[[Insert introductory paragraph here to create illusion that I’m not just aggregating other people’s content]]
Performative worklike activities
But the point is that in a modern economy, actually making stuff work is only part of the job. The other part of the job is performing that making-stuff-workiness to customers and executives. If your goal is to hire engineers to write code to protect your accounts from hackers, first you have to hire different engineers to build maps that shoot lasers, and show the laser maps to executives, to convince the executives to give you money to hire the real engineers to do the real work.
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It suggests something about the future of work, doesn’t it? Eventually, robots will do a lot of the real work of, like, producing goods and performing services and writing computer programs to spot hackers. And humans will do the overlay of performative meta-work; we’ll put on little plays to convince each other to use a particular robot’s goods or services. For all the high technology of the laser maps, they respond to a particularly human need: The robots would be perfectly happy just to get on with protecting the servers from hackers, or improving the settlement processes, but the humans need a little razzle-dazzle
Workplace protest
Here’s Ed Burmila on Roseanne, explaining why we keep trying to pretend that Trump and his fans are just misunderstood:
Barr may have wanted to use a fictional version of herself to prove that white people who love Donald Trump—people like her, in short—are not racists who traffic in ludicrous conspiracy theories and detest anyone who isn’t like them. She failed because that is exactly what she is. ABC, in abetting this mess, found that even Hollywood magic can’t make sympathetic characters out of such people, although I suspect it will keep trying. The alternative is confronting the fact that the beliefs of a substantial number of Americans are malevolent and dangerous, not mere differences of opinion that can be resolved in 20 minutes, with a hug.
But let’s have a word about what kinds of speech merit getting canned. At what point do we fire people for speech that’s protected under the 1st amendment? If we endorse firing Roseanne, must we also endorse the punishment of Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who kneel in protest during the national anthem?
If we agree with Matt Yglesias’ argument that Kaep is really a victim of right-wing “no-platforming” must we also endorse neo-racialists like Charles Murray and Ben Shapiro who keep getting shouted down when they visit college campuses?
If we’re going to address only the fact that people are saying or doing things that got them fired or shouted at, we should have similar opinions about Roseanne Barr and Colin Kaepernick. But we don’t, most of us. Most of us will tell you that it’s a fair and just outcome for one of those two people to get fired, and that the other person shouldn’t have lost their job over what they did.
Why is that? Perhaps it’s because of our political alignments: The left lines up behind a left-leaning celebrity, the right lines up behind a right-leaning celebrity. We signal our political affiliation in our choice of which controversial celebrity we defend, just like we signal our regional affiliation by following a sports team.
And maybe the difference is that Kaepernick is asking for a reduction in police brutality, and Roseanne Barr is reanimating Lee Atwater’s rotting corpse and giving it a Twitter account. And maybe, if you support one and endorse the firing of the other, then you’re making a distinction on the content of their speech and the character it reveals.
Not that it changes anything: Even if other players can take a knee in protest and have protection from the player’s union, Kaep’s never going to be a QB again, and Roseanne’s always going to have a spot on the lecture circuit where she’ll blame her racism on economic anxiety and liberal condescension. The NFL owners might back down on the kneeling ban, but they’ll always be the bosses and the players will always be men destroying their bodies and minds in exchange for a chance at a few years of fame and a fraction of the bosses’ wealth.
Internet oddities
My favorite new subreddit is /r/NatureIsFuckingLit. See, nature is lit, fam. It’s legit. Things like this cool storm front or a bird’s incredible mating dance or a snake being swallowed tail-first by a frog.
(WW1 1915)
ENGLISH GENERAL: Plan?
ENGLISH LIEUTENANT: Well, the trenches can be used to-
ENGLISH MAJOR: to symbolise man’s emptiness, yes…
The English Major (@Audenary) December 8, 2015
Authenticity is dead
Lab-made replica wine is actually pretty good and synthetic diamonds indistinguishable from mined diamonds are finally becoming available through the major diamond cartels.
Cultivating joy
Boss cat dismisses Roomba
Dance-off with corgi
Dog adopts kittens
Ladybug covered in morning dew
If you really want to cultivate joy in a more systematic way there’s always this quick summary of the Yale class on being happy. (Yes, NextDraft scooped me on this and the wine story, but they’re both worth a link anyway).
Secretly Ironic 