Author: Sahar

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Misc

The natural phases of recovery from burnout

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In January 1, 2020, I was in a bit of a frenzy. The month before, I had quit my job. I explicitly didn’t line up another job after it. Instead, the plan was to reset my relationship with time, and with workism. This was difficult.

I think I did a pretty good job, though. And people have found it useful to hear, over the last year or so. So now I’m sharing it publicly.

In my experience, embracing the identity of “not having or wanting a job right now” comes in waves.

In the first wave, I kept the attitude that powered me at work. Everything was about tasks to be done, checklists to be completed, and general industriousness. In that vein — I renewed my drivers license (hard, because it was lost somewhere in Mexico and also I had moved states in the meantime), got some healthcare balls rolling, and cleared out many lingering email tasks. I started using Roam, audited a couple classes in Harvard, and became a coach for volunteers for Bernie Sanders.

In wave two, I could finally start getting down to the serious business of thumbing my nose at productivity. I wasn’t perfect at it: for one thing, Sarah would often nag me to “stop doing chores and start working in the Skyrim mines”. But I spent weeks mostly playing video games and reading magazines like Jewish Currents in cute cafes.

The idea here was to burn time, extravagantly and flagrantly. Show my body that productivity is not a core value by ostentaniously doing nothing of consequence. Get all the napping and mind-resetting out of the way.

I did end up doing some work-ish things. I was honored to be a coach for victory captains for the Bernie campaign. I audited a class on Milton (my fave) and another on Indian Philosophy. But mostly I toiled in the Skyrim mines.

In wave three, I thought I was ready for projects. I was wrong. I took on an enthusiastic, almost frantic searching for meaning.

I was blogging, running a book club, reading magazines, light coding, community organizing, rock climbing, tabletop roleplaying, learning about coffee, matchmaking, writing to friends, and more. Suddenly, I had too many commitments.

The feeling of “wow I’m so happy and empowered, the world is my oyster, I can do PROJECTS” turned into “oh god I took on too much why am I so stressed this whole adventure was about avoiding burnout”.

In wave four, I cut back on projects substantially. I experimented with adding and removing commitments, so that I could figure out something sustainable. It’s about curiousity and testing. What actually feels fun? What feels like a chore? What do you want your life to look like? (I slipped back into some phase two thinking for a while, which is fine).

By the end, I had begun to remember how to enjoy life more fully. I made time for walks in the outdoors, friends, and projects I actually wanted to do. Things were not great, but much better than they used to be.

(That is, until I decided to throw away all that newfound balance, and dive head-first into the 2020 election. But that’s a story for another day)

Categories
Misc

What I did in 2020

This looks like me masking slightly inappropriately (nose uncovered) but actually I was just outside and very cold.

In those early months of January and February, I had just quit my job. I explored my new, non-employed identity. I had quit Facebook for many reasons. One of them was the realization that, after about six months in Somerville, I still didn’t know my neighbors, my neighborhood, or really have any deep friendships. I needed a break.

I had moved to Somerville back in June 2019, but it felt like I only truly moved to the area the first day I was job-free. I had a few months of wintry freedom, then covid hit.

By the end of February, I was increasingly concerned about this novel coronavirus in China. With some trepidation, I visited my cherished former roommates in San Francisco, and spent the entire visit wondering why no one was freaking out as much as I was. People in my informational orbit (except, notably, for Matt Stoller) seemed to be fixated on the Democratic Presidential Primary. I stocked up on food, made panicked calls to my relatives, and tried to convince my friends that no, we weren’t going to be able to have an in-person communal Pesach event, no matter how much they wanted one.

When the public finally acknowledged the virus, I was on the second save of my post-work journey: video games. Hours and hours of Skyrim. Spending hours zoned out playing Slay the Spire. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was trying to write more, again.

I stayed home. I played games. The classes I audited were cancelled. I started writing. I applied to Berkman (a weeks-long endeavor!). I started a book club, restarted my matchmaking hobby. Ran a dungeons and dragons game. Joined another.

For Kavod, I became co-chair of partnerships. Thanks to prompting by Sivan, I set up a virtual pesach for Boston Jews of Color.

I took a lot of stuff at once. Realized I had too many projects on my hands. Put many of them on ice.

By the end of May, I started a job. I hadn’t completed the renewal I was seeking. But something more important came up — the 2020 election was looming.

Thanks to George, I joined Open Labs. This was perhaps the best job I’ve ever had — the only possible contender being the civic team at Facebook.

I became the engineering lead for the team. I worked with amazing people. Among other things, we built the engineering infrastructure for notably cheaper, faster, and more accurate polling and A/B testing for the election. Then we shared the results of that polling and testing generously.

(If you know about Jesse Stinebring‘s and David Shor‘s Blue Rose Research project, it was work adjacent to that)

It was magical. Really competent, generous, talented people. (Too many to tag!) I got to try out my manager/organizer/PM skills. We took the time to build a good team culture, and it paid dividends. One thing we did as a team outing — playing puzzles together with the Association for the Protection of Magical Creatures. Another thing we tried: Jackbox games every friday afternoon.

Ultimately, the election took over my life. I had to jettison most of my other commitments and go back into an intense, all-consuming job. I don’t regret it, but it wasn’t really what my body needed. And hey, I still was able to do some fun projects, like getting people jobs, joining the Louis Brandeis Legacy Fund, writing some posts, and raising money for the Movement Voter Project.

Over the summer I took an online course on anti monopoly run by the Law and Political Economy project. Sarah and I visited Rochester for a few weeks. We came back. For my birthday, Sarah got my friends to all call in amazing voicemails ahead of time. We wandered the town, drinking lots of wonderful coffee and eating fun foods, while I listened to those messages. Thank you, they were wonderful.

In September, I became a Berkman fellow. This was pretty cool! But I ultimately put it way on the back burner till after the election was over. This was a good call, but still a little disappointing: I felt like I had the fellow experience for only one semester, instead of two.

The year ended with me first scrambling to understand and react to post-election-day arguments about the legitimacy of the vote, then retreating into some well-needed quality time with video games and Sarah. I started ramping up my Berkman work. I spent a few days writing hundreds of bullets of notes, trying to work out how I felt about social media and how it works.

It was cold outside. The virus still ran rampant. It had been a strange year. I might not have finally reset my relationship to burnout and stress, but I had helped win an election, I was happy with my boo, and things were good.

(As a reminder, I keep a “then” page that lists what I’ve been up to every year of my adult life. I’ve now finally updated it for 2020)

Categories
Misc

Blessings for a newborn

A friend of mine recently announced that they had a new baby. Delightful!

(In fact, it seems like it’s baby season this last month or two. Maybe a bunch of people were waiting to conceive until after the 2020 election?)

She asked me for a blessing for the child. I like the idea. Here’s what I came up with, with a little assist from Sam Beam:

May your voice be well worth speaking. May your eyes be wide and seeing. May your mind be wise and seeking. May you play on the trail.

May you know how the fire started. May you lose what you must part with. May you never feel the hunger, May you understand yourself.

May your hands be strong and willing. May you know when to speak and to listen. May you be a joy to mention. May you learn from it all.

May you be content with yourself. May you be a joy both to raise and to help. May we benefit from your example. May you have a beautiful relationship with time.

Categories
Misc

A twitter list of Noah Smith’s hidden gems

A little while ago, Noah Smith published a post that listed (and cheerled) a diverse set of different twitter accounts he really enjoyed.

It was pretty convincing, so I tried to follow those accounts. It was annoying — there’s a construct of a twitter list that makes it easy, but he hadn’t made one. I couldn’t find one via searching, either. (Turns out that Twitter Search doesn’t let you search for lists.)

(Side note — once you know to look for them, UX annoyances or bugs are everywhere. From the mightiest, techiest companies to industrially designed physical objects. Honestly, it’s better to be in blissful ignorance about this, so I won’t spend more time here convincing you).

So I made a twitter list for myself and shared it with the world — Noah Smith’s Hidden Gems of Twitter, a Twitter List.

(And, while we’re at it, here’s my favorite personal twitter list — the ~20 people for whom I want to read all their posts)

Categories
Misc

How to fix social media without resorting to widespread censorship

A little while ago, I made a big presentation at Berkman: Governing the Social Media City. In conjunction with the commanding Kathy Pham, I laid out some ideas for how I think about “fixing social media” by way of the metaphor of a city. Importantly, this means putting less weight on content moderation, and thinking a lot more about design.

It’s somewhat a guide to a few of my specific ideas, and also a primer on some of the ways that people in Integrity think about these problems.

Here’s the link. I’d love to know what you think.

Categories
Misc

The January 2021 Mixtape

Every month, I make Sarah a playlist of songs she might particularly want to hear. Here is a link to this month’s mixtape.

I’m behind on my mixtapes. Slowly catching up, though! Here’s January. No real theme this month, just bits, bobs, and good songs.

Here it is. And, because proprietary services are bad, let’s export to text (thanks to spotlistr.com):

The January 2021 playlist:

  • Superstar by Sonic Youth
  • I Know What Love Isn’t by Jens Lekman
  • Return of the Obra Dinn by Lucas Pope
  • Every Party Has A Winner And A Loser by Erlend Øye
  • Congo Man by Ernest Ranglin
  • At Least That’s What You Said by Wilco
  • Almost Happy by K’s Choice
  • True Love Will Find You in the End by Daniel Johnston
  • It’ll All Work Out by Blake Mills
  • Time After Time by Iron & Wine
  • Left Hand Free by alt-J
  • Shuggie by Foxygen
  • Incinerate by Sonic Youth

As always, you can find all the playlists by going here.

Categories
Misc

A meta-proposal for Twitter’s bluesky project

My first-ever submission to SSRN was a success! Recently, I’ve gotten an email every day telling me that A meta-proposal for Twitter’s bluesky project is on the top-ten downloads for a ton of journals.

Officially I’m a co-author in the top 10 downloads in a bunch of SSRN topics

Namely: CompSciRN Subject Matter eJournals, CompSciRN: Other Web Technology (Topic), Computer Science Research Network, InfoSciRN Subject Matter eJournals, InfoSciRN: Information Architecture (Topic), InfoSciRN: Web Design & Development (Sub-Topic), Information & Library Science Research Network, Libraries & Information Technology eJournal and Web Technology eJournal.

This is a little less impressive than it sounds. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Here’s the story:

How did this all happen?

As a Berkman fellow, the main thing one seems to do is go to recurring meetings for a range of working groups. Jad Esber, one of my esteemed colleagues, got the idea and invitation to give a proposal to Twitter on their Bluesky project. He rounded up a bunch of us, and together we spent 5-6 meetings going over parts of what he called a “meta-proposal” — our guide on how to review the other different proposals coming in.

Jad is a wonderful person, and I learned some project management tips just from being part of this process. Getting a fair-sized collection of people to agree on a document, quickly, is difficult! As far as I remember, he did it like so:

  • The first meeting is to scope out different ideas people have about what they want to say.
  • Jad then writes excellent notes and combines ideas into a manageable number of topics.
  • Each meeting after this includes just the subset of the original crew who feel like they have something to contribute.
  • Jad, who has taken good notes throughout these meetings, polishes them up a bit, then turns it into a paper.

It was easy! It was so nice. And I got to work with people I really enjoy, including but not limited to Crystal Lee or Tom Zick

What the paper argues

The paper contains a bunch of ideas and warnings for a hypothetical new, decentralized social network. There are three big pillars: discover & curation, moderation, and business model. It’s quite short, so I recommend you just read all of it — it is barely 5 pages long.

I do care quite a bit about integrity issues (people often call them issues of “moderation”, which is wrong! More on this in a different post later). So I wanted to highlight this a bit.

Sidenote — what is integrity? Shorthand it to “hate speech, harassment, misinformation and other harms”, or “the problems of social media that come from users doing bad things to other users”.

Regarding curation: The most subtle proposal in here is around identifying the “idea neighborhoods” that someone might be hanging out in. (The paper calls them echo chambers). Why? Because “neighborhoods” are an important building block in identifying and fighting targeted harassment. If you know which neighborhood someone normally spends time in, you can be appropriately skeptical of them in times of stress. You can see a basic version of this in action on Reddit: if a certain post in /r/TwoXChromosomes gets a spike in harassing comments, it was pretty easy to block people who recently posted or commented in /r/mensrights.

(This is also fleshed out a bit in the moderation section as well)

On moderation: I’m tempted to block quote the whole thing. It’s all so clear, important, and succinct. And the key ideas to me are in the “friction” section, which is only 3 paragraphs. Summarizing it would take just as long as quoting. Okay, I can’t help myself. Here’s the section on friction (and a little preamble).

The role of moderation isn’t just restricting bad words or racist content. In designing the protocol and reviewing proposals, the conversation around moderation should center around restricting harassment & harm.

In considering the topic, the conversation should be framed under macro norms which are universal to the protocol; meso norms that are shared across certain clients of the protocol; and micro norms that are specific to a specific client.

Friction

It is well documented that our current systems that rely on the virality of user-generated content end up amplifying harmful content – and there is only so much that moderation efforts we tack on can do to mitigate this. In reviewing BlueSky proposals, we must engage with the question of virality and amplification and whether the protocol design avoids this.

Among the beauties and challenges of free flowing online space is the lack of physical boundaries. Traversing “geographies” by jumping from one conversation to another presents no restrictions. However, from a bad actor perspective, this presents an opportunity to scale harassment efforts and disrupt many events at once. Bluesky is an opportunity to “bring in more physics”, designing in friction on the protocol-level as a proactive way to avoid downstream moderation issues. Without getting into the complex issue of identity, increasing the cost of creating a new account, including introducing a monetary cost to start a new account, might be effective.

Enabling users to see which “neighborhood” other users are coming from could help users identify a provocateur and take action themselves. In addition to helping avoid brigading, ways of visibly ‘tagging’ users could help identify “sock-puppet accounts” and make bots easily identifiable. However, visibly tagging users could present the risk of short-circuiting judgments, and so the system should also present opportunities to identify any cross-cutting cleavages – for example by highlighting shared interests between users.

I’d say I couldn’t put it better myself, but, uh, there’s a reason for that. (That is, I feel a lot of ownership of it).

Categories
Misc

A theory of money

Picture by DeviantArt user MLeth

Have you heard the parable of the island?

A bloody conqueror invades an island. He forces everyone to mine for iron (the iron is irrelevant. They could be mining for dirt clods for all we care here. The point is that they do work).

At first, his army physically forces everyone into the mines in the morning, and lets them out in the afternoon, confiscating all their iron. That’s really exhausting. For the army, that is. They don’t really care about the islanders.

Then, they switch to taking a fixed amount of iron from people as they leave the mine. It’s much easier than searching them, and has more benefits. No more overseers making sure people are working down there. No more squinting and guessing about people’s ability to product — if someone doesn’t have enough iron, they are caged and beaten until their fellow islander ponies up the iron to free them. Things are now easier (for the army).

This is still very hard, though. How to keep track of who paid up and who didn’t? The army writes out receipts as people unload their iron as they leave the mine. Every week, the army sweeps through the island and makes everyone show their receipts to prove that they’re up to date with their iron duties. The vast majority of soldiers are freed up from guarding the mine entrance.

Parsing through receipts, manning a mine opening, that’s all still too hard. So now the army just has a depot in the middle of the town. Trade your iron for receipts. But the receipts are different. They no longer bother with writing dates or words on the receipts. Receipts are just little plastic tokens. Every week, the army sweeps through and collects 10 tokens from every islander. As long as you have the tokens, they don’t care where you got it from.

Eventually, the army gets even lazier. They sweep through every year instead of every week. They don’t bother manning many “iron for token” booths. They set up one, and let islanders set up smaller booths and do their dirty work for them. As they get lazier, they get softer. They set up a “coconuts for tokens” booth (because occupying an island is hard work, and their supplies are running low), and a “give us a massage for tokens” booth. Life is good.

Those plastic tokens are money. They have value because they’re needed to pay for those yearly sweeps. Those sweeps are taxes. The army is the state. The islanders are us. We’ve just invented money, feudalism, the state, and the transition to capitalism. Ta-dah!

(I didn’t come up with this parable. I am sure I read a version of it before. I can’t find it through casual searching, though, so I’m repeating it from memory for posterity)

Categories
Misc

Moving off monopolist internet

As Tom Slee puts it in No One Makes You Shop At Walmart, (and I think either Zephyr Teachout or David Dayen, or both, explain in their recent books), it’s not true that your individual interactions with monopolists matter. As a consumer, staying away from monopolists is a losing strategy. The point is democratic policymaking, not impotent boycotts. There’s a reason they’re monopolists, after all.

That said, I’m trying to slowly wean myself off the predatory internet.

Here’s my short-term plan:

  1. Set up my own domain (sahar.io)
  2. Set up many email addresses, each for a different way of using email. For instance: feed@sahar.io for reading newsletters, shopping@ for commerce, hello@ for correspondence, etc
  3. Set up an old-school blog (hello!)
  4. Every time I write something particularly good on FB, rewrite it slightly nicer on the blog
  5. I’ve carved out some writing explicitly for a substack: yenta!
  6. So far, my email addresses auto-forward to gmail
  7. One of these days, I’ll set up a NAS to hold all my files instead of dropbox.

Longer-term:

  • Email: After a few years, I think I’ll be able to have straightened out these tangled threads enough to take more decisive action in sunsetting or sharply limiting my old email accounts. Before then, I hope to wean off the gmail UX for a separate inbox.
  • Files: Fingers crossed, the NAS will solve all my problems.
  • Writing: I’ve already started yenta, and will likely spin up another newsletter focused on technology & politics. (Name tbd — I’m currently leaning towards “Civil Integrity”.) I’ll opportunistically cross-post some juicy bits from the newsletter to this blog, but presumably be three different spaces.
  • Social networks: If all goes well, my friends will start getting used to corresponding via blog posts, comments, and email. I doubt that’ll happen. Instead, I’m slowly weaning myself towards Twitter + one other social network to be chosen. Clubhouse? I’ll hold my fire and try to have a lively Signal presence instead.

There are also ways that surveillance and monopolist technologies entwine themselves in your life, even when you’re not actively using them. Here’s my plan:

  • Web browsing: Firefox, firefox container tabs, firefox facebook container(!!), u-block origin, and privacy badger.
  • Reading online things: Firefox better web with Scroll. Email newsletters. Nuzzel.
  • Infra: Soon I’ll get a VPN (mozilla-branded?). I hear pi-holes are good? Looking for suggestions.
  • Maps: Apple maps for now. Don’t sign into google maps.
  • Tracking: Facebook only via a web browser. View it via safari on the iphone.
  • Chat / Video: Signal and Jitsi for now. Soon I’ll use a friend’s self-hosted Jitsi instead.

So that’s the plan right now. In short — set up a few things now, mostly dual-tracked. Patiently give myself years to mature into them, and as my use of them deepens (and others follow along) start leaning on them more heavily.

I’d ask what your plan is, and I am interested. But, in the end, the real change has to come from public policy. Don’t get too seduced by individualistic theories of social change.

PS – Don’t forget that I do (and you can) use A Few Weird Tricks to make your Twitter and Facebook experience much more pleasant. (You can even get rid of ads without an ad blocker!).

Categories
Misc

The December 2020 Mixtape

Every month, I make Sarah a playlist of songs she might particularly want to hear. Here is a link to this month’s mixtape.

(Where’s November, you ask? November’s mixtape was literally just Age of Adz by Sufjan) (Isn’t it already 2021, you ask? Okay, I’m behind, sorry!)

This month’s playlist is focused on helping Sarah concentrate. To that end, it features some less-lyrical music, timeless warm post-folky music (like Timber Timbre), and songs in hebrew.

Here it is. And, because proprietary services are bad, let’s export to text:

The December 2020 playlist:

  • Holemabier by The Arcadian Wild,
  • Redolent by WMD,
  • Ísjaki by Sigur Rós,
  • Alberto Balsalm by Aphex Twin,
  • Nowhere Near by Yo La Tengo,
  • Everything Goes My Way by Metronomy,
  • For the Time Being by Erlend Øye; La Comitiva,
  • Roygbiv by Boards of Canada,
  • Adon Olam (Master of the World) by Moshav,
  • Aoede by Mashrou’ Leila,
  • Fire Flies by Gorillaz,
  • Demon Host by Timber Timbre,
  • He Would Have Laughed by Deerhunter,
  • פרגולה by Eviatar Banai,
  • Myth by Beach House,
  • Wolf Like Me by Lera Lynn; Shovels & Rope,
  • Rain Clouds by The Arcadian Wild

(As always, thank you spotlistr.com for making “get the plain text of a playlist” so much less painful)

As always, you can find all the playlists by going here.

Categories
Misc

Stand with GME or the Nazis will

(Written by a friend who wishes to remain anonymous)

I’m here to talk about what’s going to happen to the 8.5M members of WSB (this is a huge number– larger than the population of NYC!) and how we could be dealing with a second wave of Americans getting red-pilled if we, the Online Left, don’t step in and start engaging with these folks. However this ends, it’s going to be an emotional experience for everyone involved. Armageddon will either be a slaughter where millions of retail investors gambled money they couldn’t afford to lose and went broke or they’ll hit the jackpot. Armageddon will trigger a tremendous amount of in-group loyalty no matter how this goes. And afterward, the story of what happened and why will start to come together. 

One way or another, there are going to be 8.5M people who will experience a life-changing moment (THAT WE ALL KNOW IS COMING) and will be incredibly susceptible to persuasive communication.

Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are both covering this situation favorably to WSB– they’re buying goodwill right now. They’re going to be among the people who were there for them early on. That means that they’ve already won an audience with this group. They’ll help shape the post-GME narrative. In all likelihood, they’ll weave a story that ties Wall Street Corruption to the Biden Administration, the college-educated elite, and probably (sotto voice) the Jews too.

That’s where you come in. Right now you have the ability to express support for this very weird form of populist collective action. You can start to earn your seat at the table for whatever happens after Armageddon in helping to shape the story and the worldview of everyone involved. It may not be exactly the revolution that any of us want, but we do share a common enemy and this is a very rare opportunity where we know a big shock is coming. 

Millions of regular people are starting to learn all about the machinery of the finance industry for the first time. They can understand the problems that stem from our financial markets through the lens of a right-wing nationalist worldview or they can understand these problems through the lens of a left-wing global solidarity worldview. So what are some specific actions that we can all take:

  • Reddit:
    • Familiarize yourself with the dialect of WSB and the GME holders. The memes are fantastic, the language and emoji are easy and specific, and we really need to not seem like a bunch of outsiders briganding their subreddit.
    • Join WSB and start engaging. You won’t be able to post for 3 months, but you can upvote good left-wing takes and downvote right-wing nonsense into oblivion. If you find right-wing provocateurs trying to steer people down the wrong path, identify them, share their username, and collectively follow and downvote them. 
    • Elsewhere on reddit, start saying favorable things about WSB and re-contextualize the collective action as a left-wing populist uprising. It’s not Occupy, but it’s close enough that we can tell a story that rhymes Occupy. 
  • Twitter: 
    • Ask hard questions to centrist intellectuals (both left and right of center) who are down on WSB. What do they think they know that all these folks don’t? Why are they cheering for them to fail? Are they really so thirsty for likes from other elites that they’re trying to get in on the ground floor of the schadenfreude?
    • Re-contextualize news articles about WSB as being a populist movement rooted in solidarity. This is the story of people banding together in collective action, holding and buying despite tremendous pressure and disinformation to say “fuck you” to the rich. That is a winning message and is likely to lead people to Gramsci instead of Dugin. 
  • Facebook
    • Facebook is full of lower-information folks than twitter, so they’re going to have less context. This means that you’re painting with a blank canvass and can tell whatever story you want. That story is about how this is a tactical evolution of Occupy. The global movement against unmitigated corporate greed got a new tool– a bunch of memelords taking down hedge funds that get too greedy. People will think this is awesome and it will help cement the idea for low information folks that WSB is a left-wing movement.

Most importantly, don’t let good be the perfect be the enemy of the good. This is a rare moment where millions of hearts and minds hang in the balance. They can either join us in a fight for global justice or they’ll be taken in by right wing fanatics and they’ll be an obstacle to our liberation. This means compromising on our rhetoric in ways that allows us to lift up stuff that’s mostly good if somewhat objectionable.

Categories
Misc

Some facts about Wednesday

Just so we’re clear:

Oh, and also:

Wednesday was much more violent than you think it was.

Consider this: the people live-streaming were idiots. They broadcasted themselves breaking the law. Many other people were not idiots. They were armed militias, equipped to the nines, often with (ex?) military members.

Those people — the competent, scary ones — were the ones planning on actually killing members of Congress. They had guns. And they didn’t livestream.

The stuff you saw was from the clowns. It’s skewing your perception. Think about what wasn’t broadcast.

Categories
Misc

How to quit your “impact” job and not feel guilty.

By the amazing Existential Comics -- http://existentialcomics.com/comic/326

I’ve put out another edition of the Yenta Newsletter. Take a look here. For posterity, I’m going to extract one piece of the newsletter — an advice column — and flesh it out a bit here.

For a few years now, I’ve been joking that my hobby is “marxist career advice”. I’ve spent many hours-long conversations with people asking for help with figuring out their life, and my basic orientation involves ideas like “yes, all labor is exploitation, but you still need a job” and “alienated labor is a true crime of capitalism. I shake my fist at it. Now let’s talk about your resume”.

I’ve thought about turning it into some sort of cultural artifact. A set of essays, a book, a podcast, etc. For now, I’ll try something more juicy — an advice column.

(It would be remiss of me not to point out that the incomparable Existential Comics did a fun take or two on this subject. That’s where the header image comes from, and the comic below as well. I love EC and encourage you to read everything they’ve ever written. Their twitter feed is dank as well.)

By Existential Comics: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/320

Recently, I ran into someone who a question squarely in my wheelhouse. It’s a sign. So, now please enjoy the inaugural issue of “Marxist Career Advice”.

I’m thinking of quitting my very cool progressive political job. It is an important job, but the working conditions aren’t great. People are overworked, underpaid, and everything is chaotic.

I come from poverty. I’ve continued to struggle with poverty and housing-insecurity through my adult life. My current employer makes a big deal out out of below-nonprofit-range salaries as a sign that we are deeply committed to the movement. I feel guilty about wanting to spend a few years making a higher salary – which I want to do so I can build up a savings net and allow myself more opportunities to join progressive fights in the future.

I want to do the right thing. I don’t want to feel guilty. How should I think about this?

Thanks,
Conflicted in Carolina

First off, conflicted — I’m sorry that’s happening to you. There is indeed a frustrating pattern where people who consider themselves on the left, pro-worker, pro-equality, etc end up becoming the worst bosses. That’s wrong. You deserve respect, fair treatment, and psychological safety at work, just as much as anyone else does. My buddy Ned Resnikoff wrote a seminal piece on this in Jacobin in 2013: When The Union Is The Boss. You might enjoy it.

You’ve expressed guilt about the idea of leaving the movement, let’s say. Let’s interrogate that! There’s a term for a thing where membership is tied to your employment: an industry. If you take the logic that “you can’t be in the movement unless you’re hired to do so” to its logical conclusion, you’ll end up with a political strategy of hiring 51% of the country in a progressive nonprofit. That’s obviously not going to work.

When I was considering the same question a while ago, I came to a few realizations:

  • If I stay in the professional left, and give up the training, socialization, resume, and money I’d get from going into industry, I don’t think I’d be thanked. Instead, people might implicitly think of me as not good enough to get a “real” tech job.
  • If I stay in the professional left, it’d be very hard for me to get a tech job where there’d be more than 3 people in the department. Little opportunity for growth, or focus.
  • If I go work in industry, and then come back, I’d be seen as having magic startup/SF pixie dust. People would trip over themselves to hire me.
  • If I work in industry, I would not be seen as speaking for my employer. I could be as radical or frank as I want. Whereas when I work for the professional left, I have to be careful of not pissing off potential future partners, clients, bosses, etc. In other words, I need to be insulated enough from professional blowback to frankly call out some vendors or groups are actively harming the cause.
  • If I leave for industry, I’ll be replaced in my current professional left job by someone who is roughly as talented as I am. They will do the work. And even, to be generous to myself, let’s say they are $30,000/year less productive than I am — depriving this one organization of 30k/year of productivity is a small price to pay for my happiness. (And who knows, this job might be an actual step up / dream for the person replacing me, as opposed to the noble sacrifice it is for me right now)

All those predictions turned out to be true, to some extent.

I don’t know your full situation, of course. And so I can’t tell you what to do. But I hope you take these points in mind. (And, while it’s important context, your current and past poverty and housing insecurity aren’t the determining factor here. You don’t need that as a “get out of guilt jail free” card. Because you should be out of guilt jail even if you had a comfortable middle class background. Does that make sense?)

Lastly, this: when we try to unionize workers at McDonalds, we don’t attack them for how terrible their employer is. We see them, accurately, as partially victims — victims that deserve a higher minimum wage, dignity and respect at work, and a union. So, too, when you work for BigCorp, you are not your boss. You are not deciding to use Congolese slave labor, etc. You’re a worker, who needs a job somewhere. A worker who deserves respect, dignity, solidarity — and a union.

Hope that helps.

(Do you have a career advice question? Ask us at yenta@sahar.io)

Categories
Misc

Birthdays for adults that don’t suck (during a pandemic)

Adult birthdays are hard. There isn’t necessarily a built-in community of fellow students around. Even letting people *know* that it’s your birthday takes effort. The pandemic, of course, has made it worse. So, just as I’m on the lookout for better ways to have adult friendships, or date during a pandemic, I’m trying to think about how to birthdays.

There are three examples of how it went really well that I’d like to share and report back.

#1: Surprise voicemail

For my birthday this July, Sarah did a really nice thing. She set up an answering machine on Google Voice. Then she asked my friends around the world to call in and leave a 3-minute birthday message.

On July 26th, Sarah and I strolled to a nice picnic breakfast. Then, and also again over the course of the day, she played back the messages, a few at a time. It was one of the best birthdays of all time. I felt so happy, and loved, and it was a delight to hear from friends old and new. Close friends and distant acquaintances I was frankly surprised to hear from.

Try it!

#2: Playlist + Slideshow

For Sarah’s birthday, I knew I had to match her. But copying exactly seemed impolite. What to do? After a week of dithering, I figured it out.

I make Sarah a mixtape every month. This time, I’d ask all her friends to contribute music to a birthday playlist just for her. Ontop of that, I’d ask them all to send photos and notes to compile into a slideshow.

Figuring out how to ask people to do 3 different things was tricky. Eventually I settled on using one Airtable form and distributing one link. Worked like a charm.

Here’s the slideshow combining the notes, the songs, and the photos. It came out really well!

And here is the playlist. Or, if you prefer text:

  • Lionel Richie – Hello
  • Cascada – Everytime We Touch
  • Club Drosselmeyer – Ginger Snaps *(This isn’t on Spotify)
  • They Might Be Giants – Birdhouse in Your Soul
  • The New Seekers – Free To Be…You And Me
  • Peter, Paul and Mary – Puff, the Magic Dragon – 2004 Remaster
  • Yola – Walk Through Fire
  • Yola – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
  • Yola – Rock Me Gently
  • Allan Sherman – Shake Hands With Your Uncle Max
  • Na Palapalai – Ke Anu O Waimea
  • Brigitte Bardot – Une histoire de plage
  • Brigitte Bardot – La madrague
  • Tanis – Ce N’est Pas Moi
  • Mazowsze – Dwa serduszka
  • Elton John – Skyline Pigeon
  • Stephen Sondheim – Company
  • Marvin Gaye; Tammi Terrell – Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
  • Rozzi – Best Friend Song – Lemon Ice Mix
  • Lake Street Dive – You Go Down Smooth
  • Laura Marling – Fortune
  • Stevie Wonder – I Wish
  • Vince Staples; Richie Kohan – Home
  • The Neville Brothers – Sister Rosa – Live From Wolfgang’s Vault
  • 100 gecs; Charli XCX; Rico Nasty; Kero Kero Bonito – ringtone (Remix) [feat. Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito]
  • Carly Rae Jepsen – Cut To The Feeling
  • Nina Simone – Love Me or Leave Me – 2013 Remastered Version
  • Edo Lee – Black Coffee
  • Trevor Hall – Everything I Need
  • Chromeo – Clorox Wipe
  • Silver Jews – People
  • Journey – Don’t Stop Believin’
  • The B-52’s – Love Shack
  • Matthew Thiessen & The Earthquakes – Forest
  • The Civil Wars – 20 Years
  • A Taste Of Honey – Boogie Oogie Oogie – Remastered

#3: A murder mystery on GatherTown

I hate zoom. And google meet. And the culture of meeting more than 3 people on a video chat structured as a set of boxes. Conversations need to be small! And breakout groups need to be fluid and user-controlled.

That’s why I’m so excited about two different platforms that try to solve it — gather.town and spacial chat. And, just the other day, my friend Giselle used gathertown to run a successful murder mystery party!

The day started out a bit normal – a brunch hangout of just a few (~5) of us friends from college. Then, in the evening, we all created avatars and moved around in gather.town! The scene was an 80’s themed prom. We each had roles in a murder mystery. Despite the mystery instructions being written years ago (and therefore assuming we wouldn’t be quarantining), gathertown made it all possible!

Try a murder mystery (or just some version of spacial chat or gather town) for your next birthday. You’ll be so much happier than an awkward 20-person zoom room.

The over-arching secret is the wingman

All these case studies had one common success factor: the wingman. These days, you need someone spending their time reminding your friends that the birthday is coming up, and then also directing them to The Plan.

And there does need to be a plan. Gone are the days where we can just spontaneously hoist someone on our shoulders and go to the nearest pub. Instead, the wingman (the planner) needs to lay out an idea, find friends, drive them to the link, etc.

For me, it was Sarah. For Sarah, it was me. For Giselle, it was our mutual friend Anna. For couples, it seems pretty easy to figure out who the wingman is.

But for single people? I don’t know. Must be tough.

Guess that’s one more reason I want to help people find love in my spare time.

Categories
Misc

Consult the room full of people in your head

View, from the balcony, of congressmen and congresswomen on the house floor as the 115th Congress is called into session on its opening day, Washington DC, January 3, 2017. (Photo by Mark Reinstein/Corbis via Getty Images)

Some time ago, on a flight across the country, I decided to listen — I mean really listen — to a full album by the band Cloud Cult. This was new for me. I grew up listening to classical music, and in doing so, I fear I trained myself to ignore the lyrics of songs almost completely. So paying attention to actual words is quite hard.

Cloud Cult was on my mind. Last.fm kept telling me that they were one of my favorite bands (by number of plays), but I couldn’t tell you much about them, or their music. I had just finished listening to Krista Tipett interviewing their lead for On Being. Clearly they were more important than the silly band with weird songs that I thought they were. So I closed my eyes, queued up a new (to me) album, and simply paid attention.

And then … woah. This song hit me like a bag of bricks.

“There’s a room full of people in your head, and every single one of them claims your name.”

There’s a party going on in your head, yes, but also parties. A parliament. And this parliament is composed of factions, each led by a different personality.

This rhymes with a concept from Jay Smooth. The Little Hater. The little hater is the voice in your head, trashing everything you do. The little hater is the leader of opposition in the parliament of you. (Never the majority leader, because then that’d mean he’d have to take responsibility for actions).

Eventually, the plane landed. The album ended. Tears crossed my cheeks. I staggered out of the airport and met my partner. I had a decision to make — should I leave my job? What sort of thing could I do next?

If there was a parliament full of personalities in my head, we decided, maybe what I needed to do was build a coalition of the personalities I wanted to embody, and do what they wanted.

We walked to a park, and I sat down on a rock, facing a pond. I decided that there were a few values/personalities to embody:

  • The one who believes they will not fail
  • The one who is an artist, unconcerned with material things
  • The one who wants to always be on the side of good
  • The one who weighs the options and coolly does the “correct” thing

For each, I embodied them, the way an actor would, or an avatar. My posture changed. My voice changed. And each personality graded different courses of action, gave advice, etc.

The last one was perhaps the most interesting. I originally thought of it as “the person who worries” or “the person who wants to make sure I’m safe”. But a trick I learned (from Gayle Karen Young at StartingBloc) was to take these personalities and add the modifier “mature”. What does the “mature worrier” look like? To me, it was a sort of Ari Emmanuel character. Brisk, even brusque. Weighing risk and reward. Hardheaded and ambitious, calculating and cool. And his take on the situation frankly surprised me.

That’s the day I realized I needed to leave Facebook (thought it took a while longer to pull the trigger). And that’s how I try to make decisions going forward.

Anyway, the point of this all was originally to suggest you listen to Cloud Cult. Cloud Cult is great! And while Room Full of People In Your Head is a great song, I’d have to say it’s not even their best. This is. Relatedly, Jay Smooth and Gayle Young are american treasures. Find Jay here. And Gayle is here.