"I believe in the kind of love that doesn’t demand me to prove my worth and sit in anxiety … Something that allows me to me without question."

- Joey Palermo (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

7 Things that Block your Happiness

1. Self hatred and self blame
2. Not being able to let go of the past.
3. Not being able to forgive yourself.
4. Not being able to cherish who you are.
5. Needing other to validate you.
6. Letting other people define who you are.
7. Trying to be perfect, and to please everyone.

(via petrito-deactivated20181216)

Posted 1 year ago with 11220 notes

Fashion and Joy

“And sometimes observers fail to realize just how difficult the fashion industry is. Could you reinvent yourself every few months while remaining true to who it is you believe yourself to be?

These are clothes that are readily wearable but also distinct. They transport you just a little bit. Maybe make you smile. Is it not dignified, democratic or intellectual to say that? That merchandise can bring joy? Well, why else do you assemble a dress as if it’s a giant jigsaw puzzle and then cover the whole thing in sequins? Joy is the point.”

Posted 1 year ago

2017 Trends Report: The Psychedelic Cultural Reality

nikolasfuturist:

Image: Keiichi Matsuda
Thank you for coming here and taking a look at my view on where we are headed as a society in 2017 with exponential technologies, and the companies that build them, drawing society down a new path.
It’s the culmination of hundreds of hours of reading articles and research, watching talks, documentaries, and movie, and discussing how the world is changing with the people building the future.
In this report I cover a number of areas including a brief history of 1994 through to 2017, VR & Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Amplification, Commerce Revolution, Automation, and Cyberwar.
But, what is ‘The Psychedelic Cultural Reality?’ With the advancing of these aforementioned technology areas, the world will feel artificial, visually-overloaded, and uncomfortable. Designers will experiment with new experiences in the world with the privileged acting as willing guinea pigs. The alt-view of the world will seem like an artificial vision – and many will welcome it with open arms.
Take a look at the full report (predictions are listed below):
VR & Mixed Reality Predictions
Facebook VR will create 3x the amount of engagement with it’s platforms and users within those users ‘plugged-in’ to the experience.
Virtual personas will have to be bigger than life to communicate emotions and reactions, and that behaviour will bleed into real life. It will be more irritating than people taking selfies.
Tech companies will use mixed reality to deliver entertainment (and/or distraction), and turn every transparent surface into an information layer.
Mobile device-based mixed reality will be the tipping point as it will make it cost-effective to get access into the experiences on offer.
Apple’s mixed reality product will be released with the iPhone 8
Point and click interfaces will start to disappear with prominence given to autonomous, visual and voice-driven experiences in the real-world.
Artificial Intelligence & Intelligence Amplification Predictions
AI will become more powerful in smaller (mobile) devices, and will start to become ubiquitous in all systems.
Researchers will start to work out how best we, as humans, can coexist and benefit with this integrated in our lives.
Algorithmic ethics definitions, data sanitization, and transformation development will be fast-rising disciplines.
Chief Information Officers transform to have ethical responsibility around how AI learns, and is applied to, their organizations.
Commerce Revolution Predictions
Traditional retailers will scramble to integrate technology (and do a bad job), and Amazon will purchase a major chain of stores and re-fit with complete autonomous systems.
Apple will revolutionize conversational commerce with a new iteration of Siri with advanced AI linked to their wallet, and home devices to connect consumers to retailers.
Automation Predictions
Open-source AI will drive progression in automation at an exponential rate with start-ups performing R&D and large companies buying their IP.
Automation will accelerate in the next 3 to 5 years with mass unemployment in China, and large factory worker declines in the western world as well.
Government-sponsored online education hubs boom in this time due to cross-training people to work better in the information economy.
Cyberwar Predictions
Increased open-source malware, interference, hacks, security awareness, and politicization of ‘hacking’.
Increased spending in penetration testing, security software, and in-house security experts for all kinds of information and entertainment-based businesses.
Increased enrolment in cyber-security career courses at college, and micro-courses at all levels of business.
***
Nikolas Badminton is a world-respected futurist speaker that researches, speaks, and writes about the future of work, how technology is affecting the workplace, how workers are adapting, the sharing economy, and how the world is evolving. He appears at conferences in Canada, USA, UK, and Europe. Email him to book him for your radio, TV show, or conference.
The post 2017 Trends Report: The Psychedelic Cultural Reality appeared first on Nikolas Badminton, Futurist Speaker.

Posted 1 year ago with 1 note

Quantity not Quality

pentopaperblog:

Artists periodically ask me what they can do to get started drawing, and also what they can do to improve the quality of their work. My answer is always the same: find a place (studio, class, group) where you can draw from observation on a frequent and regular basis. Do, and do a lot.
This passage perfectly illustrates why artmaking, of any sort, should be approached with quantity in mind.
“The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weight the work of the ‘quantity’ group: fifty pounds of pots rated an ‘A,’ forty pounds a ‘B,’ and so on. Those being graded on ‘quality,’ however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an ‘A.’ Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the ‘quantity’ group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the ‘quality’ group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”
From Art and Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Posted 2 years ago with 259 notes

Posted 2 years ago with 40 notes

kawakubosan:

COMME des GARÇONS AW1995
“Sleep”
STYLESTYLE; Witness for the Defense
In Paris in January, Rei Kawakubo presented her Comme des Garcons men’s collection for fall, titled “Sleep.” An assortment of striped pajamas worn with sweaters, jackets and bathrobe coats, it was, she said, her attempt to revive lounge wear, which had once been an important category in the gentleman’s wardrobe. The date assigned to Kawakubo for her show was, as it happened, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and two critics saw in the striped pajamas a reminder of the Nazi death camps. Their outraged reviews, in Le Figaro and The International Herald Tribune, prompted a visit to the Comme des Garcons showroom by members of the European Jewish Congress and a spate of articles denouncing Kawakubo as, at best, an unwitting anti-Semite. As a gesture of conciliation, she withdrew the pajamas from the line. Other items in the collection had been stenciled with numerals, randomly scattered, and with footprints. As the scandal escalated, the pajamas came to be described as stamped with “identification numbers”; the models, as “emaciated,” with “shaved heads”; and the footprints, as made by military boots trampling the Jews underfoot. (In fact, no numbers appeared on any of the striped garments; many of the models had long hair; and the tread had been made by a basketball sneaker.) Last month, the Mayor of the third arrondissement refused to rent Kawakubo her usual, city-owned space, for her women’s show – for fear of losing the Jewish vote in the coming elections.
For those of us in the audience that evening in January, the Holocaust connection was one of many possible interpretations, and a highly subjective one, at that. Some spectators saw the show as a late-night get-together at a boys’ dormitory. Others were dismayed by the overtones of emergency, as if the models had been wakened in the middle of the night. To my mind, they looked like insomniac patients roaming a hospital ward. “There is no meaning,” Kawakubo insisted, and, indeed, the body of her work has been abstract – a formal exercise.
Some of the most irate objections have been lodged by people who have never seen the clothes. Suspicious of fashion, they’ve been quick to charge it with crimes they’re sure it must be capable of committing. But more striking than the accusations against Kawakubo is the recklessness behind them. In what amounts to an act of aggression in and of itself, righteous indignation strangles all opinion and hijacks any discourse that the clothes might have inspired.

Posted 3 years ago with 114 notes