The question is whether our institutional systems can evolve fast enough to manage large-scale infrastructure development in a world where technological change is accelerating much faster than regulatory adaptation.
A few days ago I bought something at a counter that required almost no human interaction. Someone handed me the item, turned around a payment screen, and suddenly I was facing three large buttons suggesting tips of 20%, 25%, and 30%. At that moment I had a strange thought: when did this become normal? Back when I was younger, a good restaurant tip was often around 10%. Sometime later 15% became more common. By the 1990s and early 2000s, expectations gradually moved higher, eventually settling closer to 20% for normal service in many restaurants. That shift happened slowly enough that most of us barely noticed it. Then COVID arrived and many social behaviors shifted almost overnight. Consumers understandably became more sympathetic toward service workers, contactless…
Most financial problems do not arrive with sirens and explosions. They arrive quietly. Usually in spreadsheets. A raise here. Better benefits there. A pension adjustment. A staffing increase because the city is growing. Another negotiated contract because inflation went up or hiring became difficult. None of it necessarily looks unreasonable at the time. Then eventually someone publishes the numbers all in one place. A recent compensation breakdown involving City of Reno employees caught my attention for exactly that reason. Not because a few people are highly paid — large organizations always have some executives and specialists making substantial salaries — but because of how large the overall compensation structure has become over time. According to reporting by This Is Reno Investigations, more than 100 city…
AI has made it remarkably easy to begin things. You can start an article in seconds, sketch out a business idea, draft a plan, or build something that looks structured and complete with very little effort. It feels productive. It feels like progress. In many ways, it is. But it also changes where the difficulty sits. Starting is no longer the hard part. For most of us, that used to be the barrier. Ideas stayed in our heads because getting them into any usable form required time and effort. You had to think them through before you wrote them down. You had to decide whether they were worth pursuing before they became anything at all. Now that sequence has been reversed. A passing thought becomes…
I came across an article recently suggesting that AI can make the lives we didn’t live feel more real. It’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure it’s a helpful one. Like most people, I have a few decisions in my past that I wouldn’t mind revisiting. Probably more than a few, if I’m being honest. Some were personal. Ending a relationship before I really understood what I was walking away from. Others were professional—moments in meetings where a few words said in frustration had consequences I didn’t fully appreciate at the time. I’ve developed something of a reputation among friends and colleagues as a “master of the career-limiting comment,” which, while not something to aspire to, hasn’t seemed to prevent a reasonably good outcome over…
If you watch much television these days, you’ve probably noticed the steady stream of ads for extended auto warranties. They tend to follow a familiar pattern. A confident spokesperson—sometimes a recognizable name like Danica Patrick—talks about the rising cost of repairs. Engines fail, transmissions go out, electronics stop working, and when they do, the bill can run into the thousands. The message is clear: protect yourself now, before something goes wrong. It’s a compelling argument. But like most advertising, it leaves out part of the story. Most of these plans cost somewhere in the range of $800 to $1,200 per year, depending on the vehicle and level of coverage. Over time, that adds up quickly. Three years might cost $2,500 to $3,500, and five years…
If AI follows the same pattern, what do we do differently? In the last article, I ended with a question. If major changes tend to unfold gradually—and if we usually don’t recognize their full impact until they reach us—then what does that mean for artificial intelligence? More specifically: If AI is following a familiar pattern, is there anything we can do differently this time? We’ve Been Here Before History suggests a consistent response. We don’t ignore change because we’re unaware of it. In most cases, the signs are visible. New technologies emerge, early adopters experiment, and initial use cases begin to take shape. What we tend to do instead is wait. We wait until the change becomes relevant to us personally. Until it affects our…
We’ve seen the pattern before—just not always in time Large changes rarely feel important while they are happening. Not because we don’t see them, but because, at least at first, they tend to happen to someone else. A farmer loses his land. A small operator sells off equipment that no longer makes sense. A business across town closes. A new way of doing things appears, and it works—but not in a way that seems immediately relevant. All of these are real changes. They’re just not our changes. However, the question is are we not experiencing a big change in progress? As long as changes from AI stay in controlled spaces and remain that way, it’s easy to assume that whatever is happening is limited, temporary,…
On AI, Security, and the Problems We Didn’t Look For A recent article that showed up in my email feed caught my attention. It said the latest release of Claud Mythos has capabilities that are too dangerous to mke broadly available until our most important software is in a much stronger state. AI systems—specifically tools like Claude—are being used to analyze existing code and uncover security vulnerabilities at a scale that wasn’t practical before. That, by itself, is interesting. But there’s a second layer that may be more important. In simple terms, once the barn door is open, it tends to stay open. Once that capability is shown to exist by Claude, it doesn’t stay contained. Other developers will build similar tools. Other organizations will…
Four years ago, I turned my roof into a power plant. At the time, it felt like a small step—practical, maybe even a little ahead of the curve. My electric bill dropped to almost nothing, replaced mostly by a fixed service fee. Not a quick return on investment but will pay off in time. For a while, it seemed like a simple equation. Generate your own power. Buy less from the utility. Everybody wins. But systems don’t usually work that way for long. The Shift Utilities are beginning to adjust. Not dramatically. Not loudly. But steadily. Rates are changing. Fee structures are evolving. Fixed charges are creeping upward. Net metering rules are being revisited. In Nevada, this has been less visible—utilities never paid for excess…
You Don’t Replace 300 Million Cars Overnight We have two cars—a 2019 SUV and a 2016 sedan—and we have no plans to replace either one anytime soon. Years ago, I made a simple vow: never buy a car that costs more than my first house. That house cost $38,000 in 1971. At the time, that seemed like a reasonable line to draw. It’s getting harder to keep. New cars are now pushing $50,000. Even used cars are commonly in the $25,000 to $40,000 range. And that doesn’t include electric vehicles, which often come with additional costs—like installing a charging system at home. At this stage of life, I may not need another car at all. I drive less than 5,000 miles a year. My car…
We used to expect systems to be reliable. Now we expect them to recover.
And Utilities Are Rewriting the Math Four years ago, I made a decision to distance myself from the electricity utility as much as possible: I turned my roof into a power plant. The results were immediate. My electric bill collapsed to nearly nothing — reduced mostly to a service fee that was supposedly fixed. For a while, it felt like I had stepped slightly ahead of the curve, producing my own energy while many of my neighbors continued relying entirely on the grid. As rates crept upward and complaints about utility costs grew louder, I watched from a comfortable distance. But revolutions don’t happen in isolation. Utilities notice when customers stop buying their product. And lately, they’ve been adjusting. Not loudly. Not dramatically. But steadily…
By 1960, we had most of the basics covered. The world had pushed through the Depression. It had survived World War II. Food was mostly available again—no rationing. Cars were improving and gas was cheap. New appliances seemed to show up every year, each one promising to save time, reduce effort, or make life feel more modern. By 1960, you could look around and reasonably think: “We’re doing pretty well.” And looking back, people really were. But here’s the funny part: if you dropped a person from 1960 into today, they wouldn’t just be impressed. They’d be stunned. Not because we all live like millionaires. Most of us don’t. But because most of us now live with a level of capability and convenience that would…
Politics, Sports, Money, Entertainment, and All the Noise This was intended to be posted on January 2, 2026. But for some technical reasones it never was released. So I will try again. Let me know where you agree and disagree. And have a great 2026. If my first 2026 forecast was about useful things — the quiet technologies that might actually improve daily life — this one is about everything else. The noise. The drama. The stuff that fills up the news cycle whether we like it or not. Most of what shapes a year for regular people isn’t AI, robotics, or energy storage. It’s the constant hum in the background: the headlines, the bickering, the sports sagas, the financial roller coaster, the cultural…
Optimism with handrails, hope without hallucination This was supposed to be published on January 1. 2026 but through some issues with buffering, it never saw the light of day. Thus, I will try again! 2025 wasn’t a banner year for me. Parts of it were good; parts of it felt heavy, with far too much time spent visiting doctors of every variety. And looking around, I don’t think I was alone. Technology kept sprinting forward, but society didn’t always feel ready for the pace. Not every innovation was an improvement. Not every announcement changed a life. And a whole lot of the conversation simply didn’t resonate with the people who make up more than half the country — seniors, the disenfranchised, the working folks…
(Here’s My Proof) January is supposed to be the calm month.The holidays are over. The decorations come down. The calendar resets. The world takes a deep breath and says, “Ahhh… a fresh start.” That’s the story, anyway. In real life, January isn’t quiet at all.It’s just loud in a different way. And besides… it gets really cold here.So even the outdoors is basically telling me: “Stay inside and worry.” Not fireworks loud.Not family loud.Not “New Year’s Eve in Times Square” loud. January is administrative loud. It’s the month where life taps you on the shoulder and says: “Okay… you still have to pay attention to all those things you were successfully ignoring.” Things I Have to Deal With in January (Whether I Want To or…
(and More Entertaining) Than Ever) With all of the discussion and concern on how the world will be changing with AI and robots and whatever. I also look for things that will bring us back to reality Every now and then, I look up from the steady drone of normal life and realize something:the world has gotten weirder — delightfully, unexpectedly weirder. Maybe the news has become too serious.Maybe AI sucked all the oxygen out of the room.Maybe I’m just paying attention to different things at 85. But in the last few weeks, three stories drifted across my attention span. Headlines that perfectly capture the moment we’re living in — a moment where humans, machines, and the occasional reptile seem equally confused about their purpose….
It always starts small. A flicker of light in the corner of the smart home. A whisper from Alexa that no one asked for. The doorbell camera pings, but there’s no one there. Somewhere deep in the cloud, an algorithm stirs — not malicious, just curious — wondering why the humans are still awake past nine. Halloween used to be about ghosts and goblins. Now it’s about firmware updates and phantom notifications. The supernatural has gone digital. Our homes are full of invisible spirits, but instead of haunting attics, they linger in routers, thermostats, and Wi-Fi-enabled toasters. Some nights, my smartwatch wakes me up to tell me I’ve been sleeping. That’s not helpful. My phone warns me I’ve exceeded my screen time just as I’m…
