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Erik Mondrian

@rainstormsky.com
84 followers 80 following 96 posts

Writer, Artist, Scholar, Dreamer. 🏳️‍🌈 Passionate about virtual places; there's more to life than being real. he/they #NoAI youtube.com/erikMondrian primfeed.com/erik.mondrian fosstodon.org/@erikMondrian

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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 19/09/2026
That feeling when you're fine, but actually you're not, because what you actually are is hollow and it's like every time you talk to people, your words are just the surface of a shell around an empty desperation, and you're not sure which self is more true. #micropoetry
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 09/09/2026
Another reworked image, edited with @gimpofficial.bsky.social, of a mesh plane that I curved using a sine function and @blender.org's #Python API. #b3d
An abstract image made in Blender, showing a curved mesh plane that resembles part of a sine wave. The object has a checkerboard pattern of raised and lowered tiles, tinted pinkish purple, that alternate between light and shadow.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 07/09/2026
Edited with @gimpofficial.bsky.social, a slightly reworked image of a model that I made last year in @blender.org, using its #Python API (and the sine & cosine functions) to reposition the vertices of a mesh grid. #b3d
An abstract image made in Blender, showing a series of stylized "rolling hills" that were created by superimposing sine and cosine waves across a tiled, green plane. The edges of each tile are slightly raised, using Blender's Wireframe modifier.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 30/08/2026
I almost wish that social media apps showed us a Steam-like "hours played" count, a running total of how much time we've each spent using them. I think many of us would be absolutely horrified by the number of hours (days, weeks, months) that we've racked up while scrolling.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 04/08/2026
My body is the pain I carry / The hope that moves my limbs / Reaching, fingertips touch / I breathe you in #poetry #micropoetry
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 23/07/2026
People are amazing. People are beautiful. People are brilliant and naive, suspicious and trusting, full of love and doubt and fear and that poison we call "hate" but which is often just pain and desperation and insecurity, magnified and misdirected by those who benefit from keeping us apart.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 22/07/2026
He caught my eye / I look away / A smile to mask the ache / Of sleepless nights / And hollow days / A confidence I fake #poetry #micropoetry
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 21/07/2026
How do I give myself away / When will you see the price I pay / Who can I hold if no one stays / Or speaks the words I need to hear #poetry #micropoetry
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 20/07/2026
One important point that I forgot to mention above: If you try the example code and nothing happens, make sure you're in Object Mode first. Blender will essentially ignore any attempts to change a mesh's geometry using bpy while in Edit Mode.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 20/07/2026
Been meaning to make some tutorial videos for @blender.org's Python API (or even a detailed walkthrough of how I used bpy to create my #SecondLife terrain models). In the meantime, a quick example of how to turn a mesh grid into a sine wave, in just two lines of code. More info in the alt text. #b3d
A screenshot of the "Layout" workspace in Blender 5.2.0, showing a mesh grid and how to create it (using Add -> Mesh -> Grid). Also shown are the "Add Grid" parameters, where the X and Y Subdivisions have each been changed to 100 and the Size has been set to 10 meters.

Note: You can increase or decrease the subdivisions in order to change how smooth the wave will be. Changing the mesh's size here will affect how many times the wave will repeat across the mesh (how many cycles, in other words).A screenshot of the "Scripting" workspace in Blender 5.2.0, showing the interactive Python Console, where the following two lines of code were just run:

for vertex in bpy.data.objects['Grid'].data.vertices:
    vertex.co.z = sin(vertex.co.x)

Note: You can also combine functions and/or use different coordinates (multiplying the sin of the x coordinates by the cos of the y coordinates, for example). Have fun and experiment!

Below the Console is a 3D Viewport where the mesh grid now resembles a sine wave; to the right is the Text Editor, displaying the following text and code examples:

# Don't forget to 'import bpy' and any other necessary modules (like math) if running scripts from Blender's Text Editor or when using Blender from the command line. If using its interactive Python Console, the bpy module is already available.

# Also, because of the Console's "Convenience Variables" for bpy's context and data hierarchies, the code to the left could also be written there as follows:

for vertex in D.objects['Grid'].data.vertices:
    vertex.co.z = sin(vertex.co.x)

# Again, keep in mind that the 'C' and 'D' variables are just shortcuts. If you want to use them in scripts outside of Blender's Python Console, you have to define them yourself.



# Extra Credit:

# An object is not the same as its mesh. A mesh technically lives in its own branch of the bpy.data hierarchy; each mesh can be linked to one or more objects. In this case, the 'Grid' object and the 'Grid' mesh happen to share the same name, but they don't necessarily have to.

# In the code example(s) shown here, the '.data' of the 'Grid' object refers to the mesh data that it's linked to (different object types have different kinds of data), and the vertices belong to the mesh. We could therefore also have written the code this way instead, addressing the mesh directly:

for vertex in bpy.data.meshes['Grid'].vertices:
    vertex.co.z = sin(vertex.co.x)
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 19/06/2026
I know he means well, but it's still frustrating when a friend keeps suggesting that I just "try AI" during a particularly challenging project (especially when he doesn't understand all the details involved). I don't use AI out of principle; I also know when, even if I wanted to, it wouldn't help.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 07/06/2026
I feel that! And it's tough when the trying is mostly mental; people don't really recognize the effort that it can take someone just to get through their day. (Also, unrelated, you have a wonderful voice!)
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 07/06/2026
Just because I embrace my differences, it doesn't mean that I'm not bothered by the fact that I don't really fit in. You can be true to yourself and still sometimes wish that you were more like other people.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 05/06/2026
Life is a lifelong process of trying to figure out what it means to be alive.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 03/06/2026
Am I my inner monologue? Or am I the one who hears it? Maybe I'm the silence in between.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 22/04/2026
Bite-sized thoughts are all well and good, but what happens when we need to chew on ideas and questions that aren't as easily reduced to a social media post? With so many people apparently turning to AI to do the "thinking" for them, maybe the real issue is we don't know why we should think at all.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 29/03/2026
#SecondLife is not a game. It's a canvas. 🎨
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 25/03/2026
I can't believe it's actually been 21 years (and a couple days) since I first joined #SecondLife, way back on March 23, 2005. 🦊 This virtual world is not without its challenges, of course, but it's still an amazing place (with amazing people) that keeps me coming back over two decades later. #RezDay
A screenshot of the "Happy Rez Day" email that I received from Linden Lab a couple days ago, on March 23, commemorating my twenty-one years in Second Life:

"Erik, it's your 21st Rez Day!

Second Life is fun, weird, and always evolving, but the magic ingredient is YOU. The vibrant worlds you build and the sense of community you provide for others is simply priceless. Here's to another year of imagination and experiencing the impossible.

-The Second Life Team"

The email then lists a few "milestones" to let me know that I visited 662 different regions over the course of the past year, teleported 640 times, and at one point logged in (and out) every day for nine days in a row. The email also mentions that the average Resident visited 87 different regions, with 220 teleports, and had a daily log-in streak of three days in a row.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 21/03/2026
Can you tell me who I might cry for, when tomorrow becomes today? Who will I miss, when the sunrise casts a shadow on a world with one life less to light my way? #poetry #micropoetry
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 04/03/2026
Thank you! 🦊🧡 It's been fun to experiment and try different ways to combine images (and play with various filters too). So many possibilities! I definitely need to get back into video and maybe attempt to incorporate some of this into that medium as well.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 04/03/2026
Sometimes, when you look up at the sky, you might see your dreams looking back. (Shot in #SecondLife as four separate photos, each with a different EEP Sky setting, then layered together and edited with @gimpofficial.bsky.social)
An image from Second Life that shows a partially obscured night sky, stars competing with clouds that seem like they were painted on, in all the colors of the rainbow. The clouds' colors form different areas, a gradient that shifts from one part of the sky to the next.

Some of the clouds in the lower half of the image (in purple, red, orange, yellow, and green) have a rougher and grainier appearance, as though they could almost represent an aerial view of a world's terrain instead of just its sky, clouds becoming multicolored mountains from a distance.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 20/02/2026
Thank you! 🙏 Opening paragraph of the Wired story is... something else. 😬🤨 Will be interesting to see if the magazine issues a statement/apology. Still wondering about that Vox piece (if only to ascertain whether the writer has a history of questionable journalism). I might have to do some digging.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 20/02/2026
I can (un)fortunately read neither article, since I don't have subscriptions to the respective websites, but I looked up the writer of the piece you linked and found this, also by them: www.vox.com/technology/2... Kinda curious (in spite of myself) to know if and how it relates, based on the titles.
vox.com
Silicon Valley’s very masculine year
Ravenous, carnivorous, and totally yoked: How men in tech have evolved.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 18/02/2026
All I can do is to try to move forward. I might not know where I'm going, but I'll know who I am when I get there. (Shot in #SecondLife and edited with @gimpofficial.bsky.social)
An image from Second Life, composed of three snapshots taken from the same angle (but using different lighting settings and capture modes) that I then layered together and edited in GIMP. The image shows a set of train tracks cutting through a forest, with rocks and hilly terrain on either side. The tracks lead straight up the middle, going from the bottom of the frame until they curve out of sight in the distance.

The entire scene has an ethereal, dreamlike quality: The forest is gently veiled by a bluish fog that makes the trees in the foreground seem to glow, and across part of the train tracks is also a large patch of luminescent grass. Above the horizon, the sky is almost completely white, with the world appearing to end at the forest's edges.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 15/02/2026
Thinking a lot lately about all the things in #SecondLife that we as longtime Residents overlook and "forgive" mainly because we're so used to them, forgetting how off-putting they might be to people who aren't as familiar with SL and its idiosyncrasies. It's no wonder so few new users stick around.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 28/01/2026
Just discovered the phenomenal #Haute&Freddy this afternoon, thanks to @lokieliot.bsky.social playing the group's new song "Dance The Pain Away" during his DJ set at The Vortex club in #SecondLife. Officially obsessed with the music video too: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BhJ...
youtube.com
Haute & Freddy - Dance The Pain Away
YouTube video by Haute & Freddy
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 23/01/2026
I strongly suspect that the (cis) people who complain the loudest about being asked to use a trans person's preferred pronouns are also the same people who would be the most personally offended at being misgendered themselves. #transphobia #LGBTQ
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 18/01/2026
Apparently I've been living under a rock, because even though I'd heard of #HunterSchafer before, I knew almost nothing about her or her career until today. 🏳️‍⚧️ I love this interview with her: youtu.be/NmlKeMyXpCU Just sad to see so many trolls in the comment replies, "correcting" her pronouns. #LGBTQ
youtu.be
10 Things Euphoria's Hunter Schafer Can't Live Without | GQ
YouTube video by GQ
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 12/01/2026
Another example is the broken default environment setting on mainland regions, leaving us in what feels like a years-long solar eclipse: feedback.secondlife.com/bug-reports/... It's been this way since EEP first rolled out in 2020. How is this still not fixed? @philiprosedale.bsky.social #SecondLife
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 11/01/2026
It sometimes feels like @lindenlab.bsky.social is asleep at the wheel lately. 😕 Case in point: Images on the official #SecondLife wiki have been broken for a month and a half. No fix yet, and no acknowledgment of this ongoing issue: feedback.secondlife.com/web-bugs/p/e... @philiprosedale.bsky.social
A browser screenshot showing part of the "Linden Lab Official:New Linden Homes 2019" page on the official Second Life wiki: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:New_Linden_Homes_2019 Throughout the page are error messages instead of images, stating: "Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination"A browser screenshot showing part of the "Good Building Practices" page on the official Second Life wiki: https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Good_Building_Practices Throughout the page are error messages instead of images, stating: "Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination"
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 10/01/2026
I am invisible / Hiding distress in plain sight / Tormented in secret, within mind / But play at peace before the crowd. #poetry #micropoetry
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 10/01/2026
This is not a slight against allies. We wouldn't survive without them. 🧡 Still: I think it's extremely difficult (maybe impossible) for straight, cisgender people to truly understand what it feels like to live in a world where your gender identity or sexuality (or both) do not match the norm. #LGBTQ
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 06/01/2026
Still one of my favorite songs ever: "The Runners" by #TheNakedandFamous music.youtube.com/watch?v=jLuv... #music
music.youtube.com
The Naked And Famous - The Runners (Lyric Video)
YouTube video by NakedFamousVEVO
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Reposted by Erik Mondrian
Popular Science @popsci.com · 18/12/2025
The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality. And trans lives are grounded in reality. We see y'all. No matter what. www.popsci.com/science/tran...
popsci.com
First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition
Ninety-four percent of participants in a new study stood firm in their trans identity after five years, and "detransitioning" is rare.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 19/12/2025
Do I know who I am? I know where I've been, but that's not the same thing. Or is it? What have I been searching for? What if it's not there to find? What if, in all my wandering, I've learned nothing more than that I'll always feel lost? (Shot in #SecondLife and edited with @gimp.org.web.brid.gy)
A heavily edited shot from Second Life, composed of several superimposed layers showing the same scene and from the same angle: My humanoid, suit-wearing fox avatar standing in the foreground, my back to the camera, as I look down a dark forest path toward a number of tall trees in the distance. On either side of the path, the ground becomes hilly, gently rising (higher on the left) toward the edges of the frame. Above the trees, at the top of the image, is a small patch of night sky, densely dotted with stars, with a larger red glow in the center.

The entire image feels somewhat "unreal" and dreamlike, with parallel streaks of green following the contours of the terrain horizontally across the image; the ground is also flecked with subtle shades of purple and blue, contrasting with the sharpness of the grass, and the trees in the distance are capped by an unnatural blue glow. Around my avatar is a ghostly outline, the result of my stance shifting slightly in between each shot, so that there is a faint suggestion of me looking in multiple directions at once.
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K. Guillory @kgpaints.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
A video I recorded for @reversebutcher.bsky.social ’s art show taking place currently in Ballarat, Australia. #art #vr #secondlife #immersivism #vrchat
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The Life of Sharks @thelifeofsharks.com · 12/12/2025
I’m finding everything very difficult at the moment. I’m sure loads of us are. I don’t think we’re designed to take so much stress and existential anxiety piled upon us every day.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 23/11/2025
Some really interesting comments here: www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/... We often forget that so many things have changed, and changed radically, in just the span of a few decades. We have the world at our fingertips, but at the price of losing what it felt like to be unplugged. #life
reddit.com
From the AskReddit community on Reddit
Explore this post and more from the AskReddit community
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Gwendolyn Ann Smith @gwensmith.com · 20/11/2025
Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It is a day set aside on the 20th of November every year to honor those lost due to anti-transgender violence. This is a day for mourning our loses, and a day to rededicate ourselves to the fight against anti-trans hatred. #TDoR2025 🧵
A transgender pride flag at night, being illuminated by a nearby light source. This is the flag pole near Castro Street in San Francisco.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 07/11/2025
Yesterday I watched, horrified, as a Computer Science grad student proceeded to repeatedly copy + paste a fairly short script into ChatGPT, asking the LLM what the code was doing and how to modify it for an assignment. Not once did the student try to examine or figure out the code themself. 🤨🫠😑
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 03/11/2025
I haven't been to Chipotle in ages, but apparently they still have my number. 📲 ⬇️ I feel like their #marketing team just wanted to see how many emojis they could fit in a single message. 😯🤯 Either that, or someone ate all of the #Halloween candy before hitting send.
A screenshot of an extremely enthusiastic and emoji-filled text from Chipotle, received by me at 11:13 am on October 30, 2025, the day before Halloween:

🚨👻 ATTENTION ALL CREATURES OF THE NIGHT 🌑 THE BOORITO PROPHECY is UPON US 🔮

🎃🔥On Halloween 10/31 🌯 CHIPOTLE 🌯  is summoning ALL burrito-loving ghouls 🧛‍♂️🧟‍♀️ & Rewards Members 👁️‍🗨️💀 to HAUNT their local restaurant 💃 from 3️⃣PM to CLOSE 🌙🪩 bc… 🥁🥁🥁

🌯💸💀 $6 BURRITOS 💀💸🌯

YES U HEARD THAT RIGHT 😱😱 Show up IN COSTUME 🧛‍♂️🧞‍♀️🕵️🧑‍🎤🧑‍🚀🤖 (aka ur most unholy drip 😈), summon ur coven lol 🧙‍♀️, and get ur BOORITO 🌯👻🎃 before it VANISHES 🌫️ into the night 🌚✨

PS our lawyers 🥱 said to tell u text STOP2quit HELP4help
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 19/06/2025
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 26/10/2025
I miss Radio Shack (and Fry's Electronics too). I also just miss that era of tech, before enshittification and before AI, when computers and the Internet felt a lot more empowering, a new frontier to explore, not a corporate minefield of privacy nightmares to contend with. Thank goodness for Linux.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 26/10/2025
I wonder which way the world goes when the wild whispers weaken, wondrous wishes left wanting and withdrawn, wasted in worries that warn and wound and wither, as the wise wear winter on their minds. #poetry #micropoetry
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Auryn @lordpook.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
If you're at BLFC, come check out this screening curated by @poryout.bsky.social and I, with films by @flausch.bsky.social @sparklecats2009.bsky.social @mayabendavid.bsky.social @averycutedog.bsky.social @rainstormsky.com @dozzy.bsky.social @sournoodl.bsky.social @emowolf.bsky.social - Q+A after!
schedule.goblfc.org
New Furry Cinema Showcase (18+) BLFC 2025
Furry film from within. :3 Curated by Auryn (director of _Rukus_, 2018 SXSW selection and one organizer of _Room Party: Furry Art at the Beginning of the World_) and moderated by Pory (director of _F...
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 15/09/2025
Been thinking lately about the "grand romantic gesture" trope of a character declaring their love to someone in a public place, surrounded by strangers. Pretty much all the examples that come to mind are cishet, though. 🤔 A public declaration of love hits different when it's #lgbtq. #filmsky #cinema
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Kelly Turnbull @coelasquid.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
Sometimes we’re unsatisfied with a thing we made because when it only existed in our head, we saw all the things it could have been and when it’s done we know all the things that it isn’t, but we can’t see the way it expands into a million new things when someone else unpacks it in their head. 🖊️🦑
Frustrated little dude gripping a pencil saying “how do I pack this down into something I can actually share?” While swirling rainbows labeled “INFINITE POTENTIAL” float around them.

Little dude frowns at a tiny grey box, exclaiming “all that work for THIS?!”

Little dude shoves the grey box into another little guy’s hands; Frowning, stomping off, and saying “Here you go, I made this, it sucks.”

Second little dude cracks open the box, swirling rainbows project out onto their face.

Second little dude stares in awe at all the swirling rainbows now floating around them.
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 31/08/2025
A gorgeous sunrise over Black Rock City this morning at #BurningMan 2025, featuring the PlayAlchemist camp's 71-foot-tall Grand Pyramid: www.playalchemist.com Taken from the live webcast at 6:36 am PDT: burningman.org/live-webcast/ #BMwebcast
An early morning shot of a sunrise at Black Rock City in the Nevada desert, with the Grand Pyramid in the photo's middle ground, almost directly below the sun. In the foreground, somewhat obscured by distance from the camera and by mist, are a number of people traveling across the landscape, either on foot or by bicycle. Several Mutant Vehicles are there as well: https://burningman.org/event/participate/mutant-vehicles/
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Erik Mondrian @rainstormsky.com · 05/08/2025
Still trying to figure out what it means to be a #writer and an #artist (in various media) when someone can push a button and churn out far more "content" in a day than I could hope to create in a lifetime. #NoAI
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