John Kinson
Latest Essay
Who Is Actually in Charge?
On voting, potholes, and decisions taken without us.
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All →- 12 May 2026
An Englishman in America
On scale, culture, and what it actually feels like to move from one English-speaking country to the other one.
- 11 May 2026
On Paper, Yes
The orderly version of a large organization is roughly as accurate as a tube map. Useful for navigation. Not, strictly speaking, much else.
Notes
All →- 2 July 2026
All Roads Lead to Philosophy
Everything turns into philosophy if you poke it long enough. Even "I'm just being practical."
- 11 May 2026
Good Technology Disappears
Infrastructure only enters the conversation when it fails.
- 12 April 2025
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost
The question isn't fast versus slow. It's whether you can tell wandering from drifting.
Analysis
All →- 6 July 2026
Who Actually Maintains Trino's Connectors?
Two years of commits to every documented Trino connector, with fleet-wide housekeeping separated from real attention: the lakehouse three absorb half of it, the median connector gets less than one specific commit a month, and two people write a third of all of it.
- 4 July 2026
Every Disagreement Is the Same Disagreement
146 years of House roll-call votes: American politics was often this divided, but it has never been this one-dimensional. The second axis of conflict is dead, and that changes how everything else works.
- 3 July 2026
How Much of Growth Is the Company?
Alpha growth — the part of revenue growth a firm's environment does not explain — validated on synthetic data, then measured on seventeen years of SEC filings.