Comics by Reinder: The Naked Truth Sessions

Wednesday

The 114th Greyfriar’s Isle comic just went live for everyone on Planet Nude:

This past week and a half

I got sick again! Possibly exacerbated by my new arthritis meds. It’s too early to say that my three-day episode of needing to stay in bed was caused by those meds, but that’s also possible. The drug in question is Leflunomide, a disease-modifying anti-arthritis drug, and that class of drugs needs to be taken with care and sometimes stopped in a hurry if the side effects are too bad. Leflunomide is toxic to the liver, which really means that it’s giving the liver (an organ that breaks down toxins for a living) more work than it can handle. And that means that I need to avoid alcohol (easy, and I’m becoming a connoisseur of non-alcoholic beers now) and also be careful with paracetamol if I have a headache. My semi-regular headaches respond well to paracetamol, so having that weapon taken out of my armory is a bother. If my blood work is good, I may be able to relax this restriction, but I’m not getting my hopes up that it will be good. This stuff is effective though. If my body tolerates it, there may finally be a path to me playing guitar again.

But enough about that. While I haven’t drawn much outside of the stuff with deadlines (and even that was hard this past week), I did color some old art. Here’s a drawing from 1996 that I colored in Art Studio Pro on iPad, at a very large size, to put that app through its paces a bit:

Sadly, much as I wanted to like Art Studio Pro, I found it very crash prone and full of baffling design decisions. Here’s one. See if you can spot what’s wrong with this picture:I

I’m still planning to do a whole project in Art Studio Pro, but I’ve scaled down my ambitions for what that project should be. It’s not going to involve drawing new, large images from scratch.

Items of Interest

Let’s first catch up on the heartwarming story featured in the previous newsletter:

I thought we could all use that.

All right, that’s enough positivity for now. Take a gander at The Authoritarian Stack (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre), an attempt to map the connections between VC firms, tech firms, government officials and core functions of government, and the attempt by the former two to take over the latter. The danger to democracy is acute and is growing.

What’s the Difference Between AI Glasses and an iPhone? A Helpful Guide for Meta PR (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) - Emmanuel Maiberg, 404. This made me laugh, but it’s well worth highlighting one crucial difference that may not be obvious if you’re as online as, well, me:

Unlike the iPhone and other smartphones, one of the most widely adopted electronics in human history, only a tiny portion of the population has any idea what the fuck these glasses are. I have watched dozens of videos in which someone wearing Meta glasses is recording themselves harassing random people to boost engagement on Instagram or TikTok. Rarely do the people in the videos say anything about being recorded, and it’s very clear the women working at these massage parlors have no idea they’re being recorded. The Meta glasses have an LED light, sure, but these glasses are new, rare, and it’s not safe to assume everyone knows what that light means. 

“Bohemian Rhapsody” turned 50 years old recently. Here it is played on the Floppotron:

And on the subject of music, the music industry in the Netherlands, apparently, has a problem with AI-generated songs with right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee lyrics climbing up the charts. I haven't personally heard any of the songs because I no longer follow the charts like I used to, and even if I did, I would not waste my time on AI-generated facsimiles of music. But a counter-campaign by the venerable feminist group Dolle Mina (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre), who called on listeners to stream music by a singer I hadn't heard of, called Sophie Straat. The song they suggested, “Vrijheid, gelijkheid, zusterschap (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)” (Freedom, Equality and Sisterhood), didn't do much for me initially, but I found her 2020s spin on 1980s Nederpop (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) interesting enough to check out some more of her work and I liked most of her 2023 album Smartlap is niet dood (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) better than that one song. Here's a short film she made featuring three of her songs, presented as a chain of connected narratives:

Even earlier

This week’s blast from the past is Sir, I object! Sir, I object more! (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) (November 19, 2024). Another redraw that was originally drawn by Aggie Janicot:

And the whole page:

See you in a week or two!