I’ve been fighting with technology all week at work. We’ve ported some applications into our environment and not only are they are still pretty unstable, they’re also replacing some applications which we’re deprecating in, oh, about six weeks. And I need to writing training documentation and figure out data conversions–without access to learn the tools myself. So that’s been fun.

However, my lunchtime reading is Ann Leckie’s newest novel, The Raven Tower, and boy, is it good. I’m about halfway through and at some point I’m pretty sure I’m going to break and inhale the balance of the book one evening. I’m also working my way through The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout. It’s quite a disturbing read and Stout’s matter of fact descriptions of horrible actions doesn’t help. But it’s also interesting and not a particularly long book.

Hugo nominations close tonight and I still haven’t started my ballot. I suppose I’d better get on that, eh?

• “The economists of the early 20th century did not foresee that work might evolve from a means of material production to a means of identity production. They failed to anticipate that, for the poor and middle class, work would remain a necessity; but for the college-educated elite, it would morph into a kind of religion, promising identity, transcendence, and community. Call it workism.“
• “And suddenly the sentence that both of us needed to hear came out of my mouth: ‘You don’t have to monetize your joy.’” This is so true. I have one job, I don’t need to turn any of my hobbies into another one.
• I found this article to be utterly fascinating and Rushkoff’s book may be my next non-fiction read: We shouldn’t blame Silicon Valley for technology’s problems—we should blame capitalism.
• My new favorite poem: “I got told what to call this poem by my male colleague”

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