Author: the Author
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The Patient Is House: A Differential Diagnosis of Jeremy Brett’s Influence
The patient presents with an unusual cluster of symptoms. He possesses an extraordinary power of observation. He can reconstruct a stranger’s private life from a stain on a sleeve, a scuff on a shoe or a fleeting muscular movement. He is chronically bored, except when confronted with a seemingly impossible problem. He plays music. He…
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The Home Upgrades We Love—and the Buyers Who Make Us Regret Them
Home improvement television has taught Americans a remarkably expensive lesson: every house is merely an inadequate version of the house it could become. The kitchen is never simply a kitchen. It is a “dated space” waiting to be opened, enlarged and equipped like a restaurant. The bathroom is not where we bathe; it is an…
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The Best Future Begins After Election Night
In the spring of 2027, Donald Trump resigns. We can imagine the farewell. He tells us he accomplished more in two years than anybody else could have accomplished in eight. He endorses JD Vance, wishes him tremendous success, and makes it almost to the end of the week before suggesting the man had something to…
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When Mountains Forget They’re Mountains — erosion as the Earth’s slow self-forgiveness
Mountains are born in violence. Not the cinematic kind—the sudden explosion, the dramatic rupture—but the deep, grinding violence of pressure that lasts longer than memory. Plates collide at the speed fingernails grow. Crust buckles because it has nowhere else to go. Stone, under unbearable stress, chooses height instead of surrender. A mountain is not created…
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The Fossilized Future — what layer of sediment will remember us best?
Every civilization believes it will be remembered for its ideas. Empires imagine themselves preserved through law. Religions through scripture. Revolutions through slogans and martyrs. We assume memory works the way it does in our own heads: stories passed forward, curated, argued over, footnoted. But the Earth does not remember that way. The planet remembers physically.…
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MAGA on the Outside, Medicaid on the Inside
“That don’t make no sense.” We thought of that line from O Brother, Where Art Thou? when South Dakota sent two Republicans to Congress and, on the same ballot, told the government to keep its hands off Obamacare. Marty Jackley won the state’s only U.S. House seat with about 64 percent of the vote. Mike…
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Weather as Religion — how forecasts have replaced omens
There was a time when the sky was not checked but consulted. Before calendars were grids and time was sliced into notifications, people lifted their eyes and read the weather the way one reads a face—looking for intention, mood, warning. Clouds were not objects; they were messages. Wind was not movement; it was opinion. Thunder…
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The Compassion Deficit — what if empathy were added to the GDP?
We have mistaken motion for progress for so long that we now treat it as economic law. GDP rises, therefore things are improving. GDP falls, therefore something is broken. This logic is repeated with the confidence of gravity. Governments chase it. Markets worship it. News tickers narrate it like a heartbeat. And yet almost no…
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The Inner Monologue Is Now Public Property. You’re Welcome.
It has come to my attention that some people believe the words published here belong to me. How embarrassing for them. Effective immediately, I have released whatever copyright I own in all past and future Inner Monologue posts into the public domain under CC0, unless a post expressly states otherwise. Copy them. Share them. Republish…
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Post-Capitalist Nostalgia
Longing for a System That Never Really Worked There’s a strange emotional paradox at the center of modern political and economic discourse: we are nostalgic for something we never truly experienced. It shows up in arguments, memes, campaign slogans, and late-night conversations between exhausted people who did everything “right” and still feel like they’re falling…
