Meghna Jayanth's Blog, page 4
December 18, 2020
apricops:
I’ve seen workplace autonomy get reduced at several jobs I’ve worked at and it always...
I’ve seen workplace autonomy get reduced at several jobs I’ve worked at and it always follows the same pattern, where the initial change is “that sucks and I think it’s dumb but at least I can see some rationale behind it” and subsequent changes become arbitrary reminders that your employer controls you.
When I worked at a distribution center, we used to be able to wear headphones. Then one day, someone working at a different distribution center got their headphone cords tangled up in the conveyors and was seriously injured, and we weren’t allowed to wear headphones anymore.
I hated the change, of course, and thought it was stupid, and wondered if the incident they mentioned even happened, but I could at least see the logic to it: “wearing cords around miles of conveyor systems is dangerous.”
So people started bringing portable radios and stuff to work. No cords, no blocked ears, no problem. Until those got banned too. Why? Because they could, and they showed that they could when they banned headphones.
Then I worked at a testing center. After a while, cell phones were banned. And again, there was some logic to the decision: for starters, we were surrounded by confidential information, and also needed to maintain a quiet and discreet atmosphere. It was obviously an unnecessary overreach and showed that they saw their employees as children, but they at least had some security concerns they could justify it with.
So people brought in books and magazines to read during downtime. And then books and magazines were banned too. Why? Because they could, and they showed that they could when they banned cell phones.
It’s tied up with the culture of… I don’t know if there’s a term for it, but it’s something we’ve all seen. If there’s no tasks left to do at work, then stare at a wall. If you’re on the clock, then don’t sit down even if there’s no reason not to sit down. Smile. That whole thing.
November 30, 2020
"Suffering is a misunderstanding.
[…]
It exists… It’s real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I..."
Suffering is a misunderstanding.
[…]
It exists… It’s real. I can call it a misunderstanding, but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist, or will ever cease to exist. Suffering is the condition on which we live. And when it comes, you know it. You know it as the truth. Of course it’s right to cure diseases, to prevent hunger and injustice, as the social organism does. But no society can change the nature of existence. We can’t prevent suffering. This pain and that pain, yes, but not Pain. A society can only relieve social suffering, unnecessary suffering. The rest remains. The root, the reality. All of us here are going to know grief; if we live fifty years, we’ll have known pain for fifty years… And yet, I wonder if it isn’t all a misunderstanding — this grasping after happiness, this fear of pain… If instead of fearing it and running from it, one could… get through it, go beyond it. There is something beyond it. It’s the self that suffers, and there’s a place where the self—ceases. I don’t know how to say it. But I believe that the reality — the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don’t in comfort and happiness — that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way.
”- Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
"Might your bitter pain not be the voice of destiny, might that voice not become sweet once you..."
Might your bitter pain not be the voice of destiny, might that voice not become sweet once you understand it?
[…]
Action and suffering, which together make up our lives, are a whole; they are one. A child suffers its begetting, it suffers its birth, its weaning; it suffers here and suffers there until in the end it suffers death. But all the good in a man, for which he is praised or loved, is merely good suffering, the right kind, the living kind of suffering, a suffering to the full. The ability to suffer well is more than half of life — indeed, it is all life. Birth is suffering, growth is suffering, the seed suffers the earth, the root suffers the rain, the bud suffers its flowering.
In the same way, my friends, man suffers destiny. Destiny is earth, it is rain and growth. Destiny hurts.
”- Herman Hesse, https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/01/15/hermann-hesse-solitude-suffering-destiny/
November 2, 2019
olivia-nevrakis-hbic:
James: Welcome to the ‘fuck Zetta’ support group, where we gather to say a...
James: Welcome to the ‘fuck Zetta’ support group, where we gather to say a collective ‘fuck you’ to my aunt.
James: But first, a few words from our newest member.
Adele, sweating: So I may have misunderstood—
October 25, 2019
beaumontbros:
So I looked this up and it’s honestly reall...
So I looked this up and it’s honestly really cool. Female suffrage protesters were targeted by A LOT of police brutality so they would train like 30 bodyguards in “suffrajitsu” to protect hunger-strikers from being reincarnated. It was started by a woman named Edith Garrud, who also created an athletics club within WFM. It offered women protection but also an alibi when questioned by the police, and the gymnasium housed suffragists that were in trouble for busting in windows and stuff
beaumontbros:So I looked this up and it’s honestly really cool. Female suffrage protesters...
So I looked this up and it’s honestly really cool. Female suffrage protesters were targeted by A LOT of police brutality so they would train like 30 bodyguards in “suffrajitsu” to protect hunger-strikers from being reincarnated. It was started by a woman named Edith Garrud, who also created an athletics club within WFM. It offered women protection but also an alibi when questioned by the police, and the gymnasium housed suffragists that were in trouble for busting in windows and stuff
late2choices:
She looks like a can of Pringles.
She looks like a can of Pringles.
late2choices:She looks like a can of Pringles.
She looks like a can of Pringles.
October 19, 2019
"No sense in pretending things are different than they are. Nobody else will."
- Zetta Serda (via positively-devilish)
