Unlikely Schemes

There was no real need for a cake, but I allowed myself to bake one nonetheless. Getting started on the batter, the butter I was melting in the microwave popped over slightly, so I neded up washing the microwave plate and dome. Looking for cinnamon, I re-arranged the spices into a slightly more logical order. Turning the oven on, I noticed that the dirty oven tray inside - that we had left in there to cool since there's no way to wash it while it's hot - was still there, so I figured I'd wash it, too.

So while the cake was in the oven, I ended up washing the dishes from the sink, and discovered that there's no way to fit the oven tray in there with them. So it's best to wash the oven tray in the shower. Scrubbing the tray in the bathroom and rinsing it off with the showerhead, I noticed the burnt gunk collecting on the floor. Getting a cleaning rag and wiping the gunk off, I noticed the dust in the corners of the bathroom floors, and figured I might as well wipe those through.

Had I sent out with the intention to spend today cleaning, and made it my task to clean the whole kitchen and to mop the bathroom floor, I would've never managed to actually get up and go do it. I would've spent the whole day frozen in place, beating myself up about not getting up and getting anything done, and wasting the entire day achieving nothing and still being exhausted by the ordeal of spending the whole day fighting myself.

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

My question to myself recently has been, what if that's OK? What if I'm disappointed in myself and others? What if others are disappointed in me, or angry, or abusive? What if the world falls apart? What if people and things I love are dying, and I can't do anything to prevent it? All of that is incredibly painful.

But, to borrow one of the truest quotes of all time, "Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

So regardless of how I'm feeling, the question becomes, is there something I can do to improve my world, just a little bit? What's the right next step for me?

And for me, right now, that's learning to engage in creative pursuits without feeling that I have to do them "right." It's a willingness to screw up and try again. It's learning that I don't have to be perfect to have worth as a person.

one of my most controversial art opinions, but i do not think you need to finish a book to be an author. lots of talk on 'WHEN do you become a REAL writer? 10000 words? 1000 word?' personally i think it takes ZERO words to be a valid writer. john cage would still be a musician if he only wrote 4'33

music is just as much about the notes you dont play as it is the notes you do. writing is just as much about the words you dont use as it is the ones you do. to be a REAL WRITER is a matter of perception not volume. zero words required. you are one when youre ready to be one

then youll see folks say 'well you are not going to have an audience for your no word book' buckaroo who ever said anything about an audience?' if john cage only wrote 4'33 its very likely nobody would know who he was. it wouldnt be popular. why is POPULARITY the arbiter of 'real' writing to you?

at bare minimum we all have an audience of ONE. yourself. this is still a valid audience. a zero minute and zero seconds film, a movementless dance, a wordless speech. to stand in front of a crowd and say absolutely nothing carries weight too. ABSENCE has artistic power.

You need to ask a question about peeling an apple, so you go to the apple subreddit. Your post is automatically deleted for asking about peelers, you should have known that the place to ask that question is at the peeler community. So you go to the apple peeler drawer and ask the goblins a question, and your post is automatically deleted for being a stupid question with an obvious answer. You should have read the FAQ, where it is clearly stated that the type of a peeler that you wanted to use is the worst peeler in the universe and if you own one, obviously you should simply kill yourself. You are now banned from opening either of these drawers.

no cabinet, no drawers, no containment; simply stand in the middle of your kitchen and shout your question into thin air and goblins will appear to provide a considerable amount of advice about peelers, their history, how to hold them; the best things NOT to use your peeler on; what you can use besides apples for the thing you are making; how one goblin's grandmother once won an apple peeling contest using only sandpaper and her teeth; a terrifyingly comprehensive breakdown of the nutritional content of the apples, your peeler, the table and goblin grandma; how to build an excellent bonfire for cooking the thing you are making (or just making s'mores if you've given up by this point); someone's dissertation on the colonialist/imperialist roots of johnny appleseed; how close the apples are to going extinct; how you can make wine from those same apples; at least three gifsets of dogs, cats, raccoons, possums, and small children eating those apples; seven polls regarding the best type of apple, the best thing to make from them, and the ingredient proportions to make proper apple pie; someone cancelling you for making pie when there are perfectly good cookies in the world; a stucky drabble involving applesauce; and twenty-three people in the tags asking for your recipe

some of the advice will even be good

A few decades later marriage was forbidden up to the seventh degree of separation, or “as far as memory could go back.” This made it illegal to marry a descendant of one’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather! By the end of the eighth century it was incestuous to marry in-laws, the kin of godparents or godchildren, or a relative of someone you had once had sexual intercourse with. It was also forbidden to marry a relative of someone you had previously promised but failed to marry. These prohibitions were so broad that almost any match could be ruled invalid. One historian notes that, at least in theory, the incest rules prohibited young village men from wedding “all the marriageable girls they could possibly know and a great many more besides.”

[…]

On the other hand, because the rules were so routinely ignored at the time of marriage, they could later be used to invalidate an existing marriage. A claim of incest provided an escape clause from the Church’s strictures against divorce. A married couple, or one of the pair, who desired a divorce might suddenly discover that the marriage had been incestuous all along. In the late eleventh century the Count of Anjou was able to repudiate five of his own marriages by dint of diligent genealogical research. In 1152 the divorce of King Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine was approved when the couple pointed out that they were related within four or five degrees. The excuse served, even though this had been common knowledge at the time of their wedding and Louis’s next wife, Constance of Castile, was even more closely related to him than Eleanor had been. As one historian notes, the church’s “abhorrence of incest provided a gap in the laws of monogamy through which a king . . . could drive a coach and horses.”

In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council narrowed the definition of incest to four degrees of separation. The council’s stated aim was to enforce the modified ban more stringently. But popes continued to grant dispensations for political or financial gain. Under the papacy of Boniface IV (1389-1404), marital dispensations were openly available for sale, with a sliding fee scale based on the value of the concession being sought.”]

blood clots are more likely if you spend a lot of time sitting down, like during a flight or a road trip. get up and move around every now and then.

leg pain is a big indicator, but so is shortness of breath or a lot of coughing. shortness of breath + sudden leg pain/swelling is cause for concern

the blood test they usually use to diagnose blood clots is called a D-Dimer. in most cases this is adequate but it's not perfect. sometimes an ultrasound can be used to diagnose clots the D-dimer misses.