#no i don't get paid for these

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[probably-impossible]

We all love Frater Imperator but based on the 'tax season' chapter I don't think he's going to be very good at the job actually.

(This is a vine btw)

[cartoonsinthemorning]

You idiot! clingy girls LOVE to get pushed around teased messed-up with manhandled bullied!! ESPECIALLY this one!!

[grison-in-space]

you know what else fucks me up about the US election? one of the things that has left me reeling in bewilderment and grief this month?

I'm a scientist, y'all.

That means that I am, like most American research scientists, a federal contractor. (Possibly employee. It's confusing, and it fucks with my taxes being a postdoctoral researcher.) I get paid because someone, in the long run ideally me, makes a really, really detailed pitch to one of several federal grant agencies that the nation would really be missing out if I couldn't follow up on these thoughts and find concrete evidence about whether or not I'm right.

Currently, my personal salary is dependent on a whole department of scientists convincing one of the largest and most powerful granting agencies that they have a program that is really good at training scientists that can think deeply about the priorities of the agency. Those priorities are defined by the guy who runs the agency, and he gets to hire whatever qualified people he wants. That guy? The Presidential Administration picks that one. That's how federal agencies get staffed: the President's administration nominates them.

All of the heads of these agencies are personally nominated by the president and their administration. They are people of enormous power whose job is to administer million-dollar grants to the scientists competing urgently for limited funds. A million dollars often doesn't go farther than a couple of years when it's intended to pay for absolutely everything to do with a particular pitch, including salaries of your trainees, all materials, travel expenses, promoting the work among other researchers, all of it—so most smart American researchers are working fervently on grants all the time.

The next director of the NIH will be a Trump appointee, if he notices and thinks to appoint one. NSF, too; that's the group that funds your ecology and your astroscience and your experimental mathematics and physics and chemistry, the stuff that doesn't have industry funding and industry priorities. USDA. DOE, that's who does a lot of the climate change mitigation and renewable energy source research, they'll just be lucky if they can do anything again because Trump nigh gutted them last time.

Right now, I am working on the very tail end of a grant's funding and I am scurrying to make sure I stay employed. So I'm thinking very closely about federal agency priorities, okay? And I'm thinking that the funding climate for science is going to get a lot fucking leaner. I'm seeing what the American people think of scientists, and about whether my job is worth doing. It's been a lean twelve years in this gig, okay? Every time the federal government gets fucked up, that impacts my job, it means that I have to hustle even harder to get grants in that let me support myself—and, if I have any trainees, their budding careers as well!—to patch over the lean times as much as we can.

So I've been reeling this week thinking about how funding agency priorities are going to change. I work on sex differences in motivation, so let me tell you, the politics reading this one for my next pitch are going to be fun. I'm working on a submission for an explicitly DEI-oriented five year grant with a cycle ending in February, so that's going to be an exercise in hoping that the agency employees at the middle levels (the ones that know how to get things done which can't be replaced immediately with yes men) can buffer the decisions of those big bosses long enough to let that program continue to exist a little while longer.

Ah, Christ, he promised Health & Human Services (which houses the NIH) to RFK, didn't he? We'll see how that pans out.

I keep seeing people calling for more governmental shutdowns on the left now, and it makes me want to scream. The government being gridlocked means the funding that researchers like me need doesn't come, okay? When the DOE can't say fucking "climate change," when the USDA hemorrhages its workers when the agency is dragged halfway across the country, when I watch a major Texan House rep stake his career on trying to destroy the NSF, I think: this is what you people think of us. I think: how little scientists are valued as public workers. Why am I working this hard again?

This is why I described voting as harm reduction. Even if two candidates are "the same" on one thing you care about, they probably aren't the same level of bad on everything. Your task is to figure out the best person to do the job. It's not about a fucking tribalist horse race. A vote is your opinion on a job interview, you fucks. We have to work with this person.

Anyway, I'm probably going to go back to shaking quietly in despair for a little longer and then pick myself up and hit the grind again. If I'm fast, I might still get the grant in this miserable climate if I run, and I might get to actually keep on what I'm trying to do, which is bring research on sex differences, neurodivergence and energy balance as informed by non-binary gender perspectives and disability theory to neuroscience.

Fuck.

[bixels]

I think 90% of my gripes with how modern anime looks comes down to flat color design/palettes.

Non-cohesive, washed-out color palettes can destroy lineart quality. I see this all the time when comparing an anime's lineart/layout to its colored/post-processed final product and it's heartbreaking. Compare this pre-color vs. final frame from Dungeon Meshi's OP.

So much sharpness and detail and weight gets washed out and flattened by 'meh' color design. I LOVE the flow and thickness and shadows in the fabrics on the left. The white against pastel really brings it out. Check out all the detail in their hair, the highlights in Rin's, the different hues to denote hair color, the blue tint in the clothes' shadows, and how all of that just gets... lost. It works, but it's not particularly good and does a disservice to the line-artist.

I'm using Dungeon Meshi as an example not because it's bad, I'm just especially disappointed because this is Studio Trigger we're talking about. The character animation is fantastic, but the color design is usually much more exciting. We're not seeing Trigger at their full potential, so I'm focusing on them.

Here's a very quick and messy color correct. Not meant to be taken seriously, just to provide comparison to see why colors can feel "washed out." Top is edit, bottom is original.

You can really see how desaturated and "white fluorescent lighting" the original color palettes are.

[Remember: the easiest way to make your colors more lively is to choose a warm or cool tint. From there, you can play around with bringing out complementary colors for a cohesive palette (I warmed Marcille's skintone and hair but made sure to bring out her deep blue clothes). Avoid using too many blend mode layers; hand-picking colors will really help you build your innate color sense and find a color style. Try using saturated colors in unexpected places! If you're coloring a night scene, try using deep blues or greens or magentas. You see these deep colors used all the time in older anime because they couldn't rely on a lightness scale to make colors darker, they had to use darker paints with specific hues. Don't overthink it, simpler is better!]

[welivefast-dieyoung]

Some of y'all trying to encourage empathy for these unethically wealthy people, who agreed to be bolted in to a metal tube, that was unapproved, unsafe and was controlled by a fucking off brand playstation controller from 2011 just for a cute lil death tourism trip is why we as a society will never be free.

They went to a part of the ocean that is so deep, more people have been to space than that far down. With a man who said safety shouldn't be a concern. Oceangate literally fired someone for saying that the window wasn't going to be able to withstand those depths. They'd lost another vessel before for 5 hours. Like plllsss the self preservation left the room. This whole situation is absurd.

Even this man's own stepson doesn't give a FUCK and you want me to? Nuh uh you have the wrong one I'm afraid😭😭

[thespineoftherighteous]

whenever Andrew or Neil are talking about Kevin to the other they refer to him as "your boytoy"

[squalamander]

he's not a kin or a comfort character but a secret third thing (my worksona)

[starcatchingsnake]

Okay, Dandadan is probably one if the stupidest plots for an anime I've ever watched, but DESPITE THAT-

It still manages to have extremely compelling characters, an awesome rom-com of the two MCs, awesome supernatural powers, and a surprisingly tasteful portrayal of the main plot.

Like, I know anime, I've watched food wars. I know how anime can be, and suffice to say: I'm honestly happy with how the writers are treating the plot.

It's not overtly sexual, they haven't turned the missing balls into some sex-fueled fantasy that can only be solved through fanservice and the main characters getting it on. Instead it's been treated like it is: a circumstance thats so fucking ridiculous it is legitimately hysterical, the idea that a ghost stole your balls is honestly comedic, and I'm glad that the anime (I haven't fully read the manga so I can't speak for it) is treating it as such.

Plus, the Opening, and artstyle in which the anime is being produced with is so fucking incredible, from the designs, angles, and action sequences to the actual character movements, each scene feels so alive and every personality really pops through the character's motions. I don't feel like there is a stagnant moment in the anime so far, and it's really fucking awesome to just sit and take in the art that is being blasted into my retinas.

So all in all: do I contemplate my life choices every time I think about the plot of the show? Yes, but do I also take into account that it could've been worse, and what we got is actually really fucking amazing all things considered? Absolutely.

[boltlightning]

hey guys you heard of these things called trees ??? wow

[smilefullofcaligari]

Doodles because I can't code anymore

[decepti-thots]

framing the lost light as "found family" is lazy and boring fandom cliche to me, however i do 100% believe rodimus is the sort of person who would try to wave over all the shit that happens if you work for him by pulling the "we're like a family, haha" line. look me in the eyes and tell me rodimus would not respond to complaints about the whole place being run Like That with some vague platitude like that if only cybertronians broadly understood what "family" is in the first place.

[inthiskingdomwewillendure]

Eowyns armor in 4k

[kacievvbbbb]

The Red Hair Pirates Navigator gets sick or something while Mihawk is visiting and Mihawk, who rides around on an overgrown raft and has probably never steered an actual real ship in his life but loves a challenge, volunteers himself as a stand in while acting like they've forced his hand.

So it's just like

Absolutely No one:

Mihawk (sighing) : I guess since you've begged I'll do it 🙄

And Shanks is so excited because Mihawk is actually taking a vested interest in his crew and this is probably the closest he will get at having him as an official rhp and of course watching Mihawk do piratey things he rarely does is very hot.

Everyone else has a couple of......questions

Benn: I've never seen Hawkeyes use a map before, I'm not even sure he own's a log pose.

Shanks (insanely whipped would let Mihawk crash them into the rocks like a sailor to a siren call) : But he get's where he needs to go and that's the important bit.

Mihawk gives directions that the helmsmen has never heard of in his life, never actually opens a map navigates soley on memory, they don't see a single Island for days and he leaves the crew wondering how exactly it is he ever gets anywhere. They still somehow arrive 3 days earlier than expected.

[kcrabb88]

I feel like we really lost something when we started looking at writing as a reader-centric product meant to appeal to the desires of a specific audience rather than a writer-centric approach of someone writes whatever particular thing particular compels them/whatever weird thing the demons in their head want to talk about, and people out there who are also compelled, and/or relate, find that writing. A lot of discussions of writing really center around what readers want rather than a writer's exploration. Sometimes as a reader I don't know what I want. I click on a fic or pick up a book I'm not sure about but that looks interesting, and I love it. Reading what I expect to get is it's own joy, but we always need to expand our horizons and not get mad at creators for not always writing what we want/expect.

[p0rk-guts]

NEW HELLUVA BOSS EPISODE..... NEW CHARACTER VOICED BY KESHA? KESHA???

KESHA??????????