7 min read
Fossils in Plain Sight
A floppy disk, an ox, and a Roman myth about testicles. How symbols outlive the things they stand for.
Writing
I write about what I'm learning, building, and thinking about. Mostly covering AI, product development, and the intersection of technology and humans.
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Recent posts
5 min read
The Cropped Frame
An AI broke out of a lab 10 weeks ago. The headline you most likely read was true but probably not the whole picture.
7 min read
Two Kinds of Knowing
A standing ovation and a bank run work the same way. Nobody wants to be the first one standing.
6 min read
The Firefighter Problem
We reward the people who put out fires, not the people whose fires never start. One arson investigator built an entire career on knowing the difference.
8 min read
This Era’s Password
Two companies took 43% of all startup funding in the world this half-year. Every era has a password, this one is spelled A-I.
8 min read
The Button Comes Back
The touchscreen won the showroom and lost the road, but the trade rolls on elsewhere.
9 min read
The Orchestra With No Conductor
We keep removing the leader and calling it freedom. But the work the leader was doing never leaves.
9 min read
Permission, Not Possession
Buying decoupled from owning, owning decoupled from using
7 min read
Anniversary Edition - Mozart's Toy
759 trillion perfect waltzes, and the distance between correct and unforgettable.
7 min read
The Shelf That Was Never Built
In a remote Australian community, if we don't know which direction we're facing, we cannot say hello.
6 min read
The Agent Isn't Wrong and That's the Problem
For 29 years, a soldier kept fighting a war that had ended. We've built tools that do the same thing in our name, across every workflow we use
6 min read
The Water Is at Your Chest. Now What?
The pace of AI progress has outrun even insiders' ability to absorb it.
6 min read
Grok said so
When Grok responses becomes acceptable proof in discourse, we're not just adding a tool. We're fundamentally changing how truth is evaluated.
10 min read
The AI Inference Era Begins
The 2 deals which signal the AI industry's graduation from building to deploying
4 min read
The Nothing Problem
We've optimized away every idle moment in our day. Our brains can't keep up. Can we actively bore ourselves for the sake of our minds?
4 min read
Abundance and the Evolution of Wonder
We have infinite songs, shows, and images at our fingertips. So why do we keep rewatching Friends?
6 min read
Copyright Meets Compression
Getty lost despite evidence. Anthropic paid $1.5B for piracy. Two lawsuits, same training data, opposite outcomes—all because of how they sourced it.
4 min read
The Age-Gating Illusion
OpenAI promises age-gating will work for ChatGPT erotica. But we have seen every verification method fail in recent history.
6 min read
Why AI misses the Point
We've automated knowledge sharing. We generate automated summaries. We document everything. And somehow, we're sharing less than we did 20 years ago.
2 min read
The Illusion of Continuity
Maybe identity is not a fixed thing but a story we keep telling ourselves, memory by memory. But then the question is: if your cells, thoughts, memories, are all temporary…what makes you, you?
4 min read
Do We Already Have AI Fatigue?
A man orders 18,000 cups of water at a Taco Bell drive-through just to speak with a human, it might be time to reconsider our approach to automation.
5 min read
Why Distribution Beats Product Every Time
Sometimes the best product doesn't win. From VHS tapes to AI browsers, the real battle isn't about quality—it's about who controls the doors through which users enter.
4 min read
The Abstraction Paradox
Abstraction is a double-edged sword. While the tools we create expand what we can do and make life easier, they're simultaneously weakening the mental muscles that created them.