The Rule Is Never on Trial
An appeal tests the clerk against the manual. Putting the manual itself on trial takes a different instrument.
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Politics essays
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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
The Post-User Web
The interface is dying because the “User” is obsolete. On the post-user web, AI agents, friction economics, and the ris…
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
The Worldview with a Gun
No single ontology—vendor or otherwise—should monopolize state violence.
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.
Governance by Caricature
Volatocracy
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.
To Be is To Be Maintained
Power as the Allocation of Persistence
Vibe-Based Legitimacy (Charismatic Systems)
From algorithmic empathy to moral branding: the hidden politics of charisma in AI.
How I Learned to Laugh at 'Inevitable'
The powerful have always used the language of weather and physics to enforce their will. The best counter isn't a bette…
Truth Doesn’t Fail for Lack of Facts, It Fails on Contact with Power
Wound Worship: how harm becomes holy to silence dissent
Sacralization is power’s aftermarket armor. It’s the trick that makes the preventable untouchable.
Why Systems Lean on Our Backs: The Politics of Load Bearing
The political question isn’t if shocks arrive, but where the load lands. This essay reframes “policy” as applied physic…
"What I said came out wrong."
On Revision Privilege, a system that quietly distributes grace to the powerful while demanding finality from everyone e…
How Power Pretends It’s Natural
When is "I'm Concerned" a Command?
Are they really helping or just trying to take control? Here's how to know.
Long On Exclusion: How Investors, Institutions, and the State Keep the Margin Open
From 1493 papal decrees to 2025 AI eviction pilots, and the single profit logic that sustains them.
Systems Don't Speak Moral
Critique fails not because it's wrong, but because the system was never built to parse it.
Universality Disincentivizes Surveillance
American Culture is Stored in the Tax Code
The American Ergonomic Ideal
Who Gets to Tell the Story?
Why Denial Is the Core of Structural Power
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