#my own printer is trash but I know someone who has access to a good one. they could do that for me tomorrow. I need this on my wall

[ratstuckinamarble]

the rat is SICK? :( poor poor rat.....

stay snuggly and stay warm <3

Oh my goodness how are you this adorable T-T I don't even know what to say...

I want to glue this to my heart. May not help me get well sooner but it sure is making me so happy ๑ï

Thank you, truly.

I'll try my best to stay snuggly and warm, though I could never reach the comfort of your drawing. In the meantime, you stay cozy and safe too <3

[publiccollectors]

From the discussion “Towards A Self Sustaining Publishing Model” hosted by Printed Matter.

Some things I have learned in over 30 years of publishing since my teenage days as a zine maker, administrating my project Public Collectors, and from working in the group Temporary Services and our publishing imprint Half Letter Press.

I have just ten minutes to speak. If only one or two things that I share are useful, that’s plenty! It took me decades to understand some of this stuff.

Use every exhibition invitation with a budget to print something. Use the whole budget to print something. Make something in a large enough print run so that you have something to give away and surplus that you can sell. Your publication can be a folded sheet of paper, a booklet, a newspaper, a poster, a book, or anything in between.

Be able to print at least something at home. Buy a cheap laser printer or inkjet printer, find a used copy machine, buy a RISO or some other duplicator, carve something into a potato or a piece of foam and print it. Being able to do at least some of the printing and production at home—even if it’s on a tiny scale—will compel you to print things that you might have convinced yourself not to send out or bring to a professional printer. Hopefully the ability to print impulsively and compulsively will result in good work. Figure out how to keep making things on every scale. Look for cheap used printing equipment on Craigslist. Team up with friends and buy equipment together that you can share. Start a printing collective in your basement.

Ideally your publication should cost 1/5th or 1/6th of the retail price to make. If you sell a $10.00 publication through a store, you are probably only going to make $6.00 or less after the store takes its cut. So ideally your $10.00 book costs $2.00 or less to make. Don’t aim to just break even. Aim to make a profit so you can keep making more publications and pay for your life. Publishing will probably never be your sole income but don’t lose money on purpose. Make things that are priced fairly and look like they justify what they cost to buy. The fact that you didn’t find a more affordable way to print something is not an excuse to sell something that feels cheap and shitty for a ridiculous sum of money. Good cheap printing is easier to find than ever before. Do your homework.

Figure out the cheapest and least wasteful ways to do everything. Ask other publishers where they get their work printed. Look for local printers so you can avoid shipping fees. Ask local printers if you can pay in cash for a discount. Ask printers if there is a cheaper way to do what you want to do by adjusting the size of your paper or the paper stock or some other small shift in form. If you print things yourself, buy the paper that is on sale. Design a publication around the paper that you found for cheap. Discount warehouses sometimes have good paper. Even dollar stores sometimes have good paper. I’ve even bought paper at flea markets. Costco sells an 800 sheet ream of 24 lb paper for $6.99. I use it all the time. It rules. I also recommend getting your jugs of organic olive oil there, but you can’t print with that.

Free printing is good printing. If you have access to free printing, use it. Free printing is like free food at art openings and conference receptions. It is one of those pleasures in life that never gets old. Come up with an idea that is based around the aesthetics of whatever free printing you have access to and make the publication that way. Eat the cheese and bread. Drink the wine. Make the copies at work.

Buy bulk shipping mailers on eBay. Find bubble wrap and other packing materials in the trash. Look out for neighbors who just bought new furniture—it’s usually wrapped in miles of packing material you can use for shipping books. Boycott terrible right wing fuckers like ULINE. Seriously, they give money to everyone horrible. Trump? Check. Ted Cruz? Check. Scott Walker? Check. ROY FUCKING MOORE? CHECK FUCKING CHECK! Tear up their catalogs and use them as packing material to protect your books. Make publications that have a consistent size so you can purchase cardboard mailers in bulk and get a discount on them. Buy packing tape in bulk. Buy everything in bulk. You can store your extra reams of paper under your bed or on top of your kitchen cabinets if necessary. Be like a wacko survivalist prepper, but for office supplies. Go to estate sales and look for the home office in the house. Buy the dead person’s extra tape and staples and rulers and scissors. I’ve been using some random dead person’s staples for years because I bought their staple hoard. Staples aren’t like meat and milk. They don’t expire.

I’m against competition. Try to avoid competing with other artists for resources. If you don’t truly need the money, don’t ask for it. Artists should have a section on their CV where they list grants they could have easily gotten but didn’t apply for because they are privileged enough that they don’t need the money as much as someone else. I almost never apply for anything but the one thing I do apply for and get every year is a part-time faculty development grant from Columbia College Chicago where I teach. It pays adjuncts up to $2,500 a year to fund their projects and seems to be completely non-competitive. My union negotiated to get us more money. I have used that grant to make over a dozen publications. The value of the publications I make and sell with each grant is about three or four times the value of the grant itself. Some years I make more from the grant than I do from the limited number of classes I teach. But I don’t depend on this grant to be a publisher and I’d still be able to make things without it.

Make things in different price ranges so everyone can afford your work, but also so that you can sustain your practice. Make a publication that costs $2.00, that costs $6.00, that costs $20.00, and make something special for the fancy ass institutional libraries that have a lot of money to spare and can buy something that costs $300.00. Likewise, make things in all different size print runs. Is there something you can print 1,000 of that you can keep selling and giving away for years, to enjoy that quantity discount that comes with offset printing a large number of publications?

Collaborate with people and pay them with publications (if they are cool with that) that they can sell on their own. Sometimes this ends up being better pay and more useful than an honorarium, and it helps justify a larger print run. But see what they need—don’t assume. Barter with other publishers and sell each other’s work and let each other keep the money. This helps with distribution. Sometimes it’s easier to sell their work than it is to sell your own. Help others expand the audience for their publications.

Fund your publishing practice by asking your friends who teach to invite you to talk to their college classes about your work. Use those guest speaker fees to print something. I sometimes tell people on social media: If three or four people will invite me to speak to their class, it could fund the entire next issue of X booklet series that you like so much. This has often worked. Also, sometimes their students end up ordering publications. Sometimes lectures about publications generate more income than the publications themselves.

Have an emailing list and write newsletters to announce new publications. Stay in touch with people who like what you do. Expect to spend a ton of time corresponding with people. Have some cheap things and cool ephemera on hand that you can send people for free when they mail order your publications. Reward people who support you directly with something nice that they didn’t expect. People like handwritten notes. It’s okay if they are very short but sign the packing slip and at least write “Thank you!”

Above all, know that publishing is a life journey and not a get rich quick scheme, or even a make very much money scheme. Enjoy the experience of meeting and working with others, trade your publications with other publishers and build up an amazing library of small press, hard to find artist books. Get vaccinated and travel and sleep on each other’s couches. Be generous with your time, knowledge, resources, and work. Tell Jeff Bezos to fuck off by never selling anything you make through Amazon. Find the bookstores that you love and work with them forever. It’s nicer to have deeper relationships with fewer bookstores than surface level interactions with dozens of shops run by people you don’t know.

Think about your publishing family. Bookstore people are your family. People that organize book fairs and zine fests are your publishing family. Other publishers are your family. People who follow your work for years on end are your family. Printers and binderies are your family. The postal workers that know you by name and that you know by name are your family. The person who doesn’t care if you make the free copies at work is your family. Over thirty years later, I’m still in contact with people I exchanged zines with through the mail when I was a teenager. In some cases I still haven’t met them in person. It’s fine! They are my family. Your students are your family—particularly once they graduate or drop out, as long as they continue making books and zines. Your family is your family, particularly if they value and support your publishing practice. And for this reason, this talk is dedicated to my late father Bruce Fischer, who let me use the company copier and postage meter when I was in high school, and to my mom who sat on the floor with me and helped me hand collate and staple my zines.

That’s what I’ve got for now. Stay in touch and with luck, and enough vaccines and masks and hand sanitizer, maybe I’ll see you at a book fair. – Marc Fischer • Thank you to Be Oakley of GenderFail for the invitation to present, to the other presenters Vivian Sming, Yuri Ogita, and Devin Troy Strother, and to the wonderful people at Printed Matter for hosting this! You should be able to find the video archived on Printed Matter’s YouTube Channel.  Presented on April 2, 2021

[brazilianism]

Brazilian Elections - Let’s talk about  Fernando Haddad

Alright, so. Elections this year and we���re in a big mess, right? The new plot twist to our ever changing political scenario is Fernando Haddad, who happens to be one of the only politicians I actually like, so i’m gonna use this post to talk about his work so y’all can get to know him better since he’s not that famous outside of São Paulo. First of all, for all of you who have no idea what i’m talking about, let me catch you up: Lula (our ex-president) is still, ya know, in jail. For corruption and stuff. We can debate that more thoroughly in another post. Problem is, he wants to run for president again (he wanted before he was arrested already), and technically by some legal standards he might, cause his sentence hasn’t really been contested in every possible court, which is to say that even though his chances of them being overthrown are VERY small, it could still happen and therefore there’s a legal breach there that could allow him to run for president. And bOY is he popular at it - he was leading all the polls around the country these past few months, he was at the lead with nearly 40% of the votes at the last poll (published on the 21st/august). But there has been a debate for months now on whether he’d appoint someone else as a candidate in his place in case the most likely thing happens and he can’t run... And we kinda got the answer a few weeks ago - he didn’t appoint someone else, but he picked his vice president: Haddad, from his own party. Which is to say, in case he is barred from running, Haddad will likely be taking his place. [in the very surprising scenario where Lula DOES run Haddad would not be vice president anymore cause they have a deal with another party and then Manuela D’avila, another ex-candidate for the presidency gets the job cause she’s now supporting Haddad as kinda vice-vice president but that’s a whole other matter). So let’s talk about Fernando Haddad.

Quick background: Haddad is the son of a Lebanese immigrant and graduated in law school (and is a certified lawyer). He's also got a masters degree in economy and a doctorate in philosophy, all at USP, which is like, one of the best universities in Latin america. He’s also a teacher there in Social Sciences and currently a teacher at another private university. In public office, he has been the Minister for Education for 6 years of Lula’s government and Mayor to Brazil’s biggest city, São Paulo, from 2013 to 2016. I’m not saying you need any of those titles to be any good at the job (I mean, just look at Lula I guess) but we sure have to say Haddad came prepared for the fight talking about ground knowledge. 

As the Minister for Education Haddad invested mostly in making the access to universities broader - it was his government that created ProUni (a program that provides government scholarships to poor students in private universities), and re-designed FIES (the financing and credit system for poor students to pay for universities) making it easier for people to pay (less interest rates, more time). During his time we also got 14 new public (free) universities and other kinds of educational centers making the number of available spots go from about 140K to 218K. He was also responsible for reformulating ENEM so that it could start to become a sort of brazilian SAT, now accepted as an entrance test to several universities that all had different tests (and you had to take all of them and pay for all of them if you wanted to apply to multiple places). When he started, Brazil invested about 3,9% of our GDP in education. At the end of his run, we were investing 5,1%. The PISA results showed Brazil among the 3 countries that had evolved the most in education during those years (yeah, we were still pretty low on the rank, but we can’t say it wasn’t working). So education is quite his thing, but that’s not all. 

As a Mayor, Haddad had a clear vision for the city that involved making it more livable - his slogan said “more human”. The ideia is based on studies that say once the citizens have a sense of personal relationship with the place they inhabit the whole area starts to become safer (and also better taken care of, obviously). And that seems obvious but São Paulo had some MAJOR problems of livability. 

Imma list some of my favorite projects. For starters, Haddad changed the lightning of a big part of the city to LED lamps (they’re way brighter so the sense of safety is enhanced cause no dark alleys and stuff AND they’re more efficient so we also started saving energy) [x]. Then he created bike lanes and more bus corridors to make public transport faster and so that people could actually use BIKES in the damn city without too many risks (the number of people who use bikes here grew over 60% in a couple of years, who could have guessed it [x]). He then reduced the speed limits for several streets and speed lanes. That was MASSIVELY impopular, but he said he didn’t care if people hated him as long as it worked in the long run - and, lol, it did. With all of that he reduced accidents and deaths on traffic in the city by 15% overall and by half in specific areas [x] [x], and most interestingly: São Paulo dropped over fifty fucking places on international traffic ranks (which is over 10 times what ANY other brazilian city varied in the ranks those years so there’s no blaming it on any external factors) [x] . Yeah, Haddad started to solve traffic, which is arguably the thing everyone hates the most in this city. People spending less time in traffic start spending more time at leisure - no matter, he closed important avenues on Sundays so that people could use that space, public space, for fun, and anybody who’s been at Paulista on a Sunday nowadays will have seen how damn awesome that place became. He also regulated and stimulated Carnaval as a street party that is now country-famous (do y’all remember how nearly nobody ever considered spending Carnaval in São Paulo a cool thing before 2012? yeah. and people come to the city now just for that and spend a whole lot of money here cause of it [x]). Then he created our very first fucking city tour program with buses and all (man, biggest city in the country and we didn’t have a city tour bus for tourists, what the fuck). He did the first actual Floods Tackling project that involved actually mapping the floods and acting directly on them with more cleaning of the streets and even smart-monitored sewers and trash cans at some places [x]. He created LGBT support centers and was responsible for putting the São Paulo Pride Parade (one of the biggest in the world) on the official government calendars (and as minister for education he was responsible for trying to implement an anti-homophobia program involving educating and orienting teachers to deal with these situations) [x] . He tackled the drug problem (especially the crack-cocaine problem) downtown by offering support (food, housing, medical and psychological assistance, and actual jobs) to addicts - a lot of people were against “giving money to drug addicts”, but again, it worked, and I have a whole post about this here. He created a program to stimulate recycling food at the big open markets and to ensure that organic food was served in the local schools every week. He helped open several tech centers that allowed for people to take tech and coding courses and use 3D printers and other stuff for free or at low prices [x]. Still want more culture? He created public cinemas at poor areas (that showed all kinds of movies, local ones, international ones, all in theaters as good as the paid kind) and created a whole institution to stimulate film making in São Paulo, SPCINE [x] [x]. Oh, and he started a project to take the names of our previous dictators and torturers off the street names (cause yeah we had that) and replace them with, well, decent people [x]. 

Not enough to have some cool ass projects? K, we can discuss his economy as mayor. Cause not only Haddad was innovative as fuck as said above, he also made the city’s finances as good as ever - and I mean it, cause he renegotiated our historical debts to the federal government and reviewed several contracts to companies AND created an agency to investigate corruption scandals regaining several millions into our vaults [x] [x], in a way that by the end of his government we had over 40 billion less in debt [x], 2-3 billion in store and had our investment rate (you know the thing that Brazil kept being lowered at? by international agencies? those grades and stuff?] raised. Oh yeah, and he got like 95% of what he promised in his campaign done [x]. 

And I said all of this so I can exemplify why I like Haddad - it’s not about one or two individual projects, it’s about the way he thinks as a whole. He thinks ahead and he thinks based on actual science - without forgetting a human side of it all. All of his unpopular and polemic measures had positive results - they went miles away from common sense, but it didn’t matter for him cause scientific studies had showed it would work (and it did! what a fucking surprise!). Of couse, that made him the most hated mayor by some people cause all he does is just so weird, right? and he never cared, multiple times he mentioned he didn’t mind being unpopular if it was the right thing for the city. And he was in fact unpopular cause of that (and cause of his party, obviously). He left office leaving contracts signed for about 7 years ahead. He didn’t even have high hopes of being reelected by then, but he left stuff ready to work for the next government (likely an opposition one) anyway. Cause that’s what you do if you’re a decent politician, but it’s so damn rare to see this kind of attitude here. Haddad looked at cold hard facts, saw a city that could use a lot of change in several areas, made a plan and went ahead with it knowing that a lot of people would hate him for it but that in the end it could actively change how we live - and he was right. By the end of it, people did have a different relationship with the city. 

Haddad showed me in both his public offices that he doesn’t have the small mind of most our politicians that seem to only be able to think about things that can happen every 4 years, nor only about things that will be popular for the sake of being popular without being right. And that’s just what I want from a politician. Seems so simple, and yet it’s nearly impossible to find. So that’s why he’s a politician i’m not afraid to support. 

To close this off i’m gonna leave y’all with links to articles from the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (portuguese here) and The Wire complimenting his time as mayor too so english readers can get some more opinions AND here an Haddad article (in portuguese) that I like if you want to see more of him (especially his views of Brazilian politics), cause this doesn’t even cover all his interesting projects.  Here’s also an interview with him in english, and here here and here some in portuguese for people who want to get a better sense of him and his government plan. Feel free to ask more questions about his projects, I’ll try to get to them when I have time.

[thephaisyretreat]

Daisy / Phil Birthday “Drabble”

Word Count: 2,696 Rating: T Warnings: Mild sexual content, suggestive themes

~~~ I wanted to do two separate stories for their individual birthdays, signifying what makes each part of my favourite ship so individually fantastic. However, life got a bit in the way of that (unfortunately?) and I ended up with this, instead. Daisy and Phil are two parts to a whole, as is this fic. Happy Birthdays, my dudes. I thank the creators and the actors for providing such wonderful stuff for me to ship such an awesome ship. ~ Director Puppyface PS. Oh, consider this a post-S4 AU, though canon plot is hardly mentioned at all here. Just a little somethin’ somethin’ for the birthday kids! ;) ~~~

They haven't done birthday celebrations since living on The Bus. With everything that's gone down in recent years, though, some of them thought it would be good to reintroduce the idea. Good for morale, and all that. (And by “some of them”, namely Jemma and Mace.)

Admittedly, her own birthday celebration had been decent - nice, even. The others knowingly kept it simple; there was cake, beer, a funny card that everyone had signed, and a surprisingly rousing game of basketball in the hangar bay. (Who knew Phil was that good at basketball? She added it to her list of Phil Things.)

The strangest part of the whole thing was long afterwards, when everyone else had gone to bed, she and Coulson the last two hanging around the lounge. The two of them had cleaned up the remaining bit of trash and leftovers, Daisy insisting to help no matter how many times Coulson told her that he could do it, that she shouldn't have to since it was her birthday.

When they had parted ways, she had kissed his cheek, thanked him, and squeezed his shoulder before heading toward her bunk. She'd noticed the soft look in his eye, that look that both elated her and terrified her. As always, though, she carefully ignored it, giving him one more smile before leaving him in the kitchen to finish the remainder of the dishes.

There was an envelope shoved under her door when she'd opened it, and she at first she figured it might be from May, that is until she opened it and pulled the card out to read its contents.

You amaze me every day. I am so proud and honored to be your friend. You mean more to me than mere words will ever suffice.

It wasn't signed, but she knew from the artwork on the front exactly who this was from. She wasn't sure when he'd found the time to sneak by her quarters, since she'd ended up spending a majority of the evening with him.

She set the card on her desk and turned back around, headed for the kitchen. Coulson was still standing at the sink, elbow-deep in soapy water, humming quietly to himself. Her heart surged in her chest, and she lamented all the time she has wasted.

(Then again, maybe it had to happen now, after everything.)

She grabbed his shoulders and turned him around to face her, pushing him back so his hips pressed against the edge of the sink.

“Daisy -?” He looked confused and his hands were dripping water all over the floor, but she kept moving before she lost her nerve, all the way in, until her mouth pressed against his.

It was a little off target and their noses pushed almost painfully together for a moment, but he quickly fixed that, tilting his head and moving his lips with hers almost urgently.

She hummed - or moaned, it was a bit difficult to tell the difference when the sound disappeared down his throat - and grasped her fingers tightly into his polo shirt, as if he needed any more encouragement to stay pressed firmly against her.

His tongue flicked at her bottom lip and she granted him access, marveling in the way he didn't hesitate to curl it inside of her mouth. He kissed her hard, desperately, as if he were the one who initiated the action and needed to take as much as he could before she pushed him away. Except she didn't push him away; she gave it all right back to him, until he was pressing wet palm prints against the back of her shirt and getting soap bubbles in her hair.

He was a little leaner than she expected, soft and strong all at once, and his body felt magnificent leaning against hers. That's what cleared her head a little, though, and she carefully pulled herself a step back, breathing heavily.

He blinked at her as she let go of his rumpled shirt, his mouth parted and looking deliciously debauched. She wanted to kiss him again. (Damn, he was a great kisser.)

“Every birthday girl deserves a kiss, right?” She breathed, distractedly, trying to calm her pulse and her thoughts. He nodded slowly, as if he hadn't quite heard her, clearly distracted as well. Trying to give him a gentle look so he knew she wasn't completely blowing this off, Daisy touched her fingers against the side of his jaw for a moment. “Goodnight, AC.” She whispered, turning around and once more heading for her room - making sure she walked casually, and not too fast that it looked like she was running away from him.

“Goodnight, Daisy.” She heard, just before she disappeared around the corner into the hall.

Now that she was away from those lips and that tongue and those eyes, she allowed the wide smile to cross her face, and touched her fingers against her mouth.

Best birthday ever.

———

A few days later was Phil’s birthday, and it was a decidedly different day than Daisy’s. A few of the agents periodically pranked him throughout the day - light, small things, stuff only for amusement. Mace gave him (had to order him, really) a day free from paperwork duties, May made a show of slapping down a bottle of scotch in front of him during breakfast, and Mack spent the entire day holed up in the garage, tinkering on something or another that he refused to reveal until later.

Daisy bought him a card.

It wasn’t just any card, though; she was rather proud of the choice. She hoped it would make him laugh, which was her intention. Well, part of her intention, anyway. Following his example, she didn’t sign it, but she figured he would know who it was from once he read it. (Hopefully. Otherwise…well, someone was going to have an awkward evening.)

He opened the card while they were all eating cake and drinking beer (the cake had an edible printed photo of a pin-up Captain America on it - Phil had blushed deep red and then blurted out a loud guffaw when Jemma had presented it to him). Daisy jokingly cut him a slice that included Cap’s butt, handing it to him with a wiggle of her eyebrows. His eyes had glinted as he accepted the slice with a tiny smile on his face.

The card made him guffaw, too, though this one sounded mostly like surprise.

“Oh alright, now you’ve gotta read it aloud!” Mack insisted, pointing the tip of his beer bottle in Coulson’s direction. Coulson reddened even more than he had upon seeing the cake, and he shook his head, immediately closing the card and sliding it back into the envelope.

“No, no,”

“Oooo,” Mace teased, elbowing Coulson and trying to peer over his shoulder before he managed to tuck the card away completely. “There's a puppy on the front!” Mace announced to the group, to various reactions.

“A puppy?” May replied dubiously, raising her eyebrow at Coulson's continued embarrassment.

“It's nothing.” Coulson insisted, smirking despite himself.

Daisy hid her smile behind her drink as she took a long swig. He glanced at her only for a quick moment, but that brief eye contact sent a delicious tingle down her spine.

Yeah, he knew.

“Well… I guess if you aren't going to share… here,” Mack picked up a carefully wrapped box and held it out toward Coulson.

Coulson tucked the envelope into the back of his pants before accepting the package, knowing better than to leave the card on the table where somebody could grab it.

“Everybody pitched in a little; I put together the final product.” Mack shrugged a little shyly, scratching his ear for a second as Coulson began to tear open the paper. Elena wrapped her arm around his and hugged him close, smiling up at him.

Coulson's eyes lit up as soon as he lifted the lid off the makeshift box and saw what was inside.

“It's,”

“Lola!” Mace finished excitedly, and Jemma rolled her eyes and elbowed him in his side, reaching for his beer and pulling it away from him. He furrowed his brow at her but allowed her to take it out of his hand.

“2.0?” Coulson guessed, just as excited as Mace, and Mack nodded.

“It even flies,” Mack told him. “And no extra spy goodies this time,” He winked, making Coulson smile a little further.

Coulson carefully lifted the RC-drone-car out of its box, and set it on the table. The little action figure that sat inside of it looked surprisingly realistic.

“We used the 3D printer for the little guy. Pretty amazing, isn't it? Very life-like,” Jemma pointed out, and Coulson chuckled as he nodded in agreement.

“Ah, yeah, that’s something.” He seemed unsettled by it in a way, and Mack took over, pointing to the tiny rack on the back end of the car.

“You can hook up a GoPro here, if you want. It’ll even handle the extra weight of the camera in the air, too.” Mack shrugged again. “Something to play around with.”

“Thanks, Mack,” Coulson replied warmly, genuinely touched. “Everybody, really.”

“And before you even try to start, I’M cleaning up tonight,” Jemma raised her eyebrow in Coulson’s direction. “It’s your own birthday.” She gave a look to Daisy, still a little miffed at finding out that Daisy had helped clean up after their get-together a few days prior.

Coulson held his hands up in innocence, giving in rather easily.

“You’ll hear no argument from me, I swear.”

As the evening died down and everyone eventually went their separate ways, Coulson still hung around a bit while Daisy, Mace, and Jemma cleared up the room. Coulson was playing with the Lola car, driving it in and around Mace’s feet as he walked back and forth between the table and the refrigerator.

“Dude, if I trip and break a hip,” Mace warned, laughing as he side-stepped out of the way.

“What are you, eighty?” Coulson teased, and Mace replied quickly,

“Then that makes you pushing ninety, my friend!”

Coulson butted the front end of the car into the side of Mace’s shoe, making the man laugh, and Daisy couldn’t help but feel pleased about how the day turned out. She knew from her own experience and from knowing Coulson over the years that birthdays could be a real sad event sometimes. She was glad this year wasn’t one of those times.

(Even if they never got to the subject of her card. That would just be the icing on the cake. So to speak.)

“Daisy?” Coulson spoke up some time later, the box where Lola was carefully nestled in the crook of his arm.

“I’ll take over,” Mace gestured, moving from putting the clean dishes away to taking over her drying duty. When he sidled up next to her, he leaned down a bit to murmur, “I saw the card.”

Daisy glanced up at him sharply, but his eyes were glinting with amusement. He winked at her, and nudged her with his hip.

“Go on. Jemma and I got this handled. Not much more left to do anyway.” He assured her, and she relaxed quite a bit.

If the Director was alright with it, then….

“Good night, you two.” Jemma told them both, and they returned the salutation before walking side-by-side into the hall.

“I hope today wasn’t too much,” Daisy slipped her hands into the pockets of her jeans, glancing over at him. He shook his head in the negative, readjusting his grip on the box.

“Not at all. It was really nice, actually.” He replied, smiling softly. He seemed to have a faraway look in his eye, so she continued to walk with him in silence, figuring he’d say something else when he was ready. It was a comfortable silence, anyway. They walked in unison, and she didn’t fail to notice that if he had been holding that box in his other arm, their swinging hands might have brushed against one another.

They arrived at his quarters and stood in front of his door for a moment, this time the silence growing mildly awkward, though Daisy wasn’t sure if that was just her or not.

“Daisy?” Coulson wondered, and she turned to face him directly. He seemed shy for a moment, but then gathered his resolve and said, “Every birthday boy deserves a kiss, right?”

Softly, word for word what she’d said to him earlier in the week, in that tone of voice that was very deliberate and very revealing. He just laid himself out there, giving her the choice to either laugh it off, or…. Daisy felt like she couldn’t breathe. She nodded, briefly unsure what to do with her hands before she just leaned in and planted one on him.

He seemed to start with surprise, but quickly shifted the box against his hip so he could touch his free hand against her cheek for a moment. The way his mouth moved against hers was absolutely dirty, but his hand was featherlike as he trailed it down the side of her blouse. It sent shivers down her spine, and then his fingers curled firmly around her hip and those shivers turned into something else.

“Was the card just a joke?” He asked against her lips, refusing to stop kissing her for very long. It took her another minute to find the breath to answer him, while his mouth had started trailing a path along her jaw and down her neck,

“It doesn’t have to be,” She had two fingers slipped between a few buttons of his shirt, holding on, mindful of the box still cradled in his arm.

His pleased hum sounded on the verge of a growl as he blindly fumbled with the door behind him, pushing it open and backing into his room, taking her with him. She shut the door as he set his gift on the floor near his desk.

She expected there to be an awkward moment where they just stood there and stared at one another silently, but that wasn’t the case. As soon as the door had clicked and his hands were free, Coulson stepped toward her, into her space, and wrapped his arms around her as he set upon her mouth once again with that tongue of his.

“Wait wait wait,” She gasped after an indeterminate time had past. “This is your birthday.” She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back, guiding him toward his bed until he fell onto it with a thump.

“I was enjoying that,” He reasoned, looking put-out that they’d stopped making out. She grinned down at him, going for coy, as he leaned back on his elbows. His shirt had become a little more rumpled and unbuttoned and it took every ounce of her willpower not to just jump him immediately.

“I’m sure you were,” She nodded, kneeling down and reaching for his foot. “But I want you to relax. Okay?” She requested, untying his shoe and removing it before reaching for the other foot to do the same. She looked up when he didn’t answer immediately. He was staring at her as if he couldn’t believe any of this was real. “I don’t want you to worry about a thing. I want to take care of you tonight. Can I do that?” She set his shoes together to the side, out of the way.

“I,” He swallowed, his eyes still wide but they held a certain spark now. “But, your birthday, what about,”

“Phil,” Daisy sat up on her knees, putting them relatively eye-level, and carefully rested her hands atop his knees. “If it’ll make you feel better, I consider this a part of my birthday present, too.”

He blinked at her, his chest rising and falling as if he still hadn’t caught his breath yet. She reached up and slowly began unbuttoning the rest of his shirt, and he licked his lips with anticipation as he watched her progress.

“Best birthday ever,” He murmured distractedly, and she smiled.

———

Below: the card that inspired the fic:

[nofomoartworld]

Embracing plastic and the apocalypse: An interview with Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke

Quick post to say that:

1. If you’re in London this coming weekend, don’t miss the Digital Design Weekend 2017. It’s the 7th edition and this year’s a particularly good one with plenty of critical, intelligent and edgy works and ideas. Think Garnet Hertz‘s Disobedient Electronics: Protest, Tactical Tech, Nina Sellars, etc.

2. Artist Morehshin Allahyari and writer/artistDaniel Rourke are also part of the programme with The 3D Additivist Manifesto and The 3D Additivist Cookbook. And i’ve been asked by the lovely and sharp Irini Papadimitriou to interview them for the catalogue of the Digital Design Weekend. What they’ve done for the reflection around 3D fabrication, speculative design, and more generally digital culture is invaluable. The texts of the catalogue are online but i’m copy/pasting my intro (i’m always surprised at how flowery my prose gets when i’m asked to write ‘outside’ of my blog) and our interview below because it has images and you know i love images:

#Additivism: An interview with Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke

For its evangelists, 3D printing is going to breezily save the world one 3D printed kidney, wind turbine, honeycomb or insect snack at a time. The costs of domestic 3D printers are dwindling, the products custom-manufactured to meet our precise needs and the technology has been hailed as the most liberating and revolutionary since the steam engine.

Like with many innovations, this cheerful outlook has soon been met with warnings of copyright hurdles, high energy uses, harmful air emissions, and the realisation that the technology relies on the toxic extraction and processing of minerals and crude oil.

#additivism is the bastard of these two visions. It conjures nightmares of toxic machines churning out guns, drugs, counterfeit cash and meaningless trash ad libitum. It also take its cue from additive manufacturing technology itself and suggests that small scale, cumulative actions have the potential to bring about bigger, more complex realities.

In 2015, Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke released The 3D Additivist Manifesto and called for objects and strategies that would push the physical and conceptual boundaries of 3D printing to its most radical, dystopian and disobedient limits. Artists, designers, activists and thinkers responded with speculative or practical projects, each of them a kind of recipe for transgression and critical meditation on 3D printing and the emancipatory promises of technology. They are presented in The 3D Additivist Cookbook. Made available in 3DPDF format, it is free to download, share, remix and subvert (at additivism.org).

With it, 3D printing finally gets the counterculture movement it deserved.

Laura Devendorf, Anatomy of a Cyborg 3D Printer. A #figure from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

Anna Greenspan & Suzanne Livingston, The Electric Deep: Dream Visions of the Additive Machine. A #method from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

Régine Debatty: Hi Morehshin and Daniel! I like that you chose to follow the idea of ‘staying with the trouble’ and that we probably need to accept that the world is already beyond fixing. This is quite at odds with the tendency of design to imagine nicely-packaged solutions to all sorts of small and vast problems. Have you found that the idea of embracing the horror is still as radical as it was when you embarked on the project?

Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke: This notion of ‘solving’ a problem, especially in a world that feels increasingly non-fixable, is something that we have discussed and taught in many of our talks and workshops. In the world of #Additivism and our own practices as individuals, we’ve been big advocates of micro actions as ways to make something with wider reach and more critical potential. To build platforms and communities and frameworks for educating through rethinking and refiguring. And in contradiction to many of the principles of design, we are not interested or obsessed with answers and solutions. We want to expose things. Make invisible things visible. Mess things up, or at least offer mess and humour and darkness and speculation as ways to reconsider the complicated status of topics like equality, global ecology, or reproductive rights that need to be constantly re-assessed.

#Additivism is about poking at things with weird sticks and asking ever difficult, and often unpalatable questions. To take the very powers that oppress you and using their strategies and languages and aesthetics against them. Embrace the apocalypse but use its darkness to create light. That’s how we’ve been staying with the trouble.

A solution is always a solution ‘for’ some particular, universalised group. And so ‘radicality’ is a constantly shifting notion, dependent on the struggles and conflicts that impact the lives of unheard and unrecognised subjects. Over the life of our project the rise of negative political campaigns, such as Brexit and Donald Trump, signal how appeals to universals are still a powerful force. We oppose the grand narrative, and rather hope for an explosion of counter and micro narratives, for a recognition of singularities – plural – a project that by necessity must go on and on endlessly.

Antonio Esparza, The TurtleBag. A #fabulation from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

Golan Levin and Shawn Sims, The Free Universal Construction Kit. A #toolkit from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

R: Judging from the content of The 3D Additivist Cookbook, it seems that #Additivism has found echoes beyond plastic and 3D printing. Could you tell us how the dystopian and utopian dimensions of 3D printing can be applied to other disciplines, media, practices and technologies?

M&D: For us the 3D printer has always been a metaphor and point of departure to delve into and overlap others disciplines and worlds. The more we developed the project, and especially when it was the time to make selections for the Cookbook, we used #Additivism as a network of forces. Economic, social, political, material, infrastructural. The 3D printer is a machine that offers the promise of being able – one day – to make copies of itself. A radical metaphor for the capacity of life breathed into the world of inert matter. In an era of increasing interest in robots, AI, and other non human technological agents, the 3D printer is still a vibrant metaphor for the capacity of our technologies to inhabit and parasitise new spaces and realities. Who the particular subjects are who seek out and inhabit these new spaces is our concern, and this is another point at which the 3D printer becomes more than a neutral technology. #Additivism sought to wrestle control of 3D printer narratives away from the white tech males who dominate the field. So we still believe that #Additivism is a call for those on the ‘outside’ to seize control and multiply the possible spaces and worlds they inhabit from fablabs, maker-spaces, bedrooms, and laptop screens.

An Additivist is someone who is interested in the potential of technology to leverage small, incremental actions to potentially planetary significance. No 3D printer is required.

For a large central section of The 3D Additivist Cookbook we commissioned two artist groups – A Parede and Browntourage – to curate a series of ‘Additivist’ works. The works from artists of Middle Eastern, South American and other non-western heritages spiral around queer, feminist and decolonialist narratives. We are really proud of that section of The Cookbook in particular, because it often calls our entire project into question. Challenging dominant narratives is crucial to maintaining plurality. The 3D Additivist Manifesto asked to be contradicted and re-envisioned. Every work in the resulting Cookbook is therefore a seed for generating worlds and actions that even – and perhaps especially – its original designers did not envisage.

Jasper Meiners and Isabel Paehr, The Webcamera Obscura. A #toolkit from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

R: Few things make me happier than seeing provocative design or art ideas spread outside of the usual creative circles of galleries and festivals. How can someone who’s neither an artist nor a designer engage with the #Additivist ideas and introduce small, concrete forms of radicality into their life?

M &D: That’s awesome to hear! We share that happiness with you. So much of what we wanted to build was accessibility, education and activation (daily small actions). We urge people to do the same, and hope #Additivism inspires them. How can your particular skill or knowledge be translated into frameworks for educating and including others? What story or counter narrative do you have to bring to the world? The Cookbook’s most radical feature – we hope – is its accessibility and openness (download it for free now and see). But we are far more excited about the projects that are not contained in it, that still have to be imagined. That’s a daily radical proposition. What worlds have yet to be envisioned? We can only answer that together. Jump in.

A lot of action-based projects in the Cookbook can be realised by anyone with any kind of background, as long as they can download the objects from our website and take it to a fablab for a cheap 3D print. For example, a project by Isabel Paehr and Jasper Meiners called ‘Webcam Obscura’ which is a simple playful anti-surveillance tool for laptops. In addition, a good portion of the Cookbook includes essays, interviews, and stories (mostly science fiction) brought together to encourage Additivist way of thinking. Out of the many many workshops we have delivered we’ve only ever used a 3D printer once. Many projects in the Cookbook do their critical work without ever needing to be 3D printed. Kyle McDonald’s Liberator Variations, for instance, questions the status of the now infamous 3D printable ‘Liberator’ gun, but is also a playful tutorial and poetic homage to 3D rendering software. Many of the most ‘radical’ Additivist Cookbook projects are also the simplest. We hope the Cookbook encourages people to play, experiment and not be afraid to make mistakes. That’s the best way to learn, and it’s fundamental to the practices of art and design. We all start as amateurs. Some of us try really hard to stay that way.

R: Because the place of women in the tech world is still one we have to fight for, do you think that there is a place for feminism in #Additivism?

M&D: Yes of course or we wouldn’t do it at all. It’s actually quite interesting to walk into Fablabs anywhere in the world and see so many women standing next to machines 3D printing or laser cutting objects. It’s something we’ve been counting and paying attention to. But in addition to quantity and numbers, so much of #Additivism is about ‘the female future’ we want to participate in building. The feminism we are interested in is a philosophy of more than women, it is a philosophy of non male, non cis, non white. All those people who have at one stage or another been considered less than human by the social systems that oppress them.

Zach Rispoli, Snowden Crown Jewels. A #device from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

R: #Additivism brings to light an apocalyptic vision of the world. Yet, there is a fair amount of irony and humour in The 3D Additivist Cookbook. How do you reconcile horror with humour?

M&D: Between the two of us we have often talked about (jokingly and for real) being Positive Nihilists. So much of that is about our personalities and how we also perhaps handle the dark world we live in…lol. Do we really have to reconcile humour? If humour is a radical act in itself then it need not be considered as somehow the opposite of dystopia/darkness/apocalyptic visions.

Laughter is a shared bodily sound that carries across a group to show that the threat has passed. One human thinks they see a snake in the grass and call out an alarm, but then they quickly realise it is just a stick, and begin to laugh, and their companions laugh at their mistake. Humour today might play a similar role in light of the global problems we face. #Additivism is full of distractions and counter propositions, pointing to a perceived threat, but showing that the real concern lies elsewhere, at a different scale. Humour is significant in that act. Shared mind shifting. Reflective counter-actions and realities. Embracing the horror together.

Debbie Ding, How to Mine for Space Geodes. A #recipe from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

Belén Zahera, Surface Breeding. A #method from The 3D Additivist Cookbook

The Digital Design Weekend is taking place at the V&A in London on Saturday 23 & Sunday 24 September, 10:30-17:00. It coincides with the London Design Festival at the V&A. All events are free.

Previously: The 3D Additivist Manifesto + Cookbook.

from We Make Money Not Art http://ift.tt/2hhqsUp via IFTTT

[littleblackdomicile]

  THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO MASTER FOR HOME ORGANIZATION AND WHY

Happy Motivational Monday!

Perhaps many some of you had a goal in January to get the paper clutter in your life under control.  Oh yes, I do remember that goal and even wrote it down.  Where is that list, that note, my motivational sticky note?

  via Writer Ellen Ryan Messy Desk Article

  Ok, the photo about may be extreme but it gives us all a visual of what can quickly happen to paper if we don’t have a plan that we will implement every year, every month, every week, every day.

Surely I am talking about someone else.  Your home, my home, is no where near this condition.  We know where all our papers are.  Right?  This person has a problem…not me!

via a bowl full of lemons

  Ah, this is you then?  Or you are somewhere in between?  I used to have files like these above.  Well, maybe not as beautifully color coordinated and perfectly symmetrical as these, but I thought they were organized.  I did develop habits to file religiously, making sure that no loose papers were lurking, and believed I would be able to provide past documentation on every subject at a moments notice.  Until one day when I was in one country and the document was in another.  System error!  We came home from that trip and I looked at the numerous files fast becoming “furniture” in our lives and decided there had to be a better way.

# 1 – SCANNING 

Most of us are familiar with the concept behind scanning.  A process that takes any document and turns it info a fileable image we can store in the digital world.  We have evolved from taking docs to a place like Kinkos to scan and send us, to scanners in printers (works only if you can get the printer to work and that is an entirely separate subject) and now scanners on that thing that is permanently attached to the end of our arm.  Our phones.  I wish I had talked to someone about this years ago because before the apps for scanning were available, I was taking a photo of the document on my phone then emailing it to myself, cropping and filing away in safe little files on our computer.  Now with the apps, the cropping is done automatically and it’s so easy to send the docs to whatever system you prefer for storage.  The files go wherever we go, as they are accessible on whatever device we want them on and are in the “cloud” for easy access if we don’t have the devices with us.  Right.  When was the last time you went somewhere without your phone?  This is the way we live and I intend to take full advantage of these wonder apps that make our life easier. We have not owned a file cabinet in probably 10 years. Here’s the app we use, but there are many out there to choose from.  The best one for you is the one you can’t wait to use everyday!

  Learn More About The Scannable App Here

All sounds good right?  Right.  But it will take years to go thru and scan all the papers you have nesting around you.  Perhaps.  We will talk about this next, but for now what if you started today?  Start with the next piece of paper that comes into your home that you need to keep.  Have the scanner and digital system of your choice ready and scan/file that first item.  Do it for everything from now on.  In a year you will look back and not see an entire year of paper to deal with.  

So yesterday you did not have a scanning system in place….but tomorrow you will!  It’s a personal goal and liberating to see it working.

    If you are not motivated to do this simply because you want to escape the paper jungle you have created, then read this article Top Reviews About Identity Theft and start your new habit today.

#2 – SHREDDING 

This one is a little harder to sink into our psyche.  The Yang of the Ying.  After that tangible paper has been scanned and stored let’s shred it.  What!?  Don’t we need to keep paper forever.  The accountants 7 year rule has nothing on us.  We have 30+ years of paper!  How many times have you dug thru all those years of moldy, smelly, brittle records?  How many times have you moved them from one room to another, the attic, the basement the next home?  Super important documents are usually in a bank safe deposit box.  Past tax info is most likely kept safely with your CPA or should be kept digitally.  If a seasoned thief broke in and took your tax return info, would you even know it?

Ok, no more doom and gloom, but these things have happened.  What if you simply do it so that you can free up space in your home and have peace of mind that you are developing a better, safer system?

Really good shredders are no longer expensive.  Unless you get over zealous and feed it too many pages at a time, or have marathon sessions without a little cool down break, a shredder can be gratifying!  I love to hear that grinding sound of the teeth protecting our identity while reducing a large amount of clutter in our home.

via be happy.me

  Our shredder is near my desk and the trash can.  I can sit at the desk for 5 minutes a day, open the mail, scan and store the document, rip labels off junk mail, and shred it all without leaving my seat except to place the recyclable pieces in the weekly bin. Even if I need to pay a bill or correspond to something, it is never more than a few minutes.  We used to have a nice flat basket that I would place everything in to be shredded and Mr. LBD would do a weekly shred in the garage.  So you see, this can be a family affair too.  Kids who are old enough to follow the safety instructions might love to have this simple task for a few bucks.  And what a life long example you are instilling.  As a last resort, play a game with yourself and pass on starting happy hour until the shredding is done for the day.  Oh heck, do it during happy hour!  It won’t take long to develop a habit you will be so proud of.

So now to address the past years of paper that you are saving.  Grab a bag, tote, box or something that you will consider your “To Review” container.  Fill it up and go thru this, deciding whether to shred, or to scan and then shred.   What’s that saying…the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

Here’s the shredder that works for us.

    7.3 x 12.8 x 15.9 in

  This Shredder Available At Amazon Here

One last bit of info as you ponder acquiring a new shredder.  Once you feed your valuable info into the jaws of life, it will come out in one of the three types of cuts below.  If you watch crime TV you are more savvy than I was and know that the FBI and CIA pay folks to reconstruct docs that are strip cut.  Can’t imagine what that person does for fun if this is his/her day job!  Anyway, the cross cut is fine for us and easier to pick up off the floor with one finger lick when I miss the garbage bag emptying the machine.  (Note:  Do not empty your shredder in a rush, directly into the trash can….our friendly garbage collectors do not think it’s funny when you create a confetti party for them.  Neighbors are not thrilled with this either.  Let’s not talk about why I am so knowledgeable about this.)

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Strip Cut

Cross Cut

Micro Cut

TWO OTHER PAPER CULPRITS

Magazines and Newspapers

Love the newsprint ink on your fingers and the feel of a glossy page as you savor your favorite beverage?  Great…keep your recycle box nearby and let them go when you are done with them.  Are you an article clipper or saver?  Try this app….it changed how we do periodicals and offers ways to save to our hearts content…digitally!

Texture Digital Magizines

Now to be perfectly honest about some “paper” that has eluded all my efforts to scan and store.  Family photos.  30+ years of ours, the ones I kept of my mothers and the ones that we are asked about by every client downsizing.

Previously, in an earnest attempt to scan all photos in our life that were before the digital ones, I took photos out of frames and albums and separated them by kid, family, friends, trips and so forth.  They have been in Ziploc bags in one drawer for 3 years.  The photo scanner I purchased for $200 does a great job but the process to do 20 photos takes about an hour.  It did not fit in our schedule and I failed.

This afternoon, before writing this post, I downloaded the app below to see how long it took to digitize 100 photos.  Using my smartphone and the app it took fifteen minutes to scan the photos.  I checked for accuracy as I went which added some time.  (This was not necessary.)  Then I spent 5 minutes to download to the computer, create a file and place into Mac Photos.  In this same time, I created a card using some of the photos to test that I had indeed scanned these old photos.  Now all the photos are snug as a bug in the cloud, on my Mac and in files on the hard drive back up that I use everyday.  Automatically with the app, the photos are cropped and enhanced for the best quality.  I am motivated to do more photos before the day is out.  I am also excited to create photo memory books for ourselves, friends and family from all these vintage photos!  This is a system I can do and I will be happy to pass on the paper copies to the kids as they come by.  Any photos they do not want …are going you know where….can you hear the shredder now?!

  Learn More About Photomyne Here

This is a long post because it is a topic that so many have asked for.  These are the systems I personally have used (and will use for photos now) and have made all the difference in the organization of our home, while reducing so much stress.  Perhaps some of them will work for you.

Let Us Know Here!

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What If The Only Paper In Your Home Was The Green Kind? THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO MASTER FOR HOME ORGANIZATION AND WHY