Writing

Articles

Series One

Nobody's Job

Cities budget for water, power, and roads — and never for catching people, because that function was free until scale broke it. Eight pieces on why people fall, where the resources already are, and the machine that routes them.

Part 1

Nobody's Job

Two curves cross, and everything else in this series follows from it.

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Part 2

Nobody's Job: The Function No City Ever Funded

Start with a man I'll call Dale, because that isn't his name.

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Part 3

The Dumpster Math

Eleven fifteen at night, behind a strip mall you've driven past a thousand times.

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Part 4

The Tenth of a Percent

There is a room. It's usually beige, usually too cold, and there are more empty chairs than full ones.

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Part 5

What I Almost Built

An idea described in enough detail that you can feel why it seemed right — and then where it breaks.

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Part 6

Runners

Two in the morning, and the man in the driver's seat has been sober for nine weeks.

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Part 7

The End of the Pipe

Food out of a dumpster, into a crate, into a car at midnight, and then — where?

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Part 8

On Worth

The name of this organisation is Worthless Haunted Meat. People find it distasteful, which is the point.

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Series Two

Pass the Echo On

Four pieces on the new machines — what they took, what they gave back, and the test for pointing them at the right target. It ends where it was always heading: everything we were given came from the people behind us, and it only stays alive if it keeps moving.

Part 1

Terrified by a Function

A piece of software wrote a function better than I could, and I sat there genuinely frightened.

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Part 2

The Encumbrance

My friend Mr. J avoids AI wherever he can, and his reason is better than most of the reasons people give.

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Part 3

One Person, One Problem

Everybody loves something, and almost nobody can make a living from it. The reason isn't talent — it's overhead.

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Part 4

The Word

Three or four weeks into being genuinely good at something new, I made the mistake of naming it at lunch.

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And the one that started it

June 3, 2026

Worthless Haunted Meat

When people say asking for a friend — are they really asking for a friend? Or are they just naming themselves with a little extra room to breathe?

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