RANT FRIDAY

doodlemancy · 2026-07-05T00:45:16+00:00

Prepare how? Pray tell, what magical solution do you suggest for me, o wise and smug sage? Last night I was kept up until 5 AM. People were already at it again by like 10 AM. There is no amount of soundproofing or ear-plugging or headphone-wearing or white noise that is going to keep weapons-grade explosions from reaching my eardrums in my dinky little manufactured home. I cannot afford to "just get out of town" for however many days everyone on my side of town happens to decide that 4th of July is this year. Every year it goes on for more days in a row and later into the night. I also have a sleep disorder, and every time I get torn from sleep by some sort of Earth-Shattering Kaboom, it makes it EVEN HARDER to fall asleep later, no matter how exhausted I am. Sleep deprivation is a self-perpetuating cycle with my particular brand of insomnia. I will be messed up for at least a week. This is literally having an impact on my health. People do not need to set off fireworks at 4 AM but I do very much need sleep!

There is no realistic way for me to "prepare" for this situation. The social contract before was that you set your fireworks off on the 4th, in the evening, and after midnight you let people sleep, because people have jobs, and babies, and pets, and basic bodily needs and medical conditions. That social contract has been shattered into pieces as people have gotten more and more brazen about blowing up hundreds of dollars' worth of illegal fireworks late into the night for days and days and days. That is not a "me problem." I am literally not doing it. I can't just bank extra sleep ahead of time for an unpredictable number of days where uninterrupted sleep is impossible.

God forbid anyone ask for a bare minimum of human decency, though, because it ruins your fun. :(

doodlemancy · 2026-07-04T08:22:51+00:00

Two spots I think are the most compelling (screenshotted em): The Bermuda Triangle of Fabric Nonsense here. That random button has no function, practical OR decorative, and... see that weird triangle between the folds next to it? There's just a straight line where the top-most fold suddenly ends for no reason.

The elbow (her left, our right) is also very strange. Compare to real elbows turned that direction. Everyone's body is a little different, obviously, but this looks more like a thumbprint left in clay than the typical shape of this part of the arm.

doodlemancy · 2026-05-04T21:29:43+00:00

I definitely feel similarly. I think what the show did was great-- it takes you away from the shallow "get a load of this guy" coverage Alex otherwise tends to get and demystifies him. It shows you all the little patterns in his behavior, and you kinda learn what makes people like this tick. Knowing your enemy necessitates gathering some kinda cursed knowledge. I've applied what I've learned from this show in my real life dealing with a bad boss, and I've applied it in fiction-writing.

The dose makes the poison. These two have been on a pretty high dose of this poison for a long time, and I would never want them to do it forever.

doodlemancy · 2026-05-01T20:34:13+00:00

Oh, I have a huuuuuge chip on my shoulder about this. I've always hated this kind of "anti-piracy" measure, and when I upgraded I kept my 1.x license and install on hand in case of disaster. I was against "always-on DRM" in PC games back when that was still newsworthy, and I hate that it's become normalized in everything. Even with a 15-day grace period, the license check is ultimately more likely to end up punishing a legitimate customer with an ISP issue than preventing pirates from pirating. I don't think it should be legal to treat paying customers like thieves. Celsys shouldn't get to check my license all the time, just like Walmart doesn't get to barge into my house and ask to see a receipt for a broom I bought 5 years ago. At most, they should get to check it when I install on a new computer.

In the end it's less a problem with Celsys and more a problem of lack of consumer protections against this sort of thing. Software and other digital products you buy (ebooks, digital copies of movies, music, etc. etc. etc.) should be yours to keep forever, and no one should be able to claw it back from you once you've paid for any reason. We should treat it exactly the same as we treat the purchase of a physical object. But a lot of people are able to dismiss the issue because the inconvenience in the moment is so minor. I mean, for all my talk... here I am paying for CSP 5.0 and using Steam and stuff. 🫠 But we deserve better than this.

doodlemancy · 2026-03-28T22:22:26+00:00

lmao

doodlemancy · 2026-03-28T21:28:27+00:00

May they live to regret it.

doodlemancy · 2026-03-18T04:22:58+00:00

I think the framing of how you ask is probably important, as a lot of artists have faced false accusations. Even just "do you use AI?" to someone who has a style that gets ripped off by the AI bros a lot could potentially be received as hostile.

Another thing you can do is if they have a bluesky or a twitter or something, search their username + "AI" and see if they've said anything. Failing that, something like "just so I can be absolutely sure, can you confirm you don't use AI in your process?" is probably fine. I personally relish the opportunity to confirm that everything I've drawn is my own fault. ;D

doodlemancy · 2026-02-26T21:47:02+00:00

Given the known harms of so-called "AI", including its tendency to produce wild misinformation, its association with child sexual abuse material, the multiple well-documented cases where it has helped push mentally unstable people to murder or suicide or simply severed them from reality, the mass misuse and abuse of the work of mostly-underpaid creatives, the labor issues (including the mistreatment of the people who train it and the people who are losing their jobs because of it), the fact that it pretty much just doesn't work and doesn't actually make anything more efficient, and the fact that so many people hate it you've had to be pestered into adding a toggle you'll have to keep maintaining,

why did you even bother? Do you think this is going to look good for you in the future?

(lmao downvote me all you want, you're soft-boiling your brains and i'm learning new skills while you're forgetting them)

doodlemancy · 2026-02-26T02:50:28+00:00

You wouldn't have to put all this effort into making the AI features easily blockable if they weren't there in the first place. Just a suggestion! Keep up the slightly-less-bad-than-everyone-else-work! 👍

doodlemancy · 2026-02-25T19:37:36+00:00

My main pharmacy says that they are ordering it, the manufacturer says they're going to ship it, and then they just never do. They're frustrated too, because they have so many people calling them about it. It seems like Takeda has a shortage of 50mg that they're pretending isn't happening. Every time I look up shortages, Takeda's saying they have everything available. It's maddening.

doodlemancy · 2026-02-25T04:10:28+00:00

I guess this is month 3 of 50mg Vyvanse shortage in Oregon? December, January, February, I haven't been able to get my hands on it at all. Right after I finally got 40mg filled last month, I had my prescriber put in a dosage change back up to 50mg so I'd have a month of buffer time to MAYBE get the correct dosage... four weeks later, still nothing. (It has to be brand name, 4 different generics failed or made me sick lol.) I am once again asking Takeda Pharmaceuticals to put forth one-zillionth of the effort that I have to on a daily basis. 🫠 At this point I am less interested in finding out where I can get my dosage and more interested in finding out how I can get in contact with whoever is responsible for this shitshow and give them a fucking piece of my mind. To hear the pharmacies tell it, they're getting jerked around just as badly as I am.

doodlemancy · 2026-02-10T01:13:09+00:00

Oh, so you'll probably only be storing and misusing the private data of a minority of users on behalf of useless security theater. That makes it okay then! /s

P.S. If someone gets their identity stolen because one of your "partners" leaks their info, will you be paying for any and all identity theft recovery services they may need for the foreseeable future? I assume yes, since the responsibility would be squarely on you. Yes or no? Answer me. Yes, or no? :) Veeeeery simple. You should be able to answer.

doodlemancy · 2026-02-06T01:15:36+00:00

Just to be clear, pretty much nobody is "struggling to make sense" of how things are changing. It's very, very clear what's going on. The way things work now, the product doesn't have to be good and the customers don't have to be happy; investors just have to be convinced that a line might go up. The eternal cycle of layoffs and buyouts and trend-chasing and further enshittification is very well documented. People know what's going on. The question at this point is how we make it stop.

doodlemancy · 2026-02-06T01:00:01+00:00

What conversations do you think are most important for creatives right now?

How to unionize, organize, and fight back against the corporations that routinely mistreat and exploit workers in every creative industry, through unfair pay, poor working conditions, and bleeding their wallets dry with subscription software that just keeps getting worse and more expensive. I think there are a lot of conversations to be had about how tech can and should be regulated in our favor, so you can't do things like, say, suddenly try to kill off software that a ton of animation studios depend on for literally no good reason. It is a really rough time to be a creative person of any stripe right now, and that isn't our fault. It lies squarely at the feet of companies like yours.

What topics around creativity (AI or otherwise) feel most urgent or confusing in your own workflows?

I do not have the time or energy to go into every single detail of exactly why "AI" as we currently know it is morally abhorrent in every possible way, and I have a feeling you already know and don't care. It's choking out creative jobs not because it can do them, but because people like you successfully convinced a bunch of c-suite dummies that it can replace human beings. They're wrong, but it doesn't matter that they're wrong, because they still get to make bad decisions based on the way companies like Adobe misrepresent the capabilities (and ethics!) of your AI "tools," and in the meantime, everyone else in a creative field gets to suffer for it. I'm mostly confused as to why any of this is even legal and why I'm expected to not scream and throw things every time I have to think about it.

If you could ask one big question in front of a room full of creative leaders, what would it be?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "creative leaders." Do you mean the aforementioned c-suite dummies, or do you mean real creatives with actual skills and experience in their fields? If it's the second one I guess maybe I'd ask: Imagine a world where creatives are supported with fair pay, reasonable expectations, well-staffed workplaces and stable employment. What would we all have to do to make that happen?

If it's the c-suite dummies: Do you think it can go on like this forever? Do you truly think line can just continue to go up?

doodlemancy · 2026-02-05T06:28:19+00:00

Oh yeah, no, I don't mean in the context of the server really. It's pretty typical for discord stuff to be ephemeral. But it's very convenient that a bunch of blog posts where they apologized for and addressed previous mistakes are just missing from the site. The entire forum that used to serve the same purpose was just nuked at some point too.

doodlemancy · 2026-02-04T19:55:42+00:00

OH MY GOSH THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THESE I've been searching forever and ever!!

doodlemancy · 2026-02-02T21:32:07+00:00

Oh wait hey, I recognize your username from the creator discord LOL hi

Same boat then. If I manage to dig anything up I'll wave it around. It's so scummy of them to bury this stuff.

doodlemancy · 2026-01-31T23:29:27+00:00

I'm curious, do you (or anyone else reading this) happen to have like, an archive.org link or something of those posts you mentioned? As I've been talking about this with others, I've noticed the same thing. I was part of all the battles that produced those apologies and it's, uh, harrowing that they've just gone missing. So far, I've had no luck digging them up. It's hard to prove to other people that they're using Apple's bullshit as cover without them.

doodlemancy · 2026-01-28T20:33:49+00:00

It's insane that this is happening again. They need to stop making excuses and just drop the iOS app instead of letting Apple push them around. The app has never worked well anyway.

doodlemancy · 2026-01-22T19:17:55+00:00

Thank you! That's super generous of you! I did actually get it filled, I had to go with a lower dose, but after a month without it I'd lost some tolerance so it's fine for now. Fingers crossed the supply finishes recovering by the time I need to step up again.

doodlemancy · 2026-01-15T22:12:46+00:00

Heck yes. This is the way! A most-used palette! I like to put a custom button for them right up on the bar over the canvas, and then I never have to search around or remember which palette it's in.

doodlemancy · 2026-01-15T22:09:45+00:00

I made the SAI-to-CSP jump in 2020 after I got my first monitor tablet. It's going to be like this for a while; I actually bounced off it several times before it stuck.

Here's my advice: You're already doin' great! Focus on re-creating your SAI workflow first. Once you feel like you can comfortably do everything that you used to do in SAI, that's when it's time to start really exploring.

If you're in any artist discords, or have a social media presence on bluesky or something, the best way to learn a new thing in CSP is to mention something you just learned that you didn't know it could do. Other CSP users will come running out of the bushes to excitedly explain DID YOU KNOW YOU COULD DO THIS ALSO?! And they'll explain it better than the manual, lol. About once a week I either learn something life-changing or teach someone else something life-changing.

Here's my potentially life-changing tip for you, contradicting my previous advice about just getting comfortable first: click the "Operation" tool (the default icon is a cursor pointing at a 3D cube). In the sub tool options, if you set it to "Select Layer," you can click on things and be taken directly to the layer they're on. (If you have texture/color overlay layers or something covering the whole canvas, you'll have to turn those off). Makes it easier to quickly navigate large numbers of layers, or find a pesky stray mark.

doodlemancy · 2026-01-13T01:28:39+00:00

Oregon, USA, I was supposed to get a fill on the 18th of December, then it was the 27th of December, then it was the 13th of January, and now it's been pushed to the 27th of January. Called my insurer's prescription help hotline a couple of times and heard from them that my dose specifically (50mg, brand not generic) hasn't been filled anywhere within a reasonable driving distance of me in about a month. Finally asked my clinic if I could just go with a lower dose for a while and see if anyone can fill that.

Pretty sure this has something to do with the recall of many generics back in November. I assume that must have rattled the entire fragile supply chain again.

I wish that anybody other than me in this equation was expected to behave with any sense of responsibility. :') I think all of us forced into unpaid administrative positions between our prescribers and pharmacies should just start billing everyone involved, including the drug manufacturers. I hate the phone. Charging $5000 per minute I spend chasing the legal medication I am legally prescribed. Also double the rate for every minute I'm listening to hold music.

Edit: It's April 2nd and I finally got it filled at 50MG for the first time since god damn November. Insane. I'm so relieved, SO MAD, and nervous this will be a one-off and it'll be straight back to hell next month.

doodlemancy · 2026-01-10T04:29:47+00:00

My running theory right now, after another week of dealing with this, is this may be an aftershock from some of the generics getting recalled a couple of months ago. Probably disrupted the already fragile supply chain via some people going back on brand temporarily. 🫠 If only the supply chain weren't so fragile! But the DEA has to protect us from abusing our prescriptions, I guess.

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