August 31, 2021

Three galaxies having a fight

(Artwork by Ashley Gan on MulaZine. Image accessibility description: A piece of Scantron exam form, representing the day today (31 August 2021 — the day the Federation of Malaya gains its independence from the UK 64 years ago) and Day 548, representing the number of days Malaysia is under COVID-19 lockdown in many phases. There are 4 sections on the form, all of them representing numbers and various information and roles of those who are lost due to the pandemic, those who are fighting, and who are still persevering. Almost all of the boxes in the form are filled in. Last section is written, “Lest we forget, more than just a statistic.”)

READING IN MY TABS

• 10 books by Malaysian women writers you should be reading.
• Police reforms you should always oppose. TL:DR the only way that we will address oppressive policing is to abolish the police. Therefore all of the “reforms” that focus on strengthening the police or “morphing” policing into something more invisible, but still as deadly, should be opposed.
• In Indonesia’s Aceh, doctors are using WhatsApp to stay connected with coronavirus patients as they go through isolation. The best tech is always the most community-led, and sometimes that is the least tech required.
• “While loss is deeply uncomfortable, we can learn to adapt to the natural phenomenon of loss. But when structural inequalities produce major and secondary losses, leading to widespread collective grief, death is out of balance with life. Individual and collective, repeated and generational, traumatic loss stacked on top of existing natural loss. We must tear down the systems, institutions and narratives that engineer death, fuel it and simultaneously distract us from it. This essential rebalancing act is the charge of 21st century social justice movements.” To have a movement that breathes, you must build a movement with the capacity to grieve.
• “Design Thinking has been revered as a Silver Bullet of sorts — a methodology that never met a problem it couldn’t solve. But since my early days as a design student, I’ve had serious misgivings about the harm it perpetuates. My lived experience allowed me to see gaps in the process that largely went unnoticed. Still a practitioner today, I want to share my journey of dismantling and reassembling Design Thinking to act in service of liberation.” I can relate so much to Tania’s journey – as someone who learned design as just pushing pixels to advocating design thinking to serve corporations then coming into realisation of how design and technology can perpetuate inequality as I took up a sociology course and got involved more in the field. More importantly, it is a good introduction on asking the right questions and thinking of the long term societal impact of what you produced. Related: the reductive seduction of other people’s problems.
• “Even when people use alt text, they often don’t fully think through what’s important to convey to someone who can’t see photos. Some people will write overly simplistic descriptions like “red flower” or “blonde girl looking at sky,” without actually describing what it is about the images that makes them worth sharing. At the other end, multiple paragraphs of text to describe one image can be annoying to navigate with a screen reader. McCann tells friends to think of alt text as a writing exercise: “How do you provide as much information in as few words as possible?” What’s it like browsing Instagram while blind.
• TIL wu-wei (無為) – literally translated as ‘no trying’ or ‘no doing’, but best translated as ‘effortless action’ or ‘spontaneous action’. In the modern culture of trying harder, grinding, and strategising, wu-wei enables us to get out of our own way – which is often half the battle. (via Dense Discovery)
• Three galaxies having a fight. and the hidden melodies of subways around the world.
• “You see, this is not love. A god commanding spilled blood become delicate blue flowers is not love.”

RESOURCES AND TOOLKITS

• 41 questions regarding technology.
• Feminist Open Lab is an open online course to help you brush up on your knowledge on feminist advocacy and intergenerational activism.
• 7 principles of universal design.
• Social workers who design. Read the interview of Social Workers Who Design Founder and Principal, Rachael Dietkus, who takes us through her journey of blending social work with design and the untapped collaboration potential between the two sectors.

STATUS BOARD

• Reading: TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, which is like what I told my friend Hamizah, “a balm to this shitty world.”
• Listening: Joëlle Gergis, one of the climate scientists who worked on the recently released IPCC climate report, offers us hope.
• Watching: Haven’t watched anything good lately. Any recommendations?
• Food & Drink: Some vermicelli noodle soup on a rainy Tuesday morning, and a glass of iced coffee.