Thinking

  5. I really think the only reasonable response to the increasing prevalence of 996 in the tech world is to organize for a 20 hour workweek with no reduction in pay. They are trying to move the Overton window for working hours; let’s drag it the fuck back.

  24. Every time they bomb a school, a place of worship, a family picnicking on the beach, a wedding, a hospital, a shelter, a refugee camp, the wrong house, the wrong building, the wrong block, they say the same thing: it was a mistake. The mistake is to believe them.

  25. More and more convinced that the technocrats’ assertion that “AI” will take all of our jobs is a projection of their fear of a general strike.

  27. At the point in an essay when I have written 10K words, gathered pages of notes, have come to despair as to whether there is anything here worth anything at all, considered moving to the woods and disappearing forever, when I write one halfway decent sentence and think, “Ah, this might be it!”

  46. Inviting people to refuse a technology requires both models and support for alternatives. Instead of cars, protected bike lanes and a community of cyclists; instead of social media, third spaces and communal practices; instead of AI, work that is autonomous and dignified, etc., etc.

  52. I want to posit that one of the things we mean when we say we’re “procrastinating” is that our own sense of what matters has diverged from what our boss or company is concerned with. That is, procrastination is often a political conflict, not a personal failing.

  59. After a few days with time spent in a car (unusual for me!), I’m noticing how being in a car makes the rest of the world seem insubstantial, lacking solidity. Everything moves out of the way for you. Nothing is reliably there except you and your companions.

  62. Coming around to the notion that the Venn diagram between workers’ rights and civil rights is nearly a perfect circle. Owners can buy their rights; workers cannot.

  64. Once you see RTO as one part of an anti-labor movement, it makes other things clear: in-office attendance requirements are designed to force tech workers to remain in expensive cities. Because a tech salary + a rural mortgage = a whole lot of power to say no.

  69. A whole lot of actually very talented leaders are about to learn that management is the worst place to exercise their leadership.

  71. If you’re noticing a parallel between the way people in the administration are demeaning most Americans and the way your boss is now treating you, you are in very good company. (Tyranny in government begets tyranny at work begets tyranny in the home.)

  74. A corollary to no ethical consumption under capitalism is no ethical employment: there is no where you can work and keep your hands clean. The choices are about where to draw the line, and how to mitigate the harm on your side of it.

  78. Nearly two years since I made a regular practice of turning my digital devices off one day a week and I cannot overstate how restful it is. I won’t make a virtue of it—I don’t believe in virtue!—but those days are so intensely alive, and that’s enough.

  99. I’m certain the accumulating small bugs and instabilities that I’m noticing almost every day in previously reliable, decades-old software has nothing at all to do with the fact that the retention teams have been dissolved or else coerced into working on AI features no one wants.

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