Notes
A finite series of twenty-four essays on saturation, attention, and the engineered chaos of contemporary politics. Companion to Flooding the Space (Prometheus Books / Globe Pequot, 2026).
- No. 19 · Field NoteOctober 6, 2026
C2PA and the provenance bet
Chapter 10’s defense is a handshake that sorts a file into one of four statuses. An unsigned file lands in the gray zone, which means nobody signed it.
761 words · 5 min read → - No. 18 · Case FileSeptember 29, 2026
The cases where it didn’t work
Every earlier case file in this column was one where the play worked, which tests nothing. France 2017 is the counter-case: the same denominator attack as Slovakia, aimed at a blackout, and it lost.
969 words · 7 min read → - No. 17 · Source ReadingSeptember 22, 2026
Reading Herbert Simon on attention
Simon's sentence is usually quoted only up to its first half. The half that gets cut carries the instruction, and the design test he proposed runs opposite to how the platforms in this book are scored.
770 words · 5 min read → - No. 16 · Field NoteSeptember 15, 2026
Against the “just media literacy” answer
In the strongest study of a media literacy intervention, discernment improved because trust in mainstream headlines fell and trust in false ones fell further. Take the reply at its strongest and it still comes apart.
840 words · 6 min read → - No. 15 · Case FileSeptember 8, 2026
What Finland Actually Did
Finland's top media literacy ranking gets cited as proof the lessons work. Read the methodology and 85% of that score turns out to be schools and press freedom, with no term for teaching media literacy at all.
765 words · 5 min read → - No. 14 · Source ReadingSeptember 1, 2026
The Liar's Dividend, Seven Years On
Bobby Chesney and Danielle Citron named it in 2019, and made a second, sharper claim that is rarely quoted. Seven years and fifteen thousand survey respondents later, here is what holds.
840 words · 6 min read → - No. 13 · Field NoteAugust 25, 2026
Is the FTSeffect falsifiable?
An equation that accommodates every outcome is not an equation. Where the model is empirical, where it is only a heuristic, and what would make me abandon it.
995 words · 7 min read → - No. 12 · Field NoteAugust 18, 2026
T and R: Why the Denominator Matters More Than the Numerator
Five variables sit on top of the equation and two sit underneath. The two underneath do more of the work, and an operator can shrink one of them for free.
926 words · 6 min read → - No. 11 · Field NoteAugust 11, 2026
A is for Amplification: The Deepfake That Wasn't
In Gabon, a real video called fake helped launch a coup. Read against the book, it is a liar’s dividend case rather than an amplification case, and no fake was required.
766 words · 5 min read → - No. 10 · Case FileAugust 4, 2026
C is for Contradiction: The Kenya Playbook
Contradiction is a week of incompatible stories, each demanding its own rebuttal. In Kenya, researchers found the market that supplies the accounts, and the rate card.
829 words · 6 min read → - No. 09 · Source ReadingJuly 28, 2026
E is for Emotion: Vosoughi, Roy, Aral, Revisited
The 2018 Science paper is cited for more than it says. What it actually measured, and what it does not license us to claim.
717 words · 5 min read → - No. 08 · Case FileJuly 21, 2026
F is for Frequency: The 2024 Romanian Annulment
A candidate polling near the margin of error in October finished first in November. What moved in between was the cadence rather than the argument.
641 words · 4 min read → - No. 07 · Case FileJuly 14, 2026
V is for Volume: Brasília, January 8
One week after Lula’s inauguration, thousands walked into three federal buildings that had already been walked into online. The clearest single-event demonstration of the first variable in the equation.
722 words · 5 min read → - No. 06 · Margin NoteJuly 7, 2026
A note on method
What each post owes the reader and the rule for what stays in the Sources block. The book’s reference code is published here, and the column treats its numbers as design choices.
632 words · 4 min read → - No. 05 · Field NoteJune 30, 2026
Saturation is not noise
Noise is what the channel does to the signal. Saturation is what the sender does to the channel. The distinction decides what defenses can possibly work.
673 words · 5 min read → - No. 04 · Source ReadingJune 23, 2026
Reading Hannah Arendt in 2026
Three sentences from Arendt, two from Origins and one from “Truth and Politics,” that diagnosed the FTSeffect decades before the platforms existed.
797 words · 5 min read → - No. 03 · Case FileJune 16, 2026
The seven variables, in one page
V·F·E·C·A over T·R, in plain English. Five pressures and two brakes, walked through one at a time, with the arithmetic left until later.
791 words · 5 min read → - No. 02 · Field NoteJune 9, 2026
What “flooding the space” actually means
The Bannon line gets quoted as a dark joke. It describes a method, with inputs, outputs, a budget and an intended effect.
599 words · 4 min read → - No. 01 · Margin NoteJune 2, 2026
Why I wrote a book about chaos
The book started with a number on a screen in a lobby in Atlanta: five billion dollars of free airtime that nobody had written a check for.
687 words · 5 min read →
Notes is published every Tuesday for twenty-four weeks beginning June 2026. Each post is signed, dated, and held to between five hundred and one thousand words. Sources appear at the foot of every post.