2024-11-22 Stormy seas

This past month has been very stormy, and when I say this I mean that the recent weather in the Salish Sea has been a bit crazy of late(lots of 40-60 kt wind days), but also that I am witnessing a real life Idiocracy in the making. It's not all bad though, it was a very productive month!

ART. I illustrated some Atlantic Salmon and a Sea Louse for a presentation at MASTS's Annual Science Meeting about the effects of salmon farms on the wider ecosystem. The drawings will also appear in the accompanying paper! It is my first time contributing to a scientific paper, and that's pretty neat (I was even assigned an Erdős number).
Rabbit Waves was announced officially! I've since released two more pages, one about Morse Code and another on using flags to signal Morse Code. The project was well received, I got a lot of good comments. Devine & I put a lot of care into making the website accessible to people with screen readers (thank you Rembrand for your helpful feedback on this).

BOOKS. This month I've been reading yet another Arthur Conan Doyle book aloud to Devine, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. As always, it is a very entertaining read. I enjoy that perpetrators are not always prosecuted, sometimes people commit crimes out of desperation, or are victims of an unfortunate series of events, Holmes, despite collaborating with officials, is a very fair man(a rare quality).

TRICKS. I use YouTube often but I despise the interface, but I found a solution! I installed Untrap, a Firefox add-on. I turned off suggested videos, shorts, likes, comments, and tons of others buttons and distraction-ware on mine. My homepage is now just a blank page with a search bar — total bliss!
I stitched a pair of arm warmers for myself and for Devine to keep our hands warm. I used to wear arm warmers all the time as a teen, but never thought of making my own until now.

MENTAL HEALTH. I added a page on my site called happynothappy, which is just a very simple way to track how I feel from day to day. It would be more beneficial to track reasons as to why I feel a certain way on certain days, but for now I just want to keep it simple, otherwise I run the risk of abandoning the whole endeavour. Rostiger made their own version of my very basic tracker, which is a thousand times superior to mine, hehe!

MOVIES. I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time ever at the Vic Theater on October 27th. Of course, having never seen the film, most of the memes were lost on me, but thankfully I had read about what to expect so it was not too shocking to receive pieces of cooked toast and rice on my head. Tim Curry is absolutely brilliant in this role! He has such an amazing command of his expressions, it is evident that he has a background in theater. Luckily, I can watch the film again and again on my own because it is available for download on archive.org.
I also watched 2 french comedies I hadn't previously seen: 3 Hommes et Un Couffin by Coline Serreau(same person who directed the amazing La Belle Verte), and Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis by Dany Boon. The storylines of both films were predictable, but still very enjoyable(more so than their English counterparts).

QUOTESIf you think technology will solve your problems, you don’t understand technology — and you don’t understand your problems.A quote by Laurie Anderson

CALL TO ACTION Trans people in the US are not likely to get support now that the orange man is back in power, and it is likely that some of the rhetoric will spill over our side of the border. There are many organizations that exist to improve queer, trans, and Two-Spirit lives in Canada. You can find organizations in your area using the Rainbow Action Hub on Egale's website. I've recently donated a binder to Qmunity in Vancouver.
If you recall, I recently shared Given and C.C.'s gofundme page, their funding target was reached and the campaign has ended, but they still need help. They will continue to share updates on Kofi, support them there if you can.

ARTICLES I READ AND LIKED

• Entomologists Get a New Call to Action in the Fight Against Disinformation
• Don't call it a Substack

GREAT WEBSITES/PROJECTS

• Guerilla Girls, the website of the anonymous artist activists & feminists known as the Guerilla Girls.
• Zine Club, sign up to receive zines and/or mystery objects, handcrafted by multimedia artist Paloma Kop, in the mail.
• RJ, a re-enactment of Hanna Weiner's flag semaphore version of Romeo and Juliet.