I love animation history and one of the things that always baffled me was how did animators draw the cars in 101 Dalmatians before the advent of computer graphics?

Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isn’t kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.

Even as early as the mid 80’s Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).

But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?

The answer is so simple I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner:

They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines 🤣

That was the trick. They’re not actually 2D animated, they’re stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.

That’s how they did it! Isn’t that amazing? It’s such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.

Barbarian Ross

Man's about to turn you into the scene of a happy little accident.

In Rimworld my top surgeon just failed to give a guy a peg leg four times in a row. So that's how my day is going.

Well no shit they can't give a guy a peg leg that's not top surgery at all

So I'm an archivist and a few days ago I got an email from a 15-year-old girl wanting to know if I've got any material on the only still-existing old mill in town (you've got to imagine this mill not like a quaint, stereotypical windmill the likes of which Don Quixote fought against but rather like an industrialisation-era factory).

I wrote back and asked if she needed this for a school project or for something else where there's a deadline looming, for the simple reason that the more time I have, the more in-depth I can go with my research and the more material I'll be able to get for her.

And she answered that no, it's for her personal use because she's interested in abandoned buildings in general.

And, like. What an absolutely excellent hobby for a teenage girl to have. I bet she's the coolest person in her class and I hope that no one ever gives her a hard time about her interests.

was waiting on an emergency plumber, decided to smoke by my car instead of stare at my fucked up kitchen. he pulled up next to me, leaned out the window and goes "i'm assuming you're the client" like yeah buddy, read that one right

honorary best friend, mike the plumber, has saved the day. "don't worry, i've got pvc couplings you've probably never even seen before." brother, i wasn't aware that was something i could worry about

they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"

It's not a cure but you have no idea how many times this image has helped me with my OCD

When you're unsuccessfully looking for something and start gradually increasing your It Could Be There range. Like yeah sure maybe the rice cooker pot is in the freezer, idk

The note inside a bullet.

B-17 bomber is riddled with German anti-aircraft fire but miraculously survives. Later they discover the explosive shells were all inert; sabotaged by Nazi slaves working in armament factories.

Inside one empty shell is a written note: it's all we can do for you now.

The most important part of all this is that these small acts of bravery and noncompliance cannot be known as long as the enemy still stands, and might never be known. Just because it doesn’t seem like anyone is doing anything doesn’t mean it’s true. The best malicious compliance or subtle sabotage is the one that’s never detected, but makes ravages nonetheless.

A critical part of any resistance is

Do not post your crimes

Do not brag. Do not look for brownie points. Do not publicly recruit. Keep your mouth shut.

is it a hot take to say that i think you need to understand why something is bad, not just that it simply is?

this is a part of the problem

you need to be able to explain why you shouldnt use ai rather than “oh well its obviously bad and you shouldnt use it or else youre a bad person” because that isn’t logic. “ai generates child porn based off of real children and whether or not it does is entirely up to how it is built and if pedophiles are able to find ways around those safeguards, because ai cannot in itself discern right from wrong” is a genuine criticism. “amazon tried to build a data center the size of tuson outside of tuson just to power their ai that would’ve increased the inability to stay alive outside in parts of arizona” is a genuine criticism. even “using generative ai teaches you not to learn how to do things yourself even when they’re difficult, devaluing necessary skills out of practice” is a genuine criticism when you look at the amount of people who think they are able of doing a difficult major when they couldnt write their own papers in high school.

but “ai is just bad because it’s bad” will convince no one and is a morally lazy position to take. about anything!

you need to know why reading someone’s diary is wrong if you want to learn about privacy and respect. you need to know why child sexual assault is wrong if you want to be able to help children form healthy age appropriate relationships. you need to know why capitalism is bad if you want to replace it with something else. you need actual concrete ideas and ideologies rather than “you should agree with me because i have the right vibe”

everyone's "well-adjusted" and "mentally healthy" until the "sometimes I wish I'd never been born at all" part of Bohemian Rhapsody comes on

Well, you know, some bathroom graffiti offers insight.

Red marker handwriting on a bathroom wall. Text reads:

“Boss made a dollar Granddad made a dime But that was a poem From a simpler time.

Boss made a thousand Gave pa a cent But that penny paid the mortgage Or at least it paid the rent

Now Boss makes a million And gives us jack Smugly blames the workers For the labor that he lacks.”

And the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.

One of the things about becoming an adult and understanding where your parents were coming from a lot better, is that sometimes you can also follow that line of thinking back to where the miscommunications happened in the first place and do better with the younger people in your own life.

Like, it can be tempting to just leave it there. You understand now why Mom would get so exasperated with asking you to set the table, it's one little chore to help the whole dinner process run smoothly, especially at those hectic final stages of a family meal where everything is getting ready to serve.

Why didn't you understand this before? Well, because you didn't appreciate the work that was going into dinner. But don't stop there! Why didn't you appreciate it? Obviously you're not just the type to never empathize or get where other people are coming from, or else you wouldn't now be going, gee I understand Mom a lot better.

Stick with it and you might find that the problem was actually that Mom would just bark at you all in the chaos to get that table set, interrupting whatever other thing you were doing. She probably did that because she was distracted by all the other stuff she was doing, but from your own perspective you were just going about your own business and got this job thrust upon you with no warning and not even any politeness, making you sullen and resentful because no one likes to be treated that way.

From your adult perspective you might see where Mom was coming from and understand that she was just harried, but if you combine that with the child's perspective of not being communicated with like a person but instead barked at like a dog, you can go, hm, yes I see. I'll ask my kids to set the table before I'm at the chaotic final stages.

Then when your kids don't set the table because they have "plenty of time" and you end up hollering at them anyway, you can go, y'know, I told you to do this half an hour ago, and when they go yes but I got distracted, you can go this has happened the last twenty times what is going on with you, and they can go I don't know, and you can figure out that they have ADHD symptoms and get them a diagnosis and medication and then realize that actually you also have ADHD symptoms and so, in fact, did Mom, and wow that's an entire family curse you've just sort of unravelled! Good job!

just some of the the changes in design for the Penguin Symbol on old Penguin Paperbacks 

he did a little dance and for this crime he was imprisoned in a bubble

They liked his little dance so much they gave him a spotlight

family album

when I was like 14 I used to reblog these posts on here that were like "YOUR 20S ARE NOT AN IMAGINARY RACE YOURE DOING JUST FINE!!" just to be positive towards my older mutuals even though i didn't really get what they were about and I'd be in the tags like "#so true!! #everyone does things at their own pace!!" and now im 24 I'm thinking back to it and it's like Oh of course the imaginary race. Which im losing

You can cut past like 90% of gender essentialism by shifting from "men are like X because they're men, and women are like Y because they're women" to "people are held to different standards, given different amounts of criticism, grace, encouragement etc based on positionality and they change and grow as a result."