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| Whelp. That's A Wrap. |
You're receiving this Thursday Briefing as part of your membership. Thank you for supporting independent publications!
Scott shares his musings for this final briefing of 2021. MAEKAN thanks you all for your support and patronage over the course of this challenging year.
I won’t lie to you, 2021 felt like a shittier version of 2020. It was like 2020, but without the novelty of a virus we knew nothing about. More toilet paper, fewer civil liberties (hey, you win some, lose some right?). We’re now listing off variants like the Kardashians list off ex-husbands (admittedly, the Kardashians are still faster than COVID, though). As we approach my favorite holiday period, I wonder what lays ahead of us in 2022.
The truth is, it doesn’t really matter: we’ve seen that chaos breeds opportunity, and that “2020 + 2” can be just as much a fresh start if we want it to. One lesson I take away from my life, work, interactions is to trim the fat on everything. Between the informational and sensory overloads, we are bombarded with every day, I’ve enjoyed cutting things down massively. I only use Twitter for socials now, stick to a handful of apps and mostly focus on spending my time on work that can yield personal gain and relationships that mutually enrich. As much as I like to care for others, I’ve put a much greater emphasis on caring for my immediate circle instead. Trimming the fat also means spending way less time caring about other people’s feelings about me or things I care about. Don’t like it? No problem. Unless there is any constructive feedback, I’ve started to become immune to opinions.
Another clear conclusion from 2021 is that no one seems to know anything at all about anything. This is a comforting discovery, because most of life ends up as a byproduct of experimentation rather than whatever “expert knowledge” may be. We spend too much time worshiping those in power or with a presumed platform when we are able to lead our own projects instead. Don’t let someone’s degree, experience, or pedigree stop you from having your own full opinions and experiences. To quote the often irritating Peter Thiel, the most contrarian thing you can do is not to go against the grain, but rather have an opinion of your own. Strength comes from doing your own deep work.
So here’s to 2021, you won’t be missed at all. I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot in the past few years, but I remain excited about the future on many fronts. I gain strength and joy from the advent of new technologies, governance systems, and ideas to cull the rot we are working through as a planet and as a people. It takes a few brave people to get the ball rolling: 2022 might just be that year.
We're all wishing you a merry Christmas and happy holidays. From our team to you all, it has been a pleasure to serve you all as always. Thank you for supporting our content, our shop (go get your holiday gifts asap if you’ve forgotten), and our staff/team. MAEKAN remains a labor of love for the most part, and we couldn’t operate without you all, our wonderful readers and supporters.
- Scott
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From The Archives
Evergreen stories from the MAEKAN archive. |
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Sounds Of Tokyo
Spearheaded by MAEKAN Sound Engineer Elphick Wo and Producer Tee, Sounds of Tokyo transports you to the vibrant metropolis by reinventing its addictive energy and character through a soundtrack composed solely of audio captured in the field. Sit back, plug in headphones and experience this MAEKAN Original.
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| For Your A-10-tion |
The best links from across the Internet.
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1. ⚰️ Switzerland Approves 3D-Printed Pods For Assisted Euthanasia
Created by Dr. Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit International, the Sarco Pod is designed to provide users with a quick and painless euthanasia via the simultaneous decrease of oxygen and increase of nitrogen. The system recently passed a legal review in Switzerland and is designed to be transportable to a location of choice and activated from inside the pod (or deactivated should a user change their mind).
2. 🧠 Study Finds Brain Surgeons And Rocket Scientists NOT Smarter Than Us
A British study of 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons has found that they are not necessarily cleverer (that is how to say it, right?) than 18,000 members of the British public based on an assessment of planning and reasoning, working memory, attention, and emotion processing. That said, the results suggest that aerospace engineers had better scores for visually manipulating objects in their minds while neurosurgeons scored higher for semantic problem solving (defining rare words, for instance), suggesting they both have specific talents that make them better at their respective jobs.
3. 📚 Chaoyang Trap On The State Of China's Fashion Magazines
In the wake of the Chinese internet's outrage over Art’n’Dior's recent exhibition by photographer Chen Man, Chaoyang Trap explores the challenging environment faced by China's fashion magazines as well as other themes in contemporary literature through author and translator Na Zhong.
"For fashion magazines, creative freedom is often not free but handicapped by the bottom line. Before the recent crackdown on celebrity culture, fashion publications had seemingly found a way to balance monetization and localization: the “ageless cuteness” of Chinese celebrities like Angelababy, Yang Mi, Xiao Zhan, and Jing Boran drove traffic and created immediate hype, which easily converted to magazine sales. An issue of Harper’s Bazaar e-magazine featuring Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo sold over 1.26 million copies at 6 RMB per copy. You can see why magazines became so keen on chasing after celebrity culture, right up until the party came to an abrupt end. But this is only one of the many paradoxes in the contemporary fashion media landscape."
4. 🤝 Zaha Hadid Architects Transitions To Employee Ownership
In response to calls from a younger generation of architects for a more equitable industry, UK-based Zaha Hadid Architects has created an employee benefit trust (EBT) and in the process, shifted ownership to employees. Because the trust has no external shareholders, employees will have more control over profits from the studio, including the ability to reinvest them. In a statement, the studio had this to say:
"We can now reinvest all profits back into the business, into our people, equipment and facilities to the benefit all our employees; allowing us to prioritise our work with visionary clients, communities and industry experts around the world to advance the quality of the built environment."
5. ✊ North America has its first video game union at Vodeo Games
In other industry-changing news, Vodeo Games became North America's first video game company to unionize. Under the name Vodeo Workers United, employees partnered with the Communications Workers of America, and within it, the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE-CWA), which focuses on the game and technology industries.
6. 🛰️ Parker Solar Probe First Spacecraft To Fly Through Sun's Corona
NASA's Parker Solar Probe recently became the first spacecraft to 'touch' the Sun by flying through its extremely hot upper atmosphere known as the corona. Using an instrument unimaginatively-named the Solar Probe Cup, the Parker Solar Probe sampled particles and magnetic fields, giving scientists a clearer picture on the sun's history and impact on the solar system and by proxy, other stars in the universe.
7. ✍️ The Birth Of "Maladroit" By Broken-Handed Artist Danielle Evans
Fittingly named, Maladroit is French for "bad right," and describes Evans' predicament as she created an art series (and with it, also an NFT collection) that used her non-dominant left hand to craft graffiti-inspired forms out of Play Doh.
"Call it inspiration or permission to launch. I excitedly bought a large package of Play-Doh and started fashioning pieces, pulling ideas from the documentary and the quirky French graffiti I observed every day. My right hand was still comically bandaged, so I let my left hand do the talking."
8. 🎮 New Game Allows You To Buy An NFT, Become A Metahuman
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a 2007 first-person adventure shooter game developed by GSC Game World out of Ukraine. For its latest installment in the series, the company is offering fans or someone who really wants to be in a video game the chance to bid on a special NFT and should they win it, visit the studio to be scanned and digitally recreated as a non-player character in the game. For a game that isn't explicitly designed around NFTs, the offer might be more enticing than the play by Ubisoft's Ghost Recon: Breaking Point, which offers a free NFT (unlocked after playing 600 hours).
9. 🤖 How Do We Use AI-Assisted Design Ethically?
Helen Armstrong talks about how designers can and should harness machine learning as a design material and engage with the technology in a way that exponentially enhances our human abilities.
"Since the 1960s, we have imagined that AI will take over form-making, serving up a multitude of form variations from which a designer can simply choose—a fast forwarding of the design process. But, it turns out, the most powerful application of ML is not speeding up our process to arrive at the same kind of conclusions. The most powerful applications combine machine intelligence with human intelligence to take us along new paths entirely. "
10. 👵 Redesigning Work Could Make Longer Careers Something To Look Forward To
As human lifespans increase to potentially break 100 years, we may be seeing opportunities (or the need) to stay in the workforce longer. However, this doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing so long as we rethink and redesign the role of work in our lives to better match the rhythm of our lives at different stages. As much as they might take the sting out of working, we'd simply prefer a world that allows us to live alongside greater time spent with family, friends, and as we choose.
Instagram’s Favorite New Yorker Cartoons of 2021
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