Links: Naming the hard things

Demystifying Burnout in Tech by parallaxbat. I like how leads/managers are supposed to identify and deal with (fix/fire) subtly toxic individuals. It has not been my experience that that happens, but I always want it to. Also leads/managers are supposed to listen to and support empathic "canaries." *raises hand*. It usually works the other way, toxic people get supported and canaries get booted out.

I am a compost heap, quote from Ann Patchett.

I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.

Blue Marriage and The Terror of Divorce by Anne Helen Peterson, via liv.

Bourgeois (white) women have been taught that everything, whether the pay gap or enduring domestic labor discrepancies, can be fixed through hard work: hard communication work, hard organizational work, hard therapy work. If they just put in the hours — in their relationships, on top of the hours put into their jobs and their parenting and their body maintenance — everything would work out.

Chronic pain is surprisingly treatable — when patients focus on the brain by Nathaniel Frank via conuly.

As people come to view their pain as uncomfortable but nonthreatening, their brains rewire the neural pathways that were generating the pain signals, and the pain subsides.

Your Local Epidemiologist substack mailing list. Lots of in-depth Covid info.

Stories! Gentle, hopeful

The Last Navigator by Marissa Lingen, mrissa. A brief, hopeful story about the far future.

The Amiable Planet by Yoon Ha Lee, a Twine (text-based) gentle exploratory game. Full play-through in about 20 minutes.

And as a counterpoint, a tall comic I posted before (twice!) about dark stories.
"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" by B. Patrick.