Everyone: American political discourse cannot be any more stupid. Kamala Harris:

La Berge on cats; Adorno on music; Jameson on Postmodernism and Kornbluh on Immediacy. This is Marxism. Who'd have thunk it? Syllabus by @gavinmueller.bsky.social with @annakornbluh.bsky.social

Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao caio socialistworker.co.uk/palestine-20...

anna's archive down and I need books. Please help?

Sad news from The Wall Street Journal

writerly query: do people know the book/phrase "French Women Don't Get Fat" ? Does it have a kind of vernacular to it?

Wow--very excited for this one from @anniemcc.bsky.social

Always thought it was 476 CE. Has history changed?

At this valuation, the price to produce an undergraduate essay using ChatGPT is around $3,500, about the same rate an adjunct instructor gets paid to teach the class for which the essay is being written.

If you've been waiting for a propitious moment in the current conjuncture to buy "Fake Work" from @haymarketbooks.org ymarketbooks, this is it, folks: 40% off for the next two days. Thanks to everyone who's already purchased, we've just sold out our initial print run. More soon!

Very excited for this. Myka has written a super smart book; join us!

For years I used 12ft.io to bypass paywalls. It's been taken down after a law suit. Any other good recs? I know of archive.today but I want access to things that are just published. Any ideas?

This is simply a wonderful genealogy of global leftism. Highly recommend!

"Fake Work" spotted in new and noteworthy non-fiction at McNally Jackson Williamsburg with @maris.bsky.social and @haymarketbooks.org

With the rise of AI, I've begun to wonder if future graders of expository essays will even be able to grasp the sheer brilliance of Mandy Berry's famous Student Essay Unplugged? We many never see this kind of essay again, folks.

Total shot in the dark, but anyone on here study with Richard Marius at U Tenn Knoxville in the late 1960s / early 1970s?

So nice to see a section of "Fake Work" in this month's @harpers.bsky.social under the truly great title, "Aught Bourgeois." harpers.org/archive/2025...

Welcome new followers! ICYMI I’m a Marxist humorist who just wrote a book called Fake Work

Happy Bastille Day! Feline reminder that philosophical patron saint of the French Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, put a cat on the cover of "The Social Contract" because cats were his “test of character”; those who don’t enjoy cats “have the despotic instinct of men.” @dukepress.bsky.social

For anyone interested in species history, animal history, environmental history, can't recommend this scholar's work enough. Great interview, too. @publicbooks.bsky.social www.publicbooks.org/are-species-...

Love this combo—enjoy!

There are a few podcasts I listen to regularly. @doughenwood.bsky.social, 's is one, @poltheoryother.bsky.social by Alex Doherty is another. It was so nice to get a chance to talk with Alex about "Fake Work." soundcloud.com/poltheoryoth...

Melinda Cooper starter pack but it's only her. FYI she's one of the most creative, incisive critics of American political economy; well worth a follow for fellow travelers. @melindacooper.bsky.social

I had a lot of fun talking about the "Fake Work," and the fraudulent meritocracy of management consulting and, although we didn't call it this, the real work of Zohranomics (thanks @johncassidysays.bsky.social) goodbye.substack.com

Read @lclaberge.bsky.social on the Y2K techno-apocalypse that wasn’t

Thanks @literaryhub.bsky.social for running a bit of "Fake Work." Think of the recording, "this call may be monitored for Quality Assurance," and know that I, once, was said monitor, ready to assure that my company's Y2K prep was done with quality. @haymarketbooks.org lithub.com/doomsday-pro...

Simon Pearson @anticapitalistmusings.com helps me understand my own project. He describes "Fake Work" as "a surrealist audit of late capitalism," and says it's "the only work memoir I’ve ever read that doesn’t lie to you." @haymarketbooks.org anticapitalistmusings.com/2025/06/the-...

Always great chatting with @doughenwood.bsky.social about capitalism's foibles and follies, of which there are plenty in "Fake Work" just out from @haymarketbooks.org

Happy 50th! I read JAWS as the end of the narrative arc of the whaling industry, one which began with Moby Dick and ends with the shark as figure of deindustrialization.

FYI publishers, editors, et al: I'd absolutely love to review Arundhati Roy's forthcoming memoir, "Mother Mary Comes to Me." DM me.

Join us--it'll be hot outside and fake inside. This Thursday!

"Fake Work" gets a great write up in the NY Times today as "superbly committed to its own beliefs — truthful, dryly funny and often subtly moving. “To be a barnacle on the floating corpse of capital,” La Berge writes. “Was that the most I could hope for from a professional life?”

I'm no longer registered in the city, but for the love of the secular processes of history, people, vote for Zohran!

Honestly, the only value the wealthy could ever offer NYC would be as tax-payers. If we can't receive from them their taxes, (and the state Dem. party assures us we can't) then let them go! At least we could enjoy what they'd leave behind: park views, museums, harbors, schools. One way or another.

Weekend reading. My understanding of technology is that its a technique that uses labor to reconfigure labor, either extend or contract any labor's specific horizon. Let's see if that holds after reading this.

Scholarly publishing advice for academics and cats, from the inimitable @rcolesworthy.bsky.social in the @chronicle.com I actually did start "Marx for Cats," as a video series; it's still up, too, at vimeo.com/marxforcats

It’s here. It’s queer. Thank you @haymarketbooks.org what a great press to work with.

Marx Para Gatos Miau! www.akal.com/libro/marx-p...

The NY State Democratic Party has decided it will only run white male candidates who are either credibly accused of or who have already plead guilty to sexual harassment. Let's go! www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

My first sighting of "Fake Work" out in the wild. I'll be doing my first Fake Event tomorrow, and then others throughout the month of June. I've been sitting with this book for 25 years, literally, and I'm so excited/anxious to see its reception.

This is a good article. I can see why it's being shared and validated. But I'm surprised to see no mention of the tradition of Rhetoric, of using given sentences, paragraphs, texts, toward an end which both mimics and initiates. Who is writing this piece, shall I? www.chronicle.com/article/what...

My review of contemporary culture from the long weekend: --Alison Bechdel's new autotheory-ish novel, "Spent," is pretty disappointing. --The finale of Nathan Fielder's "The Rehearsal," really is, as Gideon Lewis-Kraus notes @ The NYer, "astonishing, ridiculous, outlandish and sublime."

Join us this Wednesday at 5pm EST. Things are getting fake, with some of my favorite critics of work and labor. @haymarketbooks.org

And thus I start my own soft launch for my new book, "Fake Work: How I Began to Suspect Capitalism Is A Joke." It's a queer, anti-work autotheory-ish memoir set in the late 90s; I was a consultant on a corporate Y2K project. This was how it looked, a beige world of beige people. @haymarketbooks.org

More meow reviews! This one mentions that some readers might find my references to vegetarianism tiresome. I agree. But I wish the author had made more of this point. Why is that the case? What does the Left find so bothersome about it? These are real questions. @dukepress.bsky.social

The uncanny perfection of an absolutely wrong claim:

No diploma at NYU for students who mention human rights abuses in Palestine. Makes one almost miss the days when NYU spokesman John Beckman could be counted on to issue statements denying grad students right to unionize and volleying vague threats about funding. www.nyu.edu/about/news-p...

AI does indeed get a lot wrong.

"plagiarism mall cops"