On the Bubble - Circudyne

On the Bubble

Closing out a season that asked why circularity stalled — and discovered that the environmental case, while critical, is not enough to close the deal. The benefits hiding behind it are the ones that will.

New Deal

A New Deal You Can Acquire For Yourself

Personal sovereignty in energy, attention, time, and your relationship with things. The Circular Century is a New Deal you can acquire for yourself — the full inheritance of a surplus you were always owed.

Winslow Homer's Breezing Up: a man and three boys sailing a catboat in fair wind, leaning confidently into the sea, with a schooner visible on the horizon

On the Bubble

Why Self-Disrupt?

The environmental imperative is the reason to begin. This is about why you'll be glad you did it. Have to versus get to. Part I of a two-part conclusion.

Wang Meng, "Simple Retreat," ca. 1370. A scholar's hermitage nestled in energized mountains — the retreat as a reservoir of calm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, public domain.

Simplicity

More Joy, Less Work

Abundant energy and intelligence are arriving just as the culture demands simplicity. The brand that sells "enough" will own the biggest business opportunity in history.

Rebellion

Are You a Punk?

When institutions produce the chaos, order becomes the rebellion. The punks of 2026 don't sneer. They say "no thank you" and build something without you.

A luminous figure rises from a recumbent body, arms extended in reluctance. William Blake's 1808 engraving for Robert Blair's poem The Grave.

Future Proofing

Vendor Dependency and the Loveless Long-Term Relationship

In a performance economy, the product is a vessel. The software is the spirit. What happens when the spirit departs?

Mary Cassatt's "Young Mother Sewing" (1900): a child leans into her mother's lap with total trust while the mother calmly continues her work, absorbing the contact without interruption.

Reassurance

Reassurance is a Strategic Capacity

The performance economy, at its best, creates the conditions for play. At its worst, it creates the conditions for vigilance.

Tiny figures lost in Piranesi's impossible prison of arches and stairs—architecture so vast and self-referential that individual optimization becomes meaningless.

On the Bubble

Transformative Ends, Incremental Means?

The era of incremental change is rapidly coming to a close

Maintenance

Maintenance Is a First Principle

Why your strategy's relationship with "stuff" determines its limits

Two Renaissance diplomats in rich attire flank a table laden with globes, scientific instruments, a lute, and books — the tools of their multilateral craft.

Diplomacy

From Managers to Diplomats

Managing within a system in decline is a form of denial.

Vincent van Gogh’s The Good Samaritan (after Delacroix), showing a compassionate figure helping a wounded man onto a horse, rendered in expressive brushwork.

On the Bubble

Empathy Is a Strategic Capacity

It enables worldbuilding where time and value are not yet fixed, providing a path to product–market fit before markets, metrics, or demand signals exist.

A painterly parody of Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” reimagined with stylized, hand-painted symbols of decay replacing the river’s ice floes as the boat moves forward.

On the Bubble

Leadership in the Time of Enshittification

Why do rigidly managed systems so often end in decay? A closer look at enshittification, linear logic, and why this moment calls for leadership.

See all