Skip to content

Blue Ribbon Team

A webzine for people who notice things.

  • Submissions
  • Newsletter
  • Contact us

Category: Design

  • Home
  • Thought Experiments
  • Design
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Science and Research Thought Experiments

Orchestrated Friction

February 16, 2026February 16, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

A Systems-Level Clarification on Extrapolation, Human Learning, and Machine Error Preface: Clarifying Earlier Work In prior writing, I introduced the idea that intelligence — human

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Energy Environmental Finance and Banking Government Intellectual Property Labor Paleontology Science and Research Thought Experiments

the Edge of Humanity

February 15, 2026February 15, 2026 Robert Smith

We Are Standing at the Edge of Everything Humanity Has Built Every generation thinks it lives at an important moment. Most are wrong. We are

Spread the love
Read More
Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Government Permaculture Thought Experiments

The Common

February 14, 2026February 15, 2026 Robert Smith

Across thousands of years of human history, one idea appears again and again in different forms: a portion of what we produce belongs to the

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Government Intellectual Property Johnstown Paleontology Thought Experiments

Build the Libraries Again

February 13, 2026February 13, 2026 Robert Smith

Andrew Carnegie understood something that feels almost subversive today: If you accumulate extraordinary wealth from society, you owe society infrastructure, not favors. Andrew Carnegie did

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design Thought Experiments

Don’t Limit Your Children

February 13, 2026February 13, 2026 Robert Smith

One of the worst things my parents ever did to me was limit me. Not with cruelty. Not with obvious abuse. Not with some dramatic,

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Culture Design Energy Finance and Banking Government Intellectual Property Science and Research Thought Experiments

The Full Cost of Secrecy

February 13, 2026February 13, 2026 Editorial Submisson

We tend to discuss intellectual property, security, and secrecy as necessary evils—unfortunate but justified costs of innovation. The assumption is simple: guarding ideas is expensive,

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Design Intellectual Property Thought Experiments

Multi-Dimensional Signal Computing

February 12, 2026February 12, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Expanding the Alphabet of Computation While Preserving Binary Stability A Structural Proposal for Increasing Symbolic Density per Physical Event Abstract Modern digital computation rests on

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design Government Indianapolis Johnstown Thought Experiments

America Needs to Learn How to Build Towns Again

February 12, 2026February 12, 2026 State Fair Judge

America Needs to Learn How to Build Towns Again I keep seeing the same map online. Red counties.Blue cities.A thousand arguments layered on top of

Spread the love
Read More
Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Thought Experiments

What Do We Expect

February 11, 2026February 11, 2026 Robert Smith

Build the World in Play Before You Try to Govern It Before anyone reaches for the word “censorship,” let me be clear. I grew up

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Culture Design Energy Environmental Finance and Banking Government Intellectual Property Labor Paleontology Science and Research Thought Experiments

Power Shifts With Tech

February 10, 2026February 10, 2026 Robert Smith

Another Lesson from the Story of Copper Technology itself is not what causes disruption and instability. The disruption comes from what happens around the technology.

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design Finance and Banking Government Labor republican Virtue Thought Experiments

The Line

February 9, 2026February 9, 2026 republican Virtue w/ Nathaniel Leery

Letter on Capitalism, Necessity, and the Line We Need to Draw Capitalism is a good engine. It is not a good religion. This distinction matters,

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Design Energy Environmental Government Permaculture Science and Research Thought Experiments

The Battery Supply Starts in the Trash

February 9, 2026February 9, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Trash Is a Battery Resource We’re Throwing Away Every time we talk about batteries, the conversation goes the same way. Lithium.Cobalt.Nickel.Rare earths.Supply chains.China.Mines. We argue

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design Thought Experiments

All paths, no matter how dark, lead to the light.

February 8, 2026February 8, 2026 Robert Smith

10,000 Paths Up the Mountain I don’t remember the first time I encountered this idea. “Ten thousand paths up the mountain.” I’ve seen it everywhere—sutras,

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Design Permaculture Science and Research Thought Experiments

Open-Source Think Tank

February 7, 2026February 7, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

An Open-Source Think Tank (By Accident) Someone said it offhand while we were talking business over coffee: “You talk like your company’s an open-source think

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design Government republican Virtue Thought Experiments

Notes Toward the Repair of a Republic

February 6, 2026February 6, 2026 republican Virtue w/ Nathaniel Leery

Every republic is born knowing something it will later forget. Power concentrates.Fear accelerates it.Violence follows when no other release exists. James Madison understood this. He

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design Government Intellectual Property Miss Ordinary Science and Research Thought Experiments

The Product I Wasn’t Allowed to Build

February 6, 2026February 6, 2026 Miss Ordinary

I didn’t start with a pitch deck. I started with a notebook. Six months of notes.Sketches.Measurements.Supplier calls.Market checks.Customer surveys.Prototype failures.One working model on my kitchen

Spread the love
Read More
Craftsman Home Culture Design Johnstown Man Made Thought Experiments Victorian Homes

A Stone Porch Victorian Transitional

February 5, 2026February 5, 2026 State Fair Judge

This house is an example of why Johnstown never fits neatly into one architectural category. Johnstown wasn’t built in one confident burst. It was built,

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Culture Design Energy Environmental Government Science and Research Thought Experiments

Data Centers and Water

February 4, 2026February 4, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Stop Boiling Small Towns: Data Center Cooling as a Public Policy Problem Data centers are marketed as “clean industry.” No smokestacks. No slag. No railcars

Spread the love
Read More
architecture- commercial Culture Design Man Made Queen Anne Thought Experiments Victorian Homes

What Went Wrong With Modern Housing

February 3, 2026February 3, 2026 State Fair Judge

Craft and Courage Meet: A Victorian Apartment House There is a moment in every building project when the plans are “good enough.” The walls are

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Design Finance and Banking Intellectual Property Labor Science and Research Thought Experiments

Power Gap

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026 State Fair Judge

Opportunity in the Backup Power Economy Here’s a thought experiment. Everyone is building data infrastructure. Big cloud providers.Regional data centers.Hospitals.Municipal networks.Universities.Small companies running their own

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Culture Design Energy Intellectual Property Man Made Science and Research Thought Experiments

The Singularity Is NOW

February 2, 2026February 2, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

For years, the idea of “the singularity” has lived safely in the future. A cliff we were supposedly racing toward. A moment when machines would

Spread the love
Read More
Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Thought Experiments

Why Sharing Our Work Matters

February 1, 2026February 1, 2026 State Fair Judge

I’m going to step out of the usual rhythm for a moment and make a direct request. Not as a publisher.Not as a brand.Not as

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Design Energy Midway Meme Machine Science and Research Thought Experiments

Entropy Is the Point

January 30, 2026January 30, 2026 State Fair Judge

Why Systems Exist to Be Spent A Thought Experiment on Structure, Dissipation, and Meaning Editorial Note:This piece is presented as a conceptual thought experiment.It reflects

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Design Environmental Johnstown Permaculture Science and Research Thought Experiments

The Will Allen Model, Extended

January 28, 2026January 28, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

A Five-Acre Regenerative Urban Farm for Maximum Food Production This system is built on the core insight demonstrated by Will Allen: Living soil and living

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design republican Virtue Thought Experiments

Planting Trees

January 28, 2026January 28, 2026 republican Virtue w/ Nathaniel Leery

— A Challenge, Not a Comfort — There’s a line that gets attributed to Khalil Gibran, though like most lines that endure, it may belong

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Science and Research Thought Experiments

Mycelium as Interface

January 27, 2026January 27, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

This article argues that fungal mycelium may function as a living, controllable interface layer between humans and machines—without invasive neural implants—using sealed bioelectrochemical exchange and

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Government Johnstown Man Made Permaculture River Refugium Project Science and Research Thought Experiments

A Different Way to Think About Data Centers

January 24, 2026January 25, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

A Local Ownership Model for Johnstown and Cambria County (This could work anywhere and should. Also site selection on the image was for convenience. No

Spread the love
Read More
Design Science and Research Thought Experiments

Seeing the Invisible Landscape 2 of 2

January 23, 2026January 23, 2026 State Fair Judge

Seeing Chemistry: A Speculative Inquiry into Optical Proxies of Smell A bounded exploration of whether biology could ever “see” chemistry indirectly—without seeing chemistry at all.

Spread the love
Read More
Design Science and Research Thought Experiments

Seeing the Invisible Landscape 1 of 2

January 22, 2026January 22, 2026 State Fair Judge

Smell as Vision: Olfaction as a Spatial Overlay Animals often behave as if they navigate a layered world humans cannot see.This essay asks how spatial

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Design Environmental Thought Experiments

Tech application- robotic fire runners.

January 22, 2026January 22, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Running the Line A great friend of mine from the prehistoric days of my 1990s Navy life was Shawn McEwen. Shawn is a hero. Everyone

Spread the love
Read More
architecture- commercial Culture Design Government Johnstown Man Made Thought Experiments

The Building That Held the Voice

January 21, 2026January 21, 2026 State Fair Judge

The Johnstown Tribune Building Small-City Architecture, the Free Press, and the Quiet Work of Beauty There are buildings that shout, and buildings that hold. This

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Digital Technology Man Made Thought Experiments

Designing for Reasoning, Part III of a 2 part series.

January 21, 2026January 21, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Anchoring Intelligence: ROM as a Stabilizing Constraint Executive Summary In earlier pieces, we argued that reasoning improves under constraint, not fluency; that friction is not

Spread the love
Read More
Artist Profiles Culture Design Indianapolis Man Made Music Reviews Thought Experiments Web Services

@317NOISESHIT

January 21, 2026January 21, 2026 State Fair Judge

Blue Ribbon Team Review: Bootleg Tapes, Real DIY Distro, and Why @317noiseshit Matters There’s a certain kind of person you want in your corner when

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Intellectual Property Man Made Science and Research Thought Experiments

Designing for Reasoning, Part II:

January 18, 2026January 20, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

An Open Experiment in Deliberate Friction What This Is (and Is Not) This is not a claim that current AI systems are “dangerous.”It is not

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Man Made Science and Research Thought Experiments

Designing for Reasoning

January 18, 2026January 20, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Part I: Why Friction Matters 1. Observation, Not Accusation Most people do not reason by holding a single, perfectly consistent idea in their heads. When

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Culture Design Miss Ordinary Science and Research Thought Experiments

What We Choose to Teach the Future

January 16, 2026January 17, 2026 Miss Ordinary

Every generation leaves something behind. Sometimes it’s buildings or tools. Sometimes it’s damage. But always—whether we mean to or not—we leave lessons. Ways of thinking.

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Design Energy Environmental Government Johnstown Man Made Science and Research Thought Experiments

The Keystone Network

January 14, 2026January 17, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

High Speed Rail for Pennsylvania An Incremental, State-Scale High-Speed Rail Framework for the Commonwealth Some ideas feel too big until you shrink them down to

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design republican Virtue Thought Experiments

On Freedom, Properly Understood

January 13, 2026January 17, 2026 republican Virtue w/ Nathaniel Leery

A Letter on Republican Liberty and the Discipline It Requires Introduction I have been accused, more than once, of being old-fashioned about freedom. That charge

Spread the love
Read More
Culture Design Finance and Banking Government Labor Labor Man Made Thought Experiments Uncategorized

The Quiet Collapse of Maintenance

January 10, 2026January 17, 2026 MR. WRIGHT

My name is Philip Randolph Wright. Mr. Wright if we are doing business. Right now we have something we need to talk about. Not an

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Design Finance and Banking Man Made Thought Experiments Vehicles

Where is Americas real utility truck?

January 9, 2026January 20, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

So I was watching one of the videos going around trying to get everyone hyped up on the Hilux truck. My first thought when I

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Design Energy Environmental Intellectual Property Permaculture River Refugium Project Thought Experiments

River Refugium Project- simplified

January 8, 2026January 17, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Making the World Better, One Simple System at a Time At the heart of the Cernunnos Foundation and our e-zine, The Blue Ribbon Team, is

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Government Intellectual Property Science and Research Thought Experiments

Why not treat AI as a utility?

January 7, 2026January 17, 2026 Robert Smith

What If Data Centers and LLMs Actually Served Everyone? There’s a strange irony in the way the future is unfolding. We’ve built the largest knowledge

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Cernunnos Foundation Design Environmental Government Johnstown Science and Research Uncategorized

Bright Meadow Group: Observe, Design, Intervene

January 6, 2026January 17, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

Making Complex Systems Work Most people learn to work harder, to grind through a problem. Hard work solves immediate problems, but it doesn’t always change

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Digital Technology Environmental Government Man Made Thought Experiments

The AI Water Panic Is Misplaced

January 5, 2026January 17, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

The Real Problem—and the Regenerative Fix No One Is Talking About Every new data center proposal seems to arrive with the same headline: “AI is

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Culture Design Finance and Banking Government Science and Research Thought Experiments

Scarcity Is a Lie. Now What?

January 4, 2026January 17, 2026 Robert Smith

“We already have the tools to take care of everyone; we just haven’t redesigned our systems—or our thinking—to match that reality.” That sentence is not

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Cernunnos Foundation Culture Design Energy Environmental Finance and Banking Government Intellectual Property Labor Labor Man Made Midway Meme Machine Paleontology Permaculture Science and Research Thought Experiments Uncategorized

Open Source the Future: Why Food, Water, and Healthcare Knowledge Must Belong to Everyone

December 25, 2025January 17, 2026 Robert Smith

Open the Knowledge or Admit the System Is a Lie Capitalism, regulated trade, markets—fine.I’m not here to argue against exchange or incentive. Capitalism is very

Spread the love
Read More
Bright Meadow Group Design Permaculture Science and Research Thought Experiments

The Doctrine of Water

December 24, 2025January 17, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

On Change, Systems, and Learning How the World Actually Works Everything is about water. Most people hear that and think I’m talking about survival. Drinking

Spread the love
Read More
Cernunnos Foundation Churches and Temples Culture Design Environmental Labor Science and Research Thought Experiments

Seasonal Amnesia

December 22, 2025January 17, 2026 Robert Smith

This piece is offered in honor of the long side of the winter solstice. We have crossed the dark hinge of the year and come

Spread the love
Read More
Artificial Intelligence Bright Meadow Group Design Intellectual Property Thought Experiments

Edge Thinking: The Missing Operating Theory of Artificial Intelligence

December 19, 2025January 17, 2026 Bright Meadow Group

For the last decade, artificial intelligence has been built on a single, mostly unchallenged assumption: Smoother systems think better. Uniform processors.Uniform precision.Uniform clocks.Uniform routing.Minimal friction.

Spread the love
Read More
  • February 2026
  • January 2026
  • December 2025
  • November 2025
  • October 2025
  • April 2025
  • March 2025
  • February 2025
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • October 2024
  • August 2024
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
Fortean Giftorium logo featuring sasquatch bigfoot, a grey alien, mothman, a wolfman, a lizardman in business suit, a mermaid, the dover demon, a puckwudgie, chupacabra, a lake monster nessie champ loch with stars and ufo in background the cycles of the moon surround it along with a pyramid with the eye and on other triangle making a six sided start and runes that say your mama
Cernunnos Foundation
Cernunnos Foundation
Stepbastard
Stepbastard

Categories

  • AMSR
  • architecture- commercial
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Artist Profiles
  • Bidets
  • Bridges
  • Bright Meadow Group
  • Cernunnos Foundation
  • Churches and Temples
  • City Skylines
  • comic relief
  • Craftsman Home
  • Culture
  • Design
  • Digital Technology
  • Energy
  • Environmental
  • Finance and Banking
  • Gothic Revival
  • Government
  • Greek Revival
  • Home Inspections
  • Indianapolis
  • Intellectual Property
  • Italianate
  • Johnstown
  • Labor
  • Labor
  • Light Houses
  • Machinery
  • Man Made
  • Megaliths
  • Midway Meme Machine
  • Miss Ordinary
  • Motorcycle ride
  • museums
  • Music
  • Navy
  • Paleontology
  • Permaculture
  • Products
  • public art
  • Queen Anne
  • republican Virtue
  • Restaurants
  • Reviews
  • Richardsonian Romanesque
  • Ridin With Robb
  • Riding Down This Road
  • River Refugium Project
  • Science and Research
  • Second Empire
  • Single Payer Health
  • Statues
  • tee shirts
  • The Wright Way
  • Thought Experiments
  • Travel toilet shaming.
  • Uncategorized
  • Vehicles
  • Veteran
  • Victorian Homes
  • Web Services
Fortean Giftorium logo featuring sasquatch bigfoot, a grey alien, mothman, a wolfman, a lizardman in business suit, a mermaid, the dover demon, a puckwudgie, chupacabra, a lake monster nessie champ loch with stars and ufo in background the cycles of the moon surround it along with a pyramid with the eye and on other triangle making a six sided start and runes that say your mama

SITEMAP

Fortean Giftorium logo featuring sasquatch bigfoot, a grey alien, mothman, a wolfman, a lizardman in business suit, a mermaid, the dover demon, a puckwudgie, chupacabra, a lake monster nessie champ loch with stars and ufo in background the cycles of the moon surround it along with a pyramid with the eye and on other triangle making a six sided start and runes that say your mama
https://www.forteangiftorium.com/

Curiosity, applied.

-A smart person describing this website.
All Rights Reserved 2024.
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Fairy by Candid Themes.