The billionaire with the bunker in New Zealand isn't actually preparing for the apocalypse. Not really. He's telling us a story. It's a story about scarcity and exclusivity, about knowing something others don't, about having options when others won't. The
The least fun fact you're likely to read today: IBM helped the Nazis. Through its German subsidiary Dehomag, "Big Blue" custom-engineered Hollerith punch card machines specifically designed to meet the Third Reich's requirements for tracking, sorting, and processing human beings. These were specialized systems
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night
I've lost count of how many times I've been cornered at conferences by men in meticulously over-casual $300 t-shirts, evangelizing their startups with religious fervor. "We're DISRUPTING the entire industry," they insist, with the insufferable confidence of someone who believes their "
I've written a few words lately about trying to shift away from U.S. tech dominance. I want to buy European/Canadian, support independent software over big tech, and move toward a digital life that aligns with my ethics. I want to question as much as I can
During COVID, I started working on a book called Permissionless. It was born out of frustration—the kind that gnaws at you when you see how broken the systems are, how unnecessary the gatekeepers have become, how much red tape gets in the way of solving real problems. The book
“Life isn’t a series of good and bad choices. It’s harder to steer it one way or the other than most people think. You just get pulled along. You look back and you wonder, “could I have changed the course of my life?” Maybe you could’ve…but
The best parts of life are messy. They refuse to follow scripts. They defy prediction. They explode past the dull constraints of data. And Silicon Valley is a doomsday cult that keeps clawing at them, stripping away the raw, unpredictable joy of the human experience and replacing it with something
We've all heard the saying. "Everyone is entitled to their opinion." But it's not quite true, is it? An opinion isn’t a birthright, and it ain't a free pass to the conversation. It’s not something you wake up with, fully
Fuck it man. Just put on some Grateful Dead. Put on some Aretha. Print some kind of zine. Paint a sign. Start a band. Write a manifesto. Bootleg a t-shirt. Hand out stickers. Throw a party. Keep it weird.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 cast a long shadow. France, humiliated and burning for revenge. Germany, rising and certain it had to strike first to stay on top. Every decision, every alliance, every military maneuver was shaped by one core belief: another war wasn’t just possible—it was inevitable.
We curate ourselves into something safe. We smooth out our rough edges. We keep things palatable, we stay detached, we’re less invested, we’re dedicated to avoiding embarrassment at all costs. That’s the mantra. Be cool. Be aloof. Don’t try too hard. Don’t try at all.
Pizza Party
For years, the internet has been shrinking. Not in size, not in data, but in ownership. A vast, decentralized network of personal blogs, forums, and independent communities has been corralled into a handful of paved prison yards controlled by a few massive corporations. Every post, every “friend,” every creative work—
My current project: I've been dusting off the old hard drives with my ripped CD collection and loading them into an iPod. A 20-year-old piece of tech with its click wheel intact, no WiFi, and no algorithm feeding me recommendations I didn't ask for. The result:
Pizza Party
I don't run analytics tools on my blog or The Index. Why would I? I don’t write for numbers. I write for people. There are no ads, no sponsors, and no investors to placate with colorful graphs and charts. In my experience, most metrics measure the wrong
Big Tech designed their platforms to keep you trapped. YouTube, X, Instagram, and TikTok aren't neutral spaces. They're businesses built on capturing your attention and data. Their algorithms, notification systems, and content policies all serve one purpose: keeping you engaged on their terms. And their terms
25.9% of teenagers who spend four or more hours daily on screens experienced depression symptoms in the past two weeks. 27.1% reported anxiety symptoms. Higher durations of Internet use increases depression levels. Adolescents who spend more than three hours online daily are more likely to fall into the
There is something perverse about every voice of record, every journalist with a profile, every writer with an audience abandoning ship for Substack. It's been a growing trend for the past few years, and it's getting worse. Substack has done an excellent job convincing intelligent people
Scroll through Instagram for a few minutes, and you’ll be swamped by a parade of sponsored posts promising extraordinary wealth through minimal effort: “PDF farming” generating €25,000 monthly, rebranded ebooks yielding “$4230 in a month,” or selling “thousands of books without writing them.” These aren’t fringe scams
Pizza Party
The world can no longer trust American tech. If that sounds dramatic, take a step back and consider the facts. The United States is a nation in the thrall of authoritarianism, owned and operated almost completely by a far-right doomsday cult intent on betraying every alliance, every contract, every promise