Watch this tiktok of a Gen Zer explaining her generation’s approach to work: https://x.com/StealthQE4/status/1715098015868805436?s=20 Here’s a transcript:I think we need to talk about this because I am a Gen Zer who got her first like corporate in office adult 9 to 5 job this year and I was actually really excited about it because it was a marketing position in a healthcare company so I thought it was gonna be really great and I get that the company itself ended up being like horribly toxic b...

Watch this tiktok of a Gen Zer explaining her generation’s approach to work: https://x.com/StealthQE4/status/1715098015868805436?s=20 Here’s a transcript:I think we need to talk about this because I am a Gen Zer who got her first like corporate in office adult 9 to 5 job this year and I was actually really excited about it because it was a marketing position in a healthcare company so I thought it was gonna be really great and I get that the company itself ended up being like horribly toxic b...

Examining Marx: Disproving the Causation Between Wage Labor and Alienation Using Existential Conflict as a Remedy for Social Contagion In this paper, I will critically assess Marx's argument that wage labor inevitably results in the alienation of the worker from their species being. I will begin by outlining Marx's depiction of the alienation process and its spread throughout society. Subsequently, I will challenge the premise that wage labor is the primary factor driving this alien...

Examining Marx: Disproving the Causation Between Wage Labor and Alienation Using Existential Conflict as a Remedy for Social Contagion In this paper, I will critically assess Marx's argument that wage labor inevitably results in the alienation of the worker from their species being. I will begin by outlining Marx's depiction of the alienation process and its spread throughout society. Subsequently, I will challenge the premise that wage labor is the primary factor driving this alien...

The concerning levels of inequality, political polarization, and civil unrest in the United States and the recent threatening of the international rules based order by the likes of Putin and Xi abroad have many feeling that our present moment is quite (shall we say) tinderboxerous. Over the summer, two books were released that attempted to provide a historical context to our present moment: End Times: Counter Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin provides a quantita...

The concerning levels of inequality, political polarization, and civil unrest in the United States and the recent threatening of the international rules based order by the likes of Putin and Xi abroad have many feeling that our present moment is quite (shall we say) tinderboxerous. Over the summer, two books were released that attempted to provide a historical context to our present moment: End Times: Counter Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin provides a quantita...

(For what it’s worth) below is an archive of most of my essays and such from the first couple years at school. All on arweave; just put an “https://arweave.net/” in front of any of the IDs below to see them. Crazy it cost about ten cents to put two years of writing on the network (potentially) forever. Wish I had done this for high school, but I think all of that is gone other than what I have physically.ID Size Fee Type Path -zDEz4TzAIy_y-nGu_e-ZTO-6f_fLcQeMDtGuKTNxyA 133.68 kB 0.00021201784...

(For what it’s worth) below is an archive of most of my essays and such from the first couple years at school. All on arweave; just put an “https://arweave.net/” in front of any of the IDs below to see them. Crazy it cost about ten cents to put two years of writing on the network (potentially) forever. Wish I had done this for high school, but I think all of that is gone other than what I have physically.ID Size Fee Type Path -zDEz4TzAIy_y-nGu_e-ZTO-6f_fLcQeMDtGuKTNxyA 133.68 kB 0.00021201784...

“Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.” With these words, Michel Foucault famously epitomized his genealogical approach to history half a century ago. On Barak in his Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization (2020), in the Foucaultian tradition, takes a scalpel to all the supposed historical truisms of energy history severing at the source the tentacular spread of the ideological energy regimes across both historical and contem...

“Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.” With these words, Michel Foucault famously epitomized his genealogical approach to history half a century ago. On Barak in his Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization (2020), in the Foucaultian tradition, takes a scalpel to all the supposed historical truisms of energy history severing at the source the tentacular spread of the ideological energy regimes across both historical and contem...

I made a few observations at the Hungarian Pastry Shop the other day that I thought were worth noting. #1 There are all these house sparrows, song sparrows, european sparrows flying around, hopping from table to table scooping up crumbs. There was this adolescent calling quite loudly, fluttering its wings, whining, begging its parents to pick up a crumb and stuff it in its mouth, when there are crumbs everywhere and the lazy thing could’ve just picked up a damned crumb itself. The scene appea...

I made a few observations at the Hungarian Pastry Shop the other day that I thought were worth noting. #1 There are all these house sparrows, song sparrows, european sparrows flying around, hopping from table to table scooping up crumbs. There was this adolescent calling quite loudly, fluttering its wings, whining, begging its parents to pick up a crumb and stuff it in its mouth, when there are crumbs everywhere and the lazy thing could’ve just picked up a damned crumb itself. The scene appea...

We’re generally taught that elites are corrupt and selfish creatures. They extract every last morsel of labor power from the proletariat, every natural resource from the earth, sucking the vitality out of every living being like a predatory parasite only to spend the vast fortune they’ve stolen from society on meaningless hallmarks of nobility (in the old days, some gilded grandfather clocks, crystal decanters, Rococo-style furniture, and a château; now, a Maybach, some abstract art, a couple...

We’re generally taught that elites are corrupt and selfish creatures. They extract every last morsel of labor power from the proletariat, every natural resource from the earth, sucking the vitality out of every living being like a predatory parasite only to spend the vast fortune they’ve stolen from society on meaningless hallmarks of nobility (in the old days, some gilded grandfather clocks, crystal decanters, Rococo-style furniture, and a château; now, a Maybach, some abstract art, a couple...

Post #1 was pretty freakin' lame. I was working on it on and off for three weeks, reading all about the High Middle Ages trying to form one grand narrative. But, I already knew where I wanted to end up. I had already written (a version of) the final part before I started out on the research. If you already know where you’re going to end up before you go, is there really any point in going at all? It’s the height of arrogance to make the story of some past time conform to your agenda in t...

Post #1 was pretty freakin' lame. I was working on it on and off for three weeks, reading all about the High Middle Ages trying to form one grand narrative. But, I already knew where I wanted to end up. I had already written (a version of) the final part before I started out on the research. If you already know where you’re going to end up before you go, is there really any point in going at all? It’s the height of arrogance to make the story of some past time conform to your agenda in t...

Meet Jane. She was born into an affluent family on the Upper East Side. Her father is a senior partner at a corporate law firm in New York, and her mother is a renowned photographer and patron of the arts who serves as a MoMA trustee. They summer in the Hamptons. She went to one of the city’s most prestigious private schools (perhaps Trinity or Riverdale). Her common app was solid: excellent grades, a nice assortment of extracurriculars, some charity work (more like voluntourism); and it got ...

Meet Jane. She was born into an affluent family on the Upper East Side. Her father is a senior partner at a corporate law firm in New York, and her mother is a renowned photographer and patron of the arts who serves as a MoMA trustee. They summer in the Hamptons. She went to one of the city’s most prestigious private schools (perhaps Trinity or Riverdale). Her common app was solid: excellent grades, a nice assortment of extracurriculars, some charity work (more like voluntourism); and it got ...

Everyone seems to intuitively know that the system we have is not sustainable, especially for people of my generation (Millennials, b. 1982 - 2004). Many of us went to college and graduated in the early 2000s. Just as we were getting our feet set in new careers, the 2008 economic crisis hit. It's been a long recovery from that, and just as things were picking back up, we had the COVID-19 shutdown. Now, the economy seems to be doing okay (at least if you’re in the NYT bubble), but there a...

Everyone seems to intuitively know that the system we have is not sustainable, especially for people of my generation (Millennials, b. 1982 - 2004). Many of us went to college and graduated in the early 2000s. Just as we were getting our feet set in new careers, the 2008 economic crisis hit. It's been a long recovery from that, and just as things were picking back up, we had the COVID-19 shutdown. Now, the economy seems to be doing okay (at least if you’re in the NYT bubble), but there a...

The other night, I watched a Michael Moore documentary about George Bush. There’s this one scene featuring with a mother from Flint, Michigan. She’s on the couch, surrounded by her family, recounting the devastating phone call where she found out her son had been killed in Iraq. She couldn’t get the words out. For some reason while I was watching this the lyrics from Dave Van Ronk’s “Samson and Delilah” started playing in my head, specifically that one refrain: "If I had my way…if If I had my...

The other night, I watched a Michael Moore documentary about George Bush. There’s this one scene featuring with a mother from Flint, Michigan. She’s on the couch, surrounded by her family, recounting the devastating phone call where she found out her son had been killed in Iraq. She couldn’t get the words out. For some reason while I was watching this the lyrics from Dave Van Ronk’s “Samson and Delilah” started playing in my head, specifically that one refrain: "If I had my way…if If I had my...

The year is 1990. The United States is said to have won the Cold War. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Free markets, liberalism, freedom, and democracy have triumphed. With the apparent defeat of both fascism and communism in Europe, with the job of World War II and the Cold War complete, the question becomes: if all these evils have been defeated, why do we still need NATO? Why do we need troops in Europe? Why not bring our boys home, declare the job well done, cut spending, and distribute a “pea...

The year is 1990. The United States is said to have won the Cold War. The Berlin Wall has fallen. Free markets, liberalism, freedom, and democracy have triumphed. With the apparent defeat of both fascism and communism in Europe, with the job of World War II and the Cold War complete, the question becomes: if all these evils have been defeated, why do we still need NATO? Why do we need troops in Europe? Why not bring our boys home, declare the job well done, cut spending, and distribute a “pea...