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On Culture — On the things we create, and how they create us

• [audio] Sages and Wisdom — 16 May 2026
  The doctor and the guru run on the same authority structure. We just pick which one to trust by its costume. Choose by what sits under the coat or you lose to charlatans.
• [article] There are no levels — 1 May 2026
  Ideas that stick are shaped to be interesting, not true. Some of these are weaponised; snuck by our faculties of reason. AI uses them in spades. I call them karstica—superficially pretty, but hiding sinkholes. If you don’t learn to detect it, the thinking gets done for you.
• [audio] It's Not Social Media, Life Is Just Worse — 18 Apr 2026
  Social media isn’t the disease. It’s the symptom you can see. The sad kids on TikTok are there because they’re sad, not sad because they’re there.
• [article] Useful Men — 4 Apr 2026
  It’s true that the ‘pathways’ to manhood are closing. I don’t think it’s a crisis of masculinity though. It’s a crisis of no more excuses for incompetence. We’re trying to find the meaning of manhood when what we actually need are new skills. Men just need to be useful.
• [article] Values Don't Matter — 21 Feb 2026
  Values often function as virtue ethics—traits we’re expected to cultivate. But virtues are context-dependent: courage for a soldier isn’t courage for a teacher, and people respond primarily to their environment. So the real task is to design the context.
• [audio] Hydraulic Despotism — 21 Feb 2026
  You’re not coerced by malice. You’re coerced by convenience. Control the flow, control the people: the most discredited theory in political science describes social media, energy and compute perfectly. The alternatives exist. We just don’t use them.
• [audio] Atavism Isn't the Answer — 7 Feb 2026
  Seed oils, raw milk, cold plunges, tradwives—one template runs them all: name a modern ill, invent an ancestral past, sell the return as cure. It’s built on a fantasy we can’t verify.
• [audio] Values Don't Matter — 24 Jan 2026
  Values don’t shape behaviour. The room does. They’re virtue ethics relabelled—and courage for a soldier isn’t courage for a teacher. Build the context; drop the list.
• [article] Hydraulic Despotism — 1 Dec 2025
  Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.
• [audio] Mundane Cults — 29 Nov 2025
  Cults aren’t the fringe. They’re the architecture of ordinary community, and not being in one usually means something’s gone wrong. The question is whether yours is one you chose.
• [audio] Men Aren't From Mars — 15 Nov 2025
  Men and women aren’t wired differently. We read the same behaviour as reasonable in him and unreasonable in her—normalising troubled men while pathologising women’s ordinary needs.
• [marginalium] Digital Personhood — 1 Jul 2025
• [marginalium] Is culture socially costly — 30 Jun 2025
• [marginalium] The Personal and Private Nature of Smartphones — 25 Jun 2025
• [marginalium] Love is about betterment — 24 Jun 2025