Prolog

I wrote this in September while on an almost two-week vacation in Spain. It was a phenomenal vacation. It was very likely the best vacation ever for my wife and I. We went to five cities: Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Ronda, and Sevilla. The grandest highlights were the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and a La Liga match in Sevilla. It was a tour that was organized byRick Steves, which made for a spectacular and memorable trip.

As fate would have it, when I returned to work, the shit hit the fan. So, I never posted it. In short order, the blog was taken down. I decided to retire from Sandia. Before I get to explaining what went down, I wanted to give this post some air. I’ll post the details of what happened tomorrow or the day after. I’m sure many of you can imagine what happened, but I promise to provide a few surprises too.

I do remember starting this vacation a few days early. At the last meeting I attended, the management provided another jaw-dropping and repulsive remark. They declared the shock physics at Sandia to be world-class and state-of-the-art work. Neither is remotelytrue or supportable. That said, that could be true in the future with proper support and decent leadership. Neither the necessary support nor the leadership is in evidence. More on what they do have tomorrow. The prospects for world-class work are thus dim to negligible. The state of the art will continue to elude them, too. It can be foundelsewhere and seen by those with a modicum of respect for knowledge.

More on the reality of all ofthis later. For now, enjoy the time capsule that follows. I do see the shadows of the events that drove me out of Sandia here. In a deep sense, one can simply see the outcome as an inevitable outcome of what was already present. I justneeded to accept the truth and reality.

tl;dr

I have lived most of my life believing expertise is a good thing; being an expert is a very good thing. Recently, this belief has felt under assault. Today, expertise is a source of suspicion and seems almost despised. Once trusted, now experts are suspects. True, even where I work. Experts are now treated as pariahs. In the workplace, an expert is surplus to requirements and a pain in the ass. Our present workplace wants drones. People who do what they are told to do faithfully without question. Management knows best. The ideal employee is a competent and compliant servant to the management. The mantra is don’t think, don’t question, and simply do your assigned work. If you do well, you might become a manager too.

Travel is magic

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

― Marcel Proust

I spent the last 12 days traveling outside the USA, across Spain. We went through a set of glorious cities and towns. We sank into a different culture and its deep history. Travel is such a magnifying glass on home, and good god the USA is a mess. Spain is a former empire, and it spent decades under fascism. It perhaps portends America’s future. For ill. The march of authoritarian rule parallels that of Franco in horrible ways. Now seeing it recovering, there can be hope too. It is civilized in ways the USA is not today. It was great to see a nation that isn’t descending into madness. By all accounts, Spain isn’t perfect with its regional nature and healing from decades of fascism, but compared to the USA, it is lovely.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

― St. Augustine

Spending a few days in Barcelona, which is clean and has only a few homeless compared with the teeming masses in the USA, is the first impression. As an American, the homeless seem to be a screaming siren of societal collapse. They are the weakest and most vulnerable people, and America is failing them. It is something that should be far more troubling, but America has a cruel streak. Our societal cruelty becomes evident in comparison to what we see in Spain. The treatment of the weakest and most vulnerable says volumes about us, and we are not good people. America is a rich, spoiled nation unable to protect its most needy citizens. When viewed through the lens of another country, we should be ashamed.

In spite of this horror, Americans seem proud and believe they are exceptional. At least this is the mantra of our current leaders. We believe we are free. In Spain, people seem much freer and happier than Americans. Decades of oppression under Franco seem to have sharpened their sense of freedom. Under Franco LBGTQ people were oppressed. Now the community is out, open, and proud. They had decades of oppression, and I see the USA headed for the same. So, perspective is found in difference.

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”

― Anita Desai

One of the greatest contrasts between the USA and Spain is the emphasis on the individual versus the community. In Spain, community is key; in the USA, it is all about the individual. This mentality has been amplifying for the last 40 years. It is the product of the neoliberal era and the power of the “cowboy” imagery. Both of these themes were key to the “Reagan revolution” and have amplified over these decades. The result has been an increasingly selfish and greedy culture. As noted, American culture is full of cruelty and arrogance. For me, the USA is increasingly embarrassing. It has become a source of horror as the truth of contrasts is evident.

These have also created a hierarchy in society where the managerial class has power and sets direction. This power is being harnessed towards acquiring more wealth and power. It is naturally self-amplifying. The level of inequality in the USA is approaching the highest in history. Ultimately, the decisions that create this dynamic are bad for society as a whole. Our current status is unhealthy. This will create failures and instability. Reality will eventually assert itself and probably be brutal.

America is headed for disaster. The national leadership is driving us off a cliff. Lots of “experts” are playing along because it is good for their short-term success. It is good for their bank accounts, too. Greed is good. Since we don’t prize community, fuck everyone else!

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

― Oscar Wilde

Expertise is Supposed to be Good, but Experts are a Pain in the Ass

“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them.”

― Werner Heisenberg

So, as it becomes obvious that America turns its back on experts, their value becomes obvious in Europe. Experts can save your ass. You want your tour guide or bus driver to be an expert. If you are working on nuclear weapons, you want experts. I am an expert on important aspects of the science of nuclear weapons. The observation of late is that my employer could not give a single fuck about my expertise. Any expression of expertise is treated as a nuisance and irritant. The details an expert sees are simply a difficulty that would rather be ignored. This observation seems like utter madness. The important thing to understand is why we ended up here.

My startling revelation is that the USA is turning its back on expertise everywhere. Even in a place where the institution is responsible for our nuclear weapons expertise is a liability. It almost boggles the mind that knowledge is not prized by such a place. That said, this explains what is happening society-wide. Experts are full of difficult and complicated details, and why bother? The fundamental problem with experts is that they get in the way of what managers want to do. They provide details and facts that tend to change what the managers want to do politically, or spend resources (money) in a desired manner.

What the experts often bring to the table is enormous amounts of nuance, subtlety, and detail. These aspects of any given topic are a bane to decision makers. These represent every bit of difficulty our managerial class seeks to avoid. Our managers bask in simplicity and ignorance. Thus, the nuance offered by experts is a toxin and is met as an unwelcome intrusion. The sort of complexity and subtlety is equally revolting to managers. Most often, they seek to solve problems by brute force and raw power. The deft skill offered by expertise annoys their aims and offers challenges they want to ignore.

What I’ve learned is that the managerial class wants a few things. One is power, and usually, money is power. Under any given manager’s reign, they want unbridled success; all is always well. Most problems or issues can simplybe messaged away. Their unspoken hope is that any problem’s effects will come due after they’ve moved on. If this can”t be done, the goal is to find scapegoats. Problems are never the manager’s problem. The buck never stops with them. All we see with the Trump Administration is this attitude taken to its logical extreme. The same behavior is commonplace with our ruling class. Those of us under their rule have come to accept and even expect this shit.

“The key to greatness is to look for people’s potential and spend time developing it.” – Peter Drucker

How the Ruling Class Uses Experts?

There are those who use modest expertise to gain power. The other route is one of luck, where the expertise simply assists and aligns with the whims of power. We see two breeds of successful experts these days:

1. The lucky expert who just happens to be aligned with managers, and the managerial directions,

2. The useful expert who trades their credibility as a shield of legitimacy to the managers.

In one case, you are simply fortunate that reality is with you and success is virtuous. In the second case, the expert becomes the tool of the ruling class. Our modern archetype is almost the entire Trump Administration. Worse yet, the expert is totally optional, and a simple loyal hack is substituted.

Any expert who does not fit this mold is cast aside. If you want success and to share in power, either luck out or shred your integrity. Often, the lucky are clueless about their bounty. They simply happened to align with the stars. They found or stumbled into the path to professional success in a way that resonates with the direction of society. To be blunt, there is nothing wrong with this. For me, personally, I see any computer hardware and software experts fit this mold. They were needed to fuel the push to exascale computing. They are also needed to fuel the push for general artificial intelligence. Their work is useful even if both of those endeavors have serious issues with the balance of efforts. The best version of these initiatives would use other expertise better. A balance of expertise would fuel a far greater program of achievement.

This is the perfect segue to the other type of expert. These are the sellouts. These are those who apply their expertise to support the managerial class. They sell their credibility as a way to underpin the desires of the leaders. It is a way to success. They promote the whims and desires of the leaders with an air of legitimacy. As these whims and desires become worse, their crimes become greater. Their expertise gets warped into excuses for terrible management. The Trump Administration is simply a perfect and hyperbolic example. The problem is all over, and it is eroding the Nation’s future. In other words, lots of these turncoats occupy positions of respect across our most important institutions. They make the excuse of being realistic while actually annihilating credibility.

What Happens When the Experts Disappear?

“Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn’t happen.”

― Malcolm Gladwell

The past 40 years have been a slow and continuous extinction-level disaster for experts and expertise. Rather than the experts being a fact-based limit on the management class, the experts are being removed. The only experts seen are the sellouts or the useful resonant ones. Their role is to provide a dash of their reputation to support the idiocy of the management decisions. I’ve seen it in the science programs supporting our national security. The end result is less security and the decline of a great Nation. Our current crisis as a nation is simply this process drawn to its natural conclusion.

A secondary effect is the reduction in expertise. There is simply less expertise because it isn’t a useful thing for those in power. Factual foundations for policy have become antiquated. A large part of enabling this process is a former largess of expertise and achievement. We have had enough achievement in the bank to make massive withdrawals. We can experience a massive decline before we drift into incompetence. My fear is that the incompetence has arrived, or will soon. Look at our National leadership, which is teeming with incompetence. The real qualification is being servile and obedient to the boss, no matter how stupid an idea is. This spirit is passed down to every level below. Those seeds have already been sewn and are blooming all over with a stench.

“Enthusiasm is more important than innate ability, it turns out, because the single more important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practice.”

― Gretchen Rubin

Expertise and the process of achieving it work against giving in to this. Being a true expert is an immense amount of work. It is an investment of time and passion. Invariably, it also involves joy and the pursuit of truth. All ofthese characteristics work against sacrificing this to serve the idiot leaders. Nonetheless, many do trade their expertise for success and power. I often see people who spend their early years professionally gaining expertise. Then they trade their expertise for success (money) or join the management class. Today’s leaders have lost the taste for expertise, as it often works to oppose the politically determined direction. The core issue is that reality often opposes the desired political outcome.

Of course, a great deal of the idiot leader’s motivation is based on a philosophy that opposes fact. In the USA, this shows up in attitudes toward sex. American sex education is structuredto oppose reality. The emphasis on abstinence only denies every reality of sex. Young people are biologically driven to have sex. Sex can provide great pleasure if done with intention and knowledge. Sex builds the connection and intimacy necessary for relationships. American sex Ed avoids all of this in favor of demanding abstinence outside of marriage. The result is an education program that leads to worse outcomes. For sex, this means more unwanted pregnancies and sexual disease. The entire program is motivated by religion rather than any objective fact. Simultaneously, experts in sex are attacked. They are denied sources of income and support. Society as a whole is harmed, and people are denied one of life’s great joys.

It is Too Late For Me

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

― Oscar Wilde

I am not suited to be a drone. I never have been. My ability to express an independence of action and thought has grown over time. It has always been present. That said, I have always had a sense of duty and responsibility to the good of society. I am a team player, although always focused on excellence and success. Thus, the leadership today is focused on their success, not the team’s. It is the same at work and especially nationally. Take the recent assassination of Charlie Kirk, where only violence against the right was condemned. It is not about all our success; it is only the success of the boss.

I have come to the conclusion that my expertise has become a liability. If I were to trade my expertise in service to the management class, it would benefit me. On the other handmy personal integrity would be sacrificed. This is the decision offered me by our society. Deny reality and facts when they oppose the direction chosen by leaders. Do not criticize stupid decisions and directions. Do not point out when the managerial messaging is bullshit. This is the way to succeed. I’ve chosen the way of truth and the ability to like myself. It is too late for me to change.

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience”.

–Harper Lee,

The other way to succeed today is to simply avoid the knowledge that would oppose management. Simplybecome a drone who does what is asked. Do not question the direction; simply serve the direction. Even when the directions are idiotic, you simply submit and do your job. This goes with the lack of committed careers and the job that you have for life. You are simply a commodity. The only way to avoid this is become a manager. In such a system, experts don’t naturally grow. Worse yet, being an expert is a horrible moral burden. At work, you are serving ends that are at odds with what you know is correct.

As my wife would quip, “Sell your soul.” The route to success these days is to sacrifice your integrity. There should be little doubt that this is evidence of how trust is under assault societally. We know innately that our leaders lack integrity and are untrustworthy people. It was a choice I did not make. I could not. I had to look at myself in the mirror.

“Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”

–Marcus Aurelius

“It is easy to live for others, everybody does. I call on you to live for yourself”.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ― Mary Oliver

I was thinking that it’s been about four months since I posted something on the blog. That means approximately 12-16 blog posts have been denied to my readers. I’ve been denied writing. Writing is thinking, and that hurts. The upshot is that there are lots on my plate that I want to share with all of you. Hopefully, I can remove that logjam and throw out some provocative and interesting ideas. I know a few of them are very timely, particularly with the expanding AI bubble and the impending enshitification of the AI itself. The current management incentives are leading to the enshitification of the National Labs. American science is enshitifying too. The whole fucking country is enshitifying.

The basic issue around AI and our national strategy is that it inherits some of the stupid ways of structuring programs that I’ve seen in my career. It is also doomed to failure. It is doomed to recreate the same loss of preeminence to China that has infested our research community. Over the last few years, China has clearly beaten us. In science, the Chinese have surpassed the USA in most areas. The reality is, we are beating ourselves. It is an own goal.  Enshitification is one of the topics foremost in my mind. I have come to realize it applies to institutions, including those that I spent my career working for. It’s an important concept that I think has a wider scope than is appreciated. It goes well beyond the internet, although nothing is really separated from that force.

“If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.”– Cory Doctrow

I have five or six blog posts queued up right away. They just need the final markup and to be posted. I’ve continued to write since September, but my belief is always that writing is to be reador it justbecomes lazy. I write for myself in a journal, but it’s simply not the same. In the last four months or so, since I stopped publishing, so much has happened. The symmetry between what I saw at the lab where I worked, and our national shit show has become so clear. It is hard to keep up with events. The magnitude and gravity of events make writing seem transient and out of date.

Here is a rundown of what is on tap for the next few weeks:

1. Experts or Drones, written in September while I was on vacation in Spain.

2. The two episodes that forced me to stop writing the blog

3. The Enshitification of Everything

4. V&V: Past, Present and Future

5. Almost TVD schemes, a path forward to high order and high resolution?

As always comment and let me know what’s on your mind too!

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” ― Albert Einstein

tl;dr

I stopped because of threats. “They are coming after you,” I was told. It also showed me who I worked for clearly and the necessity of distance from them. I don’t have enough life left to tolerate people like this. They have little or no integrity. That said, today our leadership is full of low integrity and untrustworthy conduct. Behind this lack of integrity are incentive and permission structures that encourage bad behavior. I could not tolerate being silencedany longer. I have already lost too many days to this.

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”― Ernest Hemingway

Why did it disappear?

In brief, I needed to find a safe space to speak. I could not speak safely while working. Sad, but true. My useful work is about thinking and speaking clearly. Writing is a means to do this, and I was being denied it. I was threatened bymy employer. It is a fairly pathetic stance of a weak and fragile controlling management. It is also a broad and common situation in corporate America. Workers are weak and powerless. Management is tightening its grip on institutions. Management is too often characterized by low-integrity behavior. They have a permission structure for this from the corporations, and they act on it. This itself is damning. This fact forced me to choose retirement. The censorship, explicit or implicit, feels like a very modern American tale. You would think it is un-American.

We see the same phenomenon nationally on both the left and the right. It takes different forms, all of which are toxic. Both sides practice “cancel culture” that weaponizes shame. The government is increasingly censoring via power and punishment. Corporate governance is the same.  They fear the voice of the voters or the workers. Social media and the Internet should give everyone a voice. Corporate interests, the government, and power all fear this. Instead, social media is a way to make money. It is a way to sell us shit. It is a way to create outrage that divides us. All because anger and outrage drive engagement and profit. All of this damages us. Under this sort of leadership, our collective future is grim.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou

Where does the blog go from here? We need to discuss current events!

“The purpose of an organization is to enable ordinary humans beings to do extraordinary things.”– Peter Drucker

First things first, I am retired as of now. So the blog is back. Rather than forcing you to read between the lines, the reasons for each of these developments will be explained in detail in the coming days. Stay tuned! The details of what happened will be explained. I will get to exactly what happened.

That said, there are themes that thread my personal reality with the national shit show. Part of this is the desire of those in power to kill the voice of the common man. True, whether it’s the public or the employee. You see people being executed by federal officials for the offense of filming their public conduct. This alone shows the raw power of video evidence. That power is something that those in control want to take away because it threatens them. This is far more brutal than my personal experience, but entirely consistent with my manager’s behavior.

One of the things I hated the most about my colleagues at Sandia was their giving in to the basic assumptions of their lack of power. That, of course, employees don’t have a voice. Of course, managers will lie to us about the state of work. It seems to me that the rank and file in society have turned away from any active part in their own lives. They are simply surviving. They simplyaccept their lack of power and actually become accomplices to the authoritarian impulses. These impulses emanate from corporate America and the government itself. The message is like the Borg’s “resistance is futile.” If it is, we are fucked.

I’ve been spending a lot of time since the middle of September, when I took the blog down, trying to figure out what happened. There’s a lot to analyze there. I made mistakes for sure, but I also acted with integrity. That integrity was not matched by the management. I grossly misread the situation. My management was committed fully to mediocrity. I am happy stop resisting the pull of their incompetence. I am glad to be away from where I was and no longer under their heels. Worse yet, is the realization that the terrible management has implicit permission to act with little or no integrity.

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a profound symmetry between those expressions of societal power. This provides the basic permission structure that gives the management the right to act with low integrity. Our national leaders seem to embrace the same permissions provided by the electorate. In both cases, their behavior only corrodes any institutional trust. All this means is that everyone in a position of leadership is fundamentally untrustworthy. It leads to a society that is devoid of trust, which is where we are today. It is only getting worse. We are at the point where most of us expect to be lied to or bullshitted.

The thing that sticks with me the most is that underlying all of this damage is a lack of trust. This lack of trust pervades society and has been replaced by a focus on money. Thus, the trust in the labs as high-integrity arbiters of technical and scientific quality is gone. The same can be said of each branch of government. Whether it is the court, the congress or the President, money is ruling and swamping trust. In its place is a simple subservience to money and no earned trust from the nation.

The way we are treated by those in leadership is frankly insulting. As adults in our regular lives, we have to confront real problems directly. We can’t paper them over or bullshit our way through them. We have to act on reality and deal with it. Then you go to work, and you’re treated like a child. The same is the treatment of us as citizens. You see crimes on the news and are told that what you can see is false. You’re told total bullshit and obvious fictions about what’s happening. You are never offered the truth. In the process, these leaders escape all accountability. I saw it for years at work, and now every day on the news.

These “leaders” treat us like children. As an example, it is similar to parents who try to give some euphemism around a pet’s death. Sort of the ‘Buster went away to live on the farm’ instead of making the child face the realities of life and death. In that example, the child is denied learning and growing opportunities needed later in life. The leaders do the same to society or institutions. Progress and innovation needed to overcome the reality are sacrificed along with the truth. This dynamic is driving our society and its institutions backwards.

The irony in this is that the subservience to the dollar will yield a continued decline in trust. This will lead to something that breaks the system completely. In the final analysis, we’ve created a system that undermines the best in people and draws out the worst in them. Taken together, the lab violates its (sacred) responsibilities to the nation in the name of money. This mantra is thrust upon the labs by the nation. Therefore, the outcome is simply preordained. The work will have technical or scientific integrity that is sacrificed at the altar of the dollar.

It comes down to the proposition of who and what is in control. Is it the managers? Is it the executives? Or is it our principles and values? Today, it’s the managers, and it’s the executives. They are violating our principles and violating our values to achieve their aims. This gets to one key conclusion that I have about how our management behaves today: The reason is that the incentives are all wrong. The incentives are all about money. It demands the regular and complete violation of principles and values. Today, successful management opposes the proper execution of the Lab’s mission if it gets in the way of money.

“An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation”― Steven D. Levitt

One of those things that I value deeply is the prospect of exposing our work to peer review. In fact, the episode that catalyzed the end of my career was all about peer review. The problem is that the incentives our management has today do not align with peer review. The management can only deal with a peer review that is unremittingly positive and only nibbles around the edges of problems. If the management gets a peer review that exposes problems and is negative, their reaction is deep, emotional, and often retributive. That retribution fell on me, and it was the thing that caused me to decide to retire. I can no longer work with people whose principles and values are so completely divorced from my own.

I want to be clear. Not everyone who is a manager or executive is the problem. The problem is that far too many managers and executives are encouraged by the incentive structures to do the wrong thing.  They are rewarded for doing the wrong thing. As a result, more and more managers and executives now behave in ways that are counterproductive to our basic principles and values. In that direction lies the seeds of disaster. One final bit I want to be perfectly clear about: this is not a condemnation of Sandia National Laboratory. This is a condemnation of the system that the laboratory exists in and the system we have created in this country. What happened to me and what is going on at Sandia National Labs is a reflection of what is wrong with this country.

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”― Laurence J. Peter,

Part of writing in the era of AI is to make sure that what I write is seen as authentic. So part of that authenticity is to say a fair number of not safe for work things. Things that are anti-establishment, anti-institution, and just generally shit that an AI wouldn’t say. As you probably know, AIs are tuned to provide words and text that feel like it’s appropriate for our corporate overlords. As a result, the humanity and authenticity is drained out of its output.

The issue is that the non-technical topics are addressing things in the way of progress. Good technical and scientific focus is inhbited bythe actions of those managing us. In retrospect, I can see how it did for me. Now, I can explore some of the bigger ideas. In my time at Sandia, I did not pursue ideas because it was not work-related. The lack of innovation at Sandia is a direct result of how the Lab is run. The culture of Sandia is antithetical to progress. Judging by the state of American science this may be everywhere, not just Sandia. The frightening thing is that other places are much worse. Few places are better. With the advent of AI the lack of progress and focus is potentially catastrophic for society. In the process of our collective incompetence, we have been surpassed by China across the scientific enterprise. Togethe,r these are the recipe for disaster.

Closure and Path Ahead

“You’d think solving mysteries would bring you closure, that closing the loop would comfort and quiet your mind. But it never does. The truth always disappoints.” ― John Green

This post is going to seem very angry because I am very angry. Frankly you, dear reader, should be angry too! The reasons for my anger actually affect the entire citizenry of the United States . We all depend on these institutions I’ve worked at for a safe, reliable, and effective nuclear deterrence. At a time when our nation needs more expertise and better execution of scientific and technical work, we are getting systematically worse. The mediocrity of our premier research institutions is about to have a huge real-world impact. The importance of AI for our economy and national security is growing. We are not at a state that is capable of meeting the moment we are in. Today, it’s merely a footnote in a tidal wave of societal decline and dysfunction.

The institutions that I’ve spent my entire professional career at are in free fall. They are in free fall because of mismanagement that focuses on the wrong things. They are not delivering to the nation the responsibilities to which they’ve been charged. Unfortunately, the nation itself is at fault. Our national culture is extremely broken and the culture at the labs reflects this. We have a lack of trust for all our institutions, and from what I’ve seen, where I’ve worked, that lack of trust has been earned. It has been earned because they don’t do the hard things they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities. In fact, what I see is a management system that marches us steadfastly towards mediocrity. Excellence should be demanded by the citizens.

To be clear, the assault on these institutions is bipartisan. There is an attack on excellence and efficiency from all quarters of society. On the Left you have over-regulation and an assault on risk-taking that has destroyed innovation. From the Right you have an attack on knowledge and a governance that focuses on money. This is a society-wide problem, not something that falls into the simple narrative of Left versus Right. Much of the lack of focus on continued excellence is due to arrogance, a belief in the supremacy of American science. That supremacy has evaporated in the face of this incompetent governance. My contributions can actually get better now that I’m retired!

  I don’t think the tenor or content will change. I do expect the amount of technical content is likely to increase. Perhaps this is logical. Perhaps it’s paradoxical. I still have great interests and ideas. I want to keep myself busy with passion projects involving physics and math.  Over the long term, this is sure to change, albeit slowly. I won’t have the day in and day out “inspiration” from work. A lot of the reason for retiring is that work was thoroughly uninspiring technically.  The rest of the world and the American carnage will provide plenty of great themes to work on. I am sure that I’ll rapidly have over 400 posts total.  It’ll be at 385 total as of today since 2013.

“Write even when the world is chaotic”– Cory Doctrow

In the coming week, I will be far more expansive on the reasoning and the backstory around my decisions. I have a short post on my plan for the near future. I also have a relevant post I wrote back in September while on vacation in Spain. For now, I hope some of you welcome my return to the public square.

Writing is essential to me, and I won’t stop again.