You’ve started a new job, you’ve stumbled into a conversation that’s been happening for several decades, and you’re feeling way too lost to even begin to follow what anyone is talking about, let alone participate. You’re confused, so you go see John, who seems to be semi-acquainted with the people having the conversation. You briefly sketch out what (you think) you heard, and tell him that you didn’t really understand anything anyone said.

Here’s a look at some of the articles and books I’ve been reading lately, or at least, the ones that stuck out to me. Originally, I wanted to do this as a weekly series, inspired by Cory Doctorow’s link posts where he comments on various articles he’s read - but I don’t have that kind of time. Also, I’m really not that great at remembering the various articles I’ve stumbled through online, so you’re going to get these when you get them.

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I dress lately, which I think is something that happens to you when you’re in your early twenties and trying to figure out how to be a “professional”. I think dress codes were always sort of a sticking point for many people, but from what I understand, in the pre-covid era there were many workplaces with very strong implicit or explicit dress codes that (I am told) made it very easy, or at the very least, easier to understand how you were supposed to dress.

When you call yourself a “talentless hack” (which you probably don’t, but you might if we share a similar sense of humour), it’s likely for one of two reasons: either you’re caught in a situation where you suddenly have to perform or get results or do something, with zero experience or knowledge of what’s going on (at which point feeling like “a hack” is somewhat legitimate), or you’re doing it out of self-deprecation because you have imposter syndrome.

I’ve been “blogging” on and off for more than a decade now. I struggle to decide what to put out there: I have so many thoughts, and I rarely have a time or place to share them. Every place sort of has its own issues: I love text-based social media, but the best we have is forums like reddit, which are not a great place to post “opinions” or thoughts, because they’re intended to be discussion forums, or Twitter-style (are we seriously calling it “X” now?) platforms that incentivize very short posts, which in turn incentivizes writing the pithiest version of your statement possible with no nuance whatsoever, which incentivizes reactionary statements and makes productive conversations very difficult.