Bratwurst Rewards I am sitting in front of a supermarket. One of my favorites. It is clean, new, and almost always empty. You can walk throu...

Where Fact Ends and Opinion Begins There is a lot of noise why the founder of Wikipedia, or co-founder, or face of the organisation, does no...

The Price of a Click The internet has turned into an arena where almost anything can become a spectacle if framed the right wrong way. The l...

No Monday Without It I had just put my daughter on the bus to her mother. The house was suddenly too quiet. The shop was going to close soon...

Stories Told, Stories Untold On most days the news feels like weather in times of constant climate change. A bit too much sun, a bit of pois...

Why the Political Immune System Targets the European Right I’ve been wondering about something. Not out of outrage or allegiance, but quiet ...

The Day My Daughter Chose Her Own Future Today is Zukunftstag in Switzerland, the Future Day. A day where kids are sent out to peek into the...

Children Are Not Algorithms to Be Programmed There’s a whole breed of people online giving advice to parents and kids as if they’re training...

The 4.6-Star Prison My eleven-year-old daughter read The Count of Monte Cristo and asked if the Château d’If was real. We checked. It was. A...

The Job Interview Script  There is a script for job interviews, and everyone follows it, knowingly or not. The interviewer plays the gatekee...

Who’s Afraid of the Dark? There is no witness. The stars burn and die without memory. The galaxies turn like slow storms, but not for us. Th...

The Most Famous Italian: Caligula’s Horse Someone asked, Who’s the most famous Italian in history? It tickled my national pride a bit. A cou...

The First Tweet Scene: A crowded Athenian marketplace. A man stands on a crate holding a small wax tablet. HERALD: Attention, citizens! An E...

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism Scroll long enough on X and it starts to feel like a digital monastery where everyone is trying to be ...

The Walk Home Nine o’clock in Switzerland means the world has gone still. Windows hum with warm light, and the old streets forget their name...

153 It is Sunday. I’ve been running. When I passed some people on their way to church, someone said, “The number 2 in the Bible means societ...

Germany: No Country to Fight For Politics in Germany lived for decades in two truths. One: a moral exile born of twentieth-century crimes. T...

Career Advice Me: “GuruAI, should I tell my boss the truth?” GuruAI: “In principle, yes. Truth builds trust.” Me: “He called security.” Guru...

The Transformation of Revenge My eleven-year-old daughter came to me tonight talking about The Count of Monte Cristo. She spoke of it in det...

When Clarity Kills Ambition I once watched an interview with Christopher Langan, often called the smartest man alive. The question was simpl...

Sushi in Space It was one of those freezing Alpine nights that make silence sound crystal clear. I had just picked my eleven-year-old daught...

You Can’t Fake Yourself into Engineering In the real world, gravity doesn’t care about charm. A bridge either holds or it doesn’t. A circuit...

Explaining the Trinity to My Daughter This morning, on the way to school, my daughter asked, “Papa, what is the Trinity?” We were running la...

Why Cities Vote Left I do not like when my writing sounds political. I am not trying to convert anyone or wave a flag. Politics, to me, is m...

Navigating Moral Responsibility in the Modern World I looked down at my shoes before heading to the supermarket. Brown leather. Solid. Relia...

Risk to be wrong!  I see people quoting famous writers and scientists left and right, as if wisdom only counts once someone else has said it...

LSD, Therapy, and the Courage to See Yourself Swiss psychiatrist Peter Gasser studied medicine at the universities of Fribourg and Bern.  Af...

The Sweet Cesspool Dear friend, I woke thinking about George Sanders again. You remember, voice like velvet laced with arsenic, face lit by ...

Retconning Reality (On how the edits we make to survive can become the lies we live by.) I was looking for a new job in social work. The int...

The Cybernetic Apostle Today is All Saints’ Day. Paul is a key figure in Christianity. His life, work, and letters form the backbone of Chri...

Halloween: The Inheritance We hang skeletons in windows and call it Halloween. But the real ghosts live in bloodlines. I saw a picture once,...

What It Means to Be Human The night had a cheap kind of beauty, the kind that flickers on wet asphalt and pretends it’s eternal. Somewhere, ...

When Adults Turn into Children Online The screen removes the gaze of the other. In public, we behave because someone might look at us. Onlin...

Adaptation 101 “What kind of skill do you need in life, but they don’t teach you in school?” my daughter asked. They teach you how to multip...

The Razor’s Edge I named this little blog after a line from the Katha Upanishad, the one Somerset Maugham used for The Razor’s Edge: “The sh...

Descartes Reloaded I’m a social worker, not a scientist. My world is made of faces, voices, and sometimes rather awkward silences. So when I...

Common Sense vs Madness It started like any other argument online: capitalism versus socialism, nationalism versus communism, left versus r...

When Philosophy Becomes a Product We have mistaken the love of wisdom for a weapon. Philosophy was meant to bring peace, not power. Yet in...

The Law Beneath the Law The difference between a criminal and a hero isn’t what they do. It’s who tells the story. The outlaw who robs the r...

You Set Your Own Value We were walking through a luxury shopping center. Marble floors. Quiet music. The kind of place where people speak so...

Progress Against Ourselves Since the beginning, civilization has been a wager against our own nature. We built tools to ease the burden, cit...

Talking Philosophy with a Former Hells Angels I’ve known Andi Gmeiner for about 30 years. About four years ago, I asked him for an interview...

1989: The Victory That Was a Defeat When the Berlin Wall fell, the West celebrated as if history itself had ended. The Cold War was won. Mar...

Recycling ad Absurdum  In Germany, a car dealer buys garbage to stay lawful. Each gram of packaging in must return as waste. Customers take ...

Conspiracy Theories: From One Illusion to the Next First you believe the system. Then you believe the system is lying. Either way, you’re st...

Duty in Our Time There was a time when duty needed no explanation. It held the world together. Now we flinch at the word. It sounds like iro...

Paper Power: How Paper Learned to Rule People Bureaucracy is a child that never grows up. Always needs a guardian. A caretaker. Someone to h...

Being, Not Branding The world no longer asks who are you? It asks what value do you create? We’ve become entrepreneurs of our own existence....

Verification This morning my phone said, Verify it’s you. I stared at the screen, half awake, and thought... I’m not sure. My face looked th...

The Oracle A man once stood before the oracle. Not for guidance. For permission. He didn’t ask should I. He asked how. The oracle answer...