photoshop when I go to save a gif: 3.023 Mb me, trying to reduce the size: deletes 40 frames, decreases brightness, ups the contrast, crops canvas, makes small offering to a local deity photoshop: 3.022 🙂
PSA: Photoshop’s methods for optimizing gifs are seriously outdated and it’s better to use EZgifs.com (link).
For those who are curious, this art is based on a video by Moth called The Source of the Rings, Gandalf, and Potential Inspirations (link) which argues Gandalf could be Chinese.
random thing but i realized it might be helpful for some people so uh. theres this thingy where you can upload an image and it gives you a color palette based on it !Â
heres an example
and it also gives you the hex code values for them too its p neat !
Of course capitalists want working people to be precarious, pitted
against one another, and frightened about what the future may hold. Of
course they want us to think that if we dare to push back and demand
more than scraps the robots will replace us—that we can be automated
away at the push of a button. They may wish that were the case, and are
no doubt investing their fortunes toward making it seem so. But it, and
indeed anything like it, has not come close to being true. If the
automated day of judgment were actually nigh, they wouldn’t need to
invent all these apps to fake it.
China is accused of locking up hundreds of thousands of Muslims without trial in its western region of Xinjiang.
The
government denies the claims, saying people willingly attend special
“vocational schools” which combat “terrorism and religious extremism”.
Now a BBC investigation has found important new evidence of the reality.
Duntsch’s case is a frightening example of what happens when systems of accountability, from reporting to professional associations to civil suits, fail or are purposefully dismantled. While it’s a good thing that he was criminally prosecuted and has been sentenced to life in prison, the criminal justice system is a blunt instrument of accountability that requires overwhelming evidence and the “evidence” in this case was the trail of dead and injured patients he left while he was allowed to practice for far too long.
Fascinatingly enough, Duntsch also seem to be the product of a distinctly USAmerican fixation to work hard and achieve, and to medicate away–with cocaine and alcohol in this case–any doubts or fallout. From his fixation on playing football to the decision to be a neurosurgeon, he seems a driven, confident, and determined person just like USAmericans are told to be. He is a product of that distinctly USAmerican entrepreneurial spirit, except without the discipline, skill, or follow-through.
In the extreme and ungrounded versions of the myth of entrepreuneurship, however, it didn’t matter that his reality did not match his aspirations. All that mattered was that he believe in himself and stay positive, and the reality would catch up. He tried to do just that, leaving horrifically poor surgery outcomes in the path of his self-realization, and the systems designed to stop someone like him were inadequate to stopping him.
Duntsch is a failure, but his is more than a personal failure. This is a failure of a mindset and a system that is overflowing with can-do spirit but is dry on any sober reckoning with reality, that has no room for discipline, personal or professional, no room for setback and growth except as launching pads to even more dizzying heights of achievement. I mean this part of his supervising physician’s comments to a hospital he recommended Duntsch to?
“When asked about Dr. Duntsch’s weaknesses or areas for improvement,
the supervising physician communicated that the only weakness Duntsch
had was that he took on too many tasks for one person.”
This should have raised red flags right there, because it shows someone whose ambitions outstrips their capabilities, who is overstretched and cannot be up to his responsibilities in the long run. Making sure you have the time to meet your commitments is a responsibility, especially in a job as delicate and crucial as a doctor’s.
But no, this kind of overstretching is encouraged and lauded in his society and no one thought it was the serious fault it is. This is how even well-meaning people burn out and fall apart, with consequences that can be catastrophic in high-stakes jobs.
Duntsch is a shallow, superficially charming, destructive substance abuser, the kind of person that exists in any society. His specific way of being these things, however, was shaped and abetted by his society. He is a symptom and cutting him out, while necessary, was far from a cure.
But the notion that we might understand a person with the capacity for violence to also have the capacity for gentleness is downright laughable set against the contemporary backdrop of state violence committed against black men… . It’s a stark contrast that plays out all around us, the horrifying product
of a culture, of a media, and of social, economic, and political
structures that teach us to value white men more than any other kind of
human beings.
In the same month that Roof quietly ate his Burger King after killing
nine people, 15-year-old Dajerria Becton attended a Texas pool party and
got into a fight after some white kids reportedly told a black girl to
“go back … to Section 8” housing. When white cop Eric Casebolt arrived
on the scene, he slammed Becton to the pavement, grabbing her violently
by her braids. Later reports helped us understand that Casebolt had been
particularly stressed that day, having already attended to two suicide
calls. But Becton, the black teenager, was described by Fox News host
Megyn Kelly as “no saint,” for having not obeyed the officer. There was
little curiosity about Becton’s experience of having been held roughly
by her hair while wearing only a bathing suit, just the pressing
question about white-male psychology: What could this one-dimensional
black girl have done to make the multidimensional white man react in the
way that he did?
L.J.'s Obsessions 