Notices by Mandy Brown (aworkinglibrary@mstdn.social)

Thinking with Le Guin about living with uncertainty: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/make-life-possible

All of the nonsense about so-called artificial “intelligence” has the notion of intelligence backwards: becoming intelligent does not make you alive. To be alive is to be intelligent. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/our-words

“What we’re called to ask is why the murder of one man must be described as unspeakable violence, but the systemic denial of life to 100,000 people is an acceptable business practice.” https://www.jphilll.com/p/whats-a-life-worth

Le Guin’s advice—read when you cannot write, sleep when you cannot read—has been top of mind all week and I am intensely grateful.

God I love Le Guin so much and hope her blog has been backed up a hundred times over. “Who ‘we,’ white man?” https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/54-le-guins-hypothesis

In case anyone needs a reminder (I do, often!), spending time on your art is always the right choice: https://everythingchanges.us/blog/energy-makes-time/

The whole concept of knowledge workers rests on the assertion that there are other workers who do not truck with knowledge. But that assertion is bullshit. https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/knowledge-workers

You cannot separate the ongoing fascination with creating femme AI servants from the ongoing efforts to restrict reproductive and trans rights. They are both part of a concerted effort to equate feminity with servitude, and to maintain caretaking as free and unwaged labor.

We really haven’t learned a goddamn thing about female-gendered bots have we. (I wrote this *eight* fucking years ago.) https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/bots

Something I often talk about with my clients is to question when we reflexively say we have “no choice” but to do something. We always, always have a choice. “No choice” usually really means “I don’t want to bear the consequences of not doing this thing.” Which then opens up space to ask: what are those consequences? Why are *those* the things we don’t want to bear? And what are the consequences of *making* this choice?

So much good stuff in this post from @kissane but I’m also caught up by the notion of “load-bearing personalities” and how they are just utterly, back-breakingly unsustainable. https://erinkissane.com/root-and-branch

This is not a fully formed thought, but I have a visceral reaction to seeing coverage of Altman’s firing treated as a top-left news headline. It feels part of the hagiography of these dudes, that we cover them like kings and we cover their companies like nations, but somehow we don’t cover what their tech is going to do to real people.

PSA to other folks who also frequently schedule meetings across the Atlantic: DST ends this Sunday in Europe but it doesn’t end until the following Sunday in the US—because if we’re going to fuck with the clocks let’s maximize the chaos and fuck with them at different times, sure, why not.

Wrote about late capitalism, or what I’m calling late pandemic, and what we mean when we call these things “late.” https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/late-pandemic

This is such a huge fucking win. And tech folks should be paying v close attention to the AI terms: this is 100% relevant to our work too. https://dan.mastohon.com/@danhon/111134384654804163