Perhaps you have heard of the Streisand Effect, which is where someone tries to suppress a thing (I think the original was Barbra trying to keep people from photographing her mansion or whatnot) and in doing so, attracts waaaayyy more attention than it ever would have, had someone not gone to such lengths to try and hide it in the first place.

When something is pushed very hard in a direction, it induces a big swing exactly the opposite way. It is - physics! Equal and opposite reaction! Such as when a parent (in reality or in a movie) says, “Don’t look in the closet!” Guaranteed there’s gonna be looking in that closet.

This is very useful!

Things can remind a person of their opposites. Shallow scrolling of random videos reminds me how great it is to watch a whole movie. Getting spammed with slop and bait-y headlines reminds me how lovely it is to read a piece of short fiction, start to end, and then sit and think about it for a bit. Weird robo-agents on the phone remind me of how nice it is to converse with a person (the other day I thanked someone on the phone for not being a bot and she laughed and said you’re welcome). Screens make me long for books and the sound of turning pages. And so on.

I am grateful for such reminders. They push us in another direction, like little helper elves, or parents getting us started on the swing so we can pump our legs and keep going on our own.

Neptune Road

A comic about people making a life on a terra-formed Neptune

Things Of The Week

Merriam Webster has a thing where you can see what year words came into use - a lot of them are way earlier than I thought

Oh gosh, all of David Attenborough’s work, searchable and everything. Amazing.

A classic book, and a serious amount of info on how to draw animals

Featured Thing

Brainwaves cartoons collection 1: The Fountain of Stuff at BookShop. This is the first book and they are arranged in the order that I drew them, so here is where you’ll find the peculiar early ones

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you be reminded of something, may that thing remind you of something else, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy

“Wherever we go, we are friends” - Sloth and Manatee