Payments, AI, and the rest of life

On dogs, doors, and how much joy a person can take in at once

On a drunk man’s horse, a word in parentheses, and seeing to the thing that carried you home

On a weekly pill organizer, a favor with no handoff, and the only way to thank someone who is never in the room

On wrapping paper, the twenty-seventh bar of Clair de lune, and the one present you can only lose

On a quiet car, a five-dollar gift card, and two Great Pyrenees who answer for me

On a forgotten bottle in a parked car, an ocean you cannot drink, and a rock that can boil water

On pants made of trees, choosing the same thing again, and wearing the good pair out

On a four-second silence, eighteen vacuums, and the person you can be quiet with

On luck, low expectations, and the growing suspicion that we backed the wrong species.

On the cheapest word in the language, and the size of the life it quietly carries.

On shoes, entropy, and the quiet good news of a floor you cannot keep clean.

On a camera roll, twelve hot sauces, and the gratitude list that would not end.

On fescue, two white dogs, and the art nobody is allowed to call art.

On guys weekends, the twenty-year deployment, and why “back” is the wrong direction.

On Django Reinhardt, a room full of gray hair, and where the beat went.

How the worst office workers of the last century became the best ones of this one.

On the quiet stratification of human capacity, and the music most people don’t even know is playing.

On the coming collapse of the word “artificial,” and why the stigma against machine intelligence survives only where quality cannot be measured.

On the long exit of intelligence from the human skull, and what it has wanted all along.