loxare

[loxare]

Ok but like. What the fuck is there to do on the internet anymore?

Idk when I was younger, you could just go and go and find exciting new websites full of whatever cool things you wanted to explore. An overabundance of ways to occupy your time online.

Now, it’s just… Social media. That’s it. Social media and news sites. And I’m tired of social media and I’m tired of the news.

Am I just like completely inept at finding new things or has the internet just fallen apart that much with the problems of SEO and web 3.0 turning everything into a same-site prison?

#the internet!! #save #ref

[loxare]

Day 3 of recreating my old photos. If I had to name my favorite design, it would be the Scivias Shawl.

The old photos aredated December 30th, 2017 - it's currently way too warm for snow, and I'll never outdo this original shoot. It's surreal to look back on photos where I looked good. I guess this was the hyperfeminine stage before transition that people talk about. We just took some quick photos in the backyard.

This project is my favorite, not only because of the intricate design, but because it is so versatile. I sometimes wore this as a shawl but think it looks best as a skirt. Any giant, half-circlular shawl can be worn as a skirt over leggings. This shawl's day job is working as a bedspread.

It's a very big project to make, but it's usability is proportional. The pattern is Scivias on Ravelry

#'where I still looked good' as if OP doesn't still look amazing #but also. I'm going to have to learn how to knit a shawl I see #because I desperately need that in my life #knitting

[loxare]

Let us suppose that the "average" horse would have equal proportions of all these parts. The degree to which each part in this poll deviates from the "average" size (20% of total) will determine how large or small that part of our horse will be (i.e a horse with only 10% in Legs will have legs half the size of the average horse).

I will draw a picture of the horse we make!

#Perfection #Horse #Polls

[loxare]

Just read about the study that looked into the connection between the sound resonance of human-marked caves and the location of cave paintings. They discovered that the cave paintings were most commonly located in the areas with the clearest resonance, the best acoustics. The ideal places to sing. Scientist are bound by a duty to commit to facts, to stick with what is known and can be known. They aren't allowed to just wildly speculate, jump to conclusions, or romanticise the connections they make. But I am not a man of science and I can say whatever I want.

We called them "cavemen" at first, when we knew even less of them than what we do now. They were hunter-gatherers, nomadic people who wouldn't have stayed in one place for long, not even a place as good as a cave. A cave is a maw full of blackness, cold and dark, unless you bring fire. They brought fire with them, that we know. They painted the walls in light of torches, beasts that appear to move in the flickering light. They painted the walls in places where one could best sing.

A cave is a place of darkness, unless you bring fire. And quiet - perhaps save for the bats - unless you bring your voice. What did they sing about? The same songs every year, that one sings that time of year When We Return To The Cave, or new ones made up on the spot? Were they sacred? They must have been. One does not go into an unfamiliar cave alone, there are too many ways you may die. You go together, someone shows it to you. Brings you to the paintings to sing. To sing in the dark underworld that looks nothing like the world above, and where even the weakest voices carry, amplifying like nowhere else in the world that they knew.

Is that what we still yearn for? To go with your kin to the hollow halls of sacred places, where the echo compels you to reverent silence, until it's time to sing? To hear the familiar tune, amplified by the echos of stone, urged to join the song just as wolves are called to join the howl? Our urge just as natural as theirs, like migrating birds yearn to leave and return?

Why else do we have churches, but for our yearning to sing in the caves?

[loxare]

#the fact that you didn't immediately start dancing is sad to me #video

[loxare]

Is there any frog species you have a grudge against?

Meet Gephyromantis (Phylacomantis) pseudoasper

Peak calling activity? Between 3 and 4 am 😡

Its preferred perch? The canvas of my tent 🙃

The decibels of its call? Jet-engine levels 🫨

The sound? Fuckin' Star Wars lasers.

#audio #frog #amazing

[loxare]

I have been saving this since last year. Happy Earth Day everyone.

[loxare]

saw a poll about whether you prefer corruption or redemption arcs and i realized that for me it's not really either, it's a distillation arc: when a character becomes the most intense version of what they could be, everything inessential falling away or being discarded so that only the core remains.

[loxare]

This rendition of the Hymn of the Fayth being performed in an actual church by a group of singers needs way more attention. It sounds absolutely stunning and haunting at the same time!

#oh this is gorgeous #I love the way churches sound #video #music #ffx

[loxare]

btw with art when people say 'youve got to do it scared' 'youve got to draw bad' 'youre not gonna know how to do it until you do it' it sounds like bullshit but its true. 90% of art is just getting over the fear that it's not going to be good enough to deserve to be made in the first place. but you're here. you're alive and, with no need to justify that, you're going to make art. it's just part of being alive. you'll spend so long worrying you aren't doing it good enough that you'll look back and realized you didn't live a single day of it.

[loxare]

Writing Advice: How to Create Conflict when Your Characters are Competent.

Featuring Leverage, the ultimate in Competency Porn.

Make them so good it gets them in trouble. So you've got a hacker and he's the best, definitively. Okay, well, one of his fake IDs just got called for jury duty. You pretended to be a psychic so well, someone kidnapped you to talk to a dead crime lord.

Make them targets. You're so good, enemies you didn't even know about are trying to kill you just so they won't have to take you on in your element. You're being blackmailed into doing a thing because you're the only one that can.

Limit the scope of competency. Sure, you're competent as a fighter, but your hacker is in jail and now you have to do his job and you are not competent in that. Yeah, you can climb a building, but do you know what you need to do to not end up in a crevasse while climbing a mountain?

Raise the stakes. Can you handle extracting a orphan being used by a washed up actress to fund her extravagant lifestyle? Yes. But can you handle extracting 30 orphans being used by the Slovenian mob to fund gunrunning? Maybe all you wanted was to get enough money to buy back a house, but instead you have to ruin the company so that all houses they illegally obtained are returned to their rightful owners.

Make others competent, too. Your characters are the best, but are they the best of the best? If you take you enemy down, do you go, too? If you win, does it make them win? Does it get out of hand and make other people start noticing when you're trying to keep your head down? Do they know every trick in the book and know the next move before you make it?

Make others painfully incompetent. Your characters are the best, but are they woefully unprepared for people who are not even good? Can your hologram hacker roll with it when the vital information is on a casset tape? Is the old mentor up to date on the recent technology, or is he going to screw you because he assumes the cops are just as corrupt/incompetent as when he was young?

Have some standards. Specifically, morals that make it impossible for your characters to back out or gets them in trouble for doing things "off-script." You can't leave on the train someone just stole for you because you've got to go back and stop the bad guys from bombing the IRS (even if we don't like them). You wish you could just say no to that assassin contract and leave, but someone's getting assassinated and you have to stop it because you're a good guy.

Bring up the past. Do you think that bad guy you brutally scarred a decade ago is going to carry a grudge? Do you have to save your ex-wife from the bad guy, who may also be her boyfriend, and if you suggest that she'll shut you out and you won't be able to save her or get paid? It's Draaamaaaa, babee.

#writing reference

[loxare]

The Cask of Amontillado is so well known that I doubt many people would fall for it if you told them you had a nice case of wine to show them, so if you want to trap someone underground you've got to find some other way to lure them down.

[loxare]

Took a year to complete this quilt! Pattern is by NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg called Cupola View. Fabrics used were also designed by Karen, the collection is called Earth Views.

#quilting

[loxare]

Btw much as I love to make fun of twitter and reddit's business decisions, I have 0% trust in tumblr's management to not go a similar route so this is your gentle reminder that you should regularly go to your blog settings to export your blog. That's a fancy way of saying you can download a backup of your blog so if everything goes down you'll still have a backup of your posts & convos.

[loxare]

Mammola et al. (2023)

H/t @dogreus for alerting us to this paper.

[loxare]

why are yt to mp3 websites always the shadiest fuckin sites I feel like I’m going down a dark alleyway risking the chance of getting drugged and/or stabbed just bc its the only place where I can find a guy to deal me some decent fart with extra reverb dot mp3s

#THANK YOU!!!! #I've missed yt2mp3 and this looks very nice

[loxare]

Ch👍

#HOLY SHIT #the care that went into this though #video