Advice for transmuting a disaster — 1. A parable, or something When you first notice the cracks, you don’t see anything extraordinary. Walls crack sometimes. That’s how things go. When the first brick falls, you call it an anomaly. You say, that brick was rotten anyway. It alone is at fault for its failure. When it hits the ground, it shatters…

What brain anatomy and physiology can teach us about optimizing our political systems — Americans do not trust the government. Polls from Pew and Gallup alike show our trust and satisfaction with the state are in the toilet. Our quality of life is in decline. Our belief in the fairness of our economy is slipping. Our view of the country is changing from that…

2/10 was discontent — The first snow fall is magic. The sky turns white and lets its hair down, spinning in the breeze until it blankets the ground and silently invites the world to hush. The trees shed their leaves and take on soft, white coats. My breath fogs the air in front of…

Is urbanization the key to a sustainable future? If not, what is? — Apparently, the pandemic is over now, and since the end of quarantine, people have been steadily making their way back into cities like Londoners after the Blitz. Despite all the talk of cities emptying out during the Covid era, the exodus of affluent city-dwellers to less-crowded places did not stem…

Mental health care is crucial, but let’s not pretend therapy alone will fix our problems. — After going back and forth on the decision for the better part of four years, I finally decided to switch careers. Turns out, being an anarchist is not, on its own, a career, and the paying jobs adjacent to the organizing I like doing are consistently exploitative, competitive and politically…

Considering the form of an illusory world — The mind speaks in metaphor. Everything we see, hear, smell, touch, taste, is a construction based on our brain’s sorting of chaotic stimuli coming in through our sensory organs. Variations in light and vibration reach our bodies and our brain interpret these data based on the patterns of past experience…

I can’t stop seeing it. It’s everywhere around us. Do you see it too? — “When did we agree to live and lie and die in embers of a cold old fire nobody remembers?”— Lankum I’m doing that thing again. That thing I still seem to keep doing even when I know it’s hurting me, hurting other people. I can’t stop. I entered into the…

As BTV heads to the polls tomorrow, a new model of city politics is on the line — It’s Town Meeting Day here in Vermont tomorrow, a charming tradition of real democracy that lives on almost nowhere else in the U.S. today. On the first Tuesday in March, Vermonters gather in towns across the state to elect local officials, pass city budgets and vote on changes to municipal…

There are lots of real things you have not personally experienced. — The Internet, this website in particular, is full of people telling other people what to do. I am often one of them. Everyone wants to share their story, their perspective, their knowledge, in the hopes of influencing others and improving the world, or at least of feeling heard. For some…