newyorker--2020-11-17--Invoices for Various Recent Acts of Emotional Labor

Invoice No .
921 Item : Being hushed by a fellow library patron while Steve continues to blather on , ad nauseam .
Total : $ 123.22 Invoice No .
43 Item : Listening to Richard explain the plot of “ Infinite Jest ” to me even though I loaned him the book in the first place .
Total : $ 54.21 Invoice No .
44 Item : Hosting a listening party to prove to older high-school boys that not all metal albums are in Drop D tuning .
Total : $ 44.33 , plus the cost of pizza and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Item : Smiling when instructed—e.g.
, by a construction worker on my way to work , a police officer in the park , my mother every time she ’ s ever taken my photo , etc .
Total : $ 25.43 , recurring Invoice No .
411 Item : Explaining my disability—e.g.
, when grovelling for health-insurance reimbursements , to human resources every single calendar year , to strangers for a seat on the subway , etc .
Total : $ 457.36 , recurring ( initially $ 125.50 , rate raised based on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 22 Item : Being told that there were no female Beat writers and that Kerouac ’ s “ The Subterraneans ” — “ Oh , wait , I mean ‘ The Dharma Bums ’ ; actually , ‘ Desolation Angels ’  ” —is the real Beat magnum opus .
Total : $ 76.54 ( $ 2 discount for each new title mentioned , as a bonus for at least showing range in your limited taste ) Invoice No .
107 Item : Demonstrating to a boyfriend how to do laundry—e.g.
, detailing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of dryer sheets , etc .
Total : $ 23.34 ( filed twice for two different boyfriends—both overdue ) Invoice No .
112 Item : Proving that Queen is a metal band to various metalheads .
Total : $ 192.34 , recurring Invoice No .
673 Item : Receiving nudes and the person is still wearing socks .
Total : $ 125.12 Invoice No .
88 Item : Teaching a male friend that women do not pee out of their vaginas .
Total : $ 46.44 Invoice No .
3 Item : Sitting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ father breaks down the chronological order of “ Pulp Fiction.
” The key is to focus on the clothing , he tells me , fourteen times .
Total : $ 32.98 x 14 , overdue Invoice No .
14 Item : Answering to the nickname my brother gave me as a preteen , “ Ugly Little Girl.
” Total : $ 5.62 , recurring Invoice No .
252 Item : Defining the prefix “ proto- ” to idiots on the Internet in order to explain that proto-metal is early-stage metal and that contemporary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ designation from bands like Gun , Uriah Heep , and Deep Purple—bands that helped establish metal ’ s foundation , Jon .
Total : $ 1,089.73 , recurring , because this is the hill I will gladly die on Invoice No .
253 Item : If you think that Van Halen qualifies as a metal band but Queen doesn ’ t , then you ’ re a fool incapable of analyzing the formal elements of a work of art and instead clearly rely on the arbitrary opinion of some other guy who just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Guitar Player in the early nineties .
Total : $ 1,512.23 , recurring , because I am exhausted Invoice No .
( n+1 ) Item : Biting tongue .
Total : $ 83.48 , recurring ( subject to adjustment , based on inflation )

Invoice No. 921
Item: Being hushed by a fellow library patron while Steve continues to blather on, ad nauseam.
Total: $123.22
Invoice No. 43
Item: Listening to Richard explain the plot of “Infinite Jest” to me even though I loaned him the book in the first place.
Total: $54.21
Invoice No. 44
Item: Hosting a listening party to prove to older high-school boys that not all metal albums are in Drop D tuning.
Total: $44.33, plus the cost of pizza and Mad Dog 20/20s
Invoice No. 27
Item: Smiling when instructed—e.g., by a construction worker on my way to work, a police officer in the park, my mother every time she’s ever taken my photo, etc. Total: $25.43, recurring
Invoice No. 411
Item: Explaining my disability—e.g., when grovelling for health-insurance reimbursements, to human resources every single calendar year, to strangers for a seat on the subway, etc.
Total: $457.36, recurring (initially $125.50, rate raised based on frequency of occurrences)
Invoice No. 22
Item: Being told that there were no female Beat writers and that Kerouac’s “The Subterraneans”—“Oh, wait, I mean ‘The Dharma Bums’; actually, ‘Desolation Angels’ ”—is the real Beat magnum opus.
Total: $76.54 ($2 discount for each new title mentioned, as a bonus for at least showing range in your limited taste)
Invoice No. 107
Item: Demonstrating to a boyfriend how to do laundry—e.g., detailing why detergent is necessary, the significance of dryer sheets, etc.
Total: $23.34 (filed twice for two different boyfriends—both overdue)
Invoice No. 112
Item: Proving that Queen is a metal band to various metalheads.
Total: $192.34, recurring
Invoice No. 673
Item: Receiving nudes and the person is still wearing socks.
Total: $125.12
Invoice No. 88
Item: Teaching a male friend that women do not pee out of their vaginas.
Total: $46.44
Invoice No. 3
Item: Sitting patiently and totally sober while my drunk father breaks down the chronological order of “Pulp Fiction.” The key is to focus on the clothing, he tells me, fourteen times.
Total: $32.98 x 14, overdue
Invoice No. 14
Item: Answering to the nickname my brother gave me as a preteen, “Ugly Little Girl.”
Total: $5.62, recurring
Invoice No. 252
Item: Defining the prefix “proto-” to idiots on the Internet in order to explain that proto-metal is early-stage metal and that contemporary standards don’t revoke the genre designation from bands like Gun, Uriah Heep, and Deep Purple—bands that helped establish metal’s foundation, Jon.
Total: $1,089.73, recurring, because this is the hill I will gladly die on
Invoice No. 253
Item: If you think that Van Halen qualifies as a metal band but Queen doesn’t, then you’re a fool incapable of analyzing the formal elements of a work of art and instead clearly rely on the arbitrary opinion of some other guy who just happened to write a bullshit opinion piece for Guitar Player in the early nineties.
Total: $1,512.23, recurring, because I am exhausted
Invoice No. (n+1)
Item: Biting tongue.
Total: $83.48, recurring (subject to adjustment, based on inflation)


newyorker--2020-11-17--How to Draw Intrusive Thoughts

How to Draw Intrusive Thoughts

You might think that all cartoons come from thoughts , and you might not be wrong .
Jason Adam Katzenstein , however , specializes in drawing certain kinds of thought—the ones that wake you up at 2 A.M.—WHAM !
—and keep you awake for hours , wondering why you ’ d say something so horrible to your dental hygienist when you don ’ t even have any idea what her stance is on composting .
These are the kinds of thoughts that make you truly believe that you ’ ll never sleep again , until you do , and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ midnight self .
I ’ m lucky enough to have gotten to know Jason , and to have had the opportunity to ask him for I.R.L .
personal assurance that it ’ s normal to feel bad for inanimate objects left out in the rain .
But for the rest of you , well , you get his cartoons—where micro-anxieties hatched from his highly attuned , highly brilliant brain are tossed into the minds of trees and sharks and Hamlet and Anna Karenina .
And , hopefully , these plants and super-sensitive literary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seen , a little less alone .
Just don ’ t spend too much time dwelling on what Jason thinks about you .
.
.
.
Just kidding , he thinks you ’ re great .
—Emma Allen Do you draw with your left or right hand ?
What art do you have hanging on your studio walls/above your drawing desk ?
A poster of Spike and Mike ’ s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation from 1989 and an Adrian Tomine Weezer poster .
Do you snack while you draw ?
If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to drink a formidable amount of coffee .
And then I ’ m , like , why ’ s my heart beating so fast ?
Do you listen to music or podcasts while you draw ?
If so , specify .
Yes !
I ’ ve been drawing to “ græ , ” by Moses Sumney , and “ Nina Simone and Piano.
” Some podcasts I ’ ve been loving : “ Citations Needed , ” “ Know Your Enemy , ” “ Bad Faith , ” and “ You ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ depending on what ’ s playing , and I often look back at something I ’ ve drawn and remember what I was listening to at the time .
What object or setting do you absolutely hate drawing ?
I ’ m afraid this will sound cheesy , but I need to love what I ’ m drawing .
Part of the challenge for me is finding my “ in ” to a challenging composition ; how do I stage this in a way that is interesting to me ?
How do I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your favorite New Yorker cartoon trope or cliché ( e.g.
, desert island , grim reaper , Rapunzel tower , etc. )
?
Sisyphus .
I love a still image that feels like it ’ s moving .
I also love existential absurdity .
If you could have dinner with one cartoonist , living or dead , tonight , who would it be ?
George Grosz .
What a brilliant , fearless cartoonist .
I wish I could sketch next to him and hear his stories .
What would you serve ?
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Wiener schnitzel ?
Unless I want to blow his mind with modern food innovations and we eat , like , uncrustables .
What was your favorite cartoon ( strip or animation ) as a kid ?
I watched “ Yellow Submarine ” over and over again .
I read an anthology of the early Lee/Ditko Spider-Man issues .
I still love both of these .
Good taste , little Jason .
What did you spend your first New Yorker cartoon sale check on ?
This was 2014 , so I ’ m @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Jessi ’ s Coffee Shop and two large hot coffees from Cup .
If you had to get a tattoo ( or new tattoo ) right now , what would you get ?
I ’ ve thought too much about this , and the answer is a falling sperm whale and a bowl of petunias , and the bowl of petunias is thinking , “ Oh no , not again .
”

You might think that all cartoons come from thoughts, and you might not be wrong. Jason Adam Katzenstein, however, specializes in drawing certain kinds of thought—the ones that wake you up at 2 A.M.—WHAM!—and keep you awake for hours, wondering why you’d say something so horrible to your dental hygienist when you don’t even have any idea what her stance is on composting. These are the kinds of thoughts that make you truly believe that you’ll never sleep again, until you do, and then spend the next day laughing at your midnight self. I’m lucky enough to have gotten to know Jason, and to have had the opportunity to ask him for I.R.L. personal assurance that it’s normal to feel bad for inanimate objects left out in the rain. But for the rest of you, well, you get his cartoons—where micro-anxieties hatched from his highly attuned, highly brilliant brain are tossed into the minds of trees and sharks and Hamlet and Anna Karenina. And, hopefully, these plants and super-sensitive literary protagonists make you feel a little more seen, a little less alone. Just don’t spend too much time dwelling on what Jason thinks about you. . . . Just kidding, he thinks you’re great.
—Emma Allen, New Yorker cartoon editor
Do you draw with your left or right hand?
Right.
What art do you have hanging on your studio walls/above your drawing desk?
A poster of Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation from 1989 and an Adrian Tomine Weezer poster.
Do you snack while you draw? If so, on what?
I tend to drink a formidable amount of coffee. And then I’m, like, why’s my heart beating so fast?
Do you listen to music or podcasts while you draw? If so, specify.
Yes! I’ve been drawing to “græ,” by Moses Sumney, and “Nina Simone and Piano.” Some podcasts I’ve been loving: “Citations Needed,” “Know Your Enemy,” “Bad Faith,” and “You’re Wrong About.” My hand moves differently depending on what’s playing, and I often look back at something I’ve drawn and remember what I was listening to at the time.
What object or setting do you absolutely hate drawing?
I’m afraid this will sound cheesy, but I need to love what I’m drawing. Part of the challenge for me is finding my “in” to a challenging composition; how do I stage this in a way that is interesting to me? How do I make this fun?
What’s your favorite New Yorker cartoon trope or cliché (e.g., desert island, grim reaper, Rapunzel tower, etc.)?
Sisyphus. I love a still image that feels like it’s moving. I also love existential absurdity.
If you could have dinner with one cartoonist, living or dead, tonight, who would it be?
George Grosz. What a brilliant, fearless cartoonist. I wish I could sketch next to him and hear his stories.
What would you serve?
We’re German, so . . . Wiener schnitzel? Unless I want to blow his mind with modern food innovations and we eat, like, uncrustables.
What was your favorite cartoon (strip or animation) as a kid?
I watched “Yellow Submarine” over and over again. I read an anthology of the early Lee/Ditko Spider-Man issues. I still love both of these. Good taste, little Jason.
What did you spend your first New Yorker cartoon sale check on?
This was 2014, so I’m going with a grilled chicken chipotle wrap at Jessi’s Coffee Shop and two large hot coffees from Cup.
If you had to get a tattoo (or new tattoo) right now, what would you get?
I’ve thought too much about this, and the answer is a falling sperm whale and a bowl of petunias, and the bowl of petunias is thinking, “Oh no, not again.”
Dogs or cats?
Both. But dogs.


newyorker--2020-11-17--The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done

Mann wasn ’ t alone in his frustration .
In the nineteen-nineties , the spread of e-mail had transformed knowledge work .
With nearly all friction removed from professional communication , anyone could bother anyone else at any time .
Many e-mails brought obligations : to answer a question , look into a lead , arrange a meeting , or provide feedback .
Work lives that had once been sequential—two or three blocks of work , broken up by meetings and phone calls—became frantic , improvisational , and impossibly overloaded .
“ E-mail is a ball of uncertainty that represents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on this period .
In 2003 , he came across a book that seemed to address his frustrations .
It was titled “ Getting Things Done : The Art of Stress-Free Productivity , ” and , for Mann , it changed everything .
The time-management system it described , called G.T.D.
, had been developed by David Allen , a consultant turned entrepreneur who lived in the crunchy mountain town of Ojai , California .
Allen combined ideas from Zen Buddhism with the strict organizational techniques he ’ d honed while advising corporate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how our minds work : when we try to keep track of obligations in our heads , we create “ open loops ” that make us anxious .
That anxiety , in turn , reduces our ability to think effectively .
If we could avoid worrying about what we were supposed to be doing , we could focus more fully on what we were actually doing , achieving what Allen called a “ mind like water.
” To maintain such a mind , one must deal with new obligations before they can become @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s solution is a multi-step system .
It begins with what Allen describes as full capture : the idea is to maintain a set of in-boxes into which you can drop obligations as soon as they arise .
One such in-box might be a physical tray on your desk ; when you suddenly remember that you need to finish a task before an upcoming meeting , you can jot a reminder on a piece of paper , toss it in the tray , and , without breaking concentration , return to whatever it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day , you might add similar thoughts to other in-boxes , such as a list on your computer or a pocket notebook .
But jotting down notes isn ’ t , in itself , enough to close the loops ; your mind must trust that you will return to your in-boxes and process what ’ s inside them .
Allen calls this final , crucial step regular review .
During reviews , you transform your haphazard reminders into concrete “ next actions , ” then enter them onto a master list .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for your efforts .
In his book , Allen recommends organizing the master list into contexts , such as @ phone or @ computer .
Moving through the day , you can simply look at the tasks listed under your current context and execute them one after another .
Allen uses the analogy of cranking widgets to describe this calmly mechanical approach to work .
It ’ s a rigorous system for the generation of serenity .
To someone with Mann ’ s engineering sensibility , the precision of G.T.D .
was appealing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for optimization .
In September , 2004 , Mann started a blog called 43 Folders—a reference to an organizational hack , the “ tickler file , ” described in Allen ’ s book .
In an introductory post , Mann wrote , “ Believe me , if you keep finding that the water of your life has somehow run onto the floor , GTD may be just the drinking glass you need to get things back together.
” He published nine posts about G.T.D .
during the blog ’ s first month .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in one post , he proposed the creation of a unified XML format for G.T.D .
data , which would allow different apps to display the same tasks in multiple formats , including “ graphical map , outline , RDF , structured text.
” He told me that the writer Cory Doctorow linked to an early 43 Folders post on Doctorow ’ s popular nerd-culture site , Boing Boing .
Traffic surged .
Mann soon announced that , in just thirty days , 43 Folders had received over a hundred and fifty thousand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s just nuts , ” he wrote . )
The site became so popular that Mann quit his job to work on it full time .
As his influence grew , he popularized a new term for the genre that he was helping to create : “ productivity pr0n , ” an adaptation of the “ leet speak , ” or geek lingo , word for pornography .
The hunger for this pr0n , he noticed , was insatiable .
People were desperate to tinker with their productivity systems .
What Mann and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : they were trying to be more productive in a knowledge-work environment that seemed increasingly frenetic and harder to control .
What they didn ’ t realize was that they were reacting to a profound shift in the workplace that had gone largely unnoticed .
Drucker was born in Austria in 1909 .
His parents , Adolph and Caroline , held evening salons that were attended by Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter , among other economic luminaries .
The intellectual energy of these salons seemed to inspire Drucker ’ s own productivity : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shortly before his death , at the age of ninety-five .
His career took off after the publication of his second book , “ The Future of Industrial Man , ” in 1942 , when he was a thirty-three-year-old professor at Bennington College .
The book asked how an “ industrial society ” —one unfolding within “ the entirely new physical reality which Western man has created as his habitat since James Watt invented the steam engine ” —might best be structured to respect human freedom and dignity .
Arriving in the midst @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book found a wide audience .
After reading it , the management team at General Motors invited Drucker to spend two years studying the operations of what was then the world ’ s largest corporation .
The 1946 book that resulted from that engagement , “ Concept of the Corporation , ” was one of the first to look seriously at how big organizations actually got work done .
It laid the foundation for treating management as a subject that could be studied analytically .
In the nineteen-fifties , the American economy began @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work .
Drucker helped business leaders understand this transformation .
In his 1959 book , “ Landmarks of Tomorrow , ” he coined the term “ knowledge work , ” and argued that autonomy would be the central feature of the new corporate world .
Drucker predicted that corporate profits would depend on mental effort , and that each individual knowledge worker , possessing skills too specialized to be broken down into “ repetitive , simple , mechanical motions ” choreographed from above , would need to decide how to “ apply his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his own productivity .
“ The knowledge worker can not be supervised closely or in detail , ” Drucker wrote , in “ The Effective Executive , ” from 1967 .
“ He must direct himself.
” Drucker ’ s emphasis on the autonomy of knowledge workers made sense , as there was no obvious way to deconstruct the efforts required by newly important mid-century jobs—like corporate research and development or advertisement copywriting—into assembly-line-style sequences of optimized steps .
But Drucker was also influenced by the politics of the Cold War .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ staying ahead of the Soviets .
Citing the invention of the atomic bomb , he argued that scientific work of such complexity and ambiguity could not have been managed using the heavy-handed techniques of the industrial age , which he likened to the centralized planning of the Soviet economy .
Future industries , he suggested , would need to operate in “ local ” and “ decentralized ” ways .
To support his emphasis on knowledge-worker autonomy , Drucker introduced the idea of management by objectives , a process in which managers focus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the details of how they ’ re accomplished are left to individuals .
This idea is both extremely consequential and rarely debated .
It ’ s why the modern office worker is inundated with quantified quarterly goals and motivating mission statements , but receives almost no guidance on how to actually organize and manage these efforts .
It was thus largely owing to Drucker that , in 2004 , when Merlin Mann found himself overwhelmed by his work , he took it for granted that the solution to his woes would be found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Just as G.T.D .
was achieving widespread popularity , however , Mann ’ s zeal for his own practice began to fade .
An inflection point in his writing came in 2007 , soon after he gave a G.T.D.-inspired speech about e-mail management to an overflow audience at Google ’ s Mountain View headquarters .
Building on the classic productivity idea that an office worker shouldn ’ t touch the same piece of paper more than once , Mann outlined a new method for rapidly processing e-mails .
In this system , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then select from a limited set of options—delete it , respond to it , defer it ( by moving it into a folder of messages requiring long responses ) , delegate it , or “ do ” it ( by extracting and executing the activity at its core , or capturing it for later attention in a system like G.T.D. )
.
The goal was to apply these rules mechanically until your digital message pile was empty .
Mann called his strategy Inbox Zero .
After Google uploaded a video of his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the vernacular .
Editors began inquiring about book deals .
Not long afterward , Mann posted a self-reflective essay on 43 Folders , in which he revealed a growing dissatisfaction with the world of personal productivity .
Productivity pr0n , he suggested , was becoming a bewildering , complexifying end in itself—list-making as a “ cargo cult , ” system-tweaking as an addiction .
“ On more than a few days , I wondered what , precisely , I was trying to accomplish , ” he wrote .
Part of the problem was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Refining his productivity system so that he could blog more efficiently about productivity made him feel as if he were being “ tossed around by a menacing Rube Goldberg device ” of his own design ; at times , he said , “ I thought I might be losing my mind.
” He also wondered whether , on a substantive level , the approach that he ’ d been following was really capable of addressing his frustrations .
It seemed to him that it was possible to implement many G.T.D.-inflected life hacks without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and alive.
” He cleaned house , deleting posts .
A new “ About ” page explained that 43 Folders was no longer a productivity blog but a “ website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.
” Mann ’ s posting slowed .
In 2011 , after a couple years of desultory writing , he published a valedictory essay titled “ Cranking ” —a rumination on an illness of his father ’ s , and a description of his own struggle to write a book about Inbox @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a concept .
“ I ’ d type and type .
I ’ d crank and I ’ d crank , ” he recounted .
“ I ’ m done cranking .
And , I ’ m ready to make a change.
” After noting that his editor would likely cancel his book contract , he concluded with a bittersweet sign-off : “ Thanks for listening , nerds.
” There have been no posts on the site for the past nine years .
The knowledge sector ’ s insistence that productivity is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a so-called “ tragedy of the commons ” scenario , in which individuals making reasonable decisions for themselves insure a negative group outcome .
An office worker ’ s life is dramatically easier , in the moment , if she can send messages that demand immediate responses from her colleagues , or disseminate requests and tasks to others in an ad-hoc manner .
But the cumulative effect of such constant , unstructured communication is cognitively harmful : on the receiving end , the deluge of information and demands makes work unmanageable .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can do to fix the problem .
A worker might send fewer e-mail requests to others , and become more structured about her work , but she ’ ll still receive requests from everyone else ; meanwhile , if she decides to decrease the amount of time that she spends engaging with this harried digital din , she slows down other people ’ s work , creating frustration .
In this context , the shortcomings of personal-productivity systems like G.T.D .
become clear .
They don ’ t directly address the fundamental problem @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unfolds at the organizational level .
They only help individuals cope with its effects .
A highly optimized implementation of G.T.D .
might have helped Mann organize the hundreds of tasks that arrived haphazardly in his in-box daily , but it could do nothing to reduce the quantity of these requests .
One of the few academics who has seriously explored knowledge-work productivity in recent years is Tom Davenport , a professor of information technology and management at Babson College .
Many organizations claim to be interested in productivity , he told me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by introducing new technology tools—spreadsheets , network applications , Web-based collaboration software—in piecemeal fashion .
The general belief is that knowledge workers will never stand for intrusions into the autonomy they ’ ve come to expect .
The idea of large-scale interventions that might replace the mess of unstructured messaging with a more structured set of procedures is rarely considered .
Although Davenport ’ s 2005 book , “ Thinking for a Living , ” attempted to offer concrete advice about how knowledge-worker productivity might be improved , in many places his advice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ autonomy .
In one chapter , for example , he explores the possibility of routinizing or constraining the tasks of “ transaction ” workers , who perform similar duties over and over , by using a diagram to communicate an optimal sequence of actions .
He adds , however , that such routinization simply won ’ t appeal to “ expert ” workers , who he says are unlikely to pay attention to elaborate flowcharts suggesting when they should collaborate and when they should leave each other alone .
In the end , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to find an audience .
“ It was one of my worst-selling books , ” Davenport said .
He soon shifted his attention to more popular topics , such as big data and artificial intelligence .

In the early two-thousands, Merlin Mann, a Web designer and avowed Macintosh enthusiast, was working as a freelance project manager for software companies. He had held similar roles for years, so he knew the ins and outs of the job; he was surprised, therefore, to find that he was overwhelmed—not by the intellectual aspects of his work but by the many small administrative tasks, such as scheduling conference calls, that bubbled up from a turbulent stream of e-mail messages. “I was in this batting cage, deluged with information,” he told me recently. “I went to college. I was smart. Why was I having such a hard time?”
Mann wasn’t alone in his frustration. In the nineteen-nineties, the spread of e-mail had transformed knowledge work. With nearly all friction removed from professional communication, anyone could bother anyone else at any time. Many e-mails brought obligations: to answer a question, look into a lead, arrange a meeting, or provide feedback. Work lives that had once been sequential—two or three blocks of work, broken up by meetings and phone calls—became frantic, improvisational, and impossibly overloaded. “E-mail is a ball of uncertainty that represents anxiety,” Mann said, reflecting on this period.
In 2003, he came across a book that seemed to address his frustrations. It was titled “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,” and, for Mann, it changed everything. The time-management system it described, called G.T.D., had been developed by David Allen, a consultant turned entrepreneur who lived in the crunchy mountain town of Ojai, California. Allen combined ideas from Zen Buddhism with the strict organizational techniques he’d honed while advising corporate clients. He proposed a theory about how our minds work: when we try to keep track of obligations in our heads, we create “open loops” that make us anxious. That anxiety, in turn, reduces our ability to think effectively. If we could avoid worrying about what we were supposed to be doing, we could focus more fully on what we were actually doing, achieving what Allen called a “mind like water.”
To maintain such a mind, one must deal with new obligations before they can become entrenched as open loops. G.T.D.’s solution is a multi-step system. It begins with what Allen describes as full capture: the idea is to maintain a set of in-boxes into which you can drop obligations as soon as they arise. One such in-box might be a physical tray on your desk; when you suddenly remember that you need to finish a task before an upcoming meeting, you can jot a reminder on a piece of paper, toss it in the tray, and, without breaking concentration, return to whatever it was you were doing. Throughout the day, you might add similar thoughts to other in-boxes, such as a list on your computer or a pocket notebook. But jotting down notes isn’t, in itself, enough to close the loops; your mind must trust that you will return to your in-boxes and process what’s inside them. Allen calls this final, crucial step regular review. During reviews, you transform your haphazard reminders into concrete “next actions,” then enter them onto a master list.
This list can now provide a motive force for your efforts. In his book, Allen recommends organizing the master list into contexts, such as @phone or @computer. Moving through the day, you can simply look at the tasks listed under your current context and execute them one after another. Allen uses the analogy of cranking widgets to describe this calmly mechanical approach to work. It’s a rigorous system for the generation of serenity.
To someone with Mann’s engineering sensibility, the precision of G.T.D. was appealing, and the method itself seemed ripe for optimization. In September, 2004, Mann started a blog called 43 Folders—a reference to an organizational hack, the “tickler file,” described in Allen’s book. In an introductory post, Mann wrote, “Believe me, if you keep finding that the water of your life has somehow run onto the floor, GTD may be just the drinking glass you need to get things back together.” He published nine posts about G.T.D. during the blog’s first month. The discussion was often highly technical: in one post, he proposed the creation of a unified XML format for G.T.D. data, which would allow different apps to display the same tasks in multiple formats, including “graphical map, outline, RDF, structured text.” He told me that the writer Cory Doctorow linked to an early 43 Folders post on Doctorow’s popular nerd-culture site, Boing Boing. Traffic surged. Mann soon announced that, in just thirty days, 43 Folders had received over a hundred and fifty thousand unique visitors. (“That’s just nuts,” he wrote.) The site became so popular that Mann quit his job to work on it full time. As his influence grew, he popularized a new term for the genre that he was helping to create: “productivity pr0n,” an adaptation of the “leet speak,” or geek lingo, word for pornography. The hunger for this pr0n, he noticed, was insatiable. People were desperate to tinker with their productivity systems.
What Mann and his fellow-enthusiasts were doing felt perfectly natural: they were trying to be more productive in a knowledge-work environment that seemed increasingly frenetic and harder to control. What they didn’t realize was that they were reacting to a profound shift in the workplace that had gone largely unnoticed.
Before there was “personal productivity,” there was just productivity: a measure of how much a worker could produce in a fixed interval of time. At the turn of the twentieth century, Frederick Taylor and his acolytes had studied the physical movements of factory workers, looking for places to save time and reduce costs. It wasn’t immediately obvious how this industrial concept of productivity might be adapted from the assembly line to the office. A major figure in this translation was Peter Drucker, the influential business scholar who is widely regarded as the creator of modern management theory.
Drucker was born in Austria in 1909. His parents, Adolph and Caroline, held evening salons that were attended by Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter, among other economic luminaries. The intellectual energy of these salons seemed to inspire Drucker’s own productivity: he wrote thirty-nine books, the last shortly before his death, at the age of ninety-five. His career took off after the publication of his second book, “The Future of Industrial Man,” in 1942, when he was a thirty-three-year-old professor at Bennington College. The book asked how an “industrial society”—one unfolding within “the entirely new physical reality which Western man has created as his habitat since James Watt invented the steam engine”—might best be structured to respect human freedom and dignity. Arriving in the midst of an industrial world war, the book found a wide audience. After reading it, the management team at General Motors invited Drucker to spend two years studying the operations of what was then the world’s largest corporation. The 1946 book that resulted from that engagement, “Concept of the Corporation,” was one of the first to look seriously at how big organizations actually got work done. It laid the foundation for treating management as a subject that could be studied analytically.
In the nineteen-fifties, the American economy began to move from manual labor toward cognitive work. Drucker helped business leaders understand this transformation. In his 1959 book, “Landmarks of Tomorrow,” he coined the term “knowledge work,” and argued that autonomy would be the central feature of the new corporate world. Drucker predicted that corporate profits would depend on mental effort, and that each individual knowledge worker, possessing skills too specialized to be broken down into “repetitive, simple, mechanical motions” choreographed from above, would need to decide how to “apply his knowledge as a professional” and monitor his own productivity. “The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail,” Drucker wrote, in “The Effective Executive,” from 1967. “He must direct himself.”
Drucker’s emphasis on the autonomy of knowledge workers made sense, as there was no obvious way to deconstruct the efforts required by newly important mid-century jobs—like corporate research and development or advertisement copywriting—into assembly-line-style sequences of optimized steps. But Drucker was also influenced by the politics of the Cold War. He viewed creativity and innovation as key to staying ahead of the Soviets. Citing the invention of the atomic bomb, he argued that scientific work of such complexity and ambiguity could not have been managed using the heavy-handed techniques of the industrial age, which he likened to the centralized planning of the Soviet economy. Future industries, he suggested, would need to operate in “local” and “decentralized” ways.
To support his emphasis on knowledge-worker autonomy, Drucker introduced the idea of management by objectives, a process in which managers focus on setting out clear targets, but the details of how they’re accomplished are left to individuals. This idea is both extremely consequential and rarely debated. It’s why the modern office worker is inundated with quantified quarterly goals and motivating mission statements, but receives almost no guidance on how to actually organize and manage these efforts. It was thus largely owing to Drucker that, in 2004, when Merlin Mann found himself overwhelmed by his work, he took it for granted that the solution to his woes would be found in the optimization of his personal habits.
As the popularity of 43 Folders grew, so did Mann’s influence in the online productivity world. One breakthrough from this period was a novel organizational device that he called “the hipster PDA.” Pre-smartphone handheld devices, such as the Palm Pilot, were often described as “personal digital assistants”; the hipster P.D.A. was proudly analog. The instructions for making one were aggressively simple: “1. Get a bunch of 3x5 inch index cards. 2. Clip them together with a binder clip. 3. There is no step 3.” The “device,” Mann suggested, was ideal for implementing G.T.D.: the top index card could serve as an in-box, where tasks could be jotted down for subsequent processing, while colored cards in the stack could act as dividers to organize tasks by project or context. A 2005 article in the Globe and Mail noted that Ian Capstick, a press secretary for Canada’s New Democratic Party, wielded a hipster P.D.A. in place of a BlackBerry.
Just as G.T.D. was achieving widespread popularity, however, Mann’s zeal for his own practice began to fade. An inflection point in his writing came in 2007, soon after he gave a G.T.D.-inspired speech about e-mail management to an overflow audience at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Building on the classic productivity idea that an office worker shouldn’t touch the same piece of paper more than once, Mann outlined a new method for rapidly processing e-mails. In this system, you would read each e-mail only once, then select from a limited set of options—delete it, respond to it, defer it (by moving it into a folder of messages requiring long responses), delegate it, or “do” it (by extracting and executing the activity at its core, or capturing it for later attention in a system like G.T.D.). The goal was to apply these rules mechanically until your digital message pile was empty. Mann called his strategy Inbox Zero. After Google uploaded a video of his talk to YouTube, the term entered the vernacular. Editors began inquiring about book deals.
Not long afterward, Mann posted a self-reflective essay on 43 Folders, in which he revealed a growing dissatisfaction with the world of personal productivity. Productivity pr0n, he suggested, was becoming a bewildering, complexifying end in itself—list-making as a “cargo cult,” system-tweaking as an addiction. “On more than a few days, I wondered what, precisely, I was trying to accomplish,” he wrote. Part of the problem was the recursive quality of his work. Refining his productivity system so that he could blog more efficiently about productivity made him feel as if he were being “tossed around by a menacing Rube Goldberg device” of his own design; at times, he said, “I thought I might be losing my mind.” He also wondered whether, on a substantive level, the approach that he’d been following was really capable of addressing his frustrations. It seemed to him that it was possible to implement many G.T.D.-inflected life hacks without feeling “more competent, stable, and alive.” He cleaned house, deleting posts. A new “About” page explained that 43 Folders was no longer a productivity blog but a “website about finding the time and attention to do your best creative work.”


newyorker--2020-11-17--“The Nest,” Reviewed: Jude Law Plays a Banker Who Buys Into Money’s Lies

Money talks , but few directors let it speak as clearly and as copiously as Sean Durkin does in his second feature , “ The Nest , ” which arrives on digital platforms on Tuesday .
Durkin is keenly alert to its cold , hard , implacable tones , which run throughout the drama , dominating the action even in between the florid odes to wanting , getting , having , and spending that its human protagonists deftly and passionately deliver .
The film is set expressly in the financial world in the mid-nineteen-eighties , in the same milieu as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Wall Street ” and “ The Wolf of Wall Street , ” the age of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher , which unleashed a new age of financial speculation and manipulation .
“ The Nest ” is set in the U.S. and the U.K. , for reasons that Durkin has said are autobiographical .
The movie tells a story akin to that of his own childhood—at age eleven , in the early nineties , he moved with his family from England to New York , and the culture shock that he experienced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ One of the merits of “ The Nest ” is its shift of the action from the child ’ s experiences—the boy , in the movie , is named Benjamin ( and played by Charlie Shotwell ) —to the child ’ s observations of his parents and , even more ( although not explicitly ) , to what the grownup now understands of what was going on around him and outside his immediate purview at the time .
“ The Nest ” is the story of a family—Rory and Allison O ’ Hara @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the teen-age Samantha ( Oona Roche ) , and the child Benjamin—being torn apart by the furious ambitions and social aspirations of its paterfamilias .
At the start of the action , Rory appears to be not-working in finance in New York City : he spends an inordinate amount of time languishing fretfully and frustratedly at home ( where the radio talks of President Reagan and his quotas on European chocolates ) and declares to his wife , a horse trainer and equestrian teacher , that he has a good opportunity in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , head up a new division of a company where he used to work .
Allison objects that it would be the family ’ s fourth move in ten years , but Rory , who ’ s British , isn ’ t happy in the U.S. and insists that the money would be too good to pass up .
Leaving for Britain ahead of his family , Rory arranges for them to live in grand style—he rents a huge and ancient house , nearly a castle , in Surrey , that ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s horse to have romping space and a stable , which Rory hires a contractor to build .
But when the other three members of the family ( and the horse ) arrive , the isolated estate seems to spook them all ( including the horse ) .
But Rory , swaggering like the lord of the manor , feels his very being swelling to fill the estate ’ s expanses .
He also swaggers through his office , where he ’ s hailed by his colleagues as the returning prodigal rainmaker .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ business , conditioned by his time in the freewheeling environment of Wall Street , marks a shift within the company , Davis Trading , and is appreciated by its aged founder , Arthur Davis ( Michael Culkin ) , and such younger , calmer associates as Steve ( Adeel Akhtar ) , who admits with some embarrassment , when Rory speaks of mighty deals , that he ’ s working on Norwegian fish farms .
( The corporate shift is sparked by the impending deregulation of British financial markets by Margaret Thatcher ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
Both strangely and fascinatingly , “ The Nest ” is anchored in a half-dozen extended scenes that mark the lines of conflict with dialogue of admirable precision and ferocity , with a cinematic framework to match—yet these scenes set the rest of the drama in their shadows .
With vaulting financial vision , Rory pitches Arthur on a scheme to merge the company with—actually , it turns out , to sell the company to—an American firm that ’ s looking to expand .
( It ’ s a deal that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough to retire—and will make Rory himself rich enough to live his dreams . )
Yet there ’ s trouble in paradise : while Rory is strutting at work and at home , he ’ s also riotously overspending , as Allison learns when the contractor informs her that he ’ s stopping work on the stable because Rory ’ s check has bounced .
Allison confronts Rory about it , at a dinner together in a fancy restaurant , and Durkin films the resulting clash about money in a remarkable extended take—filmed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distance—that puts the dialogue itself , the facts and figures , in the foreground as relentlessly as a ledger book embossed on the screen .
For Durkin , the adamant facts of money blast away the lies that surround it , the deceptions of those who covet it overweeningly , the sham of those who treat it as a badge of honor , the foolishness of those who hope to be warmed by its chilly power .
In the restaurant scene , which also sets the couple clearly amid other diners whose gaze @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shatters not only Rory ’ s façade of financial success but his façade of marital comity under the sheltering control of his patriarchal largesse .
Rory ’ s financial deceit exposes the fraud of the couple ’ s relationship , and—with a melodramatic flair that ’ s as theatrically impressive as it is disconnected from the fabric of the story—Allison takes deft and bold action to show up that fraud in public .
“ The Nest ” sits at the edge of the private and the public .
It displays the social manners @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spouse ( in this story , of wives—there are no female executives present in the film ) to play the role of support staff at business-related parties and dinners .
And it highlights the stories told about family life that lubricate business relations and provide a circular fantasy of happiness at home and success at work which depends on a vast yet rickety ideological framework of laws and mores , norms and assumptions .
Yet the mighty societal scope that ’ s implied in the extended clashes of “ The Nest ” is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ purview .
Though the political context behind the financial overreaches of the eighties is suggested in the film , it ’ s dropped in merely as calendar markings .
“ The Nest ” is a political movie that renders its characters resolutely apolitical .
The social ideology of the couple ’ s marriage , the assumptions of who makes the money and who takes on more of the domestic responsibilities , remains untouched throughout .
The O ’ Hara family ’ s personal history , which the movie depicts as crucial to its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dropped in at opportune moments to inform viewers trickily of what the characters themselves had in the foreground of their minds all along .
Beside the movie ’ s obvious disdain for Rory ’ s excessive ambition , it offers a favorable vision of modest aspiration , whether in the financial field or in local trades and crafts .
Yet it does so with no depth , no inwardness , no sense of the frustrations and the hungers that drive big needs and desires , whether among the rich or the poor ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The family members , though they may be rooted in Durkin ’ s experiences and memories , remain symbols , abstractions , ciphers ; Durkin ’ s incisive vision of battles over money and disputes over business practices remains stronger than his sense of their intimate , personal , or psychological import .
Durkin builds his discerning observations on a dramatic foundation that ’ s no less unchallenged , and no less rickety , than the social fictions on which it depends .

Money talks, but few directors let it speak as clearly and as copiously as Sean Durkin does in his second feature, “The Nest,” which arrives on digital platforms on Tuesday. Durkin is keenly alert to its cold, hard, implacable tones, which run throughout the drama, dominating the action even in between the florid odes to wanting, getting, having, and spending that its human protagonists deftly and passionately deliver. The film is set expressly in the financial world in the mid-nineteen-eighties, in the same milieu as modern classics of the genre such as “Wall Street” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the age of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, which unleashed a new age of financial speculation and manipulation.
“The Nest” is set in the U.S. and the U.K., for reasons that Durkin has said are autobiographical. The movie tells a story akin to that of his own childhood—at age eleven, in the early nineties, he moved with his family from England to New York, and the culture shock that he experienced is the spark of the movie. One of the merits of “The Nest” is its shift of the action from the child’s experiences—the boy, in the movie, is named Benjamin (and played by Charlie Shotwell)—to the child’s observations of his parents and, even more (although not explicitly), to what the grownup now understands of what was going on around him and outside his immediate purview at the time.
“The Nest” is the story of a family—Rory and Allison O’Hara (Jude Law and Carrie Coon), the teen-age Samantha (Oona Roche), and the child Benjamin—being torn apart by the furious ambitions and social aspirations of its paterfamilias. At the start of the action, Rory appears to be not-working in finance in New York City: he spends an inordinate amount of time languishing fretfully and frustratedly at home (where the radio talks of President Reagan and his quotas on European chocolates) and declares to his wife, a horse trainer and equestrian teacher, that he has a good opportunity in London to, as he puts it, head up a new division of a company where he used to work. Allison objects that it would be the family’s fourth move in ten years, but Rory, who’s British, isn’t happy in the U.S. and insists that the money would be too good to pass up.
Leaving for Britain ahead of his family, Rory arranges for them to live in grand style—he rents a huge and ancient house, nearly a castle, in Surrey, that’s on grounds large enough for Allison’s horse to have romping space and a stable, which Rory hires a contractor to build. But when the other three members of the family (and the horse) arrive, the isolated estate seems to spook them all (including the horse). But Rory, swaggering like the lord of the manor, feels his very being swelling to fill the estate’s expanses. He also swaggers through his office, where he’s hailed by his colleagues as the returning prodigal rainmaker. Rory’s ambitious approach to the business, conditioned by his time in the freewheeling environment of Wall Street, marks a shift within the company, Davis Trading, and is appreciated by its aged founder, Arthur Davis (Michael Culkin), and such younger, calmer associates as Steve (Adeel Akhtar), who admits with some embarrassment, when Rory speaks of mighty deals, that he’s working on Norwegian fish farms. (The corporate shift is sparked by the impending deregulation of British financial markets by Margaret Thatcher’s government—the so-called Big Bang of 1986.)
Both strangely and fascinatingly, “The Nest” is anchored in a half-dozen extended scenes that mark the lines of conflict with dialogue of admirable precision and ferocity, with a cinematic framework to match—yet these scenes set the rest of the drama in their shadows. With vaulting financial vision, Rory pitches Arthur on a scheme to merge the company with—actually, it turns out, to sell the company to—an American firm that’s looking to expand. (It’s a deal that, Rory claims, will make Arthur rich enough to retire—and will make Rory himself rich enough to live his dreams.) Yet there’s trouble in paradise: while Rory is strutting at work and at home, he’s also riotously overspending, as Allison learns when the contractor informs her that he’s stopping work on the stable because Rory’s check has bounced. Allison confronts Rory about it, at a dinner together in a fancy restaurant, and Durkin films the resulting clash about money in a remarkable extended take—filmed to place the couple at an oblique distance—that puts the dialogue itself, the facts and figures, in the foreground as relentlessly as a ledger book embossed on the screen.
For Durkin, the adamant facts of money blast away the lies that surround it, the deceptions of those who covet it overweeningly, the sham of those who treat it as a badge of honor, the foolishness of those who hope to be warmed by its chilly power. In the restaurant scene, which also sets the couple clearly amid other diners whose gaze conveys the threat of embarrassment, Allison shatters not only Rory’s façade of financial success but his façade of marital comity under the sheltering control of his patriarchal largesse. Rory’s financial deceit exposes the fraud of the couple’s relationship, and—with a melodramatic flair that’s as theatrically impressive as it is disconnected from the fabric of the story—Allison takes deft and bold action to show up that fraud in public.
“The Nest” sits at the edge of the private and the public. It displays the social manners of marriage, the expectations of a spouse (in this story, of wives—there are no female executives present in the film) to play the role of support staff at business-related parties and dinners. And it highlights the stories told about family life that lubricate business relations and provide a circular fantasy of happiness at home and success at work which depends on a vast yet rickety ideological framework of laws and mores, norms and assumptions. Yet the mighty societal scope that’s implied in the extended clashes of “The Nest” is unfortunately not within Durkin’s dramatic purview.
Though the political context behind the financial overreaches of the eighties is suggested in the film, it’s dropped in merely as calendar markings. “The Nest” is a political movie that renders its characters resolutely apolitical. The social ideology of the couple’s marriage, the assumptions of who makes the money and who takes on more of the domestic responsibilities, remains untouched throughout. The O’Hara family’s personal history, which the movie depicts as crucial to its arc (no spoilers), is dropped in at opportune moments to inform viewers trickily of what the characters themselves had in the foreground of their minds all along. Beside the movie’s obvious disdain for Rory’s excessive ambition, it offers a favorable vision of modest aspiration, whether in the financial field or in local trades and crafts. Yet it does so with no depth, no inwardness, no sense of the frustrations and the hungers that drive big needs and desires, whether among the rich or the poor; the movie moralizes rather than probes. The family members, though they may be rooted in Durkin’s experiences and memories, remain symbols, abstractions, ciphers; Durkin’s incisive vision of battles over money and disputes over business practices remains stronger than his sense of their intimate, personal, or psychological import. Durkin builds his discerning observations on a dramatic foundation that’s no less unchallenged, and no less rickety, than the social fictions on which it depends.


newyorker--2020-11-17--The Abortion Protests in Poland Are Starting to Feel Like a Revolution

Abortion is allowed in Poland only if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest , if the woman ’ s life is in danger , or if the fetus is affected by severe congenital defects .
The recent court decision , on October 22nd , eliminated the last of these three conditions from the list .
Klementyna Suchanow , a prominent feminist and author , told me over Zoom , from Warsaw , that , at first , some activists felt conflicted about calling for demonstrations , for fear of exposing people to the risk of coronavirus infection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Suchanow , who is forty-six , made her way to the courthouse and found others gathering outside .
“ I felt there was so much anger there it was about to erupt , ” she said .
Protesters undertook a spontaneous march from the courthouse to the headquarters of the ruling party , and then to the house of the Party ’ s leader , Jarosław Kaczyński .
As word spread on social media , thousands more people joined the march over its three-hour duration .
Marches , protests , and acts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Suchanow and two other women , Marta Lempart and Agnieszka Czerederecka , have become the public faces of the protests , but , as Lempart told me over Zoom , they are acting not so much as leaders as they are the “ help desk to people who want to organize protests.
” They supply visuals , suggest hashtags and slogans , and help raise money .
“ Basically , my job now is this boring office work , ” she said .
Lempart , who is forty-one , is a former government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Law and Justice Party came to power .
In 2016 , when a ban on abortions in almost all circumstances was proposed as a bill in parliament , Lempart called for a protest in which Polish women marched through the streets of many cities and towns wearing black .
( It was modelled on a women ’ s strike staged in Iceland in 1975 , when women stopped both paid and unpaid work . )
Lempart ’ s idea and subsequent organizing efforts drew thousands of people who had never been involved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in what became known as the “ black protests.
” The demonstrations were large enough to prompt the parliament to table the bill , although they were nowhere close in scale to this year ’ s actions .
Agnieszka Graff , a feminist scholar and activist , told me via Zoom , from Warsaw , that a Facebook group created to coördinate birthday celebrations for her child ’ s sixth-grade classmates became a neighborhood protest-organizing group overnight .
When Women ’ s Strike called on protesters to block traffic in roundabouts ( a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distancing ) , Graff and another woman in her neighborhood created a Facebook event in which they invited women to come on “ a pleasant stroll in a residential area.
” Graff said that local organizers expected about fifty neighbors to come .
About two thousand showed up in Graff ’ s neighborhood , on October 26th ; thousands of other protesters came to traffic circles all over Warsaw , bringing the city to a standstill .
Bus and taxi-drivers joined in , with some changing the illuminated displays on the front of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with you , girls.
” Organizers asked people to disperse after an hour , Graff said , but “ there was no coördinating of this—there is no way to exert control.
” The demonstration went on for five hours .
When I spoke to Lempart on November 10th , she told me that it was no longer possible to use Facebook as an organizing tool , because the platform can ’ t accommodate the scale of the protests : with half a million people following the Women ’ s Strike Facebook page , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respond to comments .
YouTube , Instagram , and TikTok have proved essential in helping young protesters organize ; on TikTok , the hashtag # StrajkKobiet ( Women ’ s Strike ) has generated more than two hundred and sixty-six million views .
Too often , activist organizations “ are like companies , ” Lempart said , with boards and management structures .
Now protest is effectively leaderless .
“ We ’ ve been working toward this for many years now , ” she said .
“ We have got rid of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the idea , fairly widespread among Polish intellectuals , that decades of Soviet rule produced a type of authoritarian personality , a person incapable of independent action and thought .
Olga Tokarczuk , winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature , told me by e-mail , from the Polish countryside , that she also saw the protests as “ civilizational change.
” Participants born after the fall of Communism “ are the first generation from a Poland that ’ s a member of the European Union ; they have fully enjoyed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and traveled the world freely , they know how to live elsewhere .
They speak foreign languages and are very familiar with what human and civil rights mean in the 21st century.
” The golden age of Polish democracy ended in April , 2010 , when a Polish Air Force plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński and his wife , the army chief of staff and various other military leaders , several cabinet members and high-level security officials , Catholic army chaplains , and members of parliament , among others , crashed , near @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Polish delegation was slated to take part in commemorative ceremonies .
The plane crash shocked the country and split it into two roughly equal political and social camps .
One camp remained committed to the project of democratization and European integration ; they were also the people who saw the crash as an accident—the conclusion reached so far by all teams who have investigated the disaster .
The other camp , convinced that the crash was the result of a Russian plot , coalesced around the late President ’ s surviving twin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of resentment , confrontation , and extreme Euroskepticism .
In 2015 , the Law and Justice Party , co-founded by the Kaczyński brothers , in 2001 , won both the parliamentary and Presidential elections and went to work dismantling some of the democratic institutions constructed since 1989 , most notably Poland ’ s independent judiciary .
The compromise between the Catholic Church and the liberals fell away .
Poland became a major player in the international movement for so-called traditional values and against what the movement and the Polish government call “ gender @ @ @ @ @ @ @ perceived threats to the traditional family which include reproductive rights , gender studies , and L.G.B.T.Q .
rights .
Over the past few years , about a hundred Polish municipalities declared themselves “ L.G.B.T.-free zones , ” or , more bureaucratically , “ zones free of L.G.B.T .
ideology , ” a reference to the belief that equal rights for L.G.B.T.Q .
people amount to indoctrination , particularly of small children .
“ The ruling party ’ s main way of existing on the political scene is to create conflict , ” Magdalena @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told me over Zoom , from Warsaw .
“ They always have to find an enemy , someone they can exclude from the national community.
” L.G.B.T.Q .
people , along with immigrants , have played this role for the past five years .
( Biejat added that , since the onset of the COVID‑19 pandemic , doctors have been cast in the role of scapegoat , as well . )
Biejat , a thirty-eight-year-old sociologist who began her political career as an activist in 2015 , belongs to Lewica Razem ( Left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a forty-eight-person coalition in the four-hundred-and-sixty-member Sejm , the lower house of parliament .
( Law and Justice is part of a conservative alliance that holds more than half the seats . )
When we spoke , on the twelfth day of the protests , Biejat told me that she had been in the streets every day since October 23rd .
Agnieszka Holland , a prominent film director who was once active in the dissident movement , told me over Zoom that she was watching the protests from her home in Brittany , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imposed by the French government .
“ I am following two fascinating TV series , ” she said— “ the Polish revolution and the American election.
” She had been thinking about the similarities between the two countries : both are extremely politically polarized ; both suffer from vast wealth inequality ; both have been “ divided into two totally incompatible realities ” ; in both , religious language and religious institutions play an outsized role in politics ; both have systems that are “ apparently democratic but very problematic .
Poland has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but people don ’ t feel represented.
” Her fear , she said , was that the demagogues in power in Poland are poised to change election law to make it impossible to dislodge them .
Holland described Kaczyński as a “ populist sadistic asshole with a narcissistic bent.
” Like most of the women who talked to me from Poland , Holland is calling the protests a revolution .
“ It ’ s a feminist revolution because it is a real awakening of women , who are , in Poland , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ better educated but their career opportunities are very limited .
They were resigned to the absurd abortion law for twenty-seven years.
” Biejat agreed .
“ I think it ’ s a revolution because of how we are starting to talk about abortion , ” she said .
“ There ’ s been a revolution in what we demand.
” Although the protests began as an outcry against further restrictions on abortion , protesters are now demanding “ access to abortion during the first trimester , no questions asked , ” Biejat said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ used to be confined to feminist circles , but now it ’ s hit the mainstream.
” The Women ’ s Strike organizers are thinking well beyond abortion restrictions .
They have called together a Consultative Council of experts , following the example of neighboring Belarus , where protests—also leaderless and also led , in their way , by three women—have been going on for three months .
Suchanow said that the organizers had conducted a survey of protesters , identified thirteen topics of greatest concern to them , and created working groups @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abortion rights , education , work and the pandemic , health care , climate change , and the separation of church and state ; there is also a group called No Pasarán , which focusses on the “ defascization of Poland.
” The formation of the Consultative Council projects a message of confidence—back in 1988-89 , the last time Poland saw protests on this scale , the Communist Party negotiated a power transfer with representatives of the movement .
“ Yes , it is revolution , ” Tokarczuk said , in response to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she , too , would use the word .
“ In a very painful and dramatic ( sometimes also funny ) way the old world is melting now and a new one is crystallizing.
” Some of that change is evident on the level of language .
One of the most popular banners , “ Jebać PiS , ” means “ Fuck Law and Justice ” ; another , “ Liberté , Égalité , Wypierdalajté , ” translates as “ Liberty , Equality , Get the Fuck Out ” ( as though pronounced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Polish speakers can pride themselves on expert and creative use of profanity , putting curse words on political banners is a novelty , jarring for some .
( In a tongue-in-cheek nod to expectations of public decency , some protesters carry banners emblazoned with nothing but eight asterisks—five for “ Jebać ” and three for “ PiS.
” ) “ The first time I saw a banner on the screen that read ‘ Get the fuck out , ’ I was shocked by the word , so clearly painted in red letters in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ But I got used to it quickly and decided that this anger couldn ’ t be expressed any better .
That when in society communication between two sides breaks down , when people do not hear and understand each other , when their words come from entirely different idiolects , then only the curse words remain .
It is a radical , instantaneous language that will change as things move to the next stage : negotiation , new order making , and new rules .
”

People are calling it a revolution. Since October 22nd, hundreds of thousands across Poland have been protesting—in five hundred and eighty cities and towns, by one organizer’s count. In some places, including the town of Kościerzyna, population twenty-four thousand, more than ten per cent of residents have taken to the streets. The umbrella term for the protests is “Women’s Strike,” though it’s not just women participating, and it’s not exactly a strike. The demonstrations were sparked by a decision in the nation’s Constitutional Court, in Warsaw, that would have further narrowed access to abortion in Poland. The government has since delayed implementing the decision, yet the protests go on. The goal now, it seems, is to bring down the government of the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS), which has been in power since 2015.
Abortion is allowed in Poland only if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, if the woman’s life is in danger, or if the fetus is affected by severe congenital defects. The recent court decision, on October 22nd, eliminated the last of these three conditions from the list. Klementyna Suchanow, a prominent feminist and author, told me over Zoom, from Warsaw, that, at first, some activists felt conflicted about calling for demonstrations, for fear of exposing people to the risk of coronavirus infection. Still, on the 22nd, Suchanow, who is forty-six, made her way to the courthouse and found others gathering outside. “I felt there was so much anger there it was about to erupt,” she said. Protesters undertook a spontaneous march from the courthouse to the headquarters of the ruling party, and then to the house of the Party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński. As word spread on social media, thousands more people joined the march over its three-hour duration.
Marches, protests, and acts of civil disobedience have continued ever since. Suchanow and two other women, Marta Lempart and Agnieszka Czerederecka, have become the public faces of the protests, but, as Lempart told me over Zoom, they are acting not so much as leaders as they are the “help desk to people who want to organize protests.” They supply visuals, suggest hashtags and slogans, and help raise money. “Basically, my job now is this boring office work,” she said.
Lempart, who is forty-one, is a former government employee who became an opposition activist after the Law and Justice Party came to power. In 2016, when a ban on abortions in almost all circumstances was proposed as a bill in parliament, Lempart called for a protest in which Polish women marched through the streets of many cities and towns wearing black. (It was modelled on a women’s strike staged in Iceland in 1975, when women stopped both paid and unpaid work.) Lempart’s idea and subsequent organizing efforts drew thousands of people who had never been involved in political activism into the streets, in what became known as the “black protests.” The demonstrations were large enough to prompt the parliament to table the bill, although they were nowhere close in scale to this year’s actions.
The umbrella term for the protests in Poland is “Women’s Strike,” though it’s not just women participating, and it’s not exactly a strike. Photograph by Wiktor Dabkowski / Picture Alliance / AP
Agnieszka Graff, a feminist scholar and activist, told me via Zoom, from Warsaw, that a Facebook group created to coördinate birthday celebrations for her child’s sixth-grade classmates became a neighborhood protest-organizing group overnight. When Women’s Strike called on protesters to block traffic in roundabouts (a type of direct action friendly to social distancing), Graff and another woman in her neighborhood created a Facebook event in which they invited women to come on “a pleasant stroll in a residential area.” Graff said that local organizers expected about fifty neighbors to come. About two thousand showed up in Graff’s neighborhood, on October 26th; thousands of other protesters came to traffic circles all over Warsaw, bringing the city to a standstill. Bus and taxi-drivers joined in, with some changing the illuminated displays on the front of their buses to read “We are with you, girls.” Organizers asked people to disperse after an hour, Graff said, but “there was no coördinating of this—there is no way to exert control.” The demonstration went on for five hours.
When I spoke to Lempart on November 10th, she told me that it was no longer possible to use Facebook as an organizing tool, because the platform can’t accommodate the scale of the protests: with half a million people following the Women’s Strike Facebook page, no one is able to track or respond to comments. YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have proved essential in helping young protesters organize; on TikTok, the hashtag #StrajkKobiet (Women’s Strike) has generated more than two hundred and sixty-six million views. Too often, activist organizations “are like companies,” Lempart said, with boards and management structures. Now protest is effectively leaderless. “We’ve been working toward this for many years now,” she said. “We have got rid of the Homo sovieticus thinking.”
Lempart was referring to the idea, fairly widespread among Polish intellectuals, that decades of Soviet rule produced a type of authoritarian personality, a person incapable of independent action and thought. Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, told me by e-mail, from the Polish countryside, that she also saw the protests as “civilizational change.” Participants born after the fall of Communism “are the first generation from a Poland that’s a member of the European Union; they have fully enjoyed the results of that. They have studied and traveled the world freely, they know how to live elsewhere. They speak foreign languages and are very familiar with what human and civil rights mean in the 21st century.”
For more than a quarter century, since the Eastern Bloc collapsed in 1989, Poland was a singular success story of post-Soviet transition and European integration—economically, politically, and socially. While other former member countries of the Warsaw Pact stumbled, became mired in corruption, turned into mafia states, and descended into autocracy, Poland adopted a democratic constitution, built corresponding institutions, and saw moderately right- and left-wing governments succeed one another peacefully. At least part of this success is attributable to a long-standing understanding between pro-European forces and the Catholic Church, which has its roots in the coalition of intellectuals, trade-union activists, and the Church that formed the opposition to Communist rule in the nineteen-eighties and stepped into the vacuum left by the Communist Party in 1989. “The Church went along with Europe-ization and democratization in exchange for having its way on the things they feel strongly about,” Graff said. “And, of course, the things they feel most strongly about are women’s reproductive rights.” As a result, in the nineteen-nineties, Poland adopted some of the most restrictive abortion policies on the Continent.
The golden age of Polish democracy ended in April, 2010, when a Polish Air Force plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński and his wife, the army chief of staff and various other military leaders, several cabinet members and high-level security officials, Catholic army chaplains, and members of parliament, among others, crashed, near the Russian city of Smolensk, where the Polish delegation was slated to take part in commemorative ceremonies. The plane crash shocked the country and split it into two roughly equal political and social camps. One camp remained committed to the project of democratization and European integration; they were also the people who saw the crash as an accident—the conclusion reached so far by all teams who have investigated the disaster. The other camp, convinced that the crash was the result of a Russian plot, coalesced around the late President’s surviving twin brother, Jarosław, and a politics of resentment, confrontation, and extreme Euroskepticism. In 2015, the Law and Justice Party, co-founded by the Kaczyński brothers, in 2001, won both the parliamentary and Presidential elections and went to work dismantling some of the democratic institutions constructed since 1989, most notably Poland’s independent judiciary.
The compromise between the Catholic Church and the liberals fell away. Poland became a major player in the international movement for so-called traditional values and against what the movement and the Polish government call “gender ideology,” an umbrella term for perceived threats to the traditional family which include reproductive rights, gender studies, and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Over the past few years, about a hundred Polish municipalities declared themselves “L.G.B.T.-free zones,” or, more bureaucratically, “zones free of L.G.B.T. ideology,” a reference to the belief that equal rights for L.G.B.T.Q. people amount to indoctrination, particularly of small children.
“The ruling party’s main way of existing on the political scene is to create conflict,” Magdalena Biejat, a member of parliament, told me over Zoom, from Warsaw. “They always have to find an enemy, someone they can exclude from the national community.” L.G.B.T.Q. people, along with immigrants, have played this role for the past five years. (Biejat added that, since the onset of the COVID‑19 pandemic, doctors have been cast in the role of scapegoat, as well.) Biejat, a thirty-eight-year-old sociologist who began her political career as an activist in 2015, belongs to Lewica Razem (Left Together), which is part of a forty-eight-person coalition in the four-hundred-and-sixty-member Sejm, the lower house of parliament. (Law and Justice is part of a conservative alliance that holds more than half the seats.) When we spoke, on the twelfth day of the protests, Biejat told me that she had been in the streets every day since October 23rd.
Agnieszka Holland, a prominent film director who was once active in the dissident movement, told me over Zoom that she was watching the protests from her home in Brittany, where she was under stay-at-home orders recently imposed by the French government. “I am following two fascinating TV series,” she said—“the Polish revolution and the American election.” She had been thinking about the similarities between the two countries: both are extremely politically polarized; both suffer from vast wealth inequality; both have been “divided into two totally incompatible realities”; in both, religious language and religious institutions play an outsized role in politics; both have systems that are “apparently democratic but very problematic. Poland has nothing as absurd as the Electoral College, but people don’t feel represented.” Her fear, she said, was that the demagogues in power in Poland are poised to change election law to make it impossible to dislodge them. Holland described Kaczyński as a “populist sadistic asshole with a narcissistic bent.”
Like most of the women who talked to me from Poland, Holland is calling the protests a revolution. “It’s a feminist revolution because it is a real awakening of women, who are, in Poland, like in many countries of Europe, better educated but their career opportunities are very limited. They were resigned to the absurd abortion law for twenty-seven years.”
Biejat agreed. “I think it’s a revolution because of how we are starting to talk about abortion,” she said. “There’s been a revolution in what we demand.” Although the protests began as an outcry against further restrictions on abortion, protesters are now demanding “access to abortion during the first trimester, no questions asked,” Biejat said. She added that this position “used to be confined to feminist circles, but now it’s hit the mainstream.”
The protest organizer Marta Lempart says this fall’s demonstrations are effectively leaderless—something “we’ve been working toward . . . for many years.” Photograph by Marcin Bruniecki / Shutterstock
The Women’s Strike organizers are thinking well beyond abortion restrictions. They have called together a Consultative Council of experts, following the example of neighboring Belarus, where protests—also leaderless and also led, in their way, by three women—have been going on for three months. Suchanow said that the organizers had conducted a survey of protesters, identified thirteen topics of greatest concern to them, and created working groups of experts for every one, including abortion rights, education, work and the pandemic, health care, climate change, and the separation of church and state; there is also a group called No Pasarán, which focusses on the “defascization of Poland.” The formation of the Consultative Council projects a message of confidence—back in 1988-89, the last time Poland saw protests on this scale, the Communist Party negotiated a power transfer with representatives of the movement.


newyorker--2020-11-17--A Treasury of Rare Medical Magazines

A Treasury of Rare Medical Magazines

We ’ ve all heard of Arthritis Today , Life Extension , and The British Dental Journal .
Now , @ @ @ @ @ of a very thoughtful collector , you ’ re about to discover some medical publications @ @ @ @ @ audience that they so deserved .

We’ve all heard of Arthritis Today, Life Extension, and The British Dental Journal. Now, thanks to the estate sale of a hoarder very thoughtful collector, you’re about to discover some medical publications that never reached the broader audience that they so deserved.