#icebreaker zine

[hejanic]

Hello new followers if u like meaty things and contemplative writing I have two zines that may interest you. Theyre written as reflections for a couple pieces I did for class and I'm very fond of them.

[tddkproherozine]

Digital copies of the zines have been sent out! 

Please make sure you check your spam folder, and if you can't see the zine in there, send us a DM!

We hope you enjoy the TodoDeku content 🥦🍰

[hellonoblesky]

Writing program ON TOP

[post-leffert]

PIU #3 call for submissions!

Plastic in Utero: a journal of anti-civ anarchy reborn from the compost of wasteland modernity (PIU) is calling for submissions for the third issue!. This zine-journal is open to all who want to contribute to the discussion of the current shit-hole we exist in, which some call civilization, capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. Issue 3's topics will be religion, spirituality, symbolism, and related subjects (such as irreligion, nihilism, god(s), etc). However, contributors are encouraged to explore beyond these themes. The intention is not for the topic to impose limitations on the conversations, but rather to serve as an icebreaker that can connect the various texts within the journal. Feel free to share your perspectives and contribute to the ongoing discourse from previous issues, as well, particularly in the letter section.

PIU accepts the following: Essays, reviews, and interviews (2,500 word limit) Fiction pieces (2,500 word limit) Creative nonfiction (2,500 word limit) Art (keep to one page!) Poetry (keep to two pages, please be clear on formatting requests) Letters (350 word limit)

Deadline is April 1st, 2024. Contact Artxmis at tmwg1995[@]protonmail.com or: Po Box 72 Seymour, IL 61875

If submissions are mailed, format at 9 or 10 pt font, TNR, landscape, two column.

Plastic in Utero: a journal of anti-civ anarchy reborn from the compost of wasteland modernity (PIU) is an extension of the Uncivilized Project, which encompasses the Uncivilized Podcast and Uncivilized Distro. Uncivilized Distro currently has: PIU #1, 34 pages. $3/copy, free to prisoners PIU #2, 42 pages. $3/copy, free to prisoners Anarchism in Review #1: "Leo Tolstoy (1828-1919)" by Luigi Galleani, including a biography by Artxmis Graham Thoreau. $2 if ordered alone, free if requested with copy of PIU.

[bionic-penis]

new zine if anyone is interesteddddd

it's more writing heavy but i still like it <3

[artamazon]

I'm so glad I can finally share my Icebreaker outfit! Thank you to #Destiny2ATGIG for hosting this fun Destiny Weapons Fashion Zine and letting me join in!

[ao3feed-tododeku]

High Risk

High Risk by onierokinetic

This fic was created for the Icebreaker: A TodoDeku Zine!

Izuku has been undercover on a mission for the last six months with no ability to contact anyone in his life until his fiancé, Shouto, walks into the bar Izuku is at. Izuku doesn't look like himself, but he makes a split-second decision to risk the mission in order to spend a few moments with the man he loves for the first time in months.

Words: 2514, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Todoroki Shouto, Original Characters

Relationships: Midoriya Izuku/Todoroki Shouto

Additional Tags: Pro Hero Midoriya Izuku, Pro Hero Todoroki Shouto, Undercover Missions, Fluff and Angst

Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43641798

[ladysunamireads]

High Risk

High Risk by onierokinetic

This fic was created for the Icebreaker: A TodoDeku Zine!

Izuku has been undercover on a mission for the last six months with no ability to contact anyone in his life until his fiancé, Shouto, walks into the bar Izuku is at. Izuku doesn't look like himself, but he makes a split-second decision to risk the mission in order to spend a few moments with the man he loves for the first time in months.

Words: 2514, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Midoriya Izuku, Todoroki Shouto, Original Characters

Relationships: Midoriya Izuku/Todoroki Shouto

Additional Tags: Pro Hero Midoriya Izuku, Pro Hero Todoroki Shouto, Undercover Missions, Fluff and Angst

Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43641798

[slupublicrhetoric]

agenda, 08.22

today

roster check

course introduction [slide deck]

icebreaker: zine

for next time

complete: Welcome Survey

read: Syllabus

review: Reading Guide

read: Edbauer, “(Meta)Physical Graffiti”

read: Brown, “Workers are Mobilizing” 

read (Optional): Hawk, “Publics as Spheres,” 151-159 

[swirlingdisobedience]

P1 - Portraits of a River

Class done in collaboration with tutors from the WdKA (Xenia, Mia and Eric) Practice 1 - 2024.

8 week duration

Assignment:

Objective: Create a visual narrative exploring the river Nieuwe Maas, encompassing its physical, metaphorical, and social dimensions through interdisciplinary research methods.

During this course, you will produce a new collaborative work in the form of a visual narrative* together with an interdisciplinary group of peers. Your visual narrative will explore the river Nieuwe Maas, encompassing its physical, metaphorical, and social dimensions. Your work will depart from a series of interdisciplinary research methods that will be addressed and discussed in class.

*A visual narrative or visual storytelling is a story told with visual material. You can use images, video, audio, text, performance or object-based materials to tell this story and/or convey a message.

Week 1: Introduction, context and team-building 

In class:

Welcome, introduction of the course (and competencies/assessment criteria), its goals, timeline, and expectations, teachers. Icebreaker activities to help students get to know each other.  

Students write their names and pronouns on papers

Introduction of Practices (film) + Natalia presents her work

Drawing Station Introduction

Group formation and introduce homework for next class.

By the river activity:

Look for suspicious things (objects, smells, colours, textures, shapes, movements, sounds, temperature etc.)

Document it and/or how could you document it?

Homework: Each student group gets a topic in connection to the Maas River they must research and present to the class in no more than 5 mins. Topics: history, geography, criminology, ecology, biology, urban planning, environmental damage over water quality, architecture, demographics, Economic and social impact of the river, water usage, cultural significance, hydrology, etc.

Week 2: Exploring diverse interdisciplinary approaches, understanding interdisciplinarity, intro to visual narrative  

Natalia's Class:

10:30 – 13:15 Group A – Drawing Station 

14:15 – 17:00 Group B – Drawing Station 

Students share their skills and preferred methods of experimentation corresponding to their own field and discipline.

Students build their own catalogue of methods in the form of a zine/manual made in class. 

Collaborative exercises where the students exchange and practice to entangle their ideas, styles, methods and skills by putting in practice their own manual (methods) by the Maas near WdKA. 

10:30 - 10:45 (14:15 - 14:30): Sitting in their groups, students individually list the methods for conducting research that they practice in their own field. ex. Advertisement - target group study, Fine Arts - material research, Photography - site visits.

10:45 - 11:30 (14:30 - 15:15): As a group they discuss the lists and make one unified list that can be useful for their group project. They will name each method and provide a description of: 1) What it is, 2) How to practice it, 3) With whom to do it, 4) When it should be done, 4) What materials are needed to practice it, and 5) What are the possible challenges.

11:30 - 12:30 ( 15:15 - 16:15) : Make this list (catalogue of the groups research methods) into a zine.

12:45 - 13:15 (16:30 -17:00): Groups show their zine and group discussion.

Materials needed: (color) paper, magazines, scissors, glue, markers, pens, paint or colour pencils, erasers, sharpeners, staplers. (drawing and collage materials).

Homework: Students work independently and in groups on:  

Students put in practice the research methods they consolidated as a group in the form of a zine at the Maas. They must document their process and findings. 

Students print copies of their zine and bring it for our next class

Video: John Berger Susan Sontag (storytelling lecture) watch before Friday.

Week 3: Research through drawing, integrating research into creative process (research by making) 

Natalia's class:

10:30 – 13:15 Group A – Drawing station and outside 

14:15 – 17:00 Group B - Drawing station and outside 

Introduction to artistic research 

Embodied research exercises in location – Inspired by Sara Ahmed, Orientations: Toward Queer Phenomenology.

10:30 - 11:30 (14:15 -15:15): Read the Forward of Mika Hannula, Artistic Research Methodology.

11:30 - 12:45 (15:15 - 16:30): Out in the landscape

Choose on of the following exercises and allow your intuition to guide your experience, dont question it or try to make it rational or with an end. The keyword to this exercise is *Desire.

Descriptions: Walk around and make thorough descriptions of what you see. Don’t stand only in one location, if you have made the description of something, then move on to the next. Let your intuition determine what you want to describe. Record your descriptions. Think of words, situations or sounds that can help describe what you see and sense. Include them in your recording and narrations.

Acute listening: Tune in to the sounds of the landscape. Try to isolate the sounds from all other noise, so that you have clarity over its qualities. Imitate it, try to make the same rhythm, the same pitch, the same fade in/out. Record yourself + Walk around the landscape and make your body encounter other bodies (non-human) by touching, licking, laying on or under, standing on or under and listen to the sounds these encounters create. Record them. Record the sounds of the landscape and write down what sounds you are recording.

Choreograph of space and relation: Think of the movement that the space / location suggests to your body. If you follow your intuition in navigating the landscape and encountering other non-human bodies, what type of movements do you do in order to reach those encounters? + Think of the movements that would be habitual in that landscape and how they shape that landscape. Enact those movements and document them. Be wary of how your body is shaped and moved by the space. While enacting them change pace, change orientation, and enact the movements in different locations, document your experience and the impact of those shifts in writing, drawings or video.

Extensions of the body: Find objects, bodies or non-human bodies that can help your own body extend in the space. Practice these extensions and document them in writing, drawings or video. Reflect on their inherent agency, their power and impact over your body, your movements, your voice, your rhythm and the space around you. Write down or record your reflections.

and:

Collect: Gather a collection of everything you encountered. Keep these objects and bodies (matter) for the next class, you will need them. Document you collection.

*If taking an other-than-human-body or object hurts or damages something, then document it with a drawings or tracing its textures or describing it in sound.

12:45-13:15 (16:30-17:00): Group discussion: Show and discuss findings

Guide discussion around Desire: What is desire for me? How do I experience desire? How does desire mediate my relations with other bodies and objects? Write down your ideas, realizations, confusions, questions, etc.

Materials needed: phone - recording (audio/video/photo) device, notebook and pen/pencil.

Homework: 

Students compile all the materials gathered during the session in physical form. If images were taken, sounds were recorded or videos were filmed, they must be printed or displayed in a device in the following session with Natalia.  

Week 5: No Class with Natalia.

Week 4: Experimentation and making, with emphasis on experimental and collaborative process 

10:30 – 13:15 Group A – at Drawing Station and WdKA 

14:15 – 17:00 Group B – at Drawing Station and WdKA 

Collaborative session in class: with all the material collected in the previous embodied research session.  

Peer to peer review about material they collected + Group analysis of the material 

Arranging, re-arranging and installing the material for public display (exercise) - improvising a narrative within a different context. (object-based, presenting archived material) 

10:30 - 11:30 (14:15 - 15:15): In groups students share the collected material from the previous class and they do group a analysis of the material.

11:30 -12:30 (15:15 - 16:15): Each group will find a spot in the 3rd floor of WdKA (drawing station and around). They will arrange and re-arrange the material as a group improvising a narrative that is self-standing.

12:30 - 13:15 (16:15 - 17:00): We go around to see and discuss the results.

Materials needed: Materials collected from the previous class and installing material such as rope, tape, nails, etc.

Homework: Each student individually brings a news article about the Maas River in Rotterdam that they find relevant to their interests and/or project.

Week 6: Production of Visual narrative. 

10:30 – 13:15 Group A - Drawing Station

14:15 – 17:00 Group B - Drawing Station

Collaborative session in location: Each student brings an article from the news about the Maas River. As a group they agree on a question(s) or topic(s) they would like to find out more about. Students conduct artistic research (conversation/interview) with the nearby inhabitants in order to gather testimonies on the topic.  

Students analyze the interviews they conducted and how they may affect their project/knowledge of the Maas.  

Discussion over the relevance, impact and value of art and design in the broader social and cultural context. 

10:30 - 11:00 (14:15 - 14:45): Each student shares the content of the article they brought with their group. As a group they agree on a question(s) or topic(s) they would like to investigate further. Each group writes down the questions or topics.

11:00 - 12:00 (14:45 - 15:45): Students conduct interviews/conversations with people in the city near our chosen location. Students gather testimonies on that topic(s) or question(s).

12:00 - 12:45 (15:45 - 16:30): Students analyze the interviews/conversations they conducted and how they impact their stories, narratives, and knowledge of the Maas River.

12:45 - 13:15 (16:30 - 17:00): Group discussion about their findings.

Week 7: Refining the visual narrative, asking critical questions, production 

Natalia's class:

10:30 – 13:15 Group A – Drawing Station  

14:15 – 17:00 Group B – Drawing Station 

Feedback session with groups and peers.  

Asking critical questions.  

Writing for 1.3 

10:30 - 11:30 (14:15 - 15:15): Writing reflection for 1.3:

Choose 3 out of the 5 prompts below to write about. Write for 15 minutes on each prompt. Write in whatever way feels natural to you. You don’t have to write in an academic or literary format. You won’t be assessed on correct grammar or spelling; getting your thoughts on paper is what counts. Before you start to write, travel in your mind to moments and memories. Think about how you felt and where you felt it in your body. Think about your sensory experience: what did you see, hear, smell, feel, etc. Use these memories and experiences to be as detailed and elaborate as possible in your writing.

Describe an object you interacted with during P1.2 program.

Describe a moment during the P1.2 program where you experienced a shift in knowledge or learned something new.

Describe something unexpected you experienced during the P1.2 program.

Describe an experience from P1.2 that feels valuable to your future projects.

Describe a space outside of the Academy that you connected with during the P1.2 program.

Homework: Save your writing assignment as .docx. Upload the link to your assignment under the correct Station and student group (A or B). Deadline for submission is Thursday, March 28 at 23:59 (uploading is not possible after)

11:30 - 12:30 (15:15 -16:15): Feedback between groups and asking critical questions.

Week 8: Presentations and reflection on the project 

 Groups present their Portraits of the River. Peer and teachers’ team feedback.  

[thearomanticcactus]

Thinking about the fact that we have been deprived of fancy ship names (like HotWings instead of DabiHawks) for most popular pairs. I'm gonna try to fix that, but it's not gonna be good lol

IceBreaker for TodoDeku (just because I can't think of anything better currently and that was the name of a TodoDeku zine)

Italian Flag for TodoDeku (because of the colors obv)

Snow Bunny for Rumi x Fuyumi (I'm pretty sure this is a popular one already but it's not what it's called on the shipping wiki, so...)

Pop Rocks for KiriBaku

[tddkproherozine]

IMPORTANT UPDATE: PLEASE READ IF YOU BOUGHT A COPY OF ICEBREAKER

All buyers have been sent an email with this information. If you have any questions or concerns, please DM us or respond to the email you received (check spam!)

We will be back with an update in a few weeks' time. 

[libraryofgage]

A little preview of my main piece for the nsfw half of the @tddkproherozine! Preorders for the zine are currently open and you can find them HERE

There’s so much good content, you should def check it out! 

Transcription:

Izuku suddenly feels overwhelmed, his hands shaking as he breaks the kiss to catch his breath. Without missing a beat, Shouto begins kissing his neck, his hot breath starkly contrasting with the cold hand trailing down towards...

“Shou,” Izuku says, his voice barely louder than a whisper as he grabs Shouto’s wrist. He licks his lips, trying to collect his thoughts into something coherent. But, between the tongue and teeth on his neck, he can barely manage, “We shouldn’t...the clothes.”

This much is enough, though, as Shouto mercifully pauses and looks up at him. Izuku almost breaths a sigh of relief. And then he hears, “Don’t worry.”

[aurltas]

@milkcrates tagged me to share 10 things abt myself (tysm!!! <33) and yall know i cannot resist an opportunity to yell-rant extensively about myself on tumblr and nowhere else so here we gooooo

1. i am going to do what i Always do at icebreakers/whatever and throw it out here too that i work, sort-of-indirectly-kinda, for youtube ! im a writer/reviewer on the closed captioning team for (sigh) twoset violin, aka the world’s worst enunciators (shoutout to the ppl in the comments who mention subtitles-san............yall give us life)

2. the second thing i Always bring up at icebreakers/etc is that i am a certified scuba diver!! i adore the ocean and respect it deeply with all the fear in my heart,, it’s so lovely, i’ll never forget the feeling of being like 50m down and looking up and it’s just: w a t e r

3. i really enjoy finding random lil communities of hobbyists and uhhhh that basically bleeds over into whatever i become mildly obsessed with for the next couple months and inevitably becomes a future life goal; currently it is fishkeeping/aquascaping and rare succulents ESPECIALLY haworthias i love haworthias so much guys

4. whenever i have a choice my academic projects are like 80% about fandoms and 20% about medical humanities and thats basically a summary of Me As An Academic And Human Being (which speaking of,, i just wrapped up a conference presentation where i got to present my research on queer cn diaspora in danmei fandom and i was so nervous but it was SO fun even tho it was over zoom)

5. oh my god not to get all academic again but i am Obsessed w the medical humanities you guys it’s so cool (basically it’s the intersection of medicine + the arts, whether that means incorporating art as an augmentative treatment or incorporating medical experiences into art!! a lot of ppl are somewhat familiar w music therapy or art therapy and those fall under this category) LIKE,, i honestly feel so seen at this intersection?? and both fields would truly benefit from (and need!!) the influence of the other

6. and now for a complete 180: i go through clothes super slowly and rarely buy new clothes so half my wardrobe hasnt changed in Years . meaning: a bunch of it is still stuff my mom picked out for me o)-( this is an unfortunate combo of the fact that i used to hate clothes shopping + never used to go shopping w friends Ever + am a creature of habit

7. ok so my parents made me learn piano from a young age and i, to their horror, actually loved it and seriously considered persuing music ed when i graduated hs LMFAO like if i lived in an ideal world my majors would be music ed + museum studies / museumology + medical humanities + fandom/media studies

8. as a result of being a longtime classically trained pianist i subscribe p closely to the Stereotypical Classical Musician Genres (kpop, anime music / jrock, modern classical) with a dash of whatever my friends throw my way (alt, indie, folk, i dont even technically know most of the terms lmfao) so it really tracks that my fav song rn is from a modern-traditional cn music group

9. i have a whole complex abt being multifaceted and Extremely Interesting As A Person so this is great for me HAHAHAHA but yes i am fundamentally v concerned with being a ~unique individual~ (my enneagram rly called me out on that one......im a type 4 iirc) and i feel like that shows a lot in how i use and present myself on this site lmaooo

10. my fav font rn is ovo !!! i used it to make a zine recently for class and it was such a good vibe i adore it (im currently taking a class on zines / independent publishing w my all time fav prof who also literally happens to be a municipal-level poet laureate and a rock enthusiast its BONKERS i would d*e for her)

if u read all that kudos to u!! i hope it was interesting LOLL

tagging (as per usual, no pressure + feel free to do this even if u weren’t tagged!!! i love reading these so PLS dont hesitate to do this n say i tagged u) - @star-bribery, @cityof-starlight , @saintbaselshouse , @oboenotclarinet , @theravenlyn , @reiiharu , @notfloofaccount , @mss3ng, @lenawin4 , and YOU !! if u want. :3c

[because-its-important]

transitions & transformations

i. the rest of my batch at RC

I spent the first six weeks of my batch at Recurse Center in an out-and-out sprint. I learned Python, built and released projects, and wrote blog posts every week. I wasn’t sure where my limits were, but I was determined to find out - preferably by overshooting them, then adjusting after the fact.

A curious thing happened. I kept finding that I was more than capable of starting and finishing projects, especially when I had a firm mental image of the end goal. There were at least as many unexpected good-turns as there were setbacks, and I certainly didn’t come up against any inscrutable barriers. Mostly the challenge was in overcoming the distance between a thing that doesn’t exist and a thing that does, which I was able to sort out pretty handily through a consistent application of effort across time.

Who’d have thought?

A selfie taken on my birthday, which also happened in the last few months and was really great!

The second half of my batch was not so visibly productive - with the exception of The Question Game. The Question Game is a simple game designed to help groups of people get to know each other better IRL. I designed it with my friend Brittany a few years ago as an icebreaker when we found ourselves in a group of folks who knew us but didn’t really know each other. The game only really needs a method of generating random numbers for a small but arbitrary group size, but building it out as a toy webapp was a good excuse to get practice working with a JS-only stack. I learned React, got a lil more familiar with node, and even went as far as to attach an otherwise completely unnecessary PG database and Sequelize ORM. You can see the code for it here. Outside of this project, however, I didn’t publish any code. I didn’t publish any writing, either.

So I’d like to take a moment and shine a bit of light on the work that I did during the rest of my batch.

🌒 🌓 🌔 🌕 🌖 🌗 🌘

First, I made the decision to leave community.lawyer, the social impact startup I co-founded in 2016 following the Blue Ridge Labs Fellowship.

I’m happy to report that I left on the come up, which seems a rare and privileged thing for a founder to be able to say. Gaining traction in a hyper-specialized industry like legal tech takes a gargantuan amount of sustained forward momentum, and I departed just as we began to reap the fruits of our labor. In the last few months community.lawyer has reached final approval on partnerships a year in the making, won federal grants we’d submitted to in 2016, and every day our software is being used to help connect people who have legal needs with credible lawyers. Our first two partners were exactly the types of legal organizations at the heart of our mission: the Justice Entrepreneurs Project and the DC Reduced Fee Lawyer & Mediator Referral Service.1 Based in Chicago and Washington DC respectively, these orgs are specifically chartered to deliver quality services at rates that more Americans can afford. I am so proud. ⚖️

Second, I started my first ever job hunt as a software engineer. Wowee, this was scary! I knew that I had to prepare for interviewing, which meant a) getting my career change narrative straight, b) studying Data Structures & Algorithms 101, and c) learning how to perform my handle on both of these in a live, semi-adversarial environment.

At one point during my batch my laptop broke. I read through this wonderful illustrated book during the two days it was being fixed.

In order to direct my search I also had to craft a set of selection criteria of my own. Foremost: “What good will my work do for the world?”2 Additionally, “What degree of access will I have to supportive mentors?”

Getting started with interview prep was a challenge, at least partly because I had so many options for where to start. But I did get started! I read Cracking the Coding Interview, I did the free trial and weekly free problems on Interview Cake. I attended a few group mock interviews at Recurse Center and signed up for a 1-1 mock interview with an RC alum. Her name is Leah, and she’s amazing - the superbly friendly and encouraging Comp Sci TA I wish I’d had years ago. 💚Brittany also set up mock technical screens for me with her pals, Leaf and Ian. They were the vanguard against my outsized anxiety about programming for an audience and they each took the time to give me solid feedback.

Third, I extended my batch at Recurse Center by another 6 weeks. I had decided early on I wouldn’t extend (for no real reason) and stuck with this decision up until two days before my batch ending. A small group of folks - Lily, Connor, Alicja and I - went to NYX in Union Square to try out lipsticks. We played with different colors and finishes (satin! matte! shimmer!) for half an hour or so. There came a point when I looked up, glanced across the narrow makeup store at my beautiful friends’ beautiful faces and thought, “You know, you don’t have to leave yet, right? What’s the rush?” I’d already accomplished my primary goal, to forcibly rework my identity as an engineer, but it sure seemed that I could stand to reach for a second one. That night I decided to extend my batch, with the intention of sampling a more open method of self-directed learning, i.e. with a little more chill and a lot less panic. Specifically, I wanted to practice connecting meaningfully with my limited supply of social energy.

In my bonus six weeks, I: gave three talks (2 planned, 1 impromptu) under encouragement from Ayla and Lily, learned to juggle thanks to instruction from a fellow RCer, Edward, who also loaned me a book about learning, made it into weekly Feelings Check-in (read as: opt-in support group) fairly regularly, picked my first ever lock, saw a live-coding show and then later attended two live-coding workshops (one on TidalCycles, another on Super Collider), sat in a dark room and played howling wolf clips while Microsoft Sam read grimoires aloud, got my hair braided for the first time in a decade, made dumplings and DJ’d for a dinner party, connected with folks about queer-poly relationships, gave fiery advice, and received compliments so earnest and rational and persistent that it was difficult to refute them.

Zine fair plus Lightning Bolt concert inside a movie theater in Times Square??

I also put my interview prep to use and interviewed with a handful of Recurse Center partner companies. Job searching meant squaring off against impostor syndrome and a ton of related anxieties in rapid succession. I successfully choked most of that down when it mattered, though, and it was only a couple short weeks before I received my first offer.

To that end, I’m super happy to say that I’ll be joining Blink Health as a Fullstack Product Engineer! Blink Health is a healthcare startup in SoHo. They make it easier for people to afford prescription drugs, especially for those with limited insurance plans or none at all. These savings aren’t trivial either: an extra $50 can spare someone from choosing between groceries or medicine that week, and for some folks Blink saves many times that. I’ll be starting at the end of this month. ✌️🤓

The last two years have been a wild ride: participating in a social impact fellowship and accelerator, busting my product chops and learning web dev to get a public benefit company off the ground, then diving into four months of self-directed learning at Recurse Center. I’m really looking forward to having some externally imposed structure again. Real health insurance, too.

ii. some hard truths

I made a few radical life changes in 2016, like getting involved in activist spaces, dating more, biking everywhere, building strong friendships, going capital-B Boogying, programming full-time. As I carried those changes forward through 2017, I began to notice a lot of mental and emotional reconfiguration happening to me.

Did you know that along its way to becoming a butterfly, a caterpillar nearly completely liquifies inside its cocoon?

Psychological growth is confusing, full of false starts, and generally painful. You’ve got the static pain of stretching beyond your limits, the pleasure-pain of feeling an old knot finally release, the frustrating pain of stubbing your toe because some helpful asshole has been rearranging your psychic furniture when you weren’t looking. There’s the more dramatic knife-in-the-gut pain of realizing that just because you’re growing doesn’t mean the people closest to you are, and that now in certain cases what you previoulsy regarded as friendship actually looks a whole lot like run-of-the-mill exploitation or even emotional abuse, if you're being honest, and it's a realization that only hurts more because it’s so irredeemably cliche and boring. And despite all that pain you gotta go ahead and grow anyway, claw your way out of the relative comfort of ignorance. Transcendence may not be the only show in town but afaik it’s the one most worth watching.

Prior to attending Recurse Center I’d spent lots of time exploring my surroundings and cataloguing people and places worth coming back to. My view of myself did change (and positively!) as a consequence. But sooner or later, ya get tired of the taste of low-hanging fruit.

So, armed with the bookshelf of a philosophy grad and a burgeoning psychoanalytic vocabulary begging to be let off leash, I decided to use my time at RC to try confronting a few of my Hard To See truths in addition to becoming a better programmer.

Here’s what I’ve found so far.

Truth #1: People like me a lot. This causes me problems.

I’ve been metabolizing this one for some time. I remember having a conversation with Brittany in January of 2016. I don’t remember what social anxiety I’d been vocalizing, but I must have been worrying that someone “hated me.” Brittany cut me off, exasperated in the way that only a friend can be in the face of utter delusion: “No one hates you Nicole! You’re always worried that people don’t like you and it’s never true!”

I carried that admonishment with me through two years of voracious friendship-building. On the whole, seeing that people do in fact enjoy and seek out my company has curbed the most egregious overreaches of my social anxiety. But reckoning with my anxiety honestly has also meant acknowledging that my compulsive instinct to withdraw from social situations is also a protective (if suboptimal) response to a few very real dangers.

Most acutely: being friendly, generous, and intensely empathetic makes me a ready target for users. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt for as long as I can, which makes me proportionally susceptible to being taken advantage of and then gaslighted about it. A lifetime of socialization as a petite woman don’t help, neither. This leads to a pattern where, semi-regularly, I look up and take stock of how someone has been treating me and realize that the answer is Very Badly, For Quite A While. This in turn leads to rough periods of cutting ties and moving on. Ideally I’d like to be be able to filter bad actors out sooner, but I also want to stay open, giving, and hopeful beyond reason. Those desires are fundamentally at odds with each other - raising vs. lowering one’s defenses - but it’s clear that I need to come up with a strategy that balances both.

More broadly, though, I operate under an ever-present dread of inevitably disappointing everyone who knows me. Whether people project onto me because they already like me or like me more because they project positively onto me, I am extremely sensitive to the fact that when people meet me the conception they form has waaay more to do with what they want to find than what’s actually there. My body is a surface readily projected upon: young, female-shaped, ethnically ambiguous, small, smiling. These well-intended projections cause me the most trouble when people see me interacting socially; they’ll witness fifteen minutes of seemingly effortless extroversion on my part and extrapolate out massively. As far as they’re concerned I’ve got plenty of social energy to spare, and if I don’t spend it hanging out with them, it must be because either my friendliness is fake or I don’t like them.

Pretty much none of this is conducted consciously, of course, but it still creates a lot of unnecessary pressure that I can’t pretend not to feel and resent. I know there are people who dream about attaining this kind of “popularity” - to be assumed Cooler than one truly is - but getting buffeted around by folks’ totally unexamined, unarticulated psychological desires mostly sucks.

Truth #2: I’m non-binary.

I’ve also spent a very long time resisting this one. Two decades on the rack, easy. As such, the story of getting here is long. Perhaps one day I’ll tell it. 😛

The short of it, though, is this: I’m probably at least as much of a boy3 as I am a girl. Outside of where my life has been mutated by the chronic background radiation of sexism, “benevolent” and otherwise, I don’t strongly identify as a woman. Furthermore, I find the two-gender system to be infinitely more alienating than comforting. Gender is a social construction designed to impose order on the natural messiness of sexual experience, and as far as I’m cool with that, I am decidedly Not Cool with the “normal” state of affairs, i.e. aggressively shoving whole human beings into an absurdly reductive false dichotomy.

Between its either-or-ism and its forced assignment, the traditional approach to gender reveals itself to be obviously bullshit to anyone who spends more than a few minutes thinking about it. Its boundaries are arbitrary, inconsistent, and generally ill-fitting at the level of individual experience, which why they require such an outrageous amount of coercion and bodily violence to enforce. As much as other folks want to participate in a system of ritualized violence I guess they are free to? Personally, I’d prefer to see it actively dismantled.

If gender is to be saved it’ll be by subverting it, taking it apart, remaking it into something life-affirming. Not the dehumanizing garbage we’ve got now.

As of yet I don’t have any plans to change my presentation because I don’t fuckin’ gotta!

I do have a preference towards They / Them pronouns, but She / Her is still fine. For most of my friends this isn’t going to be at all surprising nor will it in any way negatively impact our relationship. Anyone who needs me to just-be-a-girl, however, can expect turbulence.

Truth #3: My righteous anger is justified and I am good at using it to help others.

I have felt conflicted about my anger for a long time. Since a very vocal childhood I have been regularly frustrated by prejudices and injustices, and I was frequently the first voice of dissent against them, whether that meant challenging adults or my peers. Unsurprisingly, I became well acquainted with the standard strokes of the backlash.

When you are confronting bigotry in a mixed environment, the voice of the status quo will generally manifest in one of two ways:

Gaslighting, e.g. “you are wrong to have said this at all, obviously I am a Good Person, you are just imagining that what I said sounded like XYZ, honestly how could you even think this, as a matter of fact it is I who is offended!”

Tone policing, e.g. “you’re too upset about this! after all, I, the person who did Fucked Up Thing, am perfectly calm about Fucked Up Thing, so any amount of anger makes you irrational by contrast, and I get a raincheck on whatever this is about!”

I know these responses are repulsive. I know they are merely the signs of a weak and imperiled ego acting out of fear. And yet I still spend an inordinate amount of time second-guessing my own anger. Gaslighting and tone policing are a favored weapon of the status quo because they work, and they work in direct proportion to how agreeable their target wants to be.

content warning: the following segment talks about sexual harassment and assault

About couple weeks ago I had the misfortune of being sexually harassed at a club in Bushwick. After numerous rejections and explicitly telling a creep bothering me, my friends, and other women in the club to get lost, I finally went to get a bouncer to eject him. The bouncer got the creep to leave. When I went to thank him, the bouncer told me a whole story about how the creep was “a harmless guy.” Then he reached down and grabbed my ass. Presumably he felt entitled to do this after helping me get rid of a person I asked him to remove... for unwanted touching.

It Really Sucked.

At every turn during the whole ordeal (and its aftermath) I had to hold onto my anger, convince myself that I wasn’t overreacting, remind myself that anyone who thought this was acceptable to do to me is almost certainly doing worse to more vulnerable people. I kept picturing myself the way this guy, this man in a position of power, must have seen me in order to feel okay doing what he did. That I was young, small, female, too friendly to say No, already indebted anyway; that he was one of the Good Guys, that his behavior was also “harmless” because he had decided it was. I conjured up as much anger as I could, pushed down the nausea of envisioning my own degradation from an attacker’s POV, and got to work. I reached out to the club and was quickly put in contact with the owner. The venue now has a publicly posted zero tolerance sexual harassment policy. The entire staff is going through training with a local org dedicated to creating safer nightlife spaces. And that motherfucker has been fired.

I demonstrably made the world better. I wasn’t alone, but all that happened because of my actions. Me and my anger, we did that.

I wish more people were this fucking angry. 💢

~ end of content warning ~

iii. an opinion

My Saturn return is upon me, y’all. As Frank Ocean serenades, we’ll never be those kids again. I have lived a few of these here nine lives and it seems only prudent to be moving forward with some sort of opinion on the matter.

My opinion is this: us folks with financial and physical security should be spending more time fixing shit around here. Figuring out what needs fixing and how you might help are the first steps.

If you’re operating on a similar scale of privilege as I am, maybe that means changing jobs to do more mission-oriented work. If you can’t swing a change of that magnitude, maybe it means showing up to community events and engaging with, caring for, supporting people you otherwise wouldn’t talk to. Churches, libraries, volunteering, supporting local artists, participating in local politics - this all counts. If you’re already doing this sorta thing, that is awesome! Maybe you also have a friend worth inviting who you sense is just itching for a chance to exercise compassion?

I’m using “fixing” pretty loosely here, too. Fixing, to my mind, means making the world brighter, safer, and sweeter for your fellows, human and otherwise. We’ve all got different ideas about what that looks like, and there are definitely folks - myopic or malevolent or both - who will swear up and down that their fear- and hate-driven behaviors will bring about better world. Ultimately, though, I believe that many hands reaching towards their personal vision of Better will in fact make things Better, especially when that vision is informed by meaningful interaction with the real world and its real sorrows and its real triumphs.

But ya gotta reach. Ya gotta try.

I am so tired of hearing my well-fed, well-homed friends piss and moan about late capitalism4 without lifting a damn finger in service of the communities bearing the brunt of material hardship. Unfettered capitalism sure does have a marked tendency to wreak havoc on organic life! But capitalism is not a monolith, and lamenting the abuses perpetuated by its principle benefactors as unchanging or inevitable only normalizes them. Any investigation into the history of capitalism (or the broader phenomena of how a Few come to subjugate the Many) will very quickly disabuse you of the notion that this shit is going to stop without a great deal of active resistance.5

So unless you are personally doing work to put our current strand of democracy-withering corporatism six-feet-under, seriously, just STFU instead. Your nihilism is boring! You don’t sound woke! Save it for your local DSA working group!

Which isn’t to say that I’m not convinced of the wickedness6 of the problems we’re facing: skyrocketing wealth disparity with no relief in sight; the destruction of most of Earth’s biodiversity via mass extinction; a pernicious climate of racism and xenophobia that scapegoats black and brown folks and then visits misery upon them; the weight of an aging population bearing down on the shittiest healthcare system of any nation in its class; a widely disenfranchised electorate further fragmented and fatigued by hyper-polarization; the gendered terrorism that is inflicted daily on women, trans and non-binary folks, and queer people at large; a rising wave of depressive anxiety as people become more aware of these problems and how thoroughly they’ve been disempowered from changing things for the better.

So yeah, I get it. These are hard problems. I just don’t see any better option than trying anyway. I want to spend my time fixing things around here and encouraging others to try their hand too. You already know the bad news: real change is hard and it can take a very long time. You might work your whole life sowing seeds whose fruit you never get to taste.

The good news, however, is that you can get started whenever and wherever you are. The good news is that a sense of purpose is its own reward.

iv. how to get started

When you’ve got hard work ahead of you, your best bet is to use your beautiful human brain and create some leverage. Ask Archimedes about it.7

Lever systems got two parts:

The lever, which is the tool you use to amplify your effort. The longer your lever is, the easier your job will be.

The fulcrum, which is the wedge the lever rests on. The nearer your fulcrum is to the thing you want to move, the easier your job will be.

If you’re starting from zero - “I want to do more for the world but I don’t know how!” - my advice is to forget about the lever arm for now. A lever ain’t shit without a fulcrum, anyway. Your time is better spent exploring the world, keeping an eye out for problems you’d like to solve, and identifying nearby points of leverage. If you want to get into activism, a fulcrum might be volunteering to fold pamphlets for an organization with a mission you believe in. If want to see more self-expression in the world, it might be might be inviting your friends to a zine-making class or hosting your own arts and craft night.

The best fulcrum is one that makes you Feel Good when you apply any amount of effort against it. Too many people get caught up in a self-defeating belief that if they can’t give 110% of their creative energy to something they might as well not try. I can confidently say that trying is itself a virtue. Every time you try even a little bit you make it easier for yourself to try again later, and more importantly, you make trying easier for others. A bunch of people altering their behavior a smidge in the same direction doesn’t add up to nothing; on the contrary, it’s a sea change.

If you’ve got a decent idea of the types of problems you want to solve, though, and you’ve tested your fulcrums, and you are thinking, “Okay, but is this all I’m capable of giving?” then it’s probably time to work on your lever. Given your own interests and inclinations, what skills can you develop that will increase the good you’re doing 10x, 100x over? This is the long game, but it scales a whole lot better than “keep doing what I’m already doing, but more.”

For me right now this means deepening my technical knowledge, building a resilient support network, and sharing what I’m learning. Helping others has been a powerful motivator for self-improvement, not the least of which because it’s a convenient shortcut through the snarl of self-confidence issues.

I am so grateful that Recurse Center was a stop on lengthening my lever! What a concentrated cluster of helpful, considerate beings.

I’ve spent the last two years wandering around New York City in wide-eyed wonder, asking myself the most ambitious question I could think of: how do you save the world?

Getting older comes with a lot of downsides, but asking yourself big questions and living your life as the answer is the primary pleasure of adulthood. It took a ton of courage to get started and I am still frequently awed to find myself moving in the right direction. I’m humbled by the grace and fortitude of the folks who’ve been at this for way longer.

I’m also a hell of a lot happier. This summer’s gonna be rad. ☀️

There are lots of extraordinarily sexy company names like this in the legal world. ↩︎

Having the choice to direct my energies in this way is a privilege. Working in tech gives me this freedom of motion and I have been drawn to software engineering in part because it is the freest of the free (if you still gotta labor for your living). ↩︎

😱😫😖😬😬😬... 😏 ↩︎

Substitute with whatever modifier is en vogue. As a point of fact, “late capitalism” is a term that’s been floating around for literally over a hundred years. ↩︎

Thankfully, history also clearly demonstrates that the tide can be turned. ↩︎

“The use of the term ‘wicked’ here has come to denote resistance to resolution.” Wikipedia page. ↩︎

“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world,” etc etc. ↩︎

[moed-socialdesign]

This is the end, my beautiful friend

The semester is gone! the past 3 weeks were very busy for a lot of us so of course we got confused and forgot who was doing which blog. So our entry today is a mashup of weeks 14 and 15, and our last entry

Week 14

We had a lot of pre-work for our class. Lydia+Yael+Estela were the Brand vision team, responsible for coming up with the brand Essence for MOED, as well as possible names and tag-lines. 

John+Melissa+Bryn+Yuequi were the Visual brand team, responsible for coming up with possible visual directions. (include screenshots of visual direction)

Because we did the Spectrum Thinking work, we knew that both the visual and verbal language for the brand needed to feel Relaxed, Human and Action Oriented

Then we used both Brand Vision and Visual Styles to take our prototypes to the next level. We review them and discuss what we were going to present on our Share back on December 16.

For the share back we decided to show all 3 options of the brand identity and have people vote

We also had a special guest, Lee Davis! the Co-Director of the Center for Social Design. He presented us a collaboration between the Center + MICA alumni and the EcoLab at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art & Design (MOME). They worked together to redesign the brand for the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

A big takeaway from their work is that redesigning a brand is much more than visual work. There is a lot of thinking and strategy behind it, self-reflection and intentionality.

Week 15

We made some more adjustments to our prototypes and brand ideas and met on Sunday, December 13 to practice the flow of the presentation. From that meeting some other adjustments came up. By Wednesday, December 16 we were ready to present! We started class with a check in question: how are you feeling in 1 word?

We were feeling hungry, happy, exciting, grateful, almost thriving!

Our share back started at 8:30 am Central Time. It was 8:25 and we had 7 people in the waiting room. By the time we started we had  25 participants. The icebreaker brought to you by Yael was super fun: What is a skill you’re very good at but you wouldn’t put on your resume?

It was great to hear that there were a lot of good cooks, skin care professionals, Ikea assemblers, Football gurus, DIY fans, bakers, sowers and a self taught sign language translator. 

(estela put some screenshots from the shareback in yuequi’s folder)

Feedback was AWESOME! It was honest and candid. People were vocal about liking or disliking things and that was great! We thought maybe they would be shy about it but they weren’t.

After the share back we came back to wrap up a wonderful semester with some digital zines