The Dear Crisis archives

From the Archives

Every gathering, distilled: monthly Metacrisis Salons and hands-on Metacrisis Action Labs, Brooklyn, NYC.

Metacrisis Salon No. 13 · Aug 15, 2026

Should We Be Building a Mind?

Jeff Sebo

Jeff Sebo brought The Moral Circle to Salon 13 in Brooklyn, and argued that a small chance something has a mind is enough to owe it consideration. Insects included. Chatbots, before long.

Metacrisis Action Lab No. 5 · Aug 11, 2026

Collective Capital

Joshua Nussbaum · Collective Capital Lab

Josh Nussbaum maps the campaigns behind GameStop, the Constitution bid, and the Spirit Airlines buyout, and the legal barriers that killed each one. Four live pilots get workshopped in breakout rooms.

Metacrisis Salon No. 12 · Jul 18, 2026

How We Build Power

Stephanie Luce

Labor strategist Stephanie Luce on how underdogs build power: seven strategies, a long-term agenda, and organized people as the lever. The night closed with war games, three election-crisis scenarios stress-tested by the room.

Metacrisis Action Lab No. 4 · Jul 27, 2026

Strategy & Power

Organizer Allison King opens the Practical Radicals playbook: six sources of power, seven organizing strategies, and the inside/outside game behind a live transit campaign. Then the room war-games three ways a bus campaign dies.

Metacrisis Salon No. 11 · Jun 6, 2026

How we build an Ecocivilization

Jeremy Lent

The system extracts and accelerates because that is what it was built to do. A night on what an ecocivilization would look like, and how you grow one inside the shell of the old.

Metacrisis Action Lab No. 3 · Jun 28, 2026

Rooftop Reciprocity

A bare Brooklyn rooftop became food, medicine, and pollinator habitat in an afternoon. A hands-on lab on growing resilience into the city, one corner at a time.

Metacrisis Salon No. 10 · May 16, 2026

Is Climate Stabilization Still Possible?

Kelly Erhart

We already engineer the climate by accident, in the dirtiest possible way. A night on whether to do it consciously: the science, the risks, and the governance it would demand.

Metacrisis Action Lab No. 2 · Jun 25, 2026

Off-Grid Comms with Signals Rising

Spike · Signals Rising

When blackouts or overloaded towers take the grid down, the people who can still communicate are the ones who practiced. Hands-on with Meshtastic mesh radios and a four-layer comms plan.

Metacrisis Salon No. 9 · Apr 18, 2026

Is Empire Collapsing?

Luke Kemp · Samantha Sweetwater

Humans are an egalitarian species that keeps building cages, and AI is the newest one. A night on how empires form, how they fall, and what that means for this one.

Metacrisis Action Lab No. 1 · Jun 23, 2026

Two Weeks, No Grid

Could your household last fourteen days without power, water, or internet? Neighbors mapped the full plan together, from water storage to rice math to backup comms.

Metacrisis Salon No. 8 · Feb 21, 2026

Disconnection & Polarization

Emily Graham · Shia Levitt

America is not divided on issues so much as locked in contempt. A night on the perception gap, why we misjudge the other side, and what it takes to talk across the divide.