Memos by Brian Swichkow

Before Violence Becomes Visible
In September 2026, a former Cornell University student filed a civil lawsuit alleging that seven members of the Chi Phi fraternity drugged and sexually assaulted her in 2024. The allegations have...
The Reporting Escalation Ladder
The Reporting Escalation Ladder is a sequence for responding to harmful behavior wherever people share space: a community, a campus, a workplace, a friend group, an event. It runs from the quiet...
Reclaim Agency
Reclaim Agency is a call to arms against the allure of seductive technologies, emphasizing the importance of individual autonomy and critical engagement in the digital age. This phrase was inspired...
Sense of Agency
The sense of agency, or sense of control, is the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one's own volitional actions in the world. It is the pre-reflective awareness or...
attention
attention is the act or state of applying the mind to something — selecting one object, sound, or thought from everything available and holding it in focus — and, by extension, the notice, care, or...
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private Ivy League research university in Ithaca, New York, founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White and designated as New York State's land-grant institution....
Cornell Chi Phi Sexual Assault Case
The term “Cornell 7” has become shorthand for seven current and former Cornell students named as defendants in a civil lawsuit brought by a former Cornell student identified as Jane Doe. The case...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Glossary
This memo is a glossary of terms for all things related to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Glossary A AI Agent – Autonomous system that plans, acts, and critiques to achieve goals. Artificial General...
Abbott Kinney Blvd.
Abbot Kinney Boulevard is a mile-long street of boutiques, galleries, cafés, and restaurants in Venice, CA, running between Washington Boulevard and Main Street. The street is named for Abbot Kinney...
hallucination
hallucination is a perception — a sight, sound, smell, or touch — that seems real but arises without any external stimulus, and, by extension, a plausible but false output produced by an artificial...
Apple TV
Apple TV is an Apple product: a subscription streaming service for original series, films, and live sports, watched through the Apple TV app — distinct from the Apple TV 4K set-top box that shares...
Elephante
Élephante is a coastal Italian rooftop restaurant and bar at 1332 2nd Street in Santa Monica, CA, a few blocks from the Pacific. Designer and restaurateur Nick Mathers opened the Santa Monica rooftop...
stewardship
stewardship is the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care — and, in its older sense, the office, duties, and obligations of a steward. The defining feature of...
Intel
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is an American semiconductor company founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. It designs and manufactures x86 processors — the Core line for PCs and Xeon for servers —...
birth
birth is the emergence of a new individual from the body of its parent, and by extension the beginning or coming into existence of anything. The word carries several senses. It names the fact of...
IBM
IBM (NYSE: IBM) is an American technology company founded in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and renamed International Business Machines in 1924. It sells hybrid cloud and...
grace
grace is favor freely given — a disposition to or an act of kindness, courtesy, or clemency, and in theology divine assistance that is unearned — as well as a charming or attractive trait, especially...
desire
desire is a conscious longing for something a person expects will bring satisfaction or enjoyment, and, as a verb, the act of longing or hoping for it. As a noun, desire names both the feeling and...
Alibaba
Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA; HKEX: 9988) is a Chinese technology conglomerate, founded in 1999 in Hangzhou, that operates e-commerce marketplaces, cloud computing, logistics, and digital media...
Hustle Fund
Hustle Fund is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2017 by Elizabeth Yin and Eric Bahn that invests primarily in pre-seed and seed-stage software startups. It writes small first checks...