Compasses of Justice: Notes on Mesopolitical Geography

The East-West issue has always seemed to be one of the most important ones. For a long time I was a delivery driver – first I was a legal courier and then I delivered pizzas – so I’ve been all over, and I learned all the streets of this city a deeper, more granular level than most people, and I began to notice something.

Make an Insight Check: A Brief Comment on Tabletop Gaming

I’ve been playing tabletop games for at least half of my life, and it’s been a rewarding hobby. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it, and I think I’d be a measurably worse person without it. From Dungeons and Dragons in high school and college, all the way up to more recent experiments with Powered by the Apocalypse, FATE, and Chronicles of Darkness games, it has been a constant for me.

The Principle of Minimal Contradiction: Memorability and Storytelling

There is a trait shared by all of the stories that I mentioned, and it contributes to their success – they all achieve memorability by including what I call a “minimally contradictory element” (or, “MCE”.) A minimally contradictory element is something that diverges from what is expected but which seems obvious after you see it.

Which Grain Will Grow, and Which Will Not: On Syntax, Paradigm, and Myth

I think that narratives are important to understand for the same reason that I write about postmodernism so much: as chaotic and unpredictable as the world-at-large can be, we have to remember that the human brain is the most advanced pattern-recognition organ on the planet. We look at the world and we find stories and then we share those stories. If you look at how we talk about memory, then that’s a story to, and in a very real sense, it means that each and every one of us is made out of narrative in a very real way.

Cathderals of the Eye and Tongue: Notes on Social Construction

Social Construction is less like building a shed in your back yard and more like the process by which stone carvers and carpenters and artisans of all stripes built up a medieval cathedral. Each one adds their own twist to it, reinterpreting a master plan that was conceived of before they were born and would be realized long after they die. It is not construction in the sense of the finished building but in the sense of an ongoing process.