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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

Richard Smyth @rsmythfreelance.bsky.social · 4h

Today I am mostly thinking about the popular inter-war literary genre 'animal stories written by fascists'. Join me.

Title page of a collection of animal stories by Henry Williamson: TARKA THE OTTER, SALAR THE SALMON, THE EPIC OF BROCK THE BADGER, CHAKCHEK THE PEREGRINE.

Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 41m

Yay I managed to fix up the portable graphics setup that I can use in bed when I get too tired to go to the studio JUST IN TIME.
Let's put those lockdown skills to work then.
(Falls asleep)

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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

☠️ Ichabod Cranium ☠️ @snowintheair.bsky.social · 2h

Anyone who is in need of excellent & friendly audio production and cutting out AI should be talking to Fitz. I love a lot of peoples’ podcasts, but some of y’all should really be talking to him to uplift your end results. ;)

Knock Once For Yes @knockonceforyes.com · 3h

AI has tanked my audio production business, exchange rates and the cost of living crisis have tanked my English tutoring and, as someone with health conditions that needs to social distance, the remote jobs have all dried up with RTO.

Pretty desperate for work if anyone knows of anything!

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 50m

(grumbles)

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 54m

Squinting at the idea of doing text in PS

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 1h

Anyway I had heard that you can't really use the Surface with Linux and it's not true. Didn't work out of the box but did work with minimal patches that anyone could do who knows a little about it. Local repair café, for example.

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 1h

Also: I'm a professional illustrator and it's not in my budget to get a new tablet computer that can deal with the AI nonsense and general bloat just to get my illustrations processed in a way that was totally fine a decade ago. This computer is still fine. The software bloat and restriction is not

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 1h

This is all part of my gradual shift away from Adobe. Got to see about batch processing, but I'm really positively surprised by a lot of Krita so far, and I think once the settings are spot on it might be better than PS.

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 2h

It's reasonably compatible with Photoshop files, there are great brushes to be had, I think I'll be able to work from home with this again now and then!

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 2h

Had to adjust the settings in Krita to turn off touch painting, adjust the pressure curve, disable one finger dragging of the canvas and one-tap pop-up wheel activation. But all of that was easy and now it feels great.

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 2h

Krita on Mint running in my old Microsoft Surface - had to replace the kernel but instructions are online and it is working again, it had got impossibly slow under windows/Adobe and couldn't be updated. Yay!!

A cat drawn on a Microsoft surface, hand holding windows pen

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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

Saoirse McHugh @saoirsemc.bsky.social · 4h

"calls into question, why are the Government not doing something about it?"
Unfortunately the answer is easy. Managing floods like this would need landscape scale action including rewilding rivers and rewetting land and the government are fundamentally opposed to anything positive for nature

RTÉ News @news.rte.ie · 5h

Farmers along the Shannon Callows have said their livelihoods are being destroyed by rising water levels in the area, which takes in large stretches of land in counties Galway, Offaly, Roscommon and Westmeath

Farmers along Shannon say lives 'destroyed by flooding'

Farmers along the Shannon Callows have said their livelihoods are being destroyed by rising water levels in the area, which takes in large stretches of land in counties Galway, Offaly, Roscommon and W...

www.rte.ie

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 4h

Get involved in politics, it's worth it. Getting tired of it all and just going by vibes once it twice a year is less than we can do for our life, our community, our country, whatever, wherever that is. We all matter.

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 5h

Also, just locally, I've found my green councillors to be genuinely supportive of the community. I've personally seen them involve themselves in issues like flooding risks, good relations between businesses and residents - I've been to town hall with them and my neighbours. They are sound.

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 5h

If you're in the UK, consider joining the Greens. There's a lot of nonsense to push back against and they (we) are on it.
join.greenparty.org.uk

Join the Green Party

Join the Green Party from just £6 a year. Become a member today - join the only party standing up for people and planet.

join.greenparty.org.uk

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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

Oisín McGann @oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 6h

‘96% of healthcare professionals said the model helps to reduce children’s anxiety, and 46% reported a lesser need to use sedation after the children played with the set.‘

‘Lego doesn’t sell the sets and instead has donated more than 10,000 of the kits to hospitals around the world.’

Carceral Abolition @carceralabolition.bsky.social · 7h

How Lego MRI scanner sets are reducing anxiety in children undergoing medical treatment www.cnbc.com/2025/10/13/l...

How Lego MRI scanner sets are reducing anxiety in children undergoing medical treatment

Lego's MRI scanner play sets, which launched in 2023, are significantly reducing anxiety and the use of sedation in children, according to new research.

www.cnbc.com

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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

Helvetica Blanc @helveticablanc.bsky.social · 19h

One of Hands
—
🖼️ Prints
www.inprnt.com/gallery/helv...

🃏 The Wormsong Oracle Deck
helveticablanc.bigcartel.com

A single red hand reaching upward toward a black circle. The background is filled with collaged sheet music.

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 19h

Absolutely. I'm miffed that I didn't manage it in advance

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 19h

They want the money though

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 20h

Ugh. I still want to wait whether I've already caught it though, I worked with so many kids and went on so many trains

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Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 20h

Big hats

Viv Schwarz @vivschwarz.bsky.social · 20h

I'll head to Boots this week.

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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

George Gantsoudes @pedsortho.bsky.social · 1d

Please remember that the disgust people have over Christopher Columbus is not based on some modern, 21st century “woke” ideology, but rather on contemporaneous accounts of atrocities that make many modern genocides appear quaint in comparison.

Below, are the accounts of Bartlomé de las Casas.

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had in-vested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.
The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died.
While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.
Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides... they ceased to pro-create. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and fam-ished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desper-ation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk ... and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fer-tile... was depopulated... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write....

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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

matthew @pahuski.com · 1d

Happy Columbo’s Day

Screenshot from Columbo. He his talking to his dog, which is sitting is the drivers seat of a car. “Okay, I’m gonna put you in charge. You take care of the car. You’re a responsible dog. When I get back, if the car’s okay, I’ll give you another cookie.”

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Reposted by Viv Schwarz

Laurel Gale @laurelgale.bsky.social · 23h

This wild turkey looks so disappointed with its lunch.

#birds #wildlife #nature

A photo of a wild turkey at a picnic table. The turkey is standing on the bench and looking down at a small pinecone on the table. The turkey was clearly expecting something better, and the disappointment is palpable. At least that's how I interpret the scene.

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