Engaging with fiction in good faith allows you to build empathy by experiencing things through the eyes of other people

and refusing to engage with certain fiction because of a hard line moral stance against The Wrong Kind Of Fiction just makes you a less empathetic person over all.

The thing is, I engage with a lot of fiction that I would object to in real life. Sometimes I also run into fiction that I'm not particularly happy or comfortable with, but because the story is compelling, engaging, genuine and earnest and presented in a vulnerable, earnest, human way, my surface level distaste is overridden by my connection with a stranger who I've been given the opportunity to know.

I just read a comic by a gay man that has heavy drug use, written in a way that has an intimate knowledge of the kind of life and culture a lot of gay men run into, full of casual sex and hard drugs and sudden death and violence. The protagonist isn't a bad person, but he's also not the best person, but you root for him all the way through. And then he has a really bad trip and dies.

I don't feel particularly comfortable with any of that, but I was engaged all the way through. And by simplistic metrics many people might not consider it "good gay rep" or whatever because it involves a gay man doing all the hard drugs, being promiscuous and then dying, but it was written authentically, by a gay man who clearly has had experience with these things, and encourages you the reader to seek help and provides resources if you've experienced something similar.

I do not accept the idea that you should always have a moral stance on the fiction you consume. You don't have to make excuses, or have caveats, to justify the "problematic fiction" you've engaged with, maybe even enjoyed. Because a lot of fiction, particularly indie fiction, is a conversation between a creator revealing something honest and vulnerable, and a reader learning about the lives of others and experiences they will never have.

And it is a silly exercise to try to give that sort of conversation a (very ironically named) Common Sense Media review because it's got violence and drugs and kinky sex or whatever.

It is easy to stick to fiction you're comfortable with. I've done it, I do it. But in my experience, allowing yourself to engage with other people's stories, comfortable or not, is healthy for you as a human being in learning empathy and compassion for other human beings. Try reading some books in the local library, or do what I did and buy a bunch of indie comics and books from a convention full of indie creators (easy) and actually read them (Dark Souls Hard Mode).

And who knows, maybe you'll find something that'll change your life, or help you grow as a person. Or maybe you'll find a cool new thing you like.

While the CDC has given up on providing any guidance on risk control measures for covid, The People's CDC is filling the gap and continuing to track and update guidance as the situation evolves. Here's where you can download their Safer In-person Gatherings Toolkit:

Here's an extremely detailed guide on what to do if you have covid that includes how long to isolate for, how to set up your house with hepa filters and ventilation, what supplies to have on hand, when to go to the hospital, and guidelines on how to pace from the MEAction Network in the event you end up with long covid:

The work these guys are doing is amazing. They're still tracking wastewater data too so you can still figure out transmission levels in your area and not just the hospitalization levels. Check them out!

The funniest thing you could do in any new outer space adventure / exploration media is have someone invite the ship's medic to the bridge and they'd be like "fuck no, I'm the main doctor for a whole crew, come see me if you break an arm or something, good luck exploring the surface of the Planet Made of Angry Poison Gas Clouds, With Teeth, Who Love the Flavor of Human Flesh or whatever the fuck it is, adios, see you in the canteen maybe, maybe not I'm fuckin busy." And you just barely ever see that character again.

happy pride month

a thrilling saga

ice boy

Commission for @/h_stoutenburg on twitter.

This afternoon a federal judge in Florida issued an injunction on the enforcement of the state's ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. And while the order is limited to a small number of plaintiffs seeking hormone treatments on behalf of their children, it's a scathing indictment of the statute's constitutionality, as well as the cruelty of the politicians who advocated for it.

"The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real," writes US District Judge Robert Hinkle, hinting at the "unspoken suggestion running just below the surface in some of the proceedings that led to adoption of the statute and rules at issue—and just below the surface in the testimony of some of the defense experts—is that transgender identity is not real, that it is made up."

But you don't get to ban something, particularly gender-based medical care, based on barely concealed bigotry.

"Any proponent of the challenged statute and rules should put up or shut up: do you acknowledge that there are individuals with actual gender identities opposite their natal sex, or do you not? Dog whistles ought not be tolerated," the court bristles.

If you weren’t here for part one, lemme sum it up real fast:

Okay, all up to speed? We’re being served 80s throwback stuff with the serial numbers scratched off, re-labeled as yo totally 90s. What we’ve got now isn’t completely wrong, but I’m telling you, there’s so much gold left unmined.

As we saw in part one with Memphis Milano, these things get messy. Trends don’t start and end neatly every ten years. The first wave of 90s throwback attempts focused on the early part of the decade, and nobody since really pushed to represent the other seven years. Well, if you really wanna do something, I guess you gotta do it yourself.

I have suggestions. Get your flannel ready, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Analog Grunge

SURRRRRRRGE or uh, Grunge, is probably the look that defines the decade best. The big kickoff point here is Nirvana - after a shiny pop-dominated music scene in the 80s, Nevermind was like a breath of fresh smog.

Your design has to look like it survived a nuclear blast, then was run over by your parents’ Buick a couple of times.

• Rust. Dirt. Scuffs and scrapes. Signs of distress.
• Handwritten or scribbled illustrations.
• Low-rent aesthetics. Torn paper shapes, label maker or typewriter fonts.

If there’s a Comic Sans for the 90s, it’s “distressed typewriter font.” Seriously, it’s mandatory. When I pulled images for this post I could not escape typewriter fonts. I don’t think you couldn’t call yourself a respectable designer without it. Just look at how much mileage old-timey typewriters and label makers got:

Hell, it’s the giant X in The X Files!

I think another component to Grunge is sort of an anti-digital, pro-analog message. My pet theory is home computers went from being a semi-common novelty in 1990 to an essential gotta-have-it purchase in every American home by ‘99. Desktop publishing apps made it almost too easy to make pixel-perfect, clean, uniform designs. Digital photography and scanners meant you could now publish full color photographs with ease.

But digital perfection is the enemy of Grunge. Analog means authenticity.

So you had a whole gaggle of designers running in the other direction. Sure you could use a computer, but your work absolutely had to look like it didn’t come from one. As much as possible, incorporate hand-drawn artwork, scribbles, dust and splotches. Write text with chicken scratch if you have to. As much as you could make your multimillion dollar ad campaign look like it came from the margins of some high schoolers’ math homework, the better.

Factory Pomo

Not everyone was running away from digital, though. Many designers were embracing computer apps - and I think that’s where Factory Pomo first came into being. Coined by designer Froyo Tam (that’s their logo up above!) Factory Pomo is one of those things that once you see an example, you can’t stop seeing it.

• Strong, basic geometric primitives with inverted, contrasting colors
• Tall typography
• Art Deco style rivets and spikes

Want your logo to look futuristic and modern? Stick it in a circle and put some triangles around. Invert half the colors, then another half.

Max Krieger has a great writeup on the probable inflection point: Tomorrowland. As the story goes, Tomorrowland at Disney - the part of the park meant to look like it’s from the future - would very quickly look very outdated each time they tried to update it. Instead, in 1994 they decided to own being outdated. They came up with a ridiculously fun “timeless” futuristic look, mixing industrial design with Jules Verne. Factory Pomo’s signature was all over the blueprints.

The look quickly escaped the theme park and was especially prevalent in the booming mid 90s home computer market. It’s the Packard Bell cyborg, it’s the logo in Video Toaster. If you caught that The X Files logo earlier is both Factory Pomo with the tall type and X in a ring AND Grunge with the typewriter X in the background, you win 5 bonus Pogs. 

And it’s a stretch, but one could draw a line between Factory Pomo’s inverted black and whites and the Ska movement’s two-tone checkerboards. Maybe. Possibly. I’d have to call Tony Hawk to double check. 

Back to Froyo Tam for a second, but that bit about them coining the term? That was in 2017. “Factory Pomo” didn’t have a name for like… 25 years. How’s that possible, you may wonder? Weren’t designers following a defined style? Well, yes and no. I think people were designing stuff to look a certain way, but it’s less a game of “this is what the aesthetic looks like” and more like a game of telephone.

If you do an architecture tour in a major city, you’ll learn that every building and skyscraper is classified to a specific architectural movement. Every building that is but ones built in the last 20-30 years. Newer buildings have to wait a few decades for official classification. Historians need time and perspective to figure out what emerging trends in architecture are going on, whose work influenced who, that sort of thing.

Designing a logo for Slim Jims or Cherry Coke takes considerably less time than constructing a skyscraper, but I think the same principle holds true. It’s really difficult to tell what’s a trend and what’s a fad when you’re living in the moment. I couldn’t tell you what’s the defining aesthetic for the 2020s right now. It’ll be obvious in 2053, but right now, no clue.

Enough time has passed between the nineties and today that we can pick this stuff apart easily. Maybe if you’re lucky, you can be the first to classify these design movements, too.

Working on a part three! I’ll look into a few other trends and address the big question– Is the Y2K aesthetic actually a 90s thing? More to come.

*A ton of these examples above are from the CARI Institute, which you should totally check out, they’ve been cataloging this stuff for years.

kudos to the women bikers

I want this to be an actual poll, so I'm gonna need a REALLY big sample size, so do ANYTHING you can to get this around! Reblog it! Kung-pow-penis me, if you have to! Wreck my notifications! Just do ANYTHING!

October is ADHD awareness month! 🎉

The memory issues ADHD causes are some of the scarier and more frustrating parts of living with it - so here’s a set of reaction doodles that all my fellow ADHD peeps are welcome to use whenever anybody decides to comment on your forgetfulness ^ 

Ｊせんせは　よくあそんでくれますでち

Master J often plays with Kofu