A personal privacy checklist for expats and TRC holders who’d rather not become a data folktale Living in Vietnam changes how your identity works. Back home, your digital life is fragmented. In Vietnam, it becomes compressed. Facebook turns into infrastructure. Zalo becomes a de facto identity layer. Your phone number quietly replaces your signature. Your…
When three LLMs tried to write my next book, only one captured the human behind it. There’s a particular kind of madness that comes from giving three different artificial minds the same set of instructions and asking them to write the opening chapter of your next book. It’s like handing identical sheet music to three…
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Goodbye to the shitty end of social media
(or: why I’m climbing out of the enshittification pool before the lifeguard turns the lights off) I’ve reached that particular age, temperament, and neurotype where spending another minute doom-scrolling, rage-scrolling, or politely-pretending-to-be-interested-scrolling feels like stabbing my prefrontal cortex with a compost fork. So, after years of good intentions, bad platforms, and one too many algorithmic…
The email arrived today. Amazon’s Executive Customer Relations (ECR) team has formally responded to the Washington State Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division—and copied me in, as if to say “see, we’re doing something!“ What they actually did was double down on denial. Despite months of documented correspondence, Amazon’s “final” position is that their teams have…
The long quiet It’s been months since Adobe last said a word. Not even a polite auto-reply, not even a well-aimed emoji. I’ve had more meaningful communication from a Vietnamese toaster. They could have chosen decency. They could have said, “We recognise our systems failed—let’s make this right.” Instead, Adobe chose the corporate version of…
The Washington State Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division has now opened a file on my case with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). File number: 704597. Their office has contacted Amazon and requested a response within 21 calendar days. If Amazon fails to respond, the AG’s office cannot compel them—but may review the matter for patterns…
It’s a strange feeling waking up to find you no longer exist—at least, not according to Meta. No warning, no reason, no “we’re terribly sorry, old chap.” Just poof. One moment you’re posting reflections on leadership and cross-cultural life in Vietnam, the next, you’re locked out of Facebook and Messenger entirely. Not suspended. Disabled. Which,…
After weeks of circular emails, robotic replies, and a level of corporate indifference that could power a Kafka novel, Amazon has finally done the impossible. My Kindle Direct Publishing account access was restored. Not by “Executive Customer Relations.” Not by Ethan R. or Angelique (still without surnames, still without accountability). Not even by human agency.…
Leaders are defined by how they respond to failure. When systems collapse and silence follows, reputation erodes faster than any balance sheet. Explore leadership, ethics, and courage in an age of corporate automation
Amazon: The buck stops here, apparently. So does any hope for my royalites. Breach of KDP contract much? Amazon has done something extraordinary. It has closed a customer case without resolution. After weeks of correspondence and documentation, I was told that my locked-out royalties and account access were now beyond help. The matter was, in…