What I’m Thinking About Lately

January 2026

1/30/2026 — It seems like I see extraction examples everywhere lately. I’ve been catching up on the third season of the British television show Broadchurch, and was really struck by a sotryline where the editor of the local newspaper finds herself increasingly at odds with a supervisor from the out-of-town media group that has acquired the paper.

Over the course of the season, the mission and independence of the newspaper quietly erode. Decisions are made farther away. Local judgment matters less. Risk management replaces responsibility to the community. It happens quietly without fanfare. The editor finally quits when she is asked to print a story that would be devastating to families in the community, people she personally knows. I remember thinking I was really glad she was close to retirement age, because what else might she do in a small town like this? Her skills, credibility, and work were all deeply rooted in that village. And this is so much like what I am seeing in so many places that aren’t fictional.

December 2025

12/20/2025 — I went down a rabbit hole today learning about the Beguines. There’s a clear stay & build pattern there that I want to spend more time with.

I’m struck by how groups of women in the Middle Ages created housing clustered around shared space, community rhythm, and meaningful work—outside the control of husbands or the church, which were effectively the only two sanctioned paths at the time. They could support themselves. They could govern their own lives. And importantly, they were free to leave.

It wasn’t rebellion so much as a third option—a refusal to accept a false binary.

That has me wondering where similar false binaries show up in today’s “wicked” problems. Where do we act as if there are only two choices, when a third path might exist if we slowed down enough to explore it?

What’s one small experiment that could help surface those alternatives?