> Pretty humorous to quote anarchist thinkers and then endorse the government’s arguments, unilaterally telling me my gym is “not essential”

Sorry if i gave this impression. I precisely put "essential" in quotation marks to indicate that the interpretation is very subjective and variable. What i meant was that in order to have housing and food and what i personally consider basic human needs, most jobs are not needed: many people who previously felt like their job was a form of contribution to society took a step back with the first lockdowns and realized that overall and on average, society did just fine without them working at all. That's what i meant, and i certainly did not intend to imply that a virus can be beaten with cops and batons as most of our governments have tried (and failed), or that breathing fresh air and physical exercise should be illegal. Overall, there were pretty good anarchist analysis of the current Covid 1984 (wink) epidemic [0] [1], and you'll probably be glad to know i defied the lockdown and curfew on several occasions due to militant and/or mutual aid activities.

> More to the point of the article, I’d argue most PhD work meets the definition of “bullshit jobs”

Depends on what you call a job. If you do that to earn money and fame, sure that's bullshit. But in other cases, can we even call it a job? All PhD candidates (not a lot) i ever met here in France were in rather precarious situations and were studying questions that explicitly fascinated them, as part of related militant and creative activities. That kind of active curiosity often reminds me of the hacker spirit, but of course that's not the kind of mindset taught in most academic circles (the original "Watchdogs" for Nizan).

I often see people in various fields engaging in serious study of an issue that affects them. In computing, in cooking, in mechanics. We don't call these PhD because there's gatekeeping in academia, but most people are doing actual research work at some point in their life and i think that's something worth acknowledging/incentivizing. It strikes me that there are often similarities between certain blogposts detailing a problem space, and an actual research paper... but one is certainly less esteemed in our society.

> If you’re an anarchist, don’t expect the government to bail you out.

Even if you aren't an anarchist, please don't expect anything from powers that be. Read some historical propaganda and history of social struggles, or social sciences research papers.

> The “dream life” according to you, is very real, today, and you can get to it

I definitely agree with this part of the sentence, but we don't give it the same meaning. For me autonomy is something that is built collectively: there is no freedom or equality if only i enjoy them (or in other words, and as the saying goes, "none are free until all are free"). Earning a high-enough wage to afford to pay a landlord and supermarkets and dozens of evil corporations for very basic services is not a dream life in my view: i view it as earning a greater share of the pie baked off the back of exploited people. Personally, i'm more interested in free communes and how to build radical alternatives to the dystopian nightmare we're in.

[0] https://crimethinc.com/2020/04/10/and-after-the-virus-the-pe...

[1] https://fr.tild3.org/en/blog/2021/may-first/ (disclaimer: i co-wrote this one)