Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Page 5 of 132

On Restaurant Work

Not long ago, I started subscribing to Long-Haul magazine. At its best, the mag showcases real stories about work, exploitation, and organizing from the perspective of workers themselves.

In a recent issue, I felt a strong connection to a discussion of restaurant work. For anyone who’s never done restaurant work, I suspect it’s a bit of a mystery just why people do it. It’s tough work in a grueling, highly exploitative industry, even in comparison to other working-class jobs. Even I struggle to explain it, though I’ve been a restaurant worker.

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We Have Never Been Woke

This country feels different than it did just a few years ago. We’ve moved past the ‘Great Awokening’ and into a backlash phase. Many of us – especially liberals, progressives, and/or college graduates – seek answers. How did it happen? Musa al-Gharbi offers answers in his book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite.

But they might not be the answers folks seek.

Let’s take a closer look at We Have Never Been Woke and find out.

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An Activist Legacy?

When I turned 40, I wrote a post contemplating retirement from activism and activist work. More than anything else, I identified 40 as a crossroads. It’s a point where a person should step back and reconsider what they’re doing, especially in a college town with so many people in their 20s.

Nearing my 43rd birthday, I’m ready to check back in on the topic. I’ve definitely changed how I do activist work in the past few years. But even more so, I’ve thought about the legacy I might want to leave.

Let’s talk legacy.

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The End of Eternity and AI

Near the end of his novel, The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov has a few things to tell us about the use of automation and robots that bears interestingly on our use of AI today. Asimov wrote the book in the 1950s, during an earlier wave of automation. He had no specific knowledge of LLMs, of course. But in reading it, I felt as though the Good Doctor reached into our future.

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