iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If you could hold off the development of fingers until later, when the embryo is larger, you might well end up with more fingers.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This is very similar to how zebra stripes form. In the 3 species of zebra, parallel stripes form at the exactly the same spacing. Plains get their stripes early, so fewer, widest over the butt (which is still growing). Grevys get theirs later, laid on a larger embryo, so more, finer stripes.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That's more than compression. That's magic!

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Install instructions are on his blog: www.davidrevoy.com/article1060/...

davidrevoy.com

Krita brushes 2025-01 bundle

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Doing some research it turns out to be a geometric average, since they needed to maximize the area for all types of media being shown on the same screen. The guy who recommended it literally cut out cardboard pieces to see what size made the most pieces fit best in the available space.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

There were a bunch of different, competing "widescreen" formats. The most common one was Panavision, which had the advantage of being projected from 35mm film prints (which every theater could handle with a lens). The average between Panavision (2.39:1) and 4:3 would be 1.86:1 but 16:9 is 1.78:1

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Are the arms where you sculpted him, or have you already applied a rig? That wouldn't work until you get the mesh stabilized, though, so I guess not. It's already excellent work.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

But on the plus side, Krita has turned into a really good platform for creating art, especially comics art, which used to be CSP's greatest strength. But yes, there's plenty of room for improvement. And unlike GIMP, the Krita devs actually WANT to improve it.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Nobody can make you as crazy as family. My mother never came right out and said I should kill myself—she just provided a relentless tirade of reasons why I did not deserve to live. She's dead and I'm still here, so...I win? So long as I can shut up her voice in my head telling me how rotten I am.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

When you mentioned DAWs, I had this vision of Reaper becoming a paint program. It's already a video editor. 😀

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I've done bug reports and actually gotten a few changes implemented. That's one of the beauties of open source. If you have UI suggestions, the devs are a lot more approachable than any commercial software. Of course, every UI change will have its haters.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Ah, the ladies of ample posterior! All the better to sit on you, my dear.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The margins aren't huge, it's true. Quest 3 cost, from production to customer delivery is about $450. Quest uses some custom silicon, and they picked a Qualcomm CPU (XR2) that has dedicated sections for inside-out tracking and passthrough that the Frame CPU doesn't, but the Frame has more GPU power.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I'm not gonna stand in the way of anybody's fantasies. 😜

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

That's about the range that analysts had expected for the price. I'm not sure it's TWICE the headset of the Quest 3, though. That's more than I spent on my Q3 and the gaming PC I built to run PCVR, combined. Now we just need Fluxpose to start shipping.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

"Did you command a robot slave to make it for you?" "You are not an artist."

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

No, no... I'd say that's a perfect fit.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Evelyn, the professional surrogate, in her thirteenth pregnancy.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that Evelyn loved being pregnant. She loved everything about it. She loved the feel of her heavy belly, the burden of her swelling breasts, the growing pressure inside her. She even loved the random aches and pains, the feel of contractions, and the pain of her ribs and hips being spread apart.

She loved it so much that she decided at a young age to become a professional surrogate, hiring her uterus out to lonely couples who wanted children. She was extremely good at it. It seemed that every egg the donors supplied would take. She had never given birth to singletons or twins. Always triplets, quadruplets, or even quintuplets. By the time she was twenty seven, she had been pregnant twelve times, giving birth to forty-three babies. For her thirteenth pregnancy, she decided to try something even more radical. She contracted to carry babies from three couples at once, not letting each of them know about the others. She got the fertilized eggs implanted on the same day from three different clinics. Twelve eggs.

By the time of the first ultrasound at eight weeks, she could already feel that this pregnancy was different. The ultrasound tech couldn't be certain, but there appeared to be fifteen placentas. By ten weeks, she was looking unmistakably pregnant. By fifteen weeks, she looked full-term for a single pregnancy. By eighteen weeks, she looked full-term with twins. By twenty-two weeks, her belly was larger than it had been with quintuplets.

She wanted to show off her amazing body, so she started modelling. Some people derided her swollen belly as alarming and disgusting, but she developed an avid following of people eager to see just how big she was going to get.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

"You dare try to control Aughra? Aughra can barely control Aughra!"

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I've seen that in action, but I gave up trying to make that point, because they were kind of obsessed. Another trap is that as AI crap becomes the majority of the art on the web, AI models are increasingly being trained on AI crap, causing a kind of crap singularity.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

They weren't going to pay for your art, but at least they weren't going to go into business competing with you, using your own style, producing 100X as much "art" as you can, for a fraction of your base prices. I've had 'em tell me they'll happily sell art for $0.01 just to destroy "gatekeepers."

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Won't anybody spare sympathy for the poor, beleaguered billionaires being beset at all sides by "parasites" who envy their success?

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

I heartily approve of each page on its own post. I've tried to follow stories where each page is a reply to the previous page, and it's hell, especially when you get in 50 pages deep.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

If you think ANYBODY has their shit together, it's illusion. Everybody hides their vulnerability, trying to pretend they're not flailing around blindly, repeatedly getting knocked back by their own fuckups. I can't say I know what life is good for, either. I've struggled with that for 60 years.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

What "gets me nothing" is presenting evidence to people who have an emotional need to disbelieve any evidence. There is no amount of proof that you will accept, since this appears to be a matter of faith for you, so any effort is futile.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

That's general writing advice: "Show, don't tell."

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I apologize for not holding your hand and walking you through very simple research protocols one step at a time and leading you by the nose to show you each and every link. I assumed you had some passing understanding of research attribution.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

You chose not to, skipping over the chart labelled "Challenges," which lists citations of studies (not all, just a few) addressing every one of the mental health issues listed. And this was an optimistic paper, trying to show possible benefits of online psychological intervention.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The Supreme Court had absolutely zero involvement with the fines against Meta. In fact, the Supreme Court does not even have the ability to issue fines. That's not a thing. Every public system interaction has the potential to be used for surveillance, including your posts on this platform.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

While I was looking into them, I found Faber Castell also makes 3.15mm lead holders. Still less than the 4mm leads on my Derwents, but getting there.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

It's still 102° here. Hard to think about school starting. When I was growing up, schools didn't have A/C, so they didn't start until it was humanly possible to endure the heat. (but even then we had geriatric teachers who thought 95° was comfy and kept windows closed and fans off.)

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

There was a time when Ken Cougar was the peak. Sic transit gloria mundi.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

What shades do the refills come in? My problem with most mechanical pencils is they only offer HB or harder.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

The reflecting pool charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Meta has been convicted on the evidence and fined nearly a billion dollars for creating a public nuisance targeting children.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

"Feel like I'm gonna puke 'Cause my taxes are due Do my password begin with a one or a two?"

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

One guy I knew verified people's ages by asking them their favorite song. When I told him mine, he had to google it, because that was WAY before his time.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

In The Magicians, Josh Hoberman caught lycanthropy by having sex with a werewolf.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Every generation has to make the same mistakes over and over again. We survived the Meese Commission, and the "moral panic" of the 80's, and today's kids out there screaming "pedo!" at everything want to dive right back into that level of censorship.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I feel fairly confident that the people who ban particular accessories or clothing on the basis that it is "inherently sexual" would NOT like to be on record as wanting to know of a rape victim "What Was She Wearing?" It's the same vibe, truly.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I just love this image. Reminds me of that scene from the Russian movie.

Scene from "He is a dragon" (Он – дракон) when Princess Miroslava kisses Arman in his dragon form.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Another advantage of having your own website is not having to conform to the content rules of someone else's website, as vividly demonstrated by Our Fierce Differences and its previous incarnations.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I cannot help but think of AI as being "I ordered my slave to make this for me, therefore I created it. Aren't I talented?"

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

If I remember right what she was saying, Irenian women aren't even permitted to see magic being performed.

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Mark Stretch🔞 @markstretch.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Not going to entice me to start going there, again, though.

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