Thank you Pete Souza: “The Way I See It”. My heart hurts.
– Wow, this is powerful: COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool
– Support people in need affected by the horrible explosion. My friend Youmna is running a fundraiser and has networks in Beirut that will make sure that the money goes where it’s most needed. Donate here. (Youmna is one of the most impressive humans I know. She is all love and started Live Love Beirut. Hear her Story.)
– Watch Popcorn Popping in Super Slow Motion (100,000 fps)
– Sobering: How the Pandemic Defeated America
– We need to learn from cats: A cat is content to be a cat.
– This is a breathtaking commercial.
– This Brooklyn home! Gah! Look at the skylights!
– Thinking is something you have to do by yourself. (I appreciate this blog so much.)
– These patterns and colors. WOW!
– A Love Letter to All the Overwhelmed White People Who Are Trying
– Radiooooo.com lets you customize a music stream based on decade, country, and slow, fast or weird music. (via KK)
– Hire talented black illustrators for your next project.
– A beautiful read: No Artist is Pleased, by Paul Jun
– “What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.” — Claude Monet
– I love Otter. Transcribe meetings or read a quote out of a book and have it transcribed magically. (My favorite is the little Otter illustration at the bottom of this page saying “you got this!”
– These flourishes by Lara Maju are making me swoon.
– Did you know that you can attend CreativeMornings events around the world? As well our new offering, community led FieldTrips? Want your faith in humanity restored, attend some of these. Goodness and generosity is pouring out of these events.
– Are your kids bored and missing their friends? Young designers can learn and make new friends online at the Museum of Design Atlanta’s live-instruction camps and after-school classes. Thank you for sponsoring my feed this week, Museum of Design Atlanta.
Radiooooo has an app as well!
Aug 9th, 2020 / 11:11 am
As a white person who is trying it is sad to see a black person in my network calling other black people who disagree with him “coons,” while making sweeping judgements about white people on the basis of their immutable characteristics. A synthesis of views from black professors with decades of civil rights activism is interpreted as only listening to white voices. That’s because he’s ignorant of the nuances of this topic. Turns out his skin colour doesn’t give him unlimited insight.
This is a guy who stays inside playing video games all day. When he had the choice between a tough brown professor or an easy white female, he chose the latter. When he graduated, because he didn’t put in the work his portfolio sucks. Few gigs came. To him that’s all the fault of white supremacy. He got hired somewhere due to affirmative action. No gratitude detected.
This is a guy I went out of my way to help—for years, connecting him with gigs, giving him resources. If anything goes wrong in his life, like a flight is delayed, he wants to burn down the entire airline. Talking with someone else on FB in an effort to make a modest point of caution and he responds with an abusive screed to silence me. Then he’s praised for doing so. Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone calls Di Angelo’s book “hitlerian racial theory.” White nationalists love that Coates sells race essentialism to white liberals. They have the same view of the world. And can flip someone who shares it. (See Thomas Chatterton Williams review of Coates in the NYT.) This is very dangerous. Murder rates have multiplied in cities where calls to abolish/defund police are being supported administrators. Last year police shootings of unarmed black men were at an all time low. But it’s an election cycle, so one brutal incident is used to manufacture national destabilizing rage. The officers are being charged. But the looting continues.
Diversity and inclusion have a positive meaning, which I support. But when they’re used to institutionalize and validate unchecked hate or empower incompetence—I am out. I’m seeing it happen at the design schools. Someone with a not great book gets hired due to their skin colour and ideology, then they start accusing others of racism in order to gain power. There’s no presumption of innocence, group based guilt is assumed. Injustice isn’t a tool to drive out injustice. The means have to reflect the ends otherwise it’s self defeating.
Aug 10th, 2020 / 12:17 pm
As a Black person, I sadly agree with some of what Anon has said as I too grapple with trying to work with ALL people for a better world. I am a Black woman who at best is perplexed by the very observations of Black people calling other Black people anti-Black racial epithets when they speak up as an outlier.
Sadly, the strains of toxic masculinity and misogynoir practiced culturally by subsets of Black men mars those earnest plights of subsets who do not and unfortunately, the experience of one Black person casts a broad swath on all.
Anon’s comment about Diversity and Inclusion resonates deeply with me as I too have seen when it is used to insitiutionalize and validate unchecked hate or empower incompetence. I have observed at an organization the casual practicing such harms by managers who have Di Angelo’s book perched in their office more so as a paperweight and an emblem of D&I. As a Black person, I initially thought that seeing it in a manager’s office meant they had a deeper understanding of race-based experiences, however over time, I realize that it was a signifier of racial insensitivity in their professional practicing.
Agreed that injustice isn’t a tool to drive out injustice. I must say though as I am not American, I am curious as to why I am increasingly hearing more protesters being called looters? Is it a dog whistle? Other than this, I must say, I agree with much of what was said. We ALL need to do the work. All of us.
Aug 10th, 2020 / 1:58 pm