Dance It Out
Synopsis: Strasbourg’s council met the dancing epidemic of 1518 by paying for more music.
Theme archive
Musings on Breakdown and Renewal
Collapse, crisis, institutional decay, recovery, renewal, and the patterns that follow breakdown.
The Priesthood Problem
Professionalism, Expertise, and the Quiet Surrender of the Self
Escape Velocity
Hierarchy, exit and scale in the creed steering our technological future
This Land Is Sacred
How the Sacred is Excluded by Industrial Economism
Too Gentle by Half
Synopsis: Why do societies mock the tenderness they claim to admire?
Twenty Naza
A documentary, a word for the dead, and the distance between knowing and stopping
Postponed Until Further Notice
The rapture and other improbable notions circulated by the idiocracy
No More Optimism Please. More Imagination
Synopsis: Our dread of the future may be less a failure of imagination than an accurate reading of the present.
The Man Who Brings The Future
I have spent twenty years watching a certain kind of man arrive in this part of the world, and I have never once managed to like him.
The Metabolism of Discourse
We are living through an era in which the compression of attention has become so total that we no longer register it as compression.
Fantasy Worlds
Children Who Read the Future as an Instruction Manual
The Arithmetic of Standing Still
Australia’s productivity angst and the economics of presence
Who Is Allowed To Say Stop?
A summons to pause unconstrained development of AI
Elasticity Has Its Limits
It might sound implausible, but a Patriot interceptor missile takes longer to build than a war takes to fight.
What Life’s All About
We live, let’s be honest, in a world that appears to be losing its mind.
Beyond the Reach of Recovery
Collapse, Ecology, and the Unforgiving Present
Some Truths About Getting Old
Modern society has developed a peculiar habit of romanticising old age.
What The Body Already Knows
Somatic Intelligence and Industrial Civilisation
Certainty’s Standing Ovation
A thousand people rose to their feet in Sydney on 22 August 2026.
When Numbers Whisper Sweet Nothings
Mathematics, Meaning, and the Search for Intentionality
Source networks
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Substack / Published periodically
The Hames Report
Long-form essays and reflections on the future of everything. Read and support on SubstackPatreon / Published daily