The names were familiar. So were the feelings. The faces took some work.

Notes on friendship, making art, and growing older

A few things about the person behind the essays, arguments, and observations.

Gavin Newsom calls comments ‘deranged and dangerous’ after president tells Nebraska rally: ‘They can take out a city’

All the world may not be a stage, but part of my criminal defense law office is

What a ridiculous dance on a treadmill taught us about where one person ends and another begins

A new scanner, half a million words in journals, and a life I couldn’t pin down

Arrested or charged in Fresno? Start here. Guide to 500+ posts on how criminal cases work, what to expect in court, and when to call a criminal defense lawyer.

A button, a campaign I couldn't vote in, and the standard that's followed me since.

A runaway's calendar, a father's last word, and the blink of a life

Stuffed rabbits, a zoo director, and why you don't mess around with monikers

I’ve always believed that music, like space, is about exploration.  –  William Shatner Though this Irving Berlin song (provided by Rick Horowitz) is about Hitler, it has taken on a new …

The sins of the fathers are visited unto the third and fourth generations

One wrong guess about spinal fluid and I've been drinking coffee ever since

A hopefully funny essay about intergenerational humor that missed the mark

Schrödinger’s Market — reading it collapses it

And why we can’t hand anything the Going.

Suffixes, buried paintings, Axixic, and the stories we mistake for reading

So I’m applying my reading the tape skills (pattern recognition) to improving my Spanish lately. And I’ve been working on afijos (affixes). I ran across the words “cular” (pig intestine used for saus...

Kinda sorta works. Except that it often doesn't.

Reading the Tape You Just Wrote

On the Epistemology of Being Badly Profiled, and Why You Should Be Worried Even If the Algorithm Is Wrong

Seven Justices, Zero Dissents, One Foreclosed Workaround.

No Body. No Hands. Full Confession.

Prometheus, Stolen Fire, and Why AI Won’t Be Godlike…Ever

When the Tape is Reading You

The Good, the Bad, and the Very Ugly Truth About Trump's Greatest "Business" Skills

On Storytelling, Tape Reading, and Snoopy

The near closure of the Strait of Hormuz since the war began has led to a historic oil supply shock, which quickly sent global energy prices soaring.

Reading the Tape: Milestone Edition As of today, Reading the Tape has achieved a subscriber count of four — representing 33% organic growth from a base that, if I’m being precise, consists largely of...

The Tape Reader Knew First

Reading the Tape Before the News