i love you guys

This is an oil painting I made last year called Hobbyshop

When I was about 9 I would go to a hobbyshop to get lessons in painting warhammer, this painting is loosely based on that period of time

The guy who taught me was an older English man with a moustache, which I thought was an interesting sort of guy to be so in to warhammer

I remember the other guy who ran the shop always pottering about, fiddling with things. I like trying to paint fingers doing delicate little actions like this, although I haven't really figured out how to do it -

here's a much better example by Sorolla. Very nice hands.

The kid in this painting ended up glowering which I didn't really intend, but I like it because I think kids sometimes look a bit moody without meaning to. I was and am like that anyway.

People do interesting things with their feet when they're sitting and I think that's fun to try and paint as well. I thought I could say a lot about a kid with a rather inscrutable facial expression through the way he places his feet. So there you are.

Unpopular opinion: Being intelligent isn’t an excuse for being unkind.

Pretentious asshole is OUT! Pretentious Sweetheart is IN! Wearing dapper clothes and holding the door open for others makes you feel COOL AS H*CK! Glance up from your hefty books to give a stranger a smile!! Quote literature to inspire others! Be presumptuous in the way that you presume that everyone needs their day to be a little brighter!!!

Administration showed us this tweet on day one of grad school and boy did it hit home

“distinguished yourself by being kind” is my literal life motto at work, holy shit

My hot take is that being kind is the intelligent thing to do. Trust, mutual aid, and cooperation is how we make society function. Failing to appreciate the contributions of others to your life and how their well-being is the key to your own well-being is very stupid.

as good of a time as any to share my list of activities I do during what i like to call Scheduled Soul Maintenence to avoid burnout

Reminder to myself

You're stronger than you think you are.

Woah would you look at that, another very talented trans artist y'all are sleeping on! You know what to do 🧡✨

[image description:

A lizard hanging upside down from the ceiling by its back feet]

Millions of Years of Immutable Evolutionary Law: “Cats shall have litters of many offspring at one time. Some will be weak or stricken with disease--they will perish to allow the stronger siblings to escape, and to satiate other predators in order to reduce competition and encourage the existence of more capable adults.”

Human Beings:

important note: this cat's full name is breakfast sandwich

Reblog so she lives forever.

20 years. If this gets posted and we all survive for another 20…things might be alright.

Samoyed and teddy bear

The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.

I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.

Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.

I. Love this. 

Love it.

Oh my god

yes.

This is it, I found it, the funniest post on this entire godsforsaken website

I will never get over how brilliant this comic is. The artist could have just drawn a single image in response, but instead we have this masterpiece. The world doesn’t deserve @iguanamouth.

@musicaldaydreams

This has to make the @hellsite-hall-of-fame

By the void was that a twist 😆

When you get the reputation of being the guy with the encouraging words on New Year's Eve, it can start to come through as a little pressure -- what if the situation on the ground is worse than usual? what if people are more scared than they usually are, and with cause? what use are good vibes then?

well as you might imagine, because of the way I am hard wired, I think it's good and useful to figure out a way of imagining the light at the end of the tunnel

there's no tunnel, to be clear! nor light! these are metaphors! we could as easily say: the surface above the water; the doorknob in the darkness; the key at the bottom of the junk drawer; and so on, and so on

the use of these metaphors seems limited! strongly limited! when you get through tunnel to the light: what's out there? when you find the key in the drawer: do you actually want to open that door?

but for me this is fact where these ways of describing the world become more, not less, useful and instructive. questions, rightly posed, are about possibilities, not hard stops

"possibilities, not hard stops" -- this is one reason why a recent trend in interviewing on album cycles has been kind of mystifying to me: people will ask me to sort of summarize the song. but that's not how songs work! their job begins where the tidy explanation ends!

hence the occasional usefulness, I'm told, of the phrase "if it kills me" in a song I know people play on new year's eve, for which tradition I am so immensely grateful. Thank you.

it is a contradiction! make it through or get killed: these aren't compatible, are they? but yes in fact they are and we know they are. it's easy to forget but we know.

snakes leave behind whole skins. all manner of flying creatures, not just butterflies, do them one better, whole new selves from wriggling worms. rocks into gems. mystics die to the flesh to be reborn in the spirit. rebirth is the rule, not the stray exception, if we can grasp it

we in this country (and, I'd argue, the world, but I'm not here to argue tonight) are challenged to make of our present situation something better. it's a tall order

but look at yourself, consider your life

you have done it before, squared the smooth circle, navigated the hard corner, slipped through and lived to see another day

together? in solidarity? is there anything we can't do: for those suffering in an increasingly inhuman justice system; for our trans kin targeted by this wretched government; for immigrants scapegoated by the callous and the cruel? for, in and through all this, ourselves?

no tunnel but the tunnel whose contours we identify for the purposes of finding its exit, no light but the one we follow to better times

you are here at the end of a year in which I'll bet you wondered what the point was, at some point

the point is that together we can find a way. the point is that. together.

I wish you, and me, and all of us, strength & solidarity & joy in the new year as we find our way together: which we have done this year already, and will arise tomorrow to do again. /thread

wished a customer happy new year yesterday and he responded “happy new moment! you get as many of those as you’d like :)” so we’re all gonna be okay

— Arthur Naiman, Every Goy’s Guide to Yiddish (via jnoodlepudding)

black with low white spotting, black mackerel tortoiseshell tabby (torbie) with low white spotting, seal point with moderate white spotting

@joy-and-whimsy-official

Joy and whimsy detected! This post is joyful and whimsical!

A high quality “expensive” pair of shoes is one of the thriftiest ways to spend over $100 because if you have good shoes it reduces stress on literally every joint in your body. Please do not ever thrift-OCD yourself into wearing bad shoes

I have to give the hardest possible plug for Orthofeet here. My fiancée introduced me to this company when I was lamenting the fact that it feels difficult to find orthopedic shoes that aren’t kinda fugly and unfashionable. These are some of the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever worn and for both pairs I own there was very minimal breaking-in needed, they were just comfortable right out of the box. I walked around a ren faire with hills and uneven terrain for several hours in these ankle boots and I felt about the same level of tired I’ve felt after walking around in sneakers all day.

They’re not cheap shoes, but almost all of them are under $150 and it’s 100% a worthwhile investment. They have a pretty generous wear testing policy—you can wear them up to 60 days and still get a full refund if you don’t like them. There’s also lots of different styles so there’s kinda something for everyone.

it's also worth looking into Morton's Foot! And if you have it, then I definitely recommend purchasing some of the ProKinetics insoles, which you can put into Literally Any Pair Of Shoes, and/or swap between multiple pairs of shoes depending on which pair you feel like wearing that day

bonus info

1) the ProKinetic insoles might not play well with those Orthofeet shoes, so be wary of that!

2) ProKinetics actually swears by shoes like Converse being the best shoes for their Insoles! just saying

3) if you don't want to pay 80$ for some insoles (that you can then put in shoes you already own, btw,) you can just get some moleskin (like a 5$ purchase) to put on your shoes' Already Present insole like so and see if that helps - if it does, then consider making the purchase

4) definitely poke around the Morton's Foot site (mortonsfoot.com) so they can explain some of the science to you on why the insoles help. I like this page.

I like Aetrex shoes and insoles similarly, and I always get the green Superfeet insoles for hiking boots.

Also, once you've gone and spent money on good, supportive shoes, take good care of them! Shoe polish is cheap and a tin of it lasts forever and will keep your leather shoes looking nice longer when they inevitably acquire scuffs. And use a shoe horn!!! It's just a cheap piece of plastic, but it will save the heel ends of your shoes from getting smashed into uselessness. I've been wearing my favorite boots near daily for four years so far and they still look good and fit well.

Praying your new year is full of love, laughter, opportunities, and happy surprises (not the other kind). May God truly bless your 2026.

#happynewyear