#also i wanted to go with a trad doodle for them

[systembug]

Summoned, I submit to your request and your authority, technoarchaeologist

Hadron Omega 7-7 and Kayex-8 with no shading :)

[purple-st4rz-556]

I keep forgetting to be active here whoops....anyways it's Gorillaz Phase 1 OMG!!!!

OMFG I JSUT RELIZED THAT I DREW THE THUMB FACIND THE WROGN DIRECTION 💀💀💀

[s1llydr3amscape]

LET ME OUT

Looks like someone failed the captcha test to many times!

Anyways I always wanted to doodle this specific pose from Toyless' animation why because I can :]

Extras under the cut :

This was the specific screenshot I based the pose off I love hands grabbing head!!! :

The original video ^ (I'll be real with yall I was shocked the original song was poppy playtime because my only experience with it was that all my baby cousins loved that franchise. And they would show me vids off it at family gatherings because I was the babysitter. One of em even debated me abt fnaf like chill out bro you weren't even born when it came out!!!!!)

Glitchtrap rambling time woohoo let's go!!!!

-I redrew em again because I think I'm almost 100% happy with its design!!!! Like I don't wanna change their face so much because the way his face is shaped is my fave!!! Like they have the same style of muzzle as sonic characters!!!!!! I just made it rounder cuz its their early days before this au lore

-I just wanna achieve the unnaturalness with their design. Like they don't belong here. They want to get out. LET HIM OUT. type vibe basically like that's why it has like those kind off teeth instead off the rabbit ones. They get those later in the au.

-I fucking love Glitchtrap so much you don't understand they're so peak!!!!!! I jokingly hate him because I despise what it did to Vanny.

-I was a fan since day 1 bro is just so unique like woah a non animatronic for a change?!?!? STRAIGHT UP A FURSUIT!??!?! Color me impressed!!! I love zooming on it its model and seeing everyy little detail!!! Like omg bro is crying and drooling on the suit!!!!! There's also a patch of uneven stitching pattern on the top of their head compared to their mostly symmetrical design!!!

-I was so fixated on em like my level of obsession for him was bad bad!!!! Like yeah it was still there when Vanny came around during the curse of Dreadbear DLC but you don't understand it surpassed all my Foxy art!!! The first fnaf character I fixated on!?!?? Like what and yall can ask my IRLS bro had lots n lots of art!!!!! I have so much trad art of glitchy it's embarassing!!! Atleast I improved tbh!!

-I just really really loved the fan animations were bro got to time travel to the older fnaf animations and fuck em up!!!! Causing them all to glitch out like hello PEAK!?!?!?! No im not biased to rabbit characters with whiskers shhhhh... SHHH...

-Because I know all those animations already and it's like omg omg OMG Glitchtrap kinda expanded my music taste imma be fr... Fnaf autism is so bad I omfg I only listened to fnaf songs and the only time I listened to other franchises songs is because someone animated fnaf over it... like yeah I was an animation meme kid but even then I only remember the lyrics and titles to songs if I saw fnaf on them (cringe!!!!) So yeah thank u Glitchtrap <33333

-I think Malhare is the cooler name but the Glitchtrap name is cool too because when the names end in trap like this it makes me think they're like warrior cats adjacent. So in this one they just fluctuate between either Malhare or Glitchtrap

-Also another reason he's my super fave is because my brain predicted it's gloop form!!!!

-Like no joke literally the same character I dreamt about during the early days before Princess Quest.

-Except mine was a shadow like the shadow animatronics. More wispy than gloopy. I think the reason I dreamt it was because Shadow Toy Chica and fan made shadow animatronics were getting popular!! But legit same character and colors!!!!!!!

-Just a big dark mass with purple eyes surrounding it like literally the same character my brain came up with and I'm just wow <3333 minus the fact my design had really big giant swirly white eyebrows

-However my Shadow Glitchtrap was kinda more wack to say the least. Like heheheh cuz Glitchtraps a fursuit there's no denying that I changed the dream design a bit. In my old Glitchtrap designs they'd have a zipper and so what would happen was they'd unzip and flip their insides into outsides to reveal the Shadow Glitchtrap thing which was hiding inside them.

-Like those plushies that you can unzip to reveal a different plushie design basically!!!!

-TBH I prefer Glooptrap because yeah!!!!! Amalgamation of hate let's go!!!!!! I think with how gloopy he is its just fun to draw I love the fact that the weird Glitchtrap blockers look like that it fits too much with my own preestablished AU lore.

-I feel like Glitchtrap turns into Glooptrap from like the seams of their suit. Like you see that each part the suit got stitched just turn black as black liquid pours out like ohhh that shit haunted!!!! Bursting outta the seams like oh this guy has no one inside they're all just black sludge!!!!

-In this AU specifically (The one with my millions of Vanny designs) is actually a spoof fnaf AU where everyone lives!!! Like I have 3 AUs technically one of them being the fnaf cast in my oc world where they become my ocs basically called Rabbit City. My other one which is my more serious canon adjacent fnaf AU where no silly stuff or shipping happens, and it's just more overall following my own formed understanding of the canonicity and the series of events with me trying to keep the animatronics more game accurate (I dont think ive posted any of that here due to me feeling like my style limits the nit and grit I wanna go with it). And this one I mainly post on here where everything is just silly and bends to my command and everyone lives because I love everyone <333333 Literally playing with my toys type AU where I do what I want which is why a million vanny designs are in this AU specifically. I usually tag it as this 🦭🩷🐇🐰🐇🐰🐇🐰🐯 because the original name of this au is self indulgent and I'm embarrassed but it's too iconic to change it.

-Glitchtrap in this AU is just much more goofy and silly infecting people like a zombie virus and possessing them for his own gain. Weird eldritch horror that came out of a fnaf fangame. Anything goes in this AU so if I wanna make Glitchtrap a mind controlling zombie warlock wizard so be it!!!! Sorry I love zombies soo much you will have to take this trope out of my cold dead hands!!!!! I love rot!!!

-That's why it's wrinkly because they too me are like a rotten banana (Even though his associated smell to me is lemongrass). Imagine squeezing a banana still with it's skin on. That's how I imagine bro turns into glooptrap if they didn't open the zipper in time. Also because I love the design trope of rotting and withering sue me. I love when the flesh sags across the body. Wrinkles are great bro theyre so real!!!!! Also because back then people kept drawing him as skinny as a twig??? Even though they have fat??? So I made them fatter mostly because like I love the gloop part of it hiding inside <3333

-They're more green pink and purple because imma be real my fave color combo ever <33333

-I wanna do an xray piece with them soon to show their insides but I'm still uncertain if I have the art prowess to concoct it exactly like how I envision it yet. Like I need to squash and scretch them more. They need to look more decrepit and horrible!!!!! something like the unknown from dbd!!!!

-They can't actually emote properly stuck in a permanent smile

-Glithctrap and Vanny’s dynamic is like Lord Hater and Commander Peepers in this one. There's more character adjacent to the dynamic between them concocted in my head but I wanna draw a comic abt it :]

-Like yeah one second they're besties and the next they're at each other's throats ready to strangle eachother. Vanny reluctantly trying to help him at first like how she was first called.

-Oh also in this specific AU Glitchtrap isn't connected to William in the slightest more just it's own thing!!!!

-He's like an AI that wants to be human. It believes it is human. They've mimicked people too much that they don't know what they are anymore. Or what it wants anymore. What do they want.

[miausterx0x]

I was wondering if you have a Homicidal Liu, Jane the killer and Nina the killer designs?

They're nothing special that differs from how majority of the fandom views them tbh. These are not necessarily final designs, just some i doodled to get my ideas across.

I have no idea how to describe the aesthetic I'd go with for Liu, all I know that is I once heard a hc of him being a detective specifically trying to hunt down Jeff which stuck to my head since then skfksg. So i think i def want to convey that in his design somehow, which ig just means i want him to look mysterious and professional lol.

With jane's design im kinda torn between the average jane design, slim dress and elegant hair versus a more whimsigoth approach. That is just for my personal preference cause i llloove the whimsigoth aesthetic and fashion, but i do think that trad goth fits her better.

Nina my love is definitely scene and the design i have for her in my mind is way more complex than what i doodled lmao. Also a personal touch to her hoodie is bunny ears, cause i have a purple hoodie with bunny ears and it just fits her i think.

But yeah, if I were to draw these characters they'd look something like this! Ofc more polished if i were to draw them on digital, but the general idea is there

[thelemoncoffee]

*gifts more saiouma brainrot cause i have ton*

robot shuichi/ artist kokichi

Talent swap bit not the trad antogonist/mastermind or just the ships. It just is fully random. Why? I need a excuse to make shuichi a robot and kokichi an artist. Just that.

*deep breath* here we go

Kokichi making the most shit-post art a 90% of the time. And thr other is super deep and complex. Plus he loves drawing dice. Cause as an artist drawing your silly clown friends is serotonin.

And shuichi as a robot cause. It will fit a lot of his personality, and if he still is a protag we could say he was one of those investigation computers, just that made a robot for a better apeal And cause talent swap you could make kaito the ultimate inventor! So boom, also the banter. Cause kokochi constanrly with the robot phobic coments, and trashing about ai imagines (wich i dislike too tbh) and kaito getting all defensive over an amazing machine that is also his bro

Now. ROMANCE .

Kiibo wants to be a human canonicaly. And i think shuichi will be the same. But for some reason fell unworthy of being one. As his system was made to be fully logical, he would lack of something important. Creativity

Kokichi, being the ultimate artist would be someone he wouod look up too, admire deep down. A human ability he would never be able to have at his fullets. Unpredictable. Creative, random. He would try and doodle some of kokichi's pieces in a small notepad, but end up with total messes. And kokichi at the start would be PISSED for that. Cause you know. Most artist wouldn't want an ai using his art whitout their consent. But eventualy find that cute as time went on.

The free times would be cool too! They would go pretty much like the game tbh. But the rock paper scissor and it having some more lines sounds cool for me.

Now. Kichi turn. He would slowly realize that shuichi is more human that he seems to be. He might be a machine. But he isn't that diferent from them. And slowly break his bad ideas od him, and see what he is. He is a trustable friend. And even if all logic in his system would probably had made it go away from him. He stayed. Even if he shouldn't. He was loyal. Be was kind. And so he would start using him as a big. Big reference to his drawings. Making him go for a more robotic like artstyle. But keeping at as a secret. Just a detail that he might or not share with his beloved!

Extra: shuichi's system over heats when too many emotions or enbarasment. So if they date kokichi would always need to have a fan or smth for his shy boyfriend.

That's it. More of my brainrot.

oh that's an interesting concept! not all of this fully clicks with my interpretations of them, especially not in a killing game inviroment, but i thibk the concept is really cool on paper

also this ask is perfect timing, i overslept past my posting time and was about to post an rb, but now i can just spread your brainrot instead

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Dumping links like Galileo dumped the orange

Today (May 20) at 3:15PM, I’ll be at the GAITHERSBURG Book Festival with my novel Red Team Blues; then on Monday (May 22), I’m keynoting Public Knowledge’s Emerging Tech conference in DC.

On Tuesday (May 23), I’ll be in TORONTO for a book launch that’s part of WEPFest, a benefit for the West End Phoenix, onstage with Dave Bidini (The Rheostatics), Ron Diebert (Citizen Lab) and the whistleblower Dr Nancy Olivieri.

Welcome to my Saturday linkdump, the third in an occasional series that may or may not be restricted to Saturdays, but which will ever be a celebration of olde-timey linkblogging of the sort practiced by our blogfathers, blogmothers, and assorted other blogparents:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday, and today’s woke felinism comes courtesy of Dr Eleanor Janega, the earthiest of all the Medivelist Bloggers, author of the superb Once and Future Sex, all about dirty dirty medieval people and their filthy filthy habits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/17/ren-faire/#going-medieval

One of Janega’s winningest formulas is “Find a dopey thing about medieval people racing around social media and then set the ignorant straight in a world-beating, extremely well-informed rant.”

See, for example, “I assure you, medieval people bathed”:

https://going-medieval.com/2019/08/02/i-assure-you-medieval-people-bathed/

This week, Janega addresses herself to the burning question, “Did 14th C religious leaders label cats evil, precipitating a mass European cull of poor moggies?”

The answer, you will not be surprised to learn, is: “No.”

https://going-medieval.com/2023/05/16/on-cats/

Rather, medieval people — including those in the 14th century — just adored cats. That goes double for the religious leaders, as is evidenced by all the cats monks drew in the margins of religious manuscripts. Janega also reproduces painstakingly inked manuscripts crisscrossed by pawprints left by a cat that did the medieval version of walking back and forth over your keyboard while you’re trying to enter your password.

There’s also a manuscript with a large blotch that is labeled by a monk who identifies it as a piss-stain left behind by a cat (presumably a cat that wanted to go out and was tired of the monk not taking the walking-back-and-forth-over-the-manuscript hint).

In case there’s any doubt about how monks felt about cats, there’s a freaking adorable manuscript margin-doodle of cat in a little monk’s outfit. There’s doodles of cats with nuns, illustrations of cats hanging out with 14th century monks, and of course, drawings of working cats keeping down the rats in the barns and kitchens of the day.

As if that wasn’t enough, Janega closes with this banger: 14th century didn’t kill all their cats in a witch panic, because “witch panics are not a feature of medieval society”:

Indeed, medieval people didn’t really believe in the concept at all. Even in the fifteenth century when the Malleus Maleficarum, or Hammer of Witches, a witch-hunting guide was written it had to justify its very existence because no one believed that ol’ Heinrich Kramer was right about witches existing.

When people think that the Middle Ages is a place full of superstitious backwards religious fanatics it allows them to think they can just ignore over a thousand years of history because all you are going to see is disease and cat murder. This then allows stupid ideas like this to perpetuate and exacerbates the problem further. Suddenly the only people paying attention to medieval history are weirdo trad people who can bend the truth to suit their own aims, and baby, we cannot have that.

Happy caturday all, and especially to Dr Janega, may her quill never blunt.

Caturday — even a caturday about people being Very Wrong About Cats — is a reminder that the internet is often great, and not a cesspit of awful. Here is one way in which that is true: Mohit Bhoite builds tiny, perfect electronic sculptures that are both gorgeous little artworks and supremely functional exemplars of the hardware hacker’s noble art:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/

Oh. My. God. These are so great. The tiny temperature monitor with the 7-seg digital display:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/tiny-temp-monitor/

This stunning 7-seg counter:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/seven-segment-counter/

This 555 Demux, with its delicate tracery of chassis and pins:

https://www.bhoite.com/sculptures/555-bcd-demux/

Each one a delightful morsel, made seemingly for the artist’s own pleasure and self-expression. I’m slightly disappointed that these aren’t for sale (because I want all of them), but even happier that these pure works of art, unsullied by commerce.

An important note about Bhoite’s sculptures is that they’re built on open source hardware, notably kits from Adafruit, often based on Arduinos and other open designs. This openness leads to “generativity,” the ability of follow-on creators and inventors to make new things based on existing things.

Generativity is the heart of the early explosive growth of the internet. From “view source” teaching millions of us to make the web to the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, Mysql and python/perl) forming the substrate for billions of projects, the generative internet was — and is — the creative internet.

Despite a decade of energetic commons-enclosing, some of the staunchest bastions of openness and generativity continue to thrive, like Wikipedia, an encyclopedia that isn’t just “free as in beer,” it’s also “free as in speech” — free to mix and remix as you choose.

Here’s a whole passel of delightful Wikipedia-generated search tools, the Search Gizmos, a whole suite of special-purpose search tools that mine Wikipedia for informational goodies:

https://searchgizmos.com/

They’re the creation of Tara Calishain, and there are so many of them that’s it’s hard to choose just one to highlight, but I’m enormously fond of “Gossip Machine”:

A powerful tool that uses Wikipedia page views to surface potential “news days” in a given year for any topic with a Wikipedia page. By analyzing daily page views and flagging dates with significantly higher-than-average views, Gossip Machine provides you with pre-filled Google News and Google Web search links, taking you straight to valuable and insightful information about your chosen topic.

One of the bitter ironies of companies like Open AI is the co-opting of generativity for “Generative AI,” a set of products that could not be more unlike the generative projects of Bhoite or Calishain.

This kind of language game is a hallmark of every scam (not for nothing: Open AI isn’t open, and its product is neither artificial nor is it intelligent). As debates over “Generative AI” (which neither “generative,” nor “artificial,” etc, etc) rage, it’s worth revisiting how earlier debates about automation, creativity and appropriation played out.

This week in Clot Magazine, Estela Oliva interviews electronic music pioneers Jennifer Walshe and Jon “Wobbly” Leidecker (Negativland):

https://clotmag.com/interviews/jennifer-walshe-jon-leidecker-on-collaboration

The whole interview is great, but it really starts to smoke when Leidecker describes “Morover” a Negativland project built on samples of billionaires’ own fevered rants about AI:

With Negativland, we sample those CEO quotes directly — with Jennifer, those quotes also wind up in her notebooks, which she uses live as a source — it turns out CEO & EA musings make for an excellent libretto. Our deliverable is the ecosystem itself! Image diversity is more useful than photorealism! Sometimes the original sample is unbeatable, such as when Sam Altman’s voice falters when he says he feels terrible that AI is the reason his Rationalist friends have decided not to have kids. He thinks in the future, so many jobs will be lost to AI that our economy will be forced to come up with new solutions.

Later, Leidecker digs into the meat of the debate:

Electronic music has been dealing with issues of generative music and cybernetics since the 1940s, with Louis and Bebe Barron working out the creative potential of these new tools, making self-playing instruments capable of observing their own behaviour. I take the core questions faced by creative electronic musicians to involve issues of automation. What can be automated that points one in unheard musical directions?

Can networks involve more people, as opposed to replacing them? What new roles open up for humans once the old decisions are being handled? Electronic music has over 70 years’ worth of deeply moral and very creative responses to the issue of automation, and these patent-chasing corporations aren’t likely to bring up any of that work during their product demos. They need you to believe they invented this. But there’s a long and helpful history, and there’s still time to learn it.

These are the interesting discussions we could be having about these tools, if we could stop letting mediocre billionaire live rent-free in our heads as they hold flashlights under their chins and intone “Aaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeeee” in their spookiest voices. These guys are pumping their upcoming dump, and all the biggest disaster-stories are part of the scam: “AI will become sentient” and “AI will do your job as well as you” are both statements whose primary purpose is to increase the value of the stock in companies making “AI” technology (neither “artificial” nor you get the idea).

I mean, sure, our bosses will fire our asses and replace us with shell-scripts, but they don’t need working AI to do that — no more than they needed working voice response systems to replace human operators. They just enshittify their products and services, and do it under cover of chasing amazing new technology, and reap the stock gains bequeathed by keyword-drunk investors.

But the endless repetition of this vision of Fully Automated Austerity Pronatalist Space Neofeudalism gives people absolute brain-worms. The entire passive-income/rise-and-grind subculture has been convinced that they can use AI (neither etc etc) to make a fortune by…uh…generating plausible paragraphs.

Only problem: there’s no market for plausible paragraphs. The closest anyone comes is the tiny, low-dollar market for short science fiction and fantasy, which is pretty much the last bastion of paid short fiction markets. Now, these are amazing publications, and they do wonderful work, but they pay $0.01 to $0.25/word, and — more importantly — are edited by humans who sift through 1,000+ manuscripts per month looking for brilliant work to publish.

These editors are handily capable of distinguishing between extruded verbal slurry and actual short fiction, but the brain-worm bros are convinced that if they hammer these editors hard enough with enough algorithm-wrought word-salad, eventually, they’ll sell a “story” (netting a princely sum in the tens of dollars!).

This is objectively very stupid, but it’s also very terrible, because the human editors doing this labor of love are drowning in aishit. The most vocal among these LLM-blighted publishers is Neil Clarke, editor of the great Clarkesworld, who is waging a one-man war on spammy LLM submissions. His latest dispatch from the front lines (ominously titled “It continues…”) would be hacky sf, if it wasn’t real:

The one thing that is presently missing from the equation is integration with any of the existing AI detection tools. Despite their grand claims, we’ve found them to be stunningly unreliable, primitive, significantly overpriced, and easily outwitted by even the most basic of approaches.

http://neil-clarke.com/it-continues/

This is not the future we dreamt of. It’s been stolen from us by the brain-worms. Writing in Business Insider, the great Nathan Proctor describes how automation lets companies bring about the “death of ownership”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-software-legal-tricks-subscriptions-customers-money-pay-death-ownership-2023-5

When your device won’t accept the ink you chose, or run the software you prefer, or let you repair it at the depot of your choosing (or even on your own kitchen table), do you really own it?

This is the theme of much of my work, of course, including my novella “Unauthorized Bread,” which performs the science-fictional trick of building a world around a single technical conceit to magnify and clarify the underlying issues:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Proctor leads PIRG’s Right to Repair campaign, and he’s a comrade. He’s got these companies’ numbers and he’s a tireless fighter:

I believe in truth in advertising. If you’re going to sell somebody something, sell it to them. If you are going to lease something to somebody, lease it to them. If you tether their future purchases to a secret “agreement” that you baked into the technology that they don’t know about, that is deceptive. Not to mention, tinkering and fixing are American traditions. The ethos of “if it’s broke, then fix it” has other benefits, too. Repair teaches critical skills, it saves consumers money, it helps cut waste and product obsolescence. Tinkering and fixing also leads to product innovations that can benefit everyone.

Preach on, brother!

For ever tech bro who took cyberpunk dystopia as a suggestion, there are a dozen more who took it as a warning. Technologists like Micah Lee are on the front lines with Proctor and others. Lee was my colleague at EFF when Snowden contacted him privately, identifying himself as a would-be whistleblower who was trying to securely deliver a trove of US government leaks to some journalists who were struggling with the technology.

Now Lee is at the Freedom of the Press Foundation and The Intercept, and he’s working on a book: “Hacks, Leaks and Revelations,” is a practical manual for whistleblowers, reporters and investigators. Subtitled “The Art of Analyzing Hacked and Leaked Data,” it’s out in November:

https://nostarch.com/hacks-leaks-and-revelations

Meanwhile, Lee has put swathes of the book online for early perusal:

https://staging.hacksandleaks.com/introduction.html

This book isn’t a mere manifesto — it’s a manual, and it contains exercises for the reader to help them build a secure process for communicating and publishing in a way that protects sources.

Micah’s work is a reminder that the internet is made of people. Take the people away, all you’ve got is algorithms spamming each other (this is the plot of my short story, “When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth”):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/14/masque-of-the-red-death/#eschatology-watch

People matter. Everything people make — corporations, cities, workplaces, networks — only matter to the extent that they help people. Here’s a useful rule of thumb: when you’re trying to figure out whether a cause deserves your support, ask yourself, “Does this help people? Does it help more people than the alternative? Does it help people who need help?”

Asking that question made me a union man. That’s why I’ve been walking the WGA picket-lines in my neighborhood on my home-days while touring. It’s also why I cheered the dancers at LA’s Star Garden Topless Dive Bar when they became the first topless dancers in America to win recognition for their union:

https://apnews.com/article/strippers-union-los-angeles-star-garden-4069df93b149076dc2e23a0bff16438b

The Star Garden workers are organized under the Actors’ Equity Association, the same union I wrote a check to when I paid Wil Wheaton to record the audiobook of Red Team Blues (Wil’s a union man, too:)

https://www.tvinsider.com/1093201/jeopardy-wil-wheaton-ken-jennings-writers-strike/

There’s been a lot of “ha ha the strippers unionized ha ha” nonsense in response to this news, but fuck that. Sex work is work. These are workers. They work in a field that is physically demanding, potentially dangerous, and rife with exploitative practices. Damned right they need a union. Go, sisters, go!

People who think they understand ironic laughter because they made a snotty remark about a stripper’s union are absolute amateurs. To see how it’s done, check out The Onion, a publication that is consistently pretty funny, but also reliably screamingly, viciously, incredibly funny, especially about the things that hurt the most.

The canonical example of this, of course, is The Onion’s first issue after the 9/11 attacks, headlined “HOLY FUCKING SHIT” and containing such articles as “Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake”:

https://www.wired.com/2001/09/onions-bitter-tears-of-irony/

The Onion continues to be America’s leading ha-ha-only-serious forum, serving, somehow, as both escape valve and flame-fanner for the nation’s bitterest ailments. For years, they’ve run their “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” headline after every major mass shooting:

https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527

But as America continues to record multiple, daily, mass shootings, The Onion’s writers needed something else. Yesterday, they ran “Americans Describe What It’s Like Surviving A Mass Shooting,” and oh shit is it a doozy:

https://www.theonion.com/surviving-a-mass-shooting-americans-describe-what-it-s-1850438794

“It makes you really appreciate how free we are as a country when you’re hiding under a desk with bullets flying over your head.”

“Those 15 minutes standing a safe distance away from the school while the suspect finished shooting were the most harrowing of my life.” (picture of a cop)

“There’s nothing like a brush with death to remind you that all your previously held beliefs are correct and should not be questioned.” (Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA))

“My boss let me use one of my three unpaid sick days to get sewed up.”

“Only two of my three kids came home from school, but Texas has no property taxes, so it’s a wash.”

I mean.

Shit.

The new Gilded American Age is already looking a little tarnished. The unholy alliance between the infinite greed of the capital classes and the sadistic indifference of the terrified, authoritarian, musket-fucking Bible-bashers has us racing for the precipice.

It’s wild to see the parties fiddle while the Shining City on the Hill burns. I think we all expect it of the Republicans, but watching the Democrats fail working people and continue to climb into bed with the ultra-wealthy and their priorities is demoralizing, especially for those of us hoping for more from the party of the New Deal.

There’s been a lot of ink spilled on the Trump transformation of the GOP, but Dems’ transformation from a party representing labor to a party representing McKinsey consultants is less well understood.

A new book, Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality, by Lily Geismer, tells that story:

https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/lily-geismer/left-behind/9781541757004/

Left Behind gets a fascinating review by Ruby Ray Daily in Public Books, where it is contrasted with Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s by Nicole Hemmer:

https://www.publicbooks.org/what-the-1990s-did-to-america/

Both books grapple with way that the end of the Cold War and the Reagan era transformed both major US parties. In Hemmer’s telling, Reagan wasn’t the “dawn of the free-market conservative,” but rather, the “late summer” of that brand of conservativism. Without “anticommunism” to animate it, the Reagan Right coalition thrashed in a void, eventually gelling into today’s “nativism, racial resentment, and media hysteria.”

Meanwhile, the Dems under Clinton turned their backs on state-backed programs and towards market-based initiatives, making today’s “lopsided, unfair economic gains” inevitable. The Atari Democrats of the Clinton years were — in the words of one bitter union organizer — “crypto-Republicans.”

Clinton isn’t the Democrats’ Eisenhower (“accommodating his party to, and sanding the radical edges off, a new consensus”). He’s the Democrats’ Reagan, “shaping and even leading this new market-oriented consensus.”

For Geismer, Clinton wasn’t simply jettisoning the New Deal — rather, he was embracing its technocratic, expertise-worshiping aspect. It was this tendency that produced Clinton’s ghastly “welfare reform” and other attacks on working people. It’s a stark reminder that ideology without a moral center sows the seeds of its own ruin.

Meanwhile, we live today in the Atari Democrats’ world, where wealthy professionals play a high-speed game of musical chairs for the few remaining opportunities to survive the coming polycrisis with intact shelter, food and comfort. One way this plays out is in the surreal, vicious fights over college admissions.

It’s only been a minute since the Varsity Blues scandal erupted: wealthy parents (including some celebrities) bribed college officials to pretend that nepobabies and failsons were elite athletes, letting them ooze into top college slots reserved for sports prodigies (slots that often represent the only chance for poor teens of color to enter these universities):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal

The scandal touched a nerve, perhaps because it punctured the already-fragile bubble of pretense that top colleges were full of the smartest kids in America — rather than, say, the kids whose parents attended those institutions (“legacies”), or made giant donations, or were coached and polished by tutors and consultants.

Well, there’s never just one ant. Varsity Blues wasn’t the only way for rich, status-obsessed parents to buy their kids’ way into college. The latest rot exposed is a doozy of a scam: parents pay academics to pretend to collaborate with high-schoolers so they can put their names on papers published in peer-reviewed journals:

https://www.propublica.org/article/college-high-school-research-peer-review-publications

The story was broken last week by Dan Golden for Propublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education, in a long-read that details all the variations on this scam. For example, sometimes the kid does actually do some original research, but the “journal” is a fake outlet run by the “service” that connects academics and kids.

Bottom line is it works: college admissions officers are deluged with applications and don’t have time to look up the “peer reviewed” publications claimed by applicants. Faculty don’t have the time or inclination to do it either. The stakes are incredibly high, the costs are very high, and the institutions that do the evaluations are weak afterthoughts.

I wonder if we won’t just eventually give up and admit that a degree from a Big Ten or an Ivy is just a thing you buy, like a Picasso or a blood diamond. We could just turn it into a half million dollar blue tick and have done with it.

Anyway.

Hate to end this linkdump on a down-note, but there you have it. Next time I do one of these, I’ll try to remember to hold back one of the upbeat links for a palate cleanser.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

[Image ID: A pot of chunky chicken and vegetable stew.]

[beelsari]

hii congrats on 100 followers!! i wanted to request a romantic matchup for the matchup event for the obey me demon brothers so

im 18, 5'4, with black curly bob length hair, brown eyes, im a gay transman that likes dressing in mall/trad goth type clothes+makeup and is really into 80s/90s metal and nu wave goth music as well as just music in general and playing instruments, for hobbies i like watching old horror/slasher/mystery movies and doing art. i also have autism and borderline personality disorder so i have a hard time with communication and can tend to be very emotional and go into like extreme episodes of sadness or anger and it hard for me to work through but i do try my best, i also really love physical affection but am not the best at initiating it, i do really like making or getting things for people i care about though and doing things for them or just spending time around people i care about even if we're doing our own separate things in the same room :))

I pair you with…

Satan!

I believe you and satan would be the best match because he would understand you the most! Satan would study everything about you, how you feel, subconscious movements to indicate what you want etc. He’d know you inside out and whatever you’re interested in he’d study till he knows everything there is to know about it. He’d be extremely accommodating to you and try his hardest to comfort you if needed. Even with him having an extremely dangerous anger, he’s so gentle with you. You have very much calmed his anger down, earning you thanks from all his brothers. He wants you to feel completely safe with him. I personally believe Satan would very physically affection, but the difference between him and his brothers is that he’d know when to stop or when you just don’t want to be touched. Satan would definitely love just having you in his room in his bed while he’s studying at his desk. You bring him peace.

You’re laying on satan’s bed doodling while he is studying cursed potions. It’s been this way for a couple hours now, just peaceful silence between the two of you. That’s when suddenly you get the sudden wave of sadness, its so extreme you feel like you’re drowning. You feel hopeless and unloveable. Satan hears the sound of pencil stopping and turns to check on you. He sees the subtle difference in your eyes and how your face has dropped. Satan immediately gets up, “honey are you alright?” He says walking over to you. You don’t move or say anything but a tear runs down your face. Satan immediately is picking you up and laying you on his chest. “It’s okay honey, cry all you need, you’re safe with me I’ve got you”. you curl into him crying for an hour. He sits with you on him, holding you as close to him as possible, letting you listen to his calm breathing. You peak your head up with tears dried to your face “I love you”, he looks down at you with adoration, “i love you too my sweetheart” satan says as he kisses you’re head, causing you to drift to sleep.

Thank you!!

[painting-a-digital-landscape]

HBD Yukio!! (+ Status Update)

“One, two, three, ta-da!” 

Yukio, despite being given an earlier warning to switch on noise-cancelling on his headphones, still flinched at the sudden burst of colors directed straight at him. 

He had a dumbfounded look as he slowly lowered his arms, watching the fluttering bits of confetti fall at his peripherals while he stared at Iroha, who seemed to be rambling about something. A second later, and he remembered to turn off his headphones.

“-the Monopoly card stuck to today on your calendar, soo I went and tried to make something for you! Hope it’s good enough-!” She giggled.

Looking down, he stared at the small, homemade chocolate cake in front of him. Normally he’d question where in the hell did she get the ingredients since he’s positive he had nothing of the sort just lying around, or mentally smack himself with a ‘shouldve seen this coming’ judging by how he was banned from the kitchen one day and then dragged in the next (also the pile of dirty bowls and utensils in the sink, god knows he’s gonna have a time washing them later).

But at the moment he could just barely keep himself from letting an awkward, yet appreciative smile creep on his face. 

“It’s.. I really like it..!”

“Uh.. You kinda- Should I have done this another time?? ‘Cause you’ve got something on your..-”

“N-No it’s fine! I’m- It’s- Yes. Um- I mean- Can I??” The emotional expression vanished in an instant as Yukio picked up the fork and looked at Iroha with an excited catsmile.

“Huweh?? I mean you can but, shouldn’t you blow out the candle first? Or maybe cut it? I know it’s small but it’s probably not a good idea to eat it all in one go-”

“Bet.”

“Yukio no- YukIO NO-”

((ahh i wanted to make a digital gif but zero art motivation + power went out today so fuck it trad time >:D 

Speaking of which i love how this was the last message I sent somewhere before that happened

ANYWAY. Yes I know this blog’s been dead!! Mental health hasn’t been nice to my motivation for anything, but bet i’ll try to get all the stuff sitting in the inbox done before the year ends!! Till then I might just drop a few more shitpost doodles here and there before i properly get back into the swing of rps and blah DFMGKHJNGF))

[tacticalpain]

Tactical Pain Episode 011 Fisher Wallace Stimulator

This week Jeni Mc interviews Charles Fisher, a serial entrepreneur and the son of radio pioneer Avery Fisher.  Specifically, they talk about the Fisher Wallace Stimulator® as a possible option to reduce pain and depression.    This episode is sponsored by DiPSy Doodle Productions Voice Talent Dave Holly https://www.dazzleshows.com/dipsy Fisher Wallace Stimulator® https://www.fisherwallace.com/ [su_spoiler title="Machine Transcript"] [0:57] What's that was nice to be tactical pain podcast i'm your host any mac and as always we are here to talk about are very real pain and real strategies for a better life. Today we're going to talk about. [1:14] That's cool that we may be able to use to improve our life weather is there pain relief or relieving other conditions that often come with chronic pain. Specifically today we're gonna talk about cranium electric there be. What is that have to do with pain obviously the idea electric there be sounds like it might cause some pain our might bring images your mind from. Classic movies of insane asylum is an electro shock therapy. That's not really what we're talking about today although it is science born of the original work with electric shock therapy and how it treats depression. [1:59] Currently you can buy over the counter which means you can you can purchase it without a true prescription are without. Being seen by a doctor there are devices that are fda cleared that our neuro stimulation devices. No it was chronic pain have the tens units the trans derm all electoral stimulation devices you put the gel pads on. That's your back or your shoulders you know you apply it directly she that little poles your muscles contracted helps relax and and release tension and pain. Could you also be used for some people with nothing the when they use devices like that it is stimulates the nerves in such a way that it disguises the pain. [2:52] Basically cranial stimulation works in the same way these devices are. Here to be used on the head as most of you that i use a tens unit no. They will expressly say do not put this on your head enough of this on your neck it's not really designed for that. [3:14] These devices are designed for us and they are fda approved to treat depression anxiety and insomnia. Specifically today the device for gonna talk about we're going to have shit fisher from fisher was laboratories he is the present official laws laboratories we're gonna talk with him my phone about. The fisher wallace stimulator and what it offers and some of the science behind it just a couple things. Before we get into the car with chips. Fisher wallace the website is fisher wallace dot com that's f is he are we a ll a c fisher wallace dot com. And there is you doing prescription from a medical doctor or an authorization from any health care practitioner. So i could be your your doctor psychiatrist but it can also be a chiropractor on yours practitioner social worker. They are their website lists even a dietician nutritionist. You could have your medical doctor actually write a prescription but on their website they have a form that can be filled out. And they do also have for an added fee of eighteen dollars they have a practitioner that will authorize that form for you. So [4:41] That's that's really the easiest thing to do if your purchasing it because most people in your shopping on line it's it's in the middle of night you're not planning on. Going in a senior back and doing anything about it you just. Making this purchase for you for yourself so they do have a purchase authorization on my form and. I did ask them what is the the purpose of the authorization form of this is over the counter products why do i need. [5:14] To have some medical practitioner especially when is it gonna actually see me sign this form and that's that apparently is that is required by the fda. Fda approvals and things like that. I'm sure that they need to document where and when that they're they're sending these items out. So that is something that they as as an fda approved products are required to abide by. [5:44] They're device works alternating currents some people have. Be more familiar with over the counter with direct train devices this is an alternating current devise. They've had studies double blind studies placebo studies things like that. Where there studies show that the fee alternating current is more effective. When is stimulating the brain tissue and how that can help with depression anxiety and insomnia which obviously we're living with chronic pain your probably also living with some amount of all three of those conditions. [6:25] It stimulates the part of the brain that helps. Stimulate serotonin transporters there tone and we all know that their tone and is the happy hormone that helps us feel better house does. Often sleep better it is me it is the part of the brain that it's. [6:45] Helps with memory formation and helps with mood so those are things that again. Regardless of what you diagnosis for chronic pain. I think we all star to deal with brain fog i know our listeners that have fibromyalgia that is a core part of our tradition were often fighting find ways to stimulate our memory and. And concentration things like that but if you live with chronic pain long enough you'll be affected by that fog no matter who you are. [7:25] Also the device works and promoting the brain patterns that trigger rem sleep rem sleep is. The sleep where we we actually going to a deeper sleep and we dream a lot of people. With chronic pain insomnia we like to call it pain insomnia. Where were never dropping all the way down into that deep level sleep where we're really getting rest and am really getting recharged so. [7:54] Stimulating that without adding any drugs you're reading and a lot of people are. [8:02] Trying to avoid as much as they can to use anything that's too sensitive session you trying to leave your life you don't want anything that's gonna give you that hangover feeling of being sedate longer than you want to be. So to have the opportunity to try something that might stimulate a natural response. [8:24] And brianna that deeper level of sleep its is very interesting to consider the device is designed to be used twice a day for twenty minutes. So [8:35] There's probably some school of thought that if i use schedule myself to twenty min sessions where i sit alone and still and in the quiet and relax that alone will probably be good for me. But adding the. Average the device to maybe stimulate serotonin or some rest relaxation i can see the benefits of trying that. There are people that have a vaccine. You know discussion forms on line and things like that were they talk about using it more times a day. [9:13] Apparently there's a little you know very little risk of overuse in using one of these devices. But using it more often or or a higher frequency higher setting you might not get the result that you intend to it might trigger alertness when you. Are trying for your relaxation or things like that is not the kind of thing that you would develop a tolerance to. The device is working and then national process of the brain. It is just a stimulating device is not something that you could. [9:52] Become immune to after while i do see where people talk about it stops working for them after a while i don't know if so much of a case of. The device. Is it doing anything for them or maybe it's done all that i can do maybe their bodies plateau study hard to quantify without more testing. [10:17] It is approved for the treatment of anxiety. And alot of people to do things it also do with through panic attacks which are. They can they can stop your life in a heartbeat one of the questions that i did ask was. What if your in a panic attack is this something that i can sit down put it on and it would stop the attack. Or is this more of a preventive device where i need to be using it on a regular basis. The device is more designed for slow and steady improvement is something that should be used over time and it really wouldn't treat the acute onset of a panic attack. So like. Oh i people taking medication that is there emergency rescue medication for panic attacks this would not be considered an emergency rescue device this to be something that you would want to plan to use and use regularly. [11:18] So it's definitely something i think. Is very interesting to me is something i've tried in used tens unit before i have used electric stimulation approach somebody. I myself experience. Unfortunately courses are chevrolets can i use one of these devices so i have to determine that the pain that i'm using it tree whether it's to lose the trigger pointer shoulder pain or whatever. I know that in the next day to three days i will probably have a lease flare. That's just how my body responds to it it does help relieve the pain and the tension but i'm going to have a. [12:03] That's just me it can be different for other people but i have. Been afraid to try something like this because i think that the idea of. [12:16] Putting it on my head and trying it is going to cause this and. So those are some questions i'm gonna be asking chip again we're gonna be talking to check fisher he is the president of fisher wallace laboratories and we're gonna discuss the fisher wallace stimulator. And let's get shipped on the line. We've rectangle give tactical once again you jenny back. I am in your area good using. Very well thank you for having me on the show so i'm done a little bit of an angel is talking about your device and talking about. The things that its what what the difference between fda approval and fda cleared isn't some some of the things that sure that your website forums people love but i kinda wanted to talk with you directly. [13:18] About to tell us toes for so little bit about yourself introduce yourself. Well done on my iphone. Oh man and has baba trading company i don't couple of businesses and but most my work has been in consumer products i found i discovered it. Technology is a really back into french and the owner of the with the device and his brother, did god be one of the just passed away and always and there were two brothers who both electrical engineers who invented devices and still very successfully charmingly he's been told to serve me. To run two thousand five. As the state wanted to help between you required them and it really going to buy a burger, find a partner mr washing but fortunately also he is deceased and, show because i tried but it but my partner burgers around and. Also a big his background in marketing guy has resigned as but we have medical advisory board. So we're where we're not sure governmental side so that's listed on website and i would bet he's on your website it lists who who some of the medical advisors are in a little bit about each of them. [14:52] Right yes these are all pretty prominent psychiatrist for people who are intentionally field and ordered notable in their experience and, and knowledge of the subject so because we have changed technologies we provide the you know we don't really requires or the hospital where all that we do have a lot of technical expertise. Not, make sure device where which is as a whole team of engineers were very you know very well covered terms what we do and how we maintain and improve the quality of what we what we provide, and i guess i didn't realize until you mentioned it just now that did this exact technology has been around since the eighties so this is not. This isn't some fly-by-night internet bubble dot com device this is this is on its been around for a minute. [15:49] Right i mean is that originally the device and transfer the electronic version nation which is something that works properly and the body most devices, are there for like stem no way in something that, you know what people get when they have certain after they have surgery you were having orders new orders of your body, the most devices are about fifty two hundred fifty million which is way too strong berger has to where they did was a real event and, a database tens device that works on me and one to four million six busybody it was really for the geriatric market geriatric patients don't like the, you know the strongest innovation of the standard was successful that they then started to experiment with frequency that could be used to try to stimulate neurotransmitters all. So basically used to hear basically we're looking for something that was. Powerful enough but basically just powerful enough to do what was needed to stimulate the brain without. Having to be in a clinical setting with it with the doctor standing by in. That's correct me if you can hear this because many people due to lack of convulsive therapy is approximately eight hundred two thousand no apps. He utilized parses one to four so this is such a min about electricity every question is what can possibly work as its own and they. [17:27] Delete batteries in the answer to that is cuz quick question is do we use the very high carrier frequency of about fifteen thousand words with allows us to get electricity into the brain. Use radio signal without a lot of apple juice so it's not a matter how strong it is really just a matter how you deliver. And that we we also have, what am i actually frequency which is about five hundred hers which helps but not logical aspect of this so you know it's only four million in two minutes because we're actually cutting the physiological effect, and then the body was between about zero and forty hurts if you for example. But fortunately are there other ways to save a device well using frequencies that part of your body do workers. Different aspects of your physiology be stimulated using a mild formula kirby were working be used when the person there's which is using a which is running frequencies. Between zero forty range that is the your biological biologically active frequency and we have to find the right one that would stimulate heater transmitters we knew the rain was in. Its around the knee hurts if there's a number we have you carefully guarded this for the. Is it different for each patients with some people are lesser. [19:01] Or does it actually we found a frequency that would stimulate, generally the year transmitters in most patients do we have about seventy five to eighty percent success rate doesn't work on everybody we meet we return basis with one but before prices of we only get about, fifteen percent of the back so it eighty five. The types of activities around were conservative get it working seventy eighty percent of patients and when i say words i mean that it will alleviate one three symptoms that were there to treat. Have you seen any patterns and the people that it does work for weather nat's you know some some things were better for men or for women or, four different age groups that the patient and see success in the fall and any patterns or categories. Not really no we have a very wide range occasions we have a lot of each christians who prescribe is for kids we actually use cage without, she will that is two years of age were not permitted to work and actually a pediatric patients with you. You know contrition to rca prescribed and they do will pharmaceutical drugs training is not a good idea that, world history and the we also used, very successfully with my shoulder patients people in their nineties because they actually can't adjust runs very well and. [20:37] And they usually take a lot of them this is so many. Any issues which would otherwise have to be sold with poly pharmacy so we have a wide range and there's and our genders but it is really. Kind of almost fifty formula varies by the month but we find the winner more receptive to. The kind message that we're sending but he was not to prevent them from. Ordering so he was pretty much the did he do we don't have a specific population i would say that the. The appeals in terms of the purchase of the device until mark the mark and the greatest ball crosses pretty much patience between thirty five and seventy. The sum of all the more mature you know who is making a decision ball about his was recognizing symptoms as they not approach middle age better for being, you much younger and then the asians really to their seventies and then people over seventy me. Can't get medicaid were for medicare and not be you know and. Turn the blue church every therapies not not that we don't have many patients were much older and we treated. Question hundred years of age but i was a partially is over between you know the reading the bible for us thirty five seventy between the two genders see. [22:14] It's pretty common for women to experience. [22:21] How eight ball that desire and need to look for things out of the norm when and sometimes we know biologically have. More issues metabolizing certain medications. Even as simple as we can bring our castle better than a tablet things like that there seems to be more things that women experience is far side effects. And where is where is men might be more held off by the stigma of admitting they're dealing with depression women are. Often seeking something other than taking a medication and that something you'd you'd said to me when we spoke on the phone previously was that. [23:06] You will feel. [23:10] And no cup confident that your offering the public and non fire option so. That know this probably will not necessarily replace all the patients medications this would you consider this something that people use in addition to. Or is it a, it has a hard treatment in some cases and where we haven't really been able to prove how but there are a lot of witnesses were quite a few vacations and again i, where you were not i know he's had heart disease and taking drugs are you. We feel that the across the board if you can use a non pharmaceutical intervention cars. And there are others on the market got this early in the second round but i am your father no what will message in the device shield which much smaller before leaving on something that is measurable and on same problem. Can you probably used first and it doesn't work then you can go to her suitable option there are many great drugs in the market. But when you have something that has done amazing is this that has to research it is probably a good idea to start with something like this for stator better opinion we don't. [24:41] Will you use this device without contraindications with any other pharmaceutical drug sofas and has something that you're doing, where's the problem and you can reduce vacation, that's fine he can you so stay on the medicaid for for her machine that may come and actually, and, the treatment of something else that's going on and i cannot be very specific but yeah pieces of vacation every condition, is different but that's one of the things that we talked about a lot of resources is that in hand sitting quality of life. [25:23] So so we do we tell me today's the new especially when you're with your buying a house full price is coming up this past thirty days you said that i don't, when he but they can return it we have a ten percent restocking fee wishes you know, lower the industry standard would you return electronic equipment generally you charge between fifteen and twenty five percent of the purchase price restocking fee or as much flour we had to cover the cost we should be back to the plan to get a refurbished, and you know rebuilt in the parts are changing everything else and, how many years of being used objects somewhere so we have to do that just fell safe but the, this device difference from. The you know you're talking about electronics and the rest people taking what they purchase and and user and on a, how is this different from there so many devices that you can just walk in your neighborhood drug store now the icy hot has wanna leave has one, there. Danger close to ten devices but they don't have a very big and they don't have to be in a. Alone or just build the same message is most ten devices and its my body not using any there any specific frequencies or anything between the study that any different than anybody else's. So there is really not something work benjamin down i have not heard good reviews about. [27:00] You have a lot of products that are in drugstores estate and the products mean they're on the same rate this is not something that you use on your face your head and neck there. They're not. [27:14] And anyway suggested to be safe for that and so that's the difference with your devices that use you do have the science backing exactly. Where is applied to the frequency to trigger the serotonin in the brain. Product no worries we found that the previous also ours is the is a true tragedy of it so you. Me to use the applicator switch the only way you can really get interesting right there other devices market to use matches on your clothes about they don't, they are not delivering electricity in the same fashion. This is really the only way you can collection break and you are going to it safely if you understand the frequencies introducing or or active players so, no one seems to have understood that right mission hi carrier frequency of eighty thousand, and what will i do to to deliver that, discover devices better better up that's about turned in in drugstores are okay but they're not you can use and transfer, and by using both you can use this for bailey and you can also use it topically so you know a lot of pain is centered where's trigger the brain. And the boys reaction is where you were reaction and of course all the build up is result of the stress of having injury. Is his biologically. Connected to your brain and how it operates of up so the first line of defense and actually we're treatment and using this transparently but you also use this properly. [28:54] And we talked about the body her to my goal was five hundred so where were you to lazy and forget about things like that. Right will find you see you can use probably but you can also i would also recommend using it turns green because that's where a lot of his trigger, forget about, we would use it topically for example of some of which is where most despite your current on the food or barter for toronto and we've got medicine, got a lot of in order to have your heart pumping to the strawberries and proven that to break up sugar crystals words as is working properly on your foot and then there are nine million people this country couches used to. And largely and solve one of your cast and it is you know people think it was drinking port red wine the greatest number of characters are actually beer drinkers. [29:50] Yeah i know for a red wine drinker so i can i guess and say from that appears here's a real problem and also people. Very rich food these days so so glad she's cause gout and then we can also use that you can also use it anyway we have people. For help in surgery right hip pain. She put one up here in one side with pain in the oven does hundred eighty degrees the other side we give you by strapping kids activities in your body and all because he is for r and neck pain and lastly. What have you as, to for very specialized form of chronic pain which is called phantom limb syndrome internet p you can use one of these alligators with makes i changed the device. She has her, office but the we can be used on c chalets in the other out the hair you use on the subway, where the or and it will reduce which and which were you feel like your problem is still there you so snorting pain. Practically so what's the use of medical life span of the device last, yo for five years or more if we don't get anything back maybe about one percent failure rate so we, get two to five years down the road we don't cost so we replaced the cost so they're not and we will cover costs but not. [31:26] I want to buy for brush up so we can get to the number of back every year but not many and that's as long as a result of used. [31:37] Yeah doesn't look it come in looking like they been using our over and over come back later over here over my hr something. I know i have said this. I know in your website it says that one of the things that would make you a patient not eligible to use it would be if you had a pacemaker or other electronic device in the body already. We recommend using over the in over pacemaker we have a lot of patients who used to transfer a newly who pacemakers but we we put that is a contradiction because of a lot of. What we recommended by the medical advisory board about it so you don't you voyage can, raise is there any other known health conditions other than another electronic device in the body is there is there anything else that, the you guys come across as a as contraindications. The only thing is if you have if you have for some reason trap on your head on if you were into had a bullet. I wish in trouble from from you were situation and that is and if the if you use the death of his over them so you can having so that pretty much do i owe. Where's this is we. As just as we can i go to raffia first vibration appreciate you calling in and kinda talking about the science of it and in the history of the device the again i myself wasn't aware that we're looking at. [33:19] Thirty plus years of. Science and technology backing that rice with what do you think it is there's one take away that is if someone was on the fence about trying this device i mean i've been pretty open with you that my fear was that it would somehow cause me pain. And and that make me nervous about trying a device like this but if somebody were on the fence. What do you think it advice would you offer them in their decision making process. Sure but when i went to examine oh not engages in inches device to worsened with matters of electricity here, do to cause harm in any situation and how he was applied, so that's that's the first thing the fda has loaded this year for forty years and determined say it were not saved. Then we would be out of work and we would certainly wouldn't have their printer were also fully approved using over the counter device which i didn't mention in brazil canada mexico and europe those are all very very strange in, regulatory bodies and they don't. What you do anything unless you have permanent that you have a device that say they be affected so we do have that in printer outside of the united states which is even, more rigorous than or ca so i would ask people to look at the evidence that we have as well as as well as the research of between published bipolar depression which is, car in two thousand thirteen was the first time the device has never been shown to treat the to the. [34:55] It appears that which is really quite a landmark study do we have done some extraordinary work and we also have, your detailed talk this website which i did which really on the street after so i would ask people to be opened to to understanding the biological elements of what's going on here and wanted to, look at you know the fact we had a great safety record this is the mobile is receiving shares this is just when it was delivered which makes factor. Excellent when i appreciate you calling in and giving us your time and i definitely know the following up with you i think i think that i am and getting braver and i think that i'm getting willing to. Maybe dip my toes in the. And it might be funny to say dip my toes in the water with anything electric bikes but definitely looking forward to learning more about it and getting some more feedback on and i appreciate you calling interesting. Perfect thank you for having the shown happy to answer any of a question mark in the future you have a good night to you as well. [36:08] Music. [36:19] Well that was an excellent wealth of information. We appreciate the phone call from it shipped to the fisher wallace lavatories again and their website is fisher wallace dot com and you can visit their site to learn more about their. Device a couple things just. [36:44] From there was a couple little bit more information than myself cost six hundred ninety nine dollars says flying investment as shit mentioned you may return it for a refund within thirty days and it. You know is definitely something that i think if you use it just once or just twice you should not base your experience on, just wanted to uses it something that you should try over multiple experiences unless of course that causes you. Such discovered that you would want to put it back on even though this is something that you can just purchase over the counter. If you're working with pain management team are working with the with the position. I think you should talk to your doctor about it and ask them their thoughts on it are they wear bits with the recommended ss do they have any. Thoughts as to whether or not it would have positive impact for you is certainly one of those things where again. I'm always looking for things that i can and it's my life that will. Help my existing drug therapies help with my life management plan. I would definitely have to consider could i find twenty minutes twice a day to put a machine on and. You know it's relieve my pain and increase mobility and help me sleep and help my depression and anxiety i would find twenty minutes twice a day and absolutely. [38:18] Is this something that i would invest seventy dollars and that her to measure. It is covered by some insurance is yes but a lot of interferences don't and some flicks plans won't because technically it's in order to counter item. So we definitely have to we the benefits of the device versus the cost and is nice that they are for the refunds that they do have a minimum restocking fee as well so he wouldn't get all of your money back. So we definitely something that if you are gonna spend the money on you need to be committed to putting the effort into it i myself was going to spend that much money i would like to know that it has a longer lifespan perhaps for the device itself. But again if you care for something and take care of it in and use it properly that i'm sure increases lifespan exponentially. [39:19] So definitely i am very excited to be doing a little more research and learning a little more about using cranial stimulation for pain and depression anxiety and insomnia all things we do with. I have a training myself. But it is something and we research more on and i would love to hear from some of you if you try one of these devices if you had. Positive or negative effects from it if you had any unexpected benefits from it you know didn't help with with other parts of your pain management and life management. [40:01] As always we talked about coaching and and putting together a plan of of. When taking observing deciding and taking action this is definitely something that would be taking action. So if you have tried me the fisher wallace stimulator or any other type of training estimate are we'd love to hear from you. Email us you can email me at jennie mac it pains me to five dot com or are generally email info at pain sixty five dot com. And. Tell it tells your story tell it how how did it help and what. [40:49] And if you'd like we could also talk more about your experience in your diagnosis. [40:59] I'd love to have some people share with us what brought them to discovering this and in and putting their energy into trying it. [41:09] As always our comcast line is open you can call and leave a voicemail we'd love to hear from you and have a message and. Many of share your story that way our number is six zero five nine three seven eight five three six that is our pain six five. Phone number. [41:34] Six zero five nine three seven eight five three six is the podcast line so feel free to call me this voice mail tell us tell us your story. And if i do get brave enough to try either the fish are always device or or some other simulator on my brain i will get back to you with the results and share my story as well. [41:56] As always thank you for listening to the tactical pain podcast again things to jim fisher fisher oz laboratories for helping us out with today's episode. And remember awareness is free and has risen nice places to go. [/su_spoiler]

[moss-brain-blog]

Interview with Jake Brown Transcript

What's your background?

With art? Or just in general?

Just in general, yeah.

Fuckin’ yeah, raised in a shitty mining town, surrounded by people with no prospects for life. From a very working class family. Always raised in the way of y'know, "you go to school, you go to work and you die."

*Both laugh* I feel it. [We're from the same place]

Nowt special really.

So... what is it that you're aiming to do?

Me, my ideal goal is to become a tattoo artist. Like, that's my ultimate end-goal. I also wanna’ like be good as well, I don't just wanna’ be like... yknow?

Yeah.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think I could ever settle for just being a tattoo artist. I see that as another level. If I were to ever have an end-goal with it, it'd be to be award-winning. Be able to travel over the world doing it. That'd be really fucking good for me. I'd love that.

What ways are you going about achieving this goal?

For me, at the minute, it's just drawing constantly. I never did art at school, I never did art at college. It was always like- I suppose it just feeds back to that family thing of "you work..." Art's never been considered a career or never was considered a career at a young age. I never really thought about it when I was young because I was never given the opportunity to think about it like that. It was like, you either play sport and become a famous rugby player or football player, or you work a 9-5 job or a shift job.

Off the back of that, I didn't write this one down but do you feel that not being in formal art education has impacted your work?

Yeah, definitely. I think if I could have been introduced to the things that I know now a lot earlier I think I’d be leaps and bounds better than what I am now. It's only in the last 6 months that I've discovered watercolor and like, digital art, sort of that I can do it. If I’d have had access to this kind of stuff at an earlier age, I’d be a lot better. I suppose it's the same with anything really. You give a guitar to say a 3-year-old that’s interested in it then y’know.

Can you tell me a bit about your creative process? How you go about seeing a piece through, start to finish.

So, I mean, at the moment it's flash that I’m doing so I’ve got to draw roses. so if say for example I’m doing an A3 flash of about 15 roses at the minute. I get my sketchbook any chance, any spare time that I have I’m doodling away. Like, straight away, just sketching roses all the time. I spend all my time looking on Instagram, looking at photos of roses, looking at a lot of other people's work, see how they do things. Take that, and mold my own stuff to it. But if it's for something else, say, that I personally want to do, I get inspiration at the most random times. Usually when I'm at work just doing the worst stuff possible, I'll think of a great idea. So, it'll be a case of whichever medium I want to do it, whether it be like watercolour, Promarker, pencil, digital.

You don't feel yourself restricted to just one thing?

No... No. Just sorta’ go with what I'm feeling at that time. So I’ll always just grab the nearest piece of paper- say I’m at work I’ll write it down then I’ll go home and I'll do a really rough sketch of it. Really, really basic rough sketch., Or if like I’m doing it digitally, for example with the print that I did, I got a really basic photograph of a skull, then a photograph of a mace, then a photograph of a chain. Then like, crudely photoshopped it all together and then just sketched over the top.

Building your own references?

Yeah, then just build my own line-work and style over the top of that. Yeah, I tend to put like, a lot of stages to what I do. I put a lot of planning into each piece, a lot more than I think people realise.

How do you go about choosing the subject matter for your work?

For me at the minute it’s looking at the most popular or most reoccurring thing with the tattoo industry. so like y’know back to roses and skulls and daggers and panthers and pinups it's all basic stuff that you see every day. but you’ve gotta’ learn the basics before you start pulling out your own stuff.

 I understand you use both traditional and digital media fairly equal-handed within your work. What advantages and disadvantages do you personally see in both for the kind of work you do?

I think for me like, with traditional media, I don’t have the patience for it. If I'm doing like, a really big piece- I can have all my line-work down perfect, the slightest thing goes wrong with the colouring and I lose it. Say, once I've ruined a large watercolour piece with the slightest thing I don't really wanna’ go back to it. I'd rather just jump back to digital. I think my only sorta’ issue with digital is that I rely on it too much at times. But then is it really a bad thing, I guess?

Was gonna’ say, do you see that as a problem?

Sometimes, because I’d like to be able to have more options. Like, I do have a fair few options open to me but I don't wanna’ rely on the same thing every time. I'd like to be able to do a bit of this, a bit of that.

Is personal expression important to your work? Or has it been in the past?

No, never. For me, I mean... interpret this how you want but for me with art you should always just do what you want to do. But I think using art to force an agenda or an opinion is just- it's mistreating it. And I think it ruins a lot of- like there's so many people out there that could be amazing artists but they're too busy trying to push this agenda or this idea that it just pulls away from what they could be producing.

Yeah, definitely. I really like that answer. Who are your biggest influences, creatively?

I'm currently just doing a massive list. [He must have seen this one coming]. I would say definitely number one is a guy called Manuel Mendoza, his Instagram is @sacred_crow. He's just a neo-trad’ artist but I forget- he's based in the US; he's just moved shops. But his style is like it's really- the dark colours but he's using like greens and blues and yellows. So he'll do like skulls- a lot of skulls a lot of birds but they're all like, really deformed in a way. They're all stretched out and exaggerated, I find it amazing the way his line work is. It's absolutely amazing. But if I pick someone that's not a tattoo artist, that's always been a big artist it's gotta’ be French[@funeralfrench], every time. Definitely. So I've just finished up- here's a list of about five.

 @sacred_crow

@funeralfrench

@mattcurzon

@grindesign_tattoo

@tdonaire

I think I should also add on like, definitely John Baizley and Richey Beckett. I really love their stuff. I think that sums it up. They're definitely my biggest inspirations.

Name something unusual that inspires you.

Satanism. Definitely.

Hell yeah.

Seeing stuff like old photos from rituals and stuff.

Yeah, Occultism.

Yeah, just all that stuff in general. Like, from the Electric Wizard vinyl I recently got, there's loads of stuff on the inside of that. I dunno’ just summat’ about it, it's just the grim darkness of it all just fascinates me.

The overwhelming sense of dread. Does that appeal to you?

Definitely... definitely.

What ways do you keep up to date with the tattoo industry?

Instagram... and I occasionally will buy magazines. I visit the local studio quite often, stay in touch with all them. I keep up with a lot of the main websites and magazines online. I even follow a lot of product companies like the companies that make [tattoo] machines or like, inks. Just to find out what's new and keep up with what people are up to in that world as well. Like, looking at the business side of things.

Yeah, so you're not just looking at the artist aspect of it you're looking forwards to y’know?

Yeah, every aspect of it. All the way.

How important is social media to your personal practice?

It's everything. Without social media I've got no outlet to share my artwork. I mean, I 've just hit a hundred followers. That's taken a long time to get to. Without the social media side of things... I don't even know where I'd begin to start sharing my work, to be honest.

Gives you a platform, right?

Yeah definitely.

Can you recall the single defining piece of work or a moment where you turned around and had the realisation that this was the kind of thing you want to pursue?

When I first- hmm. I'd say I've got two points. First being at a really young age and seeing my dad's tattoos for the first time. Just being fascinated that that was... there. Just like, what it was. Once it got explained to me, I found it fascinating. So from like maybe age 4 or 5 I used to just draw up and down my arms all the time. So that really sparked something. And then I'd probably say the first time I got tattooed was the moment of realisation where I was like, "Oh, maybe I could do this." I mean, that was a fair few years back now like but that was the first spark of "I could do this, if I really put my mind to it." I mean I suppose a lot of depression and anxiety and a lot of stuff that's happened has really held me back over the years. But yeah, I think my defining moments of realisation are those two. Definitely.

Name something you hate about art.

People who put no effort in, no time in. Get ten times more recognition than somebody that's put hours and hours and hours into their craft. Learning every piece of what they do, say learning anatomy, learning the tools they want to use. Just, really putting the time and love in for what they want to do. Then you get some snot-nosed little kid that's- well, it's not kids but snotty stuck-up teenagers. They'll whip out a sharpie, scribble summat’ down and just put summat’ with no effort whatsoever, no care for what they're doing. They just knock summat’ out in 5 minutes maximum and it gets so much recognition and so much more praise than somebody who is putting the hours in.

So you care about the craft?

Yeah.

Name something you love about art.

That like, people- anyone can do it, if you put the time in. Anyone can produce summat’ that looks great if you put the time in. And it's for everybody that's willing to give it a chance, definitely.

What was the last piece of art you bought?

Bought... I mean I suppose I recently bought a coat just because of the print of the back. I've also bought a few vinyls mostly because like- I accept music as an art-form as well, also the album artwork.

Oh, definitely.

Like, the main reason I got the Crack the Skye album was because of the artwork on it. As for prints, I tend not to buy prints. I suppose the last proper piece of art was either a pin that I got of French's Heatseeker magazine.

Last question, how many toddlers do you think you could take in a fight?

Just line em up. I'll just keep going.