It looks like a measure of financial health, but it was built to answer a much narrower question. A credit score feels like a grade. The higher it climbs, the more financially responsible we appear to be. A lower score can feel like evidence that we’ve failed some basic
How decline in reading weakens thought itself Voice & Vision | The Unpracticed Mind, Part 3 | Reading and reasoning Reading is easy to misunderstand because almost everyone still reads something. People read texts, posts, captions, headlines, emails, comments, summaries, search results, notifications, and instructions. Words are everywhere. Screens are full of
When suffering is real, but the system cannot find a clean solution Voice & Vision | The Limits of Care, Part 1 Every so often in health care, you meet a patient who does not fit neatly into the usual categories. They are not simply sick in the ordinary way. They
A realistic “both and” response to homelessness Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 8 | The synthesis Homeless: Rights, Equity, and the Limits of Force, Part 7. By now the pattern should be clear. Homelessness persists because it’s not one problem with one lever. It’s a
Are we less capable, or simply less practiced? Voice & Vision | The Unpracticed Mind, Part 2 | Cognitive habits The strongest argument against saying Americans are simply “getting dumber” is that the decline is not even. Some measured skills have slipped. One, three-dimensional rotation, has improved. That complicates the easy
What we can do, what we must not do, and what we must build Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 7 | Legitimacy Homeless: Pipeline Problems, Part 6. This is the part where people stop pretending it’s simple. When someone is living in a tent near a
Why declining test scores do not tell the whole story Voice & Vision | The Unpracticed Mind, Part 1 | Cognitive decline It is a rude question, which is one reason serious people avoid asking it directly. Are Americans getting dumber? The question sounds arrogant. It sounds like something said by someone
How identity hijacks reason. Voice & Vision | How We Learned to Stop Thinking, Part 4 There’s a certain kind of conversation where you can feel your mind retract without moving a muscle. Someone says something about politics, public health, a court case, a movement you care about. Your shoulders
Why help exists on paper but breaks on the street Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 6 | Service delivery and bottlenecks Part 5, The Governance Trap Most people assume homelessness is mainly a question of will. If you cared enough, you’d fix it. If government funded
Why “simple fixes” fail, even when everyone wants progress Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 5 | Policy, politics, and fragmentation If you want to watch a city lose faith in itself, pay attention to how it talks about homelessness after the fifth “initiative.” At first, the language
Voice & Vision | Moscow’s Mission, Part 6 | Trust, resilience, and shared reality What to do Next When the Feed is Built to Fracture. Part 5, Moscow's Mission: Fast Shares, No Checks, Endless Fakes This series started with a simple but uncomfortable fact. Russia did not need to
How manipulation moves faster than proof Voice & Vision | Moscow’s Mission, Part 5 | Internet speed, synthetic media, and trust The playbook didn’t need your vote to change. It only needed your feed to speed up. False and sensational claims travel farther and faster than true ones on large
Why homelessness becomes a civic conflict Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 4 | Public space impacts Most people don’t meet homelessness through empathy. They meet it through disruption. If you missed it, here is part 3: The Accelerants. They meet it when the park stops feeling
Hello my glorious reader! This is a Call to Action. The purpose? To help grow Multiple Views and…News? into something more. I understand how this may come as a shock, but MVaN? is actually a very small publication. You might say, “certainly you jest, sir!” But, I do not.
Why some people get stuck outside longer Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 3 | Vulnerability There’s a certain kind of homelessness conversation that sounds sympathetic but is actually a dodge. It goes like this: homelessness is a housing problem, full stop. That sentence contains truth. It’
Veterans
When service outlives the uniform Mostly True Stories | The Last Barstool Series, Part 4 | Belonging, purpose, and the quiet work I don’t go to the VFW anymore. But I think about it more than I expected to. Part 3, What Happened with the VFW Sometimes I wonder if it
Why homelessness grows at scale Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 2 | Structural drivers Part 1 of this series, Homelessness is a Layered Problem. When homelessness rises in a region, people rush to the most dramatic explanations because dramatic explanations feel satisfying. They let you blame someone.
Homelessness
Why it grows even when everyone agrees it should not Voice & Vision | Homelessness and the Public Commons, Part 1 | The framework Homelessness is one of those issues that turns adults into warring tribes fast. Someone says housing, another says drugs, someone else says mental illness, yet others say crime,
Veterans
When the uniform came and the mission never returned Mostly True Stories | The Last Barstool Series, Part 3 | Purpose, drift, and the empty hall Catch up with part 1, The Disconnect at the VFW. The uniforms came off, but the structure stayed. The ranks, the rituals, the same stories told
How platforms, newsrooms, and government adapted after 2016 Voice & Vision | Moscow’s Mission, Part 4 | Labels, takedowns, and adaptation The last installment of this series, part 3: After the Click, discussed how the U.S. was affected by this assault. This time we discuss what the media and government
America became powerful by making real things, including lives that made sense. Voice & Vision | The Last Shift Series, Part 2 | Manufacturing, dignity, and the middle class In Part 1: The Last Shift, we stood at the factory gate and watched the lights dim. Automation turned a hundred jobs into
Critical Thinking
The Illusion of Research and the Comfort of Certainty Voice & Vision | How We Learned to Stop Thinking, Part 3 | Research, certainty, and comprehension If you missed part 2, you can find it here before diving in: How We Learned to Stop Thinking. Think about the last time you felt
Veterans
A veteran visits multiple VFW halls expecting connection and finds a pattern instead, service reduced to grievance, belonging turned into suspicion. This essay looks at what happens when structure outlives mission, and what it means to look for purpose beyond the past.
Why the Most Lasting Damage Happened After the Ballots Were Counted Voice & Vision | Moscow’s Mission, Part 3 Catch up with part 2 Moscow's Mission: Inside the Troll Farm. The most important effects of 2016 didn’t live in vote totals. They lived in what people paid