Okay So I Followed This Video About Foreshortening And…

people NEED to stop gatekeeping making music like ohhhh i don’t have an instrument ohhhhh i don’t know music theory ohhhhh i’m not gonna pay for some program. SHUT UP. take my hand.

you need NONE of that shit!!!!! there’s a website called beepbox.co. literally all you have to do is press things until it sounds a modicum of nice. it’s easy it’s free and it works on anything which has a browser because it’s a website.

if even ONE person starts making music bc of this post it will be worth it.

making bad music is just as important and okay as it is to write badly or draw badly or sing badly. you AREN’T BEHOLDEN TO MAKE GOOD MUSIC. making music is not utilitarian HAVE FUN. HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!

WHY IS DRAWING HANDS SO FUCKING HARD

Beware!

idk who needs to hear this rn but suffering is not noble. take the tylenol

Once my friend Henry was accused of wearing wireless headphones by a substitute so she said for him to hand them over so he took them off and handed them to her. Then later on she asked him a question and he didn’t respond so she said it louder and he still didn’t respond. She asked why he was not responding and he said “I can’t understand you ma'am, you took my hearing aids.”

Streaming Service Rant

taking the moment to archive my entire blog tonight! trans people i recommend y'all do too. you know. just in case.

For those of you who are serious about wanting to get out the US, read this master post of all the ideas I've investigated over the years.

For any folks out there with European ancestry who are sick of the United States, I encourage you to get a $40 subscription to Ancestry dot com and begin looking for paperwork on your ancestors going back to the old country. You might already be a citizen of that country and not even know it. There may not even be a limit for how many years have passed between you and your family's emigration. There are Jews with Spanish ancestry who have reclaimed themselves as citizens because of their documentation going back to the 15th century.

I'm talking all birth, marriage, divorce, naturalisation and military documentation between you and whoever in your family was born in Europe/citizen there. Unless your family formally renounced their old citizenships, look into it. HELL, even if they did, look into it. Citizenship laws over there change all the time.

For those of you who do not have ancestry, look into these options:

Latin Americans are eligible to apply for citizenship in Spain after 2 years because of the legacy of colonialism

Anyone under the age of 30 has the right to apply for 1 year long work away visas in other countries. You're not allowed to stay in that country specifically to work longer than 1 year, but if you can move there with your current employer and do well, someone might sponsor a visa if you're passionate about coming back to stay in the country

If you work in the service industry, go ahead and apply for a work away visa. You'll still be approved. While you're there bussing tables, think about grad school abroad and apply somewhere. It's often incredibly cheap compared to the US with discounts and social support for students depending on where you go, and FEDERAL US STUDENT LOANS CAN BE USED FOR ACCREDITED INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITIES

Grad school is free in Norway, even for foreigners, but you have to cover costs of living

Many international universities have programs offered in English

If you went to a university considered to churn out "High Potential Individuals" then the UK is offering 2 year visas to all students who have graduated within the past 5 years (think universities in the top 15 in the US)

If you are in a STEM field, you can apply for a visa to gain entry to the EU for 6 months to look for work

If you are an ARTIST, Berlin Germany offers a visa specifically for you

If you are in the medical field, check out Doctors without Borders and affiliated organizations that will take you abroad

Your medical licenses are good elsewhere in the world if you're willing to do residency abroad (sorry but I don't make the rules. They do tend to pay residents a fairer wage in the Scandinavian countries, though!)

If you are a contracted seasonal agricultural worker, there are farms in Iceland that are always hiring and will provide you with food and lodging

If you work in energy/nuclear, there are plants abroad looking for people

If you think flights+housing are too expensive to save for to live abroad, then may I remind you that flights abroad are cheaper than US flights right now for the rest of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. You can try to get a remote job or a remote side gig/hustle and from there you can work abroad and try to make it work

If you are worried about taxes, please Google the 330-day rule and residency test concerning US taxes. If you live abroad for 330 days out of the year, then the US only collects taxes from you on income earned above ~$100K a year. You still have to file US taxes, but that number basically becomes your new standard deduction.

If you work in education and are willing to teach, please apply for Fulbrights abroad, or English teaching programs abroad. If you are skeeved out about teaching English, I get it, but please know that people who speak English earn more over their lifetimes, and you would significantly improve the long term career prospects of your students and give them new opportunities

For retirees, just go abroad with your Social security if you have it. As long as you meet the financial requirements of another country and document that you can support yourself and that you aren't going there to work, you are in the clear!

An incomplete list of things that employers commonly threaten that are 100% illegal in the United States

"We'll fire you if you tell others how much you're making" The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 specifically protects employees who discuss their own wages with each other (you can't reveal someone else's wages if you were given that information in the course of work, but you can always discuss your own or any that were revealed to you outside of work duties)

"If we can't fire you for [discussing wages/seeking reasonable accommodation/filing a discrimination complaint/etc], we'll just fire you for something else the next day." This is called pretextual termination, and it offers your employer almost no protection; if you are terminated shortly after taking a protected action such as wage discussion, complaints to regulatory agencies, or seeking a reasonable accommodation, you can force the burden onto your employer to prove that the termination wasn't retaliatory.

"Disparaging the company on social media is grounds for termination" Your right to discuss workplace conditions, compensation, and collective action carries over to online spaces, even public ones. If your employer says you aren't allowed to disparage the company online or discuss it at all, their social media policy is illegal. However, they can forbid releasing information that they're obligated to keep confidential such as personnel records, business plans, and customer information, so exercise care.

"If you unionize, we'll just shut this branch down and lay everyone off" Threatening to take action against a group that unionizes is illegal, full stop. If a company were to actually shut down a branch for unionizing, they would be fined very heavily by the NLRB and be opening themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by the former employees.

"We can have any rule we want, it's only illegal if we actually enforce it" Any workplace policy or rule that has a "chilling effect" on employees' willingness to exercise their rights is illegal, even if the employer never follows through on any of their threats.

"If you [protected action], we'll make sure you never work in this industry/city/etc again." Blacklisting of any kind is illegal in half the states in the US, and deliberately sabotaging someone's job search in retaliation for a protected action is illegal everywhere in the US.

"Step out of line and you can kiss your retirement fund/last paycheck goodbye." Your employer can never refuse to give you your paycheck, even if you've been fired. Nor can they keep money that you invested in a retirement savings account, and they can only claw back the money they invested in the retirement account under very specific circumstances.

"We'll deny that you ever worked here" not actually possible unless they haven't been paying their share of employment taxes or forwarding your withheld tax to the government (in which case they're guilty of far more serious crimes, and you might stand to gain something by turning them in to the IRS.) The records of your employment exist in state and federal tax data, and short of a heist that would put Oceans 11 to shame, there's nothing they can do about that.