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#work

109 posts108 participants5 posts today
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Miguel Afonso Caetano

"By popular request, it’s the Ordinary Unhappiness Severance episode! Abby, Patrick, and Dan reflect on the hit show from the perspectives of political economy and libidinal economy, from Adam Smith to Adam Scott to Karl Marx to Mark S and beyond (with plenty of Freud and workplace war stories along the way). What ensues is less about answering plot mysteries (although spoilers abound) than it is about exploring how the show poses questions about repression, the division of labor, alienation, and more. What does working do to us as individuals, as co-workers, and as political subjects? How do our workplaces and their rituals channel our desires and our anxieties, shape our personas, and even divvy up our basic experiences of space and time? What are the psychic wages of maintaining “work-life balance” and what interventions – technological, chemical, and ideological – do we rely on to “make it work”? Does living under capitalism mean that we have always already been severed, and what should we expect about the limits, and the possibilities, of prestige television when it comes to representing the paradoxes and foreclosures of capitalism itself?"

buzzsprout.com/2131830/episode

Buzzsprout95: Wild Analysis: Severance Teaser - Ordinary UnhappinessSubscribe to get access to the full episode, the episode reading list, and all premium episodes! www.patreon.com/OrdinaryUnhappinessBy popular request, it’s the Ordinary Unhappiness Severance episode! Abby, Patrick, and Dan reflect on the hit show...
#Work#WageSlavery#PoliticalEconomy
Public
Nicolas Ward

Media — March 2025

Reading

The Giver Graphic Novel

I haven’t read the novel since middle school but I remembered really liking it a couple of times. Kid got this from the library so I read it quickly… there was a lot I had forgotten beyond the basic world building concept. Fun to refresh my recollection in a different medium.

Writing After the Homework Apocalypse

This piece on writing to demonstrate learning becomes less useful in a world with widespread generative AI, but that writing itself as a process still has significant cultural value.

Modern cultural labor is a process of responding to and pushing against the values represented in existing culture, but it is also a process of adapting to structural and technological change.

Scaling People

This was an interesting work read recommended to me by someone in our book club who also works in cybersecurity. It’s definitely geared more for a director-level audience but I found a few things that were useful. (I also skimmed and skipped a lot of the sections on hiring and promotions, since those processes are defined company wide and outside of my influence.)

A few things that jumped out at me:

Success depends on all team functions coming together to deliver a great product

p. 84

The worst thing you can do is let a temporary structure persist for too long.

p. 264

Which I interpret together as calls to create the right kinds of cross-functional teams for a project, which includes way more than just software engineers.

And additionally since I live the hybrid meeting lifestyle working with many team members not co-located with me in Seattle:

Give remote work equal footing in your organization.

p. 313

Playing

Fallen Order

I’d heard a lot about this game and where it fits into some of the stuff we saw in the Obi-Wan series. I haven’t played a Star Wars game outside of the Lego ones in some time.

Kid hasn’t seen a lot of AAA games like this (being largely a Switch/iOS household) and even as old as it is he was really impressed by the realism of the graphics. I guess we’ve both been missing out!

I’m pretty bad at some of the 3D jump quick time events and blocking, but it’s still fun and an interesting Star Wars story so far. Sure seems like a lot of Jedi managed to survive Order 66…

Grindstone

With my wife and kid playing again, I went back to one of my favorite Apple Arcade games. I apparently haven’t touched it in over three years! I’m trying out the new Carnival of Creeps set of levels.

Watching

We just finished Severance S2 in early April so I’ll include that in next month’s post. Still almost too stressful to watch before bed!

Across the Spider-Verse

I forgot this was a Part One until about 15 minutes before the end when I realized it wasn’t wrapping up. Family was a little upset about that. Still, an amazing movie, even if it doesn’t quite stand alone.

Really it’s a parenting story that happens to also be a superhero story, coupled with some absolutely astounding visuals. There’s just so much coming of age story and relationship story wrapped up in the meta commentary about Canon Events and the traditional superhero tragic backstory. I especially like how Miles says “no” to having to accept his fate just because it’s The Story.

Visual wise I particularly loved the underground zine style of Spider-Punk and the da Vinci drawing style of Renaissance Vulture, but everything was so well done from character designs to backgrounds and more. I’m still thinking about it. I’m surprised it didn’t win more awards but it was also a stacked year for the Academy (Elemental, Nimona, and the winner The Boy and the Heron).

I have to imagine the alternate world where the MCU was animated like this instead of being live action. Maybe they wouldn’t have been as big of money makers, but at least you’d be able to actually see all the action and lean into the best elements of the original comic book format.

Very excited for Beyond, even though it just got a release date… in 2027!

Listening

Lady Gaga — Mayhem

This album is amazingly good. We’ve listened to it through easily a dozen times since release, and it’s a lovely sendup of dance pop over the last few decades. More knowledgeable people than me have analyzed the influences but I can hear both callbacks to her own oeuvre as well as honoring influences like Prince, Michael Jackson, and many more. I heard some Savage Garden in there and so did Darren Hayes. We are of course particularly primed to like the Swift-sounding “How Bad Do U Want Me” that could pass for a 1989 vault track, but I have had several others stuck in my head including “Killah”, “Don’t Call Tonight”, and of course “Abracadabra”, which I highlighted last month.

Lingthusiasm — The Science and Fiction of Sapir-Whorf

A nice overview podcast episode of both functional stories where it plays a role and the linguistic research that has largely weakened the hypothesis. It’s an idea that always sounded really cool when I was first getting interested in language.

A light purple record sits on a mostly white turntable that barely fits on a white metal bookshelf. Viewed from above with the pickup arm on the right. The record label reads LADYGAGA vertically intersecting at the Y of mayhem for Side A
A plain brown library book with a blue geometric design titled "Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building" by Claire Hughes Johnson sitting on a pink bedspread
Screen shot of Grindstone save selection screen showing a Continue button and the date Monday, November 8, 2021 at 9:17 PM on a device called Shran. I was on level 181. Various icons represent my game state.
#artificialIntelligence#ladyGaga#starWars
Public
ABC Feeds

Young woman swaps high-vis for higher education to become paramedic
By Coquohalla Connor and Patrick Reincke

Hannah Jayne graduated without an ATAR, then spent five years working at her local mine before she found her calling as a paramedic.

abc.net.au/news/2025-04-06/you

ABC News · Young woman swaps high-vis for higher education to become paramedicBy Coquohalla Connor
#HumanInterest#Work#AmbulanceService
Public
Miguel Afonso Caetano

"For many of the Gen X-ers who embarked on creative careers in the years after the novel was published, lessness has come to define their professional lives.

If you entered media or image-making in the ’90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That’s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.

“I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,” said Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles.

Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights — or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles — and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything.

Gen X-ers grew up as the younger siblings of the baby boomers, but the media landscape of their early adult years closely resembled that of the 1950s: a tactile analog environment of landline telephones, tube TV sets, vinyl records, glossy magazines and newspapers that left ink on your hands.

When digital technology began seeping into their lives, with its AOL email accounts, Myspace pages and Napster downloads, it didn’t seem like a threat. But by the time they entered the primes of their careers, much of their expertise had become all but obsolete.

More than a dozen members of Generation X interviewed for this article said they now find themselves shut out, economically and culturally, from their chosen fields."

nytimes.com/interactive/2025/0

The New York Times · The Gen X Career MeltdownBy Steven Kurutz
#GenerationX#WageSlavery#Work
Public
Clayton Hove

Stanley Bing was a master of business humor, a narrower-than-normal niche but one he filled with wit, acid and panache. And every so often, you can turn a page and, hidden amongst the flinty, wry observations, is a profound truth that hits you like a ton of bricks.

Stanley Bing • biz words — Power Talk for Fun and Profit • 1989

#business#work#friends
Public
Khürt Williams

Why I Chose to Stop Working in New York City

For years, I commuted daily from Montgomery Township, NJ, into Manhattan. At first, it seemed like a smart move. Good job, good pay, and the excitement of working in the city. But over time, the hidden costs became painfully obvious—not just in money, but in energy and time too. One day I realized: it just wasn't worth it. Here's why. Paying Taxes Twice When you live in New Jersey but work in New York, you pay taxes to New York. A lot of taxes. I paid income tax to a state where I […]

islandinthenet.com/why-i-chose

Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, Jersey City, Paulus Hook
#commuting#newyorkcity#taxes
Public
CBC London

Hiring or job hunting? There are generational gaps these young workers want to talk about
An organization for youth in London is looking to bridge these gaps and help young workers and hiring managers understand each other — and what they're looking for in the workplace.
#work #youth #generation #hiring #London #News
cbc.ca/news/canada/london/hiri

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