commaDee

The first is the sternocleidomastoid muscle, or the SCM muscle.

This big red section is responsible for pain around the eye, cheekbone, and jaw, as well as some temple pain. Literally all you have to do is angle your head down a little, angle it away from the side that hurts, and then you can gently pinch and rub that muscle. I find it best to start at the bottom and travel upwards. The relief is so immediate! You can increase pressure as you feel comfortable doing so.

Here is a short and easy video showing this in action

The second is a fast and easy stretch that soothes your vagus nerve, which is the nerve responsible for calming you down. The vagus nerve, for those unfamiliar, is stimulated by deep breathing such as yawning, sighing, singing, or taking a deep breath to calm your anger in a tense situation.

You can stretch this out by sitting up as straight as possible (this does not have to be perfect to work) and interlacing your fingers. Put your hands on the back of your head with your thumbs going down the sides of your neck and, while keeping your face forward, look all the way to one side with just your eyes. Hold that until you feel the urge to breathe deeply or yawn, or until you can tell there’s a change. Then do the same thing on the other side. When you put your arms down, you should clearly be able to turn your head farther in both directions. If the first session doesn’t get rid of your migraine, rest and repeat as many times as necessary. I even get a little fancy with it and roll my eyes up and down along the outer edge sometimes to stretch as much as I can.

If you need a visual here’s a good video on it. I know some of the language they use seems questionable but this is real and simple science and should not be discarded because it’s been adopted by the trendy wellness crowd!

I seriously cannot believe I didn’t hear a word of this from any doctor in my life. Additionally, if you get frequent recurring migraines, you may want to see a dietician. Migraines can be caused by foods containing histamines, lectin, etc. and can also be caused by high blood pressure in specific situations such as exercise, stress, and even sex.

What he is outraged about is how dare Trump be so incompetent, how dare him compromise the effectiveness of the US military, which is doing its job to 'protect this country'. You will see this in media from other countries, there's little to no mention about WHERE the airstrikes were directed to, WHY and WHO they killed. It's all "oh Trump let a random journalist on his chat, how embarrassing!" If it had been Obama or Biden or whoever, the journalist probably wouldn't even had published anything, because after all I imagine (ha!) that they talk about bombing third world countries with propriety and decorum, not unlike these guys who are so, so cringe.

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

POTENTIALLY UNWANTED PROGRAM

Created as a part of the Soviet Union’s Novyy Rassvet program, or “New Dawn,” the "Heavysoldier" represents both a critical turning point in mechanized warfare of the 20th century as well as a critical look into the Soviet Union’s attempt to “Westernize” their military. Roughly six thousand units were created before OGAS assumed control and nations began unhitching themselves from the Soviet experiment. Half of all units were dismantled, but the remaining three thousand find themselves caught between warring factions in ungoverned Siberia. Any visitors, domestic or foreign, must be extremely cautious and alert when hiking in Siberia.

[robot lover/fucker stuff below]

B-17 bomber is riddled with German anti-aircraft fire but miraculously survives. Later they discover the explosive shells were all inert; sabotaged by Nazi slaves working in armament factories.

Do not post your crimes

Alawites are a religious minority in Syria and we are currently facing genocide.

If you're out of the loop, in December Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was deposed and replaced with leadership from Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, a terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda. In the months since then Alawite genocide has progressed pretty heavily.

1. This division goes back to the days of Assad.

2. This was mostly skipped but it's not hard to know when someone is an Alawite given their name and where they're from.

3. In the past, Alawites suffered from extreme poverty and lack of opportunities and were forced to either join the military or work government jobs. After the regime change mass layoffs from government positions hit Alawite majority areas, leaving thousands without stable income.

4. During the so-called "security campaigns" conducted by government forces, Alawite civilians were detained and called "Nusayri dogs/pigs/etc" (Nusayri is a derogatory term for Alawite) and sometimes forced to make animal noises (such as barking).

5. The government sent security forces to the Alawite-majority coastal areas, who often conduct the aforementioned "security campaigns", such as one two days ago in Latakia city that had at least 13 dead.

6. Whenever the government conducted the "security campaigns" they said it was against "remnants of the regime" to sway public opinion among non-Alawites into thinking these people were the ones that killed civilians in the days of Assad.

7. After some minor skirmishes between Alawites and Security forces in Jableh city, the government sent the military to the coast.

8. As I'm writing this multiple massacres against Alawites have occurred and are occurring in the coastal countryside.

9 and 10 are yet to start.

Example of stage 4:

[video description: Alawite men being detained and forced to bark]

example of stage 8:

GRAPHIC WARNING

Updated death toll according to Syrian Street 24, an independent Syrian news channel:

7 murdered in dweir baabda and beit ana

24 murdered in al-shir

38 murdered in al-mukhtariyeh (shown above)

7 murdered in al-haffeh

2 murdered in yahmour

22 murdered in qurfeis

at least 60 murdered in other locations.

insert very rusty metal grinding, blood sloshing noises here

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