Nothing But Questions
Blogging, drawing and stuff by Jacob Plette.
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So I haven’t posted jack on my work in the past couple months. I turned in a project last week so I should be getting that back sometime soon for your viewing pleasure, you imaginary folks you. Until then, here’s a photoshop “composition” I turned in.
Yup. This constitutes schoolwork. Jealous? (I’m jealous) -
Photoset reblogged from STFU, Conservatives
[TRIGGER WARNING: Blood, gore, dead bodies, aborted fetuses, pro-life jackassery]
Today, a group calling themselves the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP for short, as in, there’s a GAP in their brains where logic should go) set up a huge display or graphic and disturbing images in the middle of the Florida State University campus, right on the common green in front of our library.
They came prepared with fliers of false information, “documentation” of abortion statistics, and worst of all, giant billboards that compared abortion in America to the genocides in Rwanda, the lynchings of African Americans in the decades before and after the civil war, and the Holocaust, complete with pictures of victims of these mass murders.
Already we’re off to a wonderful start, disregarding anyone who lives on our campus. There are dorms right next to that green. They held no respect for people who may have been triggered by these images.
Here are some of the things I heard today:
“Abortion is genocide!”
No, actually, Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. The common denominator between abortions is that all of the “victims” are unborn. Thus, this would be a genocide against the unborn, or as some put it, simply very, very young. However, when a woman gets an abortion, she does not look down at her body, go “this thing is unborn or young, I will destroy it because of that.” Therefore, it is not a genocide, because the common linking factor is NOT the cause or reason of the abortion.
Also there are quite a few Jewish friends of mine who would like to have a word with you about your comparison.
“I work as an ultrasound tech, I know what i’m talking about, ive seen thousands of pregnancies!”
This does not make you a doctor. An ultrasound technician, although you must have knowledge of ailments that often happen to pregnant women and an understanding of the medical procedures they will have to go through, is not a biologist. As a matter of fact, biology is not even a base requirement. You have not learned everything there is to know about the human body. You run a machine.
“Life begins at conception! Here, look at these article snippets!”
I was then handed pamphlet with snippets of medical journals. However, all of the quotes simply stated that human development begins at conception, which no one is arguing. The word “life” was mentioned once, and that particular quote only stated that conception was the first stage in creating life, not the start of it. When I pointed this out I was met with:
“Human development and life are the same thing!”
No, no they are not. Life is a philosophical concept, human development is scientific. When I pointed out that life was a philosophical concept, I was met with this:
“No it’s not! Life and conception are one in the same”
However, when I began to argue that a fetus is not a sentient thinking being, I was met with:
“Don’t get into philosophy, only science! Life begins at conception!”
So clearly, the man I was talking to (who seemed to be the ring leader) had gotten it into this head that my definition of life was philosophical, however his definition of life was scientific fact.
Their billboards were also riddled with inaccuracy. The man I was speaking to held up a poster of an aborted fetus that claimed it was 22 weeks. However, a different angle of the same fetus on their larger billboards, claimed that it was 24. When I pointed out the inaccuracy to one of his female partners (the ultrasound tech) she initially tried to deny it. When I pointed out that the fetus has the same blood smears, the same umbilical cord placing, and the blanket it was placed on had the exact same blood pattern, she then took back her words and said that:
“When we judge when a woman gets pregnant we go by last period date, however it’s often more like two weeks after. That’s why that’s different.”
When I pointed out that it was still an inaccuracy and two weeks could make a difference between legal and illegal, she had no response for me.
The man continued on his rant, and at one point asked me this:
“As a woman, can you look at this picture? It should tear at your heart strings! It should make you want to cry!”
Which I found particularly offensive. Simply because i’m a woman does not mean I have a motherly instinct, or can’t look at a fetus without bursting into sobs. I also got this little gem before I left:
“If you had seen this picture 100 years ago, you would have wanted to know who did this! You would have wanted to string them up on a flag pole! Think about if you saw this 100 years ago!”
At which point I was just done. How am I supposed to know what I would have thought 100 years ago? I’m not a vampire. I’m not a time lord. I don’t know anything about 100 years ago besides the fact that I would have had no rights at all.
But then again, they all want it that way, don’t they?
These people make their way to schools all over the country, so if you see them coming your way, set up a counter protest with actual information, and try to record their idiocy for all to see. This is the second year they came to FSU, last year they were sponsored by the College Republicans, this year they came on their own. I called the Student Relations office to have them removed, however Landis Green is a free-speech zone, and he told me straight up that they couldn’t remove them no matter how much they wanted to, because then the GAP would go to the news and they would get even more attention, and none of the staff wants that. Some of the things that came out of these people’s mouths were so inaccurate I almost cried. They also come with a bus with pictures of aborted fetuses on them that drives around for the two days in which they stay.
If you see them, just try to ignore them. Arguing science will do nothing, as they have grown such thick skulls they can no longer accept words that do not agree with their own. Their arguments are childish and illogical, and they back it up with no scientific fact.
If you are around the Florida state University campus tomorrow, Friday the 24th, stop by Landis green and support the counter-protest. Here is the facebook group, they will probably be out there from around 10 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon if weather permits.
Pro-choice truth bombs!
They were at University of Houston my freshman year and had set up right outside the library where I had class. I wound up fainting listening to these guys. That was fun.
The whole thing is about as disturbing as it gets. I mean, do they really lack the common sense not to subject people to these images? It’s so insanely insensitive. And their willful ignorance is just infuriating.
Seriously, if these guys show up on your campus, join whatever counter-protests spring up and drive these guys off; they don’t deserve the opportunity to abuse campus free-speech zones. And if there’s not a counter-protest, start one. -
Photoset reblogged from STFU, Conservatives
If more company leaders followed this example of selflessness instead of being so fucking greedy the economy wouldn’t be so shitty. I mean really, just how much money do you really need to have.
This dude is fucking awesome. \m/
is there an article on this or something?
It’s true. He actually cut his pay down to $90,000 not $100,000.
The story is about 3 years old, but is still poignant.
But he points to corporate culture as the long-term solution. Like the AIG bonuses, Nishimatsu says, “shocked” him. “It’s like they’re from another planet,” he says.
A lesson of this recession, he hopes, will be that corporations don’t solely pursue profit and instead focus on the long-term financial health of the company and employ people and help society. Together with shared sacrifice, he believes, the global economy will recover - but only if everyone from the CEO to the entry-level employee works together.
This must be a Japanese thing because I remember Nintendo did the same thing when they cut the 3DS price from $249 to $169 back in August 2011. Satoru Iwata, the President, took a 50% cut in pay, while directors on the 3DS project took 30% and other executives throughout the company took 20%.
It seems so reasonable and yet no business leader in America would even consider something like these. “Better off closing 5 plants and killing 50k jobs than let it affect MY earnings. Good decision making, team! That was tough! Bonuses all around!” -
Photo reblogged from Really, Fox News?
I’ve always had him written off since he thought an appropriate argument was to tell my wife to kill herself. -JoeI don’t particularly care to rehash all of the garbage he spewed on Twitter yesterday, but I wanted to briefly showcase some of the most disturbing messages that Tumblr politics tag editor Alexander Ryking posted on a public forum last night. I just have one question: is this mature, professional behavior? Is this the type of person you want curating your tag content, Tumblr? Reblog if your answer is a resounding NO.
In order, here’s just what we’ve got in the screencap—he says similar things on his personal Tumblr all the time, but I thought it was important to point out that his troubled behavior is now spilling over to other media:
- calling women morons, feminazis and cunts
- equating the denial of “misandry” (a concept that is overwhelmingly rejected by everyone who understands gender politics) to denying scientific consensus
- stating that women who dislike him must have “daddy issues”
- again with the “daddy issues” thing, which IMO is the most grossly sexist part of this entire tirade
- equating women to dogs
- telling feminists to go die
This isn’t about removing him from the position of editor because of political disagreements; after all, Ryking isn’t a conservative! This is about baseless personal attacks against women specifically (although non-women who disagree with him about “feminazis” have incurred his wrath as well) and for no reason other than they identify as feminists. I cannot stress enough that these attacks take place in an internet culture where being an outspoken, visible woman online will routinely earn you death threats, sexual harassment, and acts of intimidation. Here we have someone completely oblivious to the way his words contribute to that atmosphere, and yet we’re supposed to trust him to edit the official politics tag? How can we believe that this man’s raging misogyny doesn’t spill over into that? It’s absolutely unacceptable.
Co-signed.
If this was going on on his personal tumblr, how on earth did he still have a job with Tumblr? Does nobody care what kind of people are working for them anymore? You can argue free speech until the cows come home but this kinda of crap should lose you your job. It’s a slap in the face to Tumblr and to all its users.
Call me a misandrist all you like but at the end of the day I’m not losing my job. That would be you, Mr. Ryking.(Source: saturniinae)
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Link reblogged from STFU, Conservatives
“Societies with more income inequality have higher infant death rates than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have higher rates of mental illness than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have a higher incidence of drug use than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have a higher high school drop out rate than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality imprison a larger proportion of their population than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have a higher rate of obesity than other societies:
Individuals in societies with more income inequality are less likely to be in a different class of than their parents compared to other societies:
Individuals in societies trust others less than people in other societies:
Societies with more income inequality have higher rates of homicide than other societies:
Societies with more income inequality give less in foreign aid than other societies:
Children in societies with more income inequality do less well than children in other societies:
The authors sum it up pretty simply: : “Th[e] dissatisfaction [measured in this data is] a cost which the rich impose on the rest of society.”
Fantastic info - this is why we should focus on income inequity.
These are handy.
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Post reblogged from STFU, Conservatives
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Photo reblogged from STFU, Conservatives
I loathe the Dr. Pepper “it’s not for women” ads.
1. This comic is exactly the sort of snark I need to keep from fuming every time I see those commercials. As thanks, here is the reply I received from their consumer relations department when I wrote them to complain that their ad was embarrassingly sexist and unfunny.
“I am a woman who loves the full flavor of Dr Pepper TEN and the fact that it’s only 10 calories. When I first saw the tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign and the tagline, my reaction was, “I’ll be the judge of that.” In other words, no one is going to tell me what I can eat or drink.
We have a huge female customer base that has been satisfied with Diet Dr Pepper as their beverage of choice for years; however we learned through extensive market research that there was a gap in our male audience that was looking for a low-calorie alternative to regular Dr Pepper that lacked the diet imagery. We created Dr Pepper TEN to fill that void. Dr Pepper TEN features steel-grey packaging with rivets and a manly tagline, “It’s Not For Women.” We also know Dr Pepper TEN will appeal to both men and women, however the marketing strategy is tailored to our market research and filling the need of the male target with the tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign.
We hope you, too, will come to see our advertising campaign for what it is, a humorous take on the many men who are worried about their waistlines but are too “manly” to drink a diet soda.”I really wanted to write them back but the odds that they would actually listen instead of issuing bullshit non-answers were pretty low, so I had to let it go. At any rate I’ve completely stopped drinking any Dr. Pepper Snapple Group products in protest. If you guys are interested I
stoleborrowed this list of their products from their Wikipedia page:
- 7 Up (United States, rights held by PepsiCo or its licensees in all other markets)
- A&W Root Beer
- Beefamato
- Cactus Cooler
- Canada Dry (North America)
- Clamato
- Country Time (Under license from Kraft Foods)
- Crush
- Deja Blue Water
- Diet Rite
- Dr Pepper (North America)
- Gini
- Hawaiian Punch
- Hires
- IBC Root Beer
- Margaritaville
- Mistic
- Mott’s
- Mr and Mrs T
- Nantucket Nectars
- Nehi
- Orangina (North America; brand owned by Suntory in the rest of the world)
- Peñafiel
- RC Cola (North America)
- ReaLemon
- Rose’s lime juice
- Schweppes
- Snapple
- Squirt
- Stewart’s Fountain Classics
- Sun Drop
- Sunkist (Manufactured under license)
- Tahitian Treat
- Venom Energy Drink
- Vernors
- Welch’s (Under license from Welch’s)
- Yoo-hoo
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Hey folks, no images today, just some ponderings about the past semester and my plans for the coming ones. I’ve got a few things I want to talk about. I don’t harbor any notions that it’s for anybody in particular at the moment, mind; almost no one reads this blog as of right now, but I imagine it will serve as a retrospective framing-device for that subset who enjoys delving into archives if and when I develop a readership (but hey, that’s a whole topic in and of itself I can write about later)
Looking at this past semester I’m not super thrilled with the work I’ve put out. There are a couple of things I’m pretty proud of and would be happy to show folks, but mostly it’s been, well, student work. Gucky learning process tripe, you know? Not that the stuff I’m proud of isn’t gucky student tripe, of course, its just slightly less gucky student tripe and as of right now I feel it’s an accurate representation of what I can do as a designer at this point. I guess I’m just wishing more of my work had been at that level. I’m pretty sure my biggest problem is my pretty rigid sense of aesthetic and hesitance to experiment and breach my own comfort zone, so I’m intending for this next semester to be a more adventurous, self-confident period of production, and with any luck I’ll have more student work that’s less gucky tripe than not to leave up here. Fingers are crossed on that front.
On another front, there’s a more personal project I’m workshopping for the long-term right now, with the intent to turn it into a thesis project during my last year of college. It’s a graphic novel, and without giving too much away prematurely I want it to really dig into the internal conflicts brought up by superpowers and the implications they bring to light about man’s relationship to the modern understanding of divinity, and I really want to try and frame that discussion in terms of existential philosophy if I can. With that said, it struck me on a whim that it might be interesting to document that creative process somewhere; create a record of the construction of this project from start to finish. I’ve been keeping a sort of diary/journal document where I’ve been exploring ideas as I go along, but I am wondering if making the process a matter of public record (again, not that anyone is reading right now) wouldn’t provide a sort of impetus with which I could better fuel the process and its documentation.
So I guess I’m posing the question to the air right now: should I blog about making this graphic novel? That’s not to say that if I did it would be all I post about from now on, and it’s certainly not to say that I’m really expecting an answer at this point. But I think it’s a fair question to ask of myself, I’m certainly considering it, and I suspect posing it to myself will invite my subconscious to answer me sometime soon.
Moving on from that, I do intend to eventually post the whole of my schoolwork from these past two semesters online for your perusal; it will be my project for the winter break. I can actually get my Graphic Design Software projects up fairly quickly, so that may be my next post. The hand-crafted projects will take a little longer, of course, since they have to be photographed, so those will be a bit longer.
Alright folks. Whoever you are, anonymous readers (if you exist): I’ll see you next time.
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Turned this in a while ago but I took pictures before that and I just never got around to posting them. I’ll keep this brief; busy day and lots more to do.
This assignment was centered around those four groups of animals like the mobile/texture project, but instead of textures we were to produce stylizations based on them; if you’ve ever seen a company logo or sports mascot on the side of a football helmet, that’s the kind of thing we were drawing from for inspiration. For my project I did a render of the animal’s eye and then paired it with a colored version of the animal itself, although I wanted to keep a thematic consistency throughout so I kept with a black-red-orange color scheme across the series.
The eagle eye came out pretty well; drew a little from vector imaging and a little from the Eye of Horus. The eagle evolved into a heavily simplified icon, and the red/black colors lent it a nice sense of power, like a thunderbird totem.
The tiger eye might be my favorite of the group; just went across an oval shape using varying line weight to define the contours of the tiger’s eye, brow, and cheek. The tiger itself was combination of pen and gouache stippling.
The frog eye is based off this pattern on my girlfriend’s sheets where butterflies are displayed using these rings in a grid. Basically just took that system and used it to make a frog eye. The frog itself was done with just gouache, though I found if I brushed over settled pigment with water and then dabbed with a tissue I could get that nice gradient; that was a pleasant surprise.
The gator eye was inspired by a past project; basically went for a geometric stylization and then added a splatter pattern across it. The gator was done similarly to the frog, although it started as a sort of vector-looking thing.
Anyways that was my latest drawing for graphic comm project. I’ll keep you posted as I get closer to finishing this next batch of projects. And I haven’t forgotten about those side projects; one of them is actually coming along very well and I want to give it a proper post of its own when I have the time.Until then folks!
