Design Mom Newsletter

2 weeks ago | designmom.substack.com | Gabrielle Blair

Feel free to giggle and roll your eyes whenever you read about billionaires building secret bunkers with a plan to hole up if/when the world falls apart. Nothing is sillier than a secret bunker. And the fact that they take these bunkers very seriously makes them even more laughable.

3 weeks ago | designmom.substack.com | Gabrielle Blair

Since every single person in America is either autistic or closely related to someone who is autistic, we need to make sure everyone is caught up on latest autism-in-the-news. This affects everybody. This bizarro and scary conversation started a week ago when RFK Jr. wrongly claimed that the recent rise in autism diagnoses was evidence of an “epidemic” caused by an “environmental toxin”. He also claimed he was going to find the the cause of autism (as if there is one sole cause) by September.

3 weeks ago | designmom.substack.com | Gabrielle Blair

A few weeks ago, I learned that Meta’s AI was trained on 3 of my books. If you’re an author or an artist, Meta’s AI was probably trained on your work as well. It’s not an exaggeration to say Meta stole our work and intends to make money off of it. And this isn’t the first time this has happened. My writing has been stolen and used to train other AI models as well. But it didn’t have to be this way, and an argument could be made that it’s not too late to change things.

1 month ago | designmom.substack.com | Gabrielle Blair

My two trips to the U.S. are complete. I went to California in March for Alt Summit (with a quick stop in Utah, too). Then I went to Florida last week to speak at another conference. On both trips I made sure to leave space in my suitcase (the first trip included a checked bag, the second was carry-on only) to bring home American treats. No doubt because of these recent travels, “homesick foods”, and how our list of homesick foods has changed over the years, has been on my mind lately.

1 month ago | designmom.substack.com | Gabrielle Blair

Ben Blair, Flora June, and I, arrived back in France on Friday. And then I slept the entire weekend. That is not an exaggeration. I was only awake for a few hours on both Saturday and Sunday. It was a very good, very full, very tiring trip. I think the last time I felt that exhausted was life with a newborn. Here are a few highlights, notes, and observations from our adventure:-With the help the talented and amazing Alt Summit team, I put on my 20th Alt Summit! That’s 20 conferences in 16 years.