lunarmansions

[lunarmansions]

Something no one really tells you about growing up is that once you start to figure out who you are (or maybe more importantly, who you /aren't/), it is then your responsibility to pursue that for yourself. Instead of wallowing in hate for what you are not and what you feel forced to contend with by circumstances or Life or your parents or whatever.

For a lot of people this is something like sexuality or gender or how the world sees them but for me most of these feels are wrapped up in being pretty smart and then being denied an education (because I have shitty parents who do not value education and live in a shitty society that grossly overpriced education in order to keep it as a form of class privilege). So then I struggled for years just trying to get to a point where I could go to school, and when I finally did I freaked out because I had this perception of school being some fantasy idea of academia instead of watching Discovery Channel documentaries and reading checklists. No, it really is just about credentialism, especially undergrad. Thank you, that will be $60,000. I bailed in less than a semester and am now on a waiting list for a trade school.

After that I decided that all my learning-for-fun projects that I'd always done ("Hell yeah I'm going to learn this extremely difficult language/read these boring history books/do epic questing for primary sources just to satisfy this curious urge/write 30,000 words on a niche topic and then share it with a forum of other nerds in my spare time!") were far more valid as education than the expensive piece of paper. It sort of sucks I can't apply any of this knowledge to working in a relevant field, but then again, I'd be pretty pissed if I had a master's in history and museum studies and the only job I could get was 33k a year at the Barbie museum. No disrespect to those who are there, it's just not for me.

Sometimes I think this is without a doubt the worst of all possible worlds and I am stuck in some specially-crafted hell made just to destroy my soul. But as I grow up and grapple with the reality of my elderly family getting ready to pass on and not recognize at all the extent to which their tyrannical whims controlled my earlier life, I'm coming to new conclusions, like: I can just do what I want without making it anyone else's business. Just because I have zero-to-negative interest in what constitutes most normal American life doesn't mean I have to be vicious and mean about it. I can just... move on. I don't even have to make a big deal about it, it is simply not for me, and eventually I'll construct a new world full of things and experiences and people who actually are for me.

#education #class issues

[lunarmansions]

yeah bitch I'm fancy. I'm fuckin ornate. and I'll fuck your shit up

Ornate Hawk Eagle (Spizaetus ornatus), family Accipitridae, Pance, found throughout much of Central and South America

photograph by Trey Neal

[lunarmansions]

hell yeah mercury retrograde in virgo you know what that means: time to spend the next 3 weeks obsessively editing and reviewing your writing and creative work before starting new stuff at the end of September

#mercury retrograde in virgo

[lunarmansions]

Remedios Varo - Cosmic Energy (1956)

[lunarmansions]

[lunarmansions]

Glass Gem Corn seeds color wheel

(the set from my Pantone color matches)

When I found out about this fascinating corn variety a couple of years ago, I’ve been wanting to take color match photos of the stunning multicolor kernels.

Its origin traces back to Carl Barnes, a part-Cherokee farmer living in Oklahoma. Barnes had an uncanny knack for corn breeding. More specifically, he excelled at selecting and saving seed from those cobs that exhibited vivid, translucent colors. After many years, his painstaking efforts created this wondrous corn cultivar called Glass Gem Corn.

So glad I’m finally able to match their colors! See my page to see the Pantone color matches 😊

[lunarmansions]

I have no patience for the alien thing. Come the fuck on. Show me the ships or shut the hell up. Go do something constructive that directly and positively impacts my daily quality of life instead of scamming for government cheese for your stupid dc department of whatever job that is facing imminent cuts because the dummies in charge can't stop themselves from starting another goddamn war.

#get a real job #ships or it didn't happen #aliens might be real but they do not affect my daily life #use your pull in dc to stop these idiots with war fever instead of more dumb hearings nobody cares about

[lunarmansions]

There's so much fearmongering about AI and robots and the inevitable technological future closing off all human work but I think it is far more likely only a small subset of computerized work is going to remain in twenty to forty years. Part of this is my experience on the ~ i n s i d e ~ as a former minor tech executive, part of it is the experience of my extended family in Japan after their crash in the 90s. Do people realize that so much of the AI/robot/digitization stuff is subsidized market front running? Basically a group of wealthy companies get together, decide a market they want to corner, define the budget and timeline, and get to work annhilating the existing market so they can swoop in with their replacement (ideally as a monopsony provider a la google or amazon). If an 'industry' is big enough, like very fast chips, governments will even get involved to block competitor countries' products to secure their national champions.

The biggest problem with all of this (it has been going on longer than I've been alive, like forty five years now) is that it has chewed up so much personal livelihood everywhere that enacted these policies that only like 15% or less of the people in those countries can buy the products produced. Because most people don't have the disposable cash any longer to buy the expensive computerized crap except under duress, like when they have to get a new car or new computer. I enjoy playing and making video games too, but I know why so many are in the industry: it is one of the few remaining options to be an independent producer because it requires minimal tools and can be bootstrapped solo by not paying for your own labor.

So I think what is actually going to happen is a big shift back to hyper-local production, of everything, and there will be an emphasis on employing as many people as possible (so taxes can be collected) instead of 'efficiency' and 'productivity'. It will take a lot longer than the dummies in charge think because decades of neoliberal looting will take decades to repair. And this is going to collide with wild weather changes and power outages (another reason why the data centers and robot future aren't going to be widespread). But it will be cool because there will be a return of actual diversity of stuff that is created instead of the same four companies churning out copies of the same stuff. I like to imagine things like regionally-specific mp3 player styles in the same way we describe old pottery. There will be an assumption that the AI and mass scale tools are just there for plagiarism and theft so you'll have to actually go in person to do coolhunting, and it will be impossible to scale up or influence off it because all the platform middlemen will be gone.

#the future #hyperlocalism #don't fear the robots #ai is just theft

[lunarmansions]

I finally finished reorganizing my workroom to deemphasize the computer work in favor of patterning and sewing. The only way to make this work was to move all the drawing and painting stuff to my bedroom, which means I'm now drawing whilst sitting on the floor like I did as a kid, but actually this is totally rad and really nice to get away from so much screen/desk time. I took a cue from my dyeing work and repurposed a plastic bin with a lid as a paint caddy so I can close everything messy and wet away quickly, and all my various painting/drying boards work well as drawing surfaces.

[lunarmansions]

the cat has a request gesture but because he's a super sweetie he never requests food, only cuddles on the floor or opening the garage door but the absolute best was realizing he has a special fancy extended version that he only uses with me and specifically to ask me to bend over his window seat so he can bonk my boobs with his face

#boys #cats #cat language

[lunarmansions]

It feels like a lifetime ago - in some ways it was even though it was less than five years ago - but before The Illness I had that unshakeable ambition that comes from growing up working class and managing to "make it" somewhat (I was a minor executive at a very big company everyone is aware of). Aside from nearly dying from an untreatable and uncurable neglected tropical disease, what did me in was realizing how critically unnecessary my work was and how it was really no different from dumb random chance that I'd managed to acquire so much when so many had so little. And almost everyone that I worked with who was a part of this petty aristocracy didn't see it that way, they felt they were owed this existence and all this excess, and they were willing to play the hellish game of keeping up with the cycle required to maintain it. All I can really say now is something bland like 'It really freaked me out, I had to get away from that world' and anyone who hasn't been in that situation might think they could do anything to maintain that lifestyle and existence - anything for the money, for the feeling of assurance and the security it brought - but to me it felt dangerous and fragile. It felt like a deadly trap and I felt like I was going crazy that nobody else could feel it and see it.

I truly flipped out about four months before the pandemic started and moved away from where the work was and left the job but when the floor started falling out of tech, I had already gotten to safety and it wasn't that big of a deal for me. I had prepared correctly even though it had been too crazy to explain to anyone else. And then I had the bizarre recovery event and even The Illness started to fade. I'd conquered the unconquerable but it was impossible trying to explain it to anyone. "So what do you do?" "Oh, I survived a disease with no treatment or cure that has a hallmark of unrelenting pain that doesn't respond to anything, and I did it by giving up everything I'd worked for in the prior decade and focusing solely on my daily existence and mental health, and it made me mildly psychic and completely unable to tolerate bullshit. What about you?"

#pluto in the 12th #surviving

[lunarmansions]

my brother started calling our cat "doobie brother" which he then lengthened to "dubious brother" and has since morphed into "brother dubious" like he's some sort of fucked up little monk

[lunarmansions]

I've taken immense shit over the years for having one of those giant blue ikea bags full of cables I refuse to throw away, but every time I solve an otherwise intractable problem by reaching into the bag and pulling out the correct cable, I gain another heart container

#it's not hoarding it's being prepared #cables

[lunarmansions]

the cat: ilu you must cuddle me every hour without fail or i will cry from neglect

the other cat: bitch if you look at me in an unapproved manner i will slice you. do not touch me ever unless i demand pets first and even then i will likely bite you

#cats

[lunarmansions]

I've spent the day doing a major rearrangement so I can make patterns by hand because even though I don't really have the space and had to sacrifice half of my table space in the move, I watched a bunch of videos last night of people making their tiny workspaces work for them and decided even if it's annoying to have only half the space I would like to have ideally it is better than raging myself into not doing anything at all because I hate the software so much.

#patternmaking

[lunarmansions]

How do you do

Grimm's Fairytales illustrated by Albert Weisgerber, 1900

[lunarmansions]

Just now I was overthinking myself into severe depression over current events and heard the cat start to make the bird noise so I got up to do my traditional 'oh my GOD is there a BIRD in your YARD' whisper to him but then I saw that he was freaking out because an entire family of crows had flown into the trees in our yard and for a minute I was ecstatic, I've missed the crows so much and they are just not as prevalent here as they were on the west coast. The cat absolutely hates them because they're black (like him) and bigger than him (he's a tiny guy) and eating his crickets (that's his job!) and he has wedged himself between the window and his seat to make sure they see him but they absolutely do not care. I hope they stay and make a nest.

#crows #cats