Department of

Writing

Everything here ran under ~~someone else’s~~my own name.

Start here

Everything, in order (34 pieces)

Riskgaming · Jul 23, 2026Even If the AI Optimists Are Right, It All Might Go Very Wrong
Sorry Not Sorry · Apr 29, 2026The Bulb and the BulletTucker Carlson apologized for electing Trump. Cole Allen apologized before trying to kill Trump. Both reveal what we're losing.
Financial Times · Apr 22, 2026Europe is ceding sovereignty to SpaceX
Riskgaming · Apr 16, 2026The uncanny valley of abilityWhat chess reveals about the future of AI
Riskgaming · Mar 6, 2026When It Comes to AI and Health, Everyone’s Thinking of the Wrong Oppenheimer
Riskgaming · Mar 4, 2026Abundance Is a Better Foreign Policy
Riskgaming · Feb 26, 2026Welcome to the Post-Truth Drug Trial
Riskgaming · Jan 21, 2026The greengrocer’s gambit
Riskgaming · Jan 15, 2026Forget founder mode, we’re all in editor mode now

Riskgaming · Aug 12, 2025What exactly do we mean when we talk about Abundance for New York City?
Riskgaming · Jul 15, 2025AI’s Cigarette Butler ProblemAlignment, dopamine, and the danger of too much of what we want
Sorry Not Sorry · Jul 1, 2025Coco Gauff can accept an apology but her fans can’tAre one-to-one apologies now impossible in the public sphere?
Sorry Not Sorry · Jun 8, 2025Joni Ernst is right, we’re all going to dieAnd my uncle taught me why her apology is the worst I’ve ever seen
Riskgaming · May 6, 2025The NYT’s alien headline is everything wrong with science journalism
Sorry Not Sorry · May 2, 2025Cheating at ChessDrLupo, Marina Keegan, and a Twitch charity tournament gone awry
Sorry Not Sorry · Mar 4, 2025On comms consultants, DOGE, and the right's apology gamewhy does the right demand apologies but never give them?

Sorry Not Sorry · Nov 30, 2024Why Joe Biden’s Late Apology Is Better Than Kamala Harris’ Absent One
Sorry Not Sorry · Oct 13, 2024Atonement, Magic Words, the UN, and Riskgaming
McSweeney’s · Sep 9, 2024BTS, Ronda Rousey, and the Timing of Apologies
McSweeney’s · Aug 5, 2024CrowdStrike’s $10 Empathy Failure
McSweeney’s · Jun 27, 2024Why Boeing Being Serially Sorry Doesn’t Fly
McSweeney’s · Jun 3, 2024The Pope’s Contradictory Apology
McSweeney’s · May 13, 2024Why Did Two Grandmasters Apologize to Each Other?
McSweeney’s · Apr 25, 2024Mike Tyson, Marijuana Morsels, and the Difference Between Justice and Forgiveness
The Watercooler · Apr 12, 2024What Franklin Can Teach Us About Diplomacy
McSweeney’s · Apr 10, 2024Stephen Colbert Found His Own Line with Kate Middleton
Noema · Apr 4, 2024Total Eclipse Of The Mind
McSweeney’s · Mar 25, 2024Why Apologies Aren’t Miracles
McSweeney’s · Mar 11, 2024Three Comedians, Three “Apologies”
McSweeney’s · Feb 16, 2024How Bill Clinton Turbocharged the Apology Treadmill
McSweeney’s · Feb 2, 2024Why Donald Trump Never Apologizes
McSweeney’s · Jan 18, 2024A Eulogy for the Notes App Apology

McSweeney’s · Oct 11, 2019If I Made Up My New Canadian Girlfriend, Then Where Did I Get All This Free Healthcare?

For editors

Trust and repairWhy public apologies fail, and what a good one does.
Rhetoric and speechwritingHow a speech gets made, and why most of them don’t work.
Political commentaryWhat the people at the podium are trying to do to you.
AI and writingWho gets to say what, now that machines can imitate a voice.
After the rules-based orderWhat I saw from inside the UN, and what comes next.
Dependency trapsHow Europe rented its sovereignty: space, AI, cloud.
Politics without politiciansDeliberative democracy and other ways to decide.
Games as thinkingWhat role-play teaches that a memo can’t.
Abundance abroadWhat the abundance movement owes foreign policy.
Cheating and fair playChess, tennis, crosswords, and the people who govern them.

For books (nonfiction), I’m represented by Lisa DiMona at Writers House.