a lot of people wear this shit like a badge of honor, but it’s also not normal to hide your “in-group” status as a form of martyrdom, relishing when the “enemy” slips up around you. it’s comforting in the moment, but in the long run, you’re alienating yourself from the world outside of your bubble. the more you alienate yourself, the more vulnerable and lonely you become, and the harder it is to reject the comfort of belonging to the “in-group”

To use this metaphor, imagine if in order to access help for your nearsightedness, you had to endure years of people not believing you're nearsighted because they don't believe anybody is near sighted, and you are just faking it for attention and the privilege of always sitting up front. And if you do manage to get help, you have to go to the eye doctor every 30 days for new glasses because they're not allowed to give you a prescription for longer than that. And the government is creating an artificial scarcity of glasses because they think too many people are lying about needing glasses. And when you try to push through and you make a bunch of mistakes because you can't see, it's all your fault. And because you can sorta see when you squint your eyes really hard, you're expected to do that all the time while keeping up with everybody who can just see well.

dude.

Basically it can be impossible to start doing the thing, but once you've started it, it's actually fine right? It's just FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to start it, especially because you don't want to do it.

So I've got this way where I start it "without meaning to" a bit like if you were standing on the edge of the cliff and unable to make yourself jump off but... but you can jerk your body violently-- then you're falling and you don't really get a say in the matter any more.

A good example of this is not wanting to make a call. So you'd sit there and plan what you want to rehearse and hit the button when you're ready... or not, because actually you'd put the phone down and run off to do literally anything else.

So instead, I just hit call really fast, with no actual intention to make the call. Oh shit I really don't want to but now it's ringing and oh shit someone picked up and now we're already rolling and it'd be worse to hang up than to just talk--

I do the same thing with timers and work tasks where I've trained my brain to only be 'winning' the 'game' when the 15m timer is running so now if I hit the timer I'm like 'oh shit work started and I'm LOSING' and I'll jump up to do exactly 15 minutes of work... Only now I've already started and I might as well keep going, right?

Turning tasks into "reactions" not "actions"-- And reacting is way easier.

Everyone's got lingering congestion this year, so as someone who's no stranger to phlegm, and inherited the folk wisdom of a stage actress (the show must go on!) I share with you my recipe for making things better:

2L water

the juice and rind of one lemon (just dump the juiced rinds in, don't zest them, you maniac)

a small thumb of fresh ginger, sliced in coins

about a dozen cloves, some star anise, peppercorns, and maybe whole cinnamon or allspice or whatever else you like, in a tea ball (except the cinnamon if it doesn't fit, obvs)

good dollop of honey, to taste

Bring the water to a boil then dump in all the stuff. Keep it hot but not boiling – a slow cooker is good for this. Keep this pot on a low heat all day and serve yourself a mug every so often, adding water as necessary. At some point you will need to add a new lemon and some more honey, but the spices can generally carry over two pots if you're drinking it regularly.

"Why does every corporation pursue endless growth?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

"Why do corporations treat workers the way they do?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

"Why do corporations make such bass-ackwards decisions about what's 'good for' the company?" Fiduciary duty to shareholders.

The legal purpose of a corporation with shareholders -- its only true purpose -- is the generation of revenue/returns for shareholders. Period. That's it. Anything else it does is secondary to that. Sustainability of business, treatment of workers, sustainability and quality of product, those things are functionally and legally second to generating revenue for shareholders. Again, period, end of story. There is no other function of a corporation, and all of its extensive legal privileges exist to allow it to do that.

"But Spider," you might say, "that sounds like corporations only exist in current business in order to extract as much money and value as possible from the people actually doing the work and transfer it up to the people who aren't actually doing the work!"

Yes. You are correct. Thank you for coming with me to that realization. You are incredibly smart and also attractive.

You might also say, "but Spider, is this a legal obligation? Could those running a company be held legally responsible for failing their obligations if they prioritize sustainability or quality of product or care of workers above returns for shareholders?"

Yes! They absolutely can! Isn't that terrifying? Also you look great today, you're terribly clever for thinking about these things. The board and officers of a corporation can be held legally responsible to varying degrees for failing to maximize shareholder value.

And that, my friends, is why corporations do things that don't seem to make any fucking sense, and why 'continuous growth' is valued above literally anything else: because it fucking has to be.

If you're thinking that this doesn't sound like a sustainable economic model, you're not alone. People who are much smarter than both of us, and probably nearly as attractive, have written a proposal for how to change corporate law in order to create a more sensible and sustainable economy. This is one of several proposals, and while I don't agree with all of this stuff, I think that reading it will really help people as a springboard to understanding exactly why our economy is as fucked up as it is, and why just saying 'well then don't pursue eternal growth' isn't going to work -- because right now it legally can't. We'd need to change -- and we can change -- the laws around corporate governance.

This concept of 'shareholder primacy' and the fiduciary duty to shareholders is one I had to learn when I was getting my securities licenses, and every time I see people confusedly asking why corporations try to grow grow grow in a way that only makes sense if you're a tumor, I sigh and think, 'yeah, fiduciary duty to shareholders.'

(And this is why Emet and I have refused to seek investors for NK -- we might become beholden to make decisions which maximize investor return, and that would get in the way of being able to fully support our people and our values and say the things we started this company to say.)

The main thrust of the holding is, basically, “You cannot explicitly make business decisions for any reason other than promoting the business. If you do something to promote the business that incidentally benefits other people, that’s okay, but your only stated reason can be ‘because I think the company will make more money if I do this.’”

So you can still do things like give money to charity in the company’s name, but only if you can plausibly say, “Of course I only did that as an advertisement for our company, not because I just wanted to give money to charity or anything!", presumably while stammering and calling them "baka."

Obviously the next question is "but why not just donate a ton of money and then lie and say it's for company reasons?" and the answer we were given was that if too much money (IIRC the rule of thumb we were given was 10% of profits but it's not exact) goes somewhere other than the company, the shareholders have grounds to say that EVEN IF you're doing it for business reasons, it's not a sound/reasonable business practice and they can still sue you.

I want to be clear that this is true of every single corporation with shareholders, at least in the US. Every time a company donates money to build an orphanage or find the cure for cancer or something, there HAS to be a cold, hard, capitalist reason for it (usually generating goodwill for the company, because people are more likely to buy from corporations they perceive as doing good). It doesn't mean that them donating the money is evil – like, the orphans aren't going to care why you built them an orphanage – but that it's never just "I thought that'd be a nice thing to do."

There are vast swathes of human life that have been crushed under this obligation to maximize profits. Entire lifetimes of potential wellbeing and happiness wrung out of the masses like so much fruit juice for the benefit of a few people who already had more than everyone else.

A lot of home org advice fully misses this aspect. Kondo not only acknowledges it, but leans into it. And ultimately this helps motivste me to keep my space tidy - it's really hard to me to keep on the nebulous goal of self-care, but much easier to get up and put things away if I envision my salt and pepper grinders as like, retail workers who are now standing in an empty shop (my dining table) and just wanna go home (the spice rack where they live).

Normie tidying process: that heater should be put away for summer! I mean, I'm not gonna need it

Me: well it's just chilling and also I can't be arsed.

Kondo: that heater has done a good job keeping you warm over winter and now it should get to go have a rest in the cupboard

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

It’s important, though, to understand that during the fallow period, no nutrients are removed from that ground, and nothing is expected of it. Whatever the land grows then, it keeps, and it gets tilled back in or decomposes in place, to return its energy to the earth.

We’re not allowed, in our current society, to just let our minds be fallow for a bit, to produce nothing for export, to make nothing that can be sold. But it’s part of good land stewardship, to give every field time when it doesn’t need to give you anything back. 

Two years of my patreon monthly plants combined - from September 2019 to August 2021. Looking at these together is an amazing reminder of all the wonderful support and enthusiasm my patreon supporters give me. So, anyone who’s ever supported me on patreon (or my shop!) - you helped me get here. Thank you so much for being apart of this plant filled journey, I’m extremely thankful and couldn’t have done it without you!