mx3m @mx3m@merveilles.town

There really are people replying to this thinking Europeans are cleaner than Americans or some bs. The entire western world is pretty gross I guarantee you. We have a superiority complex when we all pretty much still use paper to wipe our asses and walk in our living room with shoes on. I’m super happy if you’re one of the clean ones but I lived 20 years in Europe thank you. Your first world is gross and overrated. Arab countries in particular in my experience do personal hygiene much better.

You know the hardest thing about watching any western TV is witnessing people wearing shoes inside their home. What the heck is wrong with you?!

It’s easy to think that going from 1 to 2 kids is just twice as much work but the reality is slightly different. There are evenings now where my wife and I are so tired we don’t even cook diner for ourselves, we just have a drink or something and pass out until the next sleep cycle 😅 still went for a long walk with my son this morning, rice paddies around smell so good right now. Climbed up a hill and paid a visit to a few kami. Love the end of summer.

“The new plastics and aluminum will not disintegrate, and the concept of being up to our armpits in discarded beer cans is not a pleasant prospect for the future.”

"The second consideration deals with what happens to the disposable article after it has been disposed of. Automobile junkyards follow our highways from coast to coast. And even these appalling smears on the landscape at least have a (painfully slow) rusting process in their favor, so that five or twenty years hence they will have turned to dust.”

"When a new category of objects is designed for disposability, two new parameters must enter the design process. For one thing, does the price of the object reflect its ephemeral character? The 99 cents paper dresses cited before are excellent answers to changing fashion or to travel needs, or in the area of temporary protective clothing. But this is not the case with $149.50 paper dress."

On waste and obsolescence:

"From changing automobiles every few years, to considering everything a throw-away item, and considering all consumer goods, and indeed, most human values, to be disposable."

"I think that even the most successful designer can afford one tenth of his time for the needs of men. It is unimportant what the mechanics of the situation are: four hours out of every forty, one working day out of every ten, or ideally, every tenth year to be spent as a sort of sabbatical designing for many instead of designing for money."

“In other words, will his design be on the side of the social good or not.”

"The designer bears a responsibility for the way the products he designs are received at the market place. But this is still a narrow and parochial view. The designer's responsibility must go far beyond these considerations. His social and moral judgment must be brought into play long before he begins to design, since he has to make a judgment, an a priori judgment as that, as to whether the products he is asked to design or redesign merit his attention at all."

(Not super inclusive; feels a little wrong reading but the central idea is strong)

"It is obvious that the skills of the designer must be made more accessible to all the people. This will mean the restructuring of the role of the designer into that of a community problem-solver. His only allegiance will be to the "direct" clients, the actual users of the devices, tools, products, and environments that he designs. His secondary role will be that of facilitating the production or redesign of these things."

"Design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one right answer: it will always produce an infinite number of answers, some "righter" and some "wronger". The "rightness" of any design solution will depend on the meaning with which we invest the arrangement."

"Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order."

"The opposite of design is chaos."

"The mode of action by which a design fulfills its purpose is its function." (See graph above)

I found notes and screenshots from reading Papanek a few years ago. Some great bits.

Friction is a good thing.

Woaaah these are neat: https://github.com/tailwindlabs/heroicons

And by love I mean, your very own feeling. Not the love of another.