art for art's sake, ego-wanking for eff's sake.

This morning corrvin sent me a link to a Threads article wherein a woman had made itty bitty dolls of herself representing her annual self from birth on. It's a visual autobiography. The link was given with one of those *squee* type comments, but I was completely appalled. (Corr, don't take it personal-like, I'm not complaining about you. And I know you liked it for the sewing.)

WTF. It's a self-aggrandizing depiction of a woman no one would care about unless they knew her personally. She's not Thomas Jefferson or Hillary Clinton or LeBron James or Taylor Swift. There's really no reason this woman should have an autobiography. At least not while a single person bitches about how idiotic blogs and Twitter are because they talk about things no one cares about.

The fact that this project took the woman person-years of time to complete astounds me--- not that the amount of effort wasn't demonstrative, but that anyone would bother.

It's ugly.

I can spend 3 years of my life hand-dyeing macaroni pieces for a collage recreating my cat's best vomited upchucks, but it's not going to be worthwhile.

I know it's supposed to be art made from craft. But it's not elegant like a piece of handmade furniture. It's not useful like a dress or blanket.

All autobiographies are self-aggrandizing, inherently. But if I were to write one, there would be people asking who did I think I am? And that's how I feel about this.

It was a corollary, not the original Godwin's Law.

I made a minor error. I mistakenly referred to an incident as invoking Godwin's Law. It was actually a corollary.

This is the relevant part (for those who don't follow links): For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress.

It is, according to the wiki, a canonical corollary in that Godwin himself adopted it, and many other people consider this the actual principle of Godwin's Law. (Myself included.)

The original GL was that the likelihood of any conversation including a reference to [genocidal World War II German leadership] approaches 1 (100% likely to happen) as a conversation grows in scope or length.

When someone says "Jews and American Indians have been discriminated against [by people who think like you]." That's perhaps subtle, but you've still implied that someone is a genocidal monster and it will terminate any threads in any well-moderated forum. In strictly moderated forums it would get you booted or banned. In the original USENET the appropriate response is, "Bye." Because there is nowhere the thread can legitimately go from there. It was one of the failings of an unmoderated forum that there was no one who could stop those threads officially.

I froze the thread where it happened and screened any further comments. I'm not going to screen comments on all posts, but I will deal with any incidents that arise.

Roll me a story.

So there's this new DW group, storycubes. It's based on Rory's Story Cubes which is a set of 9 d6 each with different pictures on the faces (total of 54 images). You are supposed to make up a story using all 9 images from your roll.

The group mod rolls for anyone who requests it and the person then posts their story (can't get a new set of cubes until posted previous story).

Based on the pictures shown in the marketing materials and reviews. Based on the images of the requested rolls in the group. I have discerned 53 of 54 images. I have made a pretty good stab at finding out which images go together on each die (there was a mistake I found and I stopped for the evening.)

I'm finding this very intellectually entertaining.

I might have been interested in the Story Cubes themselves if there was a phone app (only Apple phones) or an online flash thing. But the more I look at the combinations other people are getting, the more idiotic this sounds. It's not a coherent prompt. If you could massage your roll in some fashion, perhaps. Or ignore anomalous dice. But I think it would have worked better with 6 d9, so there would be fewer mandatory prompts and so there wouldn't be as many contradictions. And honestly I think it could have used more words. The stuff they chose to include is bizarre... the symbol for Learner's Permit, but not a door or anything food-related or furniture-related.

So mostly I'm treating it like one of those logic problems.

ETA: 6pm Friday
Solved it. Know 53/54 possible images. Have all 9 dice accounted for (one face says _____ for the unknown image).

1: castle tower, credit card, eye, pyramid, rainbow, tree
2: arrow, cane, cellphone, face (mask), lightning bolt, scales
3: face (frown), key, shooting star, tepee, ?, fountain
4: fire, footprint, lock, magnet, sheep, L-learner
5: airplane, apple, flashlight, skyscraper, world, face (smile)
6: beetle, dice, hand, magnifying glass, turtle, cat
7: all-directions arrow, fish, flower, keyhole, parachuter, comedy & tragedy
8: clock, house, lightbulb, quote bubble, fletched arrow, _____
9: bee, book, magic wand, abacus, bridge, moon