CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE
The diagnostic engine of the platform.
20 min read
The Disappearance of Domestic Science
We removed the subject that taught an entire population how to maintain a life, and called it progress. Every skill the curriculum stopped teaching became a product someone sells.
Before 1989, several practical subjects existed in British schools. All were absorbed into one. Every competence the curriculum removed became a market. This was not conspiracy. It was architecture.
By Dominic Vale
24 min read
The Franchise of Permission
Right to Repair legislation grants you the legal right to fix your phone. It cannot grant you the ability. The gap between the two is the truest measure of what was taken.
Right to Repair laws open the door. But the room behind it is empty — the skills, tools, and infrastructure of repair have already been dismantled. Permission is not capacity.
By Dominic Vale
25 min read
Make Do and Mend
We didn't forget how to mend. We were dispossessed of the knowledge, and the dispossession was so complete we mistook it for who we are.
Every household once owned a darning mushroom. Now the tool requires an explanation. What happened wasn't forgetting — it was the enclosure of a cognitive commons.
By Dominic Vale
15 min read
The Maintenance Bargain
What We Lost When We Stopped Knowing Our Coats
We traded knowing for using. Rewaxing for Gore-Tex. The PFAS in 99% of American blood is the bill for choosing not to understand what we depend on.
By Dominic Vale
19 min read
The Progress Paradox
Why We're Living Longer but Not Better
The U.S. has a 12.4-year gap between healthspan and lifespan—the worst of any nation. We measured years alive. We forgot to ask: alive doing what?
By Dominic Vale
11 min read
Enough
The Architecture We Demolished
"Enough" is not a feeling. It is an architectural property—endpoint, metric, reason to stop. We dismantled all three and called it progress.
By Dominic Vale
12 min read
The Convenient Lie
How We Engineered Distance Between Action and Consequence
Plastic began as mercy for elephants. It became the material form of not wanting to know. "Away" is not a place—it's a pattern.
By Dominic Vale
12 min read
The Alibi
Who Needs You to Believe You're Naturally Extractive
For most of human history, we prevented accumulation. Then we built systems that required it—and funded the idea that we'd always been this way. The question isn't whether humans are naturally greedy. The question is who needs you to believe you are.
By Dominic Vale
9 min read
Before Plastic — How We Kept Our Feet Dry for Centuries
We traded 'good enough with maintenance' for 'perfect without maintenance' — and the cost of 'perfect' was permanence.
For four thousand years, humans waterproofed boots with materials that required weekly care. Then we invented a chemistry that needed no maintenance—and discovered it would outlive us by a century.
By Dominic Vale