#more-than-human

[ramskeleton]

fled twitter because it was bad for brain but man, gotta say, entomology and especially critical bee twitter went hard. never was great at connecting on tumblr but now that i’m here again, wondering if there are political ecologists/(more-than) human geographers/pollinator people on this website, and if so, hit me up! right now i’m especially interested in thinking about how concepts like metabolic rift can help us understand biodiversity crises esp. in regards to the relationship between managed/domesticated and wild populations (Tony Weis’s “Ghosts and Things: Agriculture and Animal Life really kickstarted this for me and I think these ideas can be relevant for thinking about pollinators) 

[mod2amaryllis]

i love being married to a straight guy. this morning we were parallel chilling and i glance at his computer and he's watching a drill fight tournament. as in, guys attaching drills to the same rod and turning them on until one breaks. to find the strongest drill. jose noticed me staring and rolled out of the way so i could see the screen. he knew every drill brand and told me their quality and price. i watched the whole thing without comment. the violence was enchanting. i never would have found this. he's a vector to an entirely alien, often beautiful, world.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He should be at the Adventurer's Guild.

[iregularlyevadetaxes]

we asked the average "i'm sooo empathetic ai brings out my maternal instincts🥹" person how they treat real human retail employees

[timeandart]

Dynamic Durationality: Art As Infrastructure In The Age Of Climate Politics

Article

Abstract

"Discussions of site orientation in public art have often been framed by contrasting the temporal notions of permanence and temporariness. This article leans on cross-disciplinary theorization of infrastructure—and its attention to climate change���to suggest that we see a new type of artistic interest in reengaging with permanence in the form of infrastructure development and maintenance. Specifically, the article analyzes the case of Super Reef, an artistic project that aspires to construct at least fifty-five km2 of reef along the coastline of Denmark. The article unpacks the material, social, political, and aesthetic dimensions of Super Reef as performing a dynamic durationality of interspecies infrastructure. This dynamic durationality implies a recognition of the always-already-provisional and precarious quality of any infrastructure project, while still invoking aspirations for long-term commitment to reconcile, repair, and maintain multispecies environments. If site orientations in the 1990s and early 2000s favored temporary, mobile, and social forms of artistic interventions, contemporary site orientations are suggestively more concerned with reimagining new forms of durationality."

[enfinizatics]

dear americans,

as a polish queer woman and human rights activist, i know exactly how you're feeling right now and what to expect from these elections. i lived through the 2015-2023 regime of pis, a right-wing populist party that divided families in the same way trump did. i’ve experienced the rise of fascism in poland, the influence of far-right parties like konfederacja, and their “santa’s little helpers”—ordo iuris, an ultra-conservative catholic organization (banned in many countries, mind you) that helped enforce a near-total abortion ban and runs anti-queer campaigns in public spaces. i supported the black protests in 2016 as a middle schooler when they first tried to ban abortion. as an adult, i actively participated in the 2020 women’s strike, running from police tear gas daily after they finally passed the ban. i supported friends who faced charges.

i’ve lived through intense homophobia in poland as a queer teen and adult. i survived the first pride march in my hometown, where far-right extremists threw stones and glass at us. i endured the anti-queer propaganda spread by the ruling party in state-owned media. i survived the “rainbow night,” poland’s own stonewall moment in summer 2020, when police arrested around 50 queer activists following the arrest of margo, a nonbinary activist. i survived the "lgbt-free zones," the targeted violence, the slurs from strangers on the street, and the protests i held against queerphobia. it was hard as fuck, but i survived.

but just because i survived, it doesn’t mean others did. many women died because of the abortion ban—marta, justyna, izabela, dorota, joanna, maria, and many others who didn’t survive pis’s draconian anti-abortion laws. milo, kacper, michał, zuzia (she was 12), wiktor, and other queer and trans kids and young adults took their own lives because of the relentless queerphobia.

despite all of this, our experience in poland can serve as a guide now. here are some tips for staying safe and how we, polish queers and women, organized under the regime:

safety first, always. if you know someone who’s had an abortion, no you don’t. if you know someone is trans, no you don’t. if you know people who help with safe abortions, no you don’t—at least not until you know it’s 100% safe to share. if you are queer or have had an abortion, only share this with people you trust fully. most importantly, not everyone has to be an activist just because they’re part of a minority. if it feels unsafe to share that you're queer, trans, etc., then don’t. it doesn’t make you any less queer.

use secure, encrypted messaging like signal for conversations on potentially risky topics, such as queerness, abortion, organizing counter-actions, protests—anything that might be used against you.

stay anonymous online. if you want to research or report something without surveillance, do not use regular internet. get a vpn (mullvad is affordable and reliable), download the tor browser (for both onion and standard links), and if you plan to whistleblow, consider using a riseup email account.

organize and build networks. community is everything now. support each other, foster independence, because your government won’t have your back. set up collectives, grassroots movements. create lists of trusted professionals—lawyers, doctors, etc.—who can offer support.

to lawyers and doctors: please consider pro-bono work. this is what got us through poland’s hardest times. your work will be needed now more than ever.

for protests or risky actions: always write a pro-bono lawyer’s number on your arm with a permanent marker.

get to know the anarchist black cross federation and other resources on safety culture: "Starting an anarchist black cross group: A guide"; Still We Rise - A resource pack for transgender and non-gender conforming people in prison; Safe OUTside the system by the Audre Lorde Project;

for safe abortion info or involvement: get familiar with womenhelpwomen.

stay radical, stay strong, stay informed: The Anarchist Library

if i forgot to (or didn't) include something, don't hesitate to reblog this post with other resources.

[cleekleequlee]

More than “more-than-human centered design”

Earlier this year when presenting in EASA 2024 with anthropologists and peer design researchers, I (after my presentation done and a drink in the kitchen at 11pm Hong Kong time) responded rather strongly to the idea of more-than-human design as “more-than-human centered” design. Example is to consider how wildboar moves around and create tunnel in urban spaces. At that time I cannot quite articulate where that sentiment is from. I still cannot today, but finds two reference helpful in explaining my opinion, that more-than-human design, or more accurately posthumanist design, is not just design for more-than-human.

One reference is Alex Wilkie’s co-authored paper on speculative design brief. Knowing his strong theoretical foothold in process theory gave me the confidence to read the paper in detail and multiple times. What I take away so far is that the design brief meant by Wilkie and authors is not only concerned with the outcome of design but also the process of design. This is key for understanding their concept of “design event”. This is under the premise that designers don’t start the design process knowing exactly what they want to design. Rather than “allowing drift” which is the idea of “design drift”, Wilkie takes a more radical position seeing this formulation of design brief as part of design process. This the design brief includes the intention of design and instructs processes for designers to map the network with existing and absent (more-than-human) actors. Theoretical conceptualization proceeds the forming of brief for articulation through design. In an other word, theory not only serves as providing the mechanism of design (as designers always go to psychology for ways to do something), but is the fundamental reason and drive for design articulation.

The next reference comes from a quick read of Annemarie Mol’s latest book Eating in Theory. I have yet to wade through the whole book. But based on the first chapter where Mol introduced the intention and structure of the book, it surprisingly shed some light on my research. In this new book the topic Mol explored is eating - an mundane, too ordinary experience that everyone cannot do without for every 12 hours they are alive on earth. Mol sets off to challenge the separation between survival and living, between labor and actualization which is very much in line with my idea of practice theory. What makes my eyes wide open with excitement is how she does that by reframing the not-worth-mentioning experience of eating. There is nothing new actively being done or designed, but this reframing is enlightening for us to take another look at all the everyday experience we have and see them in new, philosophical lights. In a nuanced way this reframing to me is connected to what Foucault and Braidotti always does, and according to (the amusingly mysterious) Barad, another way of spacetimemattering. If we call any intentional doing with a purpose as design, then Mol’s approach is also design with changed theoretical lens (from Hannah Arendt / Aristotelian) division of body and mind (labor, work and politics) to something else. A missing step if there is to call it design is to prove that such reframing gets to people’s mind, and make concrete, material change in their doing, even if it is just to feel how their throat is in touch with the other - plants and animals that we call food. I was definitely inspired by a talk by design researcher /to-be anthropologist Duan Zhipeng last week that what interests him more is not doing any form of intervention directly - like me he is no believer that the top-down approach would work, but to better “describe”. In this sense, the cosmetic work of design - I have graphic design in mind - can also be critical in forming new ways of thinking, and a lot of the top-down structures that we have relied so much in the past won’t be too helpful in achieving this vision of graphic design.

So design - I’ll use the term posthumanist design for now, is not about more-than-human centered. It is the reshuffling the conceptual construction of the world for everyone, from designers (in Wilkie’s case of attuning to MTH as part of design brief) to people who eats (which is everyone who is alive). If this can be done in the most mundane experience of eating, it can certainly be done for other groups - certain professions, certain geographies, certain practices. Finding the existing contact with MTH or stage such contact, reframe the experience as transformative learning opportunities (Mezirow) to prepare for the conditions of social change (Manzini).

ps. Some of the discussion on the relationship between theory and empirical in introductory chapter also reminds me of the many methodological books by Matz Alvesson where the empirical is not only for applying theory but for generating novel theories.

I hope I will get more thinking disturbed in reading Mol - I’m in discussion with peer PhD student to do a book club on Mol’s two books. I also am curious how other design students think of them.

References:

Wilkie, A. and M. Michael (2023). "The aesthetics of more-than-human design: speculative energy briefs for the Chthulucene." Human–Computer Interaction: 1-13.

Mol, A. (2021). "Eating in Theory."

Alvesson, M. and D. Kärreman (2011). Qualitative research and theory development : mystery as method. London, Sage.

Alvesson, M. and K. Sköldberg (2009). Reflexive methodology : new vistas for qualitative research. London ;, SAGE.

[astraystayyh]

this post actually broke my heart.

[leafyeyes417]

Summoning fix it

Danny accepted being Ghost King when he was 20. Why 20? Because at that point his human half was looking more fae than human. At least he got that growth spurt and reached 6 foot 5. But the pointed ears, catlike eyes that glowed, fangs, and glowing freckles along with his height made him stand out.

Sam and Tucker, the two most liminal humans up till that point, were only better in that their eyes only glowed when emotional and that they didn’t have freckles. The trio had decided that they were more infinite realm denizens than living and they moved in to Danny’s new castle.

Accepting the throne was chaos. Especially with the observants constantly trying to butt in after he cut their power. They tried many things to keep him busy, including trying to bury him in centuries of old paperwork. Unfortunately for them Danny was not going to put up with that.

He sent out a message looking for any ghosts whose obsession was being a secretary. And there were more than he expected. After screening he chose a few and let the rejected ones know that he would set something up to help them later, but first he needed to straighten things out.

During all this Danny ended up summoned. He was annoyed that any regular old joe could just summon him. He was the Ghost King! He had more important things to do (even if it was just playing video games) than answer every summon request at other people’s whims. There were a multitude of dimensions out there, who knew how often he could be summoned?!

The trio quickly got to work and created a summon circle that first, allowed him to send someone in his stead, and second, prevented forced summoning if he declined answering.

Calling on more ghosts, he found one that grants wishes, and unlike Desiree, has no horrible consequences as long as a price of equal payment is made. He then wished all summoning circles to summon the ghost king from the point in time of his ascension be switched with his new one.

After that, he assigned one of the secretaries to be the one to answer the summons. He made a list of things to outright decline, and if they were unsure they were to call him and ask.

That’s how the Justice League ended up finding out that there was a new Ghost King. Constantine was particularly annoyed when he realized the switch with the summoning instructions. Luckily they weren’t on such a time crunch that they didn’t have the time to get the new materials needed.

Upon completion of the summoning, a female humanoid in a professional suit floated, and spoke “I am Penny, secretary of Ghost King Phantom. What is the subject of your summons?”

[ochibrochi]

weird looking cat

[creekfiend]

on this website I frequently find myself feeling like ron swanson at home depot

[eggscargot]

i promise im not being tooooo mean to stan

i also couldnt figure it out when someone showed it to me the first time NUDNDJDRNJFJ

love sibling energy hehe

[ID: Ford Pines and Stan Pines are making heart shapes with their pointer finger snd middle fingers. Ford is giggling at Stan and doing it correctly, while Stan struggles and says, "Keep laughing! See what happens-"

The second drawing is of Ford unable to contain his laughter anymore, and Stan jumping to attack him, shouting, "I SWEAR TO FUCKING GOD-" while it is implied off screen that Mable and Dipper are pulling him back, while shouting his name. Mable thinks its funny, while Dipper is comically concerned. End ID.]

[existennialmemes]

It's cute that humans make domesticated forests with just fruit and nut trees.

"Orchard" yeah ok, you domesticated a forest is what you did. Look at it. It's got symmetry.

[monkesupreme]

dense, neutron star of a man. His weight fluctuates based off of the amount of sun hes been exposed to, and the amount of water ingested, so a very healthy kryptonian easily weighs around 350-400 lbs/ 158-181 kgs. Martha quickly traded in her lawn chairs for sturdy, solid wood, rocking chairs for the front porch as he got older, but Clark seems to be drawn to the flimsy lawn chairs like a moth to a flame.

(Hes prone to shouting for his Ma or Pa when hes scared awake, old habit hes never broke out of lol)

Bonus: a regular day for Bruce

[akanemnon]

We didn't even get an answer, and we never will (at least it's not determination)

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