindset, though after I started helping a working artist. She had been an artist for over 40 years and started at a young age, and her main source of income? Doing local craft and garden shows. She had owned a gallery, done gallery work, done charity work, and now mainly works in using upcycled materials to create all sorts of products.

I used to think that my only options as an artist were to become popular enough that people would commission me or just give me money via patreon, but that's not the case. You can sell at craft fairs and conventions, you can provide a specific service, you can create assets and asset packs people can pay for, and you can create all sorts of physical or digital products to sell... and that's just the tip of the iceberg!

If you are constantly turning art into a numbers game to see how you can make enough money by posting the right™ stuff online at the right time, you're only going to make yourself miserable.

The best way to make a living off your art has NOTHING to do with popularity, getting lots of engagement online, or besting an algorithm, it's all networking. It's all about finding the right people who want what you make. If all you focus on is your follower count and post engagement, you're just going to end up hating art.

"Having fun doesn't pay the bills", who told you that? Why did you believe them?

I'm seeing people reblog the original post without the addition and I think yall should reblog this version instead

Also I made a mistake, the artist I work for has been working for over 50 years, not 40.

Did you know that leeches were once used to predict storms? Well, a tornado warning just dropped and my squad is climbing

@takemetoturch

My dad is a meteorologist and he has never once warned me about an incoming storm. My leeches, however......

https://amp.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/19/weatherwatch-forecasting-tempest-prognosticator-storm-leech

*urgently* Lads, the leechometre is at 12 bong, I repeat, 12 bong!

"tempest prognosticator" absolutely sounds like some kind of arcane device a wizard would have lying around in his workshop