Category: Reflections
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This article is whimsical. Not to be confused with actual academic publishing, but the content cites actual literature. Have fun reading it! For decades, discussions of dating and socialisation have been trapped in individual psychology: “Be more confident,” “Improve your profile,” “Learn the rules.” This approach ignores a more powerful variable — social structure. Who…
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Most alcohol harm reduction strategies target individual behaviour: drink less, count your units, know your limits. These approaches place the entire burden of control on the drinker, while leaving the drinking environment unchanged. A growing body of evidence suggests that contextual boundary policies — which restructure where, when, and how alcohol can be consumed —…
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For decades, public health messaging on alcohol has focused almost exclusively on quantity: standard drinks per day, low‑risk weekly totals, and blood alcohol concentration limits. This “quantity control” paradigm assumes that risk scales predictably with volume consumed. However, a growing body of behavioral science suggests that context and structure — not just how many drinks…
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What a conflict‑windfall certification can achieve, how it differs from ESG, and why proliferation of such schemes is the only way to hold power accountable 0. The Certification Question The war‑windfall and harm‑windfall protocols described in the previous posts are governance tools. But tools left on a workbench change nothing. A fund may adopt a…
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A scalable, third‑party certification scheme for investors and portfolio companies that neutralise profit from intentional destruction – modelled on Fair Trade, B Corp, and organic certification 0. The Scaling Problem The war‑windfall and harm‑windfall protocols are governance tools for individual funds. But LPs cannot easily verify which funds have adopted them. GPs cannot easily signal…
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A generic framework for investors who refuse to profit from intentional or grossly negligent destruction – extended beyond armed conflict 0. The Precedent The war‑windfall protocol established a principled trigger: if a portfolio company profits from contracts intended to cause harm or kill during active conflict, the incremental gain is ring‑fenced and neutralised. A standalone…
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A framework for investors who refuse to profit from armed conflict – with an intent‑based trigger and a sanctions failsafe 1. The Investor’s Dilemma You are a GP. Your fund backed a satellite imaging startup built for flood monitoring. Then a war broke out. The startup’s revenue tripled – partly from humanitarian agencies tracking refugees,…
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A governance and capital allocation model for dual‑use technology startups 1. Problem Statement: Dual‑Use Inevitability Modern infrastructure technologies are intrinsically dual‑use. A satellite imaging system designed to monitor crop health can locate a tank column. An industrial IoT network built for predictive maintenance can relay coordinates for a precision strike. A cloud platform optimised for…
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Or: How oversensitivity, hair‑trigger interpretations, and vibe‑based accusations prepare the ground for the next moral panic 0. The Sequence Every witch‑hunt follows a predictable arc. It does not emerge from nowhere. It is prepared by an earlier phase – a period of oversensitivity, overreach, and hair‑trigger interpretations. That phase softens the ground. It erodes the…
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The old separation of powers – executive, legislative, judiciary – was a brilliant invention of the Enlightenment. But it was designed for a world where knowledge was scarce, communication was slow, and the church and the crown were the only institutions with reach. Today, we have universities that generate knowledge at an unprecedented scale, scientific…