February 21, 2024
Propaganda
Will nobody help them?
Will nobody help them?
UNDER CONSTRUCTION– sorry the formatting messed up! Will update with actual story soon
While modding, I sometimes I find myself in a ridiculous situation where I have three or even four instances of Minecraft running on my computer at the same time. Using the Minecraft Coder Pack (MCP), I am able to conjure up a fresh instance of Minecraft with the click of a button. I can choose the username associated with the instance or have the program assign a random player name.
In fact, I don’t even play logged in with a launcher anymore unless I want to connect to a server. My main world is tucked inside my development environment now. By tweaking lines of code in the editor and rebooting the game, I can change the mechanics of the game and test them in real time. Computers are marvelous! They possess an unlimited capacity to create. If it can be displayed on a screen, a computer can be made to conjure it.
Programming can be a headache, but the high of creating something and seeing users engage with it is fabulous!
Dear readers, I am pleased to present Myporia 2024, the new look for AAAAHH.net! Features include…
I haven’t touched WordPress development since 2020, so this revamp is long overdue. I have tons of web related projects floating in limbo right now, so I decided to just hunker down and finish something for once.
What’s next? Well, I have been hacking away at a wiki-theme that I hope to turn into a cute retro Minecraft guide! It will have icons and be mobile friendly and link to all kinds of useful places. Hopefully I will find some time to write as well. There is SO MUCH to write about, but my attention is split these days. Yes, it will probably mostly be political in nature. It is an election year, and if I don’t bust my ass trying to prevent the Republicans from lying they might actually win! Lord knows the Democrats aren’t going to do the job for me.
I have created a simple little HTML site for Better Than Wolves based on my old crafting recipe reference:
www.aaaahh.net/btw
I hope to make this site a kind of stylized wiki loaded with survival tips, guides, and interesting information about Better Than Wolves. For now, it provides a simple ctr-f compatible reference for all the early-game crafting recipes with some light advice-giving. If someone wanted to get through jump into BTW with the barest possible scaffolding, I think my how-to-beat-btw.html page does the trick.
A few years ago I wrote a blog post about making a comic: https://www.aaaahh.net/how-to-draw-a-comic/
I have decided to formalize this advice into something that other artists can follow to kick-start their own adventures in comic-making. While the steps written in this post pertain specifically to my own comic-making journey, I imagine that my advice could be applied to many artistic pursuits in the realm of physical media. And physical media is indeed precisely what I hope to encourage here! Digital drawing is convenient, wonderful, and beautiful, but I think learning to draw with paper and a pencil teaches fundamental truths about drawing that digital art tends to obfuscate among beginners. So, without further ado, let’s start with the medium itself, your sketchbook.
You can draw on anything from printer paper to an expensive Moleskine notebook of course, but money creates apprehension. This object is going to be a drawing notebook that you throw into your bag and take with you all over the place; it will be crushed, folded over, and spilled-upon. If you purchase something fancy shmancy, you will be afraid to carry it around and ultimately leave it at home. You must create as little hesitation as possible between yourself and the act of drawing, so if you buy expensive equipment that makes you hesitant to use it, then you have failed yourself.
The notebook doesn’t even have to be branded as a drawing notebook to fulfill its role. In fact, you will probably be up-charged if you try to buy a sketchbook from a big name art supplier. A smaller, local art store, or even just a stationary store, will have what you need. Just look for something smallish and cheap with blank pages (don’t draw on lined paper!).
Another thing to recognize about your drawing notebook is that it won’t look very pretty as you fill it up. YouTube sketchbook culture is very misleading; you see tons of videos of established artists showing off pages upon pages of crisp, finished sketches with seemingly perfect line work. This is an illusion that will mentally inhibit you from drawing.
Your drawing notebook isn’t going to look like something pulled off the shelf of Barnes&Noble. And this a good thing.
You don’t want to worry about having to show off a pretty, perfect, brand-name drawing notebook to people. The book is a tool, not a fashion accessory. You must accept the fact that your drawings won’t meet your expectations, so fill pages with abandon! Draw in the notebook as much as you can regardless of style or technique. Scribble if you want to! Your sketchbook must be a place where you are comfortable experimenting or jotting ideas. Every page is a fresh opportunity to draw, so let the apprehension slip away. Fill those pristine pages with your art, bad as you think it is, and when the notebook itself is completely full, get a fresh one and start again!
Over time, you will have chronological stacks of old notebook detailing your artistic journey to browse and show off. You might even find that you like your old art a lot more than you did when you originally drew it. Your worst critic is always yourself.
You may be tempted to buy a notebook with a metal or plastic spiral binding to it.. don’t! Over time, the notebook takes a beating and the spirals begin to lose their shape. As this happens, the pages of the notebook start to tear and fall out. It can get so bad that the notebook can’t even be opened anymore and just implodes.
Also, the external binding of spirals prevents the edge of the notebook from laying flat, which is sort of annoying on your arm as you draw.
You can draw with whatever you want. Pens are great, No. 2 pencils are cool. I prefer mechanical pencils for comic art, however, because they maintain the same line width regardless of how much you use them. Over time, standard pencils become blunt and start to draw in different ways as the tip flattens out. They need to be sharpened to maintain uniformity. This means that you have to carry around a pencil sharpener or a knife to keep your pencil in working order, and that level of maintenance to be a hindrance to beginners. Mechanical pencils, on the other hand, can be refilled with some lead and they are good to go for a while. If the tip snaps, just click and keep drawing.
This isn’t to say that a dull pencil isn’t a useful drawing tool. You can accomplish some great shading with a flat pencil, but I preferred to prioritize line consistency.
You are going to have to adapt your materials to what is available to you either locally or online, but for years I have used Muji notebooks for all my sketching needs. That is because they are CHEAP AS HELL. When I first began drawing comics back in 2019 or whatever, you could get a plain paper Muji for a buck fifty. Prices have certainly climbed since, but you are still paying less than $5 for a notebook (which is fine by me). The pages also have this slightly off-white tinge to them that I find pleasing to draw on. Printer paper is too harsh and bright by comparison.
For mechanical pencils, I have a slew of different types. My go-to are these little plastic Staples pencils that I got in a pack of different colors:
I used to own a really nice mechanical pencil… but I lost it 😛
That’s the reality we are working with here; you want to begin with cheap materials so that you do not feel bad about misplacing or damaging them. If you want to begin a lifestyle of drawing often, maybe even every day, then you have to be ready to throw your materials into a bag and move with them when duty calls. Stuff naturally gets lost along the way, and that is okay.
We have reached a novel point of contention regarding Israel; should America place conditions on any money, weapons, or resources sent? My knee-jerk response is an unequivocal yes, “Yes!”
Why of course! All of the stuff we send to other countries should come with the condition that it is not used to slay the innocent, destroy valuable infrastructure, and make life hell for others. On the contrary, our aid should be used to promote freedom and happiness across the globe. So, especially in this matter of Israel pummeling Palestinians to the point that 5000+ children have been slain and over 50% of northern Gaza is rubble, we should definitely withhold any aid unless Israel intends to resolve the conflict sometime soon.
But this begs the question: have conditions ever been placed on American aid before? Not really. For instance, Saudi Arabia receives a lot of weapons from the USA and generally uses them to pummel Yemen and nearby regions into dust. The Syrian refugee crisis, one of the largest displacement crises in history, is propelled in part because Saudi Arabia provides arms to rebel groups within Syria. Our fingerprints are all over this stuff, but it isn’t until now that public outcry has lead us to question our weapons dealings abroad. One might be lead to think that antisemitism drives criticism of Israel given that America has never before questioned the intention of foreign governments acquiring our weaponry. Are Jews undeserving while the Saudi royalty is? Of course not, but I can see where some might draw that conclusion. Scrutiny against Israel has seemingly never been higher, despite the fact that Israel and many other countries have been committing war crimes on America’s dime for a long time.
What is it about this particular conflict, Israel versus Palestine, that so invigorates us, while we are numb to others? I don’t know broadly, and I can’t speak for others on this issue. Personally, I have been following the tension between Israel and Palestine since I was a kid. And even when I was a supposedly impressionable youth sitting in the synagogue listening to my rabbi claim that everyone in the world wanted us dead, I questioned. It seemed like conservative Jews were being made to feel that somehow the survival of Israel spoke for the survival of all Jews (even though Israel itself seemed always very far from annihilation, always militarily dominant and backed by the USA). Now that the full vengeance of Israel is on display for the whole world to see, I feel that I was right to question. What Israel is doing right now in Gaza is nothing short of genocide–calling on millions of Palestinians to leave their homes and pilgrimage south to live in camps–bombing hospitals, schools, and living quarters into dust–bombing fleeing civilians dead as they try to find safety–hemming an entire population into a small region and refusing their right to freely leave. And all of this AFTER 75 years of settler violence and the steady exile of the Palestinian people to the small regions that now remain to them. Jews across the world should be appalled that the country claiming to represent us is willing to commit acts so deranged and clearly evil.
The word we hear from Israel’s government does not suggest that they are actively working to end this conflict in any way other than violent domination. Tellingly, Israel uses the American military response to 9/11 to justify its own actions today. Doing such a thing is nothing short of an abuse of history, because the Iraq war has been unilaterally recognized to be an utter mistake. Bush himself has admitted to such. Israel is making its own mistake now, and the Israeli government should stop immediately and pursue a more meaningful path toward peace as soon as possible.
So to conclude, yes, we should not give Israel one cent unless they promise to resume consistent, mandatory peace talks with Palestine with the ultimate goal of connecting Gaza to the West Bank. It is not until Palestinians have a place to call home that it will be possible for a real Palestinian government to form that is not driven by resentment and blood lust (cough ahem Hamas). On a larger scale, *all* American foreign aid should hinge on this same ideal. We should not be selling weapons to anybody unless there is a clear path to peace that can be pursued (looking at you Saudi Arabia). Otherwise, we propel geopolitical conflicts into eternity.
Is there anything more deeply American than the drive to overthrow an empire? Yet for many Americans the plight of Palestinians to be free from the oppression of Israel is branded “terrorism” and disregarded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Massacre
Remember the Boston massacre. The British killed their own subjects, and the event added to the increasing appetite for freedom felt by the American colonists. How many Boston Massacre level events has Israel committed against Palestinians over the past few decades? How many times have settlers from Israel come and violently taken land from Palestinians? How many Boston Massacres would you take before your decided that you would no longer lay down and take it? I’ll leave you with that thought.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas.” – Alejandro Mayorkas, Homeland Security Secretary
President Joe Biden, who ran his campaign on the idea that “not another foot” of wall would be built along the southern border, has now used his executive authority to waive federal laws that would have prohibited the continuation of the border wall along Mexico. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorized U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to move forward with the planning and execution of up to approximately 20 miles of border barrier system, with steel bollard panels placed in U.S. Border Patrol’s (USBP) Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector, as mandated by the DHS Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 border barrier appropriation. In short, Biden’s gonna help build the wall.
The Venezuelans proved too much political pressure for the once-progressive president. This year’s influx of illegal immigrants brought the issue home for the entire country, from California to New York to Boston. I don’t have the stats, but I bet 2023 will go down as a record breaker. Our bureaucracy couldn’t handle it. The most our government could figure out was buying them bus tickets and hotel rooms. Couldn’t let them work because they need work permits, and that’s a political process. Can’t give them housing because all the housing got bought up. Biden, locked out of any hopes of a legislative solution to the problem, is now beating the same nail that his predecessors have hammered for decades.
Biden, attempting to appeal to every American, will likely anger all of them. Republicans won’t care: they don’t use objective reality when they evaluate anything. The toughness of Biden’s policies on migrants at the border does not matter to them. The young progressives that detest Trumpian xenophobia are disgusted, of course, and Biden is not cute enough to slide by with projections of meekness. When asked point blank about the wall, Joe musters a weak defense, “I had no choice.” Apparently, the law was already written out and now Joe has to follow orders. And if waiving federal law needs to be done to do it, well I guess his hands are tied? Unlikely. Biden isn’t cute enough to get away with it.
Already, the Venezuelan arc has ended. Israel and Hamas delivered us from that news cycle a few weeks ago. Well, the Venezuelans are still here, but people not directly involved don’t seem all that interested anymore. There is portent in it, however. Palestine shows us the futility of wall building every day. The mistakes keep being made.
Of course, I can help you imagine what it might be like to be Jose Arcadio, the son of Jose Arcadio Buendia from the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel García Márquez.
As Jose Arcadio Buendia’s son, I would have grown up in the town of Macondo, which my father founded. Macondo is a place filled with magic, wonder, and a sense of isolation from the rest of the world. My family, the Buendias, are known for our quirks, eccentricities, and our unyielding determination to decipher the mysteries of life and the universe.
Growing up, I would have been exposed to my father’s relentless pursuit of knowledge and alchemical experiments. He was obsessed with discovering the hidden secrets of the world and was willing to go to great lengths to unravel its mysteries. This curiosity and thirst for knowledge would have influenced me profoundly.
My relationship with my family would have been complex. My father, Jose Arcadio Buendia, was often distant and preoccupied with his experiments, which might have left me feeling neglected at times. My mother, Ursula, would have been a source of stability and love in my life, trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy in our tumultuous household.
As I grew older, I might have inherited some of my father’s obsession with the unknown. I would have likely witnessed strange and supernatural events in Macondo, as the town was a place where reality often blurred with the fantastical. These experiences would have shaped my worldview and contributed to the unique and surreal atmosphere of the novel.
My family’s tragic history, filled with curses, incest, and unfulfilled desires, would have hung over me like a shadow. The Buendias are a family marked by solitude and a sense of inevitable fate, and I would have had to grapple with the weight of this legacy.
In “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” my character undergoes various transformations and experiences, contributing to the novel’s rich tapestry of magical realism, love, and loss. I would have played a part in the intricate web of the Buendia family’s story, a story that spans generations and encompasses the entire history of Macondo.
If you have any specific questions or scenarios you’d like me to explore as Jose Arcadio, feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to respond in character.
American politics are so fraught these days because the people of this country are facing down problems that cannot be debated away. We are asked to choose between maintaining a comfortable status quo, sacrificing our planet in the process, or making radical changes in our lives to improve the quality of our future.
This is why there can be no true debate between Republicans and Democrats in the year 2023. I imagine the tension is similar to abolition in the 19th century. When all the talking is through, the oblique reality of the debate remains plain for all to see. Words cannot hide the choice that must be made. In the 19th century, Americans had to decide if the horror of enslaving people was worth the convenience and riches of maintaining the institution of slavery. In the 21st century, Americans are deciding whether the industrial lives we cherish are worth the very destruction of the environment that birthed us and our culture.
Personally, I think stripping ourselves of the waste of our times, the electronic cages and mechanisms, would have many benefits. Living and working outside, planting things, raising animals–that is a life worth living, and it is that exact lifestyle that holds the key to loosening our dependence on the consumption of energy.
Will the ensuing conflict be as bloody as the civil war?
What sort of world does this wacky trio hope to build for us?
It recently came out that Elon Musk turned off his internet satellites in order to stop a Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian fleet. Musk claims that he did this to prevent an escalation that might lead to nuclear war.
Regardless of his intentions, Musk has clearly won favor with Putin despite the fact that the Star Link satellites are used to prop up Ukraine’s war effort. Musk is playing an interesting geopolitical game. He has to keep China and the USA happy so that he can continue to gather resources for his ventures. Does he believe in the values of the USA, or is America merely a convenient bank for his industries? China builds, America finances. Where does Russia figure in this?
And so that we don’t get lost in the sauce. Let’s remember why Trump is currently being indicted in the first place:
Guilty or innocent, these indictments are a democratic process. Democracies have to be willing to dig into the truth of matters if they wish to remain free and open. If people say our elections are falsified, then WE MUST, AS CITIZENS OF THE USA THAT RELY ON VOTING TO DECIDE OUR FUTURE, INVESTIGATE THESE CLAIMS. In that way, Trump has done us all a favor. More eyes than ever are interested in the security of our chief democratic process. If voting wasn’t secure before, you better bet your fucking ass it will be watched like a hawk in 2024. Some Republicans (and Putin, I guess) are angry about this. Why? You cried foul, so let’s see the facts.
Putin, a dictator, wouldn’t understand any of this, of course. This is all a farce to him.
Sometimes you just gotta shoot yourself in the foot to feel something.
AMerica gaining global influence after WWII: wow look at all this power
SOmebody considering externalities: what u gonna do with it? promote democracy? feed people?
American: kill asian people, kill muslim people, create dictatorships that benefit our corporations, cause mass migration crises, sell a lot of guns all over the world
Somebody considering externalities: man that might come back to bite us
AMerica: nah we’ll always hold all the cards. banking, manufacturing, technology, services
Every time your steve dies, you are planting a seed.
