The Week They Called In Sick
Every institution measures whether the work got done. Almost none measures who had to be there for it to.
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Ethics essays
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Critical Sobriety
On false dignity, comic truth, and seeing at the right scale
Uninhabitable Acts
Incidence Is Not Suffering
Modern Adulthood
"We Condemn the Excesses"
“We condemn the excesses” isn’t an apology, it’s a tactic. From Amritsar 1919 to Minneapolis 2026, how governments use…
Don’t Let Reassurance Do Engineering's Job
Why “we care” substitutes for obligation—and how delay gets disguised as kindness.
If Every User Is a Potential Threat...
People are not becoming inherently dishonest, lazy, or cynical. They are becoming game-theoretically optimal for the en…
You Don’t Have the Right
In this Age of Appeals, you have the paper right. And a stamina test.
How to Design for Cognitive Scarcity
Stop designing for the idealized “Hero User.” Build resilient interfaces that work when your user is stressed, tired, a…
Optimizing the User
Resilience is a subsidy we pay to cover the cost of structural failure
We're On It! The Age of Abundant Acknowledgement
Why being in process so often leads nowhere: Legitimacy engineering and “care signals” as governance tech
Pending: The political economy of waiting
The loading screen is the most powerful weapon in the modern state
Credibility/standing as an access-control system
Toothless Ethics: Why Principles Don’t Stop Machines
A guide to the difference between moral language and structural constraint
Assume Maximum Awareness
Institutional Apoptosis
Designing systems that know when to end
The Capture of “Maintenance”
Reclaiming the maintenance that keeps people alive rather than the one that keeps systems standing.
Temporal Capture: The Arbitrage of Human Duration
The Death of Slack
It appears we have successfully eliminated the margin for error. That's terrifying.
You Can Design Harm Out
How to design systems that protect human limits and reject harm as the path of least resistance
The Cowardice of Inference
Predictive modeling is always an exercise of political power.
Are You Usable Again Yet? (Clearance Culture)
In our burnout culture, "clearance culture" turns care into compliance. When are you truly ready to return to work? Thi…
Finitude As Love
Why embracing human limits can make our relationships, ethics, and systems more resilient
Vibe-Based Legitimacy (Charismatic Systems)
From algorithmic empathy to moral branding: the hidden politics of charisma in AI.
Who Has the Right to Sound Kind?
The real danger isn't that AI is cold and inhuman; it's that it's becoming perfectly, fluently "kind." "Counterfeit ten…
The In-House Ethicist
Before an institution can do immense harm, it must first learn to feel good about itself. It must learn to translate it…
Per What? The Denominator Is the Doctrine
The moral geometry of measurement, and how to read the metrics that lie without lying.
Stop Preaching. Start Engineering.
Goodness isn’t a moral trait; it’s a design property. When systems reward correction instead of denial, virtue becomes…
The Right to Fuck Up
We replaced repair with disposal. It’s time to build a more human world.
Terrain Over Character
Why the same harms keep recurring, no matter who is in charge.
When Explaining Makes Things Worse
We often use lengthy explanations after a mistake to manage our own discomfort. But true accountability requires concre…
The Ethical AI CEO Is a Contradiction by Design
Stop searching for an ethical AI CEO. The job is impossible. The problem isn't a lack of individual virtue, but a syste…
In Praise of Fickleness
“Fickleness” is not a moral failure; it’s fair to oscillate between incompatible demands.
"I ruin everything!"
If You Won’t Do It For Yourself
Body Language Is Bullshit. Let’s Stop Pretending.
It’s a neat, tidy, and incredibly convenient fantasy for cops, bosses, and security guards.
The Myth of Moral Decay
How American Policy Manufactures Bystander Inaction
Systems Don't Speak Moral
Critique fails not because it's wrong, but because the system was never built to parse it.
Racism as a Business Model
How Denial Became a Revenue Stream—and What It Will Take to Break the Machine
Routes and patterns
Reading paths
Concept maps
Where the same pressure keeps reappearing
More entry points
Question-led archive pages
Focused pages that stay close to specific recurring pressures.
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