Readers,

I’m off to bury my head in the snow with my kids for spring break, but I wanted to re-rerun a fan-favorite essay from a couple years ago.

It’s very, very easy to feel impotent and overwhelmed with everything that’s going on, but as much as this essay reads pretty, pretty bittersweet after hundreds of thousands of civil servants and humanitarians were laid off, it remains true that you do not need to be a brain surgeon or doctor without borders to give a shit.

Behind every brain surgeon is a legion of nurses and admins, behind every mRNA vaccine a phalanx of grant writers and lab techs, behind every safe streets policy or free school lunches or electric school bus grant stands a community of unhinged parents, underpaid teachers, and other community advocates who simply believe we should prioritize all kids.

We exist to help you answer the question, “What can I do?” 

Decide what you give a shit about and how you want to show up — whatever your location, resources, or skill set — and we’ll put you to use ASAP.

In the words of Jimmy V: never, ever give up.

— Quinn

HOW THE BRAIN WORKS

Originally published October 2023

If we want to unfuck the future, we’ve got a hell of a lot to figure out.

But who do we need — what lived experiences, what education, what resources, what skills — in order to figure it out?

Let’s back up, some context: we’ve already invented most of what we need to build.

And yet — there are some things we do still need to invent. Or at least improve on, or at least understand better, or…at all.

I have shared recently more of the madness behind how I think about how to think about what’s next.

One way I categorize fundamental pieces of the future is like this:

• What we can’t imagine yet

• What we already imagined, but don’t know how to build

• What we already imagined, and we’re building, but it’s technically incredibly difficult and maybe unsafe (?) for whatever reason(s)

• What we already imagined, already know how to build, but aren’t building (or building enough of) because it’s too expensive or because of political holdups (can be broadly or regionally applicable)

• What we already imagined, already know how to build, and are currently building

This is basically the funnel through which most ideas and technologies pass, from soap to clean steel to both fission and fusion, cell-cultured meats to mRNA vaccines, solid-state batteries to GPT’s, immunological treatments and CRISPR.

Most of it fails. Uh, why?

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