Thank you, reader, for subscribing to Anthrovision! and reading our stories this year. Starting a “newsletter” that is as bleak and upsetting as ours can be, in a year like 2020, was a real gamble. So cheers to you, for leveling the odds! (Or at least, thanks for biting your knuckle as you suffered through our writing for no more reason than your own goodness.)
Also, we apologize for the sudden lack of content coming from us, here at Anthrovision! We were really on a roll there for a minute, content-wise, but due to the pandemic and a predatory landlord (i.e. a normal landlord in brooklyn), our publishing offices had to be uprooted from our headquarters in Brooklyn, New York. Since then, we’ve been traveling from coast-to-coast in a mobile caravan. Stopping in odd places for days or weeks at a time— which, in any other year might be an adventure, but this year… yikes.
Our other excuse for not blogging here is that we’ve had to mine some capital. Anthrovision! has to eat too, you know. So we took some time to write stories for money. To prove that we’ve not been slacking-off in content production (we wouldn’t dare) here you can find some of our favorite writing that we’ve been doing outside of Anthrovision! Enjoy:
In our former offices, we had the good fortune of being neighbors to Prospect Park—which, as far as Brooklyn parks go, is the Ritz. When living in a land so thoroughly urbanized, for miles in all directions, you can’t put a price on the open spaces and shady trees of a public park…. No wait, actually you can. (The Baffler)
In the pool of who’s going to take over the planet from the humans in the next year or two, we’d put our money on mushrooms over AI any day of the week (we’d recommend you watch where you step next time you’re out in the forest). Among the many incredible offerings from our inevitable fungal overlords—mycelium, a root-like structure of fungus—is bearing a whole new movement in ecological, product design. (Core77)
With the new year, now’s a good time to start recycling if you haven’t been already. In the US, that simply means you’ll have to hire a private waste-management service to pick up your trash every week, you’ll also probably have to build a material-sorting facility in your county (plus hire a workforce), and you’ll have to create a multi-tiered organizational system for all the different materials of every product you want to put in the recycling, and only buy products from participating brands—come on, don’t be a litter bug! We’d also recommend you hire a team of symbologists to decipher the recycling codes on each product you want to toss. (Eye On Design)
Everybody is having a rough year, just be happy you haven’t yet woken up as a cockroach (or maybe you have, either way, we value your readership!) Kafka’s nightmares aside, insects are—to you use the now all-too-appropriate expression—dropping like flies. Mass extinction is a big human-industrial problem, but we can find some hope in the fact that some designers are starting to pull out their magnifying glasses. (Icarus Complex)
If this year was any demonstration of how well our venerated institutions of government and industry are at holding together society amid a global crisis, then, well… fuck. But when it comes to the climate crisis, at least people are beginning to organize outside of the wickedly incompetent power-structures currently in place, even the creatives are trying to do something. (Adobe XD Ideas)
There are too many science fiction stories about a post-apocalyptic future wherein the Earth’s air is toxic and only breathable with a mask. There are not enough non-fiction stories about the weird fetish that rich people have for absolutely obliterating urban air quality so they can live inside a sterile fishbowl. (The Baffler)
Hopefully, there is enough here to keep you happy until we can come up with some more stories for you. We are resolving to do more blogging this year, but honestly, with the way things are going, we’re trying to set the bar as low as possible. So this new year, you can expect at least one new story from Anthrovision! Thank you again for all your clicks and support!
Happy New Year!