#precedent research

[bee-capstone-blog]

Blog no.8 14/08/23

I have begun to converge and diverge iteratively this last week in the te kitenga phase. I'm cementing a vision based on all the research and self-reflection tohu I have noticed so far on my journey. This started with informed ideation based on my HMW: Engage employees in active allyship of gender minorities through process-motivated design activities. I wanted to work with the three pillars of process-motivated design: connection, agency and widening perspectives. As you can see below, this manifested in activities and objects which could support these pillars.

In my research for a mood board*, I searched terms such as "queer crafting", "trans crafts", "creative workshops", and "non-binary design" to elicit some visual inspiration for my project. Although intending to undertake visual research, my surfing took me down unexpected paths by following the nodes I encountered. (Blomfield, 2022). The result was a parallel gathering of written and visual tohu that further crystallised my vision. One quote that I found supporting my motivated approach was:

"A big part of the Norfolk Trans Joy Community Quilt wasn’t just the end product, but establishing safe spaces for transgender, gender non-conforming, and allies to be in one space and celebrate, process, and learn in a non-judgemental group.” (Baker, 2023)

This led me to explore deeper the Norfolk Trans Joy Community Quilt case study (images below) within Baker's essay How Trans Fiber Artists Are Using Quilts To Tell Their Stories. In conjunction with using quilting as a medium for expression and connection, the process was also communicated in a zine publication, an idea that had already appeared in my ideation.

I synthesised all these nodes, tohu and nascent visions into a journey map of sorts as I find visual mapping to be the easiest way to explore my thoughts. Once I have put pen to paper, I'm able to better describe my idea to others and find the weak points that need developing.

I laid out the vision and the system/ service elements that would go into delivering the vision to workplaces.

The precedent research, has been possibly the most helpful part of my process in terms of moving closer to a prototype-able idea and not just disparate thoughts and immaterial concepts. My choice to go forward with a craft-based approach is pretty similar to my local making execution of 'process-motivated design' so it might be limiting in the sense its in an area i'm already comfortable with. On the flip-side there is a strength in iterating an already established idea and aligning with my personal interest in craft will help me stay motivated (hopefully).

References:

Blomfield, C. Z.(2022). The Composing Rooms 2010-2020. Author Self Published.

References for images of the Norfolk Trans Joy Community Quilt:

[hazyla]

Whaaa I made an mcd aph design against my better judgement

[katabay]

lmao sorry to everyone in my inbox, this month has been a mess and I'm just not really around enough for it. someone in my immediate family got a new cancer diagnosis, my not-art job got restructured because management is a joke and it's been.... not great, to be honest! to top it off, my mom's cousin just died because the major hospital didn't have enough beds open for the provincial hospital to transfer him. etc etc etc.

anyway. it's been a lot and I'm Very Tired Of Things Happening 🙃

[tiredflowercrown]

The amount of research that just went into to figure out if Anthony could even hold a title as the son of a daughter of a noble

The Answer? Maybe

[hiwaga-fucks-up]

good omens may just convince me to actually read the bible and i'm not ready

[awheckery]

DEATH TW and mentions of murder so if that is triggering for you don’t read, but if it’s not then i’d like to ask if you’ve heard of forensic genealogy? while i am uneasy at the prospect of using it to find suspects, it can also be used to find the identities of unidentified decedents, who die of accidental causes or are murdered, and often it’s the only hope to identify those who have been unidentified for decades. the dna doe project is a nonprofit that’s mostly volunteer run, and i think that your research skills could be useful there or somewhere like there. i know this is kind of a random ask to receive, identification of unidentified remains is my special interest but i don’t have the time or training to get better at researching beyond a few tricks here and there.

I feel like we've read the same articles recently; did you see the tumblr post (and linked articles) about Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the Boy in the Box?

Which is to say, yes, I am aware of forensic genealogy and the DNA Doe Project, because like many white American women, I'm a true crime junkie.* My big Thing is investigative procedure tho, so I'm also deeply interested in plane & train crash investigations, medical mysteries, archaeology, anthropology... basically 'what happened, and by which processes and methods do we figure out what happened?'

So far as getting into the game myself, I dunno. I assume there's probably some sort of required formal training, along with the expectation of reliability and sustained effort, and I'm a chronically ill autodidact with ADHD. I'm the research equivalent of a sprinter; investigative genealogy requires a marathoner, because there's so much exhausting, grinding work involved.

Something I've never seen brought up before in any investigation is how many extant family trees are just wrong. Genealogical sites make it too easy to crib notes from other users, and all it takes is one person deciding 'eh that's probably the right guy' for dozens of other amateur researchers to make the same mistake, and then somebody ties that erroneous information to their DNA profile. I don't know how the forensic genealogists deal with that.

You also have to take into account how many people throughout history have just gone missing, or otherwise fallen off the historical record. Just because someone's date of death is absent doesn't mean something nefarious happened to them. (Just because someone's date of death is present doesn't mean it's correct.) People emigrate. They marry. They change their names. They die alone and unknown in a ditch**, or they die somewhere that doesn't make those records public***. Paper records can burn or flood out, and family stories rarely make it down more than one or two generations. History is messy.

I've only done serious research into my family background for two years, in fits and starts interrupted by illness flare ups. Half the time it feels like I find more questions to ask than I get answers. I've found a pair of illegitimate daughters and a handful of adoptees. I've found some two dozen 'missing persons' who may as well have disappeared into thin air, for how suddenly they dropped out of the historical record. I've found a murder victim and a (maybe) would-be murderess.

And four months ago, I found the answer to another family's 150 year old missing person case, and it changed everything I thought I knew about my mother's family.

This is how.

Five months ago, I thought I knew everything there was that could be known about John Robert McDowell.

I knew he was born July 1st of either 1868 or 1869, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. According to his naturalization petition, he came to the United States in April of 1883, when the absolute oldest he could have been was fourteen, and at the time of his naturalization in 1896 he claimed his nationality was English, presumably due to anti-Irish sentiments at the time.

I knew John's handwriting was idiosyncratic: he wrote the J in his name with a rightward upper loop that scooped up again before curving back around the center staff, and his uppercase R was a mess of curlicues. I've never seen the like before or since.

I knew that despite living in America for ten years longer than he'd lived outside it, John still had an accent in 1908 when his second son was born. Spelling is incredibly inconsistent across historical records because up until very recently, it was the practice of the record keepers to write down their best guess at what they heard, and in 1908 a midwife heard and recorded John's surname as McDoul.

John's life was actually remarkably well-documented, in comparison to his contemporaries. I bought myself access to Newspapers.com along with my Ancestry subscription, and he made semi-regular appearances in the Newport News Daily Press for the better part of thirty years as a Navy veteran, successful entrepreneur, and president of a labor union that later became the United Steelworkers Local 8888. (A seemingly throwaway notice in the Daily Press was the only record I've yet been able to find for his divorce, which eventually led me to find out whatever happened to his wife, which is another saga entirely. Pauline, you dirty rotten cheater.)

I knew that John was in and out of the hospital with thyroid cancer, but he was such a tough old bastard it took the better part of fifteen years to kill him, and he died in 1954 at the age of 86.****

According to John's death certificate (and the U.S. Government records at the VA hospital where he died), his parents' names were Thomas McDowell and Isabell Rabb (or possibly Robb, the Accent strikes again.)

This is the only record linked to either of them on Ancestry.com at all.

I have most of a history degree, so I wasn't surprised. There are next to no records of the 1890 census of the United States, and that was down to a fire in the National Archives. Ireland was dragged backwards through hell by the ankles for centuries by a succession of British monarchs and governments, and Belfast was in the prime of especially conflicted territory for much of it. No census records from John's lifetime were kept, and the likelihood his parents would show up in the surviving fragments from 1841 and 1851 was slim to none.

There were transcribed indexes from birth and marriage records available, at least, and I scoured them through, looking for a John McDowell, and there wasn't a single damn one born to a Thomas or Isabelle McDowell in a decade on either side of 1868. There wasn't any record I could find at all of a Thomas McDowell marrying an Isabelle Rabb until well after John left Ireland.

Five months ago, as far as I knew, John Robert McDowell was probably a bastard, who'd either been left out of whatever records were taken at the time, or he was one of the unfortunate ones whose birth record had been lost.

Four months ago, I realized that the record indexes on Ancestry included film numbers, which meant there were pictures of those records to be found somewhere. If they were organized chronologically, I could try to find his birth registration that way. Googling "ireland civil registration records" brought me to the Civil Records search page of a genealogy site run by, of all things, the Irish government's tourism department.

Once again, there wasn't a John McDowell born to the right parents during the right time period, so I went looking for his parents' marriage. And found it.

If they married in 1872, John would probably still technically be a bastard, but I had a point to start from. Once I clicked into the actual scan of the record I nearly snapped myself in half sitting upright in attention, because Thomas McDowell's father's name was Duncan, John named his eldest son Duncan, Isabella's father's name was John, I had to have the right two people, this couldn't be a coincidence.

And then I noticed Isabella was a widow. Isabella was a widow.

Who was your husband, and when did he die, Isabella? I searched again, and found her marriage to a Thomas Logan July 30th, 1866. No men named Thomas Logan died in Belfast between 1866 and 1870, which meant he was probably still alive when John was born. It meant I had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time.

John Robb Logan came into the world on July 1st, 1868, in the Ballymacarrett district of Belfast, the second child of four born to Thomas Logan and Isabella Robb. Once I knew what I was looking for the rest came easy.

John's early life was riddled with tragedies. His younger brother Joseph was six months old when he died in March of 1870. His father died of smallpox in December of the same year, exactly one month after the birth of his sister Mary. Three months before his fifth birthday, his first half-sibling Bella died, at just five months old. And in 1879, his older brother William died after a long, miserably drawn-out illness from spinal tuberculosis.

(As an aside, god, poor Isabella. She had four children with Thomas Logan, and a further nine with Thomas McDowell, and before her early death from a long respiratory illness she buried a husband, two sons, and two daughters. How do you go on after that, how are you not forever shattered?)

If I hadn't been sure I'd found the right family, I was after William died. Thomas McDowell was the person who reported William's death to the registrar's office after sitting by his deathbed. The registrar recorded William as a "child of [the] baker" that Thomas was by profession; Thomas McDowell claimed his stepson as his own.

Duncan McDowell, John's step-grandfather, had a family burial plot in Ballygowan, and he named William Adam Logan as his grandson, with no qualifiers, when they buried him.

All the evidence suggests that the McDowells loved John Robb Logan and his siblings, and he loved them back every bit as much. You don't choose to take on the surname of people you hate, and it seems very much the case that John chose to go by McDowell when he came to America. I'm honestly not sure there was a way for Thomas McDowell to bequeath his name to his stepchildren, given John's brother William died a Logan and his sister Mary married as one.

John Robb Logan disappeared from history after his baptism, and John Robert McDowell made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1883, but I was certain they were one and the same. The problem was proving it to my mother, because McDowell was her family name. She'd grown up with it, as had her sisters and her dozens of cousins and her father and his siblings and her father's father; I only had a paper trail arguing the name she knew didn't belong to any of them by blood.

So I went for blood.

I refuse to give my DNA to Ancestry.com on a principle born from paranoia and ethics concerns. It's absolutely not happening, ever, like hell do I expect a corporation to do the right thing with my genetic material. My mother doesn't share my concerns, either now or four years ago, when she bought an Ancestry DNA kit and then did absolutely nothing with her results besides marvel at the unexpected Swedish heritage in her 'Ethnicity Estimate' because doing anything else looked like too much work.

It took a few days to figure out how to hook my mother's DNA results into the tree I've built, and a few more for all the features to populate, but all told it took less than a week between learning the truth about my great-great-grandfather's parentage and proving it irrefutably with DNA, via several descendants of his full-blooded sister Mary and a grandson of his half-brother Wallace.

Ancestry doesn't tell you when new DNA matches are found, or when someone adds you to their tree (and thank god for that, my mother has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand matches). To those descendants of Mary Thomasina Logan, the handful of John's descendants who've shelled out for Ancestry DNA kits could be any random person. Frequently the relationships between matches aren't clear, because of all the folks like my mom who never add a tree to their results, or those who don't try to go any further back than their grandparents.

As far as Mary Logan's descendants know, the sons of Thomas Logan dead-ended his line, and when I do find John in their trees there's never more than a birth year and a blank space where there would usually be a year of death. (They all have the wrong Isabella Robb too, but I don't really blame them; apparently Isabella was one of the most popular names for girls for well over a century, and Robbs weren't exactly thin on the ground.)

Someday soon, I'm going to reach out. People who study genealogy do it because they're looking for something: long lost relatives, answers to questions asked too late, or even a better, more personal understanding of history by learning about the people who were there when it happened. Every family has its mysteries and this one, at least, could be solved.

John's story doesn't end here. Here is where it begins.

~

*I'm aware of the problematic nature of White Lady True Crime Brain Poisoning, but I'm gonna have to pull the 'I'm not like other girls' card. I'm incredibly discerning about my crime shows, I hate the fucking cops, and I'm realistic about how unbelievably low my chances are of ever being the victim of a violent crime. I'm white, I'm broke as shit, I'm built like a running back and walk like the Terminator, and most importantly, I'm single and planning to stay that way for the rest of my life. The only way I'm getting murdered is if I happen to get caught in a random mass shooting, which isn't outside the realm of possibility because America.

**In case anyone's gotten this far and is still interested, there's strong evidence that the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved last year. At some point I'd like to take a look at the tree the forensic genealogists built tho, because I have some Doubts. There was only one person in that family that fell off the map in the 40's? Just one? I was lightning-strike kinds of lucky enough to find John's real parentage, but I dug up more unanswered questions with it, because two of his half-brothers dropped out of the records after 1901. Completely setting aside the possibility of infidelity in the Webb family and how common inbreeding has been (both historically and in recent memory) in populations of European descent, I have a hard time buying that Carl Webb was the only person who could be the Somerton Man. It's still cool as shit that they have a strong possibility tho.

***Maryland and Kansas specifically can blow me, if somebody died in either of those states I have to find an obituary or a tombstone to get the mcfrickin' date, and I have to either pay money and prove a relationship to see a death certificate, or show up to an archive in person to search on their intranet, MARYLAND WHY DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO KNOW WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER DIED. (Being fair, I don't know if she died in Maryland, that's just a great-uncle's best guess, because she ran away from her family in 1949 and nobody ever saw her again after the early 60's. Helen, where the hell did you go?)

****One of the big reasons why I got into genealogy in the first place was to see if I could find how far back the predisposition to early deaths and autoimmune disease went in my family. What I hadn't expected to find was a predisposition for extreme longevity on all sides. Longevity as in 'skewing the life expectancy bell curve' kinds of longevity. As long as someone didn't come down with a freak illness or make a looooooooong string of poor life choices, they were apparently immune to death, which honestly explains a few things about Crazy Grandma, god damn.

[poorks]

What’s the vampire lore for your book then?

Vampirism is an infectious blood disease that changes you at the cellular level.

Vampire society is hierarchal and based on personal ability. The stronger special abilities get special treatment while the rest are servants.

Lotte and her husband (a vampire, a very weak vampire) live in a castle where the servant vampires revolted and had their powerful Master killed, and since the castle was built in a magic forest that makes the castle incredibly hard to find, they live in peace in communal living separate from larger vampire society.

[jaggednes]

The system all share stims and have overlapping ones (especially when co-conscious), but they all have their own "main" ones.

Steven's are more tactile (i.e. tapping parts of his body, pacing, tugging on hair).

Jake's are more auditory (i.e. echolalia, humming, repeating certain words).

Marc's are a mix (i.e. rapid blinking, cracking knuckles, humming).

[goldeneyedgirl]

I love korean Alice SO MUCH!!! As an asian person myself, I always hadcanon Alice as asian because she had always been my favorite (and because if Meyer isn't going to do this then I WILL DO THIS MYSELF) so this fic seems like my dreams coming true. But my real question is: does Jasper knows is he is going to lose his memories? Does Alice tells him he isn't going to remember her?

Hi Anon! I'm so glad that you enjoy Korean Alice!

I must admit, I always thought that the Cullen family composition was so boring. Carlisle is born in England in 1663 and travels extensively over the centuries... and somehow ends up with an all-white family, presumably Christian, the majority born within a 40 year timeline, heavily favouring the South of America?

That's just lacking imagination. Or being super Mormon, take your pick.

And I support retconning canon facts at all times. There is nothing the Twilight fandom can't improve with some DIY. And I'm really excited that you like Korean Alice, because I have a few other fics I've started that feature an Asian Alice, but I wasn't sure if too many people were invested in that.

As for your question: no, Jasper has no idea his memory is wiped. He visits Busan every few years, meets Alice for 'the first time', and has his mind wiped at the end of every single visit. That was the agreement Alice made with her coven leader, Ratana (who is kind of a dick, but also trying to protect everyone the best way she knows how) but Jasper has never been informed of this deal.

Alice never tells him because she's ashamed that she's bartered with his memories without consent, and because she never wants them to focus on how long they've got left before they have to return. She's also terrified of leaving her coven because of the dangers towards her out there, and she doesn't want to burden Jasper and his coven with her protection and survival.

Hala can sort of return memories, but the older they are, the more degraded they are. Only very recent memories can be restored perfectly - older ones decay; they are missing parts, missing conversation, and have all the emotion stripped away from them. And because Jasper's an empath, the emotions attached to his memories are very, very important to him. Arguably more important than anything else.

It's a bit of a problem.

Thank you again SO much for your message, it made my day!

[theygender]

Mine and my girlfriend's special interests are so funny to me bc I'm just like "hi I'm autistic and my special interest is dinosaurs uwu" and then you ask what her special interests are and it's like

The wreck of the Titanic

The Russian Revolution

The assassination of JFK

Unsolved murder cases from the 1800s

Stage magic

[theinfinitedivides]

well. that nearly 1000 word Ryang Eum/Jang Hyun fic is going about as well as you'd expect (and has crossed the 1000 word mark. it is still staring at me tho)

[steelycunt]

final paper due tonight and not a single word has been written 💪🏼🤩. ridi send help in these trying times pls I need strength

babe no! that is not ideal 2. say the least i am sending you the strength to tackle it you can still do this hopes not lost yet xx

[precedence-research]

The increasing number of chronic diseases related to the respiratory system has emerged as one of the major contributors to the growth of the medical suction device market. The rapidly increasing pollution all over the world has emerged as a major causative factor for the respiratory diseases that are caused during the recent times. A large number of people who uses private vehicles add contributing majorly to environmental pollution. The acute disorders of lower respiratory tract require the intervention of medical suction devices with a view to drain out the secretions that are produced in to the system. 

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has emerged as one of the largest contributors for the growth of the medical suction device market as it includes various complications that need to be managed by draining the excessive secretions that are produced repeatedly into the system of the individual. A huge number of people all over the world are suffering with asthma who require regular intervention of medical suction devices for relieving the complaints caused due to the excessive secretion of mucus. The rapid advancements which have been made by the medical sector has encouraged the potential consumers to opt for such advanced procedures which help to provide a better result in the long run. 

[maitsuki]

double vertigo - a reflection on the precedents

[GIF: アキラ Akira, Dir. Otomo Katsuhiro]

For the most part, I feel very fortunate to live in modern times. I enjoy technology, science, and medicine. I am very thankful that I'm able to stay in good health and access information. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to not have plumbing, phones, or doctors.

However, I can all too easily imagine what it would be like if technology and modernization took control. Not necessarily an AI takeover, but something more subtle. The disappearance of physical media. Cash becoming obsolete. AI taking more jobs away from humans. We're already seeing this occur and start to impact our lives. I'm only afraid that we are too late to stop it.

Medical science is what I fear more than just going cashless or DVDs going obsolete. "Designer babies" may not be a hot topic in my friend circles, but is a prime example of medical science that seems innovative and useful, but could easily be used unethically. One moment you're screening for terminal illnesses in an embryo, the next you are choosing hair, eye color, or skin color. How far do we let it go? This is the premise for the film "Gattaca", which is one of my precedent projects. It depicts a world in which genetic selection is a routine process for embryos, resulting in a society run on eugenics and full of genetic discrimination.

My idea for this project is to explore a narrative in which humanity has highly revolutionized sound therapy. It began as a search for the cure to vertigo and motion sickness, and ended with a society where sound is something used to control. And the technology has been made too accessible. Now individuals protect their ears in public spaces. Society was forever changed, all because someone wanted find the cure for a common illness.

The idea still needs some work, however the main point with this concept is to explore the dangers of innovative technology in medical science. Because even though I am a firm believer of finding cures and researching and innovating, I can easily see where it could go awry.

[interiorinvestigation2123753]

Relevant Precedent Research

After finding a concept which has lead me to have many promising ideas for my project, I needed to find some relevant precedents. This would allow me to see how other people have successfully produced similar projects.

The first precedent I looked at was ‘Second Home Hollywood Office’ in Los Angeles, America. It was designed by an architecture studio called Segascano.

Second Home Hollywood was designed to create a better and healthier co-working space. It incorporates a mixture of nature and work spaces in order to blend the exterior to the interior.

Second Home Hollywood was designed to create a better and healthier co-working space. It uses biophilic design to incorporate a mixture of nature and work.

The second precedent I researched was ‘Beyond The Family Kin Housing’ in Spain, designed by Ignacio G. Galan and OF Architects.

This project was designed for an older couple to be able to integrate living day to day life as easily as possible as well as including extra space to allow visitors to stay and help out.

This building blends various living arrangements spread over three floors, each with different levels of independence between them.

The ground floor is established as a one bedroom apartment that the couple could rent to increase their monthly income. The first floor contains a number of spaces for aging couples with increasing mobility difficulties. The second floor incorporates a pair of rooms neighbouring a living space which is designed to host the couple’s regular visitors.

From my research of these precedents, one combining biophilic design and co-working and the other focusing on co-living, I have noticed that linking spaces is everything. How each person is able to move through a building between different spaces matters.

I further realised that creating a space that fits the desired specifications and that links well is the best way to achieve a successful completion.

My next step in this project is to apply these ideas and knowledge to my own.

[evening-rose-309]

to not spoil it, they quietly killed off the ncr for absolutely no reason and made the BOS victors for some reason.

house is not dead, but for majority fucked over at the battle of the hoover dam. how it is not stated yet.

but you’re pretty much correct everything else, so real “let’s wipe the slate clean bullshit”.

Of course he lost the dam.

The NCR was the main force behind Hoover Dam's acquisition in the first place, wrenching it out from under Caesar at the last second when Hanlon and the Rangers pulled their hail mary.

Without the Bear of the West, the Three Families probably defected into Caesar or fell to the Legion or just straight up deserted House once they realized a couple hundred tanks on tricycles would never be able to stand up to the Several Thousand Trained Berserkers that make up Caesar's Legion by year 2277.

I'm just curious as to what the Tin Can Buffoons will do to him when they find him. Or if he's made contact with Boston yet as his own last stand hail mary, though that part's purely wishful thinking.