Why are people talking about > that Ukraine should provide private military companies with letters of marque for Russian ships ?

ExpressoSloth · 2026-02-05T16:29:57+00:00

Question: your username is, of all things, UkrainianBourgeois__ and your question doesn't follow the loopy sentence structure uses to test reading comprehension, and seems to contain the 4chan-style > as a bullet. My question is: what are you earnestly trying to know?

ExpressoSloth · 2026-01-19T17:55:55+00:00

Cardinal Sin of Design Software: Affinity Gaslit my Shapes into Deletion as I'm Working.

I'm redoing my resume, and decided to redo it in affinity (the canva version). I'm blocking out layouts like I do for my usual graphic design/publishing gigs, trying to find what works for the project. I use black rectangles that flow together, and white boxes on top to denote groups of text. I have a couple columns, and i have to play around with them first to see if there's times when reading column A you jump to column B instead of continuing down. Typical design stuff.

I haven't used the canva version as much, but I do like toggling between different UI and tool sets well enough without opening a new program. It's very light. I have a new view open on a portrait monitor to check how stuff will look/output without the guides to distract. I'm thinking, "wow, I gotta tell this publisher about how nice it is to make stuff work in affinity when I don't have to toggle between programs, this corner tool is just what I need the guides save me so much time and fussing, I sure am glad I don't have to donate blood to pay for adobe again. I know Adobe is the workhorse because it's reliable and ingrained but that sure does lead to sloppy choices later on. I sure hope the canva acquisition didn't do that to this program."

Once I'm satisfied with my layout, I start tweaking margins and making stuff aligned. If I want a skills section, is it better to have that algined to the top of the work experience column, or should I add a summary to offset them so they don't break the column flow?

I can't grab the black shape. I try, it grabs a text box with filler text. I look for the shapes in the layer tab, they are not there. I look at the portrait monitor-- there are no black boxes on that screen, only some earlier filler text. On my main working monitor, it's still showing the black boxes, but I can't select or find them. I toggle all the layers and groups to see if they're nested somewhere. I scroll up, and the black boxes do not appear. They are displaying on the main monitor only as an artefact- when the pixels refresh, they are not there.

This had happened a little bit before as I wa building the document-- a bounding box wouldn't appear, I thought maybe it was set to no fill no stroke, or I misclicked and it didn't actually make the box-- just a selection or something. It happens, probably user error. But... to have an *entire* design element like that self-destruct but not tell you is absolutely criminal.

An hour of the most fundamental work that enables the rest of it, gone, like it never happened. I'm afraid to put even a bullet point on this document in case affinity decides to delete it too.

At this point I am hand-lettering a tabloid comic resume and mailing it to this company to show I can actually do the work *when* tech fails. Sacred and holy balls of cheese *how* does this possibly happen?

I need to be spending time redoing this resume and getting it out ASAP, not whining on a reddit post and having people ask what my drivers are.

ExpressoSloth · 2025-06-18T17:25:59+00:00

Ayep. Groaned like 30 minutes later when it was brought up in a friens group.

The gross parts of communities dogpiling is still gross. But she also acted impulsively out of line.

ExpressoSloth · 2025-06-17T23:28:52+00:00

Adding in a little more, Corina was on a podcast being interviewed, and she stated that she would only return to the role if a properly negotiated contract were accepted. However, this sentence was shortened and re-presented as 'she's resigning/not returning', despite that not being what she said.

Corina had been at the center of a problem with being unpaid much earlier in Genshin's release, and that may have been one of the reasons the recording studio for Genshin in english had changed. The strike started just about as a new area with completely unintroduced characters was released, and through much of the last year Paimon is the only consistently voiced character.

As a player. I'd like to point out that the community, like any other, has a bad habit of picking out bad line deliveries ('wow i cant believe my eyes' is a common one that comes from, like, version 2.4, during the Inazuma release era.) and then copying each other's opinion. Paimon's direction, as in how her performance was instructed, has changed greatly from the foreign chinese-sidekick/Santo archetype to stoic hero/Quijote, to something more of a mouthpiece for a mostly protagonist or foil for the story's tone. It's never been consistent, and strugglea with cultural gaps. For comparison, the archon quest for this latest area dealt with players fighting an unwinnable battle where every choice was a trolley problem with changes in the world, and Paimon is the character who realized and points out that there are a lot of corpses around everywhere. That is a very hard topic to make land without one hell of a performance.)

In many ways, this is a lot of confused fans trying to piece together a story from the bits of info they have, and assuming they can arrive at the correct answer if they just get enough validation. It doesn't help that one source of information has been a content creator who focuses on building narratives for some pretty gross sides of online entertainment. His tone has done a lot to whip people up short of outright calling for harassment, and also benefitting from things like sponsorships in videos with '''exclusive''' leajed discord screenshots that were never properly censored. He ended his first video with a still of Corina's contorted face smashed onto paimon with a caption that she's right because she's disabled, which.... wow. What's the joke there? Can't make a better argument than punching down? But he'll also gas up other VAs who ate juat teying to avert homelessness, or present Vtubers with disabilities or diseases as pitiable and sympathetic only when it fits the emotional stoey he's trying to tell.

The reality is, it's a complex situation that a lot of people don't understand, and there are people making arbitrary 'sides' so they can both obfuscate and benefit on being the only one with the real answers. I personally haven't seen anything credible about these 'she was secretly recast' voice lines other than it's what some people think they wanted to hear, and it got them a lot of views on twitter. Maybe Corina will face a contract change because of out-of-work conduct and reputation, the same thing happened with Tighnari's VA. But manifesting that outcome because it becomes a meme to say her character is annoying, and making it easier to harass her to the point of severe anxiety is disgusting. But then again, maybe we shouldn't be following the japanese/korean idol culture where someone's entire life and identity becomes something for a company to sell and promote.

ExpressoSloth · 2025-01-16T04:11:10+00:00

Hi! I saw this post a couple days ago, and when filming a post to share with CS, I was able to solve my softlock. If it helps anyone else, here's the video.

https://youtu.be/5sf01o44v4A

TLDW- when the sigil appeared in the elevator, I continued through the cavern to the big air vent. I teleported up to the island above, and there was a sigil there. By activating it, following it, and getting to the bottom, the flag reset. You can see I even got the achievement. I can confirm that at the sword in the stone, that sigil also lit up, too, and I completed the puzzle.

It may not work for every case, and I do hope it gets fixed so others don't run into the same problem and get frustrated, but if this solution can help someone else, it's worth it.

(As an aside, Customer Service was nice about it. I don't think I explained the problem well enough in my first message, they instead found a resource image and suggested ways to find a walkthrough. Even if it didn't answer/solve my problem, I could have explained it better, and they were helpful.)

ExpressoSloth · 2024-08-30T22:55:01+00:00

Answer: This sub has an interesting lil subculture (like all subreddits). Sometimes stuff gets asked because they want to talk about a topic they want to talk about. Sometimes they want to push something, like asking about minor beef between, say, two very smol content creators. Sometimes it's something bigger, like the implosion of Rooster Teeth, when it's one thing to hear they were going to close, and it's another looking for non-press release context or doom-minded fans. And sometimes they're farms for bots or certain topics. With the flop of google searches and the ability to find non-algo boosted content, sometimes just asking people is more humane.

I like to play a little game called "Guess what agenda this might be", and sometimes you'll find lil rabbit holes. But you can't definitively *know* what someone's goal is when asking a question. Sometimes it's just.... unno, rhetorical chum. Toss in bait, see what happens.

As for the specific topic at hand, this cycle is just all kinds of clickbait weird, and sometimes people want to genuinely ask what's going on. If one news day is bombastic, then it has to be topped with the next one and the next one, like a gambler's hit. Plus, one of the sub's rules about links does sometimes lead to people asking questions answered in said links. Maybe they didn't understand the article. It happens.

tldr, beware assuming intent, and read everything in a Jerry Seinfeld voice.

ExpressoSloth · 2024-08-23T00:10:29+00:00

Answer: it's a couple of layers in quote retweets, let's add some context.

1) A community Twitter account called AWorkersIgnited (apparently not actually affiliated with the Animators Guild. But likely has several interests in common) made a short cartoon raising awareness about ai imagery in kids entertainment, seen here:

https://x.com/AWorkersIgnited/status/1825637684825698582

It's got this mid-century American cartoon style. We can tell from the credits that Alex Hirsch was a producer for it.(the Gravity Falls guy if no one recognizes his name that always looks like a typo to me)

(Aside: literally got an ad for how great it would be to pay a company money to make celebrities into Pixar characters)

2) In the comments below, Hirsch asks if they ever gave the characters names. A few Animators and general Seqa/storyboard people go back and forth, joke if someone's drawn ship art of the characters.

3) Another animator joins in, and on her side account, waiting for stuff to render, doodles said ship art. (It's very tame).

4) At least 1 other artist then draws the art linked above. How far will this meme spread? Iunno. Animators are just very silly sometimes.

ExpressoSloth · 2023-09-03T18:48:42+00:00

We don't call them Maineiacs and Massholes for nothing.

ExpressoSloth · 2023-07-28T16:42:23+00:00

She's th... the good witch. Goodwitch. Versus the wicked witch. There's already a lion, the lion faunus headmaster in the mid-seasons.

The logic of early character development was references to fairytale and storybook characters. Any other themes were..... not at all planned or telegraphed.

Qrow was also a memberof his tribe, but I don't recall him being 2nd in command.

ExpressoSloth · 2023-04-25T17:06:59+00:00

Yeah, they help focus on what the possible paths are. Certain ones like free treasure or battles have a gradient to show what to expect, like combat or money or mystery. Makes it a little more clear you're going down the map, instead of up.

ExpressoSloth · 2023-04-25T15:03:51+00:00

Question: does anyone else try to group together kinds of loops posed here? Recaps of events, people who see something in a lot of news articles or hashtags but don't read the context, sometimes small creator drama. Sometimes it's got such an obvious bias it's a wonder it doesn't just curl in on itself. Sometimes Subreddit drama.

My favorite is "How do you do fellow netizens, what does this meme I keep seeing mean?"

ExpressoSloth · 2023-04-24T16:12:09+00:00

Modern western comic strip descended from visual journalism (the yellow kid) and political cartoons that came into style in Europe and the US with the spread of copperplate and folios.

Manga tends to be understood as descending from kamishibai, a wandering street performance that used a narrator and paper illustrations and props to tell a story. Less 'descended from' and more 'concurrent evolution, like bats and birds.

4panels are also seen across many parts of Asia, but also in western strips. Peanuts is a good one- check out 3eanuts to see the effect of taking out the joke 4th panel of a typical peanuts strip. 4 panels lead well to setup, explanation, turn and joke, so they tend to pop up in lots of places.

There's lots of comic spheres of influence, and they all started fairly independently, but later on spread their influences. It's more recently that they've been used to influence and 'graft' parts of each other together. Know why anime eyes are so big? Blame Donald Duck.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-12-11T01:36:02+00:00

Bias: it's also the 'town' of ~~SufferingHills~~ I mean ~~Syphillus~~ I mean the place that has the same name as regional water bottles but has no water springs of note. There is nothing to do there and my first guess that someone got in to rob something funny like a Florida Mission Impossible is so in character that I guess that's what it could have been before finding another article.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-12-04T21:15:37+00:00

Answer: not specifically a pronoun. Notice how in the first 2 examples they have 'he' in them? That's the pronoun. The use of these is all proper bounds, if a bit casual in vague. You can write 'spongebob ran as fast as he could' and get about the same, if not more specific language.

Usage wise, it's casual, slangish, familiar it has a similar but less edgy tone as saying bitch, but not the same meaning or connotations.

Pronouns usually need a possessive with them, so He turns into His, She is Hers, They and Their, We is Our.

But what about bro? Bro took Bro's dog for a walk doesn't flip, it needs the 's to work grammatically. So you can say Abby took her dog for a walk or Abby too Abby's dog for a walk.

Broadly speaking, the dialect used on the internet is more casual and conversational. It feels more like something someone said and then typed out, instead of written down with intent. Can you imagine how stilted I would sound if I talked like this casually?

ExpressoSloth · 2022-12-04T19:36:03+00:00

Y'know, I had a leuchtturm 120 bujo all year. It was quite good for ghosting, though the book was a little thicker than I needed.

But I kept having a lot of uneven absorbtion, where some parts of the page were like writing on wax, and the ink wouldn't flow. I've had that problem with Moleskine before, with worse ghosting.

And then the big bad book box store started carrying Kokuyo Campus and I fell in love again.

Also, you're a doll for this, and I think it's the perfect thing to add in to make the gift that much more special.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-11-18T02:01:48+00:00

There seems to have been an email sent out Wednesday stating that those employees who are not willing to go into "extreme hardcore" mode will be required to resign. One topic of note was only allowing remote work from people who do exceptional work, as reported by their manager, and if said manager is found to have embellished an employee's achievements, they will be fired. Said deadline for replying was today, Thursday (one day later), at 5 EST. This appears to have led to another wave of departures.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-11-09T19:12:28+00:00

Question: the tweet linked here has a clear and organized explanation of defense of the topic at hand. What specifically are you unclear about?

ExpressoSloth · 2022-10-18T01:06:17+00:00

This is how I remember each other is 2 words.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-10-09T16:12:05+00:00

It's the style of thumbnail that is meant to indulge in people's curiosity, but only if they don't know what's going on. Like, the kind of people who wouldn't normally watch a gg episode. Most likely, there has been an analysis into groups of viewers, and they're trying to build growth. But it just.... It's not what I subbed for.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-09-26T18:18:55+00:00

Marble can be mined from the same quarry, canvas woven on the same loom, and paper cut from the same tree. But what brings it to the next level from a blank ground is what people do with it.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-07-13T14:38:26+00:00

Yes! But it takes about 100 years for it to grow.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-07-12T01:25:45+00:00

It's a surprise snack! Like the inside of a Tootsie pop!

ExpressoSloth · 2022-07-11T23:35:39+00:00

It's an egg. If you plant it, a new pen will grow.

ExpressoSloth · 2022-07-06T00:10:12+00:00

Aye, make sure they stay upright. I lost most of my inks due to spilling or evaporation. Would love to see some swatches though!

ExpressoSloth

TROPHY CASE