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Pioneering Spirit

Pioneering Spirit

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Cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Feb 21
Feb 21

California: Between Hype and Hysteria

Since the dawn of the new millennium, California has increasingly been cast in two wildly different films. In one, it is a smoldering dystopia. Broke. Burning. Unaffordable. Fleeing residents in rented U-Hauls headed for Texas. In the other, it is a sun-drenched dreamscape. The birthplace of the internet. The laboratory of climate action. A place so dynamic it could stand alone as a nation state. Both movies contain truth. Neither is the whole story. If California were a country, it would ran...

California: Between Hype and Hysteria

Since the dawn of the new millennium, California has increasingly been cast in two wildly different films. In one, it is a smoldering dystopia. Broke. Burning. Unaffordable. Fleeing residents in rented U-Hauls headed for Texas. In the other, it is a sun-drenched dreamscape. The birthplace of the internet. The laboratory of climate action. A place so dynamic it could stand alone as a nation state. Both movies contain truth. Neither is the whole story. If California were a country, it would ran...
Subscribers200+
Subscribers200+
Posts140
Posts140
Collects22
Collects22
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Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Feb 16
Rekindling California's capacity to dream
Last week I was finally able to see the cover image of my book, fifteen years after it was published. That’s a funny sentence that needs a bit of explanation.I wrote a book on the pioneering spirit that makes California awesome. The cover was a mash up of the state water project, one of the few pieces of public works visible from space, and Big Sur, by wide acclaim the most amazing confluence of land and sea on this pale blue dot. I recently had the privilege to take an aerial tour of Souther...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Feb 16
Rekindling California's capacity to dream
Last week I was finally able to see the cover image of my book, fifteen years after it was published. That’s a funny sentence that needs a bit of explanation.I wrote a book on the pioneering spirit that makes California awesome. The cover was a mash up of the state water project, one of the few pieces of public works visible from space, and Big Sur, by wide acclaim the most amazing confluence of land and sea on this pale blue dot. I recently had the privilege to take an aerial tour of Souther...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Dec 16
The Grand Canyon Perspective: Seeing Civilization in Deep Time
“History is not a ladder we climb, but a canyon we descend—each layer a story, each fossil a forgotten truth.”In the spring of the plague years, I went down. Not metaphorically—though that too—but quite literally: into the Grand Canyon, down through rock older than life itself, each layer a scripture in sediment. Tommy, our river guide—equal parts maestro, maven, and modern-day Charon—navigated us through the silence and fury of deep time. No cell signal. No calendar. Just sun, stone, and the...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Dec 16
The Grand Canyon Perspective: Seeing Civilization in Deep Time
“History is not a ladder we climb, but a canyon we descend—each layer a story, each fossil a forgotten truth.”In the spring of the plague years, I went down. Not metaphorically—though that too—but quite literally: into the Grand Canyon, down through rock older than life itself, each layer a scripture in sediment. Tommy, our river guide—equal parts maestro, maven, and modern-day Charon—navigated us through the silence and fury of deep time. No cell signal. No calendar. Just sun, stone, and the...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 30
California's opportunity to lead the world through a successful first terraforming
I caught California’s gubernatorial climate forum this week and came away with a familiar feeling: we know the stakes, we know the tools, and yet our ambition still feels smaller than the moment demands. The candidates spoke thoughtfully about clean energy, affordability, water, wildfire, and environmental justice. All necessary. All important. But California’s climate challenge isn’t just about doing more of the same. It’s about remembering who we are. California has never won by being cauti...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 30
California's opportunity to lead the world through a successful first terraforming
I caught California’s gubernatorial climate forum this week and came away with a familiar feeling: we know the stakes, we know the tools, and yet our ambition still feels smaller than the moment demands. The candidates spoke thoughtfully about clean energy, affordability, water, wildfire, and environmental justice. All necessary. All important. But California’s climate challenge isn’t just about doing more of the same. It’s about remembering who we are. California has never won by being cauti...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 28
Be Like Water: Field Notes from the Trenches of Regional Climate Adaptation
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. -- Bruce Lee Recently, I was chatting with old first-wave gov tech friends and realized I needed to articulate what I'm actually doing these days. The work is fluid, often invisible, and doesn't fit neatly into traditional innovation frameworks. But after the 2025 LA fires in Janua...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 28
Be Like Water: Field Notes from the Trenches of Regional Climate Adaptation
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. -- Bruce Lee Recently, I was chatting with old first-wave gov tech friends and realized I needed to articulate what I'm actually doing these days. The work is fluid, often invisible, and doesn't fit neatly into traditional innovation frameworks. But after the 2025 LA fires in Janua...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 16
The garden of forking permitting paths
When I was a young intern at California’s Department of Finance, working on the California Economic Recovery Task Force in the wake of the Great Recession, I watched David Crane, then a special economic advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, hold court with his usual mix of verve and vigor. One day, offhandedly, he asked another intern a deceptively simple question: What are the five things you would need to build high speed rail in California? That question stuck with me. Not because it has a cle...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 16
The garden of forking permitting paths
When I was a young intern at California’s Department of Finance, working on the California Economic Recovery Task Force in the wake of the Great Recession, I watched David Crane, then a special economic advisor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, hold court with his usual mix of verve and vigor. One day, offhandedly, he asked another intern a deceptively simple question: What are the five things you would need to build high speed rail in California? That question stuck with me. Not because it has a cle...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 8
What we build before everything breaks apart
Last January, fires raged in Los Angeles. That’s not uncommon. But hurricane-force winds and the driest winter in 150 years contributed to a horrifically rare event, the worst natural disaster in the county’s history. Due to technical glitches, the entire county received evacuation orders. A week or two later, however, the smoke was gone and for the vast majority of residents, life was the same. Over Christmas, the weather report said it would snow in Park City. Instead, it rained up to ten t...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 8
What we build before everything breaks apart
Last January, fires raged in Los Angeles. That’s not uncommon. But hurricane-force winds and the driest winter in 150 years contributed to a horrifically rare event, the worst natural disaster in the county’s history. Due to technical glitches, the entire county received evacuation orders. A week or two later, however, the smoke was gone and for the vast majority of residents, life was the same. Over Christmas, the weather report said it would snow in Park City. Instead, it rained up to ten t...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 6
Teddy Roosevelt reviews Ezra's and Derek's Abundance book and broader movement
I finished this book in an afternoon. That alone is praise of a sort. It is plainly written, vigorously argued, and animated by a sincere desire to see the Republic build again. The authors are correct. A great nation that cannot build homes, bridges, power plants, or railroads is not a great nation for long. A people who know what must be done but cannot do it will soon cease to believe in self government altogether. On this point, I find myself in full agreement. They understand something e...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Jan 6
Teddy Roosevelt reviews Ezra's and Derek's Abundance book and broader movement
I finished this book in an afternoon. That alone is praise of a sort. It is plainly written, vigorously argued, and animated by a sincere desire to see the Republic build again. The authors are correct. A great nation that cannot build homes, bridges, power plants, or railroads is not a great nation for long. A people who know what must be done but cannot do it will soon cease to believe in self government altogether. On this point, I find myself in full agreement. They understand something e...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Dec 22
A curiously inconspicuous conversation coming out of Edge
It was at Edge Esmeralda that I first made the acquaintance of Helena Hythloday, though had you asked me at the time I would not have thought the meeting especially notable. Such encounters are common in places like that, where people step temporarily out of their usual schedules to run overlapping experiments in technology, coordination, and collective life under conditions that are intentionally provisional. For the better part of a month, ideas are tested without guarantees, tools are trie...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Dec 22
A curiously inconspicuous conversation coming out of Edge
It was at Edge Esmeralda that I first made the acquaintance of Helena Hythloday, though had you asked me at the time I would not have thought the meeting especially notable. Such encounters are common in places like that, where people step temporarily out of their usual schedules to run overlapping experiments in technology, coordination, and collective life under conditions that are intentionally provisional. For the better part of a month, ideas are tested without guarantees, tools are trie...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Dec 19
Designed in California 2030
A Blueprint for Human-Centered Innovation, Regenerative Industry, and the Planetary VillageThe Design ImperativeEvery iPhone in the world carries a simple inscription: Designed in California. Those three words capture something...different :P. They represent the fusion of creativity and technology, of imagination and execution, that defines the California ethos. We surf rather than scour or scout the web because California made digital life feel like play. We designed the personal computer no...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Dec 19
Designed in California 2030
A Blueprint for Human-Centered Innovation, Regenerative Industry, and the Planetary VillageThe Design ImperativeEvery iPhone in the world carries a simple inscription: Designed in California. Those three words capture something...different :P. They represent the fusion of creativity and technology, of imagination and execution, that defines the California ethos. We surf rather than scour or scout the web because California made digital life feel like play. We designed the personal computer no...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Nov 18
The Future of California
Seventeen years ago, I started writing about the idea of California. I was young and earnest and obsessed with the way this place has always lived inside its own mythology. I wrote about the idea of California as Camelot, as Eden, as Atlantis. A place that existed on the far edge of imagination and also inside very real families and very real dreams. Recently a few folks reached out about that book. With the upcoming governors race and really the need for creative, off grid imaginative energy...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Nov 18
The Future of California
Seventeen years ago, I started writing about the idea of California. I was young and earnest and obsessed with the way this place has always lived inside its own mythology. I wrote about the idea of California as Camelot, as Eden, as Atlantis. A place that existed on the far edge of imagination and also inside very real families and very real dreams. Recently a few folks reached out about that book. With the upcoming governors race and really the need for creative, off grid imaginative energy...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Nov 11
A Belated Ode to Calbuzz and the Early Blogosphere
This is much belated. There was a time on the internet when the words still crackled. When the blogs were not yet polished newsletters with branding guides and social media strategies, but more like kitchen table pamphlets scattered into the ether, sustained by the raw joy of writing and the sheer stubborn belief that words mattered. For me, Calbuzz stood as one of those beacons. It was California politics served up with wit, irreverence, and a journalist’s nose for the absurd. Their mottos w...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Nov 11
A Belated Ode to Calbuzz and the Early Blogosphere
This is much belated. There was a time on the internet when the words still crackled. When the blogs were not yet polished newsletters with branding guides and social media strategies, but more like kitchen table pamphlets scattered into the ether, sustained by the raw joy of writing and the sheer stubborn belief that words mattered. For me, Calbuzz stood as one of those beacons. It was California politics served up with wit, irreverence, and a journalist’s nose for the absurd. Their mottos w...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Nov 1
Applied research questions on the past, present and near future of government operations
A new $120 MM bipartisan philanthropic effort to recode American government recently launched. AI agents continue to evolve. Public processes, particularly in places like California, continue to plug along, steadily and sometimes almost unchangingly zombie-like throw backs to an older era in a rapidly changing world. What are useful applied research questions as government operations goes through a massive system upgrade, an epochal change on the order of the industrialization of America. Tha...
Post cover image
Blog iconPioneering Spirit
Nov 1
Applied research questions on the past, present and near future of government operations
A new $120 MM bipartisan philanthropic effort to recode American government recently launched. AI agents continue to evolve. Public processes, particularly in places like California, continue to plug along, steadily and sometimes almost unchangingly zombie-like throw backs to an older era in a rapidly changing world. What are useful applied research questions as government operations goes through a massive system upgrade, an epochal change on the order of the industrialization of America. Tha...
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Pioneering Spirit

a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things

Pioneering Spirit

a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things

Written by
@patwater
Written by
@patwater