Two kinds of stories go viral: The rare and the commonplace

[This was originally a social post]

The biggest problem I see on social media is how often we confuse things that get attention because they represent something that happens often, and emerging that gets attention because it’s entirely unusual. One marks a pattern, one shares an outlier.

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Pro-entrepreneurship is not the same as pro-business

[This was originally a social post]

Pro-entrepreneurship is not the same as pro-business.

You can support new ideas, competition and experimentation, and still be skeptical of incumbents. Being pro-entrepreneurship means backing good-faith attempts at something new: letting teams iterate, letting bad ideas fail, and letting good ones scale.

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Make it illegal to use a photo for an AI-generated video

This was originally produced as a social video. Below is a script version.

Make illegal any use of a person’s likeness in any AI-generated video. Do it now.

Here’s why.

For 150 years, courts have recognized something called the right of publicity — the idea that your face, your voice, your identity belongs to you. Not to a tech company, not to a political campaign, not to a creepy ex. You.

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On moral relativism

(This was originally a social video, and below is my script)

Most people totally misuse the phrase “product of their time.” Here’s the fix.

There’s a classic trap in moral relativism debates. We say, “Well, people back then didn’t know any better.” But here’s the key idea from moral realism in philosophy: something can be true, even if most people at the time don’t recognize it.

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Storytelling isn’t just an output of stuff you do, it’s an input into why you do it

In my practice, storytelling has a definition and a strategy. Helpfully the research is clearer too: gathering people’s lived experiences, sharing them and then collecting the feedback to share back — on and on — gets you closer to the truth. That definition: Storytelling is a process that uses character and plot to share ways to navigate a complex world.

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The Committee to Protect Journalists reports Israeli forces have killed nearly 200 journalists

Four Al Jazeera journalists — and three others — were killed by an Israeli air strike in Gaza this month. We need to talk about that.

I usually only share reporting I’ve done, or topics where I have real expertise. International politics isn’t my beat, so I don’t pretend to have unique insight there. But this is different.

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PhillyABCs: my first kids book

After reading a particular regional children’s board book one too many times, I decided my home of Philadelphia deserved better.

I’m a journalist who spends my days obsessed with how places develop identity and share that with people to live, work and thrive. I’m also the father of two young kids in the city’s Fishtown neighborhood. I also happen to have a close friend who is a talented illustrator and a new mother herself (Hi Sara Scholl!).

I wanted to create a simple board book that would keep young kids engaged, amuse grown-ups and actually contribute something to a region’s identity. I was working on the alphabet with my pre-schooler, who responded best to fun environments where she could tie visuals to sounds and letters.

As dead-simple as it is, the ABCs framework had been used for just a couple states and cities around the world, along with some industries and hobbies. I made a list of kids publishers that seemed to produce a similar vibe, did hours of research of contacts and processes at those firms. Then I led outreach.

On Sept. 28, 2025, my first kids book launches, and can be pre-ordered at PhillyABCs.com.

Below I share some other background, lessons and insights for later.

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Will There Be More Software Developers in the U.S. Next Year? I’m Betting Yes.

Will there be more software developers working in the United States next year?

My friend—provocateur, venture capitalist, and debutante—Brian Brackeen says no. I say yes.

Now, Brian isn’t some fool. He’s an investor who backs tech companies. I’m a journalist who covers them. So we’re making a bet out of it. [Update: Amusingly, others are betting on this now too]

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