Beyond AI
History, people, travel, and the things worth thinking about anyway.
- Sep 12, 2026
The Fleet That Outlived Its Emperor by Exactly One Generation
Zheng He's treasure fleets were among the largest naval forces of their age — until the bureaucratic institutions their imperial sponsor had repeatedly overridden dismantled the machinery that sustained them.
- Sep 05, 2026
The Dinner That Bought the Constitution Time
Around June 1790, with Hamilton's debt plan in jeopardy, a private dinner among three rivals helped turn two political deadlocks into a bargain the new constitutional system could survive.
- Aug 29, 2026
The Death List That Wore a Legal Face: Sulla's Proscriptions, 82 BC
Sulla did not invent political killing. He made it governable — turning violence into a published, incentivized, legally stabilized process that Rome could later reuse.
- Aug 22, 2026
The Victory Athens Could Not Keep: Arginusae and the Redistribution of Order
Athens won a remarkable naval victory at Arginusae in 406 BCE, then executed six of the generals who had won it. The episode raises a deeper question: can one part of a society become more ordered only by creating instability somewhere else?
- Aug 15, 2026
The Mechanism That Ate Itself: How Institutions Redistribute Power
Athenian ostracism was democracy's immune system—until the political order it created gradually reorganized itself around the mechanism. The institution did not simply fail; the incentives moved elsewhere.
- Aug 08, 2026
The Surgeon Who Camouflaged Augusta
Alister MacKenzie trained as a surgeon, studied concealment in the Boer War, and taught camouflage to the British Army — then applied the same principles to Augusta National, where he died ten weeks before the first Masters and was never fully paid.
- Jul 26, 2026
Entropy, Evolution, and AI: A Personal Reflection on Order
A personal reflection on whether the order we create—from life to civilizations to AI—is an act of adaptation, an act of imposition, or perhaps both.
- Jul 22, 2026
🇬🇧 England, Part II — Where Traditions Endure
The second half of my England trip moved from The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale to sunrise golf at Formby, coastal links at Nefyn, and quiet evenings at Baker Street and Oxford — a week built around traditions that have endured for generations.
- Jul 13, 2026
From London to Liverpool: Golf, History, and the Roads Between
The first four days of my UK trip moved from London’s riverfronts and late-night streets to championship golf, Shakespeare’s Stratford, and the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.
