5 ms·

Working from bed is great? What? Who at the NYT thought this was worth publishing? This is a great way to increase mental health issues, decrease physical hea

by eric_b 6y ago

Working from bed is great? What? Who at the NYT thought this was worth publishing? This is a great way to increase mental health issues, decrease physical health and hygiene and generally make everything worse. Maybe in the future when morbidly obese humans float around in hover beds and purchase things only from Buy-N-Large this will be "great" - but this reeks of a strange "pro COVID lockdown" narrative I've been seeing lately.

TimTheTinker 6y ago
> but this reeks of a strange "pro COVID lockdown" narrative I've been seeing lately. Along with phrases like "the new normal" and such. There does seem to be a push to keep people from wanting and expecting to go back to the real normal anytime soon. Though who stands to gain from this alternate reality? It would seem the liberal left wants to normalize it (even post-vaccine), but I don't understand why.
- eric_b 6y ago
  Agreed - it's certainly a left-leaning narrative. I don't understand the "why" of any of it anymore. The far-left folks are pro lockdown but also want to help the underprivileged. No one is hurt worse by lockdowns. They want to defund the police, and yet by now even the hardened ideologue can admit that less police is maybe not a great plan. The left is anti-authoritarian but engages in almost textbook authoritarian behavior. (Cancel culture, democratic governors having emergency powers for 9+ months now etc etc) They hate capitalism but enjoy the byproducts (my most socialist friends can't get enough of Amazon prime - the irony is completely lost on them). There is just no way to reconcile the platform. It is completely incoherent.
  - TimTheTinker 6y ago
    I’ve thought some more about this, and I think their platform is coherent if you assume their goal is power. Economic trouble and poverty help the left by making them the savior upon whom everyone is dependent. After all, it was the Great Depression that gave FDR’s New Deal a free pass in the first place — and that really was the beginning of the modern Democratic Party’s economic platform. They want people to be poor. That’s how they get the majority of their votes.
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    "pro-lockdown" and "why the fuck are we giving people so little money" tend to go together, in my experience. Lock down for a month or two, give everyone more than enough money to cover rent/food/utilities and some entertainment (to keep from going insane), and greatly reduce the spread of this virus. But here we are in the US with a paltry $600 coming after the entire duration of this stupid, stupid pandemic. As to "defunding police", I like to rephrase it as "fund people, not police" - use those budgets to give people help before they get to the point where the police get involved, rather than having next to no safety net and a bunch of cops itching to use all the military hardware they've got. There you go, some coherence. Have a nice day.
    - dullcrisp 6y ago
      Stop that. This thread is for inferring people's intentions and then coming up with appropriately cartoonish motivations. I personally think the author of this article is trying to give people clinical depression. But I'm having trouble figuring out how that fits into their leftist agenda. Maybe it's because leftists are themselves lazy and unmotivated, and they want to feel better about themselves by sabotaging others? But wouldn't they see that it's unfair to hurt other people just because of their own inadequacies? I don't know, what do you think? I can't figure it out.
      - TimTheTinker 6y ago
        Hm, guess the joke’s on me. I was being a little over the top but I was thinking somewhat seriously/curiously about the left agenda. Haha :-)
      - egypturnash 6y ago
        Here is a cartoon that pretty much sums up where I suspect the author of this article is: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/ea/6f/25ea6fd2546b3f007af4f3916f1b556f.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/ea/6f/25ea6fd2546b3f007af4... To be precise, they are in the top four panels, not the bottom five.
  - ksm1717 6y ago
    Great rant, I liked how completely irrelevant it was
chapium 6y ago
They don't have to write the way you want. Its easy to write positively about tools one feels are beneficial.
tomjen3 6y ago
One of the only reasons I don't work from my bed is that it would destroy my back. If I had purchased one of those beds where you can electrically raise the back I would have worked so many more hours - and been more comfortable.
Ashanmaril 6y ago
There's an ever-growing cult of people who are so obsessed with the idea that everyone needs to be shopping for a therapist and popping mind-altering drugs, and anyone that suggests that there are basic bad habits you could put some work in to fix like exercising or not laying in bed all day is anti-"science" The last paragraph basically claims "it's not working from bed that's bad, it's the stigma against working from bed that's bad!"
fossuser 6y ago
The writer is Taylor Lorenz - most of her stuff is pretty awful. Earlier this year she attacked the Away CEO Steph Korey, she then spun Balaji's tweet that used Taylor's own words with a misleading crop to play victim: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-between-Taylor-Lorenz-and-Balaji-S-Srinivasan-really-about https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-bet... She defends Tiktok and the CCP out of ignorance because she prefers writing everything as anti-facebook, anti-US tech (this was a similar twitter thing a couple months ago, but there's no quora summary). Recently she was tweeting NIMBY style things about new housing ruining the character of the neighborhood and blaming tech for wanting more housing. Everything she writes starts with a massive anti-tech motivated reasoning bias and then crafts a story around it. I think she also defended recode here, but I'm not 100% sure (I've since blocked her on Twitter): https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handshake-debunking-b2751adc7e69 https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha... I wouldn't put much thought into her articles, she's the main person that comes to mind when I think of the decline of the NYT.

by eric_b 6y ago

TimTheTinker 6y ago

> but this reeks of a strange "pro COVID lockdown" narrative I've been seeing lately. Along with phrases like "the new normal" and such. There does seem to be a push to keep people from wanting and expecting to go back to the real normal anytime soon. Though who stands to gain from this alternate reality? It would seem the liberal left wants to normalize it (even post-vaccine), but I don't understand why.

eric_b 6y ago
Agreed - it's certainly a left-leaning narrative. I don't understand the "why" of any of it anymore. The far-left folks are pro lockdown but also want to help the underprivileged. No one is hurt worse by lockdowns. They want to defund the police, and yet by now even the hardened ideologue can admit that less police is maybe not a great plan. The left is anti-authoritarian but engages in almost textbook authoritarian behavior. (Cancel culture, democratic governors having emergency powers for 9+ months now etc etc) They hate capitalism but enjoy the byproducts (my most socialist friends can't get enough of Amazon prime - the irony is completely lost on them). There is just no way to reconcile the platform. It is completely incoherent.
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  I’ve thought some more about this, and I think their platform is coherent if you assume their goal is power. Economic trouble and poverty help the left by making them the savior upon whom everyone is dependent. After all, it was the Great Depression that gave FDR’s New Deal a free pass in the first place — and that really was the beginning of the modern Democratic Party’s economic platform. They want people to be poor. That’s how they get the majority of their votes.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  "pro-lockdown" and "why the fuck are we giving people so little money" tend to go together, in my experience. Lock down for a month or two, give everyone more than enough money to cover rent/food/utilities and some entertainment (to keep from going insane), and greatly reduce the spread of this virus. But here we are in the US with a paltry $600 coming after the entire duration of this stupid, stupid pandemic. As to "defunding police", I like to rephrase it as "fund people, not police" - use those budgets to give people help before they get to the point where the police get involved, rather than having next to no safety net and a bunch of cops itching to use all the military hardware they've got. There you go, some coherence. Have a nice day.
  - dullcrisp 6y ago
    Stop that. This thread is for inferring people's intentions and then coming up with appropriately cartoonish motivations. I personally think the author of this article is trying to give people clinical depression. But I'm having trouble figuring out how that fits into their leftist agenda. Maybe it's because leftists are themselves lazy and unmotivated, and they want to feel better about themselves by sabotaging others? But wouldn't they see that it's unfair to hurt other people just because of their own inadequacies? I don't know, what do you think? I can't figure it out.
    - TimTheTinker 6y ago
      Hm, guess the joke’s on me. I was being a little over the top but I was thinking somewhat seriously/curiously about the left agenda. Haha :-)
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      Here is a cartoon that pretty much sums up where I suspect the author of this article is: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/ea/6f/25ea6fd2546b3f007af4f3916f1b556f.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/ea/6f/25ea6fd2546b3f007af4... To be precise, they are in the top four panels, not the bottom five.
- ksm1717 6y ago
  Great rant, I liked how completely irrelevant it was

chapium 6y ago

They don't have to write the way you want. Its easy to write positively about tools one feels are beneficial.

tomjen3 6y ago

One of the only reasons I don't work from my bed is that it would destroy my back. If I had purchased one of those beds where you can electrically raise the back I would have worked so many more hours - and been more comfortable.

Ashanmaril 6y ago

There's an ever-growing cult of people who are so obsessed with the idea that everyone needs to be shopping for a therapist and popping mind-altering drugs, and anyone that suggests that there are basic bad habits you could put some work in to fix like exercising or not laying in bed all day is anti-"science" The last paragraph basically claims "it's not working from bed that's bad, it's the stigma against working from bed that's bad!"

fossuser 6y ago

The writer is Taylor Lorenz - most of her stuff is pretty awful. Earlier this year she attacked the Away CEO Steph Korey, she then spun Balaji's tweet that used Taylor's own words with a misleading crop to play victim: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-between-Taylor-Lorenz-and-Balaji-S-Srinivasan-really-about https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-bet... She defends Tiktok and the CCP out of ignorance because she prefers writing everything as anti-facebook, anti-US tech (this was a similar twitter thing a couple months ago, but there's no quora summary). Recently she was tweeting NIMBY style things about new housing ruining the character of the neighborhood and blaming tech for wanting more housing. Everything she writes starts with a massive anti-tech motivated reasoning bias and then crafts a story around it. I think she also defended recode here, but I'm not 100% sure (I've since blocked her on Twitter): https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handshake-debunking-b2751adc7e69 https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha... I wouldn't put much thought into her articles, she's the main person that comes to mind when I think of the decline of the NYT.