“machine learning…is a massive loophole in the tech equivalent of the social contract—a reprieve from the duty of care. Let the models make themselves! Generative AI in particular feels like an explicit attack on our ability to synthesize and communicate ideas.” https://fjord.style/where-im-at
Something I oft talk about with my clients: the worst burnout I experienced wasn’t the result of overwork but of being underutilized and feeling useless. We have to get specific about burnout if we’re going to address it: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/digging-through-the-ashes/
Chewing on something about the difference between willpower and discipline: willpower is the exhaustible—and frequently exhausted—skill of negotiating choices; discipline is committing to a path and rejecting the bargain.
Smart analysis from Kate Manne here about how, by bypassing the usual primary process, Kamala hasn’t been hit by the likability/competency gap that women usually face. https://katemanne.substack.com/p/why-harris-will-win
In case you need a reminder (I do, often!) it’s always a good day to make time for your art: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/energy-makes-time/
The root of “weird” is fate, destiny, witchcraft, the supernatural or unearthly or magical—think of the “weird sisters” who foretell Macbeth’s undoing, or the Greek Fates. The “weird” are usually feminine. To twist the word around and use it to refer to behavior and speech that is explicitly misogynist strikes me as like stabbing someone with the hilt of a knife—it’s your hand that bleeds.
At the risk of sounding insufferable, I will share that for some time now I’ve had a practice of turning off my devices (phone, laptop) on Saturday evenings and not turning them back on until Monday morning—after I’ve spent some time writing and moving my body. And it’s maybe one of the most restorative practices I’ve ever built.
Wrote about a better way to think about building resilient, generative, and meaningful relationships in your work. In an escalating climate crisis, and no longer creeping but leaping fascism, I am convinced this is a critical practice. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/make-kin-not-nets/
The whole concept of knowledge workers rests on the assertion that there are other workers who do not truck with knowledge. But that assertion is bullshit. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/knowledge-workers
I’m trying to come up with a more cynical and violently disparaging take on both the work of living human beings and the performance management process itself, and coming up short. https://lattice.com/blog/leading-the-way-in-responsible-ai-employment
I can’t find the page now, but there’s a moment in Menewood when Hild’s people look to her, expecting her to say she will be king, and she returns that look with something like, “No, no, all kings die! All kings are killed by men who are or want to be kings!” https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/menewood
“She suspected that there was something wrong with a social system in which time-saving devices didn’t save time for anybody but the owners.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/laborsaving
If you must write up your organization’s values, you should do it in the form of a fable not a bulleted list.
Getting strong Diana Hunter vibes from all this “Apple intelligence” nonsense. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/gnomon
Too much of our technology tries to get us to forget that we are bodies. I’m convinced that that forgetting does real damage to our spirits and intellects. We have to claw back spaces where we can be whole.
Semi-regular reminder that most of your video calls could be (probably ought to be) phone calls. No AI listening in but also you don’t have to be still, or at your desk, or forced into the 2D space that video calls demand of you. You can talk to people in other places and still be a body.