Art Gallery
A visual journey through the themes and insights of HuffmanWrites.
Page 10 of 10 · 110 images total
Consider the Source
A 920-page plan written by a private foundation, disavowed by the candidate it was written for, and now roughly half of it is policy. The most useful thing to do with a document this consequential is read it, including the parts that are not in it.
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The Delusion and the Danger
Two claims, separated on purpose. Delusional first: a politics that grounds law in a divine claim has no mechanism for correcting the interpreters of that claim, so it is unfalsifiable by construction. Then dangerous: that same structure has a track record, and it is running right now.
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Twenty-Seventh of Fifty-Six
I published an objective ranking of all 56 Speakers this morning and it placed Mike Johnson twenty-seventh. That number is accurate and it is close to meaningless, and the reason it is meaningless is a mistake I made in my own method. A rubric that counts what a Speaker produced cannot see a Speaker whose method is subtraction.
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Ranking the Speakers
There has never been a scholarly ranking of the Speakers of the House. There is one survey from 1998, of 50 Speakers, and the eighteen since have never been rated at all. This is the whole method for grading all 56, the profile string that encodes each one, the four checks that validated the data, and the measurement showing how much of a Speaker's standing is his record and how much is merely how well he is remembered.
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Separate From the Plan
The court asked a narrow question about demolition. The government answered it by describing a one-week safety closure and calling that closure separate from the Board's plan. Five days earlier, under oath, it said the opposite.
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Sealed on the Record
The government asked the court to end the case and to let it close the building, then asked to keep the document it relies on secret. A follow-up on Beatty v. Trump for September 23.
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Presidential Grading
A reproducible method for grading all 44 presidents on C-SPAN's ten leadership characteristics: the rubric stated, the ten-character profile string that encodes each president, the three checks that validated the data, and the measurements showing where weighting changes the answer and where it cannot.
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The Standard and the Man
Comparing two presidents usually turns into a verdict about two men. The useful comparison is about the office they both held: what each said about his own power, what each did with the same tools, and which of them left behind a standard he could be held to.
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What Courage Costs
The eight senators in Kennedy's Profiles in Courage all paid for their convictions with their careers. The man who wants his name on Kennedy's memorial will not pay for anything. That is the whole argument, and it is enough.
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What Is Due September 23
A short update on the Beatty v. Trump docket: the board has stopped defending its own closure and asked the court to dissolve the injunction, and Wednesday the government owes the court a sworn report.
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An Open Letter to Peter Thiel
You are right that democracy is incompatible with the future you are building. I am writing to tell you that your future is not mine, and to say plainly which one I intend to live in.
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The Name Over the Door
He is not crazy. He is doing something specific, and naming it is how we beat it. What the Kennedy Center fight reveals about the economics of a monument to one man's ego, and what the country now has to do about it.
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The Meeting Not Priced
Ninety days from this morning is December 17. With the Fed's first hike since 2023 already in the books, a war in its seventh month, and a government funding deadline three days after the last rate decision of the year, here is what the world's most-watched index is likely to do between now and then.
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The Thread Between
Ninety days from today is December 17. If the Iran war grinds on without improvement, here is what the yield curve, the Fed, and your mortgage are likely to do between now and then.
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Two Philosophies of the Pen
A compare and contrast of two modern fountain pen classics — the Bauhaus-functionalist Lamy 2000 and the nautical-luxury Waterman Carène — and the two theories of writing they embody.
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The Case for Adam Hamilton
A personal case for supporting Adam Hamilton: what I learned attending his church, why the incumbent has failed Kansas, and why this long shot is worth taking.
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The Path to 51
The math, the map, and the leadership question: what it would take for Democrats to win a Senate majority in 2026, and who would lead it.
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Run Correctly, Disbelieved Anyway
Two executive orders, a Postal Service rule, a citizenship database, a hundred lawsuits. Almost none of it has changed anything for voters. Here are the eleven real risks to the 2026 election, ranked by whether they matter, and the reason the danger is not theft but belief.
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A Million Missourians
Missouri ran its August primary under a congressional map that the state's highest court says never became law. A million voters will cast November ballots for candidates their districts never nominated. Here is the remedy I wanted to propose, why the law forbids it, and the fix that would actually work.
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Golden Gate
macOS 27 Golden Gate shipped today, the first macOS that runs only on Apple silicon. Intel Macs are done, Siri was rebuilt from scratch, and the Mac crossed the same bridge it started building in 2020. The gate is a good place to stop and look at both shores.
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The Probability of AI Ending Humanity
A companion to 'The Probability of AI Taking Over the World.' The people inside the labs are now saying the danger is irreversible loss of control in the very near term. The stars are silent in exactly the way that should frighten us. And the whole debate keeps averaging a number that, if it is the downside is everything, was never meant to be averaged. The probability is a decision, and we are setting it by default.
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The Same Standard
A United Nations mission indicted both sides of the Iran war in a single report, finding grounds to believe the United States committed a war crime at a school in Minab and that Iran committed crimes against humanity in its protest crackdown. The Fed hiked and nothing broke, the war widened to a second waterway, Germany votes tomorrow, and Marcus Aurelius had the harder discipline: if anyone can show me I am wrong, I will gladly change.
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Expect the Splash
Inflation printed hot again, and a rate hike on Wednesday is nearly certain, the first since 2023, the three Fed dissenters voted for it in July. Oil crossed $100 in the seventh month of the Iran war, Germany's far right won a state, and on the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 the Commission's verdict still stands: a shock, but not a surprise. Epictetus had a method for all of it: expect the splash.
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A Shock, Not a Surprise
The 9/11 Commission called the attacks 'a shock, but they should not have come as a surprise.' Twenty-five years later, with an entire generation grown up with no living memory of the day, this essay walks the road to September 11, 2001, the failures that let the plot through, the price that was paid, and the light that came through the fracture.
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The Probability of AI Taking Over the World
The people who build AI are now the people most afraid of it. The surveys say the median expert puts the chance of catastrophe at 5 to 20 percent, the range runs from zero to 99, and the forecasters who are actually calibrated say 2. The evidence is early and ugly, and the takeover that matters most is not the one in the headlines. The probability is not a number to be discovered. It is a decision to be made.
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The Dumbest Trade War
The United States is waging a trade war against its second-largest trading partner, its largest energy supplier, and its closest ally, over a border that produces 0.2 percent of the fentanyl and a deficit that disappears when you exclude oil. The costs are real, the pretexts are false, and the only question left is what we are trying to break.
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Vote Early, October 17
After three of the largest single-day demonstrations in American history, the No Kings movement is turning from the streets to the ballot box. On Saturday, October 17, the fourth chapter of a 250-year argument begins.
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The Case for Honest Leaders
The Founders built a government that could survive knaves. They did not build one that could survive a leader whose strategy is to make the difference between truth and falsehood undiscoverable. Honesty is not a moral preference; it is the republic's cheapest infrastructure.
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The Court That Lost Its Balance
A researched essay on how the Supreme Court lost the public's trust: record-low approval, an ethics code with no enforcement, a confirmation process reduced to raw power, and the structural reforms that could restore it.
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The Bond Market Is Not Fooled
A researched analysis of the 2026 Treasury selloff: a $2.1 trillion deficit, a Fed holding rates with inflation still above target, an administration demanding cuts it has not earned, and the plain assignment of blame.
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The Obstacle Is the Way
The United Nations says the world will overshoot 1.5 degrees. A glacier collapsed in Nepal and killed 1,280 people. A supersized El Niño is coming. And the vice president says it isn't a war. Marcus Aurelius has something to say about all of it.
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The Questions
Carl Sagan died in 1996, before the smartphone, before social media, before artificial intelligence, before the first year above 1.5 degrees. But he saw all of it coming. This is what the evidence demands of us, in his voice.
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The Two Paths
A sober look at the year 2075, forty-nine years out. The demographics, the climate, and the politics are already in motion. The question is which of two paths the world takes, and the answer is being written now.
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The Diagnosis
A confession, a diagnosis, and a defense: what it actually means to be accused of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and why the accusation has become the most reliable compliment in American politics.
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The Cracked Crown
The second Trump administration is both dangerous and useless, and the two are the same fact: power without competence does not cancel out, it compounds. The war, the economy, the record of failure, and the verdict of the polls.
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The Gavel
A documented accounting of the criminal convictions, criminal charges, and civil judgments against the forty-seventh president, and of what the legal system did and did not resolve.
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The Ballot Urn
Sixty-one days before the midterms, a plain-language tour of what the constitutional text actually assigns: who sets the rules, who counts the votes, and why the right to vote appears nowhere in the original document.
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The Corruption Tax
Corruption is conventionally treated as a moral failure. It is also an economic one, and the price is measurable: in distorted investment, higher yields, lost tax revenue, and the quiet premium paid for a government that can no longer be trusted to enforce its own rules.
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The Calm Bull
Ninety days from today is December 2. If the Iran war grinds on without improvement, here is what the world's most-watched index, a Fed that may hike twice, and a consumer already feeling the strain are likely to do between now and then.
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Ninety Days
Ninety days from today is December 2. If the Iran war grinds on without improvement, here is what the yield curve, the Federal Reserve, and your mortgage are likely to do between now and then.
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The Fault Line
A scholarly synthesis of the wargame literature and force-posture data: how a U.S.-China war in 2030 would begin, what the first weeks would cost, where it would break, and why every major study concludes neither side could win it in any useful sense.
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Giving Up Control
MacKenzie Scott helped build Amazon, then gave away $26 billion. Her philosophy of giving it away is the Stoic dichotomy of control, enacted at a scale the ancients could not have imagined.
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The Line Between
A 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods, a collapsed trade deal, and a week of floods, layoffs, and court rulings. The dichotomy of control is not an abstraction; it is the only sane way to read the news.
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The Weighing
Both chambers of Congress are in play on November 3. A look at the Senate toss-ups, the House math, the economy as the deciding issue, and what the final nine weeks will actually decide.
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The Fault Line
A formal assessment of America's macroeconomic trajectory and geopolitical standing in mid-2026: slowing growth, a mounting fiscal load, and a narrowing margin of advantage against rival powers.
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The Gate Before the Flood
A companion to Treasury Buybacks: A Colossal Failure in the Making. Switzerland's constitutional debt brake, and the dormant U.S. bill modeled on it, are a real fix, one that needs to start before the CBO's own no-crisis baseline breaks the debt-to-GDP record around 2030.
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You Cannot Patch a Flood
Scott Bessent doubled the Treasury's debt buyback program to steady the bond market. The math says it's too small to matter, raises the government's long-term interest burden, and tells Congress deficits don't matter.
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The Steward, Not the Owner
A federal judge told the President he could use the White House but not own it. This week the case reaches the Supreme Court, and the taxpayer bill for the private gift has quietly grown to $900 million.
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What Power Illuminates
A Stoic, an atheist, and a progressive make the case, directly, that the prosperity gospel and Christian nationalism betray the faith they claim to defend.
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A Different Part to Play
Cicero on the difference between an advocate's duty and a judge's, and what it means when the body meant to check that difference confirms him anyway.
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The Weight of Honor
Honor isn't conferred by office or title. It's a practical discipline: consistency, respect, courage, responsibility, and the country is watching, in real time, what erodes when leaders abandon it.
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The Senate Map
Every U.S. Senate race on the 2026 ballot — candidates, current ratings, and projections, from the handful of toss-ups that will decide the majority to the safest seats in the country.
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The Most Contested Words
The tension between bearing arms and well-regulated militias in modern America.
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The Mask of Legitimacy
On kleptocracy, corruption, and the cost of staying silent in a failing system.
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What Power Reveals
Weekly digest: observations, recommendations, and reflections from November 14, 2025.
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The Empty Mirror
Weekly digest: observations, recommendations, and reflections from January 2, 2026.
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What You Feed Grows
Weekly digest: observations, recommendations, and reflections from August 29, 2025.
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Crossroads
Weekly digest: observations, recommendations, and reflections from August 22, 2025.
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No Answer Expected
Executive summary of Letters: truth without outcome, speech without guarantee.
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Data Driven
Executive summary of The Stoic CGM: using data to govern the body without surrendering to it.
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Stoic Backgammon
Executive summary of The Stoic Citizen: virtue as a public discipline, not a private consolation.
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Indigenous Peoples 2025
Indigenous Peoples Day isn't really about renaming a Monday in October. It's about whether we're willing to look at what the old name asked us not to see.
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What we feed
Violence doesn't begin with the act. It begins long before, in roots most of us refuse to examine.
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Fibonacci
On the temptation to reach for the sledgehammer, and the discipline required to use the scalpel instead.
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Our Only Home
Remembering Carl Sagan, his cosmic perspective, and what it means to be starstuff.
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Justice Must Be Fixed
When justice bends under power and privilege, society pays the hidden price.
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Remembering Carl Sagan
An examination of constitutional rights, civic duty, and the erosion of freedom.
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You Still Have Rights
An examination of constitutional rights, civic duty, and the erosion of freedom.
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Finding My Way
Executive summary of Misaligned: when the map is wrong, discipline becomes damage.
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The Fourth Amendment
The Fourth Amendment in a digital age: why privacy matters and how it's eroding.
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45 Words
What the First Amendment really protects, why it matters now, and what threatens it.
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A More Perfect Union
An examination of constitutional rights, civic duty, and the erosion of freedom.
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What's Next?
An examination of constitutional rights, civic duty, and the erosion of freedom.
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The Stoic CGM
Executive summary of The Stoic CGM: using data to govern the body without surrendering to it.
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Reflecting on 2025
Weekly digest: observations, recommendations, and reflections from January 2, 2026.
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The Roots of Violence
Violence doesn't begin with the act. It begins long before, in roots most of us refuse to examine.
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Standing Tall for the Things We Care About
Why standing up for democratic values matters now more than ever.
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Proud to be Woke
If caring about people makes me woke, then I’ll wear the word like a medal.
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The Pause
Weekly digest: a collection of observations, recommendations, and personal reflections.
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Expect the Storm
Managing risk in a fragile world: what investors and citizens need to know.
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Unstuck
Executive summary of Unstuck: a Stoic framework for getting your life back on track.
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A Life Made Whole
Executive summary of A Life Made Whole: essays on holding yourself together when experience threatens to fragment.
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Think before picking up the hammer.
On the temptation to reach for the sledgehammer, and the discipline required to use the scalpel instead.
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Pale Blue Dot
Remembering Carl Sagan, his cosmic perspective, and what it means to be starstuff.
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The Economy is Fragile
Managing risk in a fragile world: what investors and citizens need to know.
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Endurance
Premeditatio malorum as a practical way to meet setbacks without surrendering agency.
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