The Latest Articles, Ideas, Musings, & Rants
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A tool is a tool; The person wielding it has the power
I feel similar here. The A.I. tools have snuck into my workflow. Sometimes, they lead me exactly where I want to go. I extract what I need and move on. I use them for research, for proofs of concepts, and sometimes to challenge my thinking. I don’t yet use them to be creative, but even still, I feel my brain being patterned by the way I use A.I., and I know I need to be careful. The author laments the...
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A return to ornament for ornament’s sake
I’m wishy washy when it comes to ornament in design. I mean to say that I can appreciate both the craft of [William Morris](https://wmgallery.org.uk/collection/) as well as the restraint of the [Bauhaus school of design](https://www.bauhaus.de/en/research/collection/) — not that they are mutually exclusive, in retrospect. But at the time, the simplified forms of the Bauhaus were a direct reaction to the overly ornamental Victorian era 40 years previous. In 2025, I appreciate what the past has given us. Regarding architecture, I fully...
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We are using technology wrong
The Jolly Teapot’s latest rant is a good one. While it starts with a keen observation that I have also made — that people no longer have the skill to be bored — it moves through the way in which we don’t fully understand how the technology was meant to work. These objects can do so many things conveniently, and yet we often leave the default, most inconvenient settings to rule our lives. But it goes further. It goes into the quality...
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Weather Trends
Last November, I wrote that it was unseasonably warm. Well, this year it is the opposite. Maybe not unseasonably cold — more like what is probably normal for this time of the season. August felt like a bummer. Summer was warm but cooled off quickly. August had cooler days, fewer sun breaks, and more rain. September was pretty good but cool — again, probably more like the summer’s of a decade ago. October was nice as well, with Halloween being the...
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Hiring a design studio may become a status symbol
Like what is happening to the code engineering industry, the grunt work that helped new designer right out of college learn how to be part of a design studio — to see how the sausage was made and to even learn a little along the way while helping to make it — might be going away. Production design, which basically means following the style guides and templates that a senior designer created, rather mindlessly, I might add, can be done effectively...
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Link Round Up: September
Nicolas Magand, aka [The Jolly Teapot], does a monthly round up of links and so, I borrowed the idea here. There are so many things that I read which make an impression but which don’t require a complete note or article. Here are some other things I have ben reading and ruminating upon. ## [The Creator and the Machine](https://www.doc.cc/articles/the-creator-and-the-machine) {: .h4} A long essay about the history of fine artists and computers, drawing parallels with how artists are embracing — or...
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Working with AI (not making AI work for you)
Whether I like AI or not, it is here. It is the team member that we all need to work with, whether or not we like its politics and general world view. Therefore, it is time for me to really learn how to work with it as a thought partner. I do not want to use it to do work for me, because at my level and with the way I need to own strategy and get others on my...
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How do we know we are in a bubble? Wait until it Pops
I follow economics and the stock market in the periphery. It does not affect me directly, but it certainly affects me indirectly, so I pay as much attention as I think it deserves, which ebbs and flows with the highs and lows. The way in which the past few years has made me feel like it is all built on vibes seems to have come to a head. It sounds indeed like it is actually built on vibes, and people...
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The Tyranny of the Default
Its difficult to talk about virtual tyranny when real tyranny is knocking on the country’s door — if its not already made itself very comfortable in our favorite chair. But this feels relevant to me as I think more about being a creative person with no creative practice. I feel as though mentoring others and directing others has left me with no creativity of my own. I also know that is probably not true, and just my pessimistic tendencies talking, but...
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Make Things Happen
This article made me think about some of the designers I have worked with in the past. There are not many — I have not made many career moves and have worked for small agencies less than 50 people. Even fewer were on the design side of the house. They have all made impressions. As the article says, some of the ability to take something that is not initially glamorous and turn it into a jewel. > What made those projects...
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Your Ignorance Doesn't Make You An Expert
Wow. Love this article so much. Long read, but full of humor and biting observation. > To position yourself as the arbiter of a reality that is right in front of you, and to reject that reality simply because you don’t get it, to infer that the vast sea of human knowledge on the topic is nothing next to the thimble of your ignorant skepticism, to demand that the giants of human awareness who have come before you and upon...
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To be a small thing bobbing in the Ocean
I am so damn lucky to live in New England, in the Ocean State, close to the Atlantic. Could I be in Hawaii or some warmer clime that also has ocean access? Sure, but I would likely have the same problems I have now. My problem is that while the nicest beaches that RI has to offer are at most 60 minutes away when traffic is bad, I do not go as often as that would imply. As with most...
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Managing my Political and our Collective Depression
Such a good article that captures much of what I have been feeling. > Political depression was a term I’d stumbled towards in trying to name the mixture of sorrow, distress, numbness, and nihilism that I was seeing again and again in flashes in the leftist and left-leaning people around me. It was marked by a sense of system immovability and stasis, a deeply-felt understanding that bad things were happening and would continue inexorably to happen, and most of all,...
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Self Censorship is Empathy, and that’s Not a Bad Thing
While the example this author uses is a weak one, in my opinion — I think the co-worker needed to hear that her husband has a problem, and needs support to help work through that — I do think he has a great point. Free Speech does not mean we should say any hurtful thing we want to the detriment of others. Its not a free pass to hurl expletives, racist slurs, or misogynistic diatribes about how typically you, a white...
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The AI discourse, or lack of
Why is there not a middle-ground when it comes to AI? Ai is either the worst thing in the world — burning our planet, making us all dumber, and sucking up all the venture cap money ever created (all true to a degree) or it is the best thing ever, replacing humans and doing the jobs we don’t want to do and leading us to a global renaissance where cancer is cured and people live free off guaranteed basic incomes (less...
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Zero Trust Internet
AI-generated content has gotten too good, and it happened faster than society can keep up with. A lack of media literacy which perpetuates misinformation is already a massive problem. It’s only going to get worse. Images and videos and audio are too convincing. It’s easy to have anyone, even non-celebrities, say and do anything you want. Not surprisingly, even our dumb President and the official White House account have shared AI-slop, some of it depicting the president as a dark...