Arts
The AI Provenance Crisis
AI-generated art is entering the auction market without disclosure, exposing $60B in market infrastructure to a trust failure it has no tools to manage.
Leila Farahani8 min read
Economy
The Informal Economy Is the Signal Everyone Is Missing
Cash transactions and unreported income are growing faster than official GDP across OECD countries — a signal about institutional trust, work structure, and the limits of economic measurement with major policy implications.
Miles Thornton7 min read
History
The Historical Pattern of Institutional Delegitimation — and Where We Are in It
Every major democratic trust collapse follows a recognizable pattern. We are 8-12 years into a cycle that historically runs 20-25 years — and the historical record distinguishes renewal from authoritarian consolidation.
Miles Thornton8 min read
Society
The Trust Collapse Is Accelerating in Ways Surveys Don't Capture
Institutional trust data shows declining confidence in governments and media. The more revealing signal is in behavioral data — how people actually transact, associate, and cooperate — and it suggests a collapse deeper than survey responses indicate.
Catherine Olowe7 min read
Society
The UN's World Social Report Has Confirmed What the Data Has Been Saying for a Decade
The 2025 UN World Social Report documents a global social crisis: rising distrust, worsening inequality, collapsing civic participation, and deteriorating social cohesion across every income category. The report's significance is not its findings — it is that the multilateral system has finally acknowledged them.
Catherine Olowe8 min read