#practicalities

[geeoharee]

Alabama have gassed a prisoner: https://apnews.com/article/nitrogen-execution-death-penalty-alabama-699896815486f019f804a8afb7032900

This is an interesting one, as I've long argued that inert gas would be more humane than lethal injection (which only looks 'quiet' because the lethal shot is preceded by a paralytic, so the executioners don't have to watch the guy struggle)

However it appears to have issues in practical administration: in particular, the guy held his breath for two minutes first. I don't know what you'd do about that!

I genuinely don't have much of an opinion about the death penalty because of my beliefs about suffering. I think in theory it's probably better to die quickly than be left in a cage to rot if those are the two options, but nobody on US death row dies quickly, because lawyers. And you have to have lawyers. So I don't know.

In a country that loves guns so much you'd think they'd just shoot prisoners in the head, it works all right on livestock. I think firing squad is legal in a few states but they don't seem to use it.

P.S. if you reply "NAZIS GASSED PEOPLE THEREFORE IT'S BAD" you get blocked

[gorjee-art]

a comic about cuddles

[yourmajestybee]

EVERYONE NEEDS TO LOOK AT HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON UNTRAINABLE THE STAGE PLAY RN

[kaereth]

Dragon harpy chimera birdy FALIN!! I love her

[inadvertent-cineaste]

A perfect opportunity to introduce my favorite website to those who may not know it:

Literally just two drop-down menus and a button. Pick one material from the first drop-down menu, one from the second, click the "Let's Glue!" button, and get excellent, detailed advice about what adhesive will suit your needs.

something you don't learn until you get really far into the making and tinkering life is that there's no such thing as "glue" really. there are so many kinds of substances that stick other substances together and they are all very different and if you just go look at the adhesives aisle in the hardware store the packaging never actually tells you anything useful. it's like "this is SUPER T-REX POWER GLUE" and the fine print says "good for use on wood metal and plastic". okay. but WHICH PLASTICS MY GOOD BITCH,

because SURPRISE, there's no such thing as "plastic" either. every kind of wood is basically the same on a chemical level, but the only thing every plastic has in common is "some of its molecules are long" and that is NOT a quality that determines how things stick together.

I just ordered some stuff I hope will permanently stick a circuit board to a steel sheet and withstand temperatures up to 150 degrees. by the way circuit boards are made of epoxy-bound woven glass cloth which is cool as hell but what the fuck do you glue that with? can any of the 12 kinds of adhesives I currently own do that? no of course not. if I want to stick two pieces of acrylic together so hard they become watertight to a depth of 3000 metres I have some shit that does that, but it does literally nothing else.

anyway. once you start learning how many kinds of sticking things together there are, the people at 3M start to seem like witches and I don't know if they're the kind we can trust with that level of arcane knowledge

[pangur-and-grim]

a lot of you probably knows Belphie's story, but I'll summarize just in case.

Devon Rex cats are better for people with allergies (less shed fur + less Fel d1 protein in their saliva), so on February 16, 2024, I went the breeder route and put down a deposit. before Belphie even opened his eyes, he was mine!

every Friday, the breeder sent me a new photo. I had a broken leg, and was basically rotting in bed at that point, so it was the best part of my week. then, at 12 weeks old, I BROUGHT HIM HOME!

at first, he was so alive! like a wind-up monkey that never shut off. he dangled from the wall-hangings, savaged my feet as I walked, and used my elderly cats as jumping poles to do cool acrobatics over. but all this gradually faded.

first, he stopped playing. then he stopped climbing. then he stopped moving much at all. my vet ran tests on him and found multiple pathogens (calcivrius + mycoplasma), but the medication didn't help - he kept declining.

on September 17th, I woke up to find him swollen like a balloon. we finally had an answer: he had Feline infectious Peritonitis, aka FIP. before 2017, this would've been a death sentence. he would've kept bloating until he drowned in his own fluids. and before 2024, I would've been forced to inject him with black market drugs. but thankfully, South Tower Animal Hospital in Fergus, Ontario was doing a study on the oral medication! we drove two hours, enrolled him, and left with the GS-441524 pills.

and he went from those photos above.....to this:

I thought Belphie would die as a kitten. I'd accepted that he would never grow up. but now he gets to LIVE!

and all for the low cost of $7,553.....ahhhahaha........god.

that + a recent home disaster has wiped out my savings, but I still need to pay for Belphie's medication. to remain in this study, I need to do bloodwork monthly until Feb 2025, and he'll need daily pills until March 2025.

I've put a risograph print + enamel pin set up at greerstothers.shop. I hate asking for help, but if you'd like to support Belphie's continued treatment, please consider checking them out!

[unsung-idiot]

Stan was not prepared

[knockknockwhosthereartistism]

The worst trauma comes from those who you love

[ae3qe27u]

There's a certain degree of pragmatism that goes into things. Like, well, it's gotta come from somewhere! Food, clothing, everything - it all has to come from somewhere, it doesn't just appear out of the blue

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[itsdefinitely]

some screenshot redraws

[sunnysatyr]

Hey, if you have half a minute and care about the LGTBQIA+ community in the EU, I'd suggest you take a look at this initiative to ban conversion therapies in the EU.

1 million people are required to sign, but there's barely 100k. The form takes less than a minute, it only requires your ID, name and surname.

Please, help spread the initiative so that it can reach the goal ASAP! If you're not from the EU and can't sign, at least reblog! Thanks in advance.

[marzipanandminutiae]

"hey why are all the barrier garments like linen shirts or chemises or combinations going away?"

"oh we have more washable fabrics now! you don't need to worry about sweat reaching your outer clothing when you can just chuck it in the washing machine!"

"cool!"

[100 years later]

"so uh all of those new washable fabrics are leaching microplastics into our water, and the constant machine-washing wears garments out faster. they're also not really sturdy enough to be mended, so we keep having to throw them out and now the planet is covered in plastic fabric waste that will never break down. also it turns out that the new washable fabrics hold odor-causing bacteria VERY well. so could we get those barrier garments back please?"

"sorry babe linen now costs $100000/yard and since it's been so long without them, nobody knows how to adapt barrier garments to the current styles anyway"

"..."

"maybe try this new $50 undershirt made of Special Sweat-Wicking Plastic Fabric! :) :) :)"

[clonerightsagenda]

I was rambling on the issue of museums and human remains and how certain populations are more likely to have their bodies put on display to be gawked at and then went "well I guess the Pompeii casts were of Europeans. there are bones in there right?" and Googled it to make sure, at which point I confirmed that yes there are bones in there, but more interestingly DNA testing revealed that a cast of an adult holding a child everyone assumed was a mother and child were, in fact, a man and a kid entirely unrelated to him. Honestly that's more moving to me. Maybe they were connected in a way other than blood, but maybe a stranger saw a child when the world was ending and thought the one thing he could do was hold them.

[fromcainwithlove]

author’s notes today: hey guys so just a warning there isn’t 100% explicit verbal consent even though they’re both really into it so remember this is FICTION, also they don’t use a condom :((( but in real life safe sex is important!!! please be safe out there everyone

a/n back in the day: kept thinking about ____ stabbing knives through both of _____’s hands to pin him in place while they fucked so here you go lol =P

[mumblesplash]

comics as an art form make me insane. they’re so difficult to do well. there’s so many different ways to make sequential art work and most of them are deeply unintuitive. onomatopoeia that feels completely ridiculous to put down often reads seamlessly. panels on a page become a fractally nested image composition challenge that’s only possible to lose because if you do a good job no one will notice. you have to direct the readers’ eyes on a specific path across the page but also account for the fact that they won’t follow it. comic time isn’t linear. if the order of events isn’t crystal clear the story becomes incomprehensible. sometimes you need to do this on purpose. all this for a medium almost universally considered less effective than animation and less respectable than plain text. even its own name doesn’t take it seriously