Jürgen Habermas [ a ] (18 June 1929 – 14 March 2026) was a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addressed communicative rationality and the public sphere. He held professorships at Heidelberg University and Goethe University Frankfurt and directed the Max Planck Institute in Starnberg. Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focused on the foundations of epistemology and social theory , the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context , and contemporary politics, particularly German politics . His major works include The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), a social history of the emergence and decline of bourgeois public discourse, and The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), which advanced a theory of rationality grounded in interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in instrumental or strategic reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas

Modeling Complex Systems: Graduate Texts in Contemporary Physics series, 2004, by Nino Boccara. (more)

*Darializa Avila Chevalier (born December 3, 1993) is an American politician and activist. A member of the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, she is the Democratic nominee for New York's 13th congressional district in the 2026 election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darializa_Avila_Chevalier (more)

Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in Principles of Biology (1864) after reading Charles Darwin's 1859 book On the Origin of Species. The term strongly suggests natural selection, yet Spencer saw evolution as extending into realms of sociology and ethics, so he also supported Lamarckism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer

Prison abolition is a movement that seeks to abolish prisons as an institution.[1] Unlike prison reform, prison abolition aims to establish a criminal justice system that avoids the use of detention entirely. Supporters commonly advocate for a restorative justice approach that aims to rehabilitate criminals, as opposed to retributive justice, which aims to punish the criminal in proportion to the crime.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_abolition

Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and Marxist feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, author and social theorist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), running for Vice President in the 1980 and 1984 elections under that party. She is also a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She has been active in movements such as the Occupy movement and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis (more)

Packy McCormick: Conjuring Scenius. IT’S TIME TO BUILD TOGETHER: In January, I read Taylor Lorenz’s New York Times piece on The Hype House, the LA mansion in which nineteen of TikTok’s biggest stars live, create, and collaborate. (more)

The great man theory is an approach to the study of history popularised in the 19th century. According to it, history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect. The theory is primarily attributed to the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who gave a series of lectures on heroism in 1840, later published as On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory (more)

aka B Corporation

Lenny Rachitsky interviews Eric Ries: how to build a company that withstands any era. Eric Ries is the author of The Lean Startup, a book that reshaped how a generation of founders think about building companies. His new book, Incorruptible, explains how successful companies are destroyed by failing to protect what makes them valuable, and how to change it. (more)

John Cutler: TBM 271: Diagnosing Your Company's Strategy Problem. From your vantage point, it feels like no one in your company is being strategic. The answer to everything is, "But why can't we do both?" No one seems willing to make a decision. (more)

Paul Millerd: The Way of Mediocre Man. Mediocre man flows through life. It is his birthright. He is not great man aiming at great results but merely trying to do enough of the right things over a long period of time such that it might lead somewhere interesting. (more)

Jason Pargin: How Mediocrity Can Quietly Destroy Us All. The evil in the world doesn't need you to join its side at all -- it needs only for you to succumb to a warm, dense fog that will descend upon you at some point in adulthood. That fog is called Mediocrity. (more)

Cosma Shalizi: Books to Read While the Algae Grow in Your Fur, July 2023. (more)

Earth Web, by Marc Stiegler ISBN:067157809X (more)

*Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, M.C.,[3] commonly known as Mother Teresa (26 August 1910 – 5 September 1997), was a Roman Catholic religious sister and missionary[4] who lived most of her life in India. She was born in today's Macedonia, with her family being of Albanian descent originating in Kosovo.[5][6][7][8][9] (more)

The theme of the Complexity International Jounal is the field of complex systems, the generation of complex behaviour from the interaction of multiple parallel processes. (more)

The Cynefin framework (/kəˈnɛvɪn/ kuh-NEV-in)[1] is a conceptual framework used to aid decision-making.[2] Created in 1999 by Dave Snowden when he worked for IBM Global Services, it has been described as a "sense-making device". Cynefin is a Welsh word for habitat. Cynefin offers five decision-making contexts or "domains"—'clear' (known as 'simple' until 2014, then 'obvious' until being recently renamed), 'complicated', 'complex', 'chaotic', and 'confusion'—that help managers to identify how they perceive situations and make sense of their own and other people's behaviour. The framework draws on research into systems theory, complexity theory (complex system), network theory and learning theorys.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin (more)

Dave Snowden says that Complex Systems are inherently unpredictable because they are non-causal. He finishes with the barb Scenario Planning as a method is a sure fire way of falling into all the traps listed above for managers, and PostModernism is a refuge for the confused academic who does not get point 1 above. (more)

Open Source Relational Data Base. http://www.postgresql.org/ (more)