# week 33 of 2025 **August 11-17** ![[Blecha.png]] [Chelsea Blecha](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rlwRzL)created color and lighting studies for the Bad Guys 2 movie. She has some great images on her ArtStation page. Everything is so warm and stylized. I particularly like this because I'm fascinated with surreal images with one object completely out of context. I'm sure it is a still shot of an energetic sequence of the car making a big jump. However, I prefer to see it as a world where citizens are casually comfortable with cars just sort of floating in space like that. Just another Tuesday afternoon. --- Anyway, this has been a busy week preparing for school to start. I'm looking forward to meeting the students instead of spending all my time doing the prep work. I've been building class sites, updating syllabi and schedules, creating new assignments. Soon I get to hang out with junior artists and put this stuff into action. ### simpler news It is so easy to get overwhelmed by all the news out there. Social media and the endless scroll can help you lose time and mental acuity. Plus, so many sites have advertising that somehow gets past all the ad-blocking software. Visually and mentally overwhelming. [News Minimalist](https://www.newsminimalist.com) uses AI to collect the most significant articles at any given time. You get a short blurb and links to the actual articles. Easy to quickly scan through and move on. Just discovered it and am enjoying so far. I also really like using [Brutalist.Report](https://brutalist.report) to see the most important recent headlines in a clean, efficient manner. I also subscribe to a ton of RSS feeds using [Feedly](https://feedly.com) and a custom-built theme to block out extraneous clutter. ### distractions [Orbo](https://jontopielski.itch.io/orbo) is a fun little game that I've been playing this week. You can download for Windows or play in the browser. Simple concept that is kind of addicting. [AM Ambient](https://amambient.com) streams gentle, warm ambient music in the browser to have as background sounds while working. It is _reeeeally_ slow and mellow so I need something more upbeat while working. Still, worth adding to my list of [[ambient sounds]]. --- ### people i want to know I just updated my [[now]] page and took a look the [nownownow page](https://nownownow.com/about) that Derek Sivers created to help people start the process. It is organized into categories now, so you can see people from your part of the world that are doing now pages as well. I found a few people that are geographically near me that seem to be pretty cool individuals. Making a list of their sites so I can go back and learn more when I have the time. - [Jack Baty](https://baty.net) - [BinaryDigit](https://binarydigit.city) - [Jesse Dorsey](https://jessedorsey.com) - [Derek Mohr](https://onemohrti.me) - [Desi M. Slaughter](https://desimslaughter.com/about/)