So much this, but especially the bit about inefficiency; to borrow from amb, we need to focus on critical connections over critical mass: https://www.wrecka.ge/safer-places-now/
(cf. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/change-is-constant)
So much this, but especially the bit about inefficiency; to borrow from amb, we need to focus on critical connections over critical mass: https://www.wrecka.ge/safer-places-now/
(cf. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/change-is-constant)
Finding some solace in this piece, especially the bit about self-trust: if you cannot trust yourself, you make it easier for others to program you with their plans, and you lose the ability to build trust and power with others. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2024/11/10-things-to-do-if-trump-wins/
Since I can no longer Google stupid CSS/HTML/etc questions, I must now hit my friends up, and honestly win/win: they get more time with me, a very charming person, and I get highly credible and probably funny answers to my questions.
Searched a very simple question—the kind that a year or two ago would have returned multiple credible and useful answers—and got page after page of obvious slop. What a fucking waste. We made a wonderful thing and then just goddamn threw it away.
Warmest Halloween in almost 80 years; longest stretch without measurable rain in nearly 150; climate change in Philadelphia is proceeding exactly on schedule!
Wrote about privilege and why we need to remember that it’s is a resource to be used not tossed away. It’s worth too much to discard. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/change-the-course/
Grateful to Defector for (again) sharing their annual report—useful not only for insight into how a small media business is run, but also for the description of a worker-led change process. https://defector.com/defector-annual-report-year-four
The move to elevate the “intelligence” of machines serves simultaneously to denigrate the wholeness, creativity, and wisdom of living, embodied human beings. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/what-it-is-to-be-human/
Literally gasped when I read that Nicola Griffith has two more books planned for the Hild series. Cannot wait to clear more shelf space. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/11/07/a-woman-who-wins-hild-nicola-griffith/
With the seasons changing, a reminder that there are times for growth and times for rest and you get to decide what time it is today: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/latewood/
Grateful to Molly White for pointing out the legal precarity of freelance journalism. For most people, the law is more of a threat than a protector. https://www.citationneeded.news/i-am-my-own-legal-department/
“Necessity has been called the mother of invention, but doubt is.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/to-serve-and-guide
Very interested in Kissane’s work on governance, not only because of the obvious benefits to the social web, but because I think governance is the central question to how we live and work through climate change. https://www.wrecka.ge/revealing-the-gifts/
“The Sweet had to believe in their superiority or admit that they tore their possessions from the fingers of the Swill.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/sweet-and-the-swill
Refusing your own agency time and again is like disconnecting from a power source—the energy is still there, latent and ready, but the plug dangles inches from the outlet. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/haves-and-choices/
“For an accountability sink to function, it has to break a link; it has to prevent the feedback of the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
Every time I glance at the news these days, I think about how in THE PERIPHERAL, the only “work” that seems to exist after the Jackpot is the work of celebrity. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/peripheral
I think about this “How to Work Better” mural at least once a week. (“DO ONE THING AT A TIME” and “ACCEPT CHANGE AS INEVITABLE”) https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/checklist/how-to-work-better-making-a-mural-on-houston-street
Definitely referring to food co-ops as “food conspiracies” from here on out; also, a reminder that doing things outside capitalism is inevitably messy—but what’s the cost of neatness? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/nyregion/park-slope-food-coop-joe-holtz.html
We would all do well to remember that the point of the hiring process isn’t to fulfill a job quota—it’s to find future colleagues. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/future-colleagues/
“And what, exactly, the future of work is should be up to all of us; especially, you know, the ones doing the work.” https://everythingchanges.us/blog/doing-the-work/
Alan Jacobs responded to my last essay with the very wise “POS not POSSE.” But that raises some interesting questions: why do we look for readers? And where do we find them? https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/peasant-woodland
Beyond excited for Erin Kissane’s new venture. Not only is this work of such deep, fundamental importance, but Erin is exactly the person we want tackling it. And the fact that she’s doing this work in community—with us, not for us—is evidence of that: https://www.wrecka.ge/into-the-wreck/
“If we each brought our weird talents and gifts to bear on [the problem of our social networks], and treated this problem like our problem…we would have it in the bag.” https://xoxofest.com/2024/videos/erin-kissane/
“The fear of a planet where the old rules no longer hold is the ultimate fear—because then how do you even think about the future?” https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/fear
“Whose single truth are you making possible? Whose truths are you making impossible?” https://everythingchanges.us/blog/whose-truths/
This very good piece on the mutual aid response to Helene—https://organizingmythoughts.org/neighbors-as-lifelines-the-power-of-mutual-aid-in-asheville/—echoes the message in Greenfield’s LIFEHOUSE: no one is going to rescue us but ourselves. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/lifehouse
“Most people…think that the leader is the loudest person in the room or…the one who talks back to the boss. But what a century’s worth of effective organizers mean is something different. Who’s the person that everyone goes to for advice?” https://thebaffler.com/latest/raising-hell-jaffe
The gap between your abilities and your taste is not something to be crossed but rather something to cultivate: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/stay-in-the-gap/
And the “comic mode” brings me to David Graeber’s writing on play: “at the very foundations of physical reality, we encounter freedom for its own sake—which also means we encounter the most rudimentary form of play.” https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun
Thinking about the tragic figures in WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD led me back to Joseph Meeker’s THE COMEDY OF SURVIVAL and what it means to ditch the tragic mode for the comic one: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/less-blood
Benjamín Labutat’s WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD is both fiction and non-fiction, both wave and particle, both history and imagination, and somehow, something else entirely. I loved it. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world
Trying to gather up a reading list for a big project and realizing how much this exercise is like Borges’ map—it will only be complete when it becomes equivalent to the project itself.
“Websites have always been tiny mutinies.” https://robinrendle.com/notes/coming-home/
Molly White on the POSSE philosophy, with notes on both the present benefits and limitations; the latter are numerous but not insurmountable from a technical perspective. (The cultural/political/economical perspective is another matter.) https://www.citationneeded.news/posse/
Resilience is collective, not individual: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/resilience-is-collective/
“Social life is anything but scarce and people are anything but reasonable.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/what-are-we-making-together
Next time you’re struggling to write, you can blame the gods: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/battle-with-the-gods
To be creative “requires that we be able to retire from a world that is ‘too much with us,’ that we be able to be quiet, that we let the solitude work for us and in us.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/unconscious-machine
God I love Le Guin so much and hope her blog has been backed up a hundred times over.
“Who ‘we,’ white man?” https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/54-le-guins-hypothesis
“If this is where being a good girl gets you, I recommend being bad.” YES. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/being-bad/
With Q4 pressure building, a reminder that the amount of work that is asked of you will always & forever exceed what you can do. You are already making choices about what to get done and what to leave on the floor—make them count: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/too-much-and-not-enough/
“We cannot build a strong, democratic country without ending the occupation.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/20/holocaust-survivor-veronica-cohen-80th-birthday-protest-israeli-prison
I’ve been chasing some unnameable quality in my writing for a few years, and it feels like it’s finally within my grasp—and I can’t separate that fact from the choice (and the grief) to distance myself from the platforms. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
A website is, among other things, a container. The shape of that container both constrains and makes possible what goes within it. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
Zadie Smith: “the humans I know and love, this machinery is not worthy of them.” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-zadie-smith.html
“We have to learn what we can, but remain mindful that our knowledge not close the circle…so that we forget that what we do not know remains boundless, without limit or bottom.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/what-we-do-not-know
Noticing how the backlash against DEIJ work is starting to show up in my client’s stories, the way it’s changing their expectations and plans. Can’t tell yet in what ways it will play out, but things are happening. The fight for equality doesn’t end, but the tools have to adapt to the times.
“Certain forms of escapist entertainment aside, leisure in itself is worthless without direction or content, and creative work can be more rewarding and fulfilling than many kinds of leisure.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/the-value-of-work
“Creative work readies us for material work, by offering a space to try out strategies, think through contradictions, remind us of our own agency.” https://proteanmag.com/2023/12/08/notes-on-craft-writing-in-the-hour-of-genocide/
“This is where life could happen; we are here because this is where we could be.” https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars
Love this concept of “prophetic reframing”: the “rhetorical re-description of possible civic worlds, as in the speeches of Dr. King.” https://sarahendren.com/2024/06/14/the-how-and-the-why-part-2/
While a great many workplaces subject us to burnout and exploitation and abuse, our desire to do good work—work that contributes to our collective thriving—is also innate, and powerful, and too important to give up without a fight. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/all-on-the-table/
“I think we should be done with nostalgia. To totally refuse nostalgia altogether.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/who-we-wish-to-become
Have learned that if you turn an iPhone off but leave it plugged in, it will invariably turn itself back on. Now imagining some kind of Byron-the-bulb conspiracy to resurrect every device connected to the grid, Byron blinking ecstatically about not leaving anyone behind.
Thinking with Adam Greenfield’s excellent LIFEHOUSE about the desire for stability, and how it’s often a proxy for nostalgia and grief: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/nostalgia-and-grief
Great interview with Georgina Voss about “world-fleshing,” a phrase I am definitely going to steal: https://www.worldbuilding.agency/interviews/world-fleshing-an-interview-with-georgina-voss-part-1/
Our teams may not be democracies, but that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t benefit from the same (sadly, neglected) skills that make democracy great: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/good-collaboration/
AI “is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.” https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art
Rovelli’s THE ORDER OF TIME is a lovely book to think with time and change and how it is we come to know ourselves: https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/order-of-time
The persistent and infuriating talk of how women should be mothers (and how women who aren’t mothers aren’t even women) should be understood as economic policy. Jenny Brown’s BIRTH STRIKE continues to be required reading: https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/birth-strike
Big decisions can take time to reach every part of you, as if they started in your head or your heart but need time to spread themselves all the way down to your toes. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/big-decisions-take-time/
“It feels like the best reason to get online anymore is to somehow increase the odds that I’ll be able to meet someone offline, which is where most of the good stuff happens anyway. We need to be able to find each other.” https://fjord.style/reorientation
Need a word for the grief that comes with finishing a novel and not wanting to leave the world behind. (This time brought about by a reread of Rosemary Kirstein’s excellent STEERSWOMAN books: https://aworkinglibrary.com/series/steerswoman-series/)
Nina Allan’s CONQUEST asks how to love someone across a reality as fractured, divergent, and broken as this one. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/conquest
Depressing but accurate take on the race to the bottom being played between OpenAI and publishers. Copyright evidently only protects the rich. https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/30/24230975/openai-publisher-deals-web-search
“We are now leaping headfirst into a future in which reality is simply less knowable.” https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/22/24225972/ai-photo-era-what-is-reality-google-pixel-9
“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.