How we started, and suggestions for starting your own project — Update: This is being rewritten and expanded on my newsletter, under the series Everyday Aesthetics. The first post is here.

The world’s slow move from dialogue to media — this post has moved here.

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations This story has moved here.

Let’s build communities, livelihoods, and small-scale economies — I have previously written about why Universal Basic Income (UBI) may result in poor outcomes, even if we’re able and willing to implement it. Here, I invite you to think about what an alternative — one that still addresses the issues UBI hopes to solve — might look like. If…

A long and convoluted allegory about the difference between what you can acquire and what you can keep. Unspoiler: I got carried away by a totally unnecessary thousand words here so if you don’t feel like reading silly stories about dead monarchs you can skip to the last section that…

What if we implement UBI and it makes everything worse? — Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Wait, scratch that — he won’t eat for a lifetime. Automation took over and fished the metaphorical seas dry. Meanwhile, some bold tech leaders pipe up…

College is the new High School and that should terrify everyone. Three headlines from this year: Cal State to overhaul remedial education, replace no-credit with credit-bearing classes (March, LA Times) For example, about 38 percent of last fall’s 61,757 CSU freshmen were found to need remediation in either English or math Algebra is the most failed course at community colleges across the country. Is it time to nix the requirement? (July, NPR)