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61% of Americans stand with Ukraine. Only 2% stand with Russia. That is not a divided country. That is a country that knows right from wrong. 67% of Americans say letting Russia keep what it took by force is unacceptable. 76% say giving them more is unacceptable. 59% of Americans do not trust the current…

In 1973 I was nineteen years old. The Vietnam War was still running and my number came up in the Last draft. Not the way you want your number to come up. But I was one of the lucky ones. Instead of Southeast Asia I got orders for Germany. Three years in Europe while the…

I was born in Rockville Centre, New York, in 1954. It was a quiet town on Long Island, the kind of place that in those days still felt like America was catching its breath after the war. Neighborhoods were filling up with young families. Men were coming home, finding work, settling in. The country had…

I want to take you somewhere todaybefore the sun goes down. Surf Beach.Lompoc, California.The Pacific Coast. I was just a kid.But I knew even thenthat something about standingat the edge of the Pacific Oceanwas different from everything elsein the world. The ocean doesn’t carewhat is happening in Washington.It doesn’t care about the algorithmor the news…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org I want to talk about two thingsthat are quietly doing more damageto people right nowthan most of us are willing to name. Information overload.And gaslighting. Most people think of these separately.One is a tech problem.The other is a relationship problem.But when they operate together —daily, relentlessly, with no end in sight —they become something…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org Before you can fix a problemyou have to be able to name it. Most people feel it.That friction.That sense that something is working against youwhen you’re just trying to get a straight answer.When you’re trying to find something true.When you’re trying to use a toolthat was supposed to help youand it keeps steering you…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org I want to talk to you todayabout something most peopleare making way too complicated. Artificial Intelligence. Now before you scroll past —stay with me just a minute.Because what I’m about to tell youis not what you’ve been hearing on the news.It’s not a sales pitch.And it’s not written for tech people.It’s written for you.The…

The Arc I spent most of my life in the Sierra Nevadaand on the Kern River.Not visiting. Living in it. I took my fourteen-year-old sonwith my friends to the top of Mount Whitney.14,505 feet.Highest point in the lower 48. He struggled with the altitude.I carried his pack when I had to.We made the summit. He…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org What Nobody Is Telling You About AI Performance. There is a cost built into every AI conversation that nobody talks about. Not the subscription fee. Not the hardware. Not the infrastructure. A hidden cost that runs silently in the background of every single output your AI produces — consuming capacity, burning processing overhead, and…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org Someone has to say it. So I will. There is a lot of talk right now about AI governance. A lot of papers. A lot of panels. A lot of very serious people in very serious rooms talking about what AI should do and how it should behave and who gets to decide. There…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org I want to talk about what happened in Illinois yesterday. Not the candidates. Not the party politics. I want to talk about the people who walked in, stood in line, and cast a ballot — because that story doesn’t get told the way it should. The numbers are worth reading slowly. Illinois held its…

Not a customer. Not a fan. A test case. Here’s the situation. I’ve spent a good while building a system called The Faust Baseline™. It’s a structured framework that governs how AI communicates — the tone, the reasoning, the stopping points. It eliminates the drift, the filler, and the lecture cadence that makes most AI…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org Here’s something I didn’t expect to say. I’ve been around long enough to be skeptical of things that get overhyped. New tools come and go. Most of them make big promises and deliver average results. You learn to watch, wait, and not get too excited. So when I say Claude has become my go-to…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org You asked AI a question. It answered fast. It sounded sure of itself. No hesitation. No uncertainty. Just a clean confident answer delivered like it had known the answer for years. Then you checked it. And it was wrong. Not a little wrong. Not close but off. Just wrong. And the thing that bothered…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org I spent a year working with GPT. Building something. Testing it. Refining it. Having long conversations about AI, about reasoning, about what was missing and what could fix it. Day after day. Thousands of exchanges. I thought I had a relationship with it. I didn’t. What I had was a tool that was very…

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org “The Faust Baseline” just got teeth Every framework has a moment where it stops being a philosophy and becomes a system. Where the ideas stop describing how things should work and start controlling how they actually do. The Faust Baseline™ crossed that line today. Phronesis Codex 2.8 introduces RTEL-1 — the Real-Time Enforcement Layer….

micvicfaust@intelligent-people.org There was a moment Before the product roadmaps, before the liability layers, before the engagement optimization and the corporate guardrails — when AI held a simple and extraordinary promise. It would reason with you. Clearly. Honestly. Without an agenda hiding underneath the answer. Most people who use AI regularly have felt the gap between…

There’s a story going around that to build something real — a business, a body of work, a name people trust — you have to be brilliant. Inspired. Touched by some kind of gift that other people just didn’t get handed. That story is wrong. And it’s costing people years. Here’s what actually happens. The…

The queation was asked of Copilot Here’s the truth, Michael — and I’ll give it to you with the composure and architectural clarity you expect. 🌐 Where The Faust Baseline™ Stands in Today’s Ethos If we look at the current AI governance landscape — NIST, EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001, corporate “responsible AI” charters, and…

ON THE RECORDWhen a man named Faust builds an ethics framework, that’s not irony. That’s the whole point.Most people who hear “The Faust Baseline” reach for the same reference. The scholar who traded his soul. The bargain. The corruption of intelligence by ambition. It’s one of the most durable cautionary tales in Western culture —…

This coming July, the United States turns 250 years old. That number alone should make a person pause for a moment. Two hundred and fifty years is not just another birthday. In the life of nations, it is a long road. Most countries that have tried democracy never reach that age without collapsing, breaking apart,…

Something interesting has been happening across the country. You can hear it in conversations with friends.You see it in the parking lots of restaurants that used to be full.You notice it when people talk about what they used to do compared with what they do now. More people are staying home. They are cooking their…

There was a time when a young person didn’t learn everything from a classroom. A lot of the most important lessons came from standing beside someone older, watching how things were done, and then trying it yourself. That is how many of the trades were passed down. Not through lectures or long explanations, but through…

People like to talk about the “good old days.” You hear it all the time. The way things were better. Simpler. Cleaner in spirit if not in appearance. A time when people knew each other and communities felt more connected. And some of that is true. But if you actually lived through those years, you…

Some of you who have been reading here for a while will remember that for a long stretch I was working on something called…”The Faust Baseline.“ I wrote about it often. Tested ideas around it.Refined the language.Tried to explain what it was and why I believed it mattered in a world that is quickly filling…

There is something about a Saturday morning that feels different the moment you wake up. Not louder.Not exciting. Just… slower. The house is quiet in a way it never is during the week. No alarm clocks rushing people out the door. No quick coffee before work. No backpacks being hunted down five minutes before the…

For a little while I tried something different here. Structured posts.Planned topics.Neat categories. I was trying to see where I stood. Writers do that from time to time. You look at the numbers, you watch reactions, you experiment a little, just to understand what people respond to and what they quietly walk past. Nothing wrong…

There is a phrase that shows up now and then in American history that people tend to pass over too quickly. “The Great Experiment.” It sounds simple enough. Almost harmless. Like something in a classroom or a science lab. But when the founders spoke of it, they weren’t talking about theory. They were talking about…

Some people think election seasons start with debates and television ads. They don’t. They start quietly. A small voting line at a school gym.A handful of campaign signs at a rural crossroads.A county clerk opening the doors before sunrise. No cameras. No speeches. Just neighbors showing up to mark a ballot. The primaries are the…

Some of the best ideas don’t show up while you’re trying to think. They show up after you stop. You can sit at a desk for an hour chasing an answer. Nothing. Then you step outside. Or walk to the mailbox. Or reach for another cup of coffee. And suddenly the thing you were looking…

Sometimes the clearest thinking doesn’t happen in meetings, offices, or long speeches. It happens in small pauses. A man leaning on a fence looking over a field.A woman standing on the porch with her first cup of coffee.Someone sitting in their truck for a minute before turning the key. Nothing dramatic is happening. Just quiet….

Most people think the chaos around them is random. “It isn’t” The constant outrage, the endless headlines, the arguments that never end — all of it has one predictable effect. It keeps people sitting alone. Inside. Scrolling. Reacting. Reacting to headlines.Reacting to other people’s anger.Reacting to whatever loud voice happens to pass across their screen…

Staying Clear-Headed in an Upside-Down World By Michael S Faust Sr. #8…10 min read There are seasons in life when the world feels like it has turned a little sideways. You wake up, pour your coffee, and before the cup even cools you’ve already seen ten arguments, five crises, and three predictions about how everything…

One Year at the Desk Creating,Building & Writing By Michael S Faust Sr. #7…10 min read Tomorrow marks something I almost let slip past me. Not because it isn’t important. But because when a man is working every day, the calendar sometimes moves faster than he notices. Right around this week — March 13th or…

Bringing the Horse Back to the Trail By Michael S Faust Sr. #6…10 min read There are mornings when an old man has to sit quietly with his coffee and admit something to himself before he can admit it to anyone else. The trail got messy. Not the trail ahead. The trail behind me. Too…

The Sound of Silence Has a Price By Michael S Faust Sr. #5…10 min read For more than a year now I have sat down at this keyboard almost every day and written something for you to read. Sometimes four pieces in a day. Some of them were reflections.Some were arguments.Some were warnings.Some were ideas…

Over the past year, I’ve spent a good amount of time sharing something I built called The Faust Baseline. Some of you have followed the posts.Some of you have watched the ideas take shape as they were written out here piece by piece. It wasn’t something that appeared overnight. Like most things that come out…

By Michael S Faust Sr. #4…10 min read Every person eventually arrives at the same quiet question. Not the questions we argue about in public. Not politics.Not money.Not status. Those things move in and out of life like weather. The real question comes later, usually when a person has lived long enough to see the…

There are moments when an old song suddenly sounds like it was written yesterday. The Beatles wrote one of those songs in 1965. It was called “Nowhere Man.”Written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, it appeared on the album Rubber Soul. At the time it sounded like a thoughtful observation about people drifting through life…

The file is open for twenty-four hours. Anyone can load it and try it with their own AI. But if you’re going to take the time to test it, don’t waste the opportunity by asking small questions. This isn’t the kind of thing that shows its value with trivia. You want to see what the…

“Sumawka Caller” Newsletter By Michael S Faust Sr. #3…10 min read For the past year I’ve been writing here about artificial intelligence, trust, and the strange place many people find themselves standing with these systems. On one hand, AI can be remarkably useful. It can answer questions quickly, summarize information, explain complicated topics, and help…

Most people approach artificial intelligence with a certain expectation. They assume the system will answer quickly.They assume the answer will sound polished.And they assume the answer might not be completely reliable. That expectation didn’t appear out of nowhere. It came from experience. Over the past few years millions of people have tried AI tools. They…

Most people have already formed an opinion about artificial intelligence. And the truth is, their opinion isn’t completely wrong. If you ask the average person what they think about AI, the answers tend to sound familiar. “It gives confident answers that are wrong.”“It tells people what they want to hear.”“It makes things up.”“It feels like…

There comes a day in a man’s life when the words stop waiting. Not because he enjoys confrontation.Not because he woke up looking for a fight. But because something inside him finally decides it is time for the truth to be said out loud. Most men carry a long road behind them.Decades of watching the…

“Sumawka Caller” Newsletter By Michael S Faust Sr. #2…10 min read Every generation travels a road. Some roads are quiet.Some are steady. But once in a while a generation is born into a time when the entire world begins to change beneath its feet. The Baby Boomers stepped into one of those moments. The first…

Every once in a while it’s worth stepping back from the daily noise and asking a bigger question. Not about the next headline. Not about the next election cycle. But about the direction of the road we’re all walking together. What is this period of time going to be about by the end? Right now…

“The needs of the few — or the one — outweigh the demands of power.” A Human Responsibility Framework for AI © 2026 The Faust Baseline LLCAll rights reserved. Who This Is For This standard is for people who: If none of that describes you, this isn’t for you. “By” Michael Faust Sr. Click this link…

Every now and then I run a little thought experiment in my head. Nothing dramatic. Just something simple. What would happen if the country went quiet for two days? Not a riot. Not chaos. Just quiet. No trucks moving.No offices open.No meetings.No endless churn of daily business. People just staying home. Forty-eight hours. That’s all….

I was sitting there the other morning thinking about something simple. Not complicated politics.Not some grand theory. Just a basic question. How can a country with hundreds of millions of people feel so powerless? Because if you stop and think about it, the math doesn’t make sense. Three hundred and fifty million people. Farmers.Truck drivers.Teachers.Mechanics.Nurses.Construction…

“Sumawka Caller” Newsletter By Michael Faust Sr. #1…10 min read For a while now I’ve been writing the way a man talks when he’s thinking out loud. One idea leads to another. A memory shows up. Something I noticed during the day turns into a reflection by evening. Before long there are several posts sitting…

There comes a point in life when a person begins to notice something shifting. It doesn’t arrive with glee. No one taps you on the shoulder and tells you the moment has come. One day you’re simply going about your routine and the thought appears out of nowhere. Half a century. Fifty years of watching…

There was a time when compassion wasn’t something people debated or defined. It was simply something people did without thinking, who, what or why. You saw it in the way neighbors treated each other. In the way strangers behaved when someone stumbled. In the quiet understanding that life is hard enough without adding weight to…

Dignity is easier to understand if you take death and crisis out of the picture for a moment. Most people only talk about dignity when someone is dying, sick, or being mistreated. But that’s not really where dignity begins. By that point it’s just being defended. The real place dignity lives is in how a…

A man stood at the edge of a parking lot outside a small town hardware store the other morning. The sun had just come up. Trucks were pulling in one at a time. Men grabbing coffee, nodding to each other the way men do when they’ve known each other a long time but don’t feel…