Notices by Alx 🐈 (alx@mastodon.design)

Fan-Art commissions are now available on my newly set up ko-fi profile:
https://ko-fi.com/alxfsl/commissions

As many of you know, I am currently doing a PhD (more here https://mastodon.design/@alx/113272284238735629 ) which is now requiring more attention and time and doesn't allow me to work full-time as a designer as in the past. I'm also on half-scholarship, so I need to find some alternative source of support.

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#commissions #FanArt #Art #MastoArt #Support #kofi #Watercolour #comics

Me, presenting a comic-style flyer of a diverse group for a community-based research project to a University:

"WTF are you doing, this against policies, it MIGHT be offensive, I'm unhappy with your work, you're fired"

Also, Academia:
"Business elite scholars doing bad science that will justify our nice elitist ivory tower being exclusive: absolutely brilliant, let's give them ethical blessings and publish it"

@pluralistic last piece got kinda personal, I guess

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine

#AI

"Mastodon's progenitors should be praised for ensuring their creation was born free – but the fact that Bluesky isn't free enough is no reason to turn our back on it. Our response to anything that locks in the people we care about must be to shatter those locks, not abandon the people bound by the locks because they didn't heed to our warnings."

or, in other words, that's what solidarity and mutual aid are all about.

@pluralistic

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/20/capitalist-unrealism/

JFC Neil Gaiman 'breaks the silent' and believe me, I've known unfortunately enough narcissistic manipulators in my life, to tell you: he's lying, he's downplaying his actions, his portraying himself as a vulnerable person that didn't understand what he was doing, he's making whole this about HIM, like all power-hungry narcissists do. Don't fall for it.

He's someone who learn from the master manipulative of Scientology who is trying to fool us again. He's a predator & a grifter

#NeilGaiman

One example: the 'leftist' Guardian home page is too busy posting about Christmas recipes or defending 'signs of economic growth' than telling you Israel is burning down hospitals in Gaza and that children are freezing to death. This is how they make a genocide a background noise.
Don't let them:

via @ridicol

https://mastodon.social/@ridicol/113732352006176253

@atomless @pluralistic this reminds me of a recent interview I did with a printmaker, when he told me that he strongly disagrees with the government definition of 'creative industries', as art can't be 'industrialised', simply because, even if the creator loves what they do, there are moments in which you don't feel like making art, and making art without feeling it it's simply not art, and if politicians really want to support artists, they should stop conflating them with production machines.

@jwildeboer I set it up but it was causing some issues with deploy through the CMS ( @Publii ), solved when I actually decided just to use Netlify DNS

@jwildeboer I added the records and now the domain is showing the homepage, however all other pages keep using netlify subdomain:

https://sustainabilityinthemaking.com/

when I click 'about' becomes:

https://sustainainabilityinthemaking.netlify.app/about/

Is it still something that needs to adjust or is something I need to set up somehow in Netlify?

#Netlify #web #WebDesign #DNS

Hello #Fediverse, I need some help!
I am moving a website from GitHub Pages to #Netlify . The domain is register via #Namecheap, and when I was looking to the documentation, it isn't clear to me how to set up the DNS (I don't want to transfer the domain to Netlify).

Any tips or instruction pages that I can use will be very much appreciated!

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#FediTips #Website #Hosting #DNS

Hello #PortfolioDay
I'm a designer and illustrator and do many graphic things, but I want to use this occasion to introduce (finally) my biggest ever graphic project still "in the making": my #PhD graphic ethnography on craft and sustainability cultures, where I sketch people while they make together.
It's an evolving project of which I'm still in the middle of, but if you are curious about it and want to come along, the research is available and updated on the website:
https://sustainabilityinthemaking.com/

One day I should write an essay of all the problems I had with imaginary 3D architecture renderings that populated the internet and where happily published by journals promoting almost 'unbuildable' buildings as these masterpieces of #design while they were just PR for capitalist futuristic utopias. When they were full of greenery of trees that somehow could root on a 30-cm-thickness roof, they were celebrated as 'sustainable architecture', 'sustainable cities' and what not. The results?

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Capitalist dystopias like Dubai, and tons of sad architectures and infrastructures that costed millions to never deliver that 'greenery utopias', but made a lot of archistars and real estate investors very rich through money that could have been invested in maybe smaller but more accessible infrastructure for the people who live in those places.
Thanks to generative AI, that kind of deceptive communication is entering scientific visualisation. I can't stress enough how bad this is.

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To conclude, for me sustainability is first and foremost a cultural problem, and we can solve it only through a profound cultural change. Now this is the core of my PhD so, for the sake of everyone here, I will not dig into that, it would be long and tedious and not without major debates.

My dissertation doesn't write itself and my clients' graphics don't design themselves (AI crowd don't dare answer this) so I'll end it here.

Be nice to each other, we need to come together for this fight.

The core of the problem in mainstream 'sustainable design' is that it buys into the individual responsibility for a climate breakdown that is instead a collective issue. Patronising consumers to 'buy better' without ever addressing who is actually incentivised to keep these levels of consumption high misses the point, and frankly, perpetrates the status quo.

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Designers - as the profession is intended today - are themselves a product of the industrial revolution, and actively contributed for it to expand. That's something designers refuse to reckon with, so they keep focusing on materials, product, circular economy and what not. There are some designers and architects doing great stuff out there, but they are far from being the norm of 'sustainable design'.

5/

Ok #ReplyGuys this post is going wild. A 🧵 :

- I recycle, because in the mist of nothingness, we all cling onto something.

- recycleability of plastic: it doesn't matter, because 1) recycling is a matter of policy and of energy (no, it isn't cost-free) 2) the injection of new plastic outnumbers and it's faster than the recycling process. Focusing on the material properties isn't enough

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- switching industrial materials with 'more natural ones' without addressing the inherent societal problem and a culture of overproduction incentivised by the unequal distribution of power will not cut it

- I've been working on unconventional materials for architecture and design for 15+ years, collaborating with a variety of experts. I'm open to discussions surrounding wood and clay and even other materials like bamboo (my favourite) but I don't need to be patronised about forestry

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- I'd kindly recommend the 'overpopulation' crowd to shut up unless they first acknowledge: 1) a smaller section of the whole world population is the one causing the bigger damage, 2) overpopulation is functional to capitalism bc it needs a larger workforce to exploit to function, 3) reproductive rights, women emancipation, economies of care, assisted dying, dignity for the elders are key in the discourse.
Again, I'm open to serious convos about it, but eugenics isn't my gist.

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The biggest problem with 'sustainable design' is that the mainstream approach consists in 'how can we both keep the cake and eat it', so we have design magazines like Dezeen praising stuff like 'design student makes a sustainable avocado out of beans', so that millennials like me can keep having avocados all year round without feeling guilty about the exploitative economy of all-year-round available food.

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@rpin42 also a good moment to support Verso Books by buying their books as they are in a dire situation following their UK supplier crisis

@pluralistic