...and mine didn't have anything furry or anthro in it. So, here's links to some of the others in this series that I've already done so far.

Challenge Was: Tiger Martian Cocktail
Challenge Was: The Last Stand Of Father Time
Challenge Was: Find An Old Drawing And Redraw It
Challenge Was: Boring Old Car
Challenge Was: Cave Person, Blow Torch, Lipstick
Challenge Was:Mash-Up Of Harry Potter, Mario Bros (& Ghibli)
Challenge Was: Draw Two Contrasting Emotions
Challenge Was: "A Secret In The Ice"
Challenge Was: Star Trek Re-imagined
Challenge Was: Mugshots
Challenge Was: Create A Mascot For Mac & Cheese
Challenge Was: Mash-Up Basset Hound & Parakeet
Challenge Was: The Broken Machine

And now, a bit of advice that is only tangentially connected with furry: if you do anything in a little black book, such as writing, sketching, or ideation, watch it like you would a cell phone or tablet, because assholes who steal personal electronics in public places might mistake it for one. Wanna guess how I found out?

Bad news: I'll never see that journal again. Good news: I made copies as I filled the pages.

I've been away from FA for a couple months, and now that I'm getting back I'm finding there's a migration away from X (the brand that lost the cola wars) and towards Bluesky.

So, here's the invitation. If you draw or write and you've opened a Bluesky account, post your link below in the comments and I'll follow you.

No, you do NOT have to follow me back.

If you know a writer or an artist from FA who has posted their Bluesky link elsewhere on FA, go ahead and share that with me, too, if you like their work. They want attention on Bluesky or they wouldn't be sharing their link.

Thank you.

I was so sure of myself that I lost money on this one.

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10383640/

I'm not making a dime from this, but I do use these apps myself and so I'm spreading the word.

Caveat: I'm in the US. I have no idea if this is being offered anywhere else.

Affinity, a company looking to replace Adobe, has an offer! Have a cut-and-paste:


"Get a six-month free trial of our award-winning photo editing, page layout, graphic design and illustration software – even if you’ve tried it before!"

"We know it’s daunting to switch your creative software, so we want to give you plenty of time to test out Affinity before you commit. And for those of you who may have tried it before but didn’t buy for whatever reason, we’ve reset all trials so you can give it another go for a longer period of time."

"No obligation to buy, no payment details required to sign up."


So what's the catch? I'll tell you what their promotional material doesn't mention: their company was bought out by Canva (a company that offers a web-based editing platform), so I imagine this might be to increase the user numbers of the app (before creating a connection of some kind to the platform at some unknown point in the future).

Affinity only charges once for the purchase of their app, and as with anything new there is a learning curve to use it. I've found I like their apps when I use them, and six months should be more than enough time to actually try them out for yourself before committing to them.

Link to read their promotion for yourself: https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/trial/

 karno already knows, and damn if this isn't interesting enough to watch! No idea how playable the actual game is going to be.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AJdMT4ytXQ

The Best Time of the Year Isn’t a Season or a Holiday. It’s a Week of Decadent Debauchery With No Name.

Until now. Welcome to Feral Week.

Article on Slate.com by Luke Winkie on DEC 26, 2023

Cut and paste:

"That week is the best. Those mushy, languid afternoons after Christmas haven’t been designated with a colloquial name, but lately, I’ve been referring to them as “Feral Week.” Generally, Feral Week starts at the exact moment you have completed all of your familial yuletide traditions and have downshifted into a glorious neutral. Midnight Mass has been consummated; same with the strained salutations with ancillary aunts and cousins who may as well be from a different planet. There is no more serious money to spend, and the fruits of your paycheck have already been plundered from stockings, or lay unwrapped under the tree. The last laborious meals of the season—turkey, ham, perfectly crimped mincemeat pies, whatever—have already been cooked and consumed. All that’s left to do is sit around in sedentary stasis, waiting for civilization to click back into gear after the new year.

"That means my itinerary for Feral Week is decadent and depraved. I use this special time of year to get back in touch with my worst, baseline indulgences, and I encourage you to do the same. I might play video games in my pajamas from sunup to sundown without absorbing a single ray of natural light. Or maybe I’ll read an entire book while soaking in the bath and sipping on a double gin-and-tonic. Perhaps I’ll even eat an enormous weed gummy and slip into a wondrous, nonverbal stupor—digging my fingers into the couch cushions to avoid floating out of Earth’s gravitational pull—while watching, I don’t know, Hader-era SNL highlights on YouTube for hours on end. Of course, all of these degeneracies will be paired with the exact same carne asada burrito—extra guacamole, add sour cream—that I intend to order daily from the counter-service Mexican restaurant down the street. The world is your oyster, baby. Feral Week means never having to say you’re sorry."

Link: https://slate.com/human-interest/20.....new-years.html

After much delay and some tech issues, there's an e-mail newsletter under the Karno's Klassics banner!

Almost. We've got it running, but the audience is very small. Like, me and  Karno small.

We need more people to sign in and help us test this thing to make sure it will stay up and running with a genuine crowd receiving it.

What do you get out of it? You get Karno's efforts delivered to your email, in a format that is cell phone friendly! There's only two places online you can be certain to find Karno, and that's here on FA and over on Patreon. That's two platforms he has no control over, and if they decide to toss him out for any reason that's that. However, he has the list of people subscribed to his newsletter, so if that goes down he can get back in touch with everyone on the list.

"Hey, doesn't he already have a newsletter?" He has a paper newsletter that he's been distributing as a PDF using a personal email account. So far he's gotten away with that, but all it takes is for his provider to decide he's abusing their system and he's out. The new digital newsletter comes from a provider who is used to mailing lists.

Just to go to https://karnosklassics.ck.page/signup and for the low price of verifying your desire to be added to the list, you can sleep soundly that you will always get as much  Karno as we can send!

If you have a kid like this, good luck.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcTJynGpWgI

Did you win?



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmWQmZXYd74

Lackadaisy SEASON ONE is now up for funding on BACKERKIT (already funded)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfO8ABZBf9k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bbwp4PbWYzw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i8pWbTKAps

I recently realized something. Single panel cartoons are in fact memes. Never mind that they precede the Internet by over a century; they consist of an image and customarily either a caption, headline, or dialogue that modifies the interpretation of the image, usually for humor. The only way they are "cartoons" is the choice of using drawing styles associated with the art form.

I remember that Scott McCloud tripped over this in his book Understanding Comics, but then he pretty much shrugged it off and kept going.

I'm certain I'm late for figuring this out, but I don't recall anyone else saying it before now.

Not very deep, but the pictures of some of the tools they used to make color happen in the papers are interesting.

https://thenib.com/color-archive/

The most "un-star-wars" Star Wars ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-8DT5Q8kzI

Okay, maybe not EVERY animated film, but this parody pretty much covers all the bases!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ffLIJrYEJ8

Big Tech's big downgrade
Google, Amazon, and Meta are making their core products worse — on purpose
by Ed Zitron
Mar 27, 2023, 3:03 AM
on businessinsider.com

Cut & paste:

"And Google isn't the only tech giant with a slowly deteriorating core product. Facebook, a website ostensibly for finding and connecting with your friends, constantly floods users' feeds with sponsored (or "recommended") content, and seems to bury the things people want to see under what Facebook decides is relevant. And as journalist John Herrman wrote earlier this year, the "junkification of Amazon" has made it nearly impossible for users to find a high-quality product they want — instead diverting people to ad-riddled result pages filled with low-quality products from sellers who know how to game the system."

Link: https://www.businessinsider.com/tec.....-amazon-2023-3

Elsewhere, on Patreon, a working musician talks about manufacturing inspiration. The relevant part of the audio is in the first 20 minutes. https://www.patreon.com/posts/mikey.....s-366-78200809

Science has finally cracked the mystery of why so many people believe in conspiracy theories
Jan 26, 2023 on BusinessInsider.com
By Adam Rogers

It turns out conspiracy believers may not be stupid, isolated, nor insane, but merely smug, lazy, or overconfident.

A quote from the article:

"...according to new research, it isn't ignorance that makes people most likely to buy into conspiratorial thinking, or social isolation or mental illness. It's a far more prevalent and pesky personality quirk: overconfidence.

"The more you think you're right all the time, a new study suggests, the more likely you are to buy conspiracy theories, regardless of the evidence. That'd be bad enough if it applied only to that one know-it-all cousin you see every Thanksgiving. But given how both politics and business reward a faith in one's own genius, the news is way worse. Some of the same people this hypothesis predicts will be most prone to conspiracy thinking also have the biggest megaphones — like an ex-president who believes he's never wrong, and a CEO who thinks that building expensive cars makes him some sort of visionary. It'd be better, or at least more reassuring, if conspiracy theories were fueled by dumb yahoos rather than self-centered monsters. Because arrogance, as history has repeatedly demonstrated, is a lot harder to stamp out than stupidity."

LINK: https://www.businessinsider.com/why.....fidence-2023-1

Some of you know I occasionally exhibit a dark sense of humor. For the rest of you, you're in for a treat.

Not mine, but I liked it all the same so I'm sharing it. Short and sweet; under five minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Aq6UtLKtzM

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the US, and happy whatever else to everyone who isn't.

I remember the first time I heard this idea. It was a liberal spouting an insane conspiracy theory (yes, liberal, not conservative), just days after Biden became recognized as the winner.

Since then I've been periodically hearing and reading the same dreck from loose nuts on both sides of the aisle.

So now Trump himself is coming out and announcing he's running, and the press is stumbling over itself covering the circus.

People, let me point this out: Trump and all of the lunatics can say whatever they want. I can also announce I'm running. YOU can announce you're running for US President (even those of you who aren't US citizens, although it's unconstitutional for you to actually be the president).

Without the approval and backing of the Republican Party (meaning the actual party itself, not voters who happen to be Republican), he's doing nothing except making a nice, noisy sideshow for the election coverage while everyone waits for the genuine candidates to present themselves.

Knock it off, he's not running.

I'm pretty certain of myself, but if I missed something please feel free to share so long as you can remain civil. That means no sniping at each other, too.

Patreon is bending over backwards to keep you and your audience, but it isn't going to be that easy. There's shit they have to do to keep the card issuers happy.

Brad Gugar reacts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2KVdVFr-yA

Patreon itself speaks:

https://events.patreon.com/connectpolicyq3

She's trying to track how words used to describe non-human characters have been used and how they have evolved with the fandom through time.

It's a very short poll. Here's the link, right here on FA: https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10314177/

If you like, pass it on to others who may be interested, too.