Four Vials at a Time
As of June 30 the federal government had approved about $9.7 billion total for Helene. That is about 16 percent of what the storm cost. Compare that to past disasters. After Hurricane Sandy, federal aid covered about 78 percent of the damage. After Katrina, about 73 percent.
The Ten Percent Problem
The worst case is not that we fail to solve these problems. It is that we retain the technical ability to solve them and lose the collective ability to decide to.
We Plugged In and Turned On Each Other
We did not lose the ability to talk to each other. We lost the ability to find each other. We lost what it means to actually be a neighbor, or to be a part of a community.
America is at War With Itself
"Our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness." -Internal Facebook Presentation, 2018.
Floating Alcatraz
Rome did not fall because its soldiers got soft. Rome fell because it kept promising to hold more ground than it had men to hold it, and kept sending the same legions back out to cover the difference, and when the line finally gave, it decided the problem was the men standing on it.