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does Klei even understand how much thIS sheet mUSIC MEANS TO ME

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yall. i'm so proud of myself this year. 🥹🥹🥹 i've been working really hard at improving my art and putting more effort in, and i really think that it shows in the long run. May-July were the busiest months of my day job and i had been really burnt out and felt my art was lacking, but looking back, i think i came back really strong in the last few months. i plan to continue working on scenery and backgrounds in the new year, among other things.

thank you all for all your support - every reblog or ask or kind comment. it really truly does inspire me and encourage me to keep creating. you all mean so much to me ;w;

happy new year, everyone! ✨

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Eurasian Otter | Alexander Perov

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wishing for this winter solstice to bring in renewed vitality, abundant energy, steadfast love, and resounding inner peace to flood the lifeforce of every person reading this, everyone we encounter, and everyone we love

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my art goals for 2025 and on:

use more textured brushes to move away from the airbrushed look

practice anatomy more often

more effort into environments/backgrounds

practice in traditional media at least for warmups

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Blessed Yule! 🕯️ may the Sun's return find you surrounded by warmth and light!

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if i had a nickle for every time this week i went to the beach to look for rare birds only to find one dead in the jetsam, i'd have two nickles, which isn't a lot but it's REALLY weird that it happened TWICE?????

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Does a split in front of you

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MERRY SMISSMAS FROM TF COMICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Language is universal

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I am extremely suspicious that in addition to The Powers That Be not wanting to pay actual teachers, there’s also an active effort to keep kids uneducated, ie raise more Republicans. This is coming from the states implementing this being very red, and the fact that uneducated people are more likely to be swayed by right-wing propaganda. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I just don’t think it’s a coincidence.

I am going to lose my mind.

Remember that one teacher who made going to school fun and inspired you to pursue your passions? Students at a new charter school in Arizona won’t, because they don’t get to have teachers. Instead, the two hours of academic instruction they receive each day—yes, just two hours—will be directed entirely by AI.

By a 4-3 margin, the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools on Monday approved an application from Unbound Academy to open a fully online school serving grades four through eight. Unbound already operates a private school that uses its AI-dependent “2hr Learning” model in Texas and is currently applying to open similar schools in Arkansas and Utah.

Under the 2hr Learning model, students spend just two hours a day using personalized learning programs from companies like IXL and Khan Academy. “As students work through lessons on subjects like math, reading, and science, the AI system will analyze their responses, time spent on tasks, and even emotional cues to optimize the difficulty and presentation of content,” according to Unbound’s charter school application in Arizona. “This ensures that each student is consistently challenged at their optimal level, preventing boredom or frustration.”

Spending less time on traditional curriculum frees up the rest of students’ days for life-skill workshops that cover “financial literacy, public speaking, goal setting, entrepreneurship, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving,” according to the Arizona application.

Teachers are replaced by “guides” who lead those workshops.

The student handbook for the Alpha School, the charter school Unbound’s founders operate in Texas, claims that its students “learn twice as much as standard school students while only spending 2 hours per day on academics.”

Thanks to financial support and lobbying by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, many public and private schools have integrated personalized learning software like IXL and Khan Academy into their teacher-led curriculum, although experts have questioned whether the programs provide the educational boosts they boast about in marketing material.

In its Arizona application, Unbound says its bold claims about how much its students will learn are based on the experiment it’s running on students in Texas, inspired by Elon Musk.

“The founders of Unbound Academic Institute began with opening a high-end private school, Alpha, for the same reason Elon Musk started with higher-end Teslas: to create a product that generates insights and funding for future research and development,” the company wrote in its application.

I don’t know where to begin with everything wrong with this. Let’s have bullet points:

You’re insane if you think just two hours per day is enough time to adequately teach every basic subject like history, English, science, and math.

Absolutely fuck you for thinking AI can do a teacher’s job. Teachers have already talked about how AI-generated lesson plans are shitty, and wtf are these “guides” in the classroom supposed to do if the student doesn’t understand what the AI is telling them? Do these guides have any background in education? If they’re replacing teachers, I doubt it! And who’s overseeing what the AI is teaching these kids? What if it’s wrong? Do you really think AI can measure students’ frustration with difficult material better than a qualified, human professional can? Are there no classroom discussions and collaborative learning, if every student has their own AI bullshit giving personalized “instruction”?

Relatedly, like the article mentions at the beginning, teachers do more than teach; they can connect with students, encourage them, and inspire them. Do you really think a computer will have more of a positive impact on a kid than a teacher saying they’re a really good writer, for example, and should keep working hard because they’re talented? Did we seriously come out of pandemic-era remote learning, with all the complaints about a lack of face-to-face teaching, only to remove the human instructor from the equation entirely???

Let’s be real: this is just about finding a way to not have to hire and pay teachers. That’s it

The company is literally citing Elon Musk as a source of inspiration; that should tell you all you need to know about how shit their product is. Just look at the word salad in their statement

They’re claiming students will learn twice as much in two hours as regular students. Where are they getting this? Did they conduct any research on this? Any studies at all which found that students learn more with AI cramming everything in 2 hours? Or are they being a typical tech company and pulling this out of their ass?

They’re claiming that the rest of the school day will be “freed up” to have workshops on things like financial literacy. Will they even benefit students if they don’t have a strong grasp in foundational subjects like math? Plus, those are also replaced by “guides” instead of teachers. The people who should be teaching children are the ones with formal training in education—period! Again, this just sounds like a great way to not hire teachers (who might be part of a union) and instead hire these “guides” as independent contractors. Who’s creating the curriculum for these workshops, anyway? Is it more AI? Is it these guides who likely have no real background in education?

This is why it’s important to pay attention to who’s on your local school board! This passed the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools with a 4-3 vote!

School also teaches kids social skills, not just with other kids but with teachers. How are kids supposed to learn about waiting their turn, listening to others’ viewpoints in classroom discussions, and treating teachers like, you know, people, if all of that is replaced by interacting with an individualized algorithm for hours per day? I can just picture them being totally dysfunctional in a college classroom one day

I feel bad for these kids. Their learning is going to suffer so much

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"the world isn't kind" ok??? Much more importantly are you?????

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people talk all the time about “primal instincts” and it’s usually about violence or sexual temptations or something, but your humanity comes with a lot of different stuff that we do without really thinking about, that we do without being told to or prompted to

your average human comes pre-installed with instincts to:

Befriend

Tell story

Make Thing

Investigate

Share knowledge

Laugh

Sing

Dance

Empathize with

Create

we are cholk-full of survival instincts that revolve around connecting to others (dog-shaped others, robot-shaped, sometimes even plant-shaped) and making things with our hands

your primal instincts are not bathed in blood- they are layered in people telling stories to each other around a fire over and over and putting devices together through trial and error over and over and reaching for someone and something every moment of the way

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can people please stop filming the entire fucking world around them for public consumption? and especially random fucking strangers who you did not ask???

I work at a park and man the front desk. and I'm photographed and filmed a lot. I'm talking easily 20+ times per day. most of the times, it's parents filming me swearing in their kids as junior rangers. which. they're intending to film their kids. what they get is me and the back of their kids' heads.

there's this recurring problem that like. people forget we're real people? like yeah you're filming your kid, but you're filming me interacting with your kid. I could count the amount of times someone has asked me permission to do this in the past year on one hand. and sometimes that's after they already start filming.

Like, I'm not an actor. I did not agree to this. You could be a dick and make the argument that I'm a public figure, but I'm not. This is not a persona and my uniform is not a costume. I'm a person trying to do my job and help people and teach them about science and history. And you know what makes it harder to do that? The knowledge that anything I say or do could end up shared with thousands of people. The fact that if I fuck up the wording of this kid's junior ranger pledge, or I sneeze, or make some basic mistake, it's not just a funny or embarrassing moment for me and this one family. It could end up on tiktok.

And okay, those are the people intending to film their own kids and not thinking or caring about the collateral. What's worse is the people who film everything. A few times a week some guy walks into the visitor center, phone already horizontal in front of their face, narrating what they're doing and seeing. They come up to the desk and ask me questions, phone in my face. They take wide establishing shots of the visitor center and every visitor in it. None of us agreed to this! None of these people consented to be in your youtube video! We are not the fucking set dressing of whatever travel instagram story you're making!

I don't know where I'm going with this. This is really only the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes people ask us to repeat what we just did - swear in their kid, or explain a detail, or hand them a fucking map - so they can get a second take, and they're already filming so if we say no we look like the asshole. Sometimes we're asked innocuous things like to point out a landmark, and next week there's a photo of us in the 15,000 member Rangers Pointing at Things facebook group (yep, real thing). One time my entire 45 minute evening program was filmed without my permission and I was informed after the fact. This happens all the time, and I'm giving park ranger examples, but this happens to so many people in service work or public positions every single fucking day.

I guess just, next time you go to film in a public space, take a second. Think about who you're about to film, if they agreed to that, what might happen if a video of them went viral. there's a reason I'm not out as trans at work. And then, maybe. don't. or at least fucking ask.

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I love when characters are always drawn in lab coats even outside the lab because it implies that 1) they are either constantly violating lab safety rules or 2) they have a second, casual lab coat purely for external use

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on the thirteenth day of christmas my true love was investigated for his many flagrant violations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918

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there is a judge in Seattle who does the weekly name change hearings, and who says it's her favorite part of the week. she says she doesn't read out previous names, or ask about the reasons why people want to change them. she says it's a beautiful moment, and a celebration; a claiming of a new identity, or a reclamation of an old identity. she encourages the room to clap for folks. then she welcomes everyone up, one by one, by last name and with warmth; she shows them the court order where nobody else can see, asks them to double check the spelling, and then they're done! do they want a picture? do they want their friends and loved ones who came with them to be in it too? do they want the court order in the photo? she helps everyone pose, shakes hands and stands with them for as long as they need to take it, recruits the clerk for help taking photos of the folks who came alone. then she tells them where to go next, congratulates them, and claps along with the rest of the room.

probably three quarters of the people there were trans, and she centered their experience quietly, with love and joy.

I think I'll be thinking about her a lot this January, and for a long time after. it's good to know she's there.