morgannalefey

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“First season of LEVERAGE - so he's 21 years old - he shows me his watch designs. I'm expecting, y' know, celebrity strap branding or faces. No, it's engineering schematics of GEARS and shit. Pages of them. Even then, there were none so cool.” - John Rogers

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I don't mind people who are surface-level misinformed on something. Like they only know one fact and it's wrong, but they're not invested. Those people you can just correct. The real insidious ones have moved up a step and have like, watched a single documentary that they wildly misinterpreted, and then go around "correcting" everyone else's misinformation with different misinformation that's still wrong.

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i know hearing people on this website love to pass around those posts with links to free sign language lessons but you know you need to actually put effort into learning about Deaf culture, too, right?

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Does this count as finding a walrus at your door?

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for all the artists out there, here are my favorite resources i use to learn!

Files

The Complete Famous Artist Course

Art Books and Resources

Art, Anatomy, and Color Books

PDF Files of Art Books

Internet Archive

YouTube

My YouTube Playlist of Tutorials

How to Draw Facial Features

Drawing and Art Advice

Drawing Lessons

Art Fundamentals

Anatomy of the Human Body

2D Animation

Perspective Drawing

Websites

Pinterest Board for Poses

Another Pinterest Board for Poses

Pinterest Boards for References

Reference Angle

Figurosity

Sketch Daily

True Ref

Line of Action

Human Anatomy

Animal Photo References

Humanae - Angélica Dass

Fine Art - Jimmy Nelson

Character Design References

CDR's Twitter Account

iamagco's Twitter Account

taco1704's Twitter Account

takuya_kakikata's Twitter Account

EtheringtonBro's Twitter Account

Drawabox

Color Wheel

Color Palette Cinema

Free Images and Pictures

Free Stock Photos

FILMGRAB

Screen Musings

William Nguyen Light Reference Tool

SketchFab - 3D Skeleton Model

Animation References - sakugabooru

Animation References - Bodies in Motion

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here's the story. i know expressvpn has been recommended in some 🏴‍☠️ how-to posts but it is not trustworthy. the parent company, kape technologies, not only used to distribute malate but has ties to multiple state surveillance agencies. and be careful where you look for info about good vpns, because kape technologies owns a bunch of "vpn review" sites too

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It is actually way better for 100 addicts to get their fix on pain pills than a single person in pain go without. I call this the "Torture is bad" principle. You should be able to get the good stuff forever after a single doctor's visit. If you're worried about addicts fund rehab centers and needle exchanges instead of torturing people.

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I think the internet as a whole needs to ask themselves one simple question when they see a video.

Why was the camera filming.

There are so many videos that seem real, but when you realize the camera was already filming with a great angle, you can see that it's all staged.

Yes, there are dash cams, security footage, people accidentally filming real things happening. But so many are just staged!! And no one in the notes takes the camera preparation into consideration!

This is 2024, you need to know how to spot bots lying to you, but also humans lying to you.

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Things are bad right now.

As many of you know, way back in 2020 we weren’t sure if our business was gonna make it. Our factory was already on break for Lunar New Year–a month-long holiday for many businesses in the area–and with the announcement of COVID19, everything shut down indefinitely. We knew immediately we were in for a bad time. Despite our fears, our sales grew so far beyond anything we ever expected, to the point where we had to hire two employees just to keep up with demand! 

Unfortunately, even after our factory reopened, our problems were not over. Their quality drastically declined almost immediately, to the point that a significant amount of our  fabric would literally fall apart in transit between the factory and our office. Because of this, we discovered that our sales rep had no idea what she was doing and knew nothing about the factory she was representing, so when we told her the fabric was garbage her response was “👍 factory said it’s good!” At the beginning, only roughly 10% of our new product was defective and we were able to sell the affected items with a reasonable discount. By the end of our relationship with that factory, 40% of our midi skirts and 70% of our miniskirts were defective, some affected so severely that they practically fell apart when touched. And still, our rep said everything was fine and there were no problems and the fabric composition had not changed.

So in 2022 we changed factories. We hired Ash to handle this since I was way too busy managing fulfillment to do the amount of research and communication necessary to find us a factory that met our criteria. Finding clothing factories that can make clothing over a size 2-3X is significantly more difficult than one that can’t because it often requires larger and more expensive machinery. But Ash did it: she got us set up with a new factory that has excellent certifications for both their labor practices and their methods for textile production, that delivers consistent, high quality sewing on well made fabric that can be printed without suffering loss in detail–and she was armored with the knowledge for what makes a quality garment so she could check them if they tried to screw us on quality. Their minimum orders were way higher than our previous factory’s, so we decided to focus on ordering more units of fewer designs. We ordered way too much our first round–some of those designs were in stock until the 2024 blowout sale! But it worked out, and slowly we had a warehouse full of stuff to sell.

Fast forward to 2024, business is slowing down between the economy being bad and what seemed to be a general skirt fatigue amongst our customers. We tried expanding into shirts, which would’ve been successful if our minimums were lower. In the late spring we realized we were in trouble if we didn’t make drastic changes and we ultimately decided to end in-house fulfillment and transfer to a third party fulfillment center that would support domestic shipping in Canada and eventually the UK, EU, and Australia. In order to make that transition affordable we drastically discounted everything and that sale was super successful! We were able to begin shipping from the fulfillment center with an almost clean slate, even if it did mean having to close the store for almost two months and thereby missing out on two very important months of sales.

Unfortunately, we were stupid. We continued to order new designs on an every other month schedule instead of switching to an every month schedule, forgetting that having a backstock in a variety of designs is what previously helped us float between orders and now we quite literally didn’t have enough inventory to match the sales we made for last year’s holiday sale.

That brings us to now.

We’re a little stuck. We have a round of skirts in production (yay!) but they won’t get here until February (boo!). To get back on that monthly cycle we would need to order the next round of skirts right now, but we can’t pay for production until that next round of skirts gets here; if the current sale goes well, it’s paying payroll, not production. We are currently in the very difficult, horrible situation of not having enough money for next month’s payroll unless we are somehow able to make significant sales with our very sparse inventory.

We’re scrappy and we do our best to adapt to disasters and I’m sure we’ll find a way to adapt to this one as well, it’ll just take us some time to get there. Basically we’re going to be okay eventually–hopefully later this year–but in the meantime if we seem frantic, now you know why. 

If you’re been considering trying out our viscose shirts but haven’t been able to justify paying full price, they’re on clearance PLUS half off right now! That’s $9-$15 for the viscose tops, and other tops on clearance are $20-$45. Some of the shirts we’re having a LOT of trouble selling are now priced below cost to help us recoup some of the money we spent making them.

Any amount of support helps right now. Sharing posts, telling your friends, buying a $9 shirt–all of it helps. If our clothing isn’t your thing, we also have a Patreon you can support for as little as $1 a month. https://www.patreon.com/mayakern

Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a great rest of your day and that 2025 is a brighter, kinder year for us all.

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Daryl Cagle, November 23, 2003

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Nick Anderson

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 6, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 07, 2025

In less than 40 minutes today in snow-covered Washington, D.C., a joint session of Congress counted the certified electoral votes that will make Republican Donald Trump president of the United States at noon on January 20. Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the session in her role as president of the Senate, announcing to Congress the ballot totals. The ceremony went smoothly, without challenges to any of the certified state ballots. Trump won 312 electoral votes; Harris, who was the Democratic nominee for president, won 226.

The Democrats emphasized routine process and acceptance of election results to reinforce that the key element of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power. Before the session, Harris released a video on social media reminding people that “[t]he peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny.”

But at the session, the tableau on the dais itself illustrated that Republicans have elevated lawmakers who reject that principle. Behind the vice president sat the newly reelected speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson (R-LA), who was a key player in the attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election: he lied about fraud; recruited colleagues to join a lawsuit challenging the election results from the key states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; and, after the January 6 riot, challenged the counting of certified votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania.

After the session concluded, Harris told reporters: “Well, today was…obviously, a very important day, and it was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.

“And today, I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath that I have taken many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which included, today, performing my constitutional duties to ensure that the people of America, the voters of America will have their votes counted, that those votes matter, and that they will determine, then, the outcome of an election.

“I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it—every single person, their willingness to fight for and respect the importance of our democracy. Otherwise, it is very fragile and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis.

“And today, America’s democracy stood.”

Democracy stood in the sense that its norms were honored today as they were not four years ago, which is no small thing. But it is a blow indeed that the man who shattered those norms by trying to overturn the will of the American voters and seize the government will soon be leading it again.

It did not seem initially as if any such a resurrection was possible. While MAGA lawmakers and influencers tried to insist that “Antifa” or FBI plants had launched the riot that made congress members hide in fear for their lives while Secret Service agents rushed Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, to a secure location, that left at least seven people dead and at least 140 police officers wounded, and that did about $3 million of damage to the Capitol as rioters broke windows and doors, looted offices, smeared feces on the walls, and tore down an American flag to replace it with a Trump flag, there was little doubt, even among Trump loyalists, as to who was to blame.

All four living presidents condemned Trump and his supporters; Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all suspended him; members of his cabinet resigned in protest; corporations and institutions dropped their support for Trump.

Indeed, it seemed that the whole Trump ship was foundering. Trump advisor Hope Hicks texted Ivanka Trump’s chief of staff that the Trump family was now “royally f*cked.” “In one day he ended every future opportunity that doesn’t include speaking engagements at the local proud boy’s chapter,” Hicks wrote. “And all of us that didn’t have jobs lined up will be perpetually unemployed. I’m so mad & upset. We all look like domestic terrorists now.” “Not being dramatic, but we are all f*cked.”

Even then–Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered a blistering account of Trump’s behavior and said: “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day.”

But McConnell appeared reluctant to see Trump impeached. He delayed the Senate trial of the House’s charge of “incitement of insurrection” until Biden was president, then pressed for Trump’s acquittal on the grounds that he was no longer president. Even before that February 2021 acquittal, then–House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)—who had had a shouting match with Trump on January 6 in which he allegedly begged Trump to call off his supporters and yelled that the rioters were “trying to f*cking kill me!”—traveled to see Trump at Mar-a-Lago to get him to support Republican candidates in the 2022 election.

Their hunger to keep Trump’s voters began the process of whitewashing Trump’s attempt to overturn our democracy. At the same time, those Republicans who had either participated in the scheme or gone along with it continued to defend their behavior. As time passed, they downplayed the violence of January 6. As early as May 2021, some began to claim it was less a deadly attack than a “normal tourist visit.”

When the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol began to collect testimony and evidence, Trump and fellow Republicans did all they could to discredit it. As it became clear that Trump would win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, they worked to exonerate him from wrongdoing and accused the Democrats of misleading Americans about the events of that day.

In February 2021, McConnell defended his vote to acquit Trump of inciting insurrection by promising the courts would take care of him. “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen,” he said, “still liable for everything he did while in office, [and] didn't get away with anything yet…. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

But while more than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes associated with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and many of Trump’s lawyers and advisors have been disbarred or faced charges, Trump has managed to avoid legal accountability by using every possible means to delay the federal case brought against him for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

And now, with the help of a compliant Supreme Court stacked with three of his own appointees, he has gained the immunity McConnell said he did not have. On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court handed down the aptly named Donald Trump v. United States decision, establishing that sitting presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts within the scope of their official duties. Before the new, slimmer set of charges brought after this decision could go forward, voters reelected Trump to the presidency, triggering the Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

As Republicans whitewashed January 6 and the legal system failed to hold Trump to account, the importance of Trump’s attack on our democracy seemed to fade. Even the Trump v. U.S. Supreme Court decision, which undermined the key principle that all Americans are equal before the law by declaring Trump above it, got less attention than its astonishingly revolutionary position warranted, coming as it did just four days after President Joe Biden looked and sounded old in a televised presidential debate.

As the 2024 election approached, Trump rewrote the events of January 6 so completely that he began calling it “a day of love.” He said those found guilty of crimes related to January 6 were “political prisoners” and vowed to pardon them on his first day in office. Dan Barry and Alan Feuer noted in the New York Times today that Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, referring to “the Left’s fear mongering over January 6th,” claims that “the mainstream media still refuses to report the truth about what happened that day.”

And yet, today, Trump’s lawyers wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding he prevent the public release of the final report written by special counsel Jack Smith about Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. They say it would disrupt the presidential transition by “giving rise to a media storm of false and unfair criticism” and interfere with presidential immunity by diverting Trump’s time and energy.

Having reviewed the two-volume report, the lawyers objected to its claim that Trump and others “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort,” that Trump was “the head of the criminal conspiracies,” that he hatched a “criminal design,” and that he “violated multiple federal criminal laws.” They also took issue with the “baseless attacks on other anticipated members of President Trump’s incoming administration, which are an obvious effort to interfere with upcoming confirmation hearings.”

They conclude that releasing Smith’s report “would not ‘be in the public interest.’”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARSON

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Evolution (2001)

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to all the depressed teens out there not brushing your teeth FUCKING BRUSH THEM i promise you i promise you i promise you i promise you look at me i promise you my heart my liver my lungs that you’re gonna thank yourself later. Just once a day even. Please