How the Law of Reversal Is Remaking the Middle East “The Middle East is no more. Welcome to West Asia.” —Mohammed Soliman The post-Cold War regional order has entered a period of systemic collapse. That’s the verdict from Mohammed Soliman, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and one…
A Three-Part Mini-Series — Part One “They know us better than we know ourselves. That should frighten you.” — Shoshana Zuboff, Author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Doesn’t it give you the creeps—that you’re being studied by the minute? Right now, somewhere yonder, a server is coalescing around your identity—your name,…
Lessons on chaos and emergence from the universe itself “The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.” – Arthur Eddington The Dissolving World Open a news feed, scroll a timeline, wander the comment threads, and you can watch competing realities collide in…
“The way up and the way down are one and the same.” —Heraclitus Last week I went to see an orthopedic surgeon. A nagging shoulder–elbow issue I’m trying to sort out. That same evening, an ad popped up on Facebook: a Free Shoulder Rehab Masterclass. Like magic! Except it wasn’t…
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” —Henry Ford A New Monetary Era Begins: Born Into Fiat On this day, I was born 54 years ago—just…
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Daniel J. Boorstin Turning Inward: Noticing Things This week, I’m shifting my focus from the global to the local. I’ve temporarily muted the constant noise from the Global South, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, and…
“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” — E.O. Wilson This past year has been unlike any other. I haven’t left Southwest Michigan—haven’t seen any other part of the world. Instead, I ventured into a more elusive frontier: reality. Writing…
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.” — H.L. Mencken America Is Cracking—Can You Feel It? Some see the tremors as natural; others suspect a calculated scheme. I see both:…
“A lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as plain as the nose on your face.” —Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago We are living through a historical anomaly. Unless we change course, future generations will look back on this period as Peak AI (Peak Asinine Intelligence), where one nation’s debt-backed…
If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers. —Unknown So I’m binge watching The Gilded Age, a great show on HBO Max. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, it refers to the economic boom between 1865 (end of the Civil War) and the turn…
“Outstanding, sophisticated, and mesmerizing…a spiritual intrigue similar to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.” —ForeWord Reviews