A Dance Forgotten, A Laugh Remembered
The yellow cobblestones of ulitsa Tsar Shishman were slick with rain, shining like wet amber under the streetlamps. The city was a familiar hum: trams…
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The tragedy of circular generalism
Systems are collapsing under the weight of those who cannot see specifics anymore. That is the central fact of this century, and almost everything follows…
Monday Brief – March 2nd – The Pheromone Trail, the Vacuum, and the Spiral
We live in the golden age of technological enlightenment. By which I mean your vacuum cleaner now has a microphone, a camera, LiDAR mapping, WiFi…
The Constant Beneath the Noise – On Trends, Human Nature, and the Forces That Outlast Every Technology
Walk through any major city and you can feel how urgently the present wants to be mistaken for destiny. Screens glow in every palm. Cars…
The Universe Isn’t Trying to Kill Your Company. You’re Doing That Yourself.
The Towel Problem Think, for a moment, the sheer range of things humanity has managed to not screw up. We split atoms. We put rovers…
Monday Brief – FEBRUARY 23RD – BAYES, AUTOCOMPLETE, AND THE COST OF PRETENDING THIS IS INTELLIGENCE
Bayes’ theorem is probably the single most important concept any rational adult can learn, which explains why almost nobody talks about it outside statistics departments…
AI Doesn’t Reduce Work, It Breeds It
In the beginning there was Work. It was formless, slightly resentful, and spread evenly across the day like butter that refused to melt. Then humanity…
You Fly the Plane
The last month of the morning schedule is always the hardest. Every weekday since September you’ve had to wake up at six, but it’s only…
Europe’s Last Chance to Rethink Itself, Before It Processes Itself to Oblivion
Europe is not collapsing. It is doing something more European than collapse: it is administering decline, competently, procedurally, and with a moral vocabulary that makes…
How the World’s Richest Company Forgot How to Think: The Spectacular Unraveling of Apple’s AI Dreams
There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from asking your phone a simple question and watching it fail spectacularly. Picture this: You’re trying to…
Monday Brief – FEBRUARY 16th – THE FUNERAL OF LANGUAGE (BUFFET IS LUKEWARM)
Elon Musk has now scheduled the death of human language, which feels efficient. Most civilizations wait for decline to become obvious before declaring something obsolete….
THE CITY THAT THINKS FOR ITSELF
I’ve spent twelve years inside the automotive industry watching companies pretend to innovate. Then I spent more years advising cities on why they should run…