Gender Neutral Green Goo Gremlin

Had to ban the phrase “tricky dick” from my classroom during watergate lesson because saying the word dick in front of 30 fifteen year olds is like lighting a bomb and throwing it through the doorway but now they’re just calling him Richard the Treacherous like they’re all medieval peasants. gonna lose it

Scott McCloud’s incomparable “Understanding Comics”.

I swear you can open this book to any page and it’s amazing.

(ps it’s actually a digital image of a printed copy of a drawing of a painting of a pipe)

Highly recommend scott mccloud’s “understanding comics” as an introduction to all forms of visual media, but especially educational work like scientific illustration because the man does have a handle on some of the funkier stuff that happens when a viewer tries to interpret an image.

Also reccomended: james gurney’s “light and color”. The man did Dinotopia he knows what the fuck he’s talking about.

Hey did you know there's a tell all book about the behind the scenes of Meta and the author is forbidden from promoting it?

The good news is however that it's already published and can't be stifled and whoever didn't sign the NDA can promote it as much as they want.

She's not allowed to promote it?

Well then, I guess we'll have to do it for her.

I am once again begging you to get your hands on physical media and/or save your fave stuff OFFLINE.

@thetransfemininereview has written several articles about creating your own archive!

Here's one of them, but I would recommend checking out the rest of the website as well :)

If anyone was wondering, Duolingo just got even worse.

Duolingo was already on a downward spiral for years. I discovered it in 2015 and it was an incredible tool and I used it for a few years but then I started to notice a decline. It got worse and worse in a lot of ways.

I actually ended up having a surreal and jarring one-on-one conversation with Luis von Ahn, the founder and CEO, who reached out to me after a scathing critique I posted on Reddit started to get significant traction.

Talking to him was like talking to someone who had been brainwashed by a cult. I told him how I and others in my life had found Duolingo so useful and efficient for language learning, and that its usefulness was evidenced by me noticing a real-world improvement in ability to listen to, understand, and speak the languages I had been practicing, but that recent changes had made it dramatically less useful to where I needed to put much more time in to get the same amount out.

His response was like "But all our metrics are up, our data shows that our changes are working." It was so frustrating. The metrics were all about engagement. He was showing people were spending more time practicing languages, not that they were getting more real-world ability to converse in those languages. Practice time was going up but actual language ability was going down. I tried explaining that to him but he seemed completely unable and/or unwilling to understand my point.

It was like talking to a wall.

I left the conversation with any remaining faith in the Duolingo leadership completely shattered, and I completely withdrew from using the site.

I now use Clozemaster to learn languages in place of Duolingo, and I think it is far superior it terms of efficiency, especially when combined with listening to material produced by native speakers.

If you're looking for alternatives to Duolingo, here are some options that I'm aware of (and none of them are Babbel. Don't use Babbel):

Other alternatives to consider are Youtube, often a great place for smaller schools and creators to post content. I supplement my classes with Easy German, and I used to be pretty reliant on EveryDay Chinese to practice my tones. If you're looking to learn it, there's bound to be a channel out there that is tailored toward your language learning.

A second resource to look into is textbooks with app learning. MaGraw Hill, for example, has a free app with practice material for the books you purchase. (QUICK EDIT: The app I was looking for only works on older phones, boo. But other textbook companies often have apps.) My German textbook is published by Hueber, and they also have an app. When you're looking to self study, it's definitely worth seeing if there's a textbook to work out of that has built-in app support.

THE WIGGLES JUST RELEASED A SONG CALLED “WE’RE FRIENDS OF DOROTHY”??????

okayyyyyyy

For context:

Dolly Parton is also on the album doing a collaboration as well :)

A Distressing Divulgence I downloaded a new CSP pencil brush and did a really sketchy comic to get some more practice with it! I don't know if I'll ever use it for full lineart, but it was nice to try doing something low-effort.

btw every time i say 'oaaough' or some variation of that i am trying to convey this emotion

that’s some damn tea

If extending a right to all people reduces your rights in any way?  That means that right has been dependent on the oppression of someone else.

It means you’ve been profiting from the subjugation of others in some way.  Are you good with that?

Wow this tea is SCALDING

I needed this drag. Let’s change guys and not look back

working out your brain is a must!!

• hydrate it by drinking lots of water

• eat dark chocolate and blueberries and walnuts and salmon and other foods high in antioxidants!!

• play little brain games on your phone; I like wordconenct! anything that makes you think!

• read books. It’s simple but necessary. Even better - join a book club, or read with a friend, so you can have discussions after. This will improve your reading comprehension.

• do puzzles - it doesnt have to be sudoku, I love playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Rift because it makes my brain have to match colorful patterns to physical movements very quickly!

• learn a new dance - even a tik tok trendy dance. Learning new dance moves are proven to strengthen synapses!!

• go bird watching, or foraging, or anything outdoors that requires you to explore pattern recognition and visual searching

• watch a movie with the intent of analysis - this is best done with a cinephile friend!! talk about tropes and symbolism and character growth

• cross stitch, or sew, or do anything that requires matching nimble hand movements to patterns

• play or learn an instrument!

• develop a consistent sleep schedule (or as close to consistent as you can get!)

• when eating, try to identify the ingredients and flavors you’re perceiving!

I hope this helps :)

I like how this went from me feeling like “hm why is this attacking me 🤨” at first, but feeling grateful seeing an added guide on a genuine expansion on a “ how to” work out the brain. This genuinely helps a bunch. People find solace in doing activities that get them through life by doing said activities of phone/tv or if that’s all they’ve ever known in their life to get them through things + etc tho. However, this was very impt to point out. Slowly beginning incorporating things to work the brain in ones own time.