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/