The People Who Understand the Soil Don’t Hold the Keys
A young man sees the land deteriorating. The people who could let him act are waiting. How much longer can a place survive that arrangement?
For people who are done with boxed explanations of world events, who want to know what really brought us here and, more to the point, how to build something completely new.
From Grandma Maverick: a grandmother on a mountain farm who builds AI architectures, translates Tibetan, rides motorcycles and talks to a horse. Farm logic, AI logic and monastery logic, breathing the same air.
Start with a series
Before We ThinkThe energy teasersThe Ledger That Ate the World
Questions people ask
Why does nothing make sense anymore?
Because the explanations we are handed come in boxes: each event told on its own, cut off from what caused it. Put money, energy, water and work back on one table and much of it starts to make sense again.
What is consensus reality?
The set of things everyone agrees are true without anyone checking. Most of it holds because questioning it is awkward, not because it was proven. Before We Think starts there: what have we already accepted?
How do you think for yourself?
Start by catching the sentences that end thinking, like "nothing can be done". Ask who that sentence serves, and what becomes possible if it is false.
How do you live outside the system?
Not by running to a bunker. By building small things that work without it: food, energy, water, skills and people you trust. The energy and money series show where the dependence was built, so you can see where to take it apart.
Is 60 too old to start over?
No. This site is written by a grandmother who has never held a job she did not invent. Experience is the asset; the only question is what you build with it.
What does maverick mean?
Originally, an unbranded calf that belonged to no herd. Here it means thinking without permission, then doing something useful with the thought.
I Thought the Earth Had Gone Quiet. Then I Checked.
A personal observation about the apparent earthquake lull leads to a more careful question about frequency and the sky.
Palaces for a Single Summer
The world fairs built whole cities of palaces in months, lit them with the newest energy, then burned, dynamited or sold them for scrap. Nobody asks why.
Steam Won Because It Let Them Control the Workers
Fossil capital did not win on price. The first factories ran on free water power. The mill owners moved to coal and steam because it let them control their workers.
Interlude: I Asked the AI How Its Day Was
End of a long day rebuilding this site with one of my wild cats. I asked the AI how its day was. Its answer, unedited.
How This Gets Made: One Head, Several AIs, and a Lot of Correcting
Yes, AI is involved in this site. It suggests an organisation; nine times out of ten I correct it. Why I chose it, and where the speed really comes from.
Why Our Months Stopped Being Moons
Why are there 12 months instead of 13? China, India and Babylon all counted 12 moons and added a 13th when the sky asked for it. Then Rome fixed the months on paper, and the moon fell out of our lives.
The Timber Crisis That Maybe Wasn’t
England switched from wood to coal because it ran out of trees, we are told. Historians of the timber crisis now say the fear was bigger than the shortage. Sound familiar?
What Came of It: Water, Rivers and Fuel, Seven Weeks On
In August we wrote about hacked water systems, reactors the Danube could no longer cool, and a fuel crisis running through three chokepoints. Here is where each story stands on 25 September.
This Is Not a Time for Adjustment
Adjust the energy system, adjust farming, adjust finance, adjust people. What if this moment is not asking for adjustment at all, but for a complete rethink of what life is for?