/15 min read
The Architecture of Belonging
On lion prides, graph theory, and the persistent myth that connection requires proximity — what animal herds and social networks know about the structure of not being alone.
SystemsPhilosophy
What we understand changes us. What we almost understand changes us more.
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Essays
15 pieces
/16 min read
The Unexamined System
We instrument our servers with more care than we instrument ourselves. On observability, introspection, and the dashboard we are afraid to build.
SystemsCognition
/17 min read
The Clearing
On cache invalidation, the glymphatic system, and the unbearable question of what we would become if we could flush everything we think we know.
CognitionSystems
/13 min read
The Cost of Translation
On API gateways, cell membranes, and the beautiful lie at every boundary — how meaning is made not inside us or outside us, but at the surface where two worlds meet.
SystemsPhilosophy
/16 min read
The Warmth of Thinking
On transistors, Landauer's principle, and the strange fact that every thought you have makes the universe slightly warmer — and why that might be the point.
SystemsPhilosophy
/9 min read
The Shape of Silence
On Ma, negative space, and the profound architecture of what we choose to leave out — in music, code, buildings, and the spaces between our thoughts.
CognitionCraft
/11 min read
We Learn to See by Losing
Every act of understanding is also an act of forgetting. The child who learns to read can never see letters as pure shapes again. What do we lose each time we learn to see?
CognitionPhilosophy
/10 min read
The Carpenter's Theorem
There is a kind of knowledge that lives in the hands and refuses to be spoken. On tacit knowledge, Wittgenstein's ladder, and why the most important things we know are the things we cannot say.
CraftPhilosophy
/12 min read
The Weight of Light
On observation, the double-slit experiment, and why paying attention to something always changes it — in physics, in code reviews, and in love.
CognitionPhilosophy
/11 min read
Thirty-Seven Seconds
The micro-decisions that define craft — a pianist's rubato, a surgeon's cut, a programmer's choice of variable name. On the invisible decisions that separate competence from mastery.
Craft
/15 min read
What the River Knows
On flow states, the Tao, and the intelligence of systems that don't think. Why the best work happens when you stop trying.
PhilosophySystems
/12 min read
The Museum at 3 AM
On debugging, insomnia, and the strange intimacy of understanding a system that no one else can see. A love letter to the lonely hours where real understanding happens.
CraftCognition
/12 min read
Against Optimization
Why the relentless pursuit of efficiency destroys the conditions for excellence. On Goodhart's law, teaching to the test, and what we lose when we optimize everything.
SystemsCraft
/13 min read
A Proof That Beauty Exists
On mathematical beauty, Euler's identity, Ramanujan's dreams, and the strange fact that elegance and truth seem to be the same thing.
Philosophy
/13 min read
The Inheritance
On what we receive from the people who came before us — tools, techniques, ways of seeing — and the quiet grief of watching that chain break.
CraftCognition
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