the year my mom was born

Simone de Beauvoir, Chicago 1952. [link]

one of the most beautiful things I've seen in the past few years

The reason I forgive you is because you are not perfect. You are imperfect. And so am I. All humans are imperfect. Even the man outside my apartment who litters. When I was young, I wanted to be anybody but myself. Dr. Bernard Hasselhoff said if I was on a desert island, then I would have to get used to my own company. Just me… and the coconuts. He said I would have to accept myself: my warts and all. And that we don’t get to choose our warts. They are a part of us and we have to live with them. We can however, choose our friends. And I am glad I have chosen you. Dr. Bernard Hasselhoff also said that everyone’s lives are like a very long sidewalk. Some are well paved. Others, like mine, have cracks, banana skins and cigarette butts. Your sidewalk is like mine, but probably not as many cracks. Hopefully, one day our sidewalks will meet and we can share a can of condensed milk. You are my best friend. You are my only friend.

Mary and Max is perfection.

i can appreciate good criticism

One of the very few feminine traits I can admit to having and not be ashamed of is being a humongous Sex and the City addict. Always have been, always will be. The new trailer for SATC 2 almost brings me to tears. Tears of happiness and nostalgia covered with very shiny glitter.

SATC has made me feel very free about wearing pretty absurd outfits on a daily basis. I wear dresses with pants, red high heels which are very contrasting to my very white legs, I even own a huge butterfly which I wear as a necklace feeling absolutely no shame. Seriously, I can look pretty ridiculous to others while feeling amazingly fashion foward to myself. However, I can appreciate (and agree) with a lot of the criticism I read about the series and, especially, about the movie.

To be honest, I was a fan of the TV show when it first aired. A female writer living in New York and dealing with messy relationships? Of course I could relate. Of course I was attracted to the glitter, the nightlife, the search for love and the dating psychodramas. ... But the movie made me want to cut myself. It was a showcase for how hollow and soulless these characters were. Do they have hobbies, aside from shopping? Interests? ... I was seriously offended when Charlotte wouldn't eat anything except packaged chocolate pudding on their trip because "It's Mexico." I was also offended by Miranda's rudeness to her nanny and Samantha's "Honey, we can pay people to do the stuff we don't want to do" attitude. Then it dawned on me: These women are assholes. [link]

phd

Guess who's going to be a doctor in Psychoanalysis soon?

Yup, the smartest girl in the house.

I might be funny and all, but we all know that I'm really just "street smart". Plus I also learn a lot from mistakes.

Parabéns, Dri! Orgulho grandão de você.

suspense

miles aldridge

[link]

Today I made sure I only opened the "Pretty Things" folder of my Google Reader. There are some days when only beauty does it for me.

[via]

he says he isn't as funny as he used to be. About fifty percent as funny, maybe less. He thinks, but doesn't say, no, it's you, you're depressed, you don't find anyone funny anymore. She thinks, but doesn't say, I've always been depressed. I've never found anyone funny — except you, once.

"Anniversary" by Jason Whitmarsh, with Jessica Hische's drop cap.

lines

[link]

biomimicry

I've been absolutely fascinated and obsessed with biomimicry lately. Fred Gelli has been applying the concept here in Brazil under the title "Branding 3.0". Asknature.org is one of my favorites. Absolutely genius.

sobre eles

Ela afundou o corpo nele o mais que pôde, como se assim pudesse aprisionar um instante, como se assim pudesse aprisionar o amor. E ele, querendo as respostas que a vida não lhe entrega e que só uma mulher é capaz de abrigar dentro de si, puxou os seus quadris com a ânsia de escorregar para dentro dela e ali ficar. Só uma fêmea é capaz de dividir-se assim ao meio: a metade de baixo a sobrepor-se forte, desfalecendo as resistências do macho e a de cima a ampará-lo doce, beijando e acarinhando os medos de um filhote.

-- Rita Apoena

lichtenstein

Perfection.

(from here / via)

the 4Es

"Many of us grew up with the Four Ps of Marketing: Product, Place, Price and Promotion. Do you know when the Four Ps of Marketing were invented? In 1960, by Jerome McCarthy. They were made leading-edge by Philip Kotler in his book Principles of Marketing in 1967.

The Four Ps thrived in a different world. It was a wonderful fantasy world. Marketers were king. Product differences lasted. Big, obedient audiences could be reached with big, efficient media.

What is the world of marketing today? The consumer has seized control. Audiences have shattered into fragments and slices. Product differences can last minutes, not years. The new ecosystem is millions and billions of unstructured one-to-one and peer-to-peer conversations. (...) We need a new framework. And a new tool kit.

from Product to Experience
from Place to Everyplace
from Price to Exchange
from Promotion to Evangelism."

From this article by Ogilvy & Mather. Worth taking a look at. The overall concept is extremely valid, despite one or two annoying buzzwords.

change by design

Design thinking begins with skills designers have learned over many decades in their quest to match human needs with available technical resources within the practical constraints of business... Design thinking taps into capacities we all have but that are overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It is not only human centered; it is deeply human in and of itself. Design thinking relies in our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality, to express ourselves in media other than words or symbols.

-- from the new and very thought-provoking book by Tim Brown, Change by Design.

tim brown

Designers have perhaps been used to the idea that they design something that somebody else consumes. We have to get used to the idea that we're going to help to design something that other people will participate in.

-- Tim Brow (his interview with Debbie Millman is here)

nature as the ideal business environment

And now what we’re doing, 20 years later, through our eco-innovation center here at Tátil, is trying to get inspired again by the ecosystems, understanding how coral colonies and mangroves are sophisticated trading systems, where you see beings which have a symbiotic relationship, where they trade energy and matter in a completely sustainable way. We know it’s possible to be inspired by that environment, which is a business environment because it involves trading, to try and make it work in our reality. This direct comparison to coral colonies is interesting because they only occupy 1% of the planet’s surface, yet 50% of all the life there is in the oceans lives around these colonies. It’s very similar to our reality in the cities. Nowadays, in general, more than 50% of the world’s population lives in a region that amounts to something like 2% of the planet’s surface. So we can certainly have an insight from this complementary relationship between individuals, specially if we think that all natural ecosystems have full circles, with no loose ends. Nothing remains. While our ecosystems, if you consider a city, has all the ends loose, in a sense that all the energy we use, or 95% of it, comes from non-renewable sources.

- also from the brilliant video by Fred Gelli, a man who makes me proud to be in the field that I am.

consumers vs. commensals

O que é Branding 3.0 / What is Branding 3.0 from Tatil Design on Vimeo.

I really like the idea that we’ll no longer be consumers, which is very reductive, almost as if our main condition on the planet was that of consuming. It’s almost like we are termites here. We’ll have a more interesting condition, like “commensals”. We’ll enjoy what objects have to offer, but we won’t need to possess them because owning things creates a huge environmental impact.

Eu gosto muito da idéia de que nós vamos deixar de ser consumidores – que é essa coisa reducionista, quase como se a nossa condição principal no planeta fosse de “consumir”, quase como se fôssemos cupins aqui – por uma condição mais interessante quase de “desfrutadores”, onde a gente usufruiu do que os objetos têm para nos oferecer, mas nós não precisamos possuí-los. Isso faz uma diferença enorme porque possuir coisas gera um impacto ambiental enorme.

missed call