mandy brown
@aworkinglibrary.com
Thinking about reading, work, and technology. Helping people do their best work despite the ravages of capitalism at everythingchanges.us.
Posting from https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/. I log in about once a week.
Posting from https://aworkinglibrary.com/thinking/. I log in about once a week.
Pinned
mandy brown
@aworkinglibrary.com
· May 30
Toolmen
Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool.
aworkinglibrary.com
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
Bob Black’s *Abolition of Work* has hit hard every time I’ve read it, but it hits a little harder every year. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
The Abolition of Work
Bob Black The Abolition of Work 1991 This essay originated as a speech in 1980. A revised and enlarged version was published as a pamphlet in 1985, and in...
theanarchistlibrary.org
November 11, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Bob Black’s *Abolition of Work* has hit hard every time I’ve read it, but it hits a little harder every year. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
“Work is usually imagined in terms of the ego and his muscles….But the dream-work and the work on dreams returns work to the invisible earth, from literal reality to imaginative reality.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/psychology-of-craft
Psychology of craft
“Shaping, handling, and doing something with the psychic stuff.”
aworkinglibrary.com
November 11, 2025 at 3:01 PM
“Work is usually imagined in terms of the ego and his muscles….But the dream-work and the work on dreams returns work to the invisible earth, from literal reality to imaginative reality.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/psychology-of-craft
“AI is an agreement machine, which is anathema to learning and critical thinking.” https://www.404media.co/ai-is-supercharging-the-war-on-libraries-education-and-human-knowledge
AI Is Supercharging the War on Libraries, Education, and Human Knowledge
"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another."
www.404media.co
November 10, 2025 at 6:26 PM
“AI is an agreement machine, which is anathema to learning and critical thinking.” https://www.404media.co/ai-is-supercharging-the-war-on-libraries-education-and-human-knowledge
“I have good news for you, though: assholes are a minority. People of conscience, people with good will and good intentions have always outnumbered psychopaths and sycophants.” https://okayfail.com/2025/in-praise-of-dhh.html
November 10, 2025 at 4:02 PM
“I have good news for you, though: assholes are a minority. People of conscience, people with good will and good intentions have always outnumbered psychopaths and sycophants.” https://okayfail.com/2025/in-praise-of-dhh.html
Among the many privileges of the work that I do these days is being able to walk alongside people as they make big, terrifying transitions in their work and lives.
November 6, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Among the many privileges of the work that I do these days is being able to walk alongside people as they make big, terrifying transitions in their work and lives.
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.
November 4, 2025 at 3:52 PM
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.
“To be a Luddite today is to refuse the fatalism of techno-inevitability & to demand that technology serve the many, not the few. It is to assert that questions of labor, agency & justice must come before speed, efficiency & scale.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/we-should-all-be-luddites/
We should all be Luddites
Courtney Radsch discusses rehabilitating the idea of Luddites as people concerned with the control and impact of technology.
www.brookings.edu
October 31, 2025 at 2:53 PM
“To be a Luddite today is to refuse the fatalism of techno-inevitability & to demand that technology serve the many, not the few. It is to assert that questions of labor, agency & justice must come before speed, efficiency & scale.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/we-should-all-be-luddites/
I’ll be opening a winter cohort of the sf writing work/shop soon, get on the waitlist if you want to be the first to find out! Space will again be very limited so that everyone can fully participate. https://everythingchanges.us/workshop/sf
speculative fiction work/shop | everything changes
A creative gathering to imagine the future of work.
everythingchanges.us
October 30, 2025 at 6:17 PM
I’ll be opening a winter cohort of the sf writing work/shop soon, get on the waitlist if you want to be the first to find out! Space will again be very limited so that everyone can fully participate. https://everythingchanges.us/workshop/sf
Whatever your company’s rating systems, you and your colleagues are all five out of fives at being human. Act like it: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/re-views/
Re-views | everything changes
Be a five at being human.
everythingchanges.us
October 29, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Whatever your company’s rating systems, you and your colleagues are all five out of fives at being human. Act like it: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/re-views/
Digging for the kind of knowledge that you feel in your bones, that gets under your fingernails, that can’t be lifted away and perverted by a thieving bot. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/undersense
Undersense
Knowledge that you can feel in your bones.
aworkinglibrary.com
October 28, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Digging for the kind of knowledge that you feel in your bones, that gets under your fingernails, that can’t be lifted away and perverted by a thieving bot. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/undersense
Olga Tokarczuk’s *The Empusium* is subtitled “A Health Resort Horror Story,” but somehow that undersells it. The book is smart, fun, and subversive, exactly as all horror stories should be. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/empusium
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk
In 1913, a young Pole arrives at a health resort in the Silesian mountains, a place known to be free of consumption due to the still, cold, dry air.
aworkinglibrary.com
October 28, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Olga Tokarczuk’s *The Empusium* is subtitled “A Health Resort Horror Story,” but somehow that undersells it. The book is smart, fun, and subversive, exactly as all horror stories should be. https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/empusium
“It is about a world that positively blooms around us because we are committing to the quiet and constant and careful work of tending to it.” https://terminal.ahumanfuture.co/posts/2025-10-17/the-world-is-something-that-we-make
The world is something that we make // Terminal
“...and could just as easily make differently.”
terminal.ahumanfuture.co
October 27, 2025 at 5:50 PM
“It is about a world that positively blooms around us because we are committing to the quiet and constant and careful work of tending to it.” https://terminal.ahumanfuture.co/posts/2025-10-17/the-world-is-something-that-we-make
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.
October 27, 2025 at 1:46 PM
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.
“We should dissociate ‘work’ from the Herculean labor and return the idea of work to the example of the dream, where work is an imaginative activity, a work of the imagination such as takes place in painters and writers.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/an-imaginative-activity
An imaginative activity
“We should dissociate ‘work’ from the Herculean labor and return the idea of work to the example of the dream.”
aworkinglibrary.com
October 22, 2025 at 1:33 PM
“We should dissociate ‘work’ from the Herculean labor and return the idea of work to the example of the dream, where work is an imaginative activity, a work of the imagination such as takes place in painters and writers.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/an-imaginative-activity
Reposted by mandy brown
And neoliberal risk shift means that we think workers should exert personal agency to get to a position where they can buy their rights.
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.
October 15, 2025 at 2:30 PM
And neoliberal risk shift means that we think workers should exert personal agency to get to a position where they can buy their rights.
“We were angry. Our anger was old, atavistic. We were angry as all civilized men who have ever been sent to make murder in the name of virtue were angry.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/we-were-angry
We were angry
To heal a wound is to account for the wounding.
aworkinglibrary.com
October 16, 2025 at 1:48 PM
“We were angry. Our anger was old, atavistic. We were angry as all civilized men who have ever been sent to make murder in the name of virtue were angry.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/we-were-angry
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.
October 15, 2025 at 1:37 PM
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.
Semi-regular reminder that wherever you’re reading this, it’s likely not where I wrote it. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
Coming home
Into the gap.
aworkinglibrary.com
October 13, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Semi-regular reminder that wherever you’re reading this, it’s likely not where I wrote it. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/coming-home
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.
October 9, 2025 at 3:55 PM
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.
A word about annual review season and being human. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/re-views/
Re-views | everything changes
Be a five at being human.
everythingchanges.us
October 8, 2025 at 1:31 PM
A word about annual review season and being human. https://everythingchanges.us/blog/re-views/
May I remind people that the range of responses you have to a leader you disapprove of is quite broad: insubordination, sabotage, malicious compliance, slow execution, decision paralysis. Get creative! https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/07/cbs-news-staffers-react-barri-weiss-appointment
October 7, 2025 at 1:20 PM
May I remind people that the range of responses you have to a leader you disapprove of is quite broad: insubordination, sabotage, malicious compliance, slow execution, decision paralysis. Get creative! https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/oct/07/cbs-news-staffers-react-barri-weiss-appointment
A thing you can do when the doom gets to be too much is reread a book you loved. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/case-for-rereading
The case for rereading
What thoughts are you thinking with?
aworkinglibrary.com
October 6, 2025 at 1:53 PM
A thing you can do when the doom gets to be too much is reread a book you loved. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/case-for-rereading
Supremacy thinking is the refusal of observation. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/beyond-credibility
Beyond credibility
To believe in supremacy is to refuse to see what’s right in front of you, over and over and over again.
aworkinglibrary.com
October 3, 2025 at 12:51 PM
Supremacy thinking is the refusal of observation. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/beyond-credibility
A whole lot of actually very talented leaders are about to learn that management is the worst place to exercise their leadership.
October 2, 2025 at 9:07 PM
A whole lot of actually very talented leaders are about to learn that management is the worst place to exercise their leadership.