Slouching toward a zero-context culture
We are headed down an AI-accelerated path toward hyper-efficient society and teams that lack the openness, freedom, and creativity of high-context cultures.
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The Nine Revolutions of Democracy
How Micah Bornfree's Unified Theory of Revolution combined with a dimension of time might could help us make sense of the work confronting us and keep us moving toward the nation we need.
The Supreme Court as culturemaker
The highest court in the land not only decides our most fundamental constitutional questions, their power to choose which cases they hear at all fundamentally shapes our civic culture and discourse in largely silent ways.
Weekend Edition: Just better strategy
We need adaptable, creative strategies to confront the challenges and embrace the opportunities we are facing and that kind of adaptable creativity only emerges from diverse teams.
The wisdom of Octavia Butler we need right now
Why continuing to try to predict the future in a moment of impossibly heavy uncertainty might be one of our keys to changing course.
Weekend Edition: Upgraded agents are coming
Most discussion about generative AI tools has centered around the challenges and opportunities posed by synthetic content. Now that these agents are taking actions for us, what impacts might ceding that agency have on us and on society?
Party and ideology in 2025
Who does the hyperpolarized, hyperpartisan narrative in American politics really benefit? And is it getting in our way of something better...
Weekend Edition: How we become 130M Democrats
The work of party building is always ongoing, but emerging from our current dysfunction to build something new requires a deep commitment to transform a party that has been stuck for...a while.
Weekend Edition: 130M Democrats
The cracks are the map. Passive. Disconnected. Condescending. Exclusionary. Neoliberal. All solvable if we go straight at each of these perceptions or failures of the Democratic Party.
An economics of value beyond wealth
Examining the relationship between wealth, self-esteem, and community value might help us unlock new paths to transforming our economy and reclaiming our civic life.
Ready for another way
The Democratic Party has been in the wilderness for a long time now. Perhaps the consequences are stark enough, the excuses flimsy enough that we can finally embrace real transformation.
The work ahead
If damage is the strategy, then the cracks are our guide to the work our democracy needs from us, win or lose.
Section 230 ... as intended?
Our Federal courts may have accidentally turned Section 230 into the tool it was meant to be.
A real solution buried in a War Game
The most important insight might not be anything that happens in the simulated Situation Room but what kept one of the characters from ending up on the wrong side of the "war".
A slow reflection in a fast moment
Slowing down might help us unlock the creativity and the kindness we desperately need right now.
Art as instigator or healer?
The stories we share can transform us and our communities and our society. But artists must be willing to accept the responsibility that comes with those powers.
Old laws, new systems
As Rishad Tobaccowala says sometimes "the future does not fit in the containers of the past." We need Congress to help us define new containers for information, culture, and community.
What if the means determine the ends?
Civilization's relentless focus on achievement and outcomes creates a more competitive worldview and makes us more vulnerable than we think.
Mark Zuckerberg did not apologize
Pause and shift (if you can)
Ending a year of "difficult" to begin a year of "dread"? How we might enter this new year in a way that might could lead to rebuilding some of what feels lost.
Newsletter
A Little Weekend Reading: "Always Show Up"
What an ancient text might have to offer us right now on how to show up in a relentless world.
Three months of writer's block
"We can restore anything"
No matter how heavy and intractable and desperate things may feel, we are not lost. But we might need to shift where we are look for direction.
Newsletter
Wisdom from friends
Sharing the voices of others to help us get more of what we need right now