The Periodic Digests are my way of synthesizing the noise of current events into a coherent signal. Rather than reacting to every headline, these curated summaries capture the most critical developments in philosophy, geopolitics, and culture over a set period.
They serve as both a time capsule and a tool for reflection—allowing me (and you) to look back and see the trajectory of ideas and events without the distractions of the daily news cycle.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 5.20
The United Nations told us this week that the world will fail to hold global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The U.N. Environment Programme’s new report finds that even under the most optimistic scenario, temperatures will rise at least 1.8 degrees, and UNEP Director Inger Andersen put the consequences plainly: “There is no good outcome if we remain above the 1.5” (Democracy Now!, 2026). The report’s best remaining option is to exceed current climate goals on the road to net zero. The goal is not abandoned. The path is.
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“Some things are in our control and others not.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1
The United States and Canada are now in a trade war that nobody on either side of the border asked for. Talks collapsed on Friday, August 21. The next day the United States imposed 50 percent tariffs on roughly $27.6 billion of Canadian goods. On Tuesday, Canada answered dollar for dollar, announcing tariffs on $20 billion of American products beginning September 8. Prime Minister Mark Carney put it plainly: “We were attacked.” Two neighbors, the largest trading relationship on Earth, and the response to a dispute is to make everything both countries buy more expensive.
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“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” — Epictetus, Discourses, 3.23
Net interest on the federal debt is set to cross $1 trillion this fiscal year, more than the Pentagon’s entire budget, and it holds there every year through 2035 on the Congressional Budget Office’s own numbers (CBO, 2025). On the CBO’s calm, no-crisis baseline, debt held by the public breaks the record set finishing World War II by fiscal year 2030 (CBO, 2026). That’s about four years out. Treasury’s response this month was to double its debt buyback program, a move I wrote about this week in Treasury Buybacks: A Colossal Failure in the Making: a few billion dollars a month against a $32 trillion market, a rounding error dressed up as a fix.
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“Treat it as your own only while it is given to you, as travelers treat an inn.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion, XI
On October 20, 2025, demolition crews began tearing down the White House East Wing, the 1902 addition that had housed the East Garden Room, the Family Theater, and generations of First Ladies’ offices. (NPR) It was coming down to make room for a 90,000-square-foot state ballroom, which the White House said in July 2025 would cost about $200 million, fully covered by Trump himself and other “patriot donors,” at no cost to taxpayers. (PBS) By December the estimate had climbed to $400 million. This week, CNBC reported the figure has reached roughly $900 million, and that it will now be “covered primarily by taxpayers.” (CNBC)
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“It is your business to act well the part that is given you; but to select the part belongs to another.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion, XVII
Early this morning, the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States, 50 to 49. Every Democrat voted no. So did two Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. (NPR)
Blanche spent most of his career on the advocate’s side of a courtroom: a decade as a federal prosecutor in New York’s violent crimes unit, then years defending white-collar clients in private practice. In 2023 he took on a single, high-profile assignment: representing Donald Trump personally, in the hush money trial, the classified documents case, and the election obstruction case. (Wikipedia) That’s not a dishonorable job on its own. The system depends on lawyers willing to argue a client’s case as hard as it can honestly be argued, whether the client is popular or not, guilty or not.
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Stoic Saturday: When the Law Becomes a Suggestion Think clearly. Live intentionally. Love deeply.
The Rule of Law Isn’t a Spectator Sport Marcus Aurelius wrote that “the best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” Today, that enemy isn’t just a person—it’s the slow rot of a system that once held power in check.
The rule of law isn’t a given. It’s a daily practice, like flossing or not eating the entire pizza in one sitting. And right now, it’s being treated like a suggestion rather than a rule.
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“Some things are up to us, and some are not.” — Epictetus, Enchiridion
I’ve been following the campaign around Crimea closely these past few weeks, and something about the shape of it has stuck with me — not the politics of it, which I’ll leave to people better qualified than a Stoicism newsletter, but the strategy.
For a long time, the instinct — mine included — was to imagine this kind of war ending the way wars end in movies: one decisive battle, a line on a map that moves all at once, a single dramatic turn. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening, by most independent accounts, is slower and less cinematic than that. Ukraine appears to have shifted its approach around Crimea from scattered strikes to something more sustained and methodical — degrading fuel depots, air defense, bridges, and rail lines, and increasingly, ships. Reporting from the Crimea Platform and United24 put the numbers in the range of ninety to over a hundred Russian vessels struck in single-week windows in early-to-mid July, Kerch Strait ferry capacity down as much as 75%, and passage through the Don-Azov Canal temporarily suspended. Officials in the Ukrainian defense establishment reportedly describe the goal plainly: make Crimea an island. Not take it back in an afternoon. Isolate it, patiently, until what’s left is unsustainable.
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“Let each thing you do, say, or intend be the act of one who might depart from life this very moment.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.11
Memorial Day is a strange holiday.
We grill. We shop. We go to the lake. We treat it like summer’s opening ceremony. And somewhere in the background — a parade, a flag, a moment of silence — we remember that the whole thing exists because people died.
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Subject: The Pause
“You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (paraphrase) There’s a moment between stimulus and response where everything lives.
Someone cuts you off in traffic. Your chest tightens, your foot tenses toward the brake, your jaw clenches. That’s the stimulus. What happens next is up to you.
Most people don’t know the pause exists. They move straight from event to reaction—anger to horn, frustration to sharp word, anxiety to scroll. They’re not choosing; they’re being pulled.
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🪞 A Reflection The clearest high point of 2025 was finally giving my writing the honesty it had been waiting for. I stopped circling the truth and began trusting it. Pages that had stalled for years moved once I allowed myself to write without self-protection or apology. Writing became less about producing and more about listening—staying present long enough for the right sentences to surface. Much of that work is finding its way into Misaligned, a book I plan to publish on June 10, 2026, shaped by questions I’ve carried for decades. The year didn’t resolve my story, but it helped me tell it more truthfully.
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