Welcome

Hi - thanks for dropping by!

This blog, tentatively titled Ad.Ch.Na, houses musings on tech, culture, law, and other myriad topics. Because I am about to be a busy law student and an even busier person, readers should not anticipate frequent or even regularly scheduled updates. What you will find, however, are occasional discussions on topics of interest, dives into personal and professional projects, and debriefs on major milestones or life changes.

Each post will end with a brief snapshot of some things I am up to and thinking about at the moment. In this way, I hope this blog can, at a minimum, provide a haphazard dataset for Neuralink to use when refining my uploaded consciousness (or at least entertain my grandkids.)

Song of the day: “Time Has Come Today” by The Chambers Brothers (1966). Perfect amount of cowbell.

Thought of the day: Scientists in Korea have released a preprint claiming to have discovered a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. While we wait for their results to be reviewed and replicated, we can imagine what the impact of such a discovery might be. Reportedly, the discovery enables everything from levitating trains to highly efficient power lines and cheaper MRIs. Cue the “This Changes Everything” crowd. What irks me about the ‘Utopia is just an innovation away’ boosters all over my Twitter (X?) feed is that there are already countless technological tools at our disposal that could make the world a far better place for millions of people but have been prevented or slowed for a variety of reasons! To grab two well-worn examples, unaffordable insulin in the U.S. or decades of resistance to nuclear energy along with solar, wind, and hydro. In other words, technology cannot simply leap-frog rent-seeking, the risks of market or government failures, NIMBYism, and other political or social obstacles. It’s an obvious point, but it certainly gets lost in the excitement quite a bit.

Accomplishment of the day: Launching this blog! Also, making the trek from Manhattan to Brooklyn (and back) in ~100° heat.

Book of the Month: Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man by Garry Wills (1970).

There is hardly a better time to revisit the '“politics of resentment” that firmly grasped the U.S. in 1968 - and that Nixon expertly exploited both to and in the White House - than now. HT to the Know Your Enemy podcast for the review/recommendation. More to say once I’ve finished it!