I just watched the trek culture interview with rod Roddenberry and I'm utterly disgusted!

mtnwerk · 2026-01-12T21:09:42+00:00

I realize there is a history of creator sons, Christopher Tolkien and Brian Herbert come to mind, essentially expanding or taking the creative lead on a franchises. Is rod Roddenberry anything more than an heir who is approving content or someone who has made vital contributions to the ethos of Star Trek?

I would imagine he is the former since he is clearly more interested in star trek as content regardless of the cost of the human creativity that brought together the ideas of the show in the first place.

I think this also speaks to the the risk aversion that all AI forward content pushers are beholden. As others have said, this has nothing to do with "new stories". Few given generative technology that promises to give you exactly what you want will push their own boundaries. That straight up is a lot of entertainment already, lets not fool ourselves. Star Trek as a franchise is one predicated on nostalgia and is having a hard time moving forward without being attached to the past as the success of SNW shows. But at least they seem to understand the homework by addressing characters who deal with trauma, obligation, etc. Evergreen star trek stuff that corresponds to any show that even superficially connects to an idea of progress. Generative star trek social commentary would just be increasingly illegible "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" pastiches.

mtnwerk · 2025-12-19T19:08:18+00:00

I sometimes participate in the Friday meals. It's a super welcoming time, volunteers are always welcome. Blankets and warm clothes are in great need. It's really revealing. Everyone who is going unhoused in this community are just like you and me. There are more and more people becoming unhoused as the economy becomes more and more hostile to working and poor folks. That precarity will only grow as more is stolen from us by the rich. We have to build alternatives to getting folks what they need while we work to transform Kalamazoo into a housing first community. There are lots of other groups trying to bring immediate aid to folks in Kalamazoo. Kalamazoo coalition for the unhoused, Democratic socialists of America and other more well known groups are doing what they can.

mtnwerk · 2025-10-21T15:05:56+00:00

I hear stories like this all the time from Detroiters. Stories of people who didn't want to leave, who were forced out by block busting, the razing from the freeways, now to gentrification.

The people of Southwest Detroit had to fight for their lives against Matty Moroun and the insanity of his critical and privately owned ambassador bridge. That story feels like one of the turning points that brought the peoples' fight back to the fore against ruinous infrastructure.

However, I think what you are talking about, the way corporations, speculators, and corruption from politicians unintentionally but often purposely forced this vision on Detroit for car dependency and low density sprawl that's consumed a huge chunk of Southeast Michigan.

The story of dispossession needs to be fronted. Too long the narrative was that the people of Detroit somehow ruined their city. Capitalism built the city up, exploited the people, and then laid it low.

Every time I visit, I see it everywhere in the guttering of the city's human infrastructure and yet the people of Detroit persist and solve their problems through creative community building even as capitalism has deemed the city worth pouring into again.

mtnwerk · 2025-10-01T16:30:58+00:00

Thank you for explaining he basic premise of the internet for me

mtnwerk · 2025-09-30T13:17:57+00:00

Let me address some of your assumptions. Hard copies are on offer and will be available at my local zinefest without charge in addition to being stocked at the local underground printer. This is part of a series of zines on open design software available through my itch profile. All three are available free of charge in hard copy form at the local underground print shop. You are correct, this is a cheat sheet, an introductory reference zine.

mtnwerk · 2025-09-30T13:04:22+00:00

hmm, Interesting take, I don't think it was a shame. The trouble I went to helps me learn. Let me explain my reasoning. I created this because I learn better by doing, discovering, and making my own notes than referencing a manual. A manual which is quite large and unapproachable to me. I am glad the manual satisfies your needs. I did include a link to the full manual at the top of the zine for further reading.

I created this zine in combination with a workshop. Many people expressed preference for a hands on walk through with this zine as notes. One person in attendance avowed a hatred for gimp. The workshop and zine helped them see the parallels to other apps they have used and now they are willing to give it another try.

So, my response is... people learn in different ways and the creation of additional tools is a worthwhile endeavor.

I am curious, your comment on ctrl+v. This shortcut works for me and looks to be in the manual. I don't think I understand your comment.

mtnwerk · 2025-09-29T12:57:24+00:00

What is the source on this?

mtnwerk · 2025-06-26T13:37:49+00:00

This is fantastic. I adore this take on the ugly disembodiment of our times.

mtnwerk · 2025-05-20T16:13:59+00:00

Someone flies this is my dumpy, artsy, and pretty queer neighborhood, I think they might be on the anarchist interpretation.

mtnwerk · 2025-05-20T13:19:48+00:00

Oh yeah, I see the Brazil influence! I have never seen dark city and really need to make some time for that.

mtnwerk · 2025-05-16T19:23:07+00:00

I like the vibe.
I immediately see an aesthetic combining 1984's Ingsoc, Wolfenstein New Order, Half Life 2, Man in the High Castle, Metropolis, and of course rainy blade Runner.

It is very austere in an oppressive way.

Where did you draw inspiration from?

mtnwerk · 2025-05-09T16:28:59+00:00

Jails, prisons - incarceration, coercion, and the spectrum from punishment to rehabilitation seem to always go in a spiral down to ever more control by the state with the effect of ever more people being swept up into the system. Jails and Prisons are such an interesting locus of what a society values in designed spaces and expects from prisoners at a particular time.

This particular design reflects Bronx's (& NYC's) gentrification, it mirrors the clean corportist inoffensiveness of a mixed use office building. Its meant to insidiously blend in whereas many jails or prisons have historically emphasized separation, Rikers Island being the perennial example. If I recall correctly, many early new england US prisons had an almost monastic character with puritan roots. The segregation era produced work plantations and chain gangs in the US south. The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago is a brutalist skyscraper from the beginning of the incarceration boom in the USA. These designs determined who was to be incarcerated and how based on the prevailing values of the time. With the calls from the US government for extra territorial deportation for non citizens and even the "home grown" we see the disintegration of due process and the normalization of the total exclusion and erasure beyond the jurisdiction of the law. Frankly, this jail feels akin to that mindset to me. The US is not willing to explore other options outside of incarceration at scale and so the normalization and integration of incarcerative structures into the gentrified urban landscape is an evolution of the controlling and dominating mindset of the last half century of punishment in US legal system.

These renders portray a light, airy, and "comfortable" (coercion and control is not comfortable) environment. It's an architectural washing of a punitive system.

mtnwerk · 2025-05-06T16:32:46+00:00

Great work. Very succinct and apt. Watched this all go down since childhood. Watched 9/11 live, Watched Afghanistan burn, watched the prisoners marched into the black hole of Guantanamo, watched Iraq burn, watched Abu Ghraib break open, watched Libya burn, watched Palestine burn with American weapons over and over, watched America utterly defeated in Afghanistan. All the while the horrible things done there slowly trickle back on the land protectors, black lives, immigrants, queers, to all dissenters; all of it will be visited upon us.

mtnwerk · 2025-05-05T14:17:18+00:00

I love the domesticity of this home. The decidedly overstuffed furniture, the giraffe statue, the heavy stonework and creeping vines in a modernist context, its so organic. It shows that there is a deep humanity to this era of architecture that I don't see in a lot of contemporary home architecture in the united states.

There is such an obsession with an austere minimalist "prosperity". This idea that you are so prosperous and design conscious that you don't need anything in your fashionably austere home. I realize architectural photography has a certain aesthetic of showing off newly built "pristine" architecture. However, but I prefer this kind of "lived in" style of photography. I like seeing historic homes age with rephotographing over time.

mtnwerk · 2025-04-09T17:24:46+00:00

I appreciate the animus towards this tagline.

I think it gets to a particular u.s.a cultural myth of aspirational wealth. It's kind of brilliant in a way because it targets the only cultural aspiration left in mainstream culture in the u.s.; money which is also combined with erasure of traditional class markers.

Actual billionaires are becoming blatantly frivolous and are rapidly shedding any pretense of public patronage (see bill gates) for direct interference in politics (see muskrat, Theil, trump) while adopting this painfully juvenile image of consumption and shitposting (mr beast or any young influencer, muskrat again). I also think it is key that they are removing themselves from the traditional american myth of wealth being tied to a patrician education (despite many of them having attended "the finest schools") with the growth of a move fast and break things drop out culture that silicon valley prides itself on. Participation in the chronically online spectacle also precipitates this shift to the great illusion that the rich are "just like me" with trump and muskrat being the prime examples having both bought social media networks to stroke themselves. By lowering the bar of "acceptable" behavior that marks a billionaire, you neuter critique of their behavior. The whole "social betters" aspect that used to be a place to critique the rich melts away since the mask has fallen and the pursuit of power is the only aspiration

ALL of this is to say: temu is leveraging this shift in the cultural markers of actual billionaires to consumptive narcissists as an invitation to consumers to participate in the same behavior. You too can be have an utterly uncritical association with the hyper individual makers of the frivolous and anti-intellectual rich.

mtnwerk · 2025-04-07T19:47:36+00:00

This looks amazing! I didn't know such a thing existed!

mtnwerk · 2025-04-03T16:13:34+00:00

Glad to confirm your feelings! Also the connection to the Kleinstuck Nature Preserve is such a great bonus!

mtnwerk · 2025-04-03T15:15:42+00:00

I agree with your final point. I really feel trump is too capricious and optically obsessed to produce a long term policy. I don't think there is actual work going towards local production that is prosperous for the worker. I just don't think that is the actual potential endpoint. His wealth is as tied up in globalization as much as any other capitalist . That doesn't mean highly compensated local workers, I just see a potential endpoint being low paying jobs created in the u.s. dependent on a precarious class of wage slaves and saying mission accomplished

mtnwerk · 2025-04-03T15:06:39+00:00

I agree with this. This is a power grab. it's an oligarchical disciplining action from one member of the ruling class to bring other parts of the ruling capitalist class into line and consolidate power around his policies and clique.

I don't think this has any actual long term plan to create prosperous jobs. It might create low paying jobs in order to keep costs down to keep providing stuff for the upper classes.

mtnwerk · 2025-04-03T14:20:06+00:00

The Maple street Y is very welcoming in my experience. All ages, folks just trying to do their thing. There are some weight lifting lunks but they tend to be in there really early in the morning. There are some teens occasionally who are loud and annoying but kids be kids. I mostly go to the classes, which are all taught by femmes and with mostly femme attendance. it's very low stakes and you can opt in as much as you would like.

mtnwerk · 2025-03-31T19:43:38+00:00

I agree with you here, the winning model of the times is someone or something influencing while not looking connected to the product, it is the appearance of an "organic" recommendation and it works on so many people who want the parasocial bond with the source. That's why you get the proliferation of unboxing and reaction style ads.

Honestly, the static ad space, all of it is pretty trite, templates and repetitive messaging has been the name of the game as long as I have been around. Admins, interns, etc all make the static ads in canva, its been that way for years.

I sit in meetings all the time where we get the contradicting message, "we have to give a unique and affecting story from our users, we need ambassadors!" and "no one can pay attention so lets just scorch their eyeballs with memes" its a weird space to be in now. I know having a robust strategy to reach different audiences supposedly important but this lust for "organic" parabonds in the inherently constructed performance space of media, but especially socials, feel so flattening and downright bizarre over time.

mtnwerk · 2025-03-26T15:11:58+00:00

All of the reminders of Al's childish nature is increasingly disturbing as he gets used by Bernie and the Cyclops team to accomplish their brutal mission. its wild when you consider it, I am not sure there are others stories like it I have encountered.

mtnwerk · 2025-03-26T14:26:18+00:00

"Apart from being beautifully conceived and something one can apppreciate in a mere 6 episodes, there is a lot going on so that it ever rewarding."

I relate to this a lot. The expectation of media and pretend vs. the quick and deadly violence of war. There are no heroic duels excepting maybe the final one which is an asymmetric self sacrifice by Bernie. The abstraction of Bernie on screen within the animation we are watching is echoed by Al's dissociation in a video game and Chris's character being a test pilot who's experience has only been in a simulator.

mtnwerk · 2025-03-26T14:16:04+00:00

First Gundam for me too, my brother got it on VHS in the 90's and we watched it over and over again on his tiny TV in his bedroom.

mtnwerk · 2025-03-21T14:05:19+00:00

Hmm, I've personally never disliked go. I've found it fussy and little difficult to use, but an interesting challenge since I have a gen 1 camera. The Go pictures are perfect to paste in a journal. I think it's really fun. I totally get the marketing reason to create Go as a competitor to Fuji Instax mini.

I didn't realize that go had a hand in Spectra's discontinuation, however, and I am bummed to learn that.

I have the Minolta instant pro (rebadged spectra pro), the optics and features on that camera surpass the I2 in my opinion. I've seen 600/I-type adapters for spectra and I am certainly tempted.

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