...but ya know what, I still care anyway.
Maintaining something like sanity in 2025, maybe.
Let’s see, how does this thing start?
Something like…
Once again it’s um…Tuesday, this used to come out maybe?
idk, it’s been a while.
I mean, fuck it, we might as well just scrap the intro at this point…it’s not like any aspect of the social contract we were taught as kids remains intact so I can maybe play fast and loose with the framing devices, at least for a week.
If you’re part of the new audience just joining us, the name’s AJ and I’m definitely a real human person, you can tell.
In case you can’t tell, once upon a time, I got paid to write all kinds of things…web pages (remember those?), product packaging, social media outreach, all kinds of flavor text that most people don’t read but would notice if it wasn’t there.
You see, I liked to read as a youngling, and got a big dose of TV at the turn of the century, so my brain is permanently painted with all kinds of colorful catchphrases and whimsical images. Just a coruscant edifice of tomfoolery.
For a while I beat these into angular corporate shapes, and this, dear reader, provided rich indulgences including shelter, electricity, and even cheese.
…until the modern advent of Language Learning Models…its friends call it AI, I got to know it as “costless labor” and it was the end of my career writing copy, content, and calls to action (I’m really good at writing shit that sounds like ads, you see. Cursed skill when all you have left is real life).
Anyway I haven’t had a writing job in a bit, if you’re keeping score at home (did almost get a client late last year, but then they decided that some AI thingy could also assemble 1,500 breathlessly sterile words on real estate or a new brand of passion fruit tequila or hot singles in your area or whatever the fuck).
It’s like one day post-2020 I woke up in the future, but, like, a bad, stupid future full of the worst variety show skits you could imagine. I kinda fuckin hate it here…cool to have lights on everything now, but this ain’t the future we were sold.
Okay I’m kinda just rattling the keys now…guess that’s always been part of my writing style (much love to HST) but I’m def milking it now.
I’m actually gonna try to approach any kind of formality now, not that norms n decorum have ever accomplished anything worth bleeding over…I’m AJ Freeman, and “This Was a Real Job!”
This Week in Work: I Wish I Was Wrong
At some key tipping point in the last couple of years, this newsletter’s absence chiefly centered around one difficult question: Where the fuck to even start??
In those simpler times of just ~18 months ago, I used this space to talk about developments in costless labor—be it uncompensated, undercompensated, nonhuman or otherwise—and how they affect the world of work.
Reading back through previous postings (mostly to remember the format) and forward through the latest updates, I just keep coming back to one core thought:
”Damn, I wish I was wrong about that.”
Like, I’m not the world’s smartest guy or anything, but even way back in 2023, I had shit nailed. Locked down. Firmly affixed in position.
I mean, it’s not like we didn’t discuss what the job market might look like as paid labor became ever less valued…after all, a company’s largest operating expense is labor (also read “purchasing the finite hours of a living person”) and so it is directly in such a profit vehicle’s interest to minimize or eliminate this cost.
It’s not like we didn’t go over what it would look like as the climate crisis made our world more and more uninhabitable…oh, wait, this is business: “uninsurable.”
Shit, we even got some wild cards thrown in there…I didn’t call “fascist centibillionaire seizes partial control of nuclear state,” oh wait I did…who didn’t?
What other possible result could stem from an endless centralization of influence and resources but giving the fewest individuals possible the most possible control? This is the system functioning as intended…cool, right?
All of this is work-related…it’s hard to maintain your productivity levels when your future takes place in a compromised biosphere and the stormtroopers are sharpening their swords in the present.
We just don’t ignore that stuff here.
Context is always key, and in a media landscape with such a short fucking memory, it’s important to keep in mind that the major storylines of our time typically tie together in significant ways. “Tangle” is probably a better word.
So yeah, jumping back into this whole project I’m really not sure where to start with the ongoing omnicrisis…but maybe after this section, we both have a better idea where I’m going with this. Maybe. Either way, I wish I wasn’t heading there.
Maybe Update Your Resume: US Federal Workers
In past editions of “This Was a Real Job,” this segment explored the seismic shifts in technology and anthropology of late which continue to render the jobs held by human beings today obsolete.
This installment is no different, although the root cause is a bit different in today’s entry…instead of some nifty piece of code or discount labor from Elsewhere replacing over 2 million US federal government workers as of this week, there may in fact be [checks notes] absolutely nothing.
That’s right, the friendly struggle between various forces of statecraft in history’s richest society may at long last come to a head as a government shutdown looms just hours from this publishing, serving to compound the effect of the recent and unilateral dismissal of over ten thousand federal workers.
Yes, we have all heard this story before, with a resolution impossible to reach until the absolute zero hour, when the red wire is cut just as the digital display reaches “00:01” and the day is saved. This time, however, just might be different…where does that trope go if some members of the bomb squad like explosions?
What does it look like if the bomb goes off? Well…shit blows up.
In the event of a shutdown, these two million federal workers would be left without pay for an indeterminate length of time, which should work out fantastically in a nation boasting “a gun behind every blade of grass.”
It is always interesting to note which aspects of government functionality are affected by standard political vacillations…many services will be discontinued—temporarily or otherwise—but law enforcement and revenue collection will remain active, leaving the government helpless to help but armed to harm.
Maybe more of a feature than a bug.
What does that look like for everyday citizens of The Great Experiment? I suspect nobody truly knows…but it looks like we will soon find out together.
Talent Visa Tracker: Kahlil Mahmoud
In times that at least seemed more normal, the “Visa Tracker” space was a spotlight for countries around the world offering paths to residency and citizenship to foreign nationals in the wake of the remote work revolution that recently offered location independence to a new wave of millions over the past few years.
Thing is, location independence is only as viable as the barrel of a gun says it is, and surprise surprise, a piece of laminated paper cannot guarantee your safety if The Powers that Be decide that you are not eligible to enjoy it.
You see, I am the blursed holder of a US Passport, and about a decade ago I made the outstanding decision to use it for its intended purpose: leaving the US.
Considering a few options in the Global South (for wider reasons of rejecting imperial inheritance, but also for the weather), I eventually set up shop here on the Pacific Coast…where I have been overall accepted thanks to my willingness to give a fuck about the people around me in a new community.
I also recognize that current events can quickly change the temperature on my warm welcome.
For this reason, this week I have decided to track one visa in particular, that of Khalil Mahmoud, a former student at NYC’s Columbia University (not to be confused with the South American country, although with the newest offsite “deportation processing center” located in nearbyish El Salvador it’s easier than ever to get confused).
For those who haven’t yet heard the story, it’s short.
ICE swept Khalil up in one of their famous foreigner raids where they can tell who is American by looking at them. He did present his valid “green card” residency document upon request, but ICE agents invoked the “nah" clause and just went ahead and threw him in jail because hey, cops can do that.
Mahmoud Khalil has, as of this writing, still not been charged with any crime, nor has he been officially accused of committing one. Pending the outcome of a temporary delay levied against the action, he’ll get just as deported as if he had, idk, showered a healthcare CEO with lead confetti in the streets of Manhattan.
Whatever your opinion of Kahlil’s political activities, you gotta admit that random field operatives being able to decide on the spot whether your presence in a place is valid based on your appearance is…um, problematic.
Wait we don’t mince words around here: that’s some actual-factual Nazi shit.
If your entire legal standing can be invalidated in the time it takes to pull a gun, then the entire system of human movement in our world will take a dramatically different shape very soon.
We can only hope that these open hostilities of late do not escalate further.
Hope Spot: In Defense of the Concept
Shit, man.
Hope is a crazy thing…at extremes, it can share an oval with irrationality, a one-way ride to Delululand on a caramel popcorn pony, a VR headset paradise augmenting the reality of a starving child on a city street.
Usually I save something pleasant for the end of the email, leave you fine folks with some optimistic perspective but I won’t lie to ya…it was and is a struggle some weeks.
How fucking insane is it to hold out hope when reality is holding you by the hair and firing fists into the softest parts of your face? To dream of winning when loss streams in like sunlight every morning? How can our logical minds dare defy our bloody experience, even conceptualize the fantasy of more?
It seems for every egalitarian elected to a local government, there’s a Cryptkeeper appointed to oversee public health on a national scale.
For every solar panel laptop, a glimmering tomb full of monuments to obscenity…untold human potential ground down and extruded into a grey today.
A funeral for every small glimmer of progress.
Seemingly so.
It must have also seemed that way to someone born in chains as well…and yet, many of us tread so tantalizingly close to freedom today. So. fucking. close.
I am not chained to my workstation today. This, sadly, is tangible progress.
So with all that typed, I’ll wrap this up today by mentioning I do still have hope.
If not, why bother getting out of bed? Why…pay rent? Why go through all the trouble of making that coffee when you could just…y’know, not?
I’m not blind, yall. Shit sucks, and we—you know who “we” are, ya read to the end of this—might not come out on top this time…but fuck it, I care anyway.
Maybe just maybe that’s enough to matter.
…but like I said, watched a bit too much TV growing up.