Tim Gasperak
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Tim Gasperak
@gasperak.com
130 followers 160 following 89 posts
I'm a designer committed to working with communities of people who want to make change together in response to our most complex challenges.

꩜ Strange Attractor LLC 🌿 Gregory Bateson enthusiast 🏴‍☠️ Punk rock fan
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gasperak.com
One of my most favorite pieces of writing, ever, about one of my most favorite humans, ever. Sadly, both men are now gone.
June 19, 2026 at 10:13 PM
gasperak.com
I carry this quote by the late Barry Lopez with me everywhere I go. It serves as an evergreen reminder and encouragement for me to stay focused on what matters in the midst of darkness, contradiction, paradox, and loneliness.
A quote by Barry Lopez from Arctic Dreams: “How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
April 7, 2026 at 6:35 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
erikahall.bsky.social
I have so much trouble when self described "design leaders" are posting "this is why extraction and destruction are good actually".
March 25, 2026 at 4:41 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
james.exitmusic.world
People working in tech deserve both awakening to their part in the state of the world, and also compassion for not already knowing it or knowing how to extricate themselves yet
January 2, 2026 at 7:11 AM
gasperak.com
So much of what I've been seeing and hearing in the “systems change,” systemic design, and change-making worlds in recent years amounts to a conflation of *skills* as *values* that everyone should hold. (1/2)
June 5, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
erikahall.bsky.social
So many people claim to be changemakers and refuse to give up the structural power afforded them by the system they say they want to change.

It's why that bit of jargon makes me so itchy.
May 23, 2025 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
jfairbairn.bsky.social
If you evaluate a technology’s ability to do a job “better than a human”, you have to include all the benefits that the human version of the practice created, in terms of social bonds, regenerative capacity and cultural meaning.
May 10, 2025 at 8:20 PM
gasperak.com
Today's Washington Post article about the memorial for my dear friend, Pableaux Johnson, in New Orleans last weekend.

www.washingtonpost.com/food/2025/03...

Alternate link:
archive.is/l582G#select...
A poster depicting Pableaux Johnson is held aloft by Tim Gasperak during a second-line parade for Johnson in New Orleans on February 22, 2025.
March 2, 2025 at 1:32 AM
gasperak.com
Over 500 people attended the Celebration of Life for Pableaux Johnson (pableaux.com) this past weekend in New Orleans. Here are links to the memorial service and second line parade that followed. I miss him.

Memorial: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejqU...
Second Line: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJjs...
Pableaux Johnson - Celebration of Life
YouTube video by JOE YORK
www.youtube.com
February 26, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
rlreevesjr.bsky.social
Pableaux Johnson Indian galleries in Bitter Southerner

bittersoutherner.com/wild-creatio...
Wild Creation: Mardi Gras Indians — THE BITTER SOUTHERNER
No matter the weather, no matter the losses, the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans work hard to preserve their distinctive contribution to the city’s flourishing street culture.
bittersoutherner.com
February 26, 2025 at 2:46 PM
gasperak.com
AKA abductive process or multiple description: how one context informs and describes another context. Nature does this all the time, and it requires circular feedback, among other things.

Good luck trying to get a computer or an algorithm to think or assemble anything by abductive inference.
courtneymilan.com Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · Feb 18
So one of the things that I think is lost on AI proponents is what I call the card catalog effect, a thing I shouldn’t call it because a lot of people probably have no experience with a card catalog.
February 18, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
tisserand.bsky.social
If you weren’t Pableaux’s friend, he just hadn’t met you yet. Photo by Cheryl Gerber.
Man wearing sweatshirt featuring picture of Pableaux Johnson
January 28, 2025 at 4:50 AM
gasperak.com
Pableaux (pableaux.com) was selected as the 2025 Documentary Photographer of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Here's a podcast interview from 2017 in which he gives more insight into his approach, process, and connection to his community.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...
pableaux johnson
pableaux.com
January 28, 2025 at 5:13 PM
gasperak.com
"Wouldn't it be grand?" Pableaux would often say. So, wouldn't it be grand if people picked up his tradition of regular Monday red beans gatherings in his honor? In a world aching for meaningful connections, wouldn't it be grand?
January 28, 2025 at 4:58 PM
gasperak.com
Thread:
abchao.com AB Chao @abchao.com · Jan 28
Tim's great thread reminded me: this man had turkeys in freezers all over Orleans parish, collected around Thanksgiving, to be used in the gallons of turkey gumbo he'd make and give away throughout the holidays.
gasperak.com Tim Gasperak @gasperak.com · Jan 27
In those days, Px also started hosting Sunday afternoon Louisiana gumbo parties in early December, during the blissfully cooler winter months of central Texas. He'd gather post-Thanksgiving turkey carcasses from friends and cook them down into *huge* vats of turkey stock. /9
January 28, 2025 at 1:52 AM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
rlreevesjr.bsky.social
Pableaux Johnson memorial second line. Mon Jan 27th, 2025. Tuba Fats Square. 6pm. Young Dex Brass Band playing
January 27, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
michaelerard.bsky.social
From an intro I wrote to an editor once--it explains how important Pableaux Johnson was to my career. Without him I'd be living a very different life. I am absolutely gutted by this news & I'm so sorry that people in his everyday life in NOLA and elsewhere have lost this friend & community member.
How did I leave academia, in the end? The movement was slow and gradual, not in the sense that I didn't realize what was happening, but in the sense that I had a number of opportunities to think, and think, and think about what was happening. Above all, I could appreciate it: I had a distinct choice to make, I knew. I could pursue an academic career, or I could pursue a career as a writer, in journalism. Through a convergence of social networks I met Pableaux Johnson, a freelance food writer (who later moved to New Orleans, then to Louisville) who was the first person to lay out the choice. Immensely energetic and charming, he became the devil in my ear: you don't have to go to the academic route, with all the stuff you've got? You can go out on your own. Do interesting stuff, do your own stuff. Dude, you can choose your path. Don't get stuck trying to get tenure somewhere. As I had no academic devil in my ear whispering the contrary, Pableaux's message went straight to my head. He passed me a book, This Business Called Writing, which I read but didn't fully appreciate -- I had to hear its message from someone else. Another source of the same advice, though less devilishly, was Jim Magnuson, the director of the Michener Center for Writers, who recalled his early days as a writer working security guard jobs that would let him write as much as he wanted. What you need, he said, is "institutional juice." That is, the good stuff you get: the money, benefits, social interaction, a place to go that's out of your house. Then he delivered the kicker: most of the academics I know, he said, once they've gotten tenure, they never get back to writing what it is they wanted to write. A therapist was also very helpful (she had once given Annie Dillard a run for her money as a nontraditional undergrad at Wesleyan). Why not try it? she said. Give yourself a time limit, a year or so, and say, if I haven't made these goals, then you quit and do something else, but before the
January 27, 2025 at 9:54 AM
gasperak.com
A long story about Pableaux Johnson and me that I'm not sure many people know.

We met in 1996 at an advertising agency in Austin, Texas, and became fast friends. He was a freelance designer, there trying to make ends meet. 🧵/1

pableaux.com
pableaux johnson
pableaux.com
January 27, 2025 at 2:30 PM
gasperak.com
My dear friend of 30 years. So many adventures with you that I’ll never forget. I wouldn’t have expected that when I talked to you recently that it’d be the last time. I’m heartbroken. Gonna miss you, boyo.

www.nola.com/news/pableau...
Portrait of Pableaux Johnson with his eyes closed at his wedding in 2003. Portrait of Pableaux Johnson riding a bike at sunset in Lucca, Italy, in 2005. Portrait of Pableaux Johnson wearing a box on his head and drinking a whiskey, 2003. Pableaux Johnson seated in his one-room church in New Iberia, Louisiana, 2003.
January 27, 2025 at 4:31 AM
gasperak.com
Abductive process is the language of metaphor, mutual learning, and evolution. There's little adaptive creativity without it.
christian.bsky.social Christian @christian.bsky.social · Jan 16
Abductive reasoning (aka abductive process) is core to effective decision-making and sustainable design. So much software sucks today because abduction is denigrated in engineering and management schools as creative or artistic, while induction and deduction are described as somehow more scientific.
Figure 1. Nina Bauer. Linearity vs. Circularity? On Some Common Misconceptions on the Differences in the Research Process in Qualitative and Quantitative Research, 2019. A diagram representing induction, deduction, and abduction. Induction (from Data to Existing Theory) and Deduction (from Existing Theory to Data) are grouped as Science. Abduction (from Data to New Theory) is grouped as Creativity.
January 16, 2025 at 2:12 AM
gasperak.com
Gregory Bateson:

CONSCIOUS PURPOSE
(i.e. actions taking the shortest logical or causal path; direct correctives; coupling of conscious thinking with our biological context; design)

+

DUALISTIC THINKING
(i.e. mind/body split; mind vs. matter)

=

HUBRIS
(i.e. pride, overconfidence, arrogance)
January 15, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
berkun.bsky.social
Hot damn.
January 13, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
berkun.bsky.social
The idea of designers contributing to society is fascinating - as many designers wish to do it, or think they are doing it, but yet exclusively design for corporations which often are detrimental to society. #designcogntivedissonance
January 13, 2025 at 7:15 PM
gasperak.com
@idilgaziulusoy.bsky.social @camerontw.bsky.social Do either of you have examples or evidence you could share of anyone doing design-led transition work, sustainability transitions work, or transition pathways exploration as a paid service offering? Who are the paying clients/funders of that work?
January 9, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Reposted by Tim Gasperak
indiyoung.bsky.social
Taking time is an act of resistance.
... to ask "who feels unwelcome?"
... to ask "who has self-doubt?"
... to ask "who is interrupted?"
... to recognize these are harms
... and to take responsibility against doing harm

––
Read more
🔗 medium.com/inclusive-so...
Help your team take time to sustain people.
January 3, 2025 at 11:39 AM