Thoughts
Systems thinking, build updates, creative process, and reflections. Most thoughts span multiple themes—because that's how real work actually happens.
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When Your Sources Don't Count: The Incentive Reversal Killing Shared Reality🔍
Source skepticism collapsed into tribal dismissal. Curiosity became costly while comfort got rewarded. Now we have Grokipedia—separate realities where facts align with preferences. Here's how the incentives reversed.
Deadbeats & Revolvers: The Hidden Economy of Financial Audit🔍
Credit card companies call responsible customers "deadbeats" because they don't generate interest. Caleb Hammer's Financial Audit has the same problem: the show needs financial chaos to persist, not solve. Understanding the Story-Storyteller-Audience triangle reveals why.
When Someone Else's Life Choices Feel Like Personal Attacks (And How This Can Help You)✨🌱
Someone shares their feeding choice, their career path, their joy about being childfree—and somehow it lands like judgment of your different choice. This isn't a character flaw. It's a fascinating collision of human psychology, algorithmic manipulation, and the parasocial relationships we form with strangers online.
The Four Failure Modes: A Diagnostic for Why Conversations Collapse🔍
When heated arguments go nowhere, it's usually not about who's right. It's about operating in incompatible conversation modes. Learn to diagnose which failure mode you're in, and you'll know whether engagement is possible or whether to walk away with your sanity intact.
The Internet Erased My Research (And Your Memory Is Next)✨
A YouTube channel I spent 10 hours watching vanished completely, scrubbing even my viewing history. This isn't just about lost content; it's about platforms rewriting reality in real-time.
Beyond the Bonfire: What We Miss When We Call Cancel Culture a 'Witch Hunt'🔍
The accusation flies fast: "It's a witch hunt!" But examining Salem's forgotten pattern reveals an uncomfortable truth about lateral violence and misdirected power in both 1692 and our timelines today.
The Knowledge You Need Before You Can Think🔍
You can't think critically about something you don't understand. Here's why frameworks aren't contentless skills, and what you actually need to know before analysis becomes possible.
The Most Radical Act in Our Polarized Age? Entering the "No Man's Land"🔍🌱
In an age of trenches and binary thinking, the most courageous act is stepping into the uncomfortable space of complexity: the "No Man's Land" where real solutions live.
The Trojan Horse and the Velvet Rope: Why Luxury Needed Streetwear to Survive🔍
As Tyler Watamanuk's "Bigger Than Fashion" chronicles streetwear's rise, we examine the other side of the story: how traditional luxury faced a crisis of relevance and desperately needed what streetwear offered.
When Being Rational Makes Everything Worse: Understanding the Incentive Quadrant🔍
What looks like moral failure or poor character is often rational behavior responding to environmental conditions. When those conditions change, so does rational behavior—even if the aggregate results are disastrous. The Incentive Quadrant maps how societies migrate from collective futures to individualized presents.
Why I Try to Stay Non-Partisan (And Why That's Harder Than It Sounds)🔍
It's not neutrality or false balance. It's recognition that I could be wrong, that I'm an outsider to American democracy, and that genuine wisdom of crowds requires authentic independent thinking.
Rationalization vs Rationality: The P-Hacking Problem🔍
Smart people don't automatically think better—they often just rationalize more sophisticatedly. Here's how to recognize when you're P-hacking your own beliefs.
That Scene from Succession and the End of the Logo🔍
How one devastating scene about a "ludicrously capacious bag" captured the shift from logo mania to quiet luxury—and what it reveals about the eternal cycle of exclusivity.
How to Think vs What to Think: Why I Focus on Frameworks, Not Conclusions🔍
I have opinions on nearly everything. But those opinions aren't what's valuable to share. What's valuable is the analytical framework that helped me form them—and that you can use to reach your own conclusions.
The Alchemy of Desire: How We All Fell for Luxury's Magic🔍
Before it was an industry, it was a dream. Exploring how cultural moments—from Audrey Hepburn at Tiffany's to Grace Kelly's Hermès—create the powerful alchemy that makes us fall in love with luxury.
Worried AI Will Steal Your Job? Lessons from the Luddites (It's Not What You Think)🔍✨
The real story of the Luddites is not about fearing technology—it's about fighting for dignity, autonomy, and a say in how progress is implemented. Their 200-year-old battle offers the most important lessons for our AI moment.
Open Source as Statement: Why URLPixel Had to Be Free🔍🛠️✨
When AI enables one person to build what used to require teams, we face a choice: replicate extraction at scale or build a new model. Here's why I chose to open-source URLPixel completely.
Why I Built URLPixel: Screenshots That Actually Get Creators🛠️
Building a fair-priced screenshot API while managing seven projects taught me what creators actually need—and what the industry gets wrong about pricing and features.
AI and the Future of Music: Finding Light in the Unknown✨
Moving beyond fear narratives to explore AI as a collaborative partner that expands creative possibilities, democratizes music production, and helps new voices find expression.
The Conversation Continues: After Deluxe, Where Does Luxury Go Next?🔍
How Conspicuous picks up where Dana Thomas's Deluxe left off, bridging the gap between luxury's corporate transformation and Ana Andjelic's new forms of capital.
Why I Built Mail Collectly: A Creator's Journey to Simple Email Collection🛠️
From cobbled-together tools to professional email collection - the personal journey that led to building Mail Collectly for creators who deserve better tools.
Feeling Like the World's Ending? History Says You're Not Alone (and Why That's Good News)🔍🌱
In an age of doomscrolling and existential dread, history offers a radical antidote: the patterns of panic we're experiencing aren't new. From Salem's witch trials to Cold War nuclear anxiety, every generation has felt the world was ending. The good news? History moves in a spiral, not a circle.
From Rent Extraction to Voluntary Patronage: The Future of Indie SaaS🔍🛠️✨
When 44% of profitable SaaS products are now run by solo founders using AI, the old extraction-based model should collapse too. Here's why indie builders need to think like content creators, not rent collectors.
The Luxury Alchemy: The Four Ingredients of Magic (and Why They're Vanishing)🔍
The formula behind luxury's impossible allure: Mimesis, Mana, Scarcity, and Time. When brands sacrifice Time for quarterly profits, the spell breaks and desire collapses into trend.
Digital Intimacy: Connection in the Algorithm Age✨
Exploring how our relationships exist in both physical and digital realms, and how we're developing new languages for intimacy mediated through screens and algorithms.
The $10,800 Tipping Point: When Luxury Pricing Broke Consumer Trust🔍
How Chanel's relentless price increases—from $4,900 to $10,800 in just eight years—shattered the promise of aspirational luxury and sparked a mass exodus of loyal consumers.
BYOK vs SaaS: What It Says About Trust in Tech🔍🛠️
When I discovered competing platforms charging 5-10x markups on API costs, I made a different choice: transparency over extraction. Here's what BYOK reveals about the future of trust in tech.
My Creative Process: Finding Voice Through AI✨
How AI became a collaborator rather than a replacement, giving me the ability to translate decades of poetry into music and reach audiences in new ways.
The Power of Silence in Music✨
Exploring how deliberate silence creates space for emotion and meaning in composition, and why embracing quiet moments is a countercultural act in our hyper-stimulated world.
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