Links: We are all trying so hard

[sonia]

bipolar by Sari Sariola, an illustrated zine with adorable little mice that remind me of Leo Leonni.

Still here by Roxani Krystalli.

As a child, I disliked my mother's litany of remembrance. I did not want to live in the archive of pain; I wanted us to be there together, at the breakfast table, with the bowl of yogurt and honey, the radio, with the saints and their name days. My mother, meanwhile, was saying, in her own way, that we were still here, still here, still here.

Coercion versus Care by Maria.

The resources the airline and airport put into care, that is, providing the actual service they’d been paid for, were purposely minimal. The resources available for coercion, that is, the enforcement of compliance by the people ostensibly in receipt of the service, outweighed those for care by at least five to one, going on the number of security guards who turned up.

‘Everything you’ve been told is a lie!’ Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline by James Ball.

One minute you’re doing the downward dog, the next you’re listening to conspiracy theories about Covid or the new world order. How did the desire to look after yourself become so toxic?

Valuing undervalued superpowers by Julia Ferraioli, writing about Being Glue, by Tanya Reilly, an illustrated story/talk.

Every senior person in an organisation should be aware of the less glamorous - and often less-promotable - work that needs to happen to make a team successful. Managed deliberately, glue work demonstrates and builds strong technical leadership skills. Left unconscious, it can be career limiting. It can push people into less technical roles and even out of the industry.

Folks who have shared their stories of reaching Staff-plus engineer roles by Will Larson. Lots of women in the list! Gotta admit, none of them quite sound like the role I want, even though I do want to be (and think I act as) a staff engineer.

Sense of Belonging and Software Teams by Cat Hicks, who does research on what makes software teams work better. "Belonging isn’t just about interpersonal kindness and it isn’t just about individual optimal functioning. Perhaps [it] is about what we owe to each other."

Monotropism, a theory of autism developed by autistic people, initially by Dinah Murray and Wenn Lawson.

Monotropic minds tend to have their attention pulled more strongly towards a smaller number of interests at any given time, leaving fewer resources for other processes. We argue that this can explain nearly all of the features commonly associated with autism, directly or indirectly.

Tunnel Vision: An Unauthorized BART Ride (video) by Vincent Woo. I've watched the beginning of this a couple of times and really want to watch the rest, but have not made time yet.

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

Thanks for linking the article about the connection between the "wellness" communities and conspiracy theorists. I agree about having reason to distrust medical authority, and how that relates to distrust of other authorities. (I've said that every time a doctor is dishonest about "this won't hurt," or "this medication doesn't have any side effects," they nudge somebody a little closer to anti-vax.)

At the end of the article, Jane blames isolation from Covid lockdowns for pushing people into the arms of conspiracy theorists. I think she's definitely onto something about isolation making people more vulnerable. That's something cult leaders do on purpose when they are trying to make someone more vulnerable to brainwashing; you limit their contact with their previous community, you deprive them of sleep, you make them do lots of tiring, frustrating work, you convince them their work is incredibly important and they are better than the outsiders who don't do it.
Did I just describe new mothers awake at 2am? Whose old childless friends don't understand them anymore, but their new friends on MumsNet are so supportive and give breastfeeding advice and also warn them about dangers they never realized before. MumsNet has been deliberately weaponized by terfs, and not just by them.

[sonia]

Yeah, it's scary how much has been deliberately weaponized. And how much the side we want to like (science, Democrats), stumbles and makes that harder than it needs to be.

[adrian_turtle]

That phrasing of "science" as being the side we want to like is something I absolutely agree with. Especially these days! I'm not sure there's any way to do modern politics without defining sides like that. But science is not an abstraction. Science is not The Nature of Reality; it's the STUDY of Reality. It's inherently based on people's decisions about what is important to measure, how to measure it, when does a pattern matter, who can be trusted. When I trust "science," I'm really trusting scientists. I have a certain amount of faith in the peer review process, but at this point it's mostly just faith...30 years ago I could do peer review for a narrow little window of analytical chemistry (and I knew which reviewers were kinda sloppy, and which would reject EVERY paper from whose lab), but even then I had to just trust that biochemists and physicists were doing a good job of peer review. These days analytical chemistry has advanced so far I have no clue what's going on there. It's a lot easier for me to gauge bad intentions than to gauge sloppiness or the kind of wishful thinking that leads p-hacking. Especially when negative results are effectively unpublishable, and the economic pressure for publication is so enormous.

[sonia]

Good point that it’s fallible humans all the way down, even the ones aiming generally in a good direction.

[jesse_the_k]

Oooooo! Two things I'm eager to pass from your tab stack to mine: Monotropism & BART ride.

Wow ... bipolar mice are fabulous

[sonia]

I really liked that zine too!

[silveradept]

Thank you for all of these, they've been very interesting to read and watch.

[sonia]

Glad to hear it!