mastodon 4.7.2Thinking about reading, work, and technology. Reformed tech leader; now helping people do their best work.
Posting primarily from https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/; I log in about once a week.
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.
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.
To reduce reading to the practice of empathy is to divorce it of its real power and pleasure. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/reading-matters-deeply
“If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/open-universe
“Functional information-processing…is so utterly *un*like the lived intelligence of a human being that to call it ‘intelligence’ at all is to wholly falsify its nature. ‘Artificial intelligence’ is a highly consequential misnomer.” https://www.ft.com/content/bdb3b820-905b-431e-82c0-386535755af1
You have to refuse to read the proposal from the person who also hasn’t read it. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/mouthwords/
Why we need anarchist calisthenics at work. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/break-what-should-be-broken/
Erin is the best person to do this kind of work. Not only because she has the aptitude and care, but also because she is in the right place to both observe the clouds and report back to those of us on the ground. Everyone should throw money at her! https://www.wrecka.ge/launching-a-cloud-atlas/
I’ve spent the last year reading, thinking, and talking with workers about AI and I’ve concluded that AI is not a technology—it’s an *ideology*, and it must be engaged with as such. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/toolmen
Abolition is the only way.
“The passion for, devotion to, and identification with work would be diminishing if everyone were able to work less and less.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/correct-attitude
The choice to cut parental leave is not properly understood as cost-cutting or simple leverage in a bad economy; it’s opposition to gender equality and we should talk about it as such. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/28/parental-benefits-slashed-deloitte-zoom-impact
RE: @charliejane@wandering.shop
Agree with this and also: promotion doesn't have to mean blasting on social media. You can make your art and give it to one friend, or three. You can leave it for someone to find it. Someone has been tacking poems to light posts in my neighborhood and I love it!
Art is a gift, and the gift must be given, but it needn't be given at scale.
Building on Sacasas' point about loving our limits: it's not a coincidence that a lot of the people hyping AI are also making claims to immortality. Art without practice, praise without effort, life without death—this is all the same rhyme. https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/feeding-on-illusions
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!”
Chewing on something here about how tools for professionalizing work (Kanban, etc) can also be used to abstract and make distant the ethics and consequences of that work. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/mar/26/ai-got-the-blame-for-the-iran-school-bombing-the-truth-is-far-more-worrying
Some patterns to play with when you reach the end of the trail: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/ways-of-moving/
Only a few more days to submit an application! Come join a crew of brilliant people building the imaginative muscle to make and move towards better futures.
Applications are due Thu, noon EDT. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/fall-sf-workshop/
“We cannot meaningfully separate the everyday use of ‘AI’ platforms from their application in death and war.” https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/propellant/
“What must be done is to bring the future into the present, to make power tangible *now* by means of actions which demonstrate to the workers their positive strength.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/reformed
“Mass pseudo-culture…is a device invented by monopoly capital to facilitate dictatorship over a mystified, docile, debased humanity, whose impulse of real violence must be redirected into imaginary channels.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/pseudo-culture
“There is something that learning is for, that thinking is for, that work is for, and that you are for, the discovery of which belongs to *you*.” https://medium.com/center-on-privacy-technology/an-open-letter-to-georgetown-students-in-response-to-recent-announcements-about-generative-ai-8869dcd523ef
RE: @aworkinglibrary@mstdn.social
Last call—applications for the work/shop close at noon EDT today!
“Sometimes I just lay back and think about the fact that it’s whistles and car horns and crowds versus the modern gestapo….I couldn’t really wrap my head around the idea that this could work. But it does work.” https://margaretkilljoy.substack.com/p/our-neighbors-in-minneapolis
“New choices are hard. But they’re still yours to make.” https://dansinker.com/posts/2026-04-30-cave-of-time/
Seeing some great applications rolling in already! This is gonna be a fun group. @aworkinglibrary@mstdn.social
“I’ve worked really hard to set myself up with a life and career in which I can ‘me’ as much as possible.” Lovely piece from good people thinking about doing good work in these trying times: https://www.talkscratch.com/the-group-chat-how-we-get-by/
RE: @aworkinglibrary@mstdn.social
Lots of great applications rolling in for this! So much fun to think about bringing a new group together. As a reminder, the application is brief, and should only take about 20 mins to complete. And like all my services, pricing is on a sliding scale—you pay according to your means. Applications due next Wed at noon EDT!
RE: @aworkinglibrary@mstdn.social
Applications for the work/shop are due tomorrow at noon EDT; this is gonna be such a great group. https://everythingchanges.us/workshop/sf
