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
“To proceed in a hostile world, call it an experiment. Admit that you don’t know how to do it, but ask for space and peace and respect. Then try your experiment, quietly.” Erin Kissane thinking with Ursula Franklin is what I needed today: https://www.wrecka.ge/ursulas-list/
Love and solidarity to the folks at 18f getting sucked into this horrible void. If anyone needs a sympathetic ear to talk out what to do from here, my door is open. https://www.404media.co/github-is-showing-the-trump-administration-scrubbing-government-web-pages-in-real-time/
“It is the subtlest shift that shifts everything: from…I really must choose the best path to…I chose the best path, at least for me to, finally, simply: I chose. I chose and it might have been otherwise.” https://sarahendren.com/2025/01/20/choosing/
“I have been thinking of that no, how we need to say it more, or need more to say it.” https://feministkilljoys.substack.com/p/no-is-not-a-lonely-utterance
Thinking with Roger Deakin about machines and trees and how we mediate the space between hand and machine, between object and owner. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/messengers-of-a-world-above-nature
For every friend who needs to quit their job that you send this post to, a witch earns her staff: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/abscission/
“That is why, mostly, liberation is from definition. This is no mere negative model of freedom (freedom from rather than freedom to). To be liberated from definition is how we open up what it is possible to do and to be.” https://feministkilljoys.com/2024/07/10/define-women-and-other-patriarchal-instructions/
Very relieved about the Philly stadium plan falling through, and damn if this isn’t a lesson to city councils everywhere: stop playing games with billionaires! https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/live/sixers-arena-news-philadelphia-center-city-stadium-20250113.html/card-458838513
Erin is (as usual) exactly right about the ways the big platforms are in “bad shape,” and I’d also argue it isn’t just the social platforms—it’s all of the data-grabbing, ad-supported monstrosities. https://www.wrecka.ge/bad-shape/
All of the nonsense about so-called artificial “intelligence” has the notion of intelligence backwards: becoming intelligent does not make you alive. To be alive is to be intelligent. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/our-words
I think there are several pretty straight lines between the sycophancy we’re witnessing from tech owners, and the ways that workplaces are structured as mechanisms for reproducing obedience and servility. Fascism thrives on people doing what they’re told to do.
“Everyone transitions. Let’s say that again. Everyone transitions. Everyone is transitioning, present continuous.” YES. http://okayfail.com/garden/everyone-transitions.html