Nepenthe

From the US: I’m over 30 and this is the first time I’ve heard surrogacy referred to as human trafficking. And now I need to sit and think.

It’s always felt a little bit creepy to me, but I’ve also never wanted kids and the idea of pregnancy for any reason would be traumatic. So I’m starting out heavily biased. I think if you take the money out, it no longer counts…?

But the idea would be so out of left field that it would mostly be dismissed out of hand, probably even by most women.

I had to scroll back up just because she’s so pretty. That’s a quality cat, right there, and she knows it.
11/10 would kiss on her lil forehead.

Otherwise known as: “what if everyone’s abusive ex ran the government?”

Ok. Mini-rant because I can’t contain myself atm. Do you wanna know a badly-kept secret? I’ve been making art on and off for 29 years. My ass wishes I could draw too. A ton of artists wish they could draw.

Talent will only give you a leg up, and mainly just at the beginning. The rest, all of us have to struggle for and I’m quite sure very few of us appreciate having to do so. And no matter how good they get, there is always something they have no idea how to do yet or they have some idol whose style they envy more than their own. Or they’re the type that only hates what they make because they’re the one who made it.

Van Gogh had a painter friend named Gauguin, and they were both jealous of each other. There is no magical point that one hits where you feel like you’re Good Enough. The best you can aim for is the kind of steady improvement you don’t even notice happening except on a scale of years, and the confidence to acknowledge those improvements instead of hyper-focusing on every way it isn’t what you saw in your head (it never is).

Go get a pencil or your ipad or whatever. Youtube is by far your biggest friend. Go look up videos about how to actually see what’s in front of you instead of what your brain insists must logically be there. USE REFERENCE. Trace a photo over and over, then immediately try the same thing freehand – this one is super useful, because a lot of drawing is also muscle memory. Break things down into simple shapes and then build on those. Use the open space between objects if you need to, to trick yourself into drawing something complex without getting lost in intimidating structural details.

When you’ve got those down, move onto perspective and composition. Cry a little if you have to, then get back to it. Because now you’re able to do whole backgrounds. People? Do tons of deliberately imprecise gesture drawings. Give your OC a terrifying robot head, a pillow for a torso, and springs for limbs. But go get. Your pencil. And be ok with drawing at first like everyone thinks they draw.

Barring that, my second choice is singing.

In that case, I also choose NZ 802 years ago.

In general, or just in red states? Cross-referencing LGBT politicians with their states’ historical political leanings, an openly LGBT politician has been elected or reelected while their state was considered republican a total of 96 times. The lead is actually a three-way split between Florida, Georgia, and Arizona, each with a total of 9.

So. Less than it perhaps should. Way more than you’d think.

When I get deeply emotionally attached to my data analyst, I might care if they’re moonlighting on the side. Sex, work or not, is still an emotional topic for most of the human race and it’s not new knowledge to anyone.

Enough that it would not naturally occur to me that “please do not engage in prostitution while we’re together” needs to be said out loud. I will casually ask if you’re monogamous and if you say yes, that’s how monogamy works.

Even aside from that, yeah, tbh, I would consider it good form to let your partner know you’re considering a new job regardless, just so they generally know what’s going on. If you have to hide it, maybe something is wrong.

Well, that makes them like the edge of a freezie pop. Those are dangerous.

I don’t think plastic would cut so well as it does in the article’s video, but maybe it’s not the only schematic.

Rewrite it for someone who doesn’t drink.

Oh goodness, I didn’t know they were turning the book into a movie

One of the few times it’s probably better not to have alt text…

Not much stopping you from hunting and gathering, though. There’s some reason you haven’t, and a lot of the unhappiness that would just be part of life for someone raised that way would still be unhappiness. They’d just accept it as unchanging.

That and, what was that one woman that tried to go off the grid earlier this year with her son, and the whole family died in a couple months when the winter hit? Shit’s not easy, and if you fuck up, you’ve done fucked up in a way that’s quite possibly permanent. Even the thing that got Chris McCandless was theorized to have been just eating the wrong seeds. He starved because he inadvertently paralyzed himself and couldn’t hunt.

I don’t enjoy tons of things about today’s society, but I haven’t forgotten how fun it is to scrounge and come up empty. I was about to say I’d definitely take the implied social belonging of a small tribe, but even that’s not guaranteed. I’m gonna stick close to whatever shit semblance of a safety net I have.

Imagine half your backyard being in another country. Do you think they still mow it?

If we make them out of little bits of plastic, the answer is shockingly yes

Singing to my cat is one of the only reliable methods to make her get up and leave T_T

He’s playing video games at work

Defender of the basic is a video to live by

Because homonyms are the worst part of any language and Noah Webster agrees with me.

for the metric system they don’t even use.

British people will fund pirates to steal our measuring weights, only to convert themselves 200 years later and then act like the US doesn’t have a single STEM field. And then drive by the mile for a pint of milk.

I used to have one that did that. He was aching to get on the counter and the first time he actually succeeded, I was terrified he was about to burn himself.

Nope. He just wanted to watch me cook. Sat very politely the whole time. It became a thing. Never even asked me for any of it. He just wanted to spend time with me. I miss him.

I’ve actually never had anyone in a monster truck tell me I should buy a monster truck. So…by unfortunate definition…