Essays on AI, software, and the world they're reshaping.
Mostly arguments about power, money, and attention — with notes on the systems I build in between. Grouped by what they are about; filter by stage for the date-ordered archive, or browse by topic.
SEEDLING Rough notes, still formingBUDDING Developing, partially revisedEVERGREEN Considered finished and maintained
Budding
49- BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Sports Are the Last Public Ritual
In a secular, atomized society, stadiums are one of the few places where strangers still cry together without irony. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Where Did Everybody Go?
Third places are disappearing because we priced out the conditions that made community happen for free. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Why We Stopped Repairing Things
Your grandparents repaired everything. You throw everything away. This isn't a generational virtue difference. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Surrender Is Not Giving Up
Surrender and defeat get treated as the same word, and the confusion costs you the one move that actually works under pressure. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Suburbs Are a Ponzi Scheme
Most American suburbs cannot pay for their own infrastructure. The math has never worked. We just kept building anyway. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
How Socialists Won New York
How a DSA assemblyman beat Andrew Cuomo with 50,000 volunteers and no corporate money, and what it means for American politics. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Monero in 2026: Technical Advances Meet Regulatory Headwinds
Monero's cryptography keeps getting stronger while exchanges keep delisting it. Where that leaves an investor in 2026. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
The Taoist Case Against Hustle Culture
Hustle culture treats more force as more results, and a 2,500-year-old text already explained why that breaks. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Due Process Is Already Dead
Immigration enforcement already operates outside constitutional norms, and the exceptions it pioneered are spreading into the rest of the legal system. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Why Reform Fails
You can't vote your way out of structural violence. The system is working as designed. A critique of reformism without nihilism. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
The University Is a Credentialing Machine
Higher education stopped being about knowledge long ago. It's a sorting mechanism for employers, and the content is incidental to the credential. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Expertise Is a Social Relation
Someone can know something true and still not count as an expert. Expertise is competence plus recognition, and recognition is political.