Blue Ribbon Team
Stories of place, purpose, and craft — from the road, the workshop, and the world around us.
- Red Steel Over Green Water
Androscoggin Swinging Bridge There are bridges you drive over without noticing. And then there are bridges you walk toward. - The Cult of Personality as a Known Failure Mode
A republic is explicitly designed to resist a cult of personality. That isn’t a modern insight or a partisan - Against Is Not a Contribution
(Or: If I Complain Loudly Enough, I Never Have to Build Anything) Breaking news: I have discovered a highly - Policing Free People
Policing Free People Is Different from Ruling Subjects It is always the same image. Men in armor.Vehicles built for - Franklin Street United Methodist Church in Johnstown, PA
An Architectural Presence More Than a Historical Footnote Johnstown’s Franklin Street United Methodist Church stands at the corner of - Say You Want a REVOLUTION!
You Don’t Want a Revolution. You Want Competence. Before anything else, let’s be clear. This is not an argument - Signal and Static:
A Gen-X Witness to the Compression of History I was born in 1972 to a working-class white family in - The Ball Mansion on Ninth Street Hill
Judge Cyrus Ball House — Lafayette, Indiana There is a particular kind of confidence in 19th-century architecture that we - Organizing the Wright Way
Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.Mister Wright if we are doing business.And if we’re talking about organizing, then we are most - Supply Lines and the Art of War:
What The Art of War Teaches Us About Modern Economic Fragility Most readers approach The Art of War as - Art Shouldn’t Live in Boxes
I love museums. Not in a dramatic way. The way you love somewhere that lets you breathe differently. I - Johnstown, Pennsylania
I’ve Talked About Why I Moved Here. Let Me Tell You Why You Should. I’ve written before about why - Why “Open” Is Not Anti-Capitalist
I am not anti-capitalist. I am anti-distortion. I believe in markets. I believe in competition. I believe in profit - On the Trouble With Naming What Should Not Be Limited
There is a problem that appears every time human beings attempt to protect something fundamental. We try to define - Hearing the Silent Hunt of Canids
Invisible Communication of the Hunter A Blue Ribbon Team field proposition, judged on observation. We spend a lot of - B.L.A.M.E.
Business Logic- Alignment- Metrics- Efficiency B.L.A.M.E. is a comprehensive, integrated management methodology designed to streamline operational performance, enhance cross-functional - My Tesla Letter to Mr. Westinghouse
To Whom It May Concern I write not as a salesman, nor as a petitioner armed with projections and - Orchestrated Friction
A Systems-Level Clarification on Extrapolation, Human Learning, and Machine Error Preface: Clarifying Earlier Work In prior writing, I introduced - the Edge of Humanity
We Are Standing at the Edge of Everything Humanity Has Built Every generation thinks it lives at an important - All Work Is Work
Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.Mister Wright if we are doing business. I noticed something the other day. Folks were busy - The Common
Across thousands of years of human history, one idea appears again and again in different forms: a portion of - Look for the Union Label
Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.Mister Wright if we are doing business. There’s a little phrase some folks treat like nostalgia - AiRT. Is it though?
Miss O: The Technique Was Not the Point There’s a coffee shop near home where the tables don’t quite - The Weight of a Uniform:
Why Certain Offices Once Meant Something There are moments when public office feels reduced to spectacle — when the - Build the Libraries Again
Andrew Carnegie understood something that feels almost subversive today: If you accumulate extraordinary wealth from society, you owe society - Don’t Limit Your Children
One of the worst things my parents ever did to me was limit me. Not with cruelty. Not with - The Full Cost of Secrecy
We tend to discuss intellectual property, security, and secrecy as necessary evils—unfortunate but justified costs of innovation. The assumption - Multi-Dimensional Signal Computing
Expanding the Alphabet of Computation While Preserving Binary Stability A Structural Proposal for Increasing Symbolic Density per Physical Event - America Needs to Learn How to Build Towns Again
America Needs to Learn How to Build Towns Again I keep seeing the same map online. Red counties.Blue cities.A - What Do We Expect
Build the World in Play Before You Try to Govern It Before anyone reaches for the word “censorship,” let - On Hair & Evolution
On Hair, Evolution, and Why Bad Comparisons Keep Failing I was working on Iron Age material and putting together - Power Shifts With Tech
Another Lesson from the Story of Copper Technology itself is not what causes disruption and instability. The disruption comes - A Copper Age Lesson for AI
A Copper Age Lesson for AI I’m sitting here listening to a three-hour history lecture on the Copper Age, - The Line
Letter on Capitalism, Necessity, and the Line We Need to Draw Capitalism is a good engine. It is not - The Battery Supply Starts in the Trash
Trash Is a Battery Resource We’re Throwing Away Every time we talk about batteries, the conversation goes the same - The Forest City
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Cambria County Johnstown is not broken.It is under-populated. That distinction matters, because it changes what the problem - All paths, no matter how dark, lead to the light.
10,000 Paths Up the Mountain I don’t remember the first time I encountered this idea. “Ten thousand paths up - Open-Source Think Tank
An Open-Source Think Tank (By Accident) Someone said it offhand while we were talking business over coffee: “You talk - Who Actually Invents Things
Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.Mister Wright if we are doing business. And I want to talk about something nobody likes - An Appeal to Republicans:
On Law, Legitimacy, and the Survival of the Republic There comes a moment in every republic when loyalty to - Notes Toward the Repair of a Republic
Every republic is born knowing something it will later forget. Power concentrates.Fear accelerates it.Violence follows when no other release - The Product I Wasn’t Allowed to Build
I didn’t start with a pitch deck. I started with a notebook. Six months of notes.Sketches.Measurements.Supplier calls.Market checks.Customer surveys.Prototype - A Stone Porch Victorian Transitional
This house is an example of why Johnstown never fits neatly into one architectural category. Johnstown wasn’t built in - Intentional Beings
Orcas, Signals, and the Problem of Being Understood When two intelligent beings meet without a shared language, the greatest - Doxa and Epistēmē:
How Plato Taught Power to Lie There is a quiet idea at the root of most modern information failure. - Data Centers and Water
Stop Boiling Small Towns: Data Center Cooling as a Public Policy Problem Data centers are marketed as “clean industry.” - What Went Wrong With Modern Housing
Craft and Courage Meet: A Victorian Apartment House There is a moment in every building project when the plans - A note to Johnstown, PA
I left Indianapolis for a lot of reasons. None of them matter. What matters is why I came to - Law Enforcement and Black America:
A Systems Problem We Have to Address. Before anything else, I want to separate two different conversations. One is - Power Gap
Opportunity in the Backup Power Economy Here’s a thought experiment. Everyone is building data infrastructure. Big cloud providers.Regional data - The Singularity Is NOW
For years, the idea of “the singularity” has lived safely in the future. A cliff we were supposedly racing - The Privacy Myth in the Age of Total Surveillance
We are told, constantly, that our data is “secure.” Encrypted.Protected.Safeguarded by policy, compliance, and best practices. This is a - Why Sharing Our Work Matters
I’m going to step out of the usual rhythm for a moment and make a direct request. Not as - Government Secrets?
Speech, Debate, and the Cowardice of Secrecy The Speech and Debate Clause was not written to protect Congress from - PTSD v. Tough Guy
The Switch I Never Turned Off I was watching Hawkeye’s “Nightmare” episode of MASH the other night, and it - Keeping Management Honest
WHY WE FILE EVERY GRIEVANCE Name’s Philip Randolph Wright.Mister Wright if we are doing business. Let me tell you - Entropy Is the Point
Why Systems Exist to Be Spent A Thought Experiment on Structure, Dissipation, and Meaning Editorial Note:This piece is presented - Paying Bribes Instead of Taxes
Or: What Extreme Wealth Does to a Person There is a certain kind of wealth that doesn’t simply avoid - USNA 6 – reconciliation
Beyond Posture: The Case for a Continental Republic Let’s set something aside before we go any further. The chest-thumping. - The Will Allen Model, Extended
A Five-Acre Regenerative Urban Farm for Maximum Food Production This system is built on the core insight demonstrated by - Planting Trees
— A Challenge, Not a Comfort — There’s a line that gets attributed to Khalil Gibran, though like most - Mycelium as Interface
This article argues that fungal mycelium may function as a living, controllable interface layer between humans and machines—without invasive - Fuck Gary Vee, Too (Thank You)
The First Time I Heard Gary Vee, He Was Right I first heard Gary Vaynerchuk speak when I was - Athens Starves While Sparta Trains
Every civilization walks a tightrope. Lean too far toward comfort, and you grow soft.Lean too far toward strength, and - For Hire
An Open Offer to OpenAI: Hire the Work You’re Already Using I am not writing this as a complaint. - The Threat is Real.
Freedom as a Weapon: How We Were Taught to Turn on Ourselves There is a line often attributed to - Modesty Before GOD
Modesty, Misplaced Anger, and the Strange Urge to Police the World An essay on how modesty becomes corrupted when - Submission Newsletter
Sure that is a little misleading, but… A Quick Update from Blue Ribbon Team A lot of new work - A Different Way to Think About Data Centers
A Local Ownership Model for Johnstown and Cambria County (This could work anywhere and should. Also site selection on - Work Is Not a Moral Test
Name is Philip Randolph Wright. Mr. Wright if we are doing business. Let’s get something straight before we go - Seeing the Invisible Landscape 2 of 2
Seeing Chemistry: A Speculative Inquiry into Optical Proxies of Smell A bounded exploration of whether biology could ever “see” - Miss O and the Manufacturing Renaissance:
Why America Needs to Move Beyond the Tip Economy We’ve all had that moment where we look down at - Seeing the Invisible Landscape 1 of 2
Smell as Vision: Olfaction as a Spatial Overlay Animals often behave as if they navigate a layered world humans - Tech application- robotic fire runners.
Running the Line A great friend of mine from the prehistoric days of my 1990s Navy life was Shawn - The Curse of Babel
Shalom. As-salaam alaikum. Peace be unto you. This is an article about how the people who use those greetings - The Building That Held the Voice
The Johnstown Tribune Building Small-City Architecture, the Free Press, and the Quiet Work of Beauty There are buildings that - Designing for Reasoning, Part III of a 2 part series.
Anchoring Intelligence: ROM as a Stabilizing Constraint Executive Summary In earlier pieces, we argued that reasoning improves under constraint, - Mark Cuban and the Healthcare Move That Ends the Argument
Let’s Start With What Everyone Agrees On Mark Cuban changed the healthcare conversation in the United States in a - Who Comes Before the Bar?
Letter on Courts, Crafts, and the Cost of Being Heard I want to begin with a confession, because confessions - @317NOISESHIT
Blue Ribbon Team Review: Bootleg Tapes, Real DIY Distro, and Why @317noiseshit Matters There’s a certain kind of person - I am sorry MAGA.
An Apology to MAGA — and a Call for Help This is an apology. Not a sarcastic one. Not - Wealth of the Stoic
The Stoic Argument Against Money Hoarding I was oiling the hinge on the garden gate the other morning—one of - Reparations: Clearing the Books
This article reflects the view of the Cernunnos Foundation and its founder, Robert Smith. The Blue Ribbon Team webzine - Designing for Reasoning, Part II:
An Open Experiment in Deliberate Friction What This Is (and Is Not) This is not a claim that current - Designing for Reasoning
Part I: Why Friction Matters 1. Observation, Not Accusation Most people do not reason by holding a single, perfectly - First United Methodist Church
There are buildings that announce themselves, and there are buildings that hold a city. The First United Methodist Church - Why They Took Our Time First
The Culture of Separation When people ask why working folks feel so tired now, I tell them it’s because - What We Choose to Teach the Future
Every generation leaves something behind. Sometimes it’s buildings or tools. Sometimes it’s damage. But always—whether we mean to or - What I’m Trying to Build
If you’ve been following the River Refugium Project, the consulting work growing out of it, or the wide scatter - The Keystone Network
High Speed Rail for Pennsylvania An Incremental, State-Scale High-Speed Rail Framework for the Commonwealth Some ideas feel too big - On Freedom, Properly Understood
A Letter on Republican Liberty and the Discipline It Requires Introduction I have been accused, more than once, of - Gen X and the Big Change
What Was Quietly Sold Off Before It Came Gen X grew up inside systems that worked. They weren’t glamorous.They - An Open Letter to the Republican Party
On history, responsibility, and the last off-ramp There are moments in history when delay becomes a choice—and that choice - The Quiet Collapse of Maintenance
My name is Philip Randolph Wright. Mr. Wright if we are doing business. Right now we have something we - What If Democrats Ran an Unapologetically Black‑Culture Candidate?
Disclaimer: This piece is political opinion. Capital‑O Opinion. It is a thought experiment about culture, power, and voter behavior—not - Where is Americas real utility truck?
So I was watching one of the videos going around trying to get everyone hyped up on the Hilux - Why the General Strike Never Comes
I keep seeing it scroll past. “General strike.”“Shut it all down.”“Nothing changes until we stop working.” It shows up - A Corner with Character:
225 Market Street, Johnstown PA There are buildings you pass without noticing, and then there are buildings that quietly - A question for law enforcement professionals
From my seat, the alleged reckless murder of Renee Nicole Good (her name is robert paulson) appears to have - River Refugium Project- simplified
Making the World Better, One Simple System at a Time At the heart of the Cernunnos Foundation and our