Bots n Plants

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

GIVE IT UP FOR BIRD NUMBUH 5, THE CANADIAN GOOSE, Branta canadensis!!!!

bird 5/14, Bluejay, Cyanocitta cristata

birds 6 and 7: American Goldfinch, Spinus tristis, male and female

BIRD NUMBER 8, (yellow shafted) NORTHERN FLICKERRRRR, Colaptes auratus

genuinely made me start questioning my sanity around day 3, it's half the size the of the goose, WHY did it take me 4 days to finish??

Bird number 9: Red-tailed hawk, Buteo jamaicensis

my chains are broken i am FREE. although i did have a great deal of fun with this, the barring on the wings itself took me like four days and i am READY to move on

this was a week and a half of continuous work so please excuse me for getting a little emotional in the bg 🙏

BIRD NUMBER 10!!! The Male Mallard Duck, Anas platyrhynchos

the male and female ones are gonna be posted separately bc they're taking a lot longer lol but yea! super happy i was able to capture the iridescent green of the head, i found metallic green and blue paint at a craft store that really made his head POP. it looks better in person i promise

ALSO!! As this is the 10th one, BIG announcement. The end is in sight!!!!! I plan to finish within the next 3 weeks and there will be a small dedication ceremony/ unveiling happening at the library to commemorate its completion on the 16th of May. If you live in the Western New York region and want to check it out for yourself shoot me a dm!

aaaand another one bites the duck,

we're movin right along with bird numero 11!! The lady Mallard!! Anas platyrhyncos

power couple that they are, here's bird number 12 and 13,

the Northern Cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis

and NOW that they are complete, ITS GO TIME, in the next five days (library's closed for mother's day 😭😭) i need to have the GBH fully rendered, the names of the birds vectored, weeded, masked, applied to the wall, and then painted, plus additional cattails throughout. I may be able to get away with just getting the GBH done in time for the unveiling and then just have the names and cattails added later, but i'm gonna really try to get it all done in time. BUT, i have a plan. Part of why i take so long on these is because i really am just figuring it out as I do it lmao. there have been many a time where i am sitting on top of the ladder googling "how to paint birds" but I think if i take the time tomorro to do all that figuring out how to approach it beforehand, this will go a lot faster. I may also recruit some of my artist friends to help with the placing of the names... hrmm we'll see.

Anyways, shout out to the librarian who tracked down exactly the thing i needed so i could figure out where to place the highlights in my birds eyes, ur the real mvp

Bird number 14 out of 14,

The Great blue heron, Ardea herodius

thank you to everyone who reached out or got excited about this project, it genuinely gave me the fuel i needed to keep going. In total, the 480+ total hrs it took me to cover this wall pales in comparison to how long its expected to spend on there, hopefully imparting a sense of beauty and love for the natural world to the next generation and here's hoping i'm only getting started with these.

This is why it is not assimilationist for gay/queer people to want to enshrine marriage rights in their country/region

Similarly, this is why polyamorous people are fighting for the right to have their relationships recognised by their states through marriage and/or similar agreements

Oh, and because on top of those aforementioned financial and medical protections, these laws also help you maintain connection to any kids you have and/or raise together!

Every older queer you know who is in a longterm relationship will have similar stories of how we planned our whole lives to protect what would have been granted nigh automatically if we were heterosexual.

The sexuality of a police officer is cop.

The gender of a police officer is cop.

When you become the enforcer and protector of capital, you are making the deal to be slightly favored by the system over others like you, in exchange for being its servant. Your solidarity is with the system that you serve, even if it hates you.

i have a file or folder on my pc that i want to share with other people. let's call it gayshit.mp3

unfortunately gayshit.mp3 is 750mb and im not paying for discord nitro so i need another way to send it

i put it into qbittorrent and it makes a torrent file. this is essentially a very small file that points to gayshit.mp3 so other computers can find it. kinda like a treasure map

i send this tiny file to my friend, who loads it into qbittorrent. their computer takes a moment to find mine over the vast expanse of cyberspace and then (as long as my pc is running and the file is still where it should be), it gets copied from my hard drive to theirs

this is the cool part: if somebody else loads that tiny file, they can download it from both of us. if i'm offline but my friend is on, the third person can still get it. this also means that if two people have separate halves of the file, they can download the other half from each other. as long as some combination of people have the pieces between them, they can all have the whole thing.

crucially this does not require a server!!! you can just upload the file to a few people and as long as they keep it, it's still accessible. as long as somebody, somewhere is still connected, it's available forever. the only way it goes away is if everybody disconnects from it.

i've made all these recipes multiple times and they're on my usual rotation of food to cook

(i have a paper version of this but thought it would be nice to have an online one too)

savoury:

ramen eggs - i make this so much especially after getting a egg marinating container from daiso, i usually eat this w/ rice + steamed veg or instant noodles

roasted garlic and parsley butter - for garlic bread

thai green curry - i use 1 broccoli head, 1 long eggplant and 1/2 onion

khao soi (thai coconut noodle soup)

chicken satay w peanut sauce - i eat this with white rice, raw cucumber (round slices) and raw onion (big chunks)

chicken biryani - i do it restaurant style not homestyle

chicken tikka masala

mint raita

teriyaki salmon - i cook cabbage in the pan after pouring out the sauce to wipe up the rest of it and eat this w rice

korean marinated short ribs - i eat this w/ white rice and lettuce

ground beef bulgogi - i use 2 tsp sugar

japchae

tteokbokki - i add sliced onion and cabbage at step 5

kimchi fried rice - i add cubed spam for protein

shanghai scallion oil noodles - i make a big batch and freeze the rest in small boxes

sticky rice with chinese sausage

chinese braised pork belly with arrowroot - i use pork ribs and lotus root instead, eat this w/ rice

chinese-american chicken lettuce wraps

garlic noodles

bringhe (filipino-style paella)

mexican rice - i eat this w sour cream/avocado/ground beef

black bean corn avocado salad

prawn mango avocado salad

one skillet creamy sun-dried tomato chicken orzo - i use regular pasta

tomato cream pasta - i like fettucine

carbonara - i make 1 serving (ie with 1 egg and no egg yolks) bc it doesn't reheat well

tomato cabbage vegetable soup - i use a half head of cabbage

curried carrot soup - i use the spices listed + 1 tbsp generic curry powder and i bloom the spices in butter for a few minutes before adding carrots

pasta alla norcina (cream pasta w sausage) - i make the sausage too, super easy and i freeze half of it for later

sweet:

banana bread - i use 130 g sugar instead of 150 g and i add approx. 1 cup frozen blueberries just before putting it into the oven (don't do it too early otherwise the blueberries sink to the bottom of the batter)

butter mochi - i halve the recipe and use regular milk instead of evaporated milk

cornbread - i use 60 g of brown sugar instead of 67 g and brown butter (it loses weight after browning so you need to use about 130 g butter at the start, brown it, then weigh it to make sure you have the 113 g needed for the recipe)

white chocolate macadamia cookies

copycat kozyshack rice pudding

crème brûlée - i add 1/8 tsp salt (sidenote the nyt recipe uses twice the amt of sugar. wild)

copycat lady m crepe cake - labour intensive but worth it. however you need a lot of people to eat the full size bc it's very rich

misc:

Something happened

Ok. So it all started when a guy named Bryan Mansell went to a lego reseller store called Bricks and Minifigs to sell his 80+ year old fathers lego collection so he can pay for his fathers medical bills. Mind you, this lego collection is all OG Star Wars legos all the way down and worth aprox. 200k.

Bricks and Minifigs, which I will call BAM for ease of time, is a franchise and the store he went to was located in Utah. The owners of said location, Benjamin and Chrys Gorman are not BAM at large, they are just people who signed a contract to go into buisness with BAM under their name as a franchisee.

The owners put those legos of Bryans up on consignment. Meaning Bryan still owns them, but the store gets a cut of that money for selling the legos themselves. It is explicitly stated in their contract with BAM that they can sell things on conisgnment.

Corporate BAM comes in once they learn of the lego collection and takes the store away from the owners. The owners previously had decided to move country for Benjamins job so they had contacted BAM about selling the store. BAM just fucking took it. They sent a guy named Brandon Best (more on him later) to get the keys and kick the owners out. They didnt let the owners take any of their personal property out of that store. Not even their fucking bird. But in the process of this, Brandon does say, on camera, that he is going to take on the liability of the consignment. BAM then puts new people in the management spots of that specific location. Josh Johnson and ...well lookie there....Brandon Best.

The store then starts selling those legos and not giving the money to the old man who owns the legos, saying that they dont DO consignment.

In comes Reckless Ben (Ben Schneider) who is an investigative youtuber. He goes all out to try to get these legos back to the family. Even suing the two new owners in small claims court to get that money back to the family. Which he won BTW. Meanwhile the CEO of BAM ,Ammon McNeff, threatened the old owners of the store, which they have recorded, saying that if they take BAM to court, BAM will drag out the court case out so they can drain money away from the old owners. Even ending the conversation with "if you think this is a threat...well...it is."

His words, not mine.

So Reckless Ben wins the court case. Josh and Brandon now have to pay that money back. They don't pay that money back and in fact, Josh threatens Ben on the phone (recorded) that if he persues this, he will claim Ben stole the legos and SWAT him.

Again, His words, not mine.

BAM, Josh and Brandon close that store so they can get out of paying for those legos.

Ben, not to be deterred, files a second lawsuit. He can't get it to go through until he can prove that he has spoken to both Josh and Brandon about getting the situation resolved. So he does.

He goes to Josh's house. The cops are already there. They pull him over for failing to stop correctly at a stop sign, despite having evidence on their own cop car dash cam that is available to the public saying otherwise. They ash for Ben by name. Ben is NOT driving.

They get off with a threat and a warning.

They then go to Brandon's house. Brandon comes out but says nothing. He looks like hes on fucking queludes or something this man is GONE. He sticks around for a few minutes and then fucks off back into his house.

That part of the court case is accepted. They tried to have a conversation, it failed. Got it in one.

Now they gotta go try to talk to Josh again to get everything sorted out.

This is where shit starts to really go down.

They get to his house. Cops are there again. They get pulled over on suspicion of HEROIN possession. Obviously the cops don't find anything but they break shit and threaten this kid anyway. Hours later, Ben gets home. His lawsuit is accepted. Now he has to serve them papers personally.

He goes to Josh's house again and tries to get the papers served. Four times the cops came by, three times they were like "Oh are these papers real? You arent doing anything illegal. Carry on". Until the fourth time where they, ON CAMERA, confirm with the court system that yes, the papers are real and yes they needed to be served.

So they arrest Ben for tresspassing.

Ben gets off on bail after a week.

He decides to do a go fund me for the family. He brings a huge banner for it and puts it up on the public sidewalk across from Josh's house.

The cops are called again. They know its not illegal to do what they are doing. The cops go back to their car, talk it over, admit its NOT illegal, poorly redact the body cam footage saying that and come up with a convoluted reason to arrest Ben again. So they do on suspicion of stalking.

They try to keep him in jail for a month, no bail. A judge went over the order and decided that it was crazy to do that and changed the order to let him go with bail again. Ben goes home.

THEN THEY SWAT THE PLACE HE IS STAYING ON SUSPICION OF HIM HAVING STOLEN THE LEGOS! Remember that threat that Josh gave Ben? Well, it came true. Ben was arrested again. This time they dislocated his shoulder and sent him on his way when they didnt find anything of note. Still, The kid gets harmed, threatened and bullied for the crime of...making an enemy of this company and those people.

And then the cops issue ANOTHER warant for Bens arrest. This time with no chance of bail at all.

So he flew to Mexico and is right now, currently in Mexico while he confers with lawyers over his situation.

The most fucked up part of the whole thing. Every cop and judge that harrassed him was Mormon. The CEO of BAM and Josh And Robert are all Mormons and every single one of em donate hella money to the Mormon church. Like, crazy amounts of money.

I am not making any of this up either. Like there is body cam footage, there are doccuments, emails, arrest records, court orders, dockets, contracts ETC that tell the story better than any words can.

I am not shocked at all by the corruption happening here, but I am hopefull that this is a thread that can be pulled to its source, that something good might come of how exposed these people and their crimes are by their own blatant assgrabbing tomfuckery.

But holy shit. What a development in the lego collection sphere. BAM seems to be going full force into destroying any credibility they have. Because if they can do this to anyone, they can do this to you too. How do you know if the legos you are buying arent stolen? How do you know theyre going to honor your consignment deal? How do you know theyre not gonna send the cops to break your fucking legs if you express any wish to get your rightfully owed money back from them?