Life as Usual. Business? Not So Much. wasgudtho?
I’ve been a remote worker for close to two years now. It’s enabled me to live a higher quality of life (more time to exercise, relax, less money spent on laundry, outside food, transit) but in recent events, a lot of people who haven’t considered (or who looked down on the practice) are now flung into this world. From academia to customer support, people are being strongly encouraged to work from home. I expand a bit on people who I know have been doing this for a while (at least in tech) on my site. I do want people to understand that this practice of physical distancing (not social - like you can still reach out to your friends, we have tools for that) is necessary. As a bit of a homebody, I no longer have the pressure to immediately go outside to hang out. I have the added comfort of (with a bit of disclosure / warning) calling up friends (new or old) and getting to talk to them for a bit.
This is a test of how communally strong society is right now. We’ve lived (for a good long time) in a hyper-individualistic space (get the bag versus spread the wealth, “buy back the block” versus releasing the land) and with resources under pseudo scarcity because one’s “innate” need to hoard, we’re seeing some bad facets of humanity. Granted, I’ve seen some amazing things as well. The city of Oakland, all of a sudden, has housing for un-sheltered people and can encourage companies to reduce aggressive billing tactics. Things people have been advocating for those already holding on by their teeth. Except that these measures are being pushed to insure that we remain loyal cogs in a machine that evidently is very ready to throw us out.
Weekly Reads
I share links with you that are usually either behind a paywall or have excessive tracking in a stripped down format so you can just read. This week, it’s the following:
- Make these heart-healthy dishes to freeze and enjoy later: I’m a very big fan of meal prepping, especially when I can freeze it for later (making vats of food to last a month makes it easy to mix, match and have less cleanup). These options are plant-based so they’ll last longer and are most likely still available (people took all of the things that perished quickly in stores).
- If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?: Despite using a broken metric for intelligence (IQ exams aren’t useful at all, it’s a Nazi relic), we preach the notion of metric being the means of wealth generation where it’s more about where and when you are (as well as your inherit class status). Things that capitalism enforces but keeps barely out of sight.
- Religion Is About Emotion Regulation, and It’s Very Good at It: As a former Seventh Day Adventist nee Protestant nee anti-Catholic, I read a lot of papers about its effects on society today as well as in the past. This post felt obvious after reading it but it hit me more when I took in the perspectives of people of color (namely Black people, for a lot of them, without a concept of God, there’s nothing in life - which is a valid viewpoint providing how history has treated the people).
I might link more articles like these, I go through like ~10 a day on top of books I read because of all of the ‘extra’ time I have. There’s a site I use to track my reading but as with everything, I might end up moving that to my personal site as well.
As always, reply if you find anything interesting (or didn’t and tell me what to change - I’m open but can’t promise anything).