Dream big, work together

April 7, 2026

Democratic work

Sierra LaDuke with a fun approachable video essay that tracks discontent of workers through a historic and cultural lens.
I used to enjoy the podcast Economic Update from Dr. Richard Wolff. I learned a lot from his advocacy promoting worker owned cooperatives and their potential transformational power. His framework also taught me about the economic underpinnings and unseen incentives that influence so much of world currently and in the past. That said, my perspective has since evolve to account for forces beyond dialectic materialism, such as culture, and the fickle nature of the human psyche.
I’ve been impressed and inspired by the work being done by Geeks For Social Change, an awesome organization out of the UK that is a shining beacon at the intersection of technology and community. This is the type of counterbalance we need against the prevalent dystopian neoliberal capital-fueled techno-optimism that has declared itself “inevitable”.

JA Westenburg is a writer/thinker/creative who shares a lot of good takes on Mastodon.
They posted a brief educational reminder on the hedonic treadmill. I take it as an (potentially uncomfortable) opportunity to reflect on my motivations and ambitions.

Last November I listened to the podcast series Fela Kuti: Fear No Man. In addition to being a prominent musician and founder of the Afrobeat genre, he was also a fierce activist of major cultural significance. I was not aware of the criticism against him and the podcast highlighted both his contributions and some of his problematic behaviors and opinions. The series is extremely well produced, and I enjoyed learning about the historical and familial context that created this singular artist.

sqlit: It’s been a while since I’ve needed to use such a thing, but this seems like a nice way to interact with databases from the terminal. Akin to lazygit.