Irish study confirms: A four-day work week is better for everyone.

I don’t often take days off. Some days I’ll do the bare minimum, but I’m still doing at least a little work. Part of that is because I’m afraid that if I take time off, I won’t be able to start back up with daily posting. A lot of it is that if I hope to ever get to the point where I’m making even minimum wage, I need to post often, and have content that people might consider paying for (patreon.com/oceanoxia). Basically, I’m an internet busker, and if I’m not putting in the time, I can’t expect to make a living. Honestly, I don’t expect that even if I do put in the time, which is part of why I’m working on the novel I’ve mentioned before. All of this is to say that I basically have a 7 day work week, which pulls in very little money (though you could help change that!), which makes it just a little amusing to write about a resoundingly successful trial of a four-day work week that took place right here in Ireland!

The project, backed by Fórsa and carried out in partnership by Four-Day Week Ireland, University College Dublin (UCD), and Boston College, examined the financial, social, and environmental impact that a four-day working week would have on businesses and employees in Ireland.

Following the trial, 100 per cent of employees indicated they would like to continue a reduced work schedule. Nine of the 12 companies involved are committed to continuing with the four-day week, while the remaining three are planning to continue but have not made a long-term commitment.

Lead researcher Dr Orla Kelly said: “All participating organisations plan to continue the reduced work schedule. Productivity levels are up. We found significant improvements across a wide range of well-being metrics, including positive affect, work-family and work-life balance, and several domains of life satisfaction.

“Conversely, stress, burnout, fatigue, and work-family conflict significantly declined. Levels of sleep deprivation have also fallen dramatically. We observed an increase across three forms of pro-environmental behaviour.

“The trial was particularly successful for women. They reported a significantly greater improvement in life satisfaction, had larger gains in sleep time and reported feeling more secure in their employment. Our findings hold important lessons for the future of work in this country.”

I’m not surprised. I’m a huge advocate of people having as much control over their own time as possible, and every time I see research on it, the result seems to be the same – moving to fewer days on the job is better for everyone, even the bosses. The one way it’s not better, which the articles I read don’t mention, is that it means that bosses have less control over their workers’ lives. Personally, I don’t think that’s a “downside” worth considering, but I think it’s something that does need to be considered when thinking about the motivations of business owners. A disproportionate number of them seem to be some form of petty tyrant.

It’s somewhat irritating to me that “improves productivity for employers” always has to be a part of it, though:

“In today’s working world there’s a mismatch between the amount of time we spend working and the time we spend with our families and friends. The four-day week can be at the forefront of a new age of work, providing transformative social benefits without losing pay or productivity.”

In a just world, the fact that the companies can afford it, and that it makes the workers’ lives better, would be enough. Still, in this case it seems that the drive for “more productivity” lines up with the goal of more freedom for workers, since happy, healthy workers tend to be more competent as well.

Despite this research, I suspect that it will be a long, hard struggle to make a shorter work week the norm. Powerful people seem to have a deep horror of any movement away from the arrangement that gave them their power, so we have to make the world better despite them.

But the case can be made, and studies like this show how important it is to fight for this stuff. Another day off is a huge boon in a world where so much of our time is dictated by work, getting to and from work, and trying to find moments to live in between it all. Further, with overproduction driving this climate crisis, a lot of the work that’s being done now needs to stop being done, and it would be good, in my view, if that didn’t result in anyone losing their home or going hungry. Some of that work can be replaced with environmental cleanup and restoration work – there’s a lot to do – but this is a golden opportunity to start to undo some of the social damage that has been done over the last couple centuries, and start moving towards a world where the point of life isn’t working, but living.

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Advances in avian culinary technology open new front in The Toad Wars

One of my favorite “tropes” in modern environmentalism is the idea of solving human problems by improving, amplifying, or adjusting ecosystem services. This covers all sorts of things, but I think the first example I ever heard of was using predatory insects – ladybugs – to control agricultural pests. That was my first example, but not my favorite. My favorite, as I mentioned recently, is the story of cane toads in Australia. It’s an example of an almost-clever idea that has had horrible, and sometimes hilarious results. If nothing else, it has given us this gem of a nature documentary, which you can watch with your family while you eat Thanksgiving dinner!

That’s high art, if ever there was such a thing. Truly a masterpiece of cinema.

Now, why do I bring this up, other than the fact that it lets me write about something easy while my mind is elsewhere? Well, a new front has been opened in the Cane Toad Wars, and it comes to us thanks to the very latest in avian innovation. May I present to you, the Ibis-devised “stress-and-wash” technique for cane toad cuisine?

Ibis are often seen feeding on food dumped by humans, but citizen scientists are increasingly reporting the native species is dining out on toxic cane toads.

Gold Coast coordinator of Watergum’s Cane Toads program Emily Vincent said the “stress and wash” method had been viewed numerous times by citizen scientists.

“It’s quite amusing to watch and it’s quite different from other native species and their methods of eating them,” she said.

“The ibis will pick up cane toads and they will flick them about and stress out the toads.

“What this does is it makes the cane toads release toxins from the parotoid gland at the back of their neck, which is their defence mechanism when they’re faced with predators.

“Then they’ll take them down to the creek and wash them.”
Ms Vincent said it was encouraging to see the ibis capitalising on the food source, which was first introduced into Australia in 1935 to control cane beetles in Queensland’s sugarcane crops.

The cane toad has since spread into New South Wales, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

“We have lots and lots of ibis in Australia,” she said.

“This is a learned behaviour and it’s been observed in multiple different regions.

“I think it will have an impact, especially as more species tag along and copy the behaviour.”

The article has some other useful information, including the fact that while the toad’s poison is apparently unpleasant for birds, it doesn’t actually do a whole lot to them. They mainly avoid it because of the flavor. I do feel bad for the toads (as I feel bad for some shown in the video above), but Australia’s ecosystem could really use a break, so it’s nice to see this.

Maybe this will finally bring peace between the Australians and the Ibis. I certainly hope so, given that country’s record when it comes to fighting birds, but it’s hard to say. In the meantime, here’s the current state of things as I understand it:

Small blog update, and a video

For the rest of November, I’m going to be doing low-effort posts for the most part. I’m behind on my novel, and the sad truth is that if I want to be able to keep writing, I need more sources of income. As wonderful as my patrons are, they form a pretty small crowd that hasn’t grown much over the last year, so I think it would be foolish to assume that that will change after another year or two.

I intend to keep posting daily, but for the rest of this month, and probably periodically going forward, I’ll be taking time for other work. I doubt it’s just me, but I find it hard to remind myself that yes, writing a novel is work that I actually have a responsibility to keep doing in my current situation, and it’s sometimes discouraging to work on something that only has a possibility of paying off months or years down the line.

Anyway, for a change of tone, here’s a two-parter on U.S. policing, and how it interacts with U.S. culture – television in particular. There are content warnings in the videos, but if you know anything about our “justice” system, you already know this is gonna get dark.

Video: How The Good Place Redefines the Sitcom

I’ve bee having a gloomy sort of day, for various reasons, and I don’t have much of anything to post, so here’s this instead. It’s a nice overview of one of the best shows I’ve ever watched, and a look into at least part of why it’s so good. Watching this won’t spoil the show for you in any meaningful capacity, and obviously I highly recommend that if you haven’t seen The Good Place, you should change that.

Caturday: Cardboard Box Edition

His Holiness Saint Ray The Cat leads a life of both excitement and boredom. He and I now have a morning routine of stepping outside to take the air. I contemplate life, catch up on social media and the like, and he wanders around eating grass and sniffing things (catching up on social media and the like). Then we go back inside, and he either begs for catnip, or goes to sleep. I want to be clear – he does not get catnip when he begs. I can’t get around giving him food when he’s been howling for the hour before feeding time, but I’ll be damned if I train my cat to expect drugs as a reward for tapping on my elbow every two minutes.

Anyway, one of my innovations for keeping him entertained during the day, is a length of candle wick hanging from my study door’s handle. It originally had a cork tied to the end, but after that was rabbit-kicked away, we both discovered that he loves just a bit of string with a knot at the end. Finally, after all these years, I found a toy that he’ll play with by himself.

In many ways, His Holiness is a perfect cat for us. He’s extremely tolerant of everything we do, to the point where we joke about him being aware of our harassment as the price for being saved from starvation on the street. He loves cuddling, has few objections to being picked up and snuggled, and the most objection I get to trimming his claws is that he shifts his weight so that he could roll off my lap if I let him.

My one complaint – and that’s too strong of a word for it – is that he doesn’t sit in things very much. I’ve tried to get him to hang out in a box next to me and stuff, but he prefers a more luxurious environment. He tends to hang out on the bed, or the couch, or in laundry. He’ll hang out on my lap sometimes, and on the rug by the heater next to me when the heat is on, but boxes, bags, and things of that nature are primarily ways for him to make noise when he wants our attention.

I recently had a package delivered, and on a whim, I decided to put a little catnip in the empty box. It was a given that he would be in the box until he’d consumed all of it, but he decided to just… hang out, afterwards.

His Holiness is a British Shorthair of solid build, with gray-black brindled fur on his back, sides, head, and tail. His legs, belly, and throat are snowy white, and plush-soft. His face and muzzle form triangle of white fur that peaks on his forehead, and crosses his cheeks, blending with the throat fur. In this picture, he’s on his side, partly curled in a cardboard box, and looking up at the camera, with his face slightly smushed on one side by the box.

This was, as you can see, extremely cute. I had put the box between the legs of a chair , which held the sides up so they didn’t bend out when subjected to his bulk. I think he likes the way the box holds him. Naturally, I had to grab his string.

His Holiness is curled rather like the Golden Spiral, as he attempts to catch the blurred string between his mitten-like paws.

One thing he likes to do with the string (and if I get enough *⇒patrons⇐* I’ll post a video of it), is to grab the knot at the end between his tiny little front teeth, and pull. If there’s not enough tension, he’ll step on the string. I have no idea why he does this, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the developmental weirdness of his canines.

His Holiness is the bane of all that moves within easy reach of wherever he happens to be sitting. Playing with him usually takes more effort from me than he’s willing to expend. He’s often content to just watch something, rather than chase or pounce on it, unless it’s actually in his face. In this picture he’s got a fragile grip on the string between his paw, right in front of his snoot.

I played with him till he stopped reacting to the string bumping against his face, and he apparently decided that he was in a great place for his midday nap.

Eventually, His Holiness got tired, so he curled up and just went to sleep in the box. He spent most of the rest of the day there.

He ended up spending most of the rest of the day there, and I was hopeful that this would become a regular thing, but since then it seems that he’s only really going to interact with the box when he’s either begging for catnip, or has just been given some. As I mentioned earlier, I’m not willing to train him to harass me for drugs, so box time will probably end up being an infrequent occurrence. Regardless, I’m glad I got these pictures to share with all of you.

If you want to help me keep this ravenous beast fed, you can become a patron for less than four pennies a day. Because of my immigration status in Ireland, I’m prohibited from normal work, so this is my only income for the next few years, and I’d like to have it be my main source of income after that. If you think this blog’s contents are worth a dollar per month (or more – more is definitely OK), consider helping cover the costs so I can keep doing this. Crowdfunding takes a crowd, so I really do mean it when I say that I want more patrons in the $1-$5 range. If you can’t afford that, share my posts if you like them, and thanks for reading either way!

Video: Exploring Oregon’s hidden lava caves

I’ve been doing housework and research for my novel today, so I’m sharing a video I found about lava caves. For a bonus, we have a glimpse into the work life of a cave explorer, which appears to be one of the most terrifying jobs in existence. I don’t consider myself claustrophobic, and I’ve been in a few caves – including some that got pretty tight.

But those caves had had people go through them many, many times before, and there was no way I would have been in them had they not been safe. Exploring unknown caves, and wedging myself through a passage that could just keep getting smaller? No thank you. It would terrify me even if I hadn’t read Junji Ito’s horror comic The Enigma of Amigara Fault. Personal discomfort aside, I’m glad that professional cavers like Ken can show us these places I’m too afraid to explore, and get fulfilment from doing it.

 

Video: How plate tectonics gave us seahorses

It’s a question that haunts all of us. It creeps into our minds as we try to fall asleep. It lingers in our minds, sapping attention away from life-changing events.

Whence seahorses?

How did such creatures come to be, and why do they seem to exist everywhere? Are seahorses the proof of supernatural creation that we’ve been looking for all this time? Will I have to give up my atheism for them? Only time will tell, but for now, here’s a video on seahorse evolution, and how it was influenced by the movement of the continents.

Video: The Insect Tier List

After yesterday’s post, I figured we could use something about insects that’s not all doom and gloom. These tier lists are very much made from a gamer’s perspective (in case that wasn’t obvious), so assignments of value tend to be based on things that translate well to games, so I wouldn’t call this “education”, precisely, but it’s a fun look at an assortment of insect “play styles”.

Dog-distracting for Halloween

Since Halloween is fireworks season in Dublin, and tomorrow is a bank holiday, we’re at a friend’s house helping distract her dogs. Bella hates fireworks as much as Raksha did, but where Raksha would just pace and pant and hide under my desk, Bella barks at fireworks (and airplanes).

We’re playing Munchkin Cthulhu with Over The Garden Wall on in the background. It seems to be enough to mask the booming overhead.

Bella is a sheltie who hates loud noises with a fiery passion, and barks at them so they know of her hatred.

 

Lucy is a yellow lab sleeping with her snout on my foot. She’s more bothered by Bella’s freaking out than by the fireworks.