This blog is absolutely brilliant.

On the subliminal messages behind Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In rubbish: 

Sheryl Sandberg is the future ex-COO of Facebook, and while that sounds like enough of a resume to speak on women in the workplace, note that her advice on how to get ahead appears in Time Magazine.  Oh, you thought that Sandberg’s book is news worthy in itself, how could you not do a story on this magnificence?  No, this is a setup, the Time Magazine demo is never going to be COO of anything, as evidenced by the fact that they read Time Magazine.  Much more importantly, they are not raising daughters who are going to be COO of anything.  So why is this here?

The first level breakdown is that this is what Time readers want, they want a warm glow and to be reassured that the reason they’re stuck living in Central Time is sexism.  This demo likes to see a smart, pretty woman succeed in a man’s world, as long as “pretty” isn’t too pretty but “wearing a great outfit” and that man’s world isn’t overly manly, like IBM or General Dynamics, yawn, but an aspirational, Aeron chair “creative” place that doesn’t involve calculus or yelling, somewhere they suspect they could have worked had it not been for sexism and biological clocks.  We all know Pinterest is for idiots.  Hence Facebook.

The author then analyzes a staged photograph in Lean In of women at a workplace meeting:

My personal vote for Lean In valedictorian is the woman at the bottom left, I don’t know her life or her medication history but she has the diagnostic sign of her cuff pulled up over her wrist in what I call “the borderline sleeve,” that girl will have endlessly whipsawing emotions and a lot of enthusiastic ideas that will ultimately result in a something borrowed/something blue.  Hope her future ex enjoys drama, he’s in for seven years of it.

You’re going to try and counter that this is a staged publicity photo, but my rum makes me fearless against your rebuttals.  During my two months of radio silence I’ve been writing a book of/on pornography, so I know it when I see it, and I see it.  Main thing to observe about this girl-girl feature: all the chicks are white.

Back up, wildman, the easy criticism to make is that there are no blacks in the picture, which is why you made it.  Everyone knows that the presence of blacks in such pics is staged, yet we still notice it, still want it.  Why?   Even though we roll our eyes if a black woman is artificially included in the pic, why are we still satisfied by her presence, or uncomfortable her absence?  Because we have no power to change the underlying reality.  “Better than nothing.”

This is a porno of a white woman’s workplace, no room for blacks in this fantasy, they don’t watch The Bachelor.  Don’t confuse aspirational with desirable, Halle Berry is ass-slappingly hot, no one wants to be her.  “If I worked at a female-friendly place like Facebook,” says anyone masturbating to this picture,  “I’d totally have time to get my nails done.”

No, the insightful criticism isn’t that they didn’t artificially include a black woman, it is that they artificially excluded Asian women– that this photo could only be made by activelydenying a reality: among women, Asian women are proportionally overrepresented in successful positions, especially tech jobs, especially Silicon Valley, and yes, Apple Maps, India is in Asia.  Putting this shot together is like staging an NBA publicity photo without any neck tattoos or handguns.   “What?”  When I was in my 3rd year of medical school and we all had to select our tax bracket, the Asian women went into surgery, ophthalmology, or the last two years of a PhD program, you know where the borderline sleeves went?  Pediatrics, which I think is technically sublimation but I’m no psychiatrist.  The logic was straightforward: they wanted  kids, and, unlike surgery, pediatrics offered future doctor-moms a bit of flexibility, while the Asian women apparently didn’t worry about working late because their kids would be at violin till 9:30.

This porno, for the Time et al demographic, cannot allow this bit of reality to be shown, because the moment you see Padmakshi or “Megan” at the table it is too real,  it undermines the entire sexism thesis and suggests that something else may be going on, it’s like watching an awesome gangbang and suddenly noticing all the empty Oxycontin bottles and that they’re speaking Serbian.  “That just makes it hotter!”  I just logged your ip address.  This doesn’t mean Asian women don’t experience sexual discrimination, it means that when an Asian woman succeeds, the other women in the office don’t get to experience sexual discrimination, so they’re left only with sexual harassment.  Read it a couple of times, it’ll make sense and you won’t like it.

On Salon’s Hipsters-on-food-stamps troll job:

While the idea of a Metafilter post-doc receiving food stamps AND telling me they’re entitled to it makes my eyes go Sauronic, it’s that rage that requires some examination.  Why rage?  Why not just roll my eyes and go back to drinking rum and soldering op amps?  What is the social importance of my rage?

Society is nothing more than individual psychology multiplied by too many to count.  If narcissism is what drives this society, then only narcissism will explain it.

So start with an interesting hypothetical: does everybody need to work anymore?  I understand work from an ethical/character perspective, this is not here my point.  Since we no longer need e.g. manufacturing jobs– cheaper elsewhere or with robots– since those labor costs have evaporated, could that surplus go towards paying people simply to stay out of trouble?  Is there a natural economic equilibrium price where, say, a U Chicago grad can do no economically productive work at all but still be paid to use Instagram?  Let me be explicit: my question is not should we do this, my question is that since this is precisely what’s happening already, is it sustainable?  What is the cost?  I don’t have to run the numbers, someone already has: it’s $150/mo for a college grads, i.e. the price of food stamps.  Other correct responses would be $700/mo for “some high school” (SSI) or $1500/mo for “previous work experience” (unemployment).  I would have accepted $2000/mo for “minorities” (jail) for partial credit.

The comment threads are a blast, too:

Rome understood the Christian Problem (leeching / dependency creation) more intuitively than any civilisation since, with the possible exception of cannibals.

“Whenever a cannibal is on the brink of starvation, the Lord, in his infinite mercy, sends him a fat missionary.” (Oscar Wilde)