Category

Ecology

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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Pennsylvania: Reclaiming the Land of Religious Anarchy

“Obedience presupposes duality: one who speaks and one who listens; one who knows and one who is ignorant; a ruler and ruled ones. Religious groups who broke away from the spirit of dependency and obedience cherish different values such as mutuality and interdependence…The main virtue of an authoritarian religion is obedience…God’s love and righteousness are…

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Nobody is spared from the logic of a mode of production built on exploitation: Tad Delay and the Future of Denial

“Nobody is spared from the logic of a mode of production built on exploitation. As Lacan put it, capitalism is the discourse or algorithm in which, instead of communicating to another person as a person, we are forced to negotiate through cloudy signifiers. We are workers relating to other workers in an environment mediated by…

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Too Many Unnecessary Things Everywhere: Brian McLaren, Kohei Saito, Dieter Rams and Use-Value

“As people who have been shaped by the current empire–first the European, and then Euro-American, and then the global economic empire that we’re a part of now–we have to realize our survival now depends on disentangling our identities from the values and assumptions of this empire.“ –Brian McLaren The above quote comes from an interview…

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Pictures Are Worth a Thousand Feelings, I think: Media Ecology, Feelings, and the Decline of Abstract Rational Thought

“Regardless of what is being depicted in a photograph, the form itself evokes in us a particular pattern of intuitive, holistic thinking and emotion—the exact opposite of the pattern evoked by printed works. We have all heard the cliché “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Implied in this sentiment is the idea that images…

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