Love & Work
A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
Like Coltrane, I need to feel as if "I'm after something". It's the reach, the stretch, that reminds me of the power that is mine. What are you stretching for? As my friend and colleague Liz Solomon would ask, what is your superpower?
Happy Friday.
Futures Thinking, Learning
10 “futurism fallacies” that have bedeviled earlier predictions
"One of the biggest fallacies is imagining that future society will be just like present-day society, only with more gadgets. 'You can’t just project a technology forward, you also have to think about it in the context of all other technologies also advancing over the same period of time,' co-author Steven Novella says. 'So we won’t be traveling in space in 500 years, our genetically-modified cyborg descendants will be traveling in space in 500 years. And you have to include that as part of your calculation.' Despite the checkered history of futurism, Novella thinks it’s an important pursuit that deserves more attention. 'If you’re living your life in this brief little window of time, without any sense of where you are in history, you could lose sight of what’s important, you could lose the ability to adapt nimbly to changes in technology, to changes in culture, to make decisions about the future,' he says. 'So I do think there’s a lot of benefit to futurism as an academic discipline, we just have to be realistic about it.'”
Article: Can Society Learn From the Mistakes of Futurism?
Gender, Society
Eleanor Herman on the patriarchy’s timeless demonization of powerful women
The Salem Witch Trials
"Transforming powerful women into green-faced witches and snake-haired monsters serves a dual purpose: it simultaneously diminishes the power of those who have escaped the patriarchal boundaries on their place and also discourages other women from following in their path. Who in their right mind would want to be chopped to pieces like Hypatia, Anne, or Marie? Who would want to be trashed in the media like Clinton, Gillard, and Harris?
"Hillary Clinton has been accused of participating in ritual sex magic and attending a 'witch’s church' (whatever that is) with her female friends. By early 2019, right-wing religious groups were accusing socialist representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of belonging to 'a coven of witches that cast spells on Trump 24 hours a day' (which actually might explain a lot).
"Well might we wonder what was truly going in Hillary Clinton’s scary basement with her sinister private email server when she was secretary of state. Flickering torches on the walls? Naked crazed dancers smeared with blood? Female Democrats, dressed in fawn skins like maenads, waving ivy-bound sticks and muttering incantations? Stolen penises of Republican politicians and Tucker Carlson, squirming around in a box, eating oats and corn?" - Eleanor Herman
Book Excerpt: A Brief History of Calling Women Witches
Design, Social Messaging
A campaign to give designers tools and information needed to face the climate crisis with clients, and a professional support network to help
"Design Declares – a climate emergency declaration campaign – has launched, seeking to position designers alongside 'policy makers, campaigners and scientists' in the climate action movement.
"The campaign targets communication, digital, industrial, and service designers and aims to encourage them to take action through eight 'Acts of Emergency'."
"Some might question why designers deserve to sit among policy makers and scientists during climate crisis conversations. The answer is that '80% of a products environmental footprint is predetermined at the design phase', according to (founding member of Urge Collective) Sophie Thomas." - Abbey Bamford
Article: Design Declares Campaign Hopes to Kick-Start Industry Into Climate Action
Marketing, Direct Mail
Why many marketers are shifting away from paid digital ads toward direct mail
Our clients know that we we often include old-fashioned snail mail in our media mix. This article does a good job of explaining why.
Article: Why the Surprising Rise of Direct Mail Is No Surprise at All
Packaging, Circular Economy
Alara Ertenü introduces water-resistant ‘packioli’
"Addressing the issue of plastic packaging, Turkish designer Alara Ertenü uses natural artichoke leaves and peapod bioplastics to create ‘Packioli,’ a series of 100% biodegradable packaging for commercial soap. The goal behind the zero-waste wraps is to eliminate plastic packaging and, at the same time, meet the hygiene, logistics, and endurance needs of commercial soap brands and businesses. By using artichoke leaves, the biomaterial designer tackles the alarming problem of artichoke waste, with about 80% of each artichoke thrown out – especially in the west of Turkey." -
Article: ‘Packioli’ is a -Resistant Soap Packaging Made of Artichoke + Peapod Bio-Wraps
Social Messaging, Graphic Design
A crowd-sourced collection of overlooked graphic design
"The original concept for what is now The People’s Graphic Design Archive came out of my books, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design and A Colorful Life: Gere Kavanaugh, Designer. I saw what was being preserved in archives, and realized there was so much incredible material that I came across in my research but there was no place for this material to go. I was frustrated. I could see inklings of other things that should be researched, but there’s not enough time, and not enough researchers. And even if you cover all this material, most of the time, there’s no place where it’s going to be preserved where people are going to know about it.
"I remember sitting in a meeting at LACMA in 2014 (they had this community of curators and design historians I was a part of), and I realized, Oh my god, there’s so much more they could collect! But how would they even know about it? What am I going to do? That’s when the idea dawned on me for a crowd-sourced virtual collection." - Louise Sandhaus
Article: The People’s Graphic Design Archive is Standing Guard for Overlooked Design History
Cool Tool
Now we can follow birds as they migrate
Last week I told you that the hummingbirds had left our garden. This week, wondering where they went, I found this new website just posted by Audubon.
Smiles. I can now confirm that today the Ruby Throated Hummingbird (the only hummingbird species found east of the plains) has largely left the northeast. Today, on their way to southern Mexico and Costa Rica, they are congregating around the Gulf of Mexico and central Mexico. The green represents their summer range, and the blue their winter.
Have fun. The site tracks over 450 bird species.
Website: Bird Migration Explorer
One-liners
Article: Is the print newspaper comics page in trouble?
Article: How independent bookstores help in the fight against book banning and why it matters
Article: Scorecard grades toilet paper brands in terms of climate change impact
Playlist
Last Saturday, the 24th of September, Pharoah Sanders died at the age of 81.
"Over his influential career, Pharoah Sanders has shaped his own sonic world that encompasses the primal wails and fierce energy of late John Coltrane and the stomping R&B of his Little Rock youth, Asian modes and Moroccan grooves, while balancing his explosive improvisations with gentle ballads of sublime simplicity. Saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described Pharoah as 'probably the best tenor player in the world.' Albert Ayler famously said: 'Trane was the Father, Pharoah was the Son, I am the Holy Ghost.'
"Sanders appeared on nine of Coltrane’s Impulse! releases from 1965 to 1967, including the timeless 1965 masterpieces Meditations and Ascension as well as Coltrane’s last studio recording, Expression. He has recorded over 30 albums as a leader and made critical contributions to the work of Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and McCoy Tyner.
"We explore saxophone legend Pharoah Sanders in five key songs." - Ross Eustice
1. Pharoah Sanders: “The Creator Has a Master Plan"
2. Alice Coltrane: "Journey In Satchidananda"
3. Pharoah Sanders: "Astral Traveling"
4. John Coltrane: "The Father And The Son And The Holy Ghost"
5. Pharoah Sanders: "Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt"
Article: Pharoah Sanders In 5 Songs
Image of the Week
"Pollen of Lilium auratum showing single sulcus (monosulcate), shot with a scanning electron microscope"
This is a grain of pollen of a Mountain Lilly flower, native to Japan. It makes me think of the work of a textile artist. And it makes me think of a vulva.
"Pollen is a powdery substance produced by seed plants. It consists of pollen grains (highly reduced microgametophytes), which produce male gametes (sperm cells). Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of gymnosperms. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte."
Life rules. We don't.
Wiki Post: Pollen
What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
If you get value from Love & Work, please pass it on.
|
