#organic chemistry is one of those things where while there are some general broad rules

[carlatsukinamistolemyhamsandwich]

Hi! I saw the post where you gave some writing ideas for DL and going over different plots. I'm thinking over an idea and wanted to ask if there is anything in the lore that could kill Karlheinz? - Also this is off topic but I know you're good at chemistry so I wanted to ask what's the best way to study organic chemistry? Aldol reactions might be the death of me.

In the games I’m fairly certain the only time Karl dies is when he gets killed by one of his sons after they’ve powered up on Yui’s blood (HDB) or fulfilled the condition of becoming Adam (again to do with obtaining Yui but in the later games). The only exceptions are the Mukami and Tsukinami LE routes where Karl’s still dead but Yui isn’t with one of the Sakamaki brothers but I know that in the Tsukinami brothers’ routes this doesn’t really get touched upon other than having one of the Sakamaki brothers taking over from Karl (it might get elaborated on more in the Mukami brothers routes but I don’t think it does?).

Anyway when Karl dies in these circumstance it’s usually through getting defeated in a swordfight (although Karl only lets the Sakamaki brothers get close enough to kill him if he thinks they’ve become Adam so I’d argue it’s not a proper defeat). I’d assume that like most vampires, you can kill Karl by impaling him through the heart (possibly with a silver blade, I can’t really remember this coming up outside of the context of Subaru’s knife) and/or beheading him. 

We know from other endings that vampires can also be killed by setting them on fire but I’d be a bit wary about using this method with Karl as I suspect he could put it out before there was any risk of him finally shuffling off the mortal (or immortal) coil. I suspect a silver bullet from a vampire hunter’s weapon to the heart would also be enough to finish him off but as with all of these other methods, it relies on Karl letting you get close enough to kill him. 

Vampire hunter bullets get mentioned a couple of times, namely Azusa gets shot with one prior to DF which results in him having to have his arm amputated and Shin gets shot with one in Kou’s DF route. If bullet hits but doesn’t hit the heart, then it can still be fatal as it leads to tissue death around the affected area which gradually spreads (thus why Azusa has to get his arm amputated).

I’m pretty sure that’s it for the canon ways to kill Karl (my apologies that it’s not a particularly exciting list). If you wanted to go for something a little more exciting, then in Carla’s LP route it’s revealed that there’s a snake in the demon world that’s venom turns anyone it bites into stone (it’s called a medusa snake). Karl has his own pharmaceutical institute so he probably either has some antivenom in stock or could easily produce some but I would absolutely love to read a fic where someone used something like this to finish him off. 

I hope that answers your question anon! 

As for the other part of your ask, I’ve put my answer below the cut! ^^

In terms of general organic chemistry advice, particularly when it comes to knowing reagents for different reactions, somewhat unhelpfully, the main thing that helped me was practise and memorisation.

I personally used Quizlet (an online flashcard website) a lot in my final years of high school and for part of my degree and I found it worked really well for just learning different reactions. If you have time I'd suggest finding maybe 10 or 15 minutes a couple of times a week to go over them (even if it's just on your phone while you're waiting for the bus) to help get things into your long term memory so you're not left cramming right before an exam :')

Reaction mechanisms are also one of those things that you get more of a feel for as you do them so past paper/online questions really are a good way to go, but here are a couple of things I would always check for if you get stuck:

- Is there an obvious nucleophile (i.e. a molecule with a negative charge or lone pair)?

- Is there an obvious electrophile? If there isn't a direct positive charge then check the molecule for partial charges. If there are multiple carbons with partial charges then look for the one that with the biggest partial charge or the one that is the least sterically hindered.

- Always check the number of bonds to each atom and charges and see if they make sense (i.e. carbon will never form five bonds, if it only has three bonds then there should be charge on it (or a radical), nitrogen will usually form three bonds, if it has four it should be positively charged etc).

- Always check that your structures match up. If you’re drawing them out and there’s a part of the molecule that’s not involved in the mechanism, it can be very easy to accidentally leave it out of one of your structures which will result in you losing marks even if your curly arrows are perfect.

- Count your carbons. Again, accidentally leaving out or adding in a carbon in chain is a very easy way to lose marks.

Whenever I struggled with a particular mechanism, I’d try to draw it out on a whiteboard or scrap of paper without looking at my notes, then check to see what I’d got wrong, go and do something else for 5-10 minutes and then have another go and I basically did that until I got it perfect three times in a row. 

One thing I also do with studying in general is find stupid ways to remember stuff. None from organic chemistry are coming to mind at the moment (as it’s been a while since I’ve had memorise anything ^^;;), but just as an example, in high school I learned the

Number of mol = Volume in mL/1000 x Concentration in mol dm^-3 

equation as Never Vandalize 1000 Cats. It’s stupid but my word did it work. Even better if you can find ways of tying things into your specialist interests (most of the equations I had to learn in physics ended up with anime related mnemonics).

I hope at least some of that helps anon, good luck with your studies! I'll be rooting for you!

[smores100]

once again we’re in full agreement lol. What’s your take on s3 remakes you’ve watched? Wondering how you feel about Skam FR as it’s kind of a similar situation to me where the chemistry & beauty is there but the writing and style is iffy (overwrought &overdramatic). My favorite s3 is druck. As a wlw I had high hopes for españa but it was p slow/v desexualized—a whole discussion, but my other gay friend & I were disappointed given how remakes with guys don’t hold back in that respect.. Thoughts?

Honestly re: wtfock tho I really do wonder if they had like one good writer in the room surrounded by fools. Bc it really does feel like some group projects I’ve been in where I feel like I’m the only one who’s not a fucking fool and carry the whole thing while having to fend off bad ideas (but when the majority rules, those bad ideas/execution get put in). I wonder if that’s what happened w wtfock.

re: wtfock, lol group projects are the worst….idk what wtfock’s writing process was like, but i’d love to know it. according to their wiki there were 3 writers this season? all seem to be male, naturally. did the two other writers have good ideas but there was a main writer who overruled them and did his own thing? or maybe they’re the rl one brain cell squad, that would explain a lot :p in any case, i’m unimpressed (friday’s clips did not help with that).

as for the other part of your ask….oh damn i have so many Thoughts on that, lol. this is probably gonna get long and messy, but you asked for it!

* druck - my absolute favorite. it’s the only one i’ve watched since s1, so that definitely played a part in my emotional investment and attachment. still, there was more to it than that. it was the closest to og imo in vibe and style (it felt small, real, lowkey, quiet, natural like og, as opposed to - as you said - overwrought and overdramatic + overproduced like the others); they cast an actual trans guy to play a trans character, if you wanna talk about a skam remake doing something REVOLUTIONARY? druck is the one; i loved matteo’s and david’s characterizations, how they both had a bit of isak and even in them, and the role reversal in some scenes, made things feel fresh *and* fit their characters/story; i LOVE that teens matteo and david were played by actual teens michi and lukas!! they’ve completely ruined me for all other remakes, bc thissssss is how it’s supposed to be! thisssss is how it should look like! THEY ARE KIDDOS. and they (druck and michi/lukas) truly captured what it’s like to be young and fall in love for the first time, the awkwardness and the nervousness and stuttering and fumbling around, the softness and pureness and innocence of it all!!! also they have THE BEST dynamic - other people might prefer all the hot kissing and steamy making out and the smouldering looks, but me? i just couldn’t get enough of their dumb chaotic energy, best friends who love each other deeply and are also constantly little shits to one another. gimme them pranking each other and playfighting every day! and then being soft and THE HANDS and matteo being a clingy koala basking in david’s affection :3 i also loved how for the most part they didn’t just copy/paste og’s storyline, they made some changes and knew how to make *other* changes accordingly for it to make sense and fit the story *they* were telling - for example, replacing the ‘call your gf’ scene with matteo’s panic attack/breakdown (one of my fave scenes), or their reunion at the end of ep 7 (replacing the desperate kissing + sex with a comforting and relieved yet also bittersweet and melancholic hug), or even matteo getting advice from his drug dealer instead of the school’s doctor, lol. also THE BEST BOY SQUAD, hands down. and matteo is my favorite isak bc to me he felt like his own character instead of just another isak, he was different and reletable and a constant Mood. that being said - it wasn’t perfect and it had its issues. there were a few times when i did feel they stuck too close to og scenes and it didn’t *entirely* work for me, just felt a bit off; i will forever be disappointed that they didn’t directly address and acknowledge matteo’s mental state/depression, bc there were enough signs imo to indicate that he did suffer from something. they mentioned ‘therapy’ in mia’s, alex’s and kiki’s cases, i truly thought they would with matteo as well, but alas, they dropped the ball on that one; i was extremely upset with david’s outing, but i’ve since calmed down and have managed to see it in a more positive light, tho i still have mixed feelings about it and am not fully on board with that decision, still wish it had been done differently (but at least! it wasn’t brushed off and was addressed immediately and eventually led to david having agency and yelling out his pain!!! which was good and important and cathartic); also eps 8 and 9 were pretty messy writing-wise, things either didn’t make sense or would’ve made more sense had the clips were organized differently (that random ping pong clip….?). overall tho, the good outweighed the bad, and it remains my fave

* skam france - now that’s a tricky one. the way i felt about it in the first half of the season, is different from the way i felt about it in the second half of the season, is different from the way i feel about ever since watching druck’s s3. it’s funny you should say how similar it is to wtfock for you, bc i’ve been thinking the same thing for quite some time. those neighboring countries sure have a shared flair for the dramatic! fr’s s3 was pretty much the first s3 i watched (i gif-watched half of skamit, couldn’t get into it). i wasn’t planning to (i was extremely unimpressed by the couple of s1 eps i tried watching, and same by axel’s acting in those first two seasons), but even is the loml and they got me gooood with their eliott pov trailer, which might have affected my excitement over it during the first half. back then i really enjoyed it for the most part, despite some clips being rushed or missing the point thus not fully having the required effect (their locker room scene, for example, or the ‘generalizations are bad’ convo), or how much i hated basile (a character so obviously written by a man it’s amazing), or the cheesy piano music. there were enough good things for me to focus on instead (more in a bit) that i could ignore the things i didn’t like or weren’t as good imo. however, all the positivity got sucked out of me when yann noped tf out after lucas came out to him bc WAY TO MISS THE POINT OF SKAM!!! and things went downhill after the director’s IT’S NOT DISNEYLAND IT’S FRANCE 2019 comment. i’m getting all upset just thinking about it, but to say *that*, to explain that horrendous decision bc lowkey homophobic reactions are realistic!!! only to THEN be all ‘haha jk yann isn’t homophobic! we just wanted you to *think* he was! he’s actually an awesome friend who took several days to reflect on all his past wrongdoings while his bff was at home having a nervous breakdown bc he believed his bff hated him!’ ughhhhhhhhh, miss me with that shit. great that they had yann apologizing for his past comments, but the way in which it was done was for pure shock value and angst, completely ooc for his character (all season he was all ‘tell me tell me tell me let me help let me help let me help’ only to do *that*?? nahh), and interesting how out of everyone the only black character was the only one with a negative reaction (remind you of anyone), highlighted even more during ep 7 aka the ott lucas coming out tour. then ep 8, that should have been 100% all lucas and eliott and building up to eliott’s manic episode suddenly had that weird random pov changing clip in the middle of it which truly wtf, basile was still basile, lucas thanked chloe for outing him, more scenes felt rushed, they had sex in school where people could come and go in front of huge windows in broad daylight and luckily didn’t get poisoned from licking all that paint! and i did not like the flatshare, i absolutely hated mika and lisa kicking lucas out of his room - which he pays rent for! - and manon not even trying to put up a fight, and them being like ‘roommate isn’t just a place, it’s a way of living. that’s a family, and you’re more like a cousin.’ ‘a second cousin.’ ughhhhhh and then when eliott was recovering from his depressive episode, they *still* didn’t give lucas his room back or at least let eliott stay there, he was sleeping on the couch, i’m aldjlajdafj. can’t believe i’m gonna say it, but TAKE NOTES FROM WTFOCK. tl;dr there were some good moments in the second half, but i was feeling bitter more often than not about certain things, so my enjoyment wasn’t as high as when it first started. and after watching druck, druck’s brand is definitely much more my style. plus, i was already struggling with making myself believe axel and maxence were in their teens, but after druck it’s completely impossible, so i just pretend they’re in college or something lol. all my issues with it aside, i’d still rate it higher than wtfock, bc overall the writing was better, more coherent, and made much more sense. i also liked lucas’ friendship with the girls; i loved that instead of copying the underwater kiss + 21:21 like some others have, they came up with their own thing i.e. polaris, which i thought was lovely; the lucas/manon crying in the middle of the night together in front of the tv was one of my fave scenes of the season; also love how we were introduced to eliott on the first week! and they spent time together! and specifically the piano playing scene, ohhhh; and in general elu are sweet and i reeeeally like axel and maxence and their friendship. so yeah, it had some major issues, but i’d rather have a coherent story with something done for shock value and drama ONCE than an incoherent story with several shock value moments.

* skam espana - sorry to hear you girls were disappointed! i only watched half of it, so i can only comment on what i saw. i decided to binge watch s1 and give s2 a shot when i heard they were giving cris isak’s story - it felt a bit weird to me, but it was also something different and new, and i did have an appreciation for their decision to have a wlw season (also much more revolutionary to me than showing a gay bashing), so i was intrigued and willing to try it. sadly i didn’t really vibe with s1? it’s totally a personal preference i think, maybe even a cultural thing idk, but it felt very fast and loud and hectic to me, idrk how to explain it. i was just more into the chill more lowkey vibe of druck and skamnl. but i still gave s2 a shot, and idk, it still wasn’t my cup of tea. i thought it was ok for the most part, but there were some things that bothered me - joana/cris felt underdeveloped to me? and things b/w them felt like they were moving so fast from the second they met, like jona was so intense and forward ALL THE TIME, they had like 6 almost kisses in a really short time, like shhh slow down. i remember disliking their ‘call your gf’ scene, it felt really petty and kinda mean to me? bc i felt like joana came on to cris *really* strongly and *very* frequently, so cris was more than entitled to feel hurt and betrayed when she found out joana had a bf, but then cris was kissing a dude and joana positioned herself and her bf in front of cris so she’d see them kissing too, and i just didn’t like bc seriously?? cris is valid, just apologize to her and explain?? idr much else tbh, they had some really cute and sweet scenes afterwards, i’m still against doing the underwater kiss + 21:21 so i was kinda meh about that (tho aesthetically speaking it was BEAUTIFUL, and i’m like, fiiiiine girls deserve an underwater kiss too, i’ll allow it just this once!), and that cuddling clip in ep 6 i think was sweet and the last one i watched. like i said, i was less vibing with this remake, and iirc it was going on during druck’s s3 and skamnl’s s2 - which were my faves, plus skamfr was on too i think and i was lowkey following it too, so….there was just too much all at once and something had to go, and it was skamesp. it was also around the time when panaphobia-gate happened, so *shrugs* i’m not wlw myself so your opinion on it being desexualized is probably more valid than mine? i just know when i did watch, there was a lot of kissing and making out and being cute and touchy with each other, so i thought it was ok? as i’ve mentioned before, i don’t need to see a naked butt or anything like that to *get* it lol, i thought they were lovely! but that’s just me. i will say that my faaaave part was most definitely the cris/amira friendship. they were so wonderful! one of the best skam friendships imo. i might one day go back and finish the season just for the heck of it, but they didn’t do anything major or highly offensive that made me have negative feelings towards it, it was just a personal preference + circumstances (too many remakes!) that made me be less into it and drop it before the end.

[environmentalresourcecenter]

Could Air Conditioning Make Things Worse?

As climate change continues to push summer temperatures ever higher, the increased use of air conditioning in buildings could add to the problems of a warming world by further degrading air quality and compounding the toll of air pollution on human health, according to a new study.

Writing in a special climate change issue of the journal Public Library of Science (PLOS) Medicine, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison forecasts as many as a thousand additional deaths annually in the Eastern United States alone due to elevated levels of air pollution driven by the increased use of fossil fuels to cool the buildings where humans live and work.

“What we found is that air pollution will get worse,” explains David Abel, the lead author of the new report and a UW-Madison graduate student in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies’ Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. “There are consequences for adapting to future climate change.”

The analysis combines projections from five different models to forecast increased summer energy use in a warmer world and how that would affect power consumption from fossil fuels, air quality and, consequently, human health just a few decades into the future.

In hot summer weather, and as heat waves are projected to increase in frequency and intensity with climate change, there is no question that air conditioning does and will save lives, says Jonathan Patz, a senior author of the study and a UW-Madison professor of environmental studies and population health sciences.

However, he cautions that if the increased use of air conditioning due to climate change depends on power derived from fossil fuels, there will be an air quality and human health tradeoff. “We’re trading problems,” says Patz, an expert on climate change and human health. “Heat waves are increasing and increasing in intensity. We will have more cooling demand requiring more electricity. But if our nation continues to rely on coal-fired power plants for some of our electricity, each time we turn on the air conditioning we’ll be fouling the air, causing more sickness and even deaths.”

Another senior author of the new PLOS Medicine report, air quality expert Tracey Holloway, a UW-Madison professor of environmental studies as well as atmospheric and oceanic sciences, says the study adds to our understanding of the effects of adapting to climate change by simulating the scope of fossil fuel use to cool buildings under future climate change scenarios. Buildings, she notes, are the biggest energy sinks in the United States, responsible for more than 60% of power demand in the Eastern United States, the geographic scope of the study. Air conditioning, she says, is a significant component of that electrical demand.

“Air quality is a big issue for public health,” she explains, noting that increases in ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter in the air – byproducts of burning fossil fuels and known hazards to human health – will be one result of adding to fossil-fuel power consumption.

The study forecasts an additional 13,000 human deaths annually caused by higher summer levels of fine particulate matter and 3,000 caused by ozone in the Eastern U.S. by mid-century. Most of those deaths will be attributable to natural processes like atmospheric chemistry and natural emissions, which are affected by rising temperatures. However, about 1,000 of those deaths each year would occur because of increased air conditioning powered by fossil fuel. “Climate change is here and we’re going to need to adapt,” says Abel. “But air conditioning and the way we use energy is going to provide a feedback that will exacerbate air pollution as temperatures continue to get warmer.”

The results of the new study, according to the Wisconsin team, underscore the need to change to more sustainable sources of energy such as wind and solar power, and to deploy more energy-efficient air conditioning equipment. “The answer is clean energy,” says Abel. “That is something we can control that will help both climate change and future air pollution. If we change nothing, both are going to get worse.”

Hazardous Waste Training

Annual hazardous waste training is required for anyone who generates, accumulates, stores, transports, or treats hazardous waste. Learn how to manage your hazardous waste in accordance with the latest state and federal regulations. Learn how to complete EPA’s new electronic hazardous waste manifest, and the more than 60 changes in EPA’s new Hazardous Waste Generator Improvements Rule. Environmental Resource Center’s Hazardous Waste Training is available at nationwide locations, and via live webcasts. If you plan to also attend DOT hazardous materials training, call 800-537-2372 to find out how can get your course materials on a new Amazon Fire HD10 tablet.

When Oil and Water Mix

Hydraulic fracturing of organic-rich shales has become a major industry. The commonly used term for this extraction of hydrocarbons — fracking — is especially intriguing. Not only does it convey the process of breaking apart rocks, but the dividing of public opinion. Fracking is simultaneously hyped as a boon to the economy and a disaster to the environment.

The geoscience community lies at ground zero for discussions of fracking. This broad and diverse group of people on the one hand understands commonalities in basic earth science, but on the other hand includes the fascinating juxtaposition of individuals propelling development and extraction, and individuals monitoring and constraining deleterious impacts. As a consequence, an acknowledged problem amongst many in the geosciences has been the lack of balanced discussions on the merits and demerits of fracking.

In their new paper for GSA Today, Daniel J. Soeder and Douglas B. Kent bridge chasms in discussions of fracking by providing a current paper summarizing environmental impacts of shale development. The article is open access, adheres to science and policy, and presents a complex problem such that even non-geoscientists can appreciate the issues. The paper provides an excellent understanding and a platform of how various potential impacts of fracking are being addressed.

China Recycling Shift an Opportunity for Minnesota

China’s recent shift in policy regarding recyclable material has many state and local governments reexamining how they manage a growing influx of plastics, glass, and other recyclables. But in Minnesota, the situation is not as dire; in 2016, nearly 2.5 million tons of recyclable materials were collected in the state. State and local regulations prohibit material collected for recycling to be put in landfills, and Minnesota is not landfilling recyclables now.

In the past, China and other foreign markets took in about 40% of the United States’ recycled material. China is now restricting these imports. Consequently, domestic markets are flooded with materials that can’t be sold overseas, and prices haves plummeted.

U.S. recycling programs can no longer look to foreign countries as major buyers of our recyclables and must develop domestic markets for these materials. Minnesota has an opportunity to be a leader in such markets, as we are seeking to increase the number of businesses that use recycled materials.

Minnesota’s public and private sectors have made strategic investments in recycling over the past 30-plus years. Public-sector grants and loans go to companies that use recycled materials to manufacture products. Minnesota facilities that process recycled materials have prioritized state-of-the-art sorting equipment. Focusing on local use of materials in manufacturing wherever possible has created economic development opportunities around the state.

Recycling is not just a feel-good thing; it has an economic impact. More than 260 Minnesota companies use recycled materials to manufacture their products. They employ about 18,000 people and generate approximately $3.2 billion in wages and $665 million in federal and local tax revenue.

Minnesotans wondering about shifting world markets need to stay the course — keep recycling but recycle right. While Minnesotans do better than most parts of the country at proper recycling, unrecyclable materials in recycling containers is still a huge problem. Recycled materials that are contaminated with trash and the like create inefficiencies and reduce profitability for recycling facilities.

How can you help?

Avoid wish-cycling — only include materials your hauler will accept in your bin. Don’t just throw it in and assume a processing facility will sort it out!

Check with your city, county or waste hauler on which items are acceptable.

Don’t put plastic bags, garden hoses, toys, syringes, or diapers in your recycling container.

Do not use your recycling bin as a garbage overflow.

For more recycling tips for residents and businesses, visit the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s Recycle More webpage.

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[ogxref]

MEDIUM DESIGN NOTES (Strelka Press) / Keller Easterling

MEDIUM DESIGN

Medium Design → begins a rearrangement of neurons to alter ingrained habits of mind or get to the other side of some dominant mental partitions. That altered habit of mind relies on a simple observation: Humans like to be right, they like to know the answer, they are good at pointing to things and calling their name but not so good at describing the relationships between things or the repertoires they enact... 

Captivated by circular logics, declarations, determinations, objects, solutions, universals, telos, elementary particles... → mind shaped as a closed loop: “Since superiority cannot abide contradiction, the loop lashes out with a binary fight when it is challenged. Fighting is essential to being right. There is no growth or ideation without argument or debate.”

One common script → adheres to modernist belief that the newest technology automatically delivers some essential intelligence, and updates tired old thinking with the fresh information needed to survive the future. Favoring successive rather than coexistent thoughts or practices, bombastic arguments must wipe away incumbent thought to establish the new and transcendent...

In other well-worn templates for thought, the narrative arc bends a struggle towards a utopian or dystopian ultimate.

These default scripts seem to confine humans within a small fraction of their potential. With limited capacities for addressing perennial problems, culture is often banging away with the same blunt tools that are completely inadequate to address contemporary chemistries of power:

If economic and military templates of causation provide no explanation... 

if new technologies do not provide the solution...

if the consensus surrounding laws and standards provide no relief...

 then little sense can be made of the problem. 

Smart is confused with new. Empowered is confused with free. Even dissent, adopting the very same loop and binary dispositions, sometimes knows what’s “good for everybody”, existing in a world of enemies and innocents or chalking up its failures to a lack of purity...

Since the world’s political superbugs (bullies, strongmen, countries, or instruments of market conquest) thrive on this oscillation between closed loop and binary, it’s as if there is nothing to counter them → only have more ways of fighting and being right and providing the rancor that nourishes their violence...  

“Where nothing is new and nothing is right, there are no dramatic manifestos.”

Rather than only declarations, right answers, objects, determinations → you can detect and manipulate the medium or matrix in which they are suspended and in which they change over time:

Just as this medium thinking inverts the typical focus on object over field...

...maybe medium design can be used to invert some habitual approaches to problem solving, aesthetics and politics.

Medium thinking is ever-present in many disciplines:

The oncologist follows not only the tumor but also the chemical fluctuations in surrounding tissues. 

The actor in theater stores information not only in text but also in interdependent actions. 

The architect sees not only buildings with shapes and outlines but also the matrix of activities that inflects them. 

The geologist doesn’t merely taxonomize specimens but rather reads them as traces of a process.

Medium design → uses space to prompt productive thought about both spatial and non-spatial problems. It treats the lumpy, heavy material of space itself as an information system and a broad, inclusive mixing chamber for many social, political, technical networks.

“Space does not need the screens and sensors of the internet of things to make its stiff arrangements dance. It is already dancing. And even at a moment of digital ubiquity and innovation, it may be space that is the under exploited medium of innovation with the capacity to make other information systems dumber or smarter.” 

Good starting point → the largest sociotechnical organizations of space, the repeatable formulas for formatting space all around the world... → they are too large or too widely distributed to be assessed as a discrete object with a name, a shape or an outline. They don’t respond to singular solutions or determinations, and they can really only be assessed by the activity or disposition immanent in their organization as it unfolds over time and territory. 

Designing medium → managing the potentials and relationships between objects, the activity or disposition immanent in their organization, the disposition of any organization makes some things possible and some things impossible. → “Like an operating system, it sets the rules of the game that link and activate the components of an organization.”

“Stock narratives of history about the succession rather than coexistence of knowledge, sci-fi futurologies, persuasions about lubricated freedoms or righteous activism don’t make sense. Right answers are mistakes. Multiplying problems can be helpful. Messiness is smarter than newness. Obligations are more empowering than freedom.“

INDETERMINACY:

A reasonable world of norms gives authority to declarations, master plans, standards or laws... → Medium favors indeterminacy: Since unreasonable politics easily unravel reasonable master plans, earnest manifestos, and right answers, being right is a bad idea in infrastructure space. It doesn’t work against gurus and totalitarian bullies. It’s too weak.

Designers are very good at making things, but medium design is less like making a thing and more like having your hands on the faders and toggles of organization → It is the design of interdependencies, chemistries, chain reactions and ratchets. It benefits from an artistic curiosity about spatial wiring or reagents in spatial mixtures, about designing not a single object but an updating platform for inflecting populations of objects or setting up relative potentials within them. (GU)

There is a comfort with dynamic markers and unfinished processes that are indeterminate to be practical. The dispositions of space are manipulated not with solutions but with time-released active forms (multipliers, switches, governors or other machines of interplay) To assess and manipulate medium, it is almost as if you have to cultivate your canine powers Extending the temporal dimension allows them to unfold and remain in play. 

“Instead of freedom, maybe empowering situations gain strength through interplay—mutual obligation, checks and balances, offsets, and bargains. It is not a solution but something that shouldn’t always work.”

Medium design would then be something like being good at playing pool →  where knowing about one fixed sequence won’t do any good but being able to see branching networks of possibilities allows you to play longer, add more information to the table and make the game more robust... In pool, you don’t know the answer; you only know what to do next. The balls are sometimes attached to known forms or rules of play, but the art of pool involves assessing their collisions → The player “knows how” to respond to a string of changing conditions over time with an organ of interplay.

DISCREPANCY:

To assess and manipulate medium, it is almost as if you have to cultivate your canine powers, develop a canine mind → You see things with names and hear humans speaking words but those things can’t be comprehended in the absence of a thousand other affective cues and relative positions between things in context: The position of the human relative to the door or the dog bowl, their posture or potential for violence is all being assessed equally with the sound of words and their assigned meanings... 

Notion of being able to detect the difference between what an organization is saying vs. what it is doing (i.e. how organizations decouple their messages from their real activities and underlying dispositions) → the authority given to declarations may camouflage the undeclared activity that is hiding in plain sight

“The world’s superbugs and bullet-proof forms of power may be masters of monistic demagoguery and binary head-on brutality, but they are also masters of the split screen.”

On Lies → Telling one lie is a bad idea, but telling many lies works very well. One lie calls for reconciliation and truth. Many lies create a Telfon surface on which rationality slips and slides. They know how to make words dance around and fascinate in the absence of meaning and information. Lies are everywhere, animated and in color. They lubricate and insulate. Unburdened by truth and running rings around the earnest declaration, the discrepancy that others are futilely trying to reasonably reconcile is the raw material of fully mediated rumor and contagious fictions that batter the walls and work the back channels with stunning success... It’s not what the lies say but how they bounce that is important.

Superbugs just want the bare power. They are mediated, but, more than that, they become medium: activity divorced from content or meaning.

GU! → Design that has any hope of actually making change manipulates the organization as well as the narrative that attends it. That narrative that may not be about the rational explanation of the design and its problem-solving capacities in the mode of elevator pitches and TED talks:  

Instead, it may be a dissonant story that however non-physical has physical consequences 

It may be a narrative makes something contagious or that generates a Teflon of its own. 

It may have an emotional message that renders some power more vulnerable. 

Or it may have a surprising cultural bounce because of its irrationality, outrageousness, cuteness or violence. 

TEMPERAMENT:

While temperament is a construct usually associated with the human psyche, any organization possesses a potential for either concentrating or distributing power (as well as a potential for escalating or reducing violence) → Attuned to temperament, medium design can adjust stories and organizational potentials on both sides of the screen.

LATENCY:

Notion that disposition does not happen, because it is ever-present as a latent property. → “Just as glass doesn’t have to break to be brittle, dispositional qualities are changing and unfolding.”

Medium design → enhances an ability to detect and manipulate latent potentials in the absence of event or declaration → the slow-moving, persistent violence or the interplay of rich potentials for which there is often no history...

Notion of “histories of things that don’t happen” → might be structured like an epidemiology or a branching set of thresholds and points of leverage. More like a chemistry than law, they would highlight agents of change that become contagious or seemingly immovable deadlocks that suddenly dissolve

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“Even when it is clear that the exclusive or pure embrace of the new and the modern makes culture dumber, the impure embrace remains under-rehearsed.”

With the ability to detect discrepancy, latency, temperament and indeterminacy is there a way of productively engage the things that don’t make sense? Maybe the documents of medium design are unusual mixtures of popular stories and technical specifications or explicit architectural instructions, like a cross between a novel and an actuarial table or a film and a blockchain.