The Ancient Ones
What do you want to be made of, when the meat fails and the curtain doesn’t rise again? You will die. There’s no glitter here. No hopeful Instagram filter to soften the glare. No TED Talk punchline, no therapeutic euphemism,…
The Elegy of the Known
Because we’d rather die predictably than live differently Ah, the fabled last words of every empire on the brink, every deluded CEO polishing their golden parachute, and every middle manager rearranging deck chairs on a vessel that’s already made passionate…
The Gospel of Less
A Midlife Lament in One Act, Three iPads, and Zero Chickens In 2010, I committed an act of spiritual fraud. I bought an iPad. Yes, I know. Not exactly the kind of thing you’d chisel onto a tombstone. Not unless…
Beauty in the Ashes: A Love Letter to the Few
A requiem from the strange lands of uncurated living Let’s drop the pleasantries. Reality is not the Eurovision Song Contest. No glitter cannons will herald your spiritual awakening. No rousing chorus will auto-tune your despair into meaning. No backup dancers…
Florence from Memory
Inner Fortitude in the Age of hyper-sensitive outrage addicts Is All Lost? The short answer is: yes—if you’re the kind of dopamine addict who needs five likes and a comment thread before breakfast just to feel marginally real. Then yes,…
The Politics of the Statistically Extinct
Dispatches from the Libertarian-Minarchist Schnitzel-Making Fringe The Politics of the Statistically Extinct Subtitle: Dispatches from the Libertarian-Minarchist Schnitzel-Making Fringe Let’s exorcise the formalities right at the top: I’m Austrian. Which means that every few years, I’m expected – like a…
Bureaucrats in the Machine: Globalism’s War on Builders
Or: How We Traded Builders for Bureaucrats and Called It Progress Let’s not mince words: capitalism, in its current flavor, is about as entrepreneurial as a DMV line on Ambien. No matter how often the TED talk crowd tries to…
We blew past the point of no return – and lit fireworks on the way down
How collapse became a lifestyle brand, why denial is the new national pastime, and what’s left when the lights go out. How do I feel? Not merely today — no, I mean in the grand, cosmic, thunderclap-of-history sense of “what…
Did I Miss the End of the World?
A Gen Xer’s shot at Navigating the Ongoing Clusterfuck Surprise, surprise. The void coughed me back up. Call it a mid-life software update… that crashed halfway through install. It was just me, sparring with my personal demons. We’ve settled into…
Are we happier with less
In 1991 I had my second tour as a United Nations soldier in Syria and met someone who told me about his former work as a bodyguard for some members of the Saudi Royal family. I was instantly hooked. I…
Are human rights treaties a scam
Few events have shaped human history like the French Revolution has. France has seen many revolts and also full-blown revolutions. Still, as soon as I say the very words, you will immediately and correctly associate them with the events that…
Space Origami
A couple of days ago the world was given the opportunity to watch the fourth test flight IFT4 of the Starship-Superheavy combo from SpaceX. This new super large space transport system has created quite a stir over the last couple…
The day after Globalization
In 1983, at the height of the Cold War, the world was exposed to a new movie. The Day After. Not a very good movie, no outstanding screenplay, and no imaginative plot. Even the pictures were rather – dull. But…
The slow death of the Cold War
In 1999, just one year shy of the Millennium, I lived in Paris. Like many of my age, I waited for the release of the movie Matrix. The Wachowski brothers built up the suspense of what it was all about…
Surviving Idiocracy
My twenties were dominated by traveling. Not to your next Spring Break you mind. I was a little more independent-minded and adventurous. The Middle East and Africa were in my crosshairs. Once there, I moved on by whatever means of…
How idiots make it to the top
I lived in Middle Eastern countries for many years. Those were incredibly beautiful years and I have come back with a lasting love for the entire region and its people. One day, I sat in a coffee shop and was…
The nature of the beast
In the 2006 movie Idiocracy, the American filmmaker Mike Judge depicts a dystopian world that is failing to maintain even the most basic requirements of human existence. This extreme situation developed due to an extreme form of dumbing down of…
What is true
In the 2001 movie Vanilla Sky, David Aames, owner of a large publishing company, is in prison wearing a prosthetic mask. His life went off the rails when he met the ravishing Sofia while David was still in a relationship…
Are you having fun yet?
In the 2008 film The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner plays a Staff Sergeant who defuses explosives in the Iraq combat theatre. One day, he stumbles upon an IED so powerful that even with all his protective gear, it would have…
Come with me if you wanna live …
The last couple of weeks were a real rollercoaster. When I went into my summer recess, I had the intention to clean up and streamline the portfolio of projects that I worked up for the last 5 years. Pursuing everything…
Summer Recess
2020 has turned out to be a weirdly exciting year for all of us. For all the wrong reasons I dare say. And it’s not uniquely because of the COVID-19 virus situation. The oil price war and resulting extreme oil…