Greg W. Brooks
greg-brooks.com · Musings

Musings

Essays, selected. Most first appeared on Facebook or LinkedIn; the dates are the originals.

Public life

Passionate, Not SeriousVenting and solving are different. Down in the cheap seats or in small rooms of power, we confuse one for the other.Aug. 11, 2026 Brooks’ Law, and a Ladder for StrategyProduct loses to strategy, strategy to standards, standards to regulation, regulation to disobedience. It’s a loop.Oct. 13, 2025 Identity Without ProximityFor most of history, identity came from proximity. Now it comes from “Do these people think like me?”Aug. 17, 2025 Performative vs. SeriousOne of our real divides isn’t left vs. right. It’s performative vs. serious.June 14, 2025 In the Spirit of Being UnreasonableShe was unreasonable in her reach. But I’m no more reasonable than her.Feb. 26, 2025 The HandbasketA resolution to spend less time on the Hell In A Handbasket Industrial Complex, and more on the rainbows.Dec. 31, 2023 Legal Technical DebtTechnical debt as a lens on a Supreme Court term, and Congress’s duct tape.June 30, 2022 Three Ways a Culture War EndsDomination, devolution or divorce. Culture wars have only three long-term resolution paths.Nov. 10, 2021 A Tough FourthIt’s a tough Fourth of July this year. We’ve been here before.July 4, 2020 Let People Use Their LandJust let people do what they want with their land. It’s something conservatives should cheer.Dec. 24, 2019 A Culture Without ForgivenessWhat happens when a culture stops letting kids and teens change.June 20, 2019

Media criticism

22 Theses on News and JournalismYou should consume less—much less—news. Twenty-two theses on why, and what to do instead.July 8, 2024 Covering COVID Like TrumpThe press covered COVID the way it covered Trump, and a generation of journalists may know no other way.Dec. 23, 2021 Truth Is ExpensiveTwo rules for spotting manipulation before an election, and why no one can do it for you.Sept. 14, 2020

PR and the profession

Pitching Is a Bid/Ask TransactionPitching is a bid/ask transaction, and both sides need more efficiency in the human-loop part. The market is about to get faster.Aug. 2, 2026 RulesTen of them, and three Gregisms, boiled down from a lot of past work.April 22, 2025 PR Is EasyIf a normal person can’t understand your strategy in a couple of sentences, it isn’t one.Nov. 11, 2024 PR and the Five AI RolesAI owner, model architect, engineer, technician or training data. PR can get a piece of every one.May 17, 2024

AI

On AI, Late and EarlyTwo posts from July 2020, 28 months before ChatGPT, and the question they leave behind.April 5, 2026 Pet RocksThe product exists. The audience doesn’t—or doesn’t know it wants one yet.April 2026 Horses and EnginesSteady progress gets dismissed until it’s too cheap to ignore. Then things happen quickly.Dec. 9, 2025 Tilly NorwoodAn AI production shop rolled out a synthetic actress this week. Tilly and her ilk are going to win.Sept. 29, 2025 AI and the Liability MathAI adoption will be driven by liability math, not payroll. What happens when the machine is merely as wrong as the humans?March 14, 2023

Memoir

The FumbleHot Dog Greg vs. Work Greg, 5:30 a.m., a gas-station parking lot.Oct. 8, 2025 Dad’s Two Sick DaysDad worked 121 months without a sick day. This is about the two he took, and why they didn’t count.June 18, 2023 My Other Two MomsOn the first Mother’s Day in the post-mom era, it’s worth talking about my other two moms.May 14, 2023 Two LibrariesTwo libraries, a summer-reading kid and a 14-year-old at the civic plaza—and what Missouri’s legislators forgot.April 12, 2023 I Am FiveI’m 56 today, and it’s a little weird. A birthday in time cuts: five, 17, 26, 36, 47.May 24, 2021 The Register BuildingThe Orange County Register’s last day in its building, and a career that bent around it.April 19, 2017 The Rose GardenFifty rose bushes, planted out of a rage bordering on hate, and what to plant next.June 23, 2015