Small square painting of a woman's face with a red sun, bamboo, and flowers. Red, black, and white.

My last 7 inch painting before JordanCon.

Quote: Poverty is the worst form of violence. It is an invisible bullet that kills you slowly over a lifetime of malnutrition, crushing stress, and untreated disease. -- Gandhi Quote: they call a protest 'violent', but they never call the systemic starvation that caused it violent. The master's violence is invisible; the slaves' violence is broadcast on the evening news. -- Žižek

All this fucking constant anxiety AND we have to pay taxes?!

Don't taco Tuesday this shit. Millions of people spent the day wondering if they would get vaporized, and no one in our government stood up to him. Nothing cutesy about it.

Iran threatened to cut the fiber optic cables below the Strait that supplies telecom to the entire Persian Golf/MidEast.

Trump got his ears boxed by Pakistan all day, then went TACO again.

Unrelated, today, Iran started letting Pakistani barges through the straight without even paying a toll.

Fun trick:

If a dog is annoying you, try snorting loud with an exhale breath and pushing your chest toward them.
A well-adjusted animal will recognize that as a gentle "stop, you are making me angry."
I've never had a dog that didn't calm down.

Enforce your own boundaries like a bitch with a puppy

Side note: licking is never kisses.

That excited, happy face licking is them asking you to throw up into their mouth. That's what puppies do to adult dogs.

We've all met the dog that escalates from licking to biting quickly.

And We've all met the dog children treat like rag dolls, and they just sit and bear it. (They have a breaking point. They are just very tolerant. )

Dogs, for all their 10s of thousands of years of careful breeding, have had their puppy behaviors baked in to make them more docile.

Dogs simply just don't want to hurt you. They have escalation. (Of course, each individual dog has more tolerance and might escalate fast or slower.)

All of this, plus 100s of nuisances of tail positions and body position that I don't have time to write a dissertation on right now.

Cats offer immediate responses to you crossing their boundaries, sometimes. (Some are more tolerant than others.)

But, if you are lucky, and if the dog really doesn't want to hurt you, they might just try to pin you to the ground, oddly to calm YOU down. (they do this with other dogs they care about.)

If you ignore a hard bite.

They will bite and shake.

If you ignore that, you might get mauled.

If you ignore that, you'll get nipped.

If nipping doesn't work, they will put pressure behind the bite.

Next, you will get fake lunges and maybe more barks and more grumble or aggressive snorts. (We are beyond cute hurumphs at this point.)

Next, they growl and maybe bark more. Usually, it has more fake lunges and snapping the air.

Next comes a light snap at the air, followed by a rumble or snort.

If you see them starting to lick the sides of their mouth at any point, they are getting stressed and most likely angry at the invasion. That licking might come from behind a growl eventually.

If they can't get away from you, they might tuck their tail or flap it sideways at you. If they choose not to tolerate you after that, you'll get a grumble, a whine, or hurumph to tell you to back off.

Have you ever petted a dog's cute little rear, and they started licking you?

Those aren't kisses.

Those are their most polite way of asking you to stop touching that spot on them.

The next step might be tolerating your annoying self because they love you, or they might get up and leave.

Dogs, with all their little domesticated hearts, have an escalation cycle. It starts with licking, and it ends with murder.

Dogs have boundaries. They are clear in expressing them. They sometimes are harder to pick up if you don't live with them. Not picking up on them is LITERALLY DEADLY. A cat will mess you up but rarely kills you.

Cats are just better at immediate retribution for a violated boundary.

If you think cats are the ones with boundaries, and that's why they act like that, and people who love dogs just want an animal with no boundaries because we don't respect boundaries:

1. You are kinda mean
2. You don't understand dogs.

I realized two things yesterday.

1. For years, I didn't care at all about anything associated with rockets and going to space.

2. That's not right. I had just gotten sick to death of shitty billionaires and their performative expressions of wealth.

I never stopped loving NASA and its mission.

Yes, there are over 20 major submarine fiber-optic internet cables running under the Strait of Hormuz, connecting Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. These cables are crucial for global data traffic and often run within a narrow corridor, making them a vulnerable "digital chokepoint" exposed to damage from shipping traffic, anchoring, or geopolitical conflict. Key Details About the Cables: Significance: These cables carry critical data for banking, AI hubs in the UAE/Saudi Arabia, and international communications. Location: Due to political tensions with Iran, many cables are routed through Omani waters as they transit the Strait. Key Cables: Key networks include FALCON, SEA-ME-WE 6, AAE-1, and 2Africa Pearls. Risks: The shallow nature of the Strait (mostly 200 feet or less) makes cables highly susceptible to damage from boats or intentional disruption.

So, Iran said they are on a trigger switch to destroy these cables should America take one step toward Trump's threats.
This just all sucks.

I was thinking in my knitting, then just throw a ball of yarn, gripping its end and letting it unravel straight across the road.

I'm just a little middle-aged woman who dropped her knitting 😭

TFW a client commissions a drawing of a "not dear" (monster that looks like a deer, but not quite) really wants the deer to have a few legs too many, but you are afraid people will think you used AI so you refuse.

This is what AI art is doing: making me take steps I wouldn't have otherwise.

🤣

That's so awesome!

...dors he like KFC?

I know I'm a strange person.

The English spelling for Japanese is also phonetic, so it feels more offensive somehow because of that.

I just want to know:

Am I being too sensitive?
It feels like this might be a case where I am.
Maybe I'm rude for not providing a translation on the bid sheets for English-only speakers?
🤷‍♀️

I often name paintings with Japanese words... because *waves at my art style *, but artshow staff often laughs at it and say "I'm not even attempting that".
I find it slightly offensive. That's a real language with real people who use it, and it is a cultural legacy language.