AI + ASKESIS + THE MONASTIC LIFE (but sex included) The great misunderstanding about the AI abundance economy is that freedom from work will make life less structured. For humans to flourish, it may require the opposite: stronger routines, simpler…
THE ICE SILK ROAD: CHINA’S PRIORITY NOW GREENLAND HAS FALLEN On 9 September 2026, the Dubai Tower arrived at Teesport carrying 1,370 TEU of Chinese goods, an event that might have seemed entirely unremarkable given the vast quantities of batteries,…
Middle Powers Rising: Carney, the Highest IQ (Western) Politician? There are moments in geopolitics when an apparently eccentric proposal reveals more about the direction of the international system than a treaty or a war, and Ursula von der Leyen’s suggestion…
Billie Jean x Kahneman x MSM Billie Jean: You Hear What They Wanted You to Hear There is a problem with Billie Jean that has less to do with music than with the way we construct reality. Most listeners think…
Voluntary Dystopia: From HAL to the Ship of Theseus In 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke gave us one of the most enduring images of technological fear. Astronaut Dave Bowman, trapped outside Discovery One, asks HAL 9000 to open…
The Pentagon Took the Red Pill. Then Spat It Out. There is a wonderfully unsettling moment in The Matrix when Morpheus offers Neo the choice between the blue pill and the red pill. The popular interpretation is that one pill…
The American New Dollar: How America Could Pay Every Dollar of Its Debt — and Still Default The United States cannot run out of dollars, and that is precisely why the holders of American debt may one day have reason…
Apollo in Plato’s Cave There is an obvious question to ask about artificial intelligence and art, which is probably why it is the wrong question. Can AI create? The question has already produced an industrial quantity of argument, much of…
Ann Coulter: The Foundation Trump Built His Presidency On When Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower on 16 June 2015 and announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, much of the political establishment heard…
European Agriculture as a Portfolio-Management Problem: Denmark Is the Poster Child There is something superficially compelling about Denmark’s great agricultural bargain. The country intends to transform its landscape on a scale not attempted for more than a century, creating 250,000…