The machine stops.
The machine stops.
Obey or Be Disconnected A few weeks ago I wrote that the new mobile-line registration system was not really a policy against crime. It was a policy against anonymity. I still retained, however, what was probably a naive form of…
What Mexico’s justice system takes in, and what it gives back. A Personal Starting Point This text does not come from abstraction alone. Like many people in Mexico, I learned early that crime is not an exceptional event reserved for…
Disclosure Without Consensus Introduction — The Gorilla in the Basketball Game There is a well-known psychological experiment in which participants are asked to watch a short video of people passing basketballs to one another. Their task is simple: count the…
Mexico’s Mobile Phone Registry and the Myth of Security The man in front of you at the OXXO counter is holding his phone and his INE.The clerk squints at the screen. The system freezes. Someone sighs. A form asks for…
There are many ways to make things. This is not one of them. This is a set of instructions for allowing something to occur— not necessarily under your control, not necessarily in a way that can be repeated. 1 Do…
How contemporary political and media discourse redefines violence Prologue: The Adjective Before the Act There is a form of violence that leaves no bodies, no ruins, no photographs difficult to look at. It requires no weapons and no uniforms. It…
On moral signaling and the inevitable reappearance of naked power Introduction — When Power Stops Pretending For a long time, modern societies have lived inside a useful fiction. Power, we are told, is procedural.It flows through institutions, treaties, courts, norms,…
Notes on Intuition, Language, and Power Chapter I — The Unease Before the Argument I don’t remember the first time I disagreed, but I remember the first time something felt wrong in a way disagreement doesn’t usually feel. It wasn’t…
On letters, interfaces, and the disappearance of deliberate thought or why everything still works but nobody uses It The Quiet Retirement of a Technology Early in the morning, a short news item appeared on Mexican cable television: Denmark has ended…
Capitalism, markets, and the confusion of critique Chapter I — Wildcard Words and the Poverty of Definition There are words that begin as tools and end as weapons. They are repeated so often, in so many incompatible contexts, that they…
Intelligence, Interpretation, and the Persistence of the Unfamiliar Chapter I — On the Limits of knowing For a long time, intelligence has been treated as a kind of privileged access to reality. The success of modern science has reinforced the impression…
Counting in a World Governed by Noise It’s Not the Head There is a persistent temptation, when confronted with violence, corruption, or cruelty, to focus on faces. Names. Leaders. Criminals. Presidents. Kingpins. The story almost writes itself: identify the villain,…