Navigating Public Policy, Technology, Health, Data, and Innovation for a Fairer Future
On a quiet stretch of Indiana farmland, the combines should be humming. September is harvest season, when grain silos begin to fill and contracts with Chinese buyers typically bring relief to debt-laden families. Yet this year the bins stand conspicuously empty. China, once the world’s largest buyer of American soybeans, has turned off the spigot. Read More “The Heartland Pays the Price of Tariffs”
Something remarkable is happening. Across the country, renters are joining together to form tenant unions on a scale we have never seen before. In affordable housing complexes owned by Capital Realty Group, more than 1,000 residents in five states are organizing across buildings, across cities, and even across state lines. It is a hopeful, inspiring Read More “The New Labor Movement Is in Our Living Rooms”
Here’s what’s happening right now with artificial intelligence: A handful of giant corporations are seizing control of the most transformative technology of our era, making unilateral decisions about who gets access, how much it costs, and what purposes it serves. This approach is fundamentally backwards. AI should function as a public resource accessible to all Read More “The Future of AI Belongs to All of Us, Not Just Silicon Valley”
There’s something almost subversive about Anki. In a world where every app is designed to capture and monetize your attention, here’s one that actually wants to give your time back to you. It’s the most popular education app in the world, yet it has no marketing department, no subscription traps, no notifications designed to drag Read More “The Intellectual Elegance of Damien Elmes”
There’s a woman I know who makes chicken pot pie every Tuesday. Last week, she forgot the chicken. Not because she’s losing her mind, but because her mind was simultaneously tracking her mother’s medication schedule, her son’s upcoming science fair, and the quarterly budget review due Friday. She laughed about it later, but her story Read More “Burnout, Boundaries, and the Battle to Balance Care and Career”
Jenna runs a 35-person coffee roastery in the foothills of North Carolina. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows each other’s schedule, where a sick day strains the whole team. Like most small business owners, she wears every hat: manager, scheduler, problem solver, sometimes dishwasher. And like too many others, she’s been blindsided by Read More “The One Question That Helped a Small Business Stop Losing Good People”
There’s an old saying in the semiconductor world: chips are the new oil. That metaphor, like most good ones, has limits. Oil runs downhill. Chips run on demand. And sometimes, as in the case of Samsung’s stunning recent slump, the demand disappears just when everyone thought it would never stop. So, let’s walk this one Read More “Semiconductors and the Art of Missing the Moment”
If the Founding Fathers were alive today and happened to glance at Texas’s latest congressional redistricting map, they wouldn’t just raise their powdered eyebrows. They’d likely declare it a grotesque betrayal of everything they risked their lives to build. The map, unveiled by Texas Republicans and engineered under the invisible hand of Donald Trump, is Read More “Gerrymandering and the Betrayal of the American Ideal”
Large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude offer powerful capabilities, but long-form creative work remains a persistent failure point. Projects that begin with clarity and style often degrade into generic, fragmented output. What begins as collaboration turns into cleanup. Two terms now help frame this experience: Language mummification describes the erosion of voice and vitality Read More “Naming the Pain: Narrative Labor, Language Mummification, and the Hidden Costs of Writing with AI”
Promotions are slowing down, even for top performers. The numbers show it. In early 2024, just 1.3 percent of white-collar workers received promotions, the lowest rate in years. That drop is not random. It is structural. Companies are flattening. Layers of management are disappearing as organizations shift to leaner models. Many of these moves are Read More “Let’s Stop Rewarding Visibility Over Value”