Good riddance to Putin’s puppet.

NASA isn't why the US doesn't have universal healthcare, or a social safety net. The US doesn't have those things because politicians with the power to provide them choose specifically not to (with varying levels of support from voters). Enthusiasm for human spaceflight doesn't drive that choice.

Colour illustration featuring two girls painting a giant eagg in blue and a hippo like creature up a step ladder also painting the egg in red

Tove Jansson (Finnish, 1914–2001), Moomin and sisters Mymble and Little My paint an #Easter egg #womensart #Moomins

Eh? We’re not on the same planet? 🤡

We are on the same sea but some of us are on planks and others on private yachts. Class society doesn’t negate the fact we are all tied to the same large-scale fate. Unfortunately for most of us, the billionaire class assumes they and their kids are not affected. But we’re all on the same planet.

Idiocracy was a bit TOO visionary

I mean, clearly

Indeed so. And more to the point, that sort of wealth should not exist in such a narrow silo.

I mean, obvs

On an emotional level, I can’t get past that billionaires exist and they don’t immediately think of COOL STUFF to do with effectively unlimited resources (like funding art projects, building free theme parks, libraries, indie TV shows, ending world hunger, ending our reliance on oil so…)

The light effect in this is beautiful especially.

Myanmar: Facebook’s systems promoted violence against Rohingya; Meta owes reparations – new report

It went from “oh, fun, I can keep in touch with my friends all over the world so easily” to “ah, propaganda, racism, clickbait, Brexit, Myanmar…” a bit too starkly & I wish it had never been unleashed www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ne...

Social media

I made a perfume on this theme (an imaginary future after humanity has almost gone extinct and plants have taken over). 😄

Random Fact

In Toothed Whales, their right nasal passage evolved into the mechanism that produces the sonar click they use for echolocation.

Since when has America actually protected children? The “but surely NOW…” thinking is flawed because since school shootings weren’t enough, why should this be. The horror goes deeper that the present regime and can’t be defeated by just trying to return to status quo.

Today!

My perspective on this was challenged when a close friend’s autistic kid relied on HP for comfort a while - at that point the books & films had already been bought and they’d done so well before JKR revealed her true self. It’s one thing to make a private exception, another to be online arguing.

I feel like this is the line for me: does “separating art from the artist” directly enable or fund harm? In Rowling’s case she’s made it a very proudly public yes. So I don’t feel safe around anyone who publicly defends their use of her creations/franchise. Because that is a statement in itself.

Woman with long purplish-pink hair is sipping tea out of a Moomin mug.

Would this be a good time to examine why modern Western fashion ideals are a bit problematic…

I’m going to stop saying MAGA and replace it with “paedofascist vulture capitalism.”

❤️

I mean, feel free to unfollow me if I am insufficiently pure for you. Otherwise, unless one lives in a stick lean-to and drinks naught but pure rainwater, all any of us can do is choose what level of hypocrisy we live at and with. I wrote about this, in fact:

whatever.scalzi.com/2025/03/12/t...

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

The cultural contradictions of techbro capitalism - Lawyers, Guns & Money Andrew Gelman has read Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams, which sounds like a very interesting book by a New Zealand lawyer who climbed high in the ranks at Facebook, before becoming too disgust...

A nice write up of a book, a couple of good links, and fine thesis statement at the end, I expect no less of one of the last of the great old school blogs.
www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2026/01/the-...

A multimedia sketch in a sketchbook of a grotesque chimera with two front legs wearing red jester boots, two back legs blue, a butthole that looks like a mouth making an o, a demon tail, a microwilly peeking out and pointing at a cute teddybear on the ground, and a long neck with Trump’s head, mask-like. The monster is infested with cordyceps and one of the fruiting bodies is Putin.

Looks like monsters representing the collapsing illusion of American political power are infesting my brain like the cordyceps of this chimera.

An amateur sketch in a two page spread sketchbook of a blue bunny hat surrounded by a fence and handguns.

An amateur sketch of a horror creature: multi-headed long-necked mouth monster with blood spattered everywhere, about to take a bite of a word PEACE, suspended in mid-air and apparently constructed out of torn intestines.

This year I had a plan: to give myself permission to do bad art, every day, as a form of nervous system regulation and learning. A sketch a day. The underlying lofty aim was to learn techniques that could help me pick up botanical illustration. Well, this is what I’ve sketched recently.

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

If I can do it, anyone can.