Come Away With Me, Beloved.

As an example, I vacuum an entire elementary school. And yet, for a while, I was getting asked when I vacuum the library, because it needed vacuuming.

I vacuum it daily. However, there's two spots on the carpet with things I can't get out with a vacuum. And I don't want to vacuum up little plastic game pieces that happen to fall to the floor and weren't picked up by the time I'm working.

Eventually, the school librarian figured out that I couldn't get those spots and stopped bothering my supervisor about them.

But they didn't notice everything I had gotten, just the two things I couldn't.

That list might say things like “Paint a picture. Go birdwatching. Finish that great novel I started reading. Call my grandma. Learn to bake a cake. Visit my sister. Play piano.”

I'm still Big Mad from the animation industry AI news, and I had some thoughts I needed to get out. There are lots of more important reasons why artists shouldn't use AI, but here is my philosophical take on it.

I remembered that google maps has an option to also go through the older street view footage, and while the place looks a lot different now, in 2009 this spot looking towards my childhood home looked just as I remembered it being when I was 5 years old. Painted from this streetview screenshot:

Calling this one "should've never smoked that shit, why am I in an impressionist painting". From this shot, also from 2009:

This, too, was from the way I walked to school.

This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.

and like. do we have to keep gently phrasing things to protect naturally-thin people's feelings. in my life it has never been fashionable to be fat. "fat" is still a bad word. there has never been institutional power pushing people to gain weight; no trillion-dollar industry to "fix" skinny people. a larger body type has never been over-represented in models, influencers, celebrities. sure, people might say "i'm worried for your health," but they do it with respect and gentleness, like they're talking to a scared deer.

every single fucking time i talk about this, i have to be so careful with what i say, in case i offend even one skinny person. it is just true that skinny people have social capital across many cultures. there is a reason you almost never hear someone say "i wish i was fat," but you will constantly see people say "I wish i was thin." and yet inevitably some skinny person will tell me: i thought you wanted body positivity. it is the same fucking attitude as when a cis man says "when you say men have power, well, i've been bullied for being a man. i thought you believe in mental health awareness. don't you know men have a higher suicide rate?"

two things can be true at once: your experience being bullied for being thin was terrible. and people with larger bodies probably have it worse.

i have been big and small. i know many other people who have been big and small. trust what i'm about to tell you: being small is much easier. the world is kinder to you. people treat you better. honestly, this pattern occurs pretty much regardless of gender - my guy friends have confided that they'd rather be bullied for being thin than be bullied for being fat. if you're skinny, the pressure might be to gain weight, sure, but it's often to do so in a way that keeps you skinny - to gain muscle, specifically.

thinness is seen as innate and natural, genetic. whereas carrying any fat - that is a moral failing. it is assumed to be related to your character, your personality. i have seen people equate it to discipline, to hygiene. that bias is why we need to talk about this.