So a week ago, I sprained my ankle and couldn’t walk for 3 days. I’m used to hiking at least an hour a day with my huskies so not being able to walk at all was driving me crazy. And in my jittery sedimentary state, I kept getting visions of this blursed being: a biblically accurate axolotl. There was nothing I could do but draw it.
I’m all better now and able to walk again, now back to making less cursed art (maybe)
“I’m almost 50, and here is the best thing I have learned so far: every strange thing you’ve ever been into, every failed hobby or forgotten instrument, everything you have ever learned will come back to you, will serve you when you need it. No love, however brief, is wasted.” @louisethebaker on Twitter
HEADS UP: The U.S. Postal Service quietly changed how postmarks work.
Mail is no longer automatically postmarked with the date you drop it off. Instead, the postmark now reflects the date it’s first processed by an automated sorting facility — which can be days later.
If you mail something right at a deadline, the official postmark could be later than your drop-off date and may be considered late.
If mailing date matters to you, go inside the post office and request a hand-stamped postmark.
Technically this has been true for a long time! What has actually changed is somewhat worse.
In the last few months, the post office cut the number of truck drivers that transport mail from post offices to sorting plants, and changed when they run those routes.
It used to be that there was a morning run, to bring the incoming mail to the offices, and an evening run, to bring the outgoing mail to the plants. The evening run took place after offices had closed and was supposed to take All The Mail in the offices. Nothing left behind! This ensured that mail received a current postmark because it would get to the plant that night.
Now, there is only the morning run. So all outgoing mail has to sit in offices overnight, losing time and ensuring that all postmarks are a day late.
This also means that there is no way to do an overnight delivery. All Express packages are at least two days now.
This change was made in the name of saving money, as our truck drivers are contractors and therefore not protected by postal unions.
I can guarantee you, none of us postal employees are happy with this change. It makes our jobs harder for no reason besides saving money for people well above us. I personally hope desperately that this change will be rolled back, but there is no incentive for the higher ups to do that if they don’t receive push back. Please, please provide that push back.
In the time being, hand your letters to your clerks personally and ask them to postmark it. We have stamps for that exact purpose.
[ID: “Cold weather reminder. Do NOT plug space heaters into power strips or extension cords. Plug space heaters directly into the wall outlet. Power strips are not designed to handle the high current flow required by a space heater and can overheat causing a fire.”
A photo is attached of a power strip with an extremely charred end. Part of the power strip’s wire is also charred. End ID]
My husband, an electrician, told me I have to reblog this.
For clarification’s sake, is this true everywhere? I ask because I know that different countries have different quality home electricity provision; American home electricity Ain’t Great compared with most of Europe, for example. In Wales I have never heard of this being a Thing, but our electricity comes in 240V flavour, so possibly the higher current naturally avoids this issue?
My British husband (not an electrician but electrician-adjacent) says yes this is true in the UK as well - anything that uses a lot of power should be plugged directly into the wall rather than an extension lead
Ultimately, MTV still being on the air is good news, so why do I feel uneasy about this whole situation?
Because it is a straight-up five-alarm information catastrophe that this many people can be this taken in by a story this false and this easily disprovable. There is some high-stakes shit going on in the world right now, and it’s happening as newsrooms shrink, once-reliable search engines point us toward AI nonsense, and news aggregators have no obligation to check their facts. It’s harder and harder to tell truth from fiction, and fewer and fewer of us are bothering to try. If it’s frustrating where and how we’re getting our news on whether MTV is still on the air, it is terrifying that that’s also where and how we’re getting our news on whether we’re dropping bombs on Venezuela. Our media literacy is going to have to come up, fast, or we are cooked like the Christmas goose.
I started this painting about this time last year, finished it a couple months ago, and then promptly forgot to post it. WHOOPS.
Anyway. Awhile ago I was hit by the similar but opposing natures of fire towers and lighthouses, and I wanted to explore that more. Both lonely, out of the way stations worked in isolation in sometimes extreme conditions, both tasked with protecting large swathes of people they will never meet or probably even see. Yet one is about spotting light in the distance and putting it out, while the other is about turning on the light within and shining it out.
I’m doing a special run of prints of this illustration on high quality poster canvas paper, at multiple sizes and starting at just $10usd, to help with the fact that I’ve been caught in the government hiring freeze, so I’m not sure when I’ll be back to work at my day job at this point.
ALT
