rynling: (Terra Branford)
At a certain point I got old. A lot of my "radical thinking" these days boils down to "perhaps we as a society should pay a living wage to bus drivers and sanitation workers."

But like, listen. I don't have a pension, or any savings. My family (such as it is) doesn't have money. I'm continually in debt. I don't have many options, so my retirement plan is to do domestic ecoterrorism.

Sometimes I think about the incredible environmental cost of machine-generated art and writing, and I think about what it takes to create and maintain server farms. And I think about how no one would get hurt if those buildings were bombed. It's a victimless crime, really.

That's still many decades away, though, and I'm not sure what sort of physical condition I'll be in. So who knows. I might have to settle for spray painting rainbow-colored dicks on the Antonin Scalia Law School or smashing the window in the National Cathedral with the Confederate flag.


...to the FBI agent reading this, please remember to leave kudos on my stories on AO3, thank you.
rynling: (Mog Toast)
14 Warning Signs That You Are Living in a Society Without a Counterculture
https://www.honest-broker.com/p/14-warning-signs-that-you-are-living

This is a deep matter, and I won’t try to unlock all the nuances here. I will now simply share 14 tweets that capture the stale taste of life without a counterculture.

I'm proud, I guess, to be a contributor to whatever counterculture still exists. At the same time, I'd really like to be paid for my work. Being broke all the time sucks.

If I had money, this is what I'd do:

1. Buy a Steam Deck, which I've wanted for years
2. Take a three-day vacation at the end of the semester
3. Commission an artist to work with me on a comic project
4. Start a small press maybe

That's not even a lot of money, just $3000. But even $3k is a lot when you don't get paid for anything. I'm not delusional enough to think that I ever had the potential to become the next big thing, but I wish there were more opportunities. Even working for free is super competitive, and I hate it.

Uncommitted

Apr. 7th, 2024 07:39 am
rynling: (Ganondorf)
Uncommitted PA
https://uncommittedpa.org/

A large majority of registered Democrats are frustrated, disappointed, and horrified by the Biden administration's unwavering support for Israel's genocide in Gaza. Biden won Pennsylvania by just 80,555 votes in the 2020 presidential election. We are using our votes to demonstrate to the Biden-Harris Administration that their support is dependent on their ability to stand with the majority of voters in their calls for immediate and lasting ceasefire in Palestine. Let's show the Democratic Party and Biden that they're actively losing their base that they need to win the 2024 election by not calling for a ceasefire.

I have no experience with politics, and I'm not sure what good this is going to do. But people need to say something, and people need to keep saying something, and I might as well be one of those people. I've been on a constant email and message campaign to my elected representatives since the beginning of the year. Each new petition and each new atrocity gets a new set of messages, and all of the Democrats always write back with some variation on the same response: We're not going to stop killing children until we're done killing adults. At this point they're not even denying that it's a genocide. And don't get me started about John Fetterman

I would probably die before I talked to another person on the phone or passed out flyers. I did get a bunch of signs printed, though, and I'm about to leave to go staple them up in the parks around West Philadelphia. Wish me luck!
rynling: (Ganondorf)
The strange world of high-speed semi-automated genre fiction
https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper

Lepp, who writes under the pen name Leanne Leeds in the “paranormal cozy mystery” subgenre, allots herself precisely 49 days to write and self-edit a book. This pace, she said, is just on the cusp of being unsustainably slow. She once surveyed her mailing list to ask how long readers would wait between books before abandoning her for another writer. The average was four months. Writer’s block is a luxury she can’t afford, which is why as soon as she heard about an artificial intelligence tool designed to break through it, she started beseeching its developers on Twitter for access to the beta test.

I read this article when it came out and blocked it from my mind because it made me so upset. Now, having been reminded of its existence almost two years later, it still makes me unreasonably upset.

But at the same time, an evil part of me feels malicious glee toward the type of writers who brag about how many words they can produce in a day. Like, good for you. A machine can do that, and more. I feel better about my slow progress now. The fact that my words are fought for and then chosen with love and care might not mean much to "consumers," but it means something to me.

Idk man. I recently tried to read one of the popular "cozy mystery with monster romance" books on Kindle Unlimited, and I couldn't make it past the first ten chapters. All the bland and generic coziness made me want to commit acts of domestic terrorism. Like where does Amazon keep its servers. Asking for a friend.
rynling: (Ganondorf)
When I applied to the Philadelphia writer's workshop, I described my work as being an attempt to make sense of what it means to live in the ruins of capitalism. When I was waitlisted, the feedback I got was that we do not in fact live in the ruins of capitalism.

I guess that what happened in Baltimore this morning is just normal and healthy. My bad.

Read more... )

My heart goes out to the eight members of the road repair crew who stopped traffic on the bridge and saved dozens (if not hundreds) of lives. What absolute legends.

ETA: Just to be clear, I'm not blaming the city of Baltimore, the bridge that was hit (I actually love that bridge), the two Baltimore port workers on the ship, or even the ship's crew. Rather, it's come to light that this ship had pre-existing problems, and this is one of many similar container ship accidents that's occurred this year. I've seen people taking digs at Baltimore, which feels very unfair. Obviously I'm not an expert on what happened yesterday morning, but the problem feels much, much bigger than one boat.
rynling: (Mog Toast)
Always, in the back of my mind, there's someone reading what I write and somehow baking it into the worst possible interpretation. Something I'm always afraid of is coming off like a victim, but I don't think this has anything to do with me as an individual.

Read more... )

This isn't about being a victim, and it's not really even about late stage capitalism. The experience of feeling like an outsider due to circumstances beyond your control is universal, because of course it is. And, while I respect the fantasy of finding friends and working together to achieve success in a hostile system, I'm much more interested in exploring the reality of what it means to do your best but still fail.
rynling: (Mog Toast)
Read more... )

I was so violently shocked during that interview that I probably lost a year off the end of my life, but I still think about what a nice summer that was. I’m also still friends with many of the people I met during the program. I got what I came for, and I made a lot of warm and interesting memories in the process.

I’m still baffled by the mentality espoused by everyone in the program, though. If you’re so miserable and exhausted that you’re literally experiencing visions and time loops and tears in the fabric of reality... you can just leave?
rynling: (Mog Toast)
Why reblog machine-generated art?
https://ms-demeanor.tumblr.com/post/734136970463313920/why-reblog-machine-generated-art

I don’t think that all AI art is ugly. I don’t think that AI art is all soulless (i actually think that ‘having soul’ is a bizarre descriptor for art and that lacking soul is an equally bizarre criticism). I don’t think that AI art is bad for artists. I think the problem that people have with AI art is capitalism and I don’t think that’s a problem that can really be laid at the feet of people curating an aesthetic AI art blog on tumblr.

This is an interesting and well-written perspective on AI art. I disagree with the first half of the excerpted paragraph, as I think 100% of AI art looks overly processed and dumb as fuck, but the main problem with AI art is definitely capitalism, by which I mean the main problem with AI art has less to do with AI and more to do with human artists not being paid, compensated, or otherwise able to make a living. Also:

Not everyone wants to make good art that’s creative. Even fewer people want to put the effort into making bad art for something that they aren’t passionate about. Some people want filler to go on the cover of their YouTube video.

This is a perfect way to put it, because:

Read more... )

I personally don't like AI art, but it feels reductive to say it's all bad all the time. I wish the corporate resources potentially saved by using AI art for disposable graphics were used to support human artists engaged in more meaningful projects, but that feels like a different conversation.
rynling: (Terra Branford)
How Art Forgery Actually Works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54O-fxQd-P8&ab_channel=Insider

There is a series of videos on YouTube (here) called "How Crime Works." Some of the videos I've tried to watch are a bit too long and not so interesting, but the one about art forgery is a treasure.

Despite my true and sincere love of crime, I tend to think drug cartels are bad news and also responsible for the sort of government and police corruption that causes serious problems for normal people just trying to get through the day. There is nothing sexy about that. But using your immense god-given talent to fuck over the sort of shitty wealthy people who buy fine art as an investment? That's the good stuff, and I could listen to this guy talk all day. I'm not a big fan of audiobooks, but I'm strongly considering making his book (here) the first one I listen to.

I learned about the "How Crime Works" video series through the Dark Souls podcast episode on Grand Theft Auto V (here), by the way. It's a good episode.
rynling: (Mog Toast)
Google's enshittification memos (03 Oct 2023)
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/

When I think about how the old, good internet turned into the enshitternet, I imagine a series of small compromises, each seemingly reasonable at the time, each contributing to a cultural norm of making good things worse, and worse, and worse.

This is a long post, but it's well-formatted and worth reading.

When I say "fuck capitalism," this is what I mean. It's also good to have solid documentation for something I've been lowkey upset about for the past two years, which is that Google doesn't really work anymore.
rynling: (Default)
I just submitted my essay about the early FromSoft game Evergrace to my editor at Sidequest. Huzzah!! Let me share some of the reading I did in the process of arguing why it's important for this game to be preserved and documented.

87% of classic video games are 'critically endangered', says game history organisation
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/87-of-classic-video-games-are-critically-endangered-says-game-history-organisation

A new frontier: Preserving computer and video games at the U-M Library
https://news.umich.edu/a-new-frontier-preserving-computer-and-video-games-at-the-u-m-library/

Academics want to preserve video games. Copyright laws make it complicated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/01/12/video-game-preservation-emulation/

The World’s Digital Memory Is at Risk
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/opinion/digital-archives-memory.html
rynling: (Mog Toast)
I was invited to participate in a roundtable on "public scholarship" later this week, and I have some thoughts.

Read more... )

TLDR: It's not "promoting the work of people from marginalized positions" to expect us to perform uncompensated labor while exposing ourselves to harassment, and I think younger scholars need to be more realistic and judicious about what "public scholarship" actually means.

...but of course I won't actually say any of that. What I'll do instead is be gracious and polite while supporting the other panelists and speaking as little as possible.
rynling: (Gator Strut)
> What a great time to be an emerging creative.

I think the answer is probably to get on TikTok, but I can't quite bring myself to take the plunge. There are monsters in those waters. And not the sexy kind of monsters.

I recently started a new account for Japanese books on Instagram (here), and I've been doing my best to find and follow similar accounts. It's been slow going. Instagram's algorithm is godawful to begin with, and "Bookstagram" is a consumerist hellscape of people posting photos of massive book purchases alongside videos showcasing their giant custom-built bookcases in what I can only assume are giant custom-built houses.

I mean, I like reading. I like writing. I like talking about books. I like all these things so much that I sold my soul for a PhD in order to be able to do them professionally. But I don't want to set up a social media account to shoot videos about things I buy and things I own and things I hoard and things I display in my house. And then, on top of that, nobody needs to see my face. I'm not interested in having gross teenagers (and gross adults) making snap judgments about me based on how my physical appearance projects in a shitty fifteen-second video I took with my shitty phone, and the thought of choosing ~~outfits~~ for social media videos makes me die a little on the inside.

Idk man, I just think working on my writing and art is a better use of my limited time on this earth.
rynling: (Cool Story Bro)
I recently read Andrew Ross's 2021 book Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing. It's not a long book, but it still took me more than two months to finish. There's nothing wrong with the writing; it's just depressing.

Read more... )

Anyway, the main thing I took away from Sunbelt Blues is that apparently the Mormons bought up a bunch of wildlife preserves, which they plan to use as a biological ark in the event of an apocalypse. As a result, the Church of Latter-day Saints is the largest landowner in Florida. True story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches
rynling: (Gator Strut)
By the way isn’t it funny how class is never ever mentioned with the whole “ownvoices” thing
https://tristealven.tumblr.com/post/694104285137485824

There’s less and less of the “spent a decade working as a pizza delivery guy, paint salesman, and window washer while writing scenes on napkins behind the pizza place” best-selling writers and more and more of the “graduated from an ivy league school, landed a $700,000 book deal at age 23 and is now a full time writer” best-selling writers

Read more... )
rynling: (Gator Strut)
TikTok for Authors: The Ultimate Guide
https://kindlepreneur.com/tiktok/

Well, I'm here to say that, for now at least, TikTok is definitely worth a look for authors who want to expand their social media audiences. In fact, I might go so far as to say that TikTok is the best social media for connecting with readers.

After all, you don't see shelves at your local bookstore with Facebook favorites.

Here is my experience: I started out knowing nothing about the platform before beginning preliminary research for this article. But in just a few short weeks, I managed to get my TikTok subscribers over 1000, and saw measurable increases in my book sales and newsletter signups. The hype is real, folks.


NOPE. 🙃

For the record, I briefly attempted to engage with the Bookstagram "community," and it made me hate myself. A few of my mutuals on Instagram are distinguished older professors in their late sixties and seventies, and when I see them trying to create Bookstagram "content" I die a little on the inside. Then again, they're going to have to put up with my Bowser fan art, so
rynling: (Ganondorf)
Content warning for real talk about money, how nice it is to own instead of rent, and how much I hate landlords for denying this privilege to people who aren’t extremely lucky.

Read more... )

TLDR: I always hated landlords on principle, but now that I understand actual property values and the actual cost of property maintenance I hate them even more. All day I dream about the redistribution of wealth.
rynling: (Gator Strut)
I’m going to say something that can easily be interpreted in bad faith, but I’m going to say it anyway because I think it’s important.

A new trailer for the new Legend of Zelda game was released yesterday morning, along with the official game title and release date. Nintendo’s tweet of the video gained hundreds of thousands of notes within minutes as it was widely shared and celebrated across social media.

Read more... )

Speaking of capitalism, the reason why most people do “exciting” things during vacations is precisely because the feeling of being excited is supposed to be a sustained mental state with an appropriate build-up and wind-down. This is why, back when broadcast television was a thing, advertisers would pay exponentially more for ad slots during the weekend, so that they could connect the “excitement” of their ads with the excitement of a good weekend augmented by big-name sports games and tv shows.

The Twitter news cycle is very much a 9-to-5 workday sort of thing, however. Nintendo is incentivized to make its announcements during what has become the prime time of the American online news cycle, which is 10am East Coast time. This timing is good for American journalists being paid to stay on top of press releases, not for like. Students who need to go to class.

ETA: What I'm trying to say is that I'm frustrated by mental health professionals' lack of understanding concerning how social media works and how it affects people, and I hate how medical science reconfigures normal life experiences as brain dysfunctions. I hope all neurodivergent people are doing okay.
rynling: (Gator Strut)
> I have weird feelings about all of this, but they’re not worth discussing.

Maybe they are worth discussing a little.

Read more... )

Anyway, this isn't a cry for help or attention. Instead, I want to lay the groundwork for a broader point: I think there's a lot of shame about being an "older" creator who's starting from scratch in their thirties. This is especially the case for someone like me, who is creating "young" work (like genre fiction and comic art) but has no interest in trying to pass as a young person on social media. This shame isn't merely internal; it also affects how people perceive you and react to you in real life.

Which is wild, because expecting creative people to achieve success within the current social media hellscape no later than age 25 is some bizarre YA sci-fi dystopia brainrot. And, as always, I blame capitalism. I understand why the system wants to promote young and previously unpublished people too inexperienced to know how to ask for higher royalty percentages and signing bonuses, but I think it should go without saying that work made by people who aren't fresh out of university also has value.

Personally speaking, I have nothing but love and respect for "older" writers and artists who have a second-act character development or career change.
rynling: (Terra Branford)
Opossum Country by Ben Jelter
https://benjelter.itch.io/opossum-country

This is a free, ten-minute lo-fi horror game about a trailer park. If you're worried that it's making fun of the sort of people who live in a trailer park, there's definitely an element of that, but the story goes in a direction that I wasn't expecting. The moral of the game is essentially that you shouldn't jump to conclusions about a community you don't understand. I mean, if the game can be said to have a moral. Which it arguably doesn't. Regardless, the ending is a banger.

Ben Jelter also made another free, ten-minute Game Boy game called The Last Employee, which definitely has a moral: fuck capitalism. That being the case, I'm guessing that Opossum Country is created from a place of deep sympathy for people on the margins of society. That's cool, but it doesn't stop the game from being creepy as fuck. The overworld pixel graphics are great, as are the more detailed character portraits.

So I realized, now that I'm spending more time on Itchio, that a lot of these retro Game Boy games are made with a program called GB Studio. Not only is it free, but there are also a ton of free graphics asset packs floating around Itchio. I also found a few free pixel art resources for Clip Studio Paint. I unfortunately never got the hang of CSP, but Abode has a decent set of instructions for creating pixel art on Photoshop (here). All good to know.

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