Debbie Millman draws a line between ugliness and vulgarity. A short essay on sameness, vulgarity, and beauty as consideration for the other.
Category Archives: Provocations
The beauty of the process
About shortcuts and long roads and what comes out when you let the exploration be the goal. We have lost the fear of the void. Of the white page, the blank, that blue-Monday feeling when you try to put the pieces of yourself back together to start again, in front of a project, a goal,Continue reading “The beauty of the process”
If you are really afraid, ship differently.
AI Leaders Are Calling for a Slowdown. Read the AI doom narrative as marketing and the question stops being whether they mean it. It becomes what they ship.Brussels, September 15th 2026. Marketing has a name for it: fear appeal. Trigger attention, build emotional memory, drive the decision. Public health uses it — the lung onContinue reading “If you are really afraid, ship differently.”
The vocabulary arrives before the tax
Meta settled for $17.1 billion. The historians say the tobacco moment never happened. I’ve seen this from the other side of the table. Brussels, September 9th 2026. In 2010 I was a strategist in a Paris consultancy that did, among other things, what is politely called public affairs. One of its clients made the world’sContinue reading “The vocabulary arrives before the tax”
Technological Sovereignty : a small consultancy firm journey
Why La Colmena is rethinking its technological infrastructure, and documenting the process publicly. Part one of a series. Beatriz Vílchez Silva · Brussels · January 21st 2026 The trigger Trump’s second term changed something for me. Not just the election itself, but what followed. Last year, during my Executive MBA at Future London Academy, IContinue reading “Technological Sovereignty : a small consultancy firm journey”
Lines of Flight–Technological Sovereignty
Technological Sovereignty Takes Time: Notes from the In-Between
What tech sovereignty actually looks like in practice. Part two of a series; part one is Technological sovereignty: a small consultancy’s journey. February 4th 2026, Brussels. I’m sitting at my desk, trying to log into a platform I haven’t used in months. Click. The login page appears. My fingers hover over the keyboard, waiting forContinue reading “Technological Sovereignty Takes Time: Notes from the In-Between”