A Personal Message from the Desk of Productive Catastrophe

Housekeeping notes, Force Majeure — the oil is on fire. Let's talk.

This isn’t a normal Governance Cybernetics piece. No analysis, no data, just me talking to you directly for a minute, which I don’t do enough here, not write at you but talk to you. Apologies in advance if it feels like a gear shift. It is.

The world is currently invoking Force Majeure on what feels like everything at once. Qatar on gas contracts. South Korea’s largest ethylene producer on supply. Singapore petrochemical plants running at half capacity. Japan’s Mitsui and Mitsubishi cutting output. The Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil normally moves, is effectively a parking lot with mines instead of potholes.

And on the off chance you know your Venture Bros, you’ll appreciate that Force Majeure was also a Guild of Calamitous Intent council member who got killed by The Sovereign before anyone understood how important he was. Most of you won’t know what that means, and that’s fine. But the ones who do: I see you, I love you almost as much as my paid subscribers, and yes, the name fits the moment perfectly and the movie is peak. Keep reading either way.

Anyway. I’d been sitting on this housekeeping note for a while, been turning some of this over in my head long before the oil caught fire, hence the polish and unpolish of this post, and the chaos finally felt like a good excuse to show up a little differently here and say some things I’ve been meaning to say.

Take my work. Make it yours.

If something here is useful, remix it, reframe it, transplant it into whatever you’re working on. Christopher Russell did this with a piece on fire survivors and the SB9 ban in California (https://yimbyaction.org/blog/fire-survivors-need-options-the-sb9-ban-takes-them-away/). That’s exactly what I write for, people finding some value and share it. Only ask: DM me, put the OG link in whatever fresh thing you made, and send the link. I want to see where it goes.

Pester me.

Questions, corrections, leads, “you got this wrong,” rotten tomatoes, any and all are welcome. Good research is collaborative and I’d rather be corrected early than stay confidently wrong. DMs are the best way to reach me.

What do you actually want from a paid membership?

Here's what I'm genuinely excited about: handwritten letters, office hours where you can actually ask the questions directly, voiceovers of favorite pieces for when reading isn't what you need. Things that feel like a real exchange between actual people rather than a content subscription. But I want to know what would make it worth something to you specifically, not just what sounds good in a list. I want to put the social in parasocial. Reply or DM. I'm asking because I want to know, not because it's the polite thing to put in a housekeeping post.

On pace

I like to step it up to five articles a week. Whether the world cooperates with that schedule is another question entirely. It’s clearly moving at its own pace right now and I’m mostly just trying to keep up.

What I’d ask: when something isn’t working, not just when it’s sloppy, but when it’s a little dry, missing something, not quite earning your time, tell me. This should be worth reading, not just worth filing away.

— Dave