Only this — that the tool never possess the human
(Image description: This is a picture of me on my birthday yesterday. I am wearing a black jumpsuit with a striped blue shirt and a wine coloured hijab. I am wearing a large-rimmed pair of glasses. I am holding my Apple pencil, staring into the screen, smiling. Behind me, you can see books stacked together on a table. I am the happiest I have ever been.)
I turned 40 yesterday. When someone asked me what my goal would be in this yet another juncture in my life, I hesitated because honestly I have none. I just want to live well, and I want everyone around me — everyone, honestly, regardless of your background or where you come from or your skin colour or your sexual orientation — to live well too.
Then it struck me that my goal, while not wholly personal, was exactly that — I want all of us to live well! And while to attain is not that simple because people are complex and malleable and that means we are exposed to do sketchy shit, but if you aware of the sketchy shit going on and you do your job well — either through big stuff like policy advocacy or unionising for a better pay or just simply caregiving for the folks in your home, all of us can do our part in making sure everyone can live well.
And because I am not good with words written in such very short time, I am re-sharing this Medium article on the decline of personal workplace ambition, but the increase of community-wide ambition where, you know, everyone gets to live well.
“[…] my ambition for my community and the wider world has gotten bigger and broader. I don’t know exactly where I fit in it, but I do know that I want all workers to be treated with dignity and respect — a small, humble ask that requires an unending amount of work. And I want all people who are unable to work or unable to find work to also be treated with dignity and respect. I want to become more active in organising, I want to be a resource for those looking for guidance in their careers — at least while we’re living under capitalism — and I want to make enough money to be able to throw some of that money at the world’s problems. My medium-size dreams for myself may be getting smaller, but my ambitions for the greater wide world have to be enormous. It’s the only way to get through.
Also new newsletter format! A couple of you here have let me know that you enjoyed the articles I shared (thank you!) but might not have the time to read them all, so I was asked to recommend one article out of every edition that stands out. As with every decision, the choice of the article isn’t neutral as well because it is up to me — so here’s the criteria I set for some transparency: the article must be something that had challenged my commonly held ideas and points of view, and had made me gain new insights in the process. I had been struggling with the idea of “rest is revolutionary” (although I fully endorse it) when some of us do not have the privilege to do so, so here’s the One Thing You Must Read This Week.
IF YOU MUST READ ONE THING ONLY
- "It is important to recognise that if you are at a place where you can consider rest as a revolution, you are privileged enough be able to think of your survival beyond food, clothing, shelter, and safety. A lot of people are not. [...] Rest is only revolutionary when we all can rest. And collective care - and collective action - are the only ways in which we can ensure that."
READING IN MY TABS
- A syllabus for the end of the world. Related: the liberating power of dreaming and stories., with a focus on Ursula K Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven.
- “Though we live in a world made of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed to institutions and an economy that relentlessly asks, “What more can we take from the Earth?” This worldview of unbridled exploitation is to my mind the greatest threat to the life that surrounds us. Even our definitions of sustainability revolve around trying to find the formula to ensure that we can keep on taking, far into the future. Isn’t the question we need, “What does the Earth ask of us?” Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass (possibly the most groundbreaking book I have ever read) invites us to consider the culture of reciprocity in today’s transactional, extractive world.
- “Sorrow stirs in me every time I face the myriad ways in which advanced capitalism removes the cultural conditions that would enable everyone, including the poor, to have access to learning an aesthetic appreciation of design.” Written 25 years ago, this essay on design by bell hooks on the beauty and joy brought by design, and how they are excluded to certain groups of people, still unfortunately applies today.
- "Maps might present to the viewer a sprawling megacity, a network of underground tunnels or the contours and currents of a rambling river. However, as representations of our infinitely complex word, maps are inherently political, subjective, and imperfect." How to think critically about maps.
- (TW: workplace trauma) How do organisations mishandle trauma? Social UX researcher Alba Villamil and the team at dscout and HmntyCntrd produced a report where they found organisations often used one of four “playbooks,” a set of go-to tactics that exacerbate trauma. (This is a heavy and triggering report, and I really appreciate Alba & team embedding elements of safety and care by including numerous reminders and a couple of moments to pause in the report to prioritise your emotions while reading.)
- The above report: Bosses, leaders, business owners, etc. if you read the report and recognise some of the tactics you have wielded and ask yourselves if you are complicit, the most possible answer is YES (this also included myself when I was in a management team). The only difference after asking that very question is this Q — "What can I do better?" and actually taking safe, structural, and trauma-informed actions on how to do better. It says a lot when everybody from every industry who had read this report says they can relate to the tactics, and it also says a lot that multiple reminders of trigger warnings and moments of mindfulness have to be inserted in between a report on how to work safely.
- Learning a lot from the posts in Bot Populi’s Feminist Re-imagining of Platform Planet, a collective re-imagining of the platform context, answering the hard questions on how platform capitalism can be dismantled.
- “This is the reality of a service-first world. The power has shifted so that companies set the parameters, and consumers have to make do with picking the lesser of several evils. Even then, users don’t really have a choice.” In the future, we won’t own any gadgets.
- TIL 'small small economy’, or what is called "kadogo economy” in Kenya, where commodities are sold in the smallest possible unit, not just for ease of budgeting, but because a large section of the population is unbanked – found out via this article on how Facebook is becoming inescapable in Africa.
- “I, the [hu]man of colour, want only this: That the tool never possess the human.” — Frantz Fanon, “Black Skin, White Masks” (1952)
RESOURCES AND TOOLKIT
- A Feminist Tech Policy sheds light on power structures, injustices, and the environmental aspects of technology. It questions current innovation narratives and examines the value of maintenance, accessibility, openness, and care for the digital societies of the future. A feminist approach helps to think and see beyond existing stories and structures. (I know it probably does not matter much to some people, but my heart leapt when I saw Ouassima Laabich-Mansour in the list of contributors, who is a hijabi in a feminist tech project, and a fellow project manager interested in social justice and building a just world for all — just like ME! The representation! Her PhD is on empowerment strategies in (digital) brave spaces whattt I want to know more!)
- Solutions Explorer is a one-of-a-kind search engine that showcases profitable climate solutions from all over the world which are part of an ever-growing, curated, and publicly-accessible database. Select your profile, your needs and climate goals to discover the solutions that fit best with your situation.
- I had been obsessed with tracking the location of the James Webb Telescope from this site. And check out the telescope's blueprints.
STATUS BOARD
- Reading: Derecka Purnell’s Becoming Abolitionists and Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet.
- Listening: Yussef Dayes and co. is just phenomenal here. Phenomenal.
- Watching: My friend Nine shared this short Indonesian film called Tilik in her newsletter which tells the story about a group of women travelling on a truck to visit their ailing mayoress in the hospital in a town hours nearby. I have a partial for road trip movies, especially if the settings take place more locally. The gossip monger in the story is especially familiar among the Malay community, one we often call makcik bawang (‘onion aunty’ — the origin of the word was believed to be from the practice of local women cutting onions together to prepare for big feasts in villages, in which they would take time to gossip). Could not help but notice 1) some hints of misinformation and the role of the Internet (particularly Facebook, as mentioned in the story), and 2) the — perhaps getting more obsolete in modern times — communal practice in villages to get everyone to visit local politicians they held in high esteem — whether it was for political campaigning, to get politically-motivated aid, etc. — of which they often travel by buses (or in this story, a truck) together.
- Food & Drink: Making chicken rice today.