Chapter 1: The Call You Were Afraid to Answer

The phone is still on the kitchen counter when the room begins to feel smaller. The doctor did not say there was no hope, but the words “more tests” were enough to make your mind race ahead. You picture appointments, bills, side effects, and the faces of people you do not want to frighten. Later, you may search for the video exploring scientific research and the Holy Spirit’s healing power, not because you are looking for an easy promise, but because you need to know whether faith still matters when your body feels uncertain.

That question is more honest than some Christians allow. You can love God and still be scared of a scan. You can believe in prayer and still take the prescription with a glass of water. You can ask the Holy Spirit to heal you while reading Christian encouragement for trusting God through illness and unanswered prayer. Faith does not become false because your hands shake. Sometimes faith is simply what keeps you from facing the next morning alone.

I believe the Holy Spirit is real, present, and able to heal. I also believe we should speak carefully when we bring science into that confession. Science can measure blood pressure, sleep, stress hormones, pain reports, treatment outcomes, and patterns across large groups. It cannot place the Holy Spirit in a laboratory container or decide the limits of God. What research can show is that spiritual life is not irrelevant to health. A major review of spirituality and serious illness concluded that spiritual care belongs within person-centered medical care, while newer research has found that positive religious coping may soften the connection between stress and poor mental health.

That does not mean every prayer produces the medical result we request. One large randomized study of intercessory prayer after heart surgery did not find fewer complications among patients who were prayed for. Honest faith should not hide that result. The Bible never presents God as a machine controlled by the correct words. The Holy Spirit is not a technique. He is God with us—comforting, strengthening, guiding, convicting, and sometimes healing in ways that doctors can document and in ways no chart can fully describe.

Perhaps your lived example is less dramatic than a hospital room. You may be sitting in the car before work, exhausted from months of pain that nobody can see. You may have learned how to smile during meetings while quietly wondering whether you will ever feel like yourself again. In that moment, healing may begin with a cure, but it may also begin with enough peace to make the next appointment, enough courage to tell someone the truth, or enough wisdom to accept help.

The first meeting place between science and faith is not a debate stage. It is the human body under pressure. Scripture has always treated people as whole persons whose fear, hope, relationships, choices, and spiritual condition matter. Modern research increasingly recognizes that health is also shaped by emotional, social, and spiritual dimensions, even while researchers remain careful about what their methods can prove.

You do not have to choose between praying and going to the doctor. You do not honor God by neglecting treatment, and you do not betray God by needing treatment. The same prayer can ask for a miracle, wisdom for the physician, strength for the family, and peace for the night ahead. The Holy Spirit’s healing power is real, but it is deeper than a promise that every test result will change. It is the presence of God entering the place where fear has been speaking the loudest.

Chapter 2: When Healing Does Not Look Like Rescue

A woman sits beside her husband’s hospital bed while the hallway lights dim for the night. She has prayed for weeks, called friends, written Scripture on index cards, and listened carefully whenever the doctor entered the room. Yet the numbers on the monitor have not changed in the way she hoped. The hardest part is not only the fear of losing him. It is the quiet question she is ashamed to say aloud: If the Holy Spirit heals, why does this still hurt?

That question deserves tenderness, not a slogan. Christians sometimes speak about healing as though strong faith always produces a visible cure. When healing does not come quickly, the sick person may begin carrying two burdens instead of one: the illness itself and the suspicion that they somehow failed God. That is not the heart of the gospel. Jesus never treated suffering people as spiritual disappointments. He moved toward them with compassion.

The Bible includes astonishing physical healings, but it also includes faithful people who lived with weakness, grief, waiting, and unanswered requests. Paul prayed for his “thorn” to be removed, yet God answered with sustaining grace rather than immediate relief. That did not make Paul’s faith defective. It revealed that God’s presence can remain powerful even when the condition remains painful.

This matters because the Holy Spirit’s work cannot be reduced to a single outcome. Sometimes the body recovers in a way that surprises everyone. Sometimes treatment begins working after months of disappointment. Sometimes healing appears as freedom from panic, reconciliation within a strained family, courage to ask for help, or peace that arrives before the diagnosis changes. These forms of healing should never be used to dismiss physical suffering, but neither should they be treated as imaginary simply because they are difficult to place on a scan.

A parent may sit at the edge of a child’s bed after another difficult day, too tired to form a polished prayer. The words may be no more than, “Holy Spirit, help us.” That prayer is not small. It opens the door to presence. It reminds the parent that love does not have to carry the entire burden alone.

The responsible path is not to choose between faith and medicine, but to refuse the false war between them. Pray boldly. Follow sound medical advice. Ask questions. Take the medication as directed. Seek another professional opinion when needed. Let trusted people support you. None of these actions weaken belief. They may be part of the provision you were praying to receive.

The Holy Spirit does not shame you for being tired. He does not disappear when your symptoms return. He remains near in the waiting room, the pharmacy line, the physical therapy session, and the long drive home. Even when healing does not look like rescue, you are not abandoned inside the struggle.

Chapter 3: The Healing You Can Receive Today

Morning light comes through the blinds while a man sits at the table with an unopened envelope from the clinic. He has spent three days imagining the worst. Before opening it, he places both hands on the table and whispers, “Holy Spirit, stay with me in whatever this says.” The paper has not changed, but the room has. Fear is no longer the only presence there.

This is where belief can affect health without becoming a guarantee of cure. Faith can lead a person to seek help instead of hiding, to sleep instead of searching symptoms until dawn, to forgive instead of carrying bitterness, and to accept support instead of pretending to be strong. Those choices can influence the body, but their deepest value is not found in a statistic. They restore truth, connection, and hope.

The Holy Spirit’s healing power is real because God is still able to touch the whole person. We should pray for physical recovery with courage. We should also recognize the healing that begins when shame loses its grip, when panic no longer controls every decision, or when someone who felt abandoned becomes aware of God’s presence again.

Perhaps you are still waiting for the result you want. Keep praying, but do not turn prayer into a test you must pass. Keep receiving medical care, but do not treat the diagnosis as the final word over your identity. You are more than the condition named in your chart. You are a person loved by God, worthy of care, and never invisible to the Holy Spirit.

Healing may arrive suddenly, gradually, through treatment, through rest, through people, or through a strength you did not know you had. Whatever today holds, you can ask the Holy Spirit to meet you in it. You may not control the outcome, but you do not have to walk toward it alone.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

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There is a particular kind of person who opens a large language model a dozen times a day, leans on it to draft the awkward email and summarise the reading and untangle the spreadsheet, and who, if you asked them whether they trusted the thing, would look at you as though you had asked whether they trusted a vending machine. They use it. They do not believe in it. The two facts sit together without friction, because for this person they were never in tension to begin with.

That person is, statistically, most likely to be young. According to a Gallup survey of Americans aged 14 to 29, conducted between 24 February and 4 March 2026 and released that April, fifty-one per cent of Generation Z now uses generative artificial intelligence at least weekly. This is the cohort born between 1997 and 2012, the demographic that has folded these tools into study, work and daily life more thoroughly than any other. And yet, in the same survey, sixty-nine per cent of Gen Z workers said they placed more trust in work completed without AI, against twenty-eight per cent who placed it in work produced with AI's assistance. Only three per cent reserved their greatest trust for output generated solely by a machine. The people who use the technology most are the people who believe in it least.

This is not the story the industry told itself it was writing. The implicit promise of consumer AI was that familiarity would breed confidence, that once people saw what the systems could do the scepticism would melt into dependence and dependence into faith. The opposite has happened. Exposure has curdled into wariness. And the wariness is sharpest precisely where exposure is deepest. A Fortune analysis published in April 2026, drawing on research by the enterprise AI firm Writer and the consultancy Workplace Intelligence, found that forty-four per cent of Gen Z workers admitted to actively sabotaging their employer's AI rollout, against twenty-nine per cent of workers overall. These are not refuseniks standing outside the technology and lobbing stones. They are inside it, using it daily, and quietly undermining it at the same time.

The question this poses is not the tired one about whether AI is good or bad. It is stranger and more revealing. What does it tell us about the state of AI deployment in 2026 that the most technologically fluent generation alive has become its most committed sceptics? And if their doubt is not ignorance, but something closer to experience, what would it actually take for trust to be earned rather than simply assumed?

The Numbers Behind a Generational Rupture

It is worth being precise about the data, because the precision is where the story lives. The headline figures are frequently muddled in the retelling, and the muddle flattens something important.

The 2026 Gallup study, based on a probability sample of 1,572 young Americans with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, did not merely record low trust. It recorded a slide. Among employed Gen Z respondents, forty-eight per cent said the risks of AI in the workforce now outweighed the benefits, up from thirty-seven per cent a year earlier, while only fifteen per cent judged the benefits greater. Excitement about the technology fell fourteen points in twelve months, to twenty-two per cent. Hopefulness dropped nine points. Anger rose nine, to thirty-one per cent. Curiosity remained the emotion this generation reports most often, at forty-nine per cent — but anxiety ran a close second at forty-two per cent, unmoved from the year before, holding its ground while the positive feelings collapsed around it. That is the shape of the shift, and it is more telling than a simple slump would be: a generation still interested, no longer optimistic. The same study found forty-two per cent judged AI harmful to critical thinking, against twenty-five per cent who found it helpful, and eighty per cent reckoned their own use of it likely to impair future learning. Perhaps most damningly, a separate survey published that May by the software firm GoTo and the consultancy Workplace Intelligence found that forty-six per cent of Gen Z workers said AI was making them “dumber,” compared with thirty-nine per cent of workers overall.

The broader adult population is not exactly a fountain of confidence either, though its scepticism is quieter. A YouGov poll of American adults conducted in early December 2025 found that just five per cent said they trusted AI “a lot.” Over the preceding year, twenty-five per cent reported that their trust in the technology had fallen, against twenty-one per cent who said it had risen — a net erosion at exactly the moment the tools were becoming inescapable. A separate Quinnipiac University poll published in late March 2026 found that seventy-six per cent of Americans trusted AI only rarely or sometimes, that seventy per cent believed it would reduce job opportunities, and that seventy-six per cent felt businesses were not being transparent about how they used it. The share of employed Americans who worried their own job would become obsolete had risen to thirty per cent from twenty-one per cent a year before.

Set these numbers beside the adoption curves and the dissonance becomes almost vertiginous. Just under half of American adults now use AI chatbots — forty-nine per cent, up from a third in 2024. Usage is climbing steeply. Trust is not merely failing to climb with it. Trust is going the other way. The two lines have decoupled, and the wider the gap grows the more it demands explanation, because in almost every historical case familiarity with a technology has tracked comfort with it. Cars, aeroplanes, the internet, the smartphone — each followed a rough arc in which early fear gave way to routine as competence accumulated. AI, so far, is refusing to trace that arc. It is being adopted and distrusted at the same time, by the same people, with the intensity of both rising in parallel.

Why Adoption Was Never the Same as Endorsement

The industry's confusion on this point stems from a category error that runs deep in how technology companies read their own metrics. They treat usage as a verdict. If the numbers go up, the product is winning; the market has spoken; the doubters will come around. This is a serviceable heuristic for a video game or a food-delivery app, products people choose freely and abandon freely, where continued use really is a decent proxy for satisfaction.

It is a terrible heuristic for AI, because AI is increasingly not chosen. It is arriving pre-installed. It sits at the top of the search results whether or not you asked for a generated summary. It is stitched into the word processor, the email client, the customer-relationship platform, the operating system. It is mandated by the employer who has bought an enterprise licence and set adoption targets that show up in performance reviews. When a tool is embedded in the infrastructure of daily work and daily life, using it stops being an endorsement and becomes something more like breathing the available air. You do it because it is there, not because you have appraised it and found it worthy.

This is the phenomenon that the data on Gen Z brings into focus with unusual clarity. The Brookings Institution analysis by Josie Stewart and Brooke Tanner, published on 22 July 2026 under the pointed title “Policy—not PR—will determine Gen Z's trust in AI,” makes the underlying dynamic explicit. Stewart, a senior research and communications assistant, and Tanner, a research analyst, note that around half of Gen Z uses generative AI at least weekly while expressing some of the deepest reservations of any group — a pattern they read not as confusion but as coherence. High use and low trust are not, in their account, a contradiction to be resolved. They are the natural product of a situation in which people are compelled into contact with a technology they have had ample opportunity to appraise, and have appraised without illusion.

The distinction between adoption and endorsement matters because the industry keeps mistaking the first for the second and then acting surprised when the sabotage figures come in. Forty-four per cent of Gen Z workers undermining an AI rollout is not the behaviour of a market that has spoken in favour. It is the behaviour of people who have been given a tool they did not ask for, told to use it, and found the quiet forms of resistance — feeding it junk, routing around it, declining to trust its output — that remain available when the loud form, refusal, has been taken off the table. Adoption, in this light, is not the end of the trust problem. It is the container in which the trust problem is now being fought.

A Distrust That Was Learned, Not Inherited

The comforting explanation for all this, and the one the technology sector has reached for most often, is that the scepticism is a deficit — of knowledge, of literacy, of exposure. Young people are anxious, the reasoning goes, because they do not understand the technology well enough to see its promise, and the remedy is education: more AI-literacy programmes, better onboarding, clearer communication about capabilities and limits. It is a flattering theory for those who hold it, because it locates the problem entirely in the user and requires nothing of the product.

The theory has one fatal weakness. The people expressing the deepest doubt are the ones who understand the technology best. A September 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that sixty-two per cent of adults under thirty had heard “a lot” about AI, the highest of any age group — and this same, best-informed cohort was the most pessimistic, with sixty-one per cent saying the technology would worsen people's ability to think creatively and fifty-eight per cent saying it would erode their capacity to form meaningful relationships, both figures around twenty points higher than among those over sixty-five. By February 2026, a further Pew survey had stated the whole decoupling in one cohort's own numbers: sixty-six per cent of adults aged 18 to 29 used AI chatbots and thirty-one per cent used them daily, making them the heaviest-using age group in the country, while just fourteen per cent expected AI's effect on society to be positive and forty-eight per cent expected it to be negative. The heaviest users are the least persuaded, and by some distance. The scepticism does not recede as understanding grows. It deepens. This is the single most inconvenient fact for the literacy theory, and it is decisive: you cannot educate people out of a conclusion they reached by paying attention.

The Brookings analysis and a companion Fortune essay by the outlet's editor Nick Lichtenberg, published on 16 April 2026, converge on the same reframing. The distrust is not irrational. It is earned. It reflects first-hand experience of a specific and repeated kind. Gen Z has watched AI systems state falsehoods with total confidence, the phenomenon the field politely calls hallucination and everyone else calls being wrong without knowing it. They have generated content with these tools and then been penalised for it by institutions — more than half of college students report that their schools either discourage AI use, at forty-two per cent, or ban it outright, at eleven per cent, even as sixty-three per cent of faculty concede that their 2025 graduates were not prepared to use AI in the workplaces that now demand it. They have been told the technology is a co-pilot and then watched it fold the entry-level jobs where they expected to build the very judgement that would let them supervise it.

There is a body of research that lends this lived experience empirical teeth. A June 2025 preprint from the MIT Media Lab reported weaker neural connectivity and poorer recall among participants who wrote essays with the help of a large language model, compared with those who wrote unaided. A study by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University, surveying 319 knowledge workers across 936 AI-assisted tasks, found that higher confidence in a generative system was associated with less critical thinking, not more. Work by Michael Gerlich at the SBS Swiss Business School in 2025 found that heavier AI use correlated with greater cognitive offloading and lower critical-thinking scores, an effect most pronounced among younger participants. None of this proves that AI makes people less capable in any simple causal sense. But it means that when nearly half of Gen Z reports the technology is making them “dumber,” they are describing something that researchers are independently measuring. The feeling has a footing.

What emerges is a distrust that was not inherited from anxious parents or absorbed from alarmist media, but assembled, piece by piece, from direct encounter. And it is active rather than passive. A Skyword survey of a thousand American consumers, published in June 2026, found that sixty-seven per cent of Gen Z respondents were using AI more than they had a year earlier, against fifty-two per cent of consumers overall, and that nearly one in three had contacted a brand directly to correct something an AI tool had said about it — close to double the rate of the general population. They do not merely doubt the output. They check it, and then they go to the trouble of reporting what they find. It is the scepticism of the mechanic who has looked under the bonnet, not the passenger who is nervous about the noise.

The Quiet Erasure of the First Rung

If there is a single grievance that anchors the generational rupture, it is the disappearance of the entry-level job, and it deserves to be understood on its own terms, because it connects the abstract question of trust to something concrete and material.

The traditional path into skilled work runs through a period of supervised incompetence. The junior analyst builds the model badly and is corrected. The trainee lawyer drafts the memo, has it torn apart, and drafts it again. The apprentice does the tedious, low-stakes work under the eye of someone who has done it a thousand times, and in the doing acquires the judgement that eventually lets them do the high-stakes work and, later still, supervise the next apprentice. The tedium is not incidental to expertise. It is the mechanism by which expertise is transmitted. Remove the bottom rung and you do not simply inconvenience the people standing on it. You break the ladder.

This is precisely the function that generative AI is best at absorbing. The summarising, the first drafts, the routine research, the boilerplate code — the substance of entry-level work is also the substance of what these systems do most competently. The consequence is measurable. Lichtenberg's Fortune analysis reports that junior hiring fell nearly eight per cent within six quarters at companies adopting AI, and that unemployment among recent college graduates reached 5.7 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2025, exceeding the national rate, with underemployment among recent graduates standing at 42.5 per cent, the highest since 2020. The displacement is arriving not through dramatic mass layoffs but through what Lichtenberg calls “quiet erasure” — the junior role that is never posted, the pipeline that thins one unfilled vacancy at a time.

The concern here is old, even if the technology is new. In 1974 the Marxist theorist Harry Braverman, in his study of the twentieth-century workplace, described the way industrial management systematically stripped skill out of jobs, concentrating judgement in a shrinking managerial layer while the majority were left with degraded, deskilled tasks. In 1983 the ergonomics researcher Lisanne Bainbridge, in a paper on automation that has only grown more relevant, identified what she called the “ironies of automation”: that the more you automate a system, the more critical and the more difficult the residual human role becomes, because the human is now expected to monitor a process they no longer routinely perform and to take over precisely in the moments the machine cannot handle — the moments that require exactly the fluent competence the automation has prevented them from maintaining. A generation that has been handed AI to do its formative work, and then told it will one day be expected to oversee that AI, has read Bainbridge without needing to read Bainbridge. It has intuited the trap. You cannot supervise what you were never allowed to learn.

This is why the deskilling anxiety is not nostalgic or self-pitying. It is a structurally sound observation about how competence is built and how it is being interrupted. When a young worker distrusts a system that produces confident output while quietly eroding the conditions under which they might learn to check that output, they are not being irrational. They are noticing the mechanism.

When Opting Out Stops Being an Option

The most under-examined aspect of this whole predicament is the one the brief that prompted this essay named directly: millions of people, disproportionately young, now use AI tools daily not because they trust them but because opting out is no longer practically available. The condition deserves a name of its own — compelled adoption — because it inverts the usual relationship between a technology and its user.

Consider the ordinary surfaces of a working life in 2026. The search engine returns an AI-generated summary above the links, so that even the act of looking something up now routes through a generative system whether or not you wanted it to. The office suite offers to draft, rewrite and summarise, and increasingly assumes you will accept. The employer has purchased seats and set targets; the Bentley-Gallup research on business AI has long shown that adoption is being driven from the top down, and the Writer and Workplace Intelligence survey underlying the sabotage figures polled 2,400 knowledge workers precisely because their firms were rolling the tools out to them, including 1,200 executives doing the rolling. To decline, in this environment, is not a neutral act of consumer preference. It is to fall behind colleagues, to miss targets, to mark yourself as a resister in an organisation that has decided the future is settled.

Compelled adoption changes the meaning of every usage statistic the industry cites. When a company boasts that a tool has reached fifty per cent weekly penetration among young workers, it is describing, in part, the success of its own mandate, not the freely given approval of its users. And it changes the meaning of resistance, too. If you cannot refuse the tool, the only forms of dissent left are the small, deniable ones the sabotage research catalogues: feeding proprietary information into public models where it should not go, using unapproved tools instead of the sanctioned one, quietly producing lower-quality AI output to make the system look less effective, tampering with the metrics that would show it succeeding. These are not the tactics of people who have been persuaded. They are the tactics of people who have been conscripted and are looking for the exits.

There is something almost poignant in the figure of the reluctant user — the person who has internalised the futility of refusal so completely that they no longer even frame it as a choice, who reaches for the tool with one hand while withholding belief with the other. This is not the enthusiastic early adopter of technology mythology, nor the noble refusenik of the resistance narrative. It is a third thing, less legible and more common: the person who complies and does not consent, who has separated the practical question of use from the moral question of trust because the practical question was decided for them. Millions of people now live in this posture, and the industry's dashboards cannot see them, because the dashboards were built to count clicks, not to detect the quiet withdrawal of faith behind them.

The Long History of Trusting Machines

None of this is quite as unprecedented as the breathlessness of the moment suggests, and the historical parallels are worth drawing not to diminish the present but to calibrate it.

The Luddites of 1811 to 1816 have been so thoroughly reduced to a slur — a Luddite is now simply a fool who fears progress — that their actual grievance has been buried. The framework-knitters and croppers who broke machines in the English Midlands were not against technology as such. Many were skilled operators of the machinery of their trade. Their objection was to a specific deployment of new machines by owners who used them to drive down wages, circumvent labour standards and concentrate the gains of higher productivity in their own hands, while the workers who had built the industry's skill base were cast off. Their quarrel, in other words, was not with the loom but with the distribution of the loom's benefits and the absence of any say over how it was introduced. Read the contemporary data on AI — the seventy per cent who expect it to cut jobs, the sabotage, the demand for transparency and recourse — and the rhyme is unmistakable. The distrust has never really been of the machine. It has been of the arrangement around the machine.

The twentieth century added a subtler lesson. As automation spread through cockpits and control rooms, researchers documented a phenomenon they called automation bias: the human tendency to over-trust an automated system, to defer to its output even when it was wrong and even when contrary evidence was available. The danger of automation, it turned out, was rarely that people rejected it. It was that they surrendered to it too completely, ceding judgement to a machine that did not deserve the deference. Seen against this history, the Gen Z posture — high use, low trust, judgement withheld — starts to look less like a pathology and more like a hard-won corrective. A generation that refuses to grant automation the deference it has not earned is a generation that has, perhaps unknowingly, absorbed the central safety lesson of the automation age.

And then there is the economist Robert Solow's famous observation from 1987, at the height of the office-computing boom, that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” The productivity paradox he named has an eerie contemporary echo. For all the money and disruption, the aggregate productivity gains from generative AI remain, as of 2026, stubbornly hard to locate in the macroeconomic data. Transformative technologies, from the steam engine to electrification to the personal computer, have historically taken decades to deliver their promised gains, precisely because realising them requires reorganising the institutions, skills and trust relationships around the machine — the very things that are currently in open dispute. The trust deficit is not a delay before the revolution. It may be part of the mechanism by which any real gains are either eventually secured or permanently squandered.

What Recourse Would Actually Look Like

If the distrust is earned, then the standard remedies are worse than useless, and this is the sharpest edge of the Brookings argument. Stewart and Tanner are explicit that the trust deficit will not be closed by better marketing or another round of AI-literacy campaigns, because the deficit is not a communications failure. You cannot advertise your way out of a conclusion that people reached through experience. What would close it, they argue, is substantive change that gives people meaningful oversight and genuine recourse over the systems that affect their lives — the ability not merely to be told an AI was used, but to contest its output, to reach a human, to seek redress when it errs.

The tech industry's own gestures, Stewart and Tanner note, have been telling in their inadequacy: chief executives pledging to cover the electricity costs of their data centres, walking back their more lurid layoff predictions, offering voluntary reassurances. These are the moves of institutions that understand there is a problem and hope it can be managed with goodwill rather than obligation. But the same research documents why goodwill will not suffice. Over the past decade, Americans' confidence in technology firms has fallen faster than their confidence in most other institutions, and the youngest cohort has lost faith in the major tech companies faster than any other group. These are the same firms now asking to be trusted. Voluntary commitments from actors whose credibility is itself in freefall are not a foundation on which trust can be rebuilt.

The alternative is binding. Some of the scaffolding already exists. The European Union's AI Act, which entered into force in 2024 and is being phased in across the middle of the decade, takes a risk-based approach, banning certain uses outright, imposing strict obligations on high-risk systems, and requiring, among other things, transparency about when people are interacting with a machine. The Union's older data-protection regime, the GDPR, already grants individuals a right, under its provisions on automated decision-making, not to be subject to purely automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects, together with a right to obtain human intervention and to contest the outcome. These are, in embryo, exactly the recourse mechanisms the trust deficit demands: not a promise that the system is fair, but an enforceable route to challenge it when it is not.

The Brookings analysis sketches where such obligations would bite hardest, across four domains. On labour, it points to portable benefits, wage insurance for displaced workers, lifelong-learning accounts, honest disclosure standards around AI-attributed layoffs, and targeted support for the entry-level cohort bearing the early costs of the transition. On creativity, a framework for consent and compensation, so that the people whose work trained these systems are not simply expropriated. On the environment, mandatory energy and water disclosures for data centres and protections so that households do not quietly subsidise private compute through higher utility bills. On safety, privacy- and safety-by-design requirements, anti-discrimination enforcement and heightened protections for minors. The common thread is not hostility to the technology. It is the insistence that the people affected by a system should have some enforceable purchase on it — a lever, a court, a human being who can be held to account.

This is the substance of what “earned” would mean. Trust, in any durable sense, has never been a feeling that can be induced by persuasion. It is a wager about the future behaviour of another party, and it is rational only to the extent that the other party can be held to its word. We trust the surgeon because the surgeon is licensed, regulated, insured and liable. We trust the aeroplane because the aviation system is saturated with accountability, from the certification of the airframe to the investigation of every incident. We do not trust these systems because we were told they were trustworthy. We trust them because recourse exists when they fail, and because that recourse has teeth. AI, for now, has been asking for the trust without building the accountability. The generation that has looked most closely has noticed the asymmetry, and declined.

The Verdict of the People Who Know It Best

Return, at the end, to the reluctant user — the young worker with the model open and the belief withheld. The instinct of the industry, and of a good deal of the commentary around it, has been to treat this person as a problem to be solved: too anxious, too cynical, insufficiently visionary, in need of reassurance or re-education. This essay has argued for the opposite reading. The reluctant user is not a problem. They are a signal, and possibly the most reliable one available.

Because they are the people who know the technology best. They have used it more, understood it more, encountered its failures more directly than any focus group or executive or optimistic keynote. When the best-informed users of a tool converge, in growing numbers and with rising intensity, on the judgement that it is useful but not to be trusted, that its output must be checked and its incursions resisted, they are not exhibiting a deficit. They are rendering a verdict. And the verdict is not that the technology is worthless — they would not use it daily if it were — but that it has not yet earned the deference it keeps demanding.

That verdict is, in a sense, good news, though it will not feel like it to the companies whose valuations depend on the deference. A generation that uses a powerful technology without surrendering its judgement to it is a generation behaving exactly as a healthy society ought to behave in the presence of something new and consequential. The scepticism is not the failure of AI adoption. It is the immune response of people who have seen enough to know that adoption and trust are different things, and that the second must be earned on terms the first cannot dictate.

The uncomfortable implication for the industry is that there is no shortcut. The trust cannot be marketed into existence, cannot be assumed, cannot be extracted by mandate from users who have already appraised the goods. It can only be built the slow way, through systems that give people real oversight and real recourse, through institutions that make the machine's makers answerable when the machine fails, through a distribution of the technology's benefits that the people generating those benefits can recognise as fair. Until then, the reluctant users will keep doing what they are doing: using the tool, withholding the faith, and waiting — reasonably, patiently, with their judgement intact — to be given a reason to believe.

References

1. Gallup (2026) “Gen Z's AI Adoption Steady, but Skepticism Climbs.” Web survey of 1,572 Americans aged 14–29, conducted 24 February – 4 March 2026, margin of error ±3.6 percentage points. Available at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/708224/gen-adoption-steady-skepticism-climbs.aspx

2. GoTo and Workplace Intelligence (2026) “The Pulse of Work in 2026: Opportunity, Risk, and Responsibility in an AI-Driven Workplace.” Survey of 2,500 global employees and IT leaders, released 19 May 2026. Available at: https://www.goto.com/blog/pulse-of-work-2026

3. Stewart, J. and Tanner, B. (2026) “Policy—not PR—will determine Gen Z's trust in AI,” Brookings Institution, 22 July 2026. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/policy-not-pr-will-determine-gen-zs-trust-in-ai/

4. Angelo, J. (2026) “Gen Z workers who fear AI will take their job are actively sabotaging their company's AI rollout,” Fortune, 8 April 2026. Survey by Writer and Workplace Intelligence of 2,400 knowledge workers (including 1,200 C-suite executives) across the US, UK and Europe. Available at: https://fortune.com/2026/04/08/gen-z-workers-sabotage-ai-rollout-backlash/

5. Lichtenberg, N. (2026) “Gen Z turning its back on AI isn't irrational—it's a verdict on everyone who failed them,” Fortune, 16 April 2026. Available at: https://fortune.com/2026/04/16/why-does-gen-z-distrust-ai-anxiety-failures-college-work-government/

6. YouGov (2025) “Most Americans use AI but still don't trust it.” Surveys of US adults conducted 4 and 8 December 2025 (n=1,287 and n=1,187). Available at: https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/53701-most-americans-use-ai-but-still-dont-trust-it

7. Quinnipiac University Poll (2026), reported in TechCrunch, “As more Americans adopt AI tools, fewer say they can trust the results,” 30 March 2026. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/30/ai-trust-adoption-poll-more-americans-adopt-tools-fewer-say-they-can-trust-the-results/

8. Pew Research Center (2025) “How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society,” 17 September 2025. Fielded 9–15 June 2025, n=5,023. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai-and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/

9. Pew Research Center (2026) “Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact,” 17 June 2026. Fielded 17–23 February 2026, n=5,119. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/americans-and-ai-2026-chatbots-smart-devices-and-views-on-impact/

10. Pew Research Center (2026) “How Americans' opinions and use of AI differ by age,” 17 June 2026. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2026/06/17/how-opinions-and-use-of-ai-differ-by-age/

11. Kosmyna, N. et al. (2025) “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task,” MIT Media Lab preprint, June 2025. Available at: https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/

12. Lee, H-P. et al. (2025) “The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking,” Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University. Survey of 319 knowledge workers across 936 AI-assisted tasks.

13. Gerlich, M. (2025) “AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking,” SBS Swiss Business School, published in Societies.

14. Skyword (2026) “AI and Brand Trust survey.” Survey of 1,000 US consumers, published 29 June 2026. Reported at: https://www.contentgrip.com/gen-z-ai-brand-trust-skyword-survey/

15. Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.

16. Bainbridge, L. (1983) “Ironies of Automation,” Automatica, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 775–779.

17. Solow, R. (1987) “We'd Better Watch Out,” New York Times Book Review, 12 July 1987.

18. Bentley University and Gallup (2023–) “Business in Society: The Bentley-Gallup Report on AI.” Available at: https://www.bentley.edu/gallup/ai

19. European Union (2024) “Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 laying down harmonised rules on artificial intelligence (Artificial Intelligence Act).” Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1689/oj

20. European Union (2016) “Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation),” Article 22 on automated individual decision-making. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/679/oj

---

Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

Listen to the free weekly SmarterArticles Podcast

In Summary: * A Quiet Thursday winds down. The only chore I took care of today was cleaning up the front porch. When I woke this morning I considered cleaning both the front porch and back porch, but by the time the front porch was done, the day had heated up and I thought, nah... the back porch can wait for another day.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night.

Health Metrics: * bw= 228.40 lbs. * bp= 140/80 (71)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups, BP breathing exercises, pilates

Diet: * 07:05 – 1 ham & cheese sandwich, seafood salad * 12:30 – pizza, Che Ba Mau (oriental dessert)

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:50 – bank accounts activity monitored. * 05:10 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap * 10:00 – clean front porch * 12:30 to 13:30 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 14:00 – listening to the Yankees vs. White Sox MLB Game * 16:30 – and the White Sox win this one, 2 to 1 in the 11th inning. * 16:45 – follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials

Chess: * 09:00 – moved in all pending CC games

Sometimes my intuition is strong and on point.

Sometimes what feels like my intuition is anxiety and fear based on past experiences.

Her Final Form

#nsfw #Izzy

Izzy lost consciousness for a while as she lay there in the lake of fluid that was from her pussy. Her eyes moved rapidly as her mind was transported to a place far from normal sleep.

Izzy awoke in a strange place. Neither truly physical nor fully spiritual, it was nonetheless familiar. The floor below her felt solid. Anything in the distance was hazy and shrouded in mist. She could see images of stained glass from her church and columns of white and jade. A strange hum, reminiscent of hymns, filled the air. Then, she heard faint moans, eerily similar to those from the porn she often watched. Though it was very dark, she could see everything clearly.

In the distance, she could see a bright light waning in the distance. Every other direction, she saw the same repeating pattern of jade columns and stained glass artistry. The light was the only thing breaking up the never-ending cascading pattern in the dark. Even the strange hums had no real source or direction. Without the light, there would be nothing in this voice. The only beacon of curiosity was the light. So she chose to go that direction. Towards that light. As cliche as it sounds, she had to go towards the light.

As she walked forward, but it felt different. She was walking on the balls of her feet, but the sensation did not feel out of place or startling. Her strides were longer and effortless. She was covering much more ground than normal. However, in this space, her perception of everything felt altered. Smells were sharper. Hearing acute. Vision clearly was different. She had never seen this well in the dark. She certainly felt different but could not place the reason as to why. Maybe she could get a better look once she got closer to the light.

As she got closer, the shards of stained glass lost their color. The shards were becoming more mirror-like in appearance. It's as if the light was purifying everything around it. Free of color but replaced with a silver, calming hue.

The light that she followed grew warmer the closer she got to it. More intense. More radiant. It was beginning to hurt her eyes, but she kept moving forward, shielding them. As she turned away from the light, she got a glimpse of her body in one of the reflective silver mirrors that used to be stained glass. What she saw terrified her. What stared back at her was far from human. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, and she couldn't believe it was her.

She was covered in all-black fur, head to toe. Her eyes large, almond-like, and yellow, with slit pupils like a cat or a lizard. Her legs were much longer than before, hips flared, and her feet, no longer human, were much more feline in presentation, with sharp, black, retractable claws. Her ears were large and pointed, almost feline but not quite. They were still on the sides of her head, but their size was all wrong. Much too big. She didn't recognize herself and she was gripped with uncontrollable fear.

She opened her mouth and gasped. Out of her mouth came a forked tongue like a snake. She screamed. What she heard was a tritone of otherworldly moans and feline howls. Her scream became a wail of despair.

She had transformed into the very darkness that she had invited inside herself. The growls, snarls, and animalistic outbursts of her impulsive anger – all those things she ignored, never questioned, and embraced – they were now a part of her, whatever had done this to her body. This is what she had manifested deep within herself; this is what she had invited into her life and soul. She arrived at a terrifying realization: this was what she had become. Her rage to be free from her sheltered life liberated her far beyond what she thought was humanly possible, certainly awakening something. And it was all wrong.

Then came the most alarming transformation. As if her mind wasn't already in great distress, it got worse. Izzy was becoming sexually aroused. Every time she had an outburst of anger, she had always felt the rush between her legs and it felt good. Almost as if it was rewarding her. She began to see why. The true reason revealed itself, rising up between her legs. She panicked.

From the tuft of fur, from between her legs, a large pink penis began to emerge from where she would have expected her clit. And here you would expect to see a scrotum; she felt the familiar wetness of her pussy. She was now something more like a hermaphrodite than female, and despite her fear and shock, she obviously had the insatiable urge to touch herself. Her new anatomy now begged for attention. But she resisted despite her new throbbing and leaking erection. Almost taunting her...begging her to take in her new form. She resisted. This was all wrong, and now she confused, horrified, and horny.

Then, the chorus of porn and moans grew louder, fully eclipsing the faint angelic hymns. She fell to her knees, buried her face in her furry hands, and cried. Letting her inhuman voice cry out into the void. Her new body continued to throb with sexual need, begging her to touch. Precum leaking out of her obscenely large lady cock.

Izzy had forgotten all about the light. But the light did not forget her. It moved closer. She felt radiant warmth on her back. It registered as a sensation, but Izzy was too lost in despair to notice. Too horny to think straight. Too lost to move any direction. Only when she felt warm almost too hot hands on her shoulder did she look up to pay attention.

She was blinded by the light, but she welcomed the warm embrace as she wept and leaned into this unknown spiritual presence. She was unable to look at it; her eyes could not handle reverence or intensity.

She hid her face again; she didn't want to be seen. Despite all of her thoughts telling her no, her demonic body was saying other things, wanting her to perform sexual acts and wanting more depraved thoughts. Wanting the last bit of humanity left in Izzy to fade away. She throbbed harder. She knew she was completely obscene and unfit to be seen by anyone in this state of walking contradiction.

The being of light never took its hand off her shoulders. It held her close and started to rock her back and forth. Without speaking, without saying a word, this angelic entity started to communicate with Izzy. It felt like someone was slowly opening the curtain into her mind. Then she heard words from inside her head.

Your real name is Jezebel. That birth name of your soul. When you were born in the place of light and love. I have known you for your whole life. We met there and we bonded. We traveled to the earth realm many times together. Until one day, your sexual urges made you greedy and corrupt. Eventually you accumulated karmic debt. We got out of sync and could not reincarnate together. I could no longer find you for many generations. But I never stopped looking for you. I always came back, without fail. Going back to the earth realm hoping my spirit would find you.

Izzy couldn't believe what she was hearing, but deep down she felt like she knew this entity.

You lost your memories. You forgot who you were. Even after returning to the spirit realm, you were a ravaged ghost of your former self. Every time I was in the earth realm, I felt forever doomed—locked in this cycle and unable to heal you as you spiraled more and more into spiritual corruption with each hurt you endured. You lived through them all: married, widowed, or isolated, yet you never had that same spark of life we once shared together. I stopped reincarnating; instead, I decided to search for you in the spirit realm, hoping to find you upon your return to the light. But you never quite made it—you would leave, only to fall right back to earth, never fully cleansing yourself or giving yourself a chance to regain your divine memories. I couldn't reach you to pull you up higher.

Even now, Izzy felt the wounds in her heart. Her choices lead her here. Changed her. Cursed her. Even in this strange place, she still felt the weight of the lie her life always was. The news of knowing it's always been like this didn't help anything. She started to wail again, feeling like a total failure. Unable to get out or escape.

The voice continued to speak.

The ring you wore, the ring you put all your hopes and dreams in, was the gateway for me to cross over. To be by your side once again. I was too eager. Unfortunately for me, it was a prison. I could see. I could hear, but I couldn't act. I couldn't speak. I couldn't protect you. Early on, I saw the cracks forming. The strain. The want. The pain. I watched the evolution silently, unable to do anything but watch. You invited something dark and ancient, baby. A force from the dark ones that humanity has forgotten. It was taking you over, and I couldn't warn you or tell you to stop. I didn't have a voice; I couldn't comfort you when you needed it most. I hurt when you hurt. I cried when you were sad. I was there for it all. I did everything in my power to stay close to you, even when you threw me far away. I didn't want to leave your side, no matter what until the end. I wanted to be there for you.

In that moment, Izzy fully realized what this spirit was saying. She trembled. She shook. Izzy did horrible things to that ring. Casting it aside, masturbating with it. Inverting its very purpose and what it stood for. What happened to her changed her, making her insatiably horny and confused, changing her body; she felt like she deserved it all. She folded deeper in her misery in this confusing place. She tried to pull away from the spirit of the ring.

“I don't deserve you,” Is what Izzy tried to say with her voice. What she heard were animalistic vocalizations far removed from any sense of human speech. Even that was taken away from her. For a moment she paused and shuddered. Everything human has nearly been eroded. So she wept. Large tears pooling in her eyes and sploshing on her fur.

Her anger, rage, and trantric porn induced masturbation had taken everything... leaving only her darkness, desires, ensconced in this demon-like vessel, in a place she didn't know how to escape.

The spirit of the ring held fast and leaned in closer, refusing to let her go. Reusing to let her run away into the darkness. The spirit of the ring spoke to her again.

I forgave you before you threw me away. I endured what you put me through because I was with you until the very end. I will stay with you until you make peace with yourself. I love you with every fiber of my being. You don't remember me, I know this, but I am your other half, your partner. Your everything. Forever. I know you are beyond lost and hope right now. Your lost your memory, and you tried to drown the emptiness with religious devotion and sexual pleasure. I'm not letting you go. I don't care what you have done to yourself right now. I waited eons to exist in the same dimension as you again, even if it's just as your ring. Even as you are right now. Even if you are broken and changed.

Izzy surrendered and accepted the warmth and love from this foreign presence in this confusing world as she tried to cope with what happened to her body. She finally opened her eyes, looking at her black, naked body covered in fur. As she looked at her raging erection, she accepted that this was part of her now too. This is just how things were going to be.

Despite the great discomfort, she tried to turn to the light to see who or what this being was. It was her only rock in this unsteady place. So, she spoke back to the light, the same way it spoke to her, using her mind. Her own voice was unable to form words anymore.

“I'm sorry, I don't remember,” She stared blankly at the light, blinded. “I'm sorry for what I've done to you. I'm sorry for all the pain I have caused others. I'm sorry for the pain I caused in other lifetimes. I don't know where to begin to fix this, but I want to make this right. I don't want to be like this forever.”

Izzy continued to sob, but for just a moment, the weight of her heart began to lift. “I have to forgive myself.”

Izzy kept staring into the blinding light. Unable to make out any shapes. Instead, she closed her eyes and let the light bathe her in a warm glow. She took a deep breath. Her final thought was this. “At least someone here truly loves me. And I thank you so much for that. I just wanted to be loved.”

The spirit of the ring spoke again. “I will always be with you. I am inside of you now,” the ring said. Izzy was enveloped in the blinding light. All of the warmth covered her body, and she took in a deep breath, accepting her fate. Her body was fully consumed by the light. She felt every part of herself lighten and dematerialize. “This is the end,” she thought to herself, “and it was so beautiful.” Everything slowly faded to black.

Izzy slowly opened her eyes in her living room, her face still planted in the wet puddle created by her pussy. The musky familiar scent has now permeated the whole living room. With wet slaps against the carpet, she reached around, searching for the warm light that had enveloped her just moments before. She already missed the one thing that truly loved her... only to find it gone once again. Her heart dropped as the feeling of being alone again welled up inside of her.

She didn't know why she was still here. She had let go. She was ready to leave. The broken woman curled up into a ball and whimpered. Then, a familiar radiant warmth began to bloom within her. From between her legs, she sighed...and wept, crying harder. “Not again,” she spoke in her human voice. Her eyes widened in realization. She had her voice back.

She touched her face and looked at her hands. She felt bare skin, so she ran into the bathroom. She had to see her body. What she found was a naked human form but it still was not her hold body. Her only relief was that she looked human, mostly.

She was taller now, with flared hips, higher cheekbones, eyes a little larger and more almond-shaped—still human—and slightly pointed ears that weren't noticeable from a distance. Her hey color had changed to a very light caramel color, almost radiant. She turned off the bathroom light and confirmed she still had excellent dark vision and a faint amount of eye shine was visible. She turned the light back on, quickly.

Her eyes then traveled down the rest of her naked body. Her breasts were much larger and stood proud; while this was a welcome change, it overshadowed the rest of her transformation. She ran her hands up and down her body, getting used to this new form and accepting that the old Izzy is long gone now.

Finally, she checked her mouth and opened wide. Thankfully, the forked tongue was gone; however, too many of her teeth were too long and pointed. She closed her mouth, took a long breath, and sighed. She accepted her fate: at least she didn't look like a cat demon—even if she had a slight resemblance to her previous form.

Between her legs, she noticed that all of her pubic hair had disappeared—not just shaved but as if it would never grow back again. It was unnaturally smooth. In the center, right above her vulva, she saw something resembling a tattoo in white ink—a perfect circle with the same silver hue as her ring. She ran her fingers over the white circle, wondering what this meant.

As if on cue, warmth unlike anything she had felt from normal arousal began to rise up from between her legs. The tattoo began to glow faintly. Instead of shock, she felt a compulsive need to touch the light—to put her hand between her legs and touch herself.

As she brushed her hand against her clit, she felt the same radiant light as before. The sensation rushed all over her body. She kept rubbing her pussy and closed her eyes.

The spirit of the ring was with her—the spirit was in her pussy—and it loved her. This was confirmation that she was no longer alone. So her hand stayed there, basking in the warmth of her long-lost soul bond.

Izzy spent hours on the floor of her bathroom, gooning in bliss with her spiritual lover that was her ring. Her astral lover was now part of her body, telling her to rub her pussy, forever.

I’m in a car with two dogs strapped to myself in the special dog buckle safety seat thing even though we are at the parking lot in this cool evening, when it’s not clear whether the sun or the moon is shining behind the gray clouds.

Indeed.

The low sound of traffic is the only thing to be heard when the black dog is barking at things he sees.

I went to a pizzeria I’ve not been to for seven years today. It was the same man behind the counter; a fit looking handsome fellow whose thin waistline I think is remarkable for someone in his line of work. He looked exactly the same except now he wore glasses.

Then at the park we met a friend from before, from when we lived here. She looked exactly the same except this time the toddler she was with was a new one, the fifth and not the fourth.

I think if we would’ve lived here still, we would’ve been close friends, but it’s all chance, it’s so random, you know? Who I would’ve been then, because

I feel it clearly that us moving and beginning this new life clearly marks one of these branches which changes the life sufficiently.

I’m still myself inside, but I am not so fit, i don’t even train four to five times a week anymore, I have skills now, can build and fix things

And I’ve not even got the same interests

And I’ve been opening up some of these parts of myself I’m not proud of, and have taken a good look. That’s one of the reasons I think I’ve grown a bit more fat and melancholic. even so, I’m better off.

And there are still too much stuff in mother In law’s apartment, only this time I found it very charming. Almost.

Finally, finally, on seeing me, these people probably think, and would say, that I look the same

But I’ve got glasses now.

Today I have been consistently sweat drenched and I have felt warm and a little bit disgusting in a way like definitely unattractive with messed up hair and these paint speckled crocs, and the point is that I didn’t give a single fuck as I was walking among all of these people with hair looking the way rich people do their hairs and white clothes of silken quality without a single spot I did feel out of place like a bumpkin, but somehow the only emotion in me was something like a mild amusement

Such is the freedom which comes with age, maybe.

Thursday's MLB Game of Choice is joined already in progress; the White Sox and Yankees are scoreless in the 4th inning. As I usually do, I'm following the game's score and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we can also find links to the radio-call of the game provided by announcers of either team we choose.

And the adventure continues.

Oaxacan Shelling Beans, Purple Tomatillos, Peak Season Blackberries at the Mixteco Farms stand.

Pasture Raised Eggs, White Sapote, Melons at the Don Betos Farm stand.

BBQ Plate from SMP in the market.

The latter was written at some point in the last few days. I am currently in a place where my migraine becomes unbearable easily, and I keep pushing myself past the line when I try to figure out how all of this works. This has shown me how I am not very go with the flow on such things. I will get there eventually, but I'm finding the editing, etc a bit off putting. I'm probably not doing something correctly, but I swear this is clunkier than the journals from the 90s. That makes no sense. Hence it likely user error.

-—

How do we burn? In the flickers of yesterday's aggression, or the promise of tomorrow's future? At what point do we stop drowning our children with the obscenities of a wealthy ignorance? When each step is a rattling cage, how can we hear any substance of truth?

Half-blind and jacking off to a false modesty, we bid stupor to the obvious—both oblivious and wise. Little more than puppets on parade to stroke the not-so-cunning disaster. How glorious our stranglehold.

Perhaps we'll get lucky...and choke on it.

Written July 30, 2026 © 2026 AnOublietteofThought.

Disclaimer

If you have not figured it out, this website and all of its contents are not to be taken seriously. All of it entirely is a work of satire and humor. It is not to be taken seriously—at all. Anything said about persons living or dead, fictional or real—is purely for fun. Really.

I was an early adopter of Sirius XM Radio, back when you had to buy a special little box to play through the FM radio in your car. I discovered a lot of cool music in the early 2000s by listening to it, and I’ve subscribed a few times since then.

But, like seemingly everything, Sirius XM Radio has been getting worse and worse. There’s a channel called Soul Town which plays soul hits of the 60’s. It became Smokey’s Soul Town and remained Smokey’s Soul Town even after four former employees sued him for sexual harassment and sexual assault. The allegations haven’t been proven and likely can’t be, but whether you choose to have someone represent your brand is not a legal proceeding and doesn’t require proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Apparently for Sirius XM management, being associated with someone accused of sexual assault is not a dealbreaker. Which is their choice, of course, but my subscription is also a choice.

On a less serious note, Marky Ramone’s Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, a channel that played classic punk interspersed with Marky’s thoughts and/or reminiscences about the bands, was replaced by Classic Punk, a DJ-less channel with occasional station IDs voiced by what sounds like a 22-year-old from a 90’s Mountain Dew commercial. I really keep expecting him to say it’s “totally extreme.” Again, it’s a choice.

But today really sent me over the edge. My favorite channel has always been Little Steven’s Underground Garage, the channel through which I discovered a lot of cool music in the early 2000s. They have mostly stopped playing new music,(more on this in a bit), but they still play a great mix of rock and soul songs and have a number of charismatic DJs who often drop cool knowledge about the songs and artists they play. I miss the new music, but I can live with this situation.

But then I started noticing that the few new songs they add to the rotation almost always involve Little Steven getting paid. So either they’re artists who record for his label, Wicked Cool Records (so he gets paid on both ends of the deal as both the guy who runs the channel and the guy who gets royalty payments for the label), or they’re artists who work behind the scenes at the Underground Garage, or they’re artists who are going to appear on the annual Underground Garage cruise. In short, the new music that this channel plays almost always involves Little Steven getting paid. On the public airwaves, this would be illegal as hell, but because it’s not on the public airwaves, they can be as openly corrupt as the Trump administration.

But even that wasn’t what finally made me pull the trigger on canceling. What made me pull the trigger was when Little Steven just announced this week’s Coolest Song in the World (a weekly designation granted to songs both old and new) is a song by New York band The Cyns— a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Neighborhood Bully.” For those unfamiliar, “Neighborhood Bully” is from Dylan’s 1983 Infidels album and is a song that asserts that Israel is always in the right when committing acts of violence and shouldn’t adhere to the rules other countries abide by. (You can check the lyrics if you don’t believe me.)

There is no way to interpret covering this song in 2026 except as a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Now, Jem Records is free to include this song on their upcoming Dylan tribute album (because the world simply doesn’t have enough Dylan covers), and the Cynz are free to record it, and Little Steven is free to play it, but I am not coming along for the genocide cheerleading ride.

Fuck the Cynz, fuck Jem Records, fuck Little Steven and fuck Sirius XM.

How could he ever be lonely when she is everywhere beauty thrives.

[Verse 1] There was ache in the morning There was want in the light I lay still in the silence Thinking of you through the night

Madness, I know it But it felt like a sign Something moved in the dawn air And whispered your name into mine

[Pre-Chorus] You were there and you were not A ghost inside my skin So I left my flesh behind me And went searching on the wind

[Chorus] Past the little beach at sunrise Where the gulls broke the dark Past the blue and endless water With your name against my heart

Over stone and over sorrow To the place where wild things grow I found you in tiny miracles Where the Burren flowers show

[Verse 2] I went looking for your loneliness In the hollow of the day Sure that I would find you In the empty, aching space

But you were not abandoned You were held by something true Peace was blooming all around And it looked so much like you

[Pre-Chorus] Blue and yellow, red and periwinkle Soft against the stone You were love and you were quiet You were never quite alone

[Chorus] Past the little beach at sunrise Where the gulls broke the dark Past the blue and endless water With your name against my heart

Over stone and over sorrow To the place where wild things grow I found you in the miracles Where the Burren flowers show

[Bridge] And maybe love is not possession Maybe longing learns to kneel Maybe beauty doesn’t answer It just teaches us to feel

So I sat beside the flowers Where the ancient limestone sleeps And I loved you without reaching And I wanted without need

[Final Chorus] Past the little beach at sunrise Where the gulls broke the dark Past the Cliffs of Moher standing Like a wall around my heart

Over ache and over wanting To the place where wild things grow I found you in the miracles Where the Burren flowers show

[Outro] You were there and you were not You were near and out of view In the blue, yellow, red, and periwinkle Every tiny bloom was you

---

#song #poetry

Twist Rede Twist

Redetwisten rede twisten over appels onrechtmatig getransporteerd in sinaasappelkisten over allen die zich in mei vergisten over de onwetende die zich daarvan vergewiste

rede twisten redetwisten over schreeuwers die hun roeping misten over zeikers die nooit naast subsidie potjes pisten over kasten vol lijken en ongelegen komende kisten

rede twisten rede twisten over slangen die dankzij medische ingrepen niet meer slisten over het nogal vage aantal in nevelen gehulde vermisten over hen die de onterecht verkregen strafschop desondanks misten

redetwisten redetwisten over hen die troefkaarten uit de hand van de Solitaire speler gristen over bier dat door onbekende oorzaak te lang moest liggen gisten over hen die alles wisten maar desondanks de bus misten

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twist de rede in oorlog en vrede twist de rede heden ten dage over het verleden twist de rede over leden overleden twist de rede over blaadjes onbeschreven twist de rede twist

By Publius (of the 21st Century) — No. 9

(These are additional observations complementing “The Valerian Trap…” from July 28, 2026)

In “On War”, the famous military theoretician and Prussian army officer von Clausewitz saw the phenomenon but did not fully grasp its strategic consequence. Having recently experienced French captivity following Prussia's defeat in 1806, Clausewitz watched as the Iberian Peninsular War of 1808–1814 unfolded. Napoleon installed his brother on the Spanish throne, occupied Madrid, defeated regular armies, and repeatedly demonstrated French battlefield superiority. Yet Spain and Portugal never became governable French possessions. Resistance returned after every apparent defeat, attacked communications, isolated garrisons, and forced France to disperse enormous strength, while Wellington's army supplied conventional pressure. France won battles, held cities, consumed men and treasure—and finally lost the peninsula.

Von Clausewitz did not overlook this war. Across his writings — the Kleiner Krieg lectures at the Berlin Kriegsschule and, within On War itself, the chapter on “The People in Arms” — he addressed people's war, the arming of the nation, and small war. But the terminology itself reveals the limitation. Spain remained for him principally a lesser form of military activity: irregular, dispersed, supplementary, and smaller than the contest of regular armies. What he did not fully develop was the strategic inversion within it. The weaker party did not have to become stronger or defeat France in France's military language. It merely had to deny France the political result for which the war was being fought. Even so, the seed of the answer was already in his own first principle — that war is the continuation of policy, and the political object, not the battlefield, is the true measure of victory. Kissinger did not correct Clausewitz so much as complete him.

Henry Kissinger supplied the missing lemma in 1969: “The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.” This was more than an observation about guerrilla tactics. It identified unequal burdens of victory. The conventional power requires an affirmative conclusion—pacification, capitulation, territorial control, regime replacement, or an enforceable settlement. Its opponent may require only survival, continued resistance, and time. For the stronger party, another inconclusive victory becomes evidence of strategic failure. For the weaker party, another survived defeat becomes evidence that its strategy is working.

The United States has repeatedly encountered this asymmetry since World War II and repeatedly failed to master it. Korea ended without decisive victory. Vietnam ended in defeat. Iraq produced a rapid military overthrow but no durable political settlement, while enlarging Iranian influence. Afghanistan ended after twenty years in humiliation with the Taliban restored. These wars were not identical, and the Gulf War of 1991 remains an important exception precisely because its objective was political, and it was limited. The broader pattern is nevertheless hard to dismiss: the United States excels at destroying targets and organized forces, but repeatedly fails to convert military superiority into sustainable political order.

Iran makes the recurring error more precarious. Iran is not a guerrilla movement, although several of its partners and proxies operate irregularly. It is a large state with territory, armed forces, institutions, industries, and a long historical memory. Yet it can fight according to Kissinger's logic. Washington must produce a recognizable result. Tehran need only preserve the regime, retain retaliatory capacity, keep regional resistance alive, and prevent the United States and Israel from imposing their preferred end state. Iran can lose installations, commanders, missiles, and infrastructure and still deny victory. The United States can win nearly every engagement and emerge strategically weaker after every single encounter.

That, in my judgment, is already the direction of travel. The American position in the Middle East is weaker than it ever was before February 28, 2026. Iran has already absorbed the decapitation of much of its religious, political, military, and scientific leadership — including the killing of its Supreme Leader — and still resists. That is Kissinger's logic in its starkest form: the regime does not need to reconstitute what it lost. It needs only to survive long enough to prove that the loss did not settle anything. Much of America's leverage has been spent in military action that has not produced closure. Continued presence carries rising costs, while withdrawal may eventually become attractive because so little remains to be gained. Yet withdrawal would not end the consequences. Over decades—not tomorrow, and perhaps not soon—it could expose Israel to pressures it cannot manage alone and ultimately place its continued existence as a defensible state at risk. The ultimate Israeli nightmare is not immediate battlefield defeat, but the gradual exhaustion or departure of the outside power on which the regional balance has depended for so long. The continuation of strikes, retaliation, interrupted negotiations, and contests over Hormuz already demonstrates the failure to translate force into closure.

There is a serious older warning. Rome and Parthia, and later Byzantium and Sasanian Persia, fought recurrently for almost seven centuries. Their final great war, from 602 to 628, ended in a spectacular Byzantine victory but left both empires financially, militarily, and politically exhausted. Within a decade, the Arab-Islamic conquests had begun; within a generation, they destroyed the Sasanian Empire and stripped Byzantium of much of its eastern and southern world. Tactical victory had prepared strategic ruin.

History does not repeat mechanically. But historical oblivion offers no protection against recurring strategic logic. Von Clausewitz saw Spain but reduced its lesson to people's war and Kleiner Krieg. Kissinger provided the missing link and completed the thought: the stronger power loses when it cannot transform superiority into a political conclusion. The lesson was presented at enormous cost in Vietnam, re-presented in Iraq and Afghanistan, and NOT learned, and is now being ignored again in Iran. To call such repetition remarkable would be too neutral a judgment. Given the clarity of the historical record and the predictability of the outcome, it is a failure of strategic stewardship.

Fauci, and Faucism, represented the apotheosis of what the managerial/academic/journo class desires: An excuse for sweeping power, based on (alleged) expertise, in which they could ride roughshod over those stupid proles and flyover people while preening about the allegedly superior moral and intellectual qualities that justify their rule.

Then it turned out that they were wrong about nearly everything and — as Fauci’s diaries demonstrate — knew it at the time, at least at the top.

— Glenn Harland Reynolds (here)

Is anyone shocked to find out from his diaries that Anthony Fauci is a self-absorbed megalomaniac who gloried in the attention and praises heaped upon him during the pandemic? Of course not. He is a prime example of the Luciferian passions of pride and vainglory and the damage they will do if unchecked.

Here's an interesting take on the self-proclaimed American elites as well as a personal reaction from one of their followers that will also shock no one but which serves to illustrate our depravity and the increasingly bitter divide in America.

#history #politics