Essays

Fourteen essays, one argument: discovery isn't finding. They live at The Feast — start anywhere.

We Are the Tortoise — July 2026

Loyalty is taste with time and attention applied — the slow, owned relationship compounds while everything optimized for speed quietly decays.

Friction, Working In Your Favor — May 2026

Friction isn't the enemy of a good experience — it's the texture that makes one. How the right friction builds the preference that optimization erases.

Who Benefits? — May 2026

When commerce optimizes the human out of the buying journey, the relationship becomes the last thing worth owning. A case for leaning back in and building it.

Readiness Is Not a Strategy — April 2026

Being "AI-ready" isn't a strategy, and buying tools out of fear isn't a plan. The difference between readiness and actually knowing what your business is for.

Trust Is Structural — April 2026

Trust isn't a feeling, it's structure — who you let decide for you. Why we hand choices to the people and systems that earn it, and what shifts when machines ask.

All Together Now — April 2026

No brand out-runs AI agents alone. A case for coalition: competitors pooling one audited trust layer agents must consult, instead of staying a tenant on someone else's.

The Algo In Your Head — March 2026

You already run a conditional spending matrix in your head — the original algorithm. What your own decision logic reveals about how brands really get chosen.

Humans Open Boxes (for now) — March 2026

As commerce optimizes people out of the buying journey, the human moments become the opportunity. Why unboxing — the last human touch — is worth protecting.

The Relationship is the Price — March 2026

Platforms deliver volume, but you only rent it — and the bill comes due as owned demand erodes. Why the relationship, not the reach, is the real price.

My New Favorite Sweater — March 2026

Preferences aren't retrieved, they're built in the act of discovery. Serve someone only what the algorithm already knows and taste calcifies — the cost is Discovery Debt.

Performance Marketing is a Ponzi Scheme — March 2026

Performance marketing is rented demand that decays the moment you stop paying — deceptive, dangerous, doomed. The case for owning demand instead of renting it.

You Call It Friction, I Call It Human Experience — February 2026

We optimized friction out of commerce and called it progress — the Frictionless Trap. What we lost when friction became the enemy, and why it was human all along.

Meanwhile, as you were optimizing — February 2026

Algorithmic Legibility and Agentic Invisibility are two sides of one coin — win the agent's purchase, lose the customer's choice. What that actually costs your P&L.

Discovery Isn't Finding — February 2026

Discovery isn't finding — and the neuroscience says that difference is where brand loyalty forms. What agentic commerce strips out when an AI agent does your shopping.

New essays land at The Feast first. The working vocabulary behind them lives in the Field Guide.