“That’s how it is—we’re literate….But why do we lock ourselves into one mode? Why either/or? We aren’t binary. Why have we replaced oral text with written? Isn’t there room for both?” aworkinglibrary.com/writing/t…

“Functional information-processing…is so utterly unlike the lived intelligence of a human being that to call it ‘intelligence’ at all is to wholly falsify its nature. ‘Artificial intelligence’ is a highly consequential misnomer.” www.ft.com/content/b…

To reduce reading to the practice of empathy is to divorce it of its real power and pleasure. aworkinglibrary.com/writing/r…

Erin is the best person to do this kind of work. Not only because she has the aptitude and care, but also because she is in the right place to both observe the clouds and report back to those of us on the ground. Everyone should throw money at her! www.wrecka.ge/launching…

In my personal headcanon, Le Guin and Franklin are the Ursulae, and they are right at this moment resting in the shade of a great big tree, drinking tea (Franklin) and whiskey (UKLG) and talking about the end of the patriarchy—which for them has already happened.

“The value [added by the mythical 10x engineer] is literally the wages that the other nine workers are no longer paid, and which thus remain on the credit side of the company’s ledger.” aworkinglibrary.com/writing/t…

“The primary difference between deepfake photos and LLM conversations is that the people who generate the former are deliberately trying to fool others, and many of the people who elicit the latter from LLMs have inadvertently fooled themselves.” www.theatlantic.com/philosoph…

“I believe that writing is the most astonishing of all human technologies.” www.nybooks.com/articles/…

“The nature of generative AI is in fact degenerative, serving only to cut information loose from its tether. It is the opposite of learning.” endlessbookshelf.net/2026/05/1…

“Fear that there may be no alternative to the will of the AI arise because we have been told for decades that there is no alternative to neoliberalism.” aworkinglibrary.com/writing/p…

“When you have made enough to live on by your profession you must refuse to sell your brain for the sake of money.” aworkinglibrary.com/writing/f…

We must not work for war. aworkinglibrary.com/writing/i…

“We would be much better served by teaching many more people how to think rigorously and reason about abstractions (and they would be much better served, too) than we would by just plopping them as-is in front of LLMs.” www.b-list.org/weblog/20…

“New choices are hard. But they’re still yours to make.” dansinker.com/posts/202…

“The passion for, devotion to, and identification with work would be diminishing if everyone were able to work less and less.” aworkinglibrary.com/writing/c…

The choice to cut parental leave is not properly understood as cost-cutting or simple leverage in a bad economy; it’s opposition to gender equality and we should talk about it as such. www.theguardian.com/business/…

Becoming automatons: aworkinglibrary.com/writing/a…

Chewing on something here about how tools for professionalizing work (Kanban, etc) can also be used to abstract and make distant the ethics and consequences of that work. www.theguardian.com/news/2026…

You have to refuse to read the proposal from the person who also hasn’t read it. everythingchanges.us/blog/mout…

“There is something that learning is for, that thinking is for, that work is for, and that you are for, the discovery of which belongs to you.” medium.com/center-on…

“What must be done is to bring the future into the present, to make power tangible now by means of actions which demonstrate to the workers their positive strength.” aworkinglibrary.com/writing/r…

“I’ve worked really hard to set myself up with a life and career in which I can ‘me’ as much as possible.” Lovely piece from good people thinking about doing good work in these trying times: www.talkscratch.com/the-group…

Every time they bomb a school, a place of worship, a family picnicking on the beach, a wedding, a hospital, a shelter, a refugee camp, the wrong house, the wrong building, the wrong block, they say the same thing: it was a mistake. The mistake is to believe them.

More and more convinced that the technocrats’ assertion that “AI” will take all of our jobs is a projection of their fear of a general strike.

“We cannot meaningfully separate the everyday use of ‘AI’ platforms from their application in death and war.” ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/pro…