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

All cardsCollections

In the context of political discourse online, moralized content containing moral-emotion expression is consistently associated with increased sharing across various topics, among laypeople and political leaders, and during consequential political events. We call this phenomenon moral contagion .

Just a moment...

The Creator Economy

In some ways, the distinction between normalcy and pathology is arbitrarily defined—as well as hard to measure.

Meghan O'Rourke • The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness

The Mythical Norm

There is a big difference between “We want to get this strike settled for the good of the US economy” and “We support the workers.”

Hamilton Nolan • Whose Fault Is It?

Labor Under Capitalism

Many of us have oriented our entire lives around an effort to be “normal,” never realizing that “normal” is not a stationary goal. It keeps moving while we dance a perpetual foxtrot, jitterbug, and paso doble around it, trying to catch up and confused when we finish each day exhausted and uninspired by this party called life.

Sonya Renee Taylor • The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

The Mythical Norm

If you’ve used all of your creative powers to come up with a cure for cancer and you want to follow a playbook for the FDA approval process, by all means, do that.

But it seems as if too often, people are going through the FDA approval process in hopes that it will lead them to the cure, metaphorically speaking.

Packy McCormick • Burn the Playbooks

Disillusioned

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

It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to “being real.” Yet it is a subversive statement.

Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that... See more

Ursula K. Le Guin — 28. It Doesn’t Have To Be the Way It Is

Worldbuilding and Science Fiction

I didn’t know that all the therapy and journaling and meditation and “work on myself” I did would eventually start to pay off, and that after a lifetime of worrying that people might not like me, I would learn to love and trust myself enough that it would finally stop mattering so much what strangers thought and I could FREAKING RELAX.

10

I didn’t... See more

Substack • Notes | Substack

Personal Growth

Successful platforms do not just discover what consumers want — they produce the consumers and the forms of consumer desire that they need.

Rogers Brubaker • Hyperconnected Culture and Its Discontents

The Creator Economy and Media & Culture