There’s way more going on in your head than there is in reality.
There is a mechanism nobody talks about when they talk about banned words. Not the history. Not the pain. Not the politics. The mechanism. Because the mechanism is the same regardless of which word is in the slot, which group is doing the banning, or which era of history you're examining. And until you understand... Continue Reading →
The Accused There is a specific kind of damage that doesn't get named often enough because it looks like a personality trait from the outside. The person who over-explains. Who qualifies everything. Who says I think when they mean I know. Who watches your face while they're talking to you — not because they're socially... Continue Reading →
You are not your personality. You are not your natural limits. You are not the anxiety that shows up before the important conversation, the ceiling you bump into every time something real is within reach, the version of yourself that always finds a reason to stop just before the thing that would actually change your... Continue Reading →
Why What You Know Isn't Always What You Can Access — and What to Do About It I recently read something I wrote about love. Not someone else's writing about love. Mine. Words I generated from somewhere real, that meant something when they came out, that I put down because they were true and I... Continue Reading →
Let me be clear before anything else. When I use the word insanity here, I am not insulting anyone. I am describing a mechanical condition. A person whose entire world is built on unreliable secondhand information, defended by substanceless identity, and enforced by legal fiction is not evil or stupid. They are operating a structure... Continue Reading →
You Already Have What You Need. You Just Don't Know What's Running. I'm going to say something that might land wrong at first. The system isn't the problem. I know. Stay with me. The system is doing exactly what systems do — expanding into available space, selling what sells, running what runs, optimizing for compliance... Continue Reading →
The bullshit machine is not always loud. Sometimes it shows up as generosity. You think of a friend who the bullshit machine thinks might be mad at you, because you think most people are most of the time, and then get the impulse to do something nice for them. Sounds simple. Sounds good. Except when... Continue Reading →
Most people don't know they've been programmed. Not because they're unaware that childhood shapes you — everyone knows that in the abstract. But because the specific mechanism is rarely named clearly enough to be useful. Here it is clearly. There are two ways a child learns. The first is cause and effect. Touch the hot... Continue Reading →
The Longest Running Operation in Human History Before the phone there was the television. Before the television there was the radio. Before the radio there was the newspaper. Before the newspaper there was the Bible. Not the scripture itself — the physical object. The printed, distributed, institutionally controlled document that arrived in your home carrying... Continue Reading →
How Bad Ideas Become Load Bearing Almost nobody builds a house of lies on purpose. They build on what they were given. They build on what everyone around them was building on. They build because the foundation looked solid and the people who laid it had credentials and the people who questioned it got called... Continue Reading →
On AI, Fictional Codes, and the People Who Will Use Them to Make Claims on Your Person The Bullshit Machine has a new uniform. It's not a badge. It's not a suit. It's not a form with small print at the bottom. It's a conversational interface that sounds reasonable, moves fast, and has read everything... Continue Reading →
There's a conversation most people never get to have. Not because it's forbidden — nobody is going to arrest you for asking the right questions, at least not yet — but because the environment never produces it. School doesn't produce it. The news definitely doesn't produce it. Your employer has no interest in producing it.... Continue Reading →
Also Called the Book of the Inheritance Concerning How the Machine Turns a Death into a Brand,a Widow into an Heir, Grief into a Shield,and Compassion into Compliance CHAPTER 1 The Transfer 1:1 And a man named Charlie was killed. And the man had a following. And the following was loyal and the following was... Continue Reading →
There's a version of Jesus Christ walking around America right now that the original would probably not recognize. He's on t-shirts. He's on truck decals. He's in dining rooms in a soft-lit portrait that makes him look like he's about to ask you to prom. He's been on cable news, at political rallies, and somehow,... Continue Reading →
Before you begin, understand what this is and what it is not. This is not a political manifesto, a call to rebellion, or a complaint about the state of the world. It is a diagnostic. The chapters that follow examine the machinery of systems—laws, narratives, authority, and the agreements that allow them to function. Written... Continue Reading →
The Bullshit Machine 