About this site

I started this site because I love to write. Economics, history, culture—whatever keeps the mind alive. Simple plan. Post a week, maybe two.

Then PrumpTutin came along.

Now it's Tuesdays and Fridays, Sunday is my longer paid post so I can feed the cat. The country's being gutted in real time, and somebody has to write it down. The lies come fast and loud. This is my answer.

Here's the thing: I don't do social media. Never have. If you need to tell me something, write a letter. Send an email. Like humans did for centuries before Zuckerberg decided your grandmother's birthday was content to monetize.

Social media is digital heroin—designed to hack your dopamine system and keep you scrolling while they auction your attention to the highest bidder. Every outrage is engineered. Every fight is profitable. Democracy needs conversation. Social media gives you performance anxiety in 280 characters or less.

And now everything's going to video. I wish Professor Krugman would include text when he posts one. Video is slow—I read four times faster than anyone talks. More to the point, reading lets me stop, think, reread, argue back. Video just rolls over you. Maybe I'm old-fashioned. Maybe I just like words that sit still long enough to mean something.

So Burnt Ground spreads the old way. Person to person. Reader to reader. You tell a friend. They tell another. Word of mouth instead of algorithmic manipulation.

You sign up, you get everything. The whole archive. No corporate middleman deciding what you see. Just you and me and whatever's on my mind that week.

The plan was to write about interesting things. Now I write about survival. Turns out they're the same thing.

Welcome to Burnt Ground—because some fires need to burn.