words matter

"For example, look at the dominant discourse framing the current state of Work as an “Anti-Ambition” or “Anti-Work” Movement, painting a picture of people simply not wanting to work. In fact, they are not rejecting Work per se. They are rejecting the current system of Work (Work 2.0) and demanding a world of Work anchored in values such as equity,

As a certified bed rotting girlie™️ myself, I can say my horizontality is both restorative and avoidant, and when I work from bed, it can even be productive ( it’s giving Prousting ). Sometimes laying down is just laying down. Other times it’s a depressive episode. The question is: are you in your rot era or is your rot era in you?

—Mariam Sharia

Prompt power is not benign! The questions we ask ultimately determine the answers we find.

In John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, Berger describes the relation between what we see and what we know, more precisely arguing that what we know impacts what we see (and vice versa). Talking about the ubiquitous abundance of images and their increasingly ephemeral, insubstantial, and available meaning, he says, “If the new language of images were used

That final clarification is important. It is to say that language doesn’t simply allow us to describe reality as we experience it. Rather, it actively constitutes those experiences — it brings into being the everyday world for us: a world of tables and chairs, cats and dogs, planets, Great Aunt Jemima, and so on.

“Quiet Quitting” articles allowed readers to access a convenient cause (damn lazy Gen-Zers) for a pretty existential problem (work sucks). It’s also, conveniently, a way of blaming workers for systemic ills. “Quiet Hiring” deflects from organizational norms that call for eking out as much productivity (at the lowest cost) from each employee in the