All posts by keith

Art, books, People Who Made America Great

Tom Sawyer


Today in history, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was copyrighted by Mark Twain.

I haven’t read this since I was a kid, but a lot of it stuck with me.
This is part of my People Who Made America Great series.

The novel has elements of humor, satire and social criticism; features that later made Mark Twain one of the most important authors of American literature. Mark Twain describes some autobiographical events in the book. The novel is set around Twain’s actual boyhood home of Hannibal, near St. Louis, and many of the places in it are real and today support a tourist industry as a result.

Art, comics

Steve Ditko RIP

I didn’t know Steve Ditko. I only met him through the pages of Spider-man, Dr. Strange, Hawk and Dove. In later years he developed Shade the Changing Man, and squirrel Girl for the big companies. His other characters include Mr. A, the Question, and many more.
He became a recluse and declined interviews in the 80sI think, and worked mostly on his own B&W comics.
He was found dead in his apartment on June 29th, and may have been dead for 2 days according to the police.

Here’s one from one of his Mr. A comics, and a tribute I did as a portrait of a friend.

Ditko
Ditko Mr. A
Damien as Dr. Strange
Damien as Dr. Strange Ditko Tribute

books, SF, Space

Killing Gravity

Great SF book. Quick read.

[showbookcover isbn=”B01MYM808E” action=”amazon”]

Mars Xi can kill you with her mind, but she’ll need more than psychic powers to save her in Killing Gravity, the thrilling science fiction space adventure debut by Corey J. White.
Before she escaped in a bloody coup, MEPHISTO transformed Mariam Xi into a deadly voidwitch. Their training left her with terrifying capabilities, a fierce sense of independence, a deficit of trust, and an experimental pet named Seven. She’s spent her life on the run, but the boogeymen from her past are catching up with her. An encounter with a bounty hunter has left her hanging helpless in a dying spaceship, dependent on the mercy of strangers.
Penned in on all sides, Mariam chases rumors to find the one who sold her out. To discover the truth and defeat her pursuers, she’ll have to stare into the abyss and find the secrets of her past, her future, and her terrifying potential.
Art, books

On Doing Nothing: Finding Inspiration in Idleness By Roman Muradov

Not just about doing nothing, but about how doing stuff other than your art can help with it. I, also, read his graphic story Jacob Bladders, which is interesting, esp. the art.

[showbookcover isbn=”B079Q98MLF” action=”amazon”]

inventions, inventors, People Who Made America Great

Samuel Morse–Inventors Series 2

Samuel Morse
Samuel Morse

Samuel Morse invented the telegraph, which was patented on June 20, 1840. He held patents for several other electromagnetic improvements, and was a fine artist as well. His political views were a non starter for me. He advocated for slavery, and was anti-immigration, among other things, but he did have some shining accomplishments in spite of that.
Here’s his Wikipedia article.

inventions, inventors, People Who Made America Great

Lloyd Augustus Hall–Inventors Series 1

Lloyd Hall
Lloyd Hall

Born today (or the 20th, or 21st depends on where you look) Lloyd Augustus Hall. African American scientist who amassed 59 patents in food preservation.
Not much online about him, but here’s the Wikipedia article.
It was, also hard to find a picture. The drawing is from the first of only 2 that I found. Both are real small, and look like they come from some kind of yearbook, or company thing.
Couple more links:
African American Scientists Page
Web Archive of Inventor. org page

books, Uncategorized

Money and Work Unchained by Charles Hugh Smith

Great book. I was a little slow getting into it, but it panned out well. You can read from the blurb below what it’s about, so if you’re into economics, interested in the why nots of Universal Basic Income, want to know how we can change our relationship to money and work, this is a good book for that.

[showbookcover isbn=”B077S8PJ5Y” action=”amazon”]

The current conventional-wisdom view of our soon-to-be future is rose-tinted: automation will free millions of people from the drudgery of work, then by taxing the robots doing all the work, we can pay everyone Universal Basic Income (UBI), enabling a life of leisure and artistic pursuit for all. The result: A future of Universal Happiness.
But is this accurate? Is this what UBI is actually capable of doing?
More importantly, is this what we want?
And even more importantly: will this “future” be our best future? Will it account for and manage the practicalities of work, money and automation, given the limits of endless growth on a finite planet?
Money and Work Unchained drags the now-popular concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) from the shadows of Pundit blather into a harsh, illuminating light, and in doing so presents an entirely new view of the future that upends our conventional understanding of work and money.
This book lays out a practical pathway that realigns work, money and human fulfillment into a sustainable system that sheds the inequalities and injustices of the status quo in favor of a human-scale way of living