A standing record of thinking-in-progress. New pieces every other Thursday on media, politics, attention, and the long arc of ideas worth defending.
The piece that best captures the moment — set aside for readers who want context, not just headlines.
We were promised that abundant information would make us better citizens. What it has produced, instead, is a generation of people who know the headline of everything and the substance of nothing. A meditation on the geometry of attention — and what it costs us to keep refreshing.
Continue readingFour pieces from the last several weeks. Read them in any order; each stands alone.
Maps drawn in real time, narratives written before the polls close, and the strange theatre of a country that watches itself decide.
Publishers insist the novel is back. The receipts, read carefully, suggest something more interesting and a little more troubling.
AI assistants are not arguing with us yet. That may be the problem. On the quiet corruption of never being disagreed with.
On the slow disappearance of the posed picture, and what the snapshot-archive will look like to the people who inherit it.
Commentary is organized by the questions it keeps returning to, not the news cycle of the week.
No tracking, no promotions, no third-party sharing. One essay, one short note from the desk, and a single recommended read from elsewhere on the web.