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The Social Graph as a Hidden Usefulness Ledger: Why the Brain Sorts People by Access to Resources — and a Test of Function-Free Friendship

You say "we're just close" and "I value people." But inside, a quiet contact database is running: you unconsciously tag each person as a node (a hub with access) or a channel (a pipe to a resource) — and that column decides who you call back. The buried truth: even your warmth has an SKU. A technical dissection of the most intimate software you never knowingly installed.

Life 35 min

AI

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War

The New Oil of Artillery: The Global Explosives Market in 2026

An OSINT long-read on the global market for explosives and energetic materials: why the bottleneck is not money or demand but certified upstream throughput. A historical lens (the 1915 Shell Crisis), the theory of a market that breaks the normal rules, throughput math, supply chains, country playbooks, capacity, a financial lens and scenarios to 2030. No manufacturing instructions — strategy, economics and policy only.

1 min

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World

The EU Pensioner Crisis: an Intergenerational Conflict Escalating Across Housing, Pensions and Welfare

Madoff got 150 years for a $65 billion pyramid. France's own accrued pension liabilities run 397% of its GDP, and nobody goes to prison for that, because participation is mandatory by law. In 1960, one European pensioner was held up by 6.7 workers. Today it's 2.8. By 2050 it will be under two. This is an autopsy of the broken intergenerational contract: who bought a house for three years' salary and is selling it back to you for eight, why your contributions will never become your pension, where Europe's Nvidia went — and why the largest protest of a generation wasn't against the pyramid, but for the right to get into it two years earlier.

22 min

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Markets

Five Capital Accounts — Money, Debt, Assets, Time, Reputation: Separate Portfolios Instead of One Envelope

Your business runs like a production stack, and your money runs like a ninth-grader's pocket change: all in one envelope and always 'roughly fine.' Stop keeping the business, the family, savings, and the ego in one mental wallet — and run capital like a codebase: modules (buckets), backups (the cushion), concentration limits (anti-god-object), versioning, no single point of failure. This isn't financial advice. It's a breakdown of one engineering habit carried from the repo to the bank account.

27 min

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Lab

Trust

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Focus

Optics

Unfinished Projects Across 15 Years: Fewer than One in Ten Reached the Finish — Five Conditions That Set Closed Ones Apart

I asked an AI to line up everything I'd ever announced as a 'series,' a 'book,' a 'project in N parts.' Of everything I called a book or a series, fewer than a tenth ever reached a final state. This isn't a text about failure — it's about the difference between unfinished, unclosed, seed, and dead; about the single exception that proves the rule; and about why an unclosed file is sometimes not a debt but a seed bank — but only if you actually harvest, instead of romanticising a graveyard of drafts.

14 min

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Culture

The Nehaj Protocol: Pirates Raised by a Border, and a State That Said 'Not Us'

The strongest wind ever recorded in Croatia hit 248 km/h. A few thousand refugees on bare rock turned it into a business partner and held Venice, the Habsburgs, and the Ottomans by the throat for four centuries. This is the story of the Uskoks of Senj — pirates raised by a border and unpaid wages. And about the Nehaj Protocol: four moves by which any empire creates an uncontrollable force of its own, then pretends it isn't hers.

19 min

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Life

Divorce Is Predicted by Small Signals: Responses to Bids for Connection — 86% in Lasting Couples vs 33% in Divorced Ones

A couple doesn't die when someone cheats. It dies when one of them says 'look at this' and the other, for years, doesn't turn their head. The cheapest unit of intimacy isn't a date or a gift — it's a five-second answer to a small signal. An autopsy of what a quiet non-answer really costs: Gottman, the 86/33 numbers, metal fatigue, and a yellow paper crane as the only witness.

19 min

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How to

A House on the Fault Line: North Cyprus Property, If You Can Do the Math

North Cyprus is sold as a cheap paradise with a guaranteed 12% a year. In reality it's a market that keeps no records of its own prices, where the developer behind the flagship resort just got five years, and the title under your villa might belong to someone who fled in 1974. And yet — for the right buyer, it can still be a rational move. The difference between a disaster and a smart deal isn't who got in early. It's who correctly stacked the title, the location, the developer, the management company, the liquidity, and their own life scenario.

31 min

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