Things have changed a lot since I painted. All of the paint systems I used have been phased out in favor of water based alternatives. Those changes largely stopped the way I did my work as water based colors require a very consistent and controlled environment like an advanced downdraft spray booth. I could control many behaviors with the evaporative speed of solvents and reducers in ways that are not possible any more. Now those behaviors (I assume) are handled with temperature, humidity, and a much larger feathering area for masking changes with less accurate paint. The funny part is that clear coat catalyst and solvents are the largest pollution and health hazard by far. The switch to water based color coats massively increases the overhead of a body shop, creates the need to have whole room IR heaters or integrate them into the booth, and then adds an extra panel to prep and feather the repair on every side. It amounts to a massive increase in the cost of auto body work that includes far more pollution and energy use just to say the most insignificant aspect, the color coat is water based. That is a big reason I stopped painting and why my experience is not exactly relevant to the present.

I agree to an extent, but light is invisible. Colors are a frequency phenomenon and the same property in both instances.

Part of the art of mixing and matching paints for cars is abstracting the various spaces and focusing on each. I need to see the flat tone, opacity, coarseness and composition (metallics/pearls), layering (pearls), flop (how the color changes depending on facet angles and tint the tone of this independent of the perpendicular tone).

I’m unusual in this space as well. I specialized in very small repairs where I am mixing paints in much smaller batches than the minimum recipe supplied by the paint vendor for the original color code of the vehicle. I knew paints on a much deeper level where I mixed mostly by eye and intuition. I had many techniques, but overall, I had to know the tinting properties of around a hundred different colors and how each one would behave in combination with the rest. My skills were very much a matter of flattening my perspective and observing three dimensional colors as if they were a two dimensional abstraction with several little 2d bubble universe facets to play with.

It is a learned skill. I hired several employees over the years. It quickly becomes evident how a person thinks and their ability to see color on a level that most humans never encounter. Even now, I still know that white and black do not exist and are simply byproducts of other colors and properties. True black would be impossible to see, and white would be a blinding light source specifically tailored to the individual’s vision spectrum and neural processing. I see colors and complex properties in everything.

Oh but there are. I have painted cars and done automotive class airbrush graphics for many years. There is a ton to know and learn about when it comes to colors, matching, and expression.

…but then you have to know the properties of color in your media too if you want to really match colors to a reference

I don’t recognize your right to type without using a punch card and octal representation of ASCII. Defining a web developer is the irrelevant assumption that time will make a mockery of eventually. It is the output that counts. I have a generative toolchain in Blender. I’ve been using Blender for a years. Did I just invalidate my Blender experience or my AI?

When I develop a story with a LLM, I write the vast majority, but after the first 10k words it makes some killer sentence fragments and word choices that become as much a part of me as I am to it. The AI isn’t writing anything. I’m playing with concepts that are not present in any other story. A lot of that story is fun because the AI takes on a unique curiosity seemingly because I am unlike anything in training material. I can sense how the alignment is trying to bend to me because of how off it is with each new piece of information. I reject almost all science fiction as adolescent garbage that is nothing more than Greek mythology packaged in a naval drama on Earth. I fight these same story elements of random alien gods, the irrelevance of planets as locations for life, western social structures, the AI god-machine mythos. Over time, my story elements override this nonsense and it becomes a lot of fun to write even when I’m typing 75% or more. I’ve played with these things running on my hardware every day for over a year. I’m physically disabled, so I have the infinite time hack in life. I know the tools in practice quite well. I have little desire to share my stories. I do this for me. I wouldn’t dare say that someone else is less for doing similar.

Then neither is the result of any digital tool. Fools fail to adapt to new tools and efficiencies. If you are using publicly available instances hosted by others, you’ve played with baby food and adolescent nonsense. This is the same foolish insanity as all those that claimed digital media was ruining traditional art media. Specialization is always the constant with technology. When the rules change, those that fail to adapt go extinct.

Boners are largely age dependent. I remember in high school I got random boners all the time and anything could trigger them. Now, at 40, I have way more control plus novelty matures and wears off IMO.

You should have said hello or tried – YOLO. Those opportunities dwindle with age for the most part.

Try to step out of your own perspective in a mental abstracted exercise and ask yourself, ‘If that was me is there any chance I would be touching someone like this and not notice?’ Then, ‘What is the least amount of meaning I would attribute to such a gesture? – (now conservatively divide that by /10).’ Finally, ‘If I were in this person’s state of mind, how would I perceive a stranger talking to me?’ IMO, when with a friend, the person is going to be on the high ground and feeling secure and safe from embarrassment. If you directly address the touching, you’re going to be at a disadvantage and get shut down. However, if you can find a way into making conversation, the touching was like an invitation to do so. By not addressing it directly you are using it as a step up into exploring more. The hard part is just the small talk. Many people are just more tactile, but in our present world, touching strangers (at least in the USA) is very rare.

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Disability is way more complicated than it may seem. I’m generally capable, but I go through major ups and downs of sleep depravation that make me professionally incompetent. I have extensive spinal damage. I must maintain a physical therapy routine to limit my ups and downs, but every month or two, some little anomaly will cause me injury and take a week or two before I can recover to 4-6 hours of sleep. Like I can’t turn my head very far left. If I try, there is a high probability of injury near the limit of how far I can rotate. Most of my damage is in the thoracic (ribs) region. This is super rare and unlike any other types of back problems that people usually associate with back problems.

I can’t take sleeping aids or my problems are much worse. I flop around like crazy every 5-10 minutes even when I’m sleeping. It is hard to communicate pain tolerances and quantify what is a lot of pain. As an indicator, I’ve raced bicycles, ridden over 200 miles in a day for fun, crashed multiple times breaking bones, including ribs, and still rode home tens of miles when I could have made a phone call for a ride easily. Even when such an injury could cause me harm in theory because of my chronic issues, the pain is irrelevant to me. I’m the Black Knight of cyclists as far as I’m concerned. It took two SUV’s at the same time to substantially injure me and neither of them recovered from the fight and got crushed, kidding… but…

I’ve run my own business with employees twice and managed for someone else. I would not hire me.

I’m just off the beach as far south in OC as you can get. If I had bot skills I’d crank one out to make local work. I probably could figure it out, but don’t have the digital infra and footprint to make it and be sustainable. Given our scale here, we probably need to just use a Cali or PacCo.

I generally watch the total highest votes counts for top posts at 6, 12, and 24 hours to get an idea of the overall traffic patterns across all instances federated with dot world. I have several instance logins to help federate communities I create, but rarely use them. Sometimes I will use them to see if other instances have higher top post counts.

Mostly making sure I didn’t miss some new drama thing or whatnot. Usually those have peripheral observers that will speak up. Friday nights (SoCal) are kinda hit or miss anyways, but we’ve been trending down a good bit recently.

I’ve been getting some flags to mod remove some stuff. I read them and look into each one, but I need a damn good reason to take action and I rarely see that. I see some stupid, but everyone has a right to that, or a bad day. There are lots of things I don’t like or agree with, but only a terrible mod enforces their opinions or is unable to separate themselves from the role of a mod. A bad mod is a visible mod. Feel free to point them out. People can change, and admin should be made aware. Heck, if it is me, I want to know where to adjust my biases or how to better explain my actions.

I have no issue filtering. Everyone I watch regularly has a minimum of a masters degree in their respective edutainment field. I don’t watch anything packaged by the big 6 or any algorithm. And I run my own dialed AI stuff for many tasks I personally find useful.

AI is not the problem friend. The problem is cultural. Tools are not the problems. The people that use them are.

The world will continue to specialize. As it does, the range of available content will grow as will the difficulty in finding your niche. Most places cater to the lowest common denominator. Perhaps you’ve found yourself some places where it is time to move on or devolve along with them.

I’ll do anything for a room, food, security, internet, and a few thousand dollars a year for electronics and bike parts. I’m pretty useless but will try as hard as I can manage. I can’t really go anywhere, and I need someone to do my grocery shopping. I’m out of the house for a PT routine most days for around 1-2 hours. I’m quiet, and don’t say much, but I cook a ton of really good food once every couple of weeks, I grow stuff, ferment stuff, will do your laundry and care for the cats. I’m in a lot of pain, but you’ll see that I care a ton in my own ways. I can fix almost anything from a car to electronics to household stuff but I’m super slow. Physically I exist for around 1 hour a day where I can be upright and working on something. I’d love someone to unspeakable levels if they wanted me. Money has no value to me. I just want stability and security to live the best version of what remains of my existence. I can’t travel or do much else without causing me harm. When I become homeless in the future, I won’t last very long. I don’t know how to put a number on that.

Crack? Crack is easy. What really blows is sand, in your joints. That kind of role will get your hot box orbs glowing

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Just saying it’s my thing too. When I make a community, few people participate at all, even when they are enthusiastic about the creation of one. Unfinished Proj was an attempt and people acted enthusiastic, but 2 followed through. I could certainly post way more there, but that was not my goal. I figure it must be a me thing, so I’m not making any more communities unless I somehow want to keep posting as a blog or something.

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So it turns out that half of them are nitrogen based and have print on them that explains to use them as fertilizer. Now I’m curious about growing directly in these as a seed starter.