Even more exciting? I did it by combining my apparel design skills from a previous career and my user experience design skills from my current career as a Product Designer!

When the CDC recommended that we wear face masks out in public, I started wearing a scarf or handkerchief tied over my face. At first, it seemed to work alright, but after about twenty steps, it would begin to fall down, and I’d be fidgeting and adjusting it while out and about.

With the time at home and lots of materials left over from my fashion design days, I decided to sew masks for my BF and myself. I found a few patterns online, but before I could decide which one to try, I ran into a problem. …

Below is Julianne Nicole’s* eloquent, beautiful, incredible, and heartbreaking story about one COVID-19 patient’s death, on a single day of a ‘normal’ shift as an ICU nurse in New York City.

It moved me so much that I thought everyone, everywhere needed to read it, even those not on Facebook.

The link to her original post can be found below.

I am a Covid ICU nurse in New York City, and yesterday, like many other days lately, I couldn’t fix my patient. Sure, that happens all the time in the ICU. It definitely wasn’t the first time. It certainly won’t be the last. What makes this patient noteworthy? A few things, actually. He was infected with Covid 19, and he will lose his battle with Covid 19. …

Abuse of Power in Human Resources

Intro

Governmental organizations are notoriously rooted in the hierarchical, classical management approach, with top-down communication. The City of [Undisclosed], as a governmental agency, clearly is organized in this format, but also includes a large human resources department. As is typical of the human resources management approach, this department is dedicated to supporting the city employees’ rights, focussing on compensation and benefits. But what benefits and rights does a new employee without full ‘employee’ status have when they begin working for the city? Due to the lack of protections given to employees who are temporary, part-time, or are working within the year-long probationary period, the City of [Undisclosed] human resources department is useless. The existence of bureaucracy within the organization becomes very clear as management is favored over talented individuals. When management exerts coercive power over subordinates without full employee status, management is favored, based solely on their higher position within the organization and their employment status. The overt exertion of power, lack of ability or even consideration is ignored and talented and creative individuals without full employee rights become byproducts of the system. …

Technology and Culture

In the 1980s there were about 30 million computers in the world (Trueman 2015), documenting personal lives and work, digitizing photographs, computing data, and browsing the internet. Though the 21st century is only seventeen years old, we’ve already seen an exponential advancement of technology. Today there are more smart devices than there are humans on the planet. (Boren 2014) That’s more than 7.2 billion devices ceaselessly recording the lives of billions of people, analyzing information and data, propagating social media videos and images, recordings and infinitely more. How do we make sense of so much data?

Both James Bridle and Lev Manovich are concerned with the ubiquity of technology today and implications it has on cultural studies. Additionally, both have created their own unique, computer-aided method of understanding this overwhelming flood of data. However, this is where Bridle and Manovich diverge. The problems they seek to solve, their process of image collection, and the purpose of their work differ in many ways. Manovich’s “Cultural Analytics” utilizes existing technology to superficially analyze massive amounts of visual data points plotted into a single, interactive image for cultural studies. (2014) Conversely, Bridle’s “New Aesthetic” seeks to more deeply examine individual fragments of these visual artifacts, critically analyzing technology and its affect on humanity and culture…

Creating Living Memorials from Human DNA
Biopresence (2005) by BCL — Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara

When you think of a cemetery, what comes to mind?
I envision an evenly dispersed grid of cold, hard, inorganic headstones of cement, marble, and metal, each numbered and sterile. Perfectly manicured grass surrounds each frozen form. The only visible colors are supplied by fading, dying flowers, cut into bouquets and laid to rest with the headstones. Having recently visited my uncle’s grave, this environment did not seem to me like a place of comfort for those that have lost a loved one.

As an alternative to traditional headstones, Georg Tremmel and Shiho Fukuhara of BCL proposed Biopresence, a service which infuses your recently deceased’s DNA within a living tree, resulting in a ‘transgenic tombstone’. The tree’s form does not change with the entwinement of human DNA within its structure, storing it as a silent mutation within each tree cell. “In a nutshell, Biopresence will piggyback the human DNA underneath redundant triplets of nucleic acids that already exist in the tree. These redundant triplets are not actually expressed in the tree, making them available to store excess…

Memory Chip®’s Latest Update Enables Natural Neurotransmitter Release: Promises to Help Mood Mimicry Drug Addicts

LOS ANGELES, OUTER US — March 23, 2042 — Do you recall the joy and peace you felt playing on the beach, admiring the singing birds and deep blue skies prior to the 2018 US/China Environmental Sanction Lift? How about the pre-curfew evenings hanging out with friends and family on the porch, just enjoying a cool, safe night? Now you can relive those moments as though they are actually happening. Introducing the new and improved Memory Chip® Neurotransmitter Refeel System™.

Unfortunately, it is all too common to have several friends and family members addicted to one of the hundreds of Mood Mimicry Drugs (MoMiDs) flooding the market. Last year alone 2.2 million OUS Residents were registered as MoMiD addicts and over 650 thousand people overdosed on them, yet they are still the mostly commonly prescribed remedy for those with Post War Depression Syndrome (PWDS). Though MoMiDs synthesize positive feelings through faux neurotransmitter release amplification, they cause addiction and damage to the body’s ability to naturally generate these feelings. In fact, prolonged use of MoMiDs results in increased depression and MoMiD dosages are often elevated in order to feel even a small amount of happiness. …

In thinking of a ‘natural medium for storage and transmitting knowledge’ my initial notion was a design which could store and recall our thoughts and memories, as we frequently rush through life without really experiencing events. There are times when I’ve had a great weekend and someone asks, ‘how was your weekend?’ on Monday, and I can’t recall what happened for a minute or two. If it involved great experiences, maybe I can retrieve that memory and feeling and experience it once more. Like being absorbed in a daydream, when some random thought invokes a happy memory that causes you to laugh out loud and feel happy? So often we recall negative experiences and it is so powerful, it overrides our positive experiences. …