Latest Pieces

I’ll be first to admit when I first encountered this name I read it as “Forty Niners”. Given it was while reading Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts, I should’ve known better. I’ll chalk that up to the brain’s predictive processing and football season. The Friday Niters were not a football team, nor did […]

Just in time for the end of Oktoberfest, or just before the Oktoberfest beer goes on sale. As I draft this piece there is a selection of such beverages awaiting sampling in the refrigerator. Most, German or not, know of this two week holiday. Fewer understand the significance of beer to the German culture, and […]

It’s fitting this new era begins by discussing another. The 1789 Presidential Election ushered in a new order that would eventually give rise to one of the world’s great superpowers. It did not, however, look anything like the elections of today. The United States after the Revolutionary War It’s important to recall at the end […]

As of 11:47AM on Saturday, June 28, 2025, I’m a Microsoft-Certified Power BI Analyst. Crickets. More crickets. I’m glad it’s over. Six months of coursework is plenty for a single subject. It’s the application I now look forward to. Before the certification exam it’d begun percolating into my daily responsibilities as a technology consultant. With […]

Yes, I’m still here. This has been the longest duration between newsletters since starting Becoming Polymathic. What necessitated it wasn’t lack of ideas or time, but a need to dedicate resources towards my second novel, Backward. It became apparent after my last piece on May 4th, despite my continued belief its first draft is significantly […]

The fall of 2014 was significant for a couple reasons. The first, I started my sophomore year of college. The second, I began drinking coffee. My roommate Collin worked at Babcock Dairy beginning at 5:00AM and he’d leave about two cups in the Mr. Coffee for when I’d need it around 9:00AM. I was, and […]