I Don't Feel Like Drawing

examples:

1. "Five second rule!" while scrubbed, after dropping a sterile scalpel on the floor (no they did NOT pick it up again but I swear everyone's buttholes puckered)

2. (spoken during the closing of a particularly long and difficult case) "Nurse - my tunes." :heavy metal starts blasting:

3. Gently to a fretful patient, pre-anaesthesia: "It's going to be okay. I promise, I've dealt with worse." As soon as the patient is unconscious: "This is literally the worst thing I've ever seen."

4. [okay this one was a med student] "Wowwww, that's so gross!!" Reg: "Please remember that [patient] is awake for this procedure." Student to patient: "Oh my god. I am so sorry, that was really unprofessional - " Patient, cheerfully, also engrossed with what's happening inside them on the screen: "Nah - it's, like, super gross, right?"

6. Elderly surgeon to the anaesthetist who is gossipping with their reg: "I need you to pretend you're in church." [weirdest way to ask people to be quiet, but whatevs]

Anaethetist's new reg with big, horrified eyes: "You mean we should start praying???"

7. Panicking rad tech: "Uhhhh my machine broke. I need to jump on this part and kick it, but I am not paid enough if I break it. Can you - "

Surgeon, casual as: "Yeah, sure."

:violently beats up the C-arm until it starts pumping out those sweet, sweet x-rays:

8. ODP to theatre assistant: "Saw the new tasche earlier. Suits you."

Theatre assistant: "Thanks! it grew on me :)"

9. Surgeon using the electrocauter, leaning over the incision and inhaling deeply: mmmmm, that smell always gets me hungry. I'm having barbeque tonight.

Spinal surgeon: hey, that scoli's getting bad. want me to fix it for ya?

Me: I mean. There's a pretty long wait list

Spinal surgeon: yeah but I could do it tonight

Me: that would be very illegal, Jeff

There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.

And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.

People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.

Chattel slavery is an incredibly cruel and dehumanizing system.

So is every other kind of slavery.

This doesn’t diminish the awfulness of what people were forced to endure under chattel slavery.

I just think it’s useful to remember that cruelty is complicated and diverse and just because a cruel system is different doesn’t make it right by any means.

Roman slavery operated differently from slavery in the antebellum American south which operated differently from slavery in the Ottoman Empire which operated differently from modern prisoner chain gangs.

In the unit about physical work, he points out that work is, at its core, a measurement of labor, and that labor which isn’t done by a paid laborer had another name before the rise of automation: slavery. He has his students quantify the amount of physical work that you might expect out of a human slave, and then sets them to work calculating what that means for their own standard of living. If you wanted to live like you currently do in the ancient world, how many slaves would you need? Calculate your washing machine in slaves. Calculate your dishwasher in slaves. Calculate your refrigerator and your TV and your HVAC in slaves.