Humanity

TLDR: Every morning you trust the floor exists without checking—that’s faith, not reason We’ve never met the number “2” or visited “the past,” yet base our lives on these abstractions Science celebrates these tools while ignoring they’re built on pure belief Project management taught me we always work backward from faith in an unseen future If we all share this foundational belief system, we should build societies that reflect it The Floor Beneath Your Feet You wake up. Your feet hit the floor. No structural analysis, no existential crisis, no flashlight to confirm reality. Just pure, unconscious faith that the world continues to exist between yesterday’s last glance and this morning’s first step. ...

There’s a phrase in Latin that refuses to let us hide: hic et nunc—here and now. Whatever your story—your religion, your cosmology, your philosophy of where souls come from or where they’re headed—today you are a human among humans. You woke up inside this species, on this planet, with agency. That is enough to give you a duty. Respect the origin story. Respect the destination. But protect the present. I’m convinced of something simple: if, by whatever cosmic lottery, your consciousness ended up in a living human, then you are responsible for what happens to us—now. Not responsible for everything, but responsible to someone. Responsible for the choices you touch, the systems you influence, the harms you prevent, the goods you can advance. ...

As a father of teenagers, I’ve been thinking hard about what skills they’ll actually need in a world where AI is everywhere. Not the hype, not the fear-mongering—just practical skills that will serve them well whether they’re applying to college, starting their first job, or building something of their own. This guide is for teens, but also for parents who want to understand what’s worth focusing on. It’s based on research, but written in plain language with real exercises they can actually do. ...

TLDR: Regulation is inevitable—if democratic institutions don’t write the rules, corporations will through their “permission systems” Current complex regulations favor large companies while crushing small competitors, creating digital feudalism where platforms extract rent from participation The solution isn’t eliminating rules but creating thin, open, transparent protocols like the early internet that enable innovation without permission How We Traded Democratic Rules for Corporate Permissions Regulation is the landscape, not the weather. Whether you’re building an app, writing a newsletter, selling crafts online, or just trying to share your work with the world, you will encounter rules that shape what’s possible. If democratic institutions don’t write them, the market’s largest players will. The question isn’t whether we’ll have rules—it’s who writes them, and whether they serve the many or the few. ...

TLDR: Labels like “left/right” or “elite/worker” don’t just describe reality—they create and reinforce the divisions we claim to oppose Inverting our language (“cancer got this person” vs “person has cancer”) externalizes conditions rather than making them defining features AI could amplify collective wisdom without the distorting lens of political categorization, helping us see each other as humans first Small linguistic shifts can create cascading changes in how we perceive reality and relate to each other In a world increasingly defined by division, we find ourselves trapped in a paradoxical cycle: the categories we create to understand our society reinforce the divisions we claim to oppose. Left or right, Democrat or Republican, worker or elite, pro-choice or pro-life—these labels don’t just describe reality; they actively shape it. ...