Tara McMullin

@taramcmullin

Writer, podcaster, and producer baffled by the absurdity of neoliberal capitalism. Autistic feminist. Aspiring independent scholar. Amateur baker. Host of the What Works podcast and author of a book of the same name.

whatworks.fyi

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Much of the pleasure of “generating content” — whether through a machine or by some other means, about oneself or about other things or about other things as a way to signify oneself — is in imagining that someone else might also want it. The content is not just for you to consume but to anchor shared experience, or at least allow us to imagine its... See more

Rob Horning • Practico-inertia

The Creator Economy and content as capital

Pinery: Self-Publishing App.

pinery.app

Design Inspo

The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as “money laundering for copyrighted data,” which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re... See more

The Creator Economy and

William Morris - Useful Work versus Useless Toil

marxists.org

Labor Under Capitalism

Platform workers’ liminal status makes them much more vulnerable to exploitation. In the United States, most gig workers and creators are classified as “independent contractors,” a categorization the IRS defines as “people who offer their services to the general public” in an independent trade, business, or profession. In practical terms, this... See more

A Labor Movement for the Platform Economy

Labor Under Capitalism and The Creator Economy

This sort of collapsed, derelict condition can appear around any disintegrating dimension of being.

Venkatesh Rao • Digital Homelessness

Broken Links

So why try to predict the future at all if it’s so difficult, so nearly impossible? Because making predictions is one way to give warning when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions. Because prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses. Because, most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today.

A Few Rules for Predicting the Future by Octavia E. Butler

Science Fiction

No Redemption Arcs in Hell

Brandon blgtylr.substack.com

the art of writing

"Redemption comes from a character who has incurred a moral debt through their actions then making good on that moral debt by performing some deed or service or act of heroism that will ameliorate the bad. That seems simple enough. But in the arid secular plains of modernity and its accompanying moral relativism, what is even good? What is even bad? How can there be redemption in the absence of a functioning moral schema?"

We rarely hear talk about preparing them for a life-time of making meaningful decisions. We don’t talk about how to prepare them for a world in which adults don’t always have the answers. We don’t talk about preparing them for a world where sometimes disobedience is the right choice, and just because something has ‘always been done like this’... See more

Dr Naomi Fisher • They Won't Get Away With That in the Real World

Higher Ed Under Capitalism