This lovely post from Ethan (https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/commencement/) is a good reminder that just because a job ends doesn’t mean you have to say farewell to your work friends; you can take your friends to go! https://everythingchanges.us/blog/work-friends/
Part of my deep frustration with polling is how much it centers one people’s beliefs over the consequences other people bear as a result. “57% of Omelans support torture of child” is not the fucking mandate some people think it is!
“Assurances that we’ll all find other jobs before too long miss the point. We don’t necessarily want other jobs. We don’t want sympathy. We want our work, and the places we’ve done that work, to be recognized and valued.” https://www.hcn.org/articles/losing-more-than-a-forest-service-job
“But we can’t let machines do our human accounting for us, nor allow Trumpism to lead the whole of humanity into a binary, Manichean world of number ones versus human zeroes. Of those who matter and those who don’t.” https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/02/trump-gaza-number-one
Among other things, targeting 18F sends a clear message that tech workers are being coerced into serving the needs of capital. Even for those who never took it, civic tech work held the promise of escape, the dream of using tech for good. And dreams are dangerous.
Keeping things moving in the war on work. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/what-is-your-work-now/
This memo from a bunch of lawyers about the legality of DEI programs is admirably readable and plainly argued and seems like it would be useful in a lot of contexts: https://drive.google.com/file/d/129LVji0weEUdpl-mbWMFWHKU7n5ZSRfX/view
The kicker in this piece from Megan Marz about the shitshow that is hiring tech is simultaneously very instructive and entirely terrifying: https://thebaffler.com/outbursts/hiring-squad-marz
“What’s happening right now is also a labor story.” Yes, yes it is. https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/leaving-18f/
“The tools used to erase trans and non-binary people are the same tools used against feminism. They are the same tools used to advance white supremacy.” https://feministkilljoys.substack.com/p/oh-cruel-world
Applications are open until Thursday for the spring speculative fiction work/shop! Join a small group of people to think in community about how your work needs to change to meet the moment—and to move towards brighter futures. https://everythingchanges.us/workshop/sf
Thinking with Le Guin about living with uncertainty: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/make-life-possible
Hearing from tech folks fed up with layoffs and bad AI features who are ready to connect with their fave peers to build small, sustainable services and products & I just want to say if any of you want a fierce sidekick along for the ride, I would love to talk. https://everythingchanges.us/contact/
For no reason at all, find myself thinking often of this couplet from the Tao, in Le Guin’s rendition: “The disordered society / is full of loyal patriots.”
This is very good on several fronts, and also I want to underscore the bit about automation here: a big thread running through what’s happening in both tech and government right now is a concerted effort to deskill workers. https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-real-reason-metas-bleak-ai-vision
Something I’m chewing on with respect to Erin’s post here is that so much of the story about what’s happening now is oriented towards what certain people claim to be doing—and so little of it is about who gets hurt when those claims comes true. https://erinkissane.com/against-entropy
“I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.” https://www.mavenproductions.com/letter-to-a-young-activist
“The word ‘obedience’ derives from ear, to obey is to give your ear to law or to the tyrant who suspends the law, replacing it with his own will. A feminist ear might be how we hear the instructions by refusing to follow them; hearing with defiance not compliance.” https://feministkilljoys.substack.com/p/changing-institutions
Really important detail in this piece from an anon OPM employee: if you do not already have your coworker’s mobile numbers, or haven’t set up a secure backchannel to talk, do it now. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/opm-fork-musk-trump-federal-personnel-management-employee.html
“a nation which colonizes…is already a sick civilization, a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/boomerang