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zines are so back

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it's not a true pet peeve but when certain phrases are divorced from their contexts it does give me a weird little butterfly in my stomach.

like, okay. "hell is other people" is an excellent line from Sartre's play "no exit". it's very short, you could probably read it in an afternoon or two. but the line isn't making a commentary about all people - it's actually specifically about the 3 characters in the play. they're all very bad people who are legitimately being punished in-actual-hell. they are forced into a room together for eternity & have been hand-picked to be as annoying as possible to each other as punishment for the sins they committed while alive.

and that concept is crazy! i don't write fanfiction but imagine what characters would be actual torture for each other! "hell is other people" isn't condemning humanity - it is saying we create hell from other people.

or like - shakespeare's "brevity is the soul of wit"! that is a joke line said by a joke character. polonius constantly talks too much and says fucking nothing of use. while hamlet is having like, the worst year of anyone's life - polonius gives really fucking vague and useless advice, including such popular sayings as: "to thine own self be true" and "neither a borrower or a lender be." when he says brevity is the soul of wit, it is meant ironically for the audience - this is a man who never shuts the fuck up. he himself is not brief, and therefore witless.

stuff like this just makes me wonder like - how many idioms or sayings come from completely different contexts and we just. fogrgot :(

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A comic I did for a roadrunner-themed anthology collected by my local indie comics group, 7000BC.

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plus a lot of people live in this fantasy land where physical health problems are taken seriously and addressed immediately. like they think if you faint you get rushed to the hospital and everyone spends days and nights investigating what's wrong. instead you will spend 6+ hours in A&E waiting room only for someone to be like "well you seem fine now" and discharge you. you can be coughing blood every day, or throwing up anything you eat for weeks or months, and the people around you will not mobilise to find out what's wrong. if you can't self advocate or have someone very dedicated to advocating for you, you're outta luck

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25 years of ads peeled away

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the amount of maintenance being alive requires.. i got nothing against eating but 3x a day, every day? couple hours max until you feel hunger coming back? the same teethbrushing routine every morning and night forever? showering doesn't last more than a day? give me a break

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t’s the final week of marketing and promotion for The Toxic Avenger, and the teams here at Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting have decided to do something a little different. Rather than spending the rest of our marketing budget on a stunt or campaign, we’ve decided instead to join forces with the non-profit Undue Medical Debt for a much more important cause.

When director Macon Blair’s The Toxic Avenger storms into theaters this weekend, he won’t just be melting faces on screen — he’ll also be melting medical debt in real life.

In the fresh new take on Troma’s cult classic, arriving in theaters August 29, Toxie has his life upended by unexpected medical debt. It’s for that reason that we’re working with Undue Medical Debt to quite literally erase medical debt for real people here in the real world.

At least $5 million in medical debt gets erased no matter what. And for every million bucks the movie makes at the box office, another million in debt will go up in toxic smoke.

This debt relief is possible thanks to a partnership between Cineverse and Undue Medical Debt, a national nonprofit dedicated to helping families least able to pay burdensome healthcare debt.

“We spent hours brainstorming how to close out the campaign and, while sending Toxie to the moon was appealing, no idea came close to combating unexpected medical debt for families,” said Cineverse SVP of Marketing Lauren McCarthy. “The Toxic Avenger had his entire life upended by crushing medical costs so, as Toxie says, ‘Sometimes you have to do something’.”

“As the medical debt crisis continues to grow we’re grateful for this partnership with The Toxic Avenger film, which is not only funding debt relief but also shining a light on the human impact of a broken system,” said Marisa Clemente, Vice President of Philanthropy at Undue Medical Debt. “We are always looking to team up with real-life superheroes who support our mission — including movie lovers, who now have an easy way to enjoy a reimagined classic while supporting financially and emotionally burdened families.”

The nonprofit leverages donations to purchase qualifying medical debt (for individuals four times or below the federal poverty level or who have medical debt that is 5% or more of annual income) in bulk from providers like hospitals and also collection agencies for pennies on the dollar meaning one dollar donated, on average, erases $100 of un-payable medical debt. Recipients of debt relief then receive an Undue branded envelope in the mail out of the blue with the good news: some or all of their medical debt has been erased.

Cineverse is relieving at least $5 million in medical debt across the country, where needed most, with our own donation, with ticket sales leading to unlimited additional donations.

Learn more about Undue Medical Debt with their explainer video and FAQ and then check out the official Toxic Avenger campaign page here.

Undue Medical Debt is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in 2014 by former debt collectors. To date Undue has acquired — and abolished — over $22 billion of burdensome medical debt, helping over 14 million families and addressing a major social determinant of health. Undue purchases unpayable debts for a fraction of their face value in bundled portfolios and partners with individuals, faith-based organizations, local and state governments, foundations, corporations and many others to empower donors by converting every dollar contributed into $100 of medical debt relief on average.

Undue partners with hospitals, health systems and physician groups to acquire medical debt for abolishment. Undue rose to national prominence on an episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” with John Oliver in which Undue facilitated the abolishment of $15M in medical debt.

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My therapist, who specializes in adults with ADHD, recently told me that all of her clients need a three day crashout period after a big life change. Finish the semester? Crashout. Change jobs? Crashout. Go on a really cool, really relaxing vacation? Crashout the moment you get home.

It's true of literally all of her clients. She works with a lot of them to put systems in place so that their crashouts are only three days. This includes the high-powered execs who travel regularly for work. It does not matter how successful or high functioning they are - they have ADHD, and a crashout is just part of the process of living with it.

I'm sharing this with all you ADHD friends out there, just in case you (like me) start shaming yourself if your crashout lasts more than one day. It turns out three days is kind of the best case scenario. Be kind to yourselves!

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Rendered in delicately cross-hatched ink, dozens of figures inhabit towering structures or assemble in crowds in the elaborate scenes of Pittsburgh-based artist Ben Tolman. Evoking the playfulness of Where’s Waldo? and the optical illusions of M.C. Escher, the artist conjures what Galerie LJ calls “a kind of human zoo.”

Opening next month, the gallery presents Tolman’s solo exhibition, Control, the title of which takes its cue from current events. Throughout the last 15 years, the artist has channeled an undercurrent of disconnection and imagined dystopian settings. His forthcoming show acknowledges the uncomfortable notion that some of these elements have become disconcertingly close to reality.

Tolman depicts faceless humans that move in sheeplike herds, “willingly following paths that clearly go against their own interests: technology, invisible barriers, belief systems, trends, politics,” the gallery says. The works in Control ask: how far are they (or we) willing to go? At what cost comes folly���or simply not paying attention?

In works like “Apartment” and “Routine,” anonymous figures mill about in individual, soulless boxes. Some appear to be working, relaxing, or socializing. Others just seem to stand there, staring into their phones. And in the darkly comical “Connected,” people queue to walk up a towering ramp structure, absorbed so much in their screens as they head up the incline that it’s too late before they realize they’ve stepped right off the precipice.

“With a generous dose of cynicism and voyeurism, Tolman portrays the eccentric truths and social failures of Western society,” the gallery says. “That’s what (he) is trying to understand—or to condemn. The future he sketches might seem bleak, were it not infused with a delicious sarcasm.”

Control runs from September 5 to October 4 in Paris. Find more on Tolman’s website and Instagram.

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someone reach out to @yesterdaysprint

Give a man a leaf and he will eat it. Teach a man to leaf and he will go away

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i think AI coding assistants cured my impostor syndrome. i have to review sloppy, nonsensical AI-generated code someone put forward as work with their name on it. oh you think that's good code? neat! i guess im not actually just tricking my way through my job because i wouldn't put my name on code this bad

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this is how I do it

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Transmasc Minotaur Tattoo Commission

Prints

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the other day someone was telling be about how much they love Thai food and all I could think about was this meme but knew I would sound like a lunatic it I tried to explain it.

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a "mutual" is a type of animal predomenantly found in michigan, serbia, and the north of england