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 fact, most of the economic innovations of the last thirty years make more sense politically than economically. Eliminating guaranteed life employment for precarious contracts doesn’t re- ally create a more effective workforce, but it is extraordinarily effective in destroying unions and otherwise depoliticizing labor. The same can be said of... See more

David Graeber • A practical utopians guide to the coming collapse – David Graeber

Economics

Better design is warranted, but it is not enough if the goal is risk reduction. Risk reduction requires socialization, education, and enough agency to build experience. Moreover, if we think that people will still get hurt, we should be creating digital patrols who are there to pick people up when they are hurt.

danah boyd • Risks vs. Harms: Youth & Social Media

The Creator Economy and Media & Culture

The hacker class experiences extremes of a winner-take-all outcome of its efforts. On the one hand, fantastic careers and the spoils of some simulation of the old bourgeois lifestyle; on the other hand, precarious and part-time work, start-ups that go bust, and the making routine of our jobs by new algorithms—designed by others of our very own

The Creator Economy and Labor Under Capitalism

The aspect ratio of our lives has changed. By narrowing our field of view, cutting off our peripheral vision, the phone doesn’t just remove us from space and provoke a sense of claustrophobia. It isolates us.

Nicholas Carr • Out of the Landscape, into the Portrait

Media & Culture and The Creator Economy

“Toward a phenomenology of the phone”

So What Do You Do?

buttondown.email

Making Sense

Now we have seen that the semi-theological dogma that all labour, under any circumstances, is a blessing to the labourer, is hypocritical and false; that, on the other hand, labour is good when due hope of rest and pleasure accompanies it.

William Morris • William Morris - Useful Work versus Useless Toil

Labor Under Capitalism

The Creator Economy

View of Errand Runners of Digital Platform Capitalism: The Errand Economy as a Contribution to the Discussion on the Gig Economy | tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal...

triple-c.at

Labor Under Capitalism and The Creator Economy

“The gig economy, regardless of workers’ competence, undermines workers’ rights, and makes every job cheap and precarious. Thus, an errand economy can be defined as the process of transforming all workers, regardless of skill level, into people who do the footwork, gruntwork, legwork, and odd jobs under a newly formed working regime.”

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