Dispatches from the Underground is a recurring short-form feature connecting current events to the formal theory this blog covers in its longer posts. Each issue runs three to five items: a few things from the news that week that the existing framework illuminates, followed by a couple of things we’re keeping an eye on. The items are shorter than a regular post by design — a hook, one formal move, and a link to wherever the argument lives in full.
The name is a small piece of personal history. Between 1994 and 1995, I wrote something similar — very loosely similar — on a VAX terminal in London. Nobody read it. The Underground in the title refers, depending on your disposition, to the Tube, to Dostoevsky, or to the fact that formal theory tends to operate beneath the surface of whatever everyone is arguing about. All three readings are correct.
Current Issue
March 20, 2026 — Witkoff’s strategic credulity and Gabbard’s public non-endorsement; Section 702 and the surveillance system watching itself; student loans moved to Treasury; the Bondi subpoena that announced its own insincerity; Kalshi and whether a prediction market that causes its predictions is still predicting.
All Issues
March 20, 2026 — Iran/bilateral accountability; Section 702/setter model; student loans/conservation of impossibility; Bondi subpoena/signaling; Kalshi/endogenous base rates.
Browse the full Dispatches archive. Subscribe to the blog to receive new issues by email — the subscription box is in the sidebar.