none-bones-bullshit-wzxef

Handmade is supposed to have fingerprints

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 22:51:33 GMT

Artists have hands. (Most of them.)

There is an increasingly stupid conversation happening around art right now.

On one side, there are people insisting that anything made with artificial intelligence is automatically soulless garbage. On the other hand, there are people typing “beautiful gothic woman with flowers, highly detailed” into a generator, putting the result on a coffee mug, and calling themselves small-batch artisans.

Neither of these positions is especially useful.

I use AI.

Obviously. It helped me wrestle this blog post out of the swamp of half-formed thoughts living in my brain. I use it to organize ideas, research things, help with writing when my words are present but refusing to line up properly, and occasionally explain why some bizarre piece of hardware from Temu does not fit together despite having seventeen plastic components and no instructions.

That does not mean it made my art.

It did not clean the bones. It did not wrap the wire. It did not drill through a piece of wood while trying not to drill through my own hand. It did not stare at a collection of chandelier crystals, bells, stones, plant cuttings, and suspicious objects from the beach until they began to make sense together.

The distinction is not whether a person used technology.

Artists have always used tools. Cameras are tools. Photo-editing software is a tool. A circular saw is a tool. I personally own several tools capable of removing a finger, and nobody has accused the saw of making my art for me.

The real questions are: Who made the creative decisions? Who performed the work? And are they being honest about it?

Etsy’s stated policy allows sellers to offer artwork created with their own prompts and AI tools, provided the AI is disclosed. Etsy describes these pieces as seller-designed work, which puts a computer-generated image beside objects designed by a person and produced by a manufacturing partner.

Legally and commercially, maybe those things fit beneath the same umbrella.

Emotionally? No.

A handmade object contains evidence.

A small asymmetry may exist, where a hole wandered slightly to the left on a pendant. A piece of copper carries the toothy bite marks of pliers. A painted surface may have a stubborn cat hair embedded in it, creating a one-of-a-kind mixed-media experience I absolutely intended.

Even when the work is clean, the object carries a history of decisions. I changed my mind here. I broke something there. I added a bell and then removed it because it sounded less like a tiny woodland spirit and more like a gas-station door.

That history matters to me.

Recently, zine artists have been arguing about the same thing. Some see AI as fundamentally at odds with the slow, scrappy, accessible process of making a zine by hand. Others use it around the edges- for coding, layout help, or tasks that make publishing possible without replacing the actual writing and artwork.

I understand both reactions.

There is something deeply irritating about watching corporations scrape up human creativity, process it into a product, and sell “efficiency” back to the people whose labor made it possible. Artists are already expected to work for exposure, compete with mass-produced imports, feed algorithms, create constant content, photograph everything beautifully, and somehow make enough money to buy groceries.

Now they are also expected to compete with machines that can produce two hundred vaguely witchy mushrooms before I've even finished looking for the pair of pliers I was holding thirty seconds ago.

But purity tests are not especially helpful either.

Disabled artists use tools. Neurodivergent artists use tools. Poor artists use whatever is available. A person can use AI to make a task accessible without handing over the entire creative process. The problem is not that nobody should ever receive assistance from a machine.

The problem is replacing the person and pretending nothing valuable was lost.

Bones & Bullshit is handmade because the hand matters.

Not because hands are morally pure. Mine are currently dry, scratched, and probably have glue on them. Very morally grey, I'd say.

The hand matters because it connects the idea to a body. A person stood somewhere, during an actual portion of their finite life, and made the thing.

That is what you are buying from an artist.

Not just an object.

Evidence that somebody was here.

Vibe: Feeling like you need to know and do it all.

Sat, 30 May 2026 03:43:36 GMT

This Week's Mantra:

I do not need to do or know everything.

I need to recognize patterns, eliminate the nonsense,

and choose the best next move for me,

and read the damn label TWICE.

This mantra is a reminder that competence does not require perfect certainty.

Most of the time, we do not need every single detail before we act.

We need to slow down enough to notice what kind of situation we are in, how we feel inside, what information actually matters, and who it matters for. We also need to ignore panic-brained assumptions and distractions.

And then, we need to make the NEXT best reasonable decision.

The reasonable decision for ourselves.

Recognizing patterns.

What does that mean?

Well... looking for the familiar. Asking yourself, "Have I seen a situation like this in the past?", "Does this remind me of something?", "What shape is the problem?", and "Where are the goddamn trees!?" ( Maybe check the forest. ).

Eliminating the nonsense involves clearing away extra noise and clutter clogging up your senses, doing away with the unnecessary obligations, undue and unneeded pressures such as perfectionism, divesting yourself of absolutisms or half-truths, and getting rid of anything that makes the situation at hand, the moment that is now or tomorrow, bigger or more confusing than it already is.

An example- You're a very exhausted mother of a tween and teen, an artist, an educator at a middle school, and you are constantly feuding with your very dramatic body, AND you have two cats. Do NOT go rescue a cat off of your porch, Just don't.* That would NOT be your next step. Got it? Yes? Cool.

*If you have already made this decision just know- that I understand.

Choosing the next best move.

This is basically you giving yourself permission to not solve your entire fucking future right this instant. You just have to decide what action makes sense right now. Does that require exercising some prioritizing? Yep. Is that a huge energy tax for some of us? Yeah. Make one of your buddies do more than just bitch about their day at work to you. It's okay. Take up space. Get them to do the damn dishes for the night and sit your butt down, be horizontal, stick your legs up a wall... whatever makes you comfortable. And have a think, a write, a conversation if you have a victim, and decide- What is more important?

Examples of "right now" type decisions for you to view:

Folding your laundry or completing your exam review ...

Petting that kitty until he says stahp or eating life-sustaining food for the first time in 10 hours

(who does a thing like forget to eat?) ...

Watching neighborhood drama

unfold from your porch or reading that book Darcy wrote about ADHD...

Fuuuuuck, I don't remember the title.*

And YES! Read the label twice, thrice if you must! Carry the damn label with you to the store if you must. Take a pic if you have such a device to do so.

Sometimes the problem is not about intelligence or how "smart" we are. It isn't always about effort, attitude, or preparation.

Sometimes we move too quickly. We skip a key word or detail, click the wrong thing, misread the time zone for the proctored online exam that may, or may not, be in an hour and 10 minutes- or in 10 minutes. XoX

Maybe we just assumed we understood the instructions.

The second read is not a failure. The 35th review before the exam doesn't mean you don't already know the material. (But also, remember we talked about prioritizing... 35 reviews is anxiety. Seek your school counselor. Or whoever, I don't know your life.)

Moral of the rambling: Double check things. That's your safety rail. But don't do it while you're hyperventilating. Go get some cold water, an ice pack, a cool breeze, cold shower (do you see the pattern?), whatever, take some slow evenly spaced breaths, and when you inhale squeeze your butt-cheeks. Release slowly and exhale.

This mantra is about staying grounded, reducing friction, and trusting in yourself to work through life's pop-up windows and side-quests one simple step at a time.

Goodnight, my dear future readers and passers-by.