About this website
A Certain Tendency takes its name from François Truffaut’s 1954 essay A Certain Tendency of the French Cinema. Make of that what you will.
I am not anti-blogging, but A.C.T. is an anti-blog. It will publish between two and four long-form essays per annum, each essay distinguished by investment in research and composition.
This agenda is deliberate. While I would not go so far as to say “the medium is the message,” in the case of A.C.T. it certainly is a message – or, perhaps, three:
The most brilliant polymaths in the world can reasonably claim expertise on no more than three or four very narrow topics. And experts on topics are often the least prone to opine on them – at least not before considerable thought and inquiry. From these two premises we may conclude that only rarely does anyone have something of substance to say about anything.
Blogs often feature deep research and good writing, but neither is the central value proposition. Instead, what blogging does better than any other medium is offer timely and frequent missives on the topics each blog’s readers care about. This model is uniquely vulnerable to audience capture. Bloggers (quite correctly, given their mandate) privilege the question, “What do my readers want me to talk about?” over the question, “Where can I contribute the most value?” Unfortunately, “What do my readers want me to talk about?” is not so different from, “What do my readers want me to say?” that the two may be consistently distinguished without exceptional integrity and independence.
Some brands release a firehose of work that is occasionally excellent, frequently mediocre, and on average just good enough to offer their inundated audience some value – all under the assumption that the attention economy will be won by whoever makes the most overtures. This model has a limited shelf-life, engendering audience frustration with inconsistent quality that only increases as offerings scale. Alternatively, brands that publish less frequently, but promise consistent and reliable excellence, are increasingly popular. As the number of brands in this category multiplies – whether they publish new works or curate old ones – the high-volume/low-effort model is less and less competitive. In a world where audiences can readily access more newly published works than ever – as well as every other work ever published – quality eventually eats everything.
About me
I am a writer, attorney, and political activist based in San Francisco. My work has been published in diverse outlets, from Wired to City Journal.
Much of my time is spent thinking about the public policy implications of data privacy and AI on behalf of my employer, Salesforce (all opinions expressed on this site are exclusively my own). Before that, I was an associate at the law firm of Morrison & Foerster, and before that I interpreted econometric data for a boutique government contractor.
In 2021, I co-founded the Briones Society, whose mission is to advance conservatism in American cities by partnering with moderates, and which has been instrumental to San Francisco’s post-pandemic comeback. Aside from formal and informal positions on various political campaigns and civic bodies, I serve as a delegate to the California Republican Party and as Political Affairs Vice Chair for the San Francisco GOP.
I am a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces, and enjoy shooting, hunting, camping, watching 90s movies, reading biographies, and training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I hold a BA in economics from UC Berkeley, where I graduated with high honors, and a JD from Harvard Law School, where I did not.
