ID: Three vertical panels of Japanese animator and producer Hayao Miyazaki frustrated over his writer’s block. First panel shows him working at his table with his back to the us, captioned “I can feel it everyday, the limit of my ability.” Second panel shows hims frustrated, hands above his head with an unlit cigarette unlit in his mouth. Third panel shows him watering his plants.
THIS IS INSTEAD OF TELEPHONING BECAUSE I CANT LOOK YOU IN THE VOICE. I SIMPLY CANNOT GET THAT THING DONE YET NEVER HAVE DONE SUCH HARD NIGHT AND DAY WORK NEVER HAVE SO WANTED ANYTHING TO BE GOOD AND ALL I HAVE IS A PILE OF PAPER COVERED WITH WRONG WORDS. CAN ONLY KEEP AT IT AND HOPE TO HEAVEN TO GET IT DONE. DONT KNOW WHY IT IS SO TERRIBLY DIFFICULT OR I SO TERRIBLY INCOMPETANT.
Dorothy Parker | Telegram to her editor, 28 Jun 1945 | Letters of Note: Vol. 2
Some days we are Dorothy Parker, screaming ALL I HAVE IS A PILE OF WORDS, and/or Hayao Miyazaki, feeling the limit of our ability (albeit temporarily).
For International Women’s Day today, I want you to read these two brilliant articles by my two brilliant friends:
This International Women’s Day, I am thinking of how tired we are by Samantha Cheh. “They were tired of a lot of things. Tired of always being afraid. Tired of wading through stories about dead and abused women. Tired of compensating for emotionally stunted men. Tired of male politicians who act as if “woman” is a concept from space. Tired of never being valued the way a man would be, in every facet of life, but especially pay. Tired of arguing about the inherent value of our humanity and our labour. Maybe, being a woman in 2021 is about balancing the endless, irreconcilable contradictions and tasks set before you, and never having any of that recognised as being valuable and necessary.”
Period leave: A privilege or a basic right? by Surekha Ragavan. “Companies need to understand that it is a natural cycle, and that all women go through this together but in their own unique ways. Personally, I have my moments with cramps so I don't take the leave consistently, but I think it is great to have because I have a lot of friends who suffer terrible cramps.” Also read her excellent Twitter take on the infantilising and demeaning notion of ‘period leave’, and why this must stop.
READING IN MY TABS
Designer, researcher, and educator Danah Abdulla on consumer capitalism, complacent convenience, political‘wokeness’, and why we should all become design dissenters.
“We need a new work culture, one that is larger than company cultures, and one that is not the product of corporate mythologising or the propaganda of internal communications. We need a deep work culture grounded in science and centered on the welfare — financial, psychological, and physical — of working people, not a shallow culture that glorifies bronze age charismatic leadership while downplaying the strength of emergent order that arises from the messiness of social self-governance.”
In 2015 the multi-billionaire Larry Page published an open letter to the internet euphorically heralding a revised future vision for Alphabet / Google. After outlining numerous ideological benefits the letter ended with Larry asking the entirely rhetorical question: What could be better? The question was answering itself, blindly assuming that indeed NOTHING could be better than Google. What if we answered Larry's question? What if the Google management stop firing its AI team members—who predominantly consist of Black women and women of colour? Related: tech firms need Black AI scholars and labour rights.
This person is losing faith in UX — “UX is now "user exploitation.” May I suggest a more justice-oriented approach in design and UX?
Or consider Seven Generations thinking, ask yourselves: “What in my design might cause trauma to begin with? Who could this hurt today? Who could this hurt in the future?” But at the same time you can say, “Who could this help? Who could this assist? Could my design assist the most vulnerable in their ability to cope with the conditions that are causing their vulnerability?”
“And on some dead afternoon / when you’ll likely forget this / as you browse through the vintage / again and again—there it is / what everyone’s given up / just to stay here”.
RESOURCES & TOOLKITS
coveillance.org “is a collective of technologists, organisers, and designers who employ arts-based approaches to build communal counterpower.”
The Sourcebook Project is compiling an objective, unsensationalised catalog of scientific phenomenon that do not make sense yet. And also, an Encyclopaedia of Unknowns. (Thanks Samuel from Cabinet of Wonders!)
30 minutes of relaxing visuals from Studio Ghibli.
Drive around the cities in the world while listening to their radio stations, or if you would just prefer to listen, Radio Garden have thousands of live radio stations around the world.
STATUS BOARD
Reading: Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley and Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail.
Listening: I miss just lingering and walking aimlessly, so having Field Recordings on loop — a podcast where audio-makers stand silently in fields (or things that could be broadly interpreted as fields).
Watching: Sonic Forest, a short film on the jungles of Colombian Pacific and its rich ecosystem.
Food & Drink: Char kueh tiao, and a friend sent over some delicious Earl Grey cookies from Doubletreats!