When I took my only holiday in 3 years to go to my baby niece’s birthday party, they had to shut down the pediatrics ward of the hospital for a week and send all the kids to the capital city 6 hours away.
I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven’t seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka “raptures of the deep”
basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.
she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.
if you can solve it, you’re good. that is the hardest part of the test.
because here’s what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they’re not dying, they’re not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.
a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he’d told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he’s at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can’t go down there, but he saw the woman go.
instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.
she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.
when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍
I love how we got the introduction to TREE LAW a few weeks ago, when that story went viral on Twitter about the person whose neighbor illegally had all of their trees chopped down because they wanted a city view, so that we would understand what was happening when Universal thought it would be funny to deprive strikers of shade by “trimming” city-owned trees to the point of destruction.
This is an excellent example of organically teaching concepts without relying on tedious tutorials or forced, immersion-breaking expository cutscenes.
A++++ game design. 10/10, no notes.
That tree law post a few weeks ago was the morning news playing in the background of the opening scenes of a disaster movie.
You know, I’ve been thinking about this one artist I used to be friends with on here MANY years ago, when I was a teen. He was quite a bit older than me and much higher skill level! Very gifted artist! He was a role model to me almost. But I can’t forget how he made me feel inferior, insecure, and guilty for having more followers than him back then. I ended up having to comfort HIM because he couldn’t believe I had more traction online even if my art was worse than his.
He also accused me of copying his art on at least one occasion. It made me feel like shit and he treated me like I didn’t deserve any of my recognition even if I pumped out art like a machine at that time. I want a crumb of that energy back.
Teens, don’t stay friends with people who treat you like shit. Don’t waste your energy on people who just want you to fail.
I’m going to need y'all to preemptively chill out because the actor’s strike is going to mean a lot of things including shows and movies we’ve been anticipating being pushed way back, and absolutely minimal press tours for the next however long this lasts.
The effects of the writer’s strike are months down the road which made it a whole lot easier to support because as third parties we weren’t really being affected (yet), the effect of the actor’s strike is going to be immediate and we’re going to get a lot more propaganda of “these people are overpaid to begin with.”
Remember our desire for content does not supersede these people’s rights to live.
Support unions, support the strikes.
REMEMBER!!!!! The actor’s strike is NOT about the ten or so A-list actors whose names you can rattle off off-hand, this is about everybody else, the people you see on tv shows and movies, who you recognize as often being in the productions you love playing this or that bit character but you have no idea what their actual name is. The guest stars, the background actors (aka ‘extras’), and everybody in between. A-list actors can name their own price- this isn’t about them. But SAG-AFTRA is *BIGGER* than those people! And this is about them and protecting their incomes and rights.
As this second strike joins the first, remember that!!!
It’s about all the “hey, it’s that guy"s.
With that said, it’s GOOD that A-listers are also walking off! That creates more pressure! There are always ten, a hundred, a thousand more extras. There’s only one Chris Evans and if he walks, there’s no replacing him. Those folks striking is GOOD for the smaller actors.
They know it, too. Right before this one, literally RIGHT before it, I read a post where Matt Damon said for him it’s about the minimum income requirement to get health insurance, and how most actors only cross that threshold because of residuals. He straight-up called it “a life or death matter for some people.” He knows he’s not “some people,” but he’s also aware “some people” are out there and need their voices amplified.
“Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they’re 15” this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit
To wit:
I want to share some wisdom from my high school art teacher.
In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:
“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.
“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”
Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.
Takeaway here: be as cringe as you want. Don’t limit yourself based on other ppl’s tastes. They’re not you, and you are incredible 💕
Muriel Fahrion, the creator of Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears, was under a work for hire contract when she created them and as a result has received no residuals over the last 40+ years. If you like either of those properties, consider purchasing something from her website. She has art and cute jewelry!
ALT
