labor

2 entries tagged labor. All writing.

SEPTEMBER 26, 2026 Eighteen Months and Twenty-One Million A Microsoft executive says most white-collar work gets automated in the next 12 to 18 months. A New York Times investigation says Silicon Valley is already bracing for the underclass that leaves behind. And I keep getting told, in real time, that Bitcoin is the one thing standing between any person, company, or AI agent and what comes next. I checked the actual mechanism — the energy, the bond math, the reserve data, and what AI agents are literally paying each other with this year — and the honest answer splits the argument instead of settling it. SEPTEMBER 10, 2026 He Drew It at 120 Degrees. They Built It at 90. Robert Propst designed the cubicle to give office workers a screen they controlled. He lived to watch companies turn it into a box, and called the result "monolithic insanity." The strange part is that nothing was added to his design to ruin it — the panels were only turned, from an open 120-degree screen into a closed 90-degree cell. Six decades later the walls are gone again, the desk is unassigned, and attendance is mandatory. The thing being spent has been the same the whole time.