Category

Ecology

Designing for Beauty, Sufficiency, and Collective Care – Part 2b: What is Solarpunk?

This is the second section in Part 2 of my recent grad school design paper in which I explore two contemporary, post-capitalist movements that have much to offer our creative endeavor to imagine a new, ecologically sensitive design story. Degrowth and solarpunk are neither finished experiments nor cautionary tales but living, still-unfolding proposals, argued over…

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Designing for Beauty, Sufficiency, and Collective Care – Part 2a: What is Degrowth?

This is the first section in Part 2 of my recent grad school design paper in which I explore two contemporary, post-capitalist movements that have much to offer our creative endeavor to imagine a new, ecologically sensitive design story. Degrowth and solarpunk are neither finished experiments nor cautionary tales but living, still-unfolding proposals, argued over…

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Designing for Beauty, Sufficiency, and Collective Care – Part 1d: The Design Institutes of China

This is the fourth section in Part 1 of my recent grad school design paper in which I explore four laboratories of non-capitalist and postsocialist design. Please find the preceding sections below if you’d like to catch up: Introduction Part 1a: The Designed Object as Comrade in Constructivist Russia Part 1b: Advertising as Cultural Strategy…

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Designing for Beauty, Sufficiency, and Collective Care – Part 1c: Design in Cuba: Sufficiency and Resourcefulness in Action

This is the third section in Part 1 of my recent grad school design paper in which I explore four laboratories of non-capitalist and postsocialist design. Please find the preceding sections below if you’d like to catch up: Introduction Part 1a: The Designed Object as Comrade in Constructivist Russia Part 1b: Advertising as Cultural Strategy…

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Use-Value Score Calculator: Notes On A Recent Grad School Project

I recently turned in two projects for a grad school class called Emerging Media, which is a graduate seminar that focuses on emerging technological advancements as they relate to the Communication Design industry and design-related fields. Perhaps not surprisingly, one of the “emerging technologies” the instructor introduced the class to was generative AI and for…

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The Judgement and Salvation of the Lone Star Tick: Mammals, Meat, and Non-Human Prophets

“The central theme in the prophecy of Joel, one of the 12 minor prophets (dōdekaprophēton), is that the Day of the Lord (yōm ădȏnay) is at hand (chs. 2–3). […] Joel utilizes the concept contextually for his contemporaries, using the locust swarms to point to the Day of the Lord as a day of both…

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The Theo-Aesthetic World of William Morris: Introduction

This is the introduction to a paper on William Morris I am writing for a MFA class, the rough draft of which I recently submitted.  Introduction As generative AI floods our screens with astonishingly strange deepfakes and algorithms continue to commodify creativity, a quiet rebellion has been blooming: Gen Z “Luddites” ditch smartphones for flip…

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I Hate COPS Because I Love COPS

“As an occupation, policing necessarily involves people in a violent institution, demands they forfeit their freedom to a hierarchical chain of command and constraints imposed by their oath of office, and asks them to participate in an idolatrous view of the nation-state as the place where God’s action in history is primarily to be experienced…

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Losing Oneself: Brief Reflections on Identity, Roles, and Alienation

“Although the social structures in the contemporary world are less rigid than in ancient cultures, there are still many pre-established functions or roles that people readily identify with and which thus become part of the ego. This causes human interactions to become inauthentic, dehumanized, alienating. Those pre-established roles may give you a somewhat comforting sense…

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