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The data does not support the assumption that all burned out people can “recover.” And when we fully appreciate what burnout signals in the body, and where it comes from on a social, economic, and psychological level, it should become clear to us that there’s nothing beneficial in returning to an unsustainable status quo. 

The term “burned out” is sometimes used to simply mean “stressed” or “tired,” and many organizations benefit from framing the condition in such light terms. Short-term, casual burnout (like you might get after one particularly stressful work deadline, or following final exams) has a positive prognosis: within three months of enjoying a reduced workload and increased time for rest and leisure, 80% of mildly burned-out workers are able to make a full return to their jobs. 

But there’s a lot of unanswered questions lurking behind this happy statistic. For instance, how many workers in this economy actually have the ability to take three months off work to focus on burnout recovery? What happens if a mildly burnt-out person does not get that rest, and has to keep toiling away as more deadlines pile up? And what is the point of returning to work if the job is going to remain as grueling and uncontrollable as it was when it first burned the worker out? 

Burnout that is not treated swiftly can become far more severe. Clinical psychologist and burnout expert Arno van Dam writes that when left unattended (or forcibly pushed through), mild burnout can metastasize into clinical burnout, which the International Classification of Diseases defines as feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance, and a reduced sense of personal agency. Clinically burned-out people are not only tired, they also feel detached from other people and no longer in control of their lives, in other words.

Unfortunately, clinical burnout has quite a dismal trajectory. Multiple studies by van Dam and others have found that clinical burnout sufferers may require a year or more of rest following treatment before they can feel better, and that some of burnout’s lingering effects don’t go away easily, if at all. 

In one study conducted by Anita Eskildsen, for example, burnout sufferers continued to show memory and processing speed declines one year after burnout. Their cognitive processing skills improved slightly since seeking treatment, but the experience of having been burnt out had still left them operating significantly below their non-burned-out peers or their prior self, with no signs of bouncing back. 

It took two years for subjects in one of van Dam’s studies to return to “normal” levels of involvement and competence at work. following an incident of clinical burnout. However, even after a multi-year recovery period they still performed worse than the non-burned-out control group on a cognitive task designed to test their planning and preparation abilities. Though they no longer qualified as clinically burned out, former burnout sufferers still reported greater exhaustion, fatigue, depression, and distress than controls.

In his review of the scientific literature, van Dam reports that anywhere from 25% to 50% of clinical burnout sufferers do not make a full recovery even four years after their illness. Studies generally find that burnout sufferers make most of their mental and physical health gains in the first year after treatment, but continue to underperform on neuropsychological tests for many years afterward, compared to control subjects who were never burned out. 

People who have experienced burnout report worse memories, slower reaction times, less attentiveness, lower motivation, greater exhaustion, reduced work capability, and more negative health symptoms, long after their period of overwork has stopped. It’s as if burnout sufferers have fallen off their previous life trajectory, and cannot ever climb fully back up. 

And that’s just among the people who receive some kind of treatment for their burnout and have the opportunity to rest. I found one study that followed burned-out teachers for seven years and reported over 14% of them remained highly burnt-out the entire time. These teachers continued feeling depersonalized, emotionally drained, ineffective, dizzy, sick to their stomachs, and desperate to leave their jobs for the better part of a decade. But they kept working in spite of it (or more likely, from a lack of other options), lowering their odds of ever healing all the while. 

Van Dam observes that clinical burnout patients tend to suffer from an excess of perseverance, rather than the opposite: “Patients with clinical burnout…report that they ignored stress symptoms for several years,” he writes. “Living a stressful life was a normal condition for them. Some were not even aware of the stressfulness of their lives, until they collapsed.”

Instead of seeking help for workplace problems or reducing their workload, as most people do, clinical burnout sufferers typically push themselves through unpleasant circumstances and avoid asking for help. They’re also less likely to give up when placed under frustrating circumstances, instead throttling the gas in hopes that their problems can be fixed with extra effort. They become hyperactive, unable to rest or enjoy holidays, their bodies wired to treat work as the solution to every problem. It is only after living at this unrelenting pace for years that they tumble into severe burnout. 

Among both masked Autistics and overworked employees, the people most likely to reach catastrophic, body-breaking levels of burnout are the people most primed to ignore their own physical boundaries for as long as possible. Clinical burnout sufferers work far past the point that virtually anyone else would ask for help, take a break, or stop caring about their work.

And when viewed from this perspective, we can see burnout as the saving grace of the compulsive workaholic — and the path to liberation for the masked disabled person who has nearly killed themselves trying to pass as a diligent worker bee. 

I wrote about the latest data on burnout "recovery," and the similarities and differences between Autistic burnout and conventional clinical burnout. The full piece is free to read or have narrated to you in the Substack app at drdevonprice.substack.com

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Orientalism by Edward Said is free to read online!

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Historians are rarely challenged just for applying words like ‘woman’ and ‘man’ to the past; it would not inevitably cause a backlash to say that a historical figure wanted power, or grieved, or felt anger. A trans historian, though, is caught in the double-bind of the DSM-5. Our experiences and our desires are quite literally mad. We do not have the social license to see ourselves fractured and reflected in historical figures; we are standing in the wrong place to write. Put simply, if you foreclose trans readings, you foreclose trans writing. When we reflect on the similarities between our lives and those of historical figures, we are accused of spreading our social contagion to the dead. To read our own anamorphoses in a text, to communicate that to a cis academic establishment who have rendered our unqualified subjectivities unimaginable, we are forced to accuse historical figures of transness. And then, of course, we are chastised for pathologising them. For a trans historian, it is not viable to simply universalise our experiences of gender. In order to relate to historical figures’ gendered experiences in our writing in a way that is legible to cis readers, we have to assert that those figures were trans. There is a gap to be bridged, and the onus to bridge it falls on us… Transmisogyny and anti-effeminacy were and are integral to the structure of patriarchy and therefore to cisness (or vice-versa). In ‘Monster Culture (Seven Theses)’, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen proposed a methodology for reading cultures: ‘from the monsters they engender’. In concluding this sketch of Byzantine cisness, I would like to attempt to apply this method. To monster a group or an individual is a violent act, and through examining the way transfemininity was monstered in Byzantium, we can begin to understand the shape of the violent regulation of gendered possibilities that constituted Byzantine cisness… Synesius [of Cyrene] did not simply compare the image of the elegantly coiffed effeminate with the shiny dome of the soldier’s helmet; he went one step further, proclaiming that pretty hair was the give-away for hidden effeminacy. He rails against ‘effeminate wretches’ who ‘make a cult of their hair’, who he suggests engage in sex work not out of economic necessity but as an act of sex and gender exhibitionism, to ‘display fully the effeminacy of their character’. Then, he goes on to say:

And whoever is secretly perverted, even if he should swear the contrary in the marketplace, and should present no other proof of being an acolyte of Cotys save only in a great care of his hair, anointing it and arranging it in ringlets, he might well be denounced to all as one who has celebrated orgies to the Chian goddess and the Ithyphalli.

The implication is clear: long, well kempt, perfumed and curled hair is not just hair, it is a signifier, one that signals total abnegation of manhood, and therefore of cisness. This demonstrates one of the mechanisms by which cisness was maintained and enforced in the Byzantine world. Relatively minor embodied gender transgressions, like too-long or too-pretty hair, could be linked to transfemininity and to sexual receptivity, the two farthest points from patriarchal manhood. That is not to say that this prevented people from committing such gender transgressions; rather that it made them risky, a weapon that could be used against you by anyone who wanted to do you harm. The other thing demonstrated by Synesius’ invective is the relationship between effeminacy, unmasculine vanity and presumed sexual receptivity. It would be tempting, based on the relationship Synesius draws between long beautiful hair and receptive anal sex, to suggest that the animating force of this antipathy is, if not homophobia, a narrower pre-modern equivalent. There is, however, a fantastically complicating detail in Synesius’ remark on the reasons such ‘effeminates’ engage in sex work: being sexually available is presented as an instrumental, rather than terminal value. In Synesius’ imagination, sex work is the means, but social recognition of the feminine gender of the sex worker is the end: to ‘display fully the effeminacy of their character’. The monster Synesius invokes to shore-up his own gender position, to guard his own cisness and his access to hegemonic masculinity, is an unambiguously transmisogynist fantasy. It is here that Byzantine cisness most sharply converges with twenty-first-century cisness.

‘Selective Historians’: The Construction of Cisness in Byzantine and Byzantinist Texts, Ilya Maude [DOI]

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verso books has made books on palestine, mass protests, and student rebellions free to download on their website

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"A number of Africans served as colonial soldiers with pride because they mistakenly hoped that the army would be an avenue for displaying the courage and dignity of Africans, and, perhaps, in the process, even earning the freedom of the continent, by making Europeans pleased and grateful. That hope was without foundation from the outset, because the colonialists were viciously using African soldiers as pawns to preserve colonialism and capitalism in general."

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

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"Wages paid to workers in Europe and North America were much higher than wages paid to African workers in comparable categories. The Nigerian coal miner at Enugu earned one shilling per day for working underground and nine pence per day for jobs on the surface. Such a miserable wage would be beyond the comprehension of a Scottish or German coal miner, who could virtually earn in an hour what the Enugu miner was paid for a six-day week....

When discrepancies such as the above were pointed out during the colonial period and subsequently, those who justified colonialism were quick to reply that the standard and cost of living were higher in capitalist countries. The fact is that the higher standard was made possible by the exploitation of colonies, and there was no justification for keeping African living standards so depressed in an age where a higher standard was possible because of the work output of Africans themselves."

-Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

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“It annoys me when people say, ‘Oh, the Iraq War, it was a geostrategic error. It was a colossal blunder. It was a failure.’ No, it was a crime. It was in defiance of international law, and it was defined over the last 15 years by war crimes, by widespread torture, by human rights abuses, by massacres.”

— Journalist Mehdi Hasan, speaking on Democracy Now! today about the 15th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. See the interview: 15 Years After Invasion of Iraq, Amnesia & Distortion Obscure U.S. Record of War Crimes & Torture (via democracynow)

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More than 100 Palestinians have been killed and some 700 others wounded after Israeli troops opened fire on hundreds waiting for food aid southwest of Gaza City, health officials say, as the besieged enclave faces an unprecedented hunger crisis. The Gaza Ministry of Health said on Thursday that at least 104 people were killed and more than 750 wounded, with the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemning what it said was a cold-blooded “massacre”. [...] People had congregated at al-Rashid Street, where aid trucks carrying flour were believed to be on the way. Al Jazeera verified footage showing the bodies of dozens of killed and wounded Palestinians being carried onto trucks as no ambulances could reach the area. “We went to get flour. The Israeli army shot at us. There are many martyrs on the ground and until this moment we are withdrawing them. There is no first aid,” said one witness. Reporting from the scene, Al Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul said that after opening fire, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies. “It is a massacre, on top of the starvation threatening citizens in Gaza,” he said. The dead and wounded had been taken to four medical centres: al-Shifa, Kamal Adwan, Ahli and the Jordanian hospitals. Ambulances could not reach the area as the roads had been “totally destroyed”, said al-Ghoul. “The numbers will rise. Hospitals are no longer able to accommodate the huge number of patients because they lack fuel, let alone medicine. Hospitals have also run out of blood.” Reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith said the Israeli military “initially tried to pin the blame on the crowd” saying that dozens were hurt as a consequence of being crushed and trampled when aid trucks arrived. “And then, after some pushing the Israelis went on to say that their troops felt threatened, that hundreds of troops approached their troops in a way they posed a threat to them so they responded by opening fire,” Smith added.

. . . continues at Al Jazeera (29 Feb 2024)

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i think it's pretty disingenuous to claim that illiteracy is secretly beneficial to the ruling class lmao. lots of assumptions baked in there about the putative value of written information specifically, and about written information as some kind of bastion of truth to power (known voice of the people, the publishing industry). but more to the point it just seems profoundly detached from the extreme hostility that, say, the entire job market systematically exhibits toward illiterate people and even low-literacy people. nothing about our current society is set up to accommodate those who cannot or do not read, like literally this renders people instantly socially marginal and you can see it happening if you've ever seen someone struggling with, say, reading and filling out forms at the doctors office or for a driving test, not to even mention the interpersonal ramifications like the general widespread assumption that reading ability = intelligence = worth. there is no social force or mandate from above demanding illiteracy---quite the opposite in fact

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reading kate briggs and thinking about french translations into english and how similar they are as languages and thus relatively “easy” to translate, but how there will inevitably be nuances that are lost, as is the case for every language. like how “la mort de l’auteur” is obviously a pun on “le morte d’arthur” and that doesn’t really translate well into “death of the author” because it doesn’t have that same cultural connotation. or how in portrait of a lady on fire, héloïse responding “courir” to marianne’s question of “mourir?” is nowhere near as poetically satisfying when you remove the rhyme in english by translating it as “dying?” “running.” and even the title portrait of a lady on fire is not a precise translation, since in french it’s portrait de la jeune fille on feu, but i actually think that “lady” is nonetheless a better translation that “young girl” insofar as it better communicates sciamma’s themes and héloïse’s agency. or “l’expérience vécue du noir” (by fanon) is translated “the fact of blackness” by charles lam markmann. it’s certainly a punchier title than “the lived experience of the black man,” but it’s not “faithful” to the original word choice. obviously these are issues in all facets of translation across every language, im just thinking through it in terms of french bc that happens to be the language i focalize wrt translation. it’s a perpetual quandary, of course. very cool stuff

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like with lolita I feel like even when people are defending the book they tend to go too far in the wrong direction and flatten it into "well obviously the book isn't sympathetic towards pedophilia, you're supposed to hate humbert and think he's disgusting at all times" and I just feel like that's reductive bc like. the book is absolutely not sympathetic towards pedophilia but imo you ARE supposed to find humbert funny and kind of tragic and charming and that's like. the point! like he's intentionally written to be all these things!

if the book wanted to just be like. a straightforward condemnation of pedophilia, then humbert wouldn't be the narrator. but it's not a book about child sexual abuse being bad -- like that kind of goes without saying, you don't really need to argue it -- it's a book about the ways humbert justifies his abuse to himself, and to the audience. it's a book that's largely about how stories are told, and the way personal and cultural narratives can be used to justify even the worst imaginable behavior. humbert doesn't describe himself abusing a child, he describes himself being 'seduced' by a 'nymphet'; he likens his relationship to that of dante and beatrice or petrarch and laureen to establish historical legitimacy and lend a sort of tragic romanticism to it. it almost feels like the book is less focused on the story itself, and more on the way humbert spins it. he isn't written to be an obviously hateable monster, he's written to be erudite and tragic and funny, and that's because the book isn't trying to teach you that child abuse is bad, it's demonstrating the ways that being erudite and tragic and funny can be used to normalize and justify something that you already know is bad. imo it's largely a book about the ways that someone can construct a mythology to convince themselves of anything, and how if we don't think critically about what we're told then we can fall into the same trap.

it's also absolutely a story about reading past the lines to figure out what's actually going on. like it's funny that the book has become such a touchstone for discourse about Media Literacy bc I really think that 'media literacy' is like. one of the core themes. like the book kind of requires that you ignore the way humbert writes to make out what he's actually describing; the worse his behavior gets, the more flowery and beautiful his writing becomes. the story the book tells if you buy into humbert's mythology and the story it tells if you don't are dramatically different.

like the ways that the book depicts dolores suffering are there, but you almost have to read past the narrative humbert presents to see them, right? like when he complains about dolores being irritable and cruel and moody, he's presenting the picture of a fickle and unreasonable WOMAN who is toying with his emotions. but when you read what he's actually describing instead of the way he describes it, it reads like a fact sheet on spotting child abuse! she has mood swings, she lashes out at people, nothing makes her happy, she cries herself to sleep most nights. if we read humbert's account at face value, she's a fickle seductress who gets a sick thrill out of hurting him; if we recognize his bias and intentions in writing it, she's a deeply depressed and traumatized child still attempting to resist her abuser despite everything she's been through. like it's as close to an exercise in 'media literacy' as a book can get in that regard.

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“Although men are more likely than women to be murdered, women are more likely than men to be murdered by a member of the other sex and by a spouse. MacKinnon (1987) reports that “four out of five murdered women are killed by men; between one third and one half [of murdered women] are married to their murderers. When you add in boyfriends and former spouses, the figures rise.” Dobash and Dobash (1977/78) reported finding that more than 40 percent of women who are murdered are murdered by their husbands. By comparison, only 10 percent of male murder victims are killed by their wives. Walter Gove (1973) found that “for women the shift from being single to being married increases the likelihood of being murdered, while for men the shift decreases their chances.” Gove obtained similar findings for single as compared to married women as regards “accidental deaths.” It is, of course, likely that many accidental deaths were in fact murders. Such statistics served as the impetus for Blinder’s (1985) remark, “In America, the bedroom is second only to the highway as the scene of slaughter.

Loving to Survive by Dee L.R. Graham”

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Perhaps the real test was for Abraham was to confront God as he did at Sodom, thus teaching his children “righteousness and justice,” and ultimately to say “no” to God. Perhaps, on some level in this narrative, Abraham failed the test. […] God never speaks to Abraham again.

Rabbi Hyim Shafner, Did Abraham Fail the Ultimate Test?

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“All this extra work is affecting women’s health. We have long known that women (in particular women under fifty-five) have worse outcomes than men following heart surgery. But it wasn’t until a Canadian study came out in 2016 that researchers were able to isolate women’s care burden as one of the factors behind this discrepancy. ‘We have noticed that women who have bypass surgery tend to go right back into their caregiver roles, while men were more likely to have someone to look after them,’ explained lead researcher Colleen Norris.

This observation may go some way to explaining why a Finnish study found that single women recovered better from heart attacks than married women – particularly when put alongside a University of Michigan study which found that husbands create an extra seven hours of housework a week for women. An Australian study similarly found that housework time is most equal by gender for single men and women; when women start to cohabit, ‘their housework time goes up while men’s goes down, regardless of their employment status’.”

- Caroline Criado-Pérez’s Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

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A key issue in understanding who feeds the world is the distinction between calories produced and calories delivered. Simply because a farming method produces a lot of calories, does not mean that those calories are going towards feeding people. Calories can be wasted or channeled into animal feed, biofuels, and other non-food uses, complicating how we assess methods for alleviating hunger. Emily Cassidy and her team studied this phenomenon across major agricultural countries. They found that in India, for example, 89% of produced crop calories went to feeding people during the study period. In Brazil, however, that number was 45%. In the United States, which produces the most gross calories out of any country studied, it was only 27%.

Backgrounder: Small Scale Farmers and Peasants Still Feed the World

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