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Charts for your viewing pleasure.

May 30th, 2023

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Y’all need to learn about Ea-nasir.

April 30th, 2023

Short backstory to Ea-nasir: In 1750 BC in Ur (modern-day Iraq) some guy named Nanni bought copper ingots from a guy named Ea-nasir. Nanni, upon arriving to Dilmun to pick up his order, found the copper to be substandard. Nanni then carved the first negative Yelp-esque review in history. The internet has, for the last few years, been delighted by Ea-nasir and his shady ways.

There are Tiktoks galore about the Ea-nasir saga.

There’s even a whole, complex Ea-nasir / Simpsons series.

It’s kind of amazing. But we shouldn’t be surprised that the first complaint took off like gangbusters on the internet. The internet is for porn and complaining. It is its nature.

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Art is now confounding.

April 1st, 2023

I do not understand cryptocurrency. I totally cop to that. I assumed it was like money but magical internet money. I feel like it’s more than that, which is why I’ve been checking out sites like theinvestorscentre.co.uk to try and get a clearer picture. For example, there’s this art piece called G.E.M.M.A. by a street artist I adore, Tristan Eaton. Here are some of his murals.

G.E.M.M.A. appears to be a computer-generated version of his art with variations of all those elements Tristan incorporates into his work. That’s cool.

But you can’t purchase any unless you have crypto and then… you don’t necessarily own the piece? I was like “Here’s an idea – how about I give you money, or beans, a big bag of beans, those are worth something, you can plant them, and then in return you give me An Art? We revert to the ancient concept of the exchange of payment for goods and services. No? Okay.” =insert my confusion=

Update: Now you can buy some of them in this plane of existence so why didn’t they do that before? I’m going to take a nap.

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I am cool and hip. This is it. This is the one time.

February 18th, 2023

Recently I saw a post on Tumblr.

Now, you might be “that is certainly a collection of words that mean nothing to me” but I understood! I understood all of it! And I’m going to explain it to you because it’s actually quite interesting.

This is a person named maia arson crimew. The all lowercase is intentional.

Her chosen pronouns are she and it. I’m going to use she for this post. Her last name is a mashup of “crime” (because she commits crimes) and “mew” (because she likes cats). She uses a super-cute cat drawing to identify herself. I love that her website looks like 1999 garbage.

She’s a Swiss 23-year-old and she’s a hacker. maia is quite good at it, too. But her latest act was to get the TSA no-fly list and release it to the public. The way maia showed she had accessed it is a point of interest to people: She took a picture of the site with a cute lil plushie and said “holy sh*t, we actually have the nofly list. holy f*cking bingle, what?! :3”

People loved her whole personality.

But a lot of people were not okay with how she chose to identify herself or live her life, despite the fact that she bothered precisely no one about it. She is:

A therian, or individuals who believe or feel that they are non-human animals in a non-biological sense.

A bi lesbian, and a polyamorous one at that, who has nine girlfriends. I don’t know what a bi lesbian is, but again, she’s bothering no one so go for it.

A hard-core socialist. From her Wikipedia page: She has cited curiosity, anti-capitalism, anarchism, and opposition to the concept of intellectual property as the motives for her hacking, stating that “caring about literally nothing but profit definitely doesn’t result in security.”

On her Twitter bio, crimew describes herself as an “indicted hacktivist/security researcher, artist, mentally ill enby polyam trans lesbian anarchist kitten.”

A small portion of the LGBTQ+ community has problems with how she chooses to identify herself. They want her to be called something “sensible.”

NOW

Let us refer back to the original image.

We can now translate it! Clarity!

Bonus: She’s really quite delightful.

And if you want to hear her speak about cybersecurity, here’s maia is on a podcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgbQb7G6e7w

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Beaver Skull. Here we go (again.)

January 17th, 2023

Back in 2021 I started decorating a beaver skull. I painted it dark blue, covered it with dark blue felt (in case I wanted to impale some pins in it), and started making beaded components. Refer to this post for my first attempt(s). I was heartily displeased by how clompy the glue looked so I was like “Enough trying to salvage. We’re ripping it all off and starting over in 2023.” And that’s what I did.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: What the hell is with these colors??? The colors looked washed out as hell here. These are the colors in real life.

You seein’ those? You see this? This has all those colors. Where are they??

When I’m done I’ll take pictures outside in the sunlight, maybe that will help. Something I did that really helped was pull the lower jaw off of the primary part of the skull. It was hot-glued on by the teeth so it wasn’t that hard to remove. I must have shook one of the bottom teeth loose because it slid out and OMG do you know how much of the beaver skull is tooth? Whatever you’re thinking, it’s more than that.

It’s all tooth in there! Absolutely bananas.

I was going to try to salvage any of the pieces that I had removed but I decided starting fresh had to be totally fresh. I painted the skull that dark blue but didn’t add felt because I don’t anticipate putting pins anywhere. That reduces the bulkiness as well. I building everything off the skull for the first layer because I find it easier to stick on plaques of beads rather than individually. They drop off less if they’re a mass threaded together.

I’m aggressively procrastinating on the sides of the lower jaw. It’s going to be an odd shape, there’s going to be a full color transition from blue-black to gold and back AND I have to make two symmetrical versions. Ugghhhh. I’ll do it, I’ll do it, but I won’t be happy about it.

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More Oakland Zoo figures. this time during the day.

January 3rd, 2023

Ness-Ness, her daughter and I returned to the Oakland Zoo to see the actual animals as well as the lit-up animals in their diurnal form. This was the entrance.

I saw many beasts but I’m only going to share a few. Starting with a bunch of ravens chillin’ on a net. Not part of the zoo at all. I got really excited about seeing them. Ness-Ness was like “…We’re at the zoo with many exotic creatures from all over the world and you’re psyched about… local birds?” The answer is yes. Ravens are awesome and I am not ashamed.

Nor-alive big ole flying grasshopper!

Alive jaguar sleeping mere feet from me! I wanted to touch. The glass was strong.

The queen ant and her massive egg-laying butt tunnel of love. It’s great during the day as well.

As is the centipede.

This bug is still confusing. The black part, that’s the face, right? And the two twiddly bits, that’s the butt? Those are fangs on the black flat face? I rarely don’t know which end is up (heh).

Jumping spider:

The flies with the corpse flower:

The (I think) cicadas scratching their 17-year-itch with an ant that clearly didn’t consent to being adjacent to this sexual act:

Back to live animals. If you read my recent Kenya and Tanzania posts I referenced birds I called “sentient mangoes.” There were some of them in a massive enclosure with other African fauna.

A Sacred Ibis! Love them. Black featherless heads and poofy white bodies? I am here for that. Also please note the antelope in the background. We’re going to get into him in a moment.

A Klipspringer is a wee African antelope that lives its life on its tippy-toes because it hops from rock to rock. I’ve never seen one in person so I was delighted when I was right next to one! So small. So precious.

The keeper was in the enclosure because the zoo would be closing in twenty minutes and the Klipspringer was hanging right next to her. I was envious.

Hyena. Very large. Larger than I had originally thought.

Some kind of monkey with an absurdly long tail.

Back to the sculptures. The porcupine:

The bearded dragon:

These were referred to as wolves. I do not get wolves from them. I get coyote, maybe. Perhaps they’re a rare type of wolf that I’m unfamiliar with.

Really well-designed snake:

And a traumatized frog.

If you’re near Oakland during the holiday season and you can get tickets I highly recommend checking this out. It’s awesome and different every year.

Posted in Beastiesbeastiesbeasties, Nature, Random Art Bloggery, Travels – I Has Them | Edit | No Comments »

Japan? You okay?

November 23rd, 2022

I keep getting ads for this Japanese company, Sugoi Mart. They sell mostly food and mostly that food is the thing of nightmares. I can’t tell if it’s being sold as a joke or it is legit food for consumption with your mouth. I’m really hoping for the former.

Addendum: Still very concerned.

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Drones! But like, not scary. Happy drones.

October 26th, 2022

I remember, a long time ago, when ten drones doing anything in synchronicity was wildly impressive. Now, a gazillion drones are doing all manner of delightful things and I for one am here for it. For example, there’s a company where the drones are filling in the negative areas of Greek ruins.

Awesome. Awesome stuff. Their website is amazing too. Really well-designed. AND you can find out how much it costs to rent them! It starts at $20,000 so I’m out, but maybe someday, after I win the lottery. Get ready to see extremely odd stuff in your night sky if I win.

https://www.cyberdrone.com/

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I left the house! (Last year! But let’s not judge!)

October 11th, 2022

For the last few years (ignoring the suckfest that was Covid) I would go to San Francisco to visit my friend Ness-Ness. She usually takes me around and introduces me to things that aren’t a television or a computer or my bedroom. It’s very good for my mental health and well-being. Last Christmas she took me to the Oakland Zoo for their Christmas lights, they call it “Glowfari.” I was delighted by how many light-up animals were represented, specifically ones that were of great interest to me. It’s not often you get flies circling a corpse flower at a children’s event.

First, Bug Tunnel! I think it’s the queen ant and her giant egg-laying rump. I would want to use it as a chuppah for my wedding because I’m a romantic.

There were praying mantises (mantiiiiii):

And a rhinoceros beetle:

And this Tim Burton fella:

And the aforementioned flies with a corpse flower:

Plus two insects, I think they’re cicadas, in flagrante delicto:

Some of the figures had moving parts. There was the jumping spider:

And a centipede which was creepy as hell but I can’t hold it against the sculpture, centipedes give me the heebie-jeebies all the time.

*shudders*

A gathering of gastropods. We’re clearly taking some artistic liberties with the shell colors, but that’s fine. I can’t imagine any scientists are picketing outside.

Boneyard with porcupine adjacent.

Bearded dragons.

Dancing cranes. I loved the way these were set up. Very ethereal.

Bamboo forest complete with pandas. Note the pandas are not in flagrante delicto, in keeping with their character. They are notorious for not banging it out when given the opportunity.

African hornbills, nice to see birds I know all too well showing up.

Monkeys designed with eyes that know too much. The only major complaint with these animals are the eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul and a lot of these animals sold their soul to our Dark Lord Satan.

Here is a picture of Ness-Ness’ husband to give you a sense of scale. These figures are all really big.

The African plains were by far the most impressive of the tableaus. There were massive crocodiles with jaws that opened and closed:

A boar with the ultimate blasé expression:

And both kinds of baobabs. There are the ones found on the mainland and the ones only found in Madagascar.

Gorgeous flower tunnel with animal heads. I think that baboon has lascivious thoughts. He has intentions. #HelloLadies

And this moose is going to straight-up kill this other moose. We have entered into a soon-to-be violent moose interaction and I felt compelled to back away slowly.