Today is Tuesday, my friends. You know what that means: Drawing class! Okay, you didn’t actually know that Tuesday means drawing class but it does. For the past week, I’ve been practicing nothing but faces. They’re challenging haha.
While I practice getting my proportions correct, you folks can enjoy these recent stories that caught my eye.
New dating app matches people only if they have good credit scores. 🤣 [Fast Company] — “Love might be blind, but it’s not fiscally irresponsible. At least not if a new dating app has its way. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Score, a new app (and website) for the financially minded, hopes to attract people with “good to excellent” credit who know the importance of monitoring their finances. No one with a credit score of less than 675 is allowed to join.” On a related note, turns out several of my financially independent friends use FIRE dating. Who knew? [Nerd trivia: This is the first time I have ever hyperlinked an emoji.]
Deepfake scammer walks off with $25 million in AI heist. [Ars Technica] — “This incident marks the first of its kind in Hong Kong involving a large sum and the use of deepfake technology to simulate a multi-person video conference where all participants (except the victim) were fabricated images of real individuals. The scammers were able to convincingly replicate the appearances and voices of targeted individuals using publicly available video and audio footage.” Craaaaaa-zy!
Do anything. [Aaron Francis] — “Know that it’s okay to change course once you’ve started. It’s okay to start something and then realize something might be better for you. That’s the beauty of action; it opens paths you wouldn’t have seen earlier.” [Fantastic advice, but one of those annoying sites where every sentence is its own paragraph. Why do people do this? It’s awful to read.]
Reversible and irreversible decisions. [Farnam Street] — “Sometimes you can handle the uncertainty or outcomes. Like trying a new restaurant after reading a review or hearing about it from someone at work. Other times, you want to remove as much uncertainty as possible. You wouldn’t decide to marry someone after one amazing date, buy a car without test driving it, or put all your money into a stock you overheard someone talking about in line at the grocery store.” [Pretty sure this is one of Jim’s favorite concepts.]
I don’t really have a “bonus” video for you today. Instead, I’ll share one of my recent favorite art videos. You’ll probably think it’s a bit lame, but I like it. It’s 20 minutes of a pro artist describing how and why he uses cross-hatching as he demonstrates in real time.
I continue to make progress on my art journey. I don’t practice as much as I ought — maybe three two-hour sessions per week instead of daily 60-minute sessions — and it’s partly because I don’t know what to practice. To that end, I’m building a library of “art exercises” on YouTube (and via photocopied art books). This crosshatching exercise is one of my faves because it’s a cool effect and it’s more difficult than it looks. (Like, that “energy field” crosshatching with the brush pen seems like it should be easy but I cannot get my results to look convincing.)
Okay, that’s it for today. See you all tomorrow!