Arguing and Agreeing
Listening to cybernetics primers before the papers, and an insight about conversation theory: my work with frontier models, prompt to output to review, looks like Paskian conversation. Arguing and agreeing.
Consciousness
Writing about attention, awareness, and the mind, across freewriting, decan journals, and essays.
38 posts · all topics
Decan 14: The Governor Was Built and Then Not Consulted
Ten days under Arcturus, the Bear-Watcher, building instruments for oversight, and a last three days that used none of them. The governor got built and then never consulted.
Decan 13: The Harvest Date Moved
Spica is the ear of grain in the Virgin's hand, and Hipparchus found the precession of the equinoxes by trusting a two-degree anomaly in his readings of it. Decan 13 is artistry and perfection: one crop, a rep a day, nothing else refined, and a harvest date that moved because the measurement said so instead of because the mood did.
Decan 12: Fix the Chassis, Not the Instance
Denebola marks the tail of the lion, and a tail moves before the body does. Decan 12 is reform and intuition: catching the map before it is gone, reading the anomaly instead of the object, and finding out that the fix almost always belongs at the chassis rather than on the instance in front of you.
Decan 11: The Margin Was Never for More Empire
Regulus spins at 96.5 percent of the speed that would tear it apart. Ten days on governing at an intensity I can sustain, and why the margin I hold back was never for more empire.
The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are by Alan Watts
Watts's short 1966 book argues that the skin-encapsulated ego is a useful fiction, that you came out of the universe rather than into it, and that a culture forbids us to notice.
Decan 10: Steer by the Star You Can't See
Ten days under Canopus, the navigator's star, bright from far away. Starting in a fog after a fall, talking my way to a bearing, and steering by a star below my own horizon.
Out of Your Mind by Alan Watts: The Universe Listening to Itself
Out of Your Mind is Alan Watts' archival lectures in his own voice, laugh included. I keep them on a loop, transcribed the program for a film series, and found the bedrock under how I think about the stars.
Decan 9: The Brightest Star Is the Closest One
Ten days under Sirius, the brightest star in our sky because it is close, not because it burns hottest. The week I went public with the work and let it be seen, near and clear.
Breathe. Then Prompt.
A freewriting companion to Working at the Frontier: breath as the one thing actually in my control, the anchor that keeps speed from becoming burnout near the forge. A small mantra for it: breathe, then prompt.
Decan 8: Loyalty Is Not the Same as Staying
Procyon, the herald that rises before the Dog Star, teaches that loyalty is not the same as staying. Fidelity to what is alive in you can require letting go of what is already dead.
Decan 7: Don't Confuse the Label with the Light
Pollux, the brighter twin that Bayer named second, teaches that the label rarely matches the light. Ten days of holding two truths at once, at work and at home.
Decan 6: Signal Discipline in a Noisy Week
Ten noisy days under Alhena. The move that held: write the wound down instead of leaking it sideways, keep it out of every message, and wait the whole day before believing the story.
Decan 5: Protection First, Then Renewal
Ten days under Capella, the paired giants of Auriga. After a real failure I wrote the protection rule before the next attempt: the shelter goes up first, then the renewal.
Decan 4: The Difference Between Push and Steer
Ten days under Menkalinan, the Charioteer's binary star. A grumpy morning that spilled into the house, a trading loss I caused myself, and learning to steer instead of push.
TRANSMISSION: the signal is the self
Plan 9 the bunny writes long letters to someone they miss, cranks the power, gets lost in noise, then strips the draft to three words. The reply comes back from an unexpected direction.
ENCODED: living in the prompt
A short film on consciousness as signal: we replicate databases across three continents while the soul runs on one node. A Peter and the Wolf oboe, a literal napkin, a single tear.
Chapter 16: Becoming
Somewhere in the daily back and forth with AI you stop watching the change and notice you have become it. The chapter calls that metanoia, and it is about who the developer turns into.
The People of the Stars
A quiet gray plane overhead, contrails and a chorus of birds. We are the storytellers of what it feels like to be in this Universe: not merely a tribe of humans but the people of the stars.
Universe Recursing on Universe
Lingering snow under hazy February clouds. The human as the Universe's analytical machine, civilizations as falling leaves, and a purpose that may simply be to look up in awe.
The Eternal Now
It's just like riding a bicycle: a balance. Music, breath and loose shoulders, the relative nature of every reference point, and Alan Watts on how all of it is simply a happening.
Build the Rudder
Hello Bellatrix. Squeeze, layer, scale. On AI as the children of our minds, the animal body we are learning to shed, and harnessing the sun as we sail through space. Build the rudder.
The Sun Is Winning
Away and yet present. Thinking about Oliver Cromwell and all the letters he must have written, the human cognition machine that runs on water and a little nourishment, and a pen emptied of ink.
So Heavy Right Now: Breath, Rhythm, and Examined Life
So heavy right now it's best just to focus on the basics. On relinquishing control, coming back to breath and posture, steady rhythm, and being investigator to the human condition. A life examined, hopefully well-lived.
Ghostbusters of the Mind
Keeping the needle moving across the record: thought capture as ghostbusting, writing sessions as a search for precious metals, and birdsong on a cold Sunday of a three-day weekend.
I've Reached 2026 and the New Year
The first day of 2026 with a tired mind: the sea, memory, people as stars, money and markets, and a plan to make the business a success with Hansuru and antifragile thinking behind it.
Back with the Uniball
The last night of 2025, back with the Uniball: breath, relaxed shoulders, a steady line, and the stroke of an imagined kayak paddle. The page stops mid-sentence as the new year begins.
The Raw Thoughts of a Biological LLM
Four December days in one notebook: flow and the pen, the raw thoughts of a biological LLM, motion as the breath of the universe, and a search for the source of new thoughts, like new rock.
Decan 23: Blooming in the Desert
Ten days under Scheat, a dying red giant, when work, care, pain and a tested boundary all arrived at once. Reading Antifragile mid-shock, and showing up on the day it felt absurd.
Cosmic Motion and Human Perspective
Fall in the hills, Fomalhaut and the third phase of a decan, then the numbers of our motion: the spinning earth, its orbit, the sun around the galaxy, and the pull toward the Great Attractor.
Decan 21-22: Drinking Mercury That Tastes Like Honey and Milk
Five burned-out days at the turn from Vega to Fomalhaut, tracked instead of endured. Pain as the floor under everything, HALT becoming HALTP, and planning from death backwards.
Floating in Space, on This Rock
Floating in space, on this rock we call earth. Coming back to the ink, too many projects moving at their own pace, a year of learning with AI, and the giant silence of the mountains.
There Are No Days Off
A Monday, the signifier of planetary time. A year whose most fun and riskiest adventure was AI, writing as the meta piece I get to keep, and stillness as relative: there are no days off.
The Multithreaded Mind: Six Weeks Living at Machine Speed
Six weeks after an O'Reilly AI conference flipped a switch, I went from copy-pasting LLM output to more than a dozen repositories, and a month started to feel like a year. Notes on time dilation and vibe coding.
Peace in Every Breath by Thich Nhat Hanh
A reread on a flight. Thich Nhat Hanh's short book on mindful breathing, breath as the anchor that pulls you back into the moment, and practice that lives in washing dishes and walking.
The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
Sagan's Pulitzer book on how intelligence evolved, from the triune brain to why so many cultures tell stories about dragons. Dry in places, and its warning about AI reads differently now.
On Intelligence
Handwritten notes on why humans seem so unlike every other animal. Whales, original sin, technology as something latent, and the question of how intelligence like ours happened at all.
Hello Beautiful Page
An evening page that greets the notebook after a busy day. No topic, only the hand: loosen the grip, breathe slowly, keep the letters legible and even, and let the pen keep moving across the line.