• Biden Meme

  • You’re so worried about imploding like a blackhole that a gravastar gets you

    You’re so worried about imploding like a black hole that a gravastar gets you instead. Not the collapsing, all-consuming kind, mind you, but the particularly smug sort of gravastar. The one that sits there, perfectly balanced between collapse and explosion, radiating just enough existential snark to remind you it knows something you don’t. “What are…

  • Hard Problems

    In the current cultural landscape, we are inundated with the effects of hot media, where everything is designed to captivate and engage as quickly and intensely as possible. This is the world of easy engineering—where technologies and systems are designed for maximum efficiency and accessibility, often at the expense of depth or complexity. The focus…

  • The Internal Clock

    The internal clock—the rhythm of attention and expectation honed by our optimized cognitive processes—demands precision. A narrative must hit its emotional or intellectual beat at just the right moment to captivate the human mind. Television series, by their very nature, are purpose-built to meet these demands. Unlike books, which are often sprawling, open-ended, and subject…

  • A Palimpsest of Power

    The Middle East has always been a battleground, not merely of armies but of narratives, symbols, and structures of meaning. Its history is a cyclical tragedy: every civilization that enters it—whether Macedonian, Roman, Ottoman, or Israeli—comes armed with the conviction that they can succeed where others have failed. Yet, time and again, they are unmade,…

  • Aleppo

    Somewhere north of the rotting heart of Aleppo, where the roads are just suggestions and the sky is the same dull gray as the mortar dust, the Pentagon’s militia went to war with the CIA’s boys. It wasn’t news to anyone on the ground, least of all the fighters pulling triggers with American ordnance, but…

  • Rover

    The screen flickered again, its harsh blue glow casting jagged, angular shadows across the cockpit. Rover Unit R-VR07 adjusted his position within the cramped confines of the escape pod, his articulated limbs whirring softly against the silence. Somewhere deep within his titanium chassis, algorithms churned in quiet frustration. They found no solution. The barren rock…

  • PAC Memo

    Internal Memo To: PAC Strategy Committee From: Funding Allocation Team Subject: Maximizing Value from “Independent” Thinkers Team, In our ongoing mission to counter the dirtbag left’s narrative, it’s critical that we double down on funding independent thinkers like [Deleted Name] and [Deleted Name]. These two have perfected the delicate art of looking like they’re just…

  • Firestarter

    Scene: Boardroom, Stratodyne Aerospace Headquarters, circa Now The conference room shimmered with chrome surfaces and LED screens, a mausoleum for billion-dollar decisions. Aloysius “Al” Riparini, CEO of Stratodyne Aerospace and occasional reader of Popular Mechanics, slouched in his ergonomic chair like a sullen Apollo.  He forward, hands steepled, his face carved in the grim expression…

  • The Art of Writing

    The Business of Being Read There’s a new breed of prose jockey out there, and they’re hell-bent on cornering the market on words. They’re not journalists, not novelists, not even the rugged, chain-smoking bloggers of yesteryear—no, they’re Substackers. These digital scribes have proclaimed themselves the saviors of the written word, promising to deliver insights, frameworks,…

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