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Dog Eats Übermensch
I was on my usual caffeine circuit, shuttling between the Starbucks and The Cow’s End, because one coffee is never enough and also because I enjoy the illusion of productivity that comes with walking briskly while holding a cup. It was a normal Venice morning—skaters wiping out, tech bros on rental e-bikes, a guy playing…
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UBI for Goobers
Somewhere in the rotting heart of the American experiment, I found myself on a government-funded Greyhound bound for an undisclosed location—the proving grounds for Universal Basic Income. They wouldn’t tell me where I was going, only that I’d be “embedded” with the first generation of economic refuseniks: the Goobers. A new class of citizen, neither…
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Prime Directive
James Bond: Prime Directive (An Amazon Studios Original Film—Available Exclusively on Prime Video with Free One-Day Shipping!) There was a time—perhaps mythical, perhaps real—when James Bond was a man of simple appetites: martinis, women, and the occasional war crime disguised as “Queen and Country.” He was a blunt instrument of empire, a wrecking ball in…
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In Defense of Piracy
The sky above the port was the color of a paywall, tuned to a dead channel. Piracy? It’s not rebellion—it’s maintenance. A kind of street-level protocol to keep the whole rotten edifice from collapsing into the sea of its own greed. You think those subscription fees disappear into the cloud? They’re fuel for the…
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The Great American Firewall
San Francisco, 2025. Up in the Hills, the Masters of the Universe are slumped in Herman Miller chairs, IV-dripping horse tranquilizers straight into their overclocked nervous systems. Ketamine—the official drug of the techno-aristocracy—keeps the existential dread at bay, smooths out the jagged edges of a collapsing world. One minute they’re at a fireside chat mumbling…
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Intraclass Warfare
In contemporary capitalism, we observe a recurring phenomenon in which one faction of the professional-managerial class (PMC) sacrifices another sector within its own class, ostensibly in the name of progress, accessibility, or efficiency. This process, which we might term sacrificial disruption, serves two simultaneous functions: first, it gains ideological legitimacy from below (by appealing to…
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The Great Atlantic Dog Show
I arrived in Brussels at dawn, trailing the scent of duty-free bourbon and whatever questionable chemicals I’d ingested somewhere over the Atlantic. The city had the feel of an overgrown bank lobby, marble and bureaucracy stretching endlessly in every direction, occupied by men who had long since traded their souls for mid-tier diplomatic immunity. It…
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The Poppy Index
Opium is a bureaucracy of the flesh. A ledger. A meticulous clerk with a pen of black tar ink, scratching endless entries into the neural book. It does not create—it records. A meticulous hand. A totalitarian librarian, bent over his desk, stamping “APPROVED” on each incoming sensory impression, filing away the vast detritus of human…
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Make Communism Great Again
The pearl-clutching over Vitalik’s comment seems to imply that all those crying foul are the ones who’d be out of moves and scrambling for a new hassle if crypto ever manages to design democracy as a self-executing machine. After all, if the system runs itself, transparent and fair, with smart contracts automating policies like universal…
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Seppuku Scheduling
Here’s how it happens. You sketch a plan. It’s airtight, bulletproof, a Swiss watch of efficiency. You will do A and B. Maybe, just maybe, if the stars align and the traffic lights are all green, you’ll do C. Then reality happens. You do A. You do B. And somewhere in the back of your…
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