The authors describe the Texas law banning most abortions and authorizing vigilante actions against people who seek abortions, doctors who perform them, and those who "aid and abet" abortions. The law outlaws the vast majority of abortions, as it prevents termination of pregnancies where a heartbeat can be detected, a stage that is often reached before a person even knows they're pregnant. Many reports have been describing this as a "six-week abortion", though this is somewhat misleading, as it is actually four weeks after conception, and two weeks after a missed menstrual cycle. Even a person who takes a pregnancy test the first day after a period is missed would need to obtain an appointment for an abortion, despite all waiting periods, within two weeks. The law took effect at midnight on September 1, 2021, and the Supreme Court did not take action on emergency requests to block the law. This is the first law banning abortions at such an early stage of pregnancy that has been allowed to take effect, even briefly.

Black LinkedIn users describe problems they've experienced with the platform, including material they post not appearing or being taken down, or getting surprisingly less traffic than expected. LinkedIn has insisted this is not based in systemic bias, but "stem from a mix of content-neutral technical bugs, the popularity among other users of particular posts, and the occasional moderation error". This explanation has been met with (very reasonable) skepticism from Black users.

Forsgren writes about measuring workplace productivity, and the limitations of using common metrics like lines of code or number of commits to do so. She speaks about a "more holistic framework" to measure productivity, which would factor in dimensions like satisfaction, well-being, communication, and collaboration, along with measurements of efficiency or output. She discusses how naive interpretations of GitHub statistics, which show increased time working, more code pushed, and faster merges since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, would suggest a positive outlook on productivity, but that these ignore the enormous amount of burnout and dissatisfaction in the tech industry that point to this being very unsustainable. While I like her idea of a holistic view of productivity, I am generally skeptical of telemetry and automated "measurements" of productivity, which I think do a disservice to workers.

A recent study has suggested that "the pandemic has ramped up discrimination against racial and ethnic minority groups — one that may be as widespread as it is difficult to detect". After a surge in incidents of anti-Asian violence related to the pandemic, the researchers investigated whether similar attitudes may be influencing less visible, "everyday" forms of discrimination. Researchers found that survey takers were considerably less likely to respond positively to an Asian or Hispanic person when evaluating roommate candidates when they had been primed to think about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Employees at Apple often link their personal and work accounts for various reasons, including so they can beta test software, and because it is difficult to switch between iCloud accounts. As a result, they have been subjected to major invasions of privacy, including their messages, photos, and other data being exposed. They have been told they are not allowed to wipe any of their devices, potentially exposing extremely personal data including tax and loan information and compromising photographs.

The authors describe an "infodemic" that is occurring in concert with the pandemic, where deceptive material about COVID-19, masks, and vaccines is spreading widely and resulting in those who believe it taking fewer preventative steps against the disease. They discuss engaging pandemic-response playbooks to try to counteract misinformation before it goes viral.

Smilges talks about how LGBTQ Pride is so often inaccessible to them and their disabled friends for various reasons—"they're too loud, too crowded, and too filled with unwanted or accidental touch, as well as planned without basic accommodations, like ramps, sign language interpreters, and food/drink alternatives for people with specific dietary needs". They talk about the commodification of Pride, and how it is built around serving those who are wealthy, not disabled, gender-conforming, and white. They also talk about how they are rethinking the emotions around disability and queer pride.

Kaczorowski describes her recent experience with burnout, and how it's different from her experiences with the phenomenon before the pandemic began. She gives advice on how to treat people who are experiencing burnout, and she also talks about how she believes that there will be a massive amount of burnout (or people acting on current burnout) in the near future as people move past the uncertainty of the earlier portions of the pandemic.

Louise writes about how the media prefers to show disability in the form of "inspiration porn" or stories of traumatic events, but refuses to cover serious issues affecting disabled people. She laments the lack of openly disabled journalists, which she says contributes to the continuing narrative of "person disabled by shocking and traumatic event, hates being disabled, 'overcomes' their disability".

Rands writes about stress, things he does to combat stress, and leading indicators of when "it's about to hit the fan" in terms of stress. He also talks about how he checks in with his team on their stress levels.