For the past twenty years, two things have been happening in 2D animation. First, American studios have been offshoring in-between frames to Asia (as was the case in Adventure Time and Steven Universe). Second, Japanese studios have started to do the same thing after being accused of literally killing young people in their own industry by forcing them to create in-between frames under grueling conditions. I've linked to and excerpted two articles under the cut.

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To me, the antidote to the "line must always go up" issue with larger studios seems to be smaller studios that are largely independent from such concerns. The problem is that, especially for 2D animation, production is extremely labor-intensive, mainly because of the necessity of creating in-between frames. If you're a manic college student whose body still works, maybe you can do this labor, and you can do it with joy. Back before everyone deleted their accounts, however, Twitter was filled with comics drawn by indie animators in their late 20s explaining why they were quitting: working that hard fucks you up both physically and psychologically. The labor is literally disabling.

Based on the foundation of work pioneered by 3D animation, the generation of in-between frames by AI could be a good and useful application for the technology as a labor-saving tool. It has so much potential, and I hate that it's being used against artists, specifically with the aim of eliminating them entirely. The technology has an amazing potential to solve critical problems that have persisted in the animation industry for decades; but, instead of empowering artists, it's become an existential threat. This is dystopian, and I hate it.

The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem
https://thewalrus.ca/the-publishing-industry-has-a-gambling-problem/

If buying the debut is a rollicking night at the craps table, then the sophomore project is the sober morning after. Gone is the clean slate. What publishers really want to see, McGrath says, is growth. “More than any particular number, they’re looking to see a track that is always on the rise.” This is impossible to prove after only one book, especially a book that loses the publisher money. Which is to say: almost all of them.

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Idk man. Fun times. I'm doing my best to write and publish reviews; and, despite everything, I think my own stories are worth the struggle and anxiety of the publication game. Still, I wish everything didn't have to be so difficult.

Silksong
https://hannahlockillustration.tumblr.com/post/794407609977421825/silksong-just-beat-phantom-in-the-game-u-where

I love Hannah Lock's art in general, and I especially love this illustration in particular.

I'm linking to the piece here as a reference to myself. What I hear is that the way to develop your style as an artist is to allow yourself to be as horny as you need to be about one specific thing, and this is exactly the sort of thing I can't get enough of: A little guy in a lushly green environment. This is, for example, why I still love the Zelda games despite also kind of genuinely hating the Zelda games.

While studying my social media metrics over the past two years (which is a totally normal thing to do), I realized that reception is totally random. In addition, nothing I draw is ever going to do numbers in the current social media ecosystem. So why not give up and do whatever I want instead? Specifically, given that I love color and composition but suck at linework, why not loosen up a bit and just fill the page with rough lines and color blocks? And if I draw dozens of pieces just like the illustration I linked to above, so much the better! In the art world I believe they call this a "theme."

I have a handful of pieces I need to wrap up; but after that, it's little guys in green environments time. 🌿

Ghost in the Mall: The Affective and Hauntological Potential of Dead Mall Ruins
https://capaciousjournal.com/article/ghost-in-the-mall/

In the dead mall the dream of mass consumer culture is disenchanted – the stores are closed, there are no products on the shelf, no running water fountains, no more vibrant exciting consumer interiors. And yet, as the enthusiasts’ reflections demonstrate, the utopian desires of the mall remain a spectral affectual trace haunting the hallways once filled with people and products.

Not gonna lie, I love the concept of "spectral affect." I also admire how the author of this article references The Mushroom at the End of the World (my beloved):

Despite the rubble seeming dead and inert, ruins are lively places – places where unexpected things may emerge. I approach the dead mall like Anna Tsing (2015) does the abandoned industrial forests where matsutake mushrooms grow. The matsutake alerts us to an important question: what grows on the edges of our capitalist worlds, in our capitalist ruins? Inspired by Tsing, I practice an "art of noticing" – looking with a hopeful eye at the ruins of dead malls.

I've been rereading Tsing's matsutake book alongside Fredric Jameson, and both authors are interesting companions on the road to rethinking what it means to live in the ruins of a decaying empire. As a follow-up to In Praise of Moss, it might be cool to make a new zine titled something like "In Praise of Decay: The Mushroom Model of Degrowth."

The Tragic Downfall of the Internet’s Art Gallery
https://slate.com/technology/2024/05/deviantart-what-happened-ai-decline-lawsuit-stability.html

It’s not unlikely, as WyerframeZ surmised, that someone constructed a low-effort bot network that could hold up a self-perpetuating money-embezzlement scheme: Generate a bunch of free images and accounts, have them buy and boost one another in perpetuity, inflate metrics so that the “art” gets boosted by DeviantArt and reaches real humans, then watch the money pile up from DeviantArt revenue-sharing programs. Rinse, repeat.

This is an interesting article from May 2024 that meticulously documents what's been happening to DeviantArt since late 2022. It's really sad... and kind of spooky.

The Death of the American Shopping Mall
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2022/oct/21/the-death-of-the-american-shopping-mall-in-pictures

Photographer Phillip Buehler captured the last stages of life of a New Jersey mall in a sad and insightful set of images showing how shopping has shifted from the physical to the digital.

What's interesting about this dead mall in New Jersey is that, while most dead malls are fairly well-preserved, metal strippers compromised the structural integrity of the roof of this one almost immediately after it closed, thus allowing water to leak in and pool in the inner corridors. The mall thus occupies an eerie state between "abandoned" and "postapocalyptic," and it's a little sad but also very cool to see.

Outbreaks of rabies seem to be rising across the U.S., CDC surveillance shows
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/rabies-outbreaks-rising-us-deaths-vaccine-rcna227771

People are most often exposed to the rabies virus through the saliva of an infected wild animal that can get into the mouth, eyes or a wound, which is why bites are so dangerous. Prior to the 1960s, most cases in humans were from infected pets, usually a dog. Thanks to strict pet vaccination laws, the canine strain of rabies has been eliminated from the U.S.

Unfortunately...

Vaccine Hesitancy Among Pet Owners Is Growing: Public Health Expert On Why That Matters
https://stories.tamu.edu/news/2025/01/14/vaccine-hesitancy-among-pet-owners-is-growing-public-health-expert-on-why-that-matters/

In the same 2024 study, many of the concerns raised by pet owners mirror those of humans: More than half of pet owners question the effectiveness of vaccines. A similar percentage was concerned about vaccine safety and side effects. Many believed it was better for pets to contract a disease to get immunity than to get vaccinated. About 60% of pet owners thought that pets receive too many vaccines. Strikingly, nearly all pet owners preferred fewer vaccines to be administered to their pets at a time.

In other news, it's been fun (read: horrifying) to watch all my older colleagues come down with a "mysterious illness" at the beginning of the fall semester. Hmmmmm I wonder what that could be.

Your Labubu Might Be the Most Honest Indicator of a Global Recession
https://www.milleworld.com/labubu-economic-recession-indicator/

All of this points to the same underlying truth: people are adapting to scarcity by aestheticizing it. When people can’t afford abundance, they turn to objects that feel meaningful, compact, and emotionally loaded. That’s where Labubu enters the chat — not as a toy, but as a talisman.

For real though. I think it's telling that it's not actual teen girls who are into these toys, but grown Millennials who are pushing 40 and still can't afford to buy a house. So on one hand, these stupid little things aren't that deep; but also,

As philosopher Byung-Chul Han notes in The Burnout Society, modern individuals are no longer disciplined by external forces. Instead, they’re coerced internally by a need to perform, optimize, and consume under their own volition. In this framework, buying a Labubu isn’t a childish indulgence, but a full-on coping mechanism as a small act of self-soothing in a system that’s rigged for extraction.

Is a spider's vision stitched together like ours?
https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/a0v8wy/is_a_spiders_vision_stitched_together_like_ours/

So, it's reasonable to suppose that information from the spider's primary and secondary eyes is integrated in the spider's brain, and in whatever way a spider has visual experience - which is certainly inconceivable to us - it experiences all its eyes in a single integrated frame. I think you'd kind of need a reason to suppose that spider vision is not integrated.

It's very cool that there are people in the world studying things like this. And, personally speaking, I think it would be fun to have secondary eyes. I love perceiving light and motion, no joke.

I'm doing this research for the story I want to write for the Bloodborne zine (here) btw. Sign-ups for contributors are open until June 20 if you're interested.

I'm really enjoying the two newest chapters of Deltarune. There are bits and pieces of the game that remind me of Homestuck, and so I wondered what Andrew Hussie is up to these days. I think I found him on Instagram, and I am simultaneously amazed and 100% unsurprised.

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