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The Intrepid

The Circular Firing Squad of Productivity

Three articles landed within weeks of each other, each diagnosing a productivity crisis, each blaming something different. Together, they reveal more than any intended: we have no idea what we're measuring anymore. The Accusations The device hoarding article warns that Americans keeping phones for 29 months instead of

The JARLS Manifesto: Trust Over Compliance

Prelude: The Age of Manuals Every field eventually drowns in its own documentation. Software did it. Government did it. Tabletop role-playing games certainly did it. By the late 2010s, game shelves and digital libraries were groaning under the weight of 300-page tomes for what were once five-page ideas. A GM

The Molecule, Day Three: Combustion and Exhaust

There’s a narrow window in Portland traffic where you get an unimpeded straight shot through I-84 into downtown, and I missed that aperture this morning, getting carried along a viscous stream of cars across the Morrison Bridge, down Naito Parkway, and into the $17 a day garage where optimism

The Evolution of Opinion Commerce

How the Reactor Learned to Monetize Thought Opinion Commerce—the exchange of perspectives, analysis, and commentary for attention, status, or money—is as old as human civilization. Opinion Commerce is the industrialization of persuasion. The technologies change, but the substrate—human attention and its monetization—remains constant. From Parisian salons

Mecha Borg: Operation Neighborhood Watch

A scenario in the rubble Introduction Premise: A squadron of mecha has been left behind during a city-wide withdrawal. The comms grid collapsed in the first hours; all command frequencies are jammed. The patchwork unit huddles in the ruins—half scratch barricade, half inherited scrapyard—waiting for extraction that will

The Molecule, Day Two: Compression

I arrive at 6:54AM on my own set of wheels, slipping into a vacant spot on the first level of the parking garage across the street from the courthouse. Today I have a wall charger, longer cables, a copy of JP Ahonen's Sing No Evil, all stuffed

The Döömenvalley Redux: The Karelia Offensive

Mörk Borg One-Shot of Retribution and Remembrance THE SITUATION The DNS (Definitely Not-Sees) remnants fled east. Now the So-Be-It Regime occupies what's left of Döömenvalley—claiming "liberation" while cataloging everything that made it home. Commissar Draganov, the officer who killed Döömenpapa's family during the

The Molecule, Day One: Intake

The molecule arrives at 6:45 AM, having paid its entrance fee. Twenty dollars to Uber to avoid the bus, though public transit will claim its due eventually. The courthouse doors remain locked until 7:30. No explanation was offered. The institution kept its own hours. A coffee shop nearby

The Constitutional Turducken

Or, The Right To Bear Arms And Why We Can't Have Nice Things "Unfortunately, [the academics] agree because they are all studying the same part: the anus." —David Yamane, sociologist of Gun Culture 2.0 I. Ambient You pull into the lot fifteen minutes after opening.

Propaganda's Red Shift and ZTT's Sonic Temple

Forever 20 Minutes into the Future The 2025 release of A Secret Sense of Rhythm, A Secret Sense of Sin: The Complete ZTT Propaganda offers six discs spanning their time on ZTT Records (1983-85), curated by the label's archivist Ian Peel. It includes their 1985 debut A Secret