Threads
The ideas that connect these essays to each other.
Click a thread to trace it across the archive, or click any essay to see where it connects.
Accidental Complexity
Political systems accumulate complexity the way codebases accumulate technical debt. The answer isn't to tear them down or keep piling on. It's to refactor.
Holding the Whole
AI dissolves accidental complexity at speed, but essential complexity — the question of whether it all adds up to something good — remains stubbornly human.
The Architect's Exit
Kissinger defined a revolutionary power as one that rejects the legitimacy of the order it inhabits — then spent his career building America's. What happens when his framework fits its own architect?
Soft Landings
I spent almost two decades loyal to one airline alliance — then the program changed its rules, and I started gliding away so quietly they'll never know I left.
Staying in the Water
What building a bootstrapped company actually feels like after nearly a decade — not the VC default, not the indie hacker fantasy, but the uncomfortable middle where most of the building happens.
Blast Radius
AI can reproduce substantial software systems. The moat against substitution scales with the blast radius of failure — but the line between what's safe and what's vulnerable keeps moving.
The Absorption Gap
Four scenarios for how AI gets absorbed into the real world — and why all four are happening at once.
Writing With Machines
I've always used writing to think. This time I'm using AI to write — not to produce text faster, but to think harder.
Collapsing Cycles
Cycles are getting shorter everywhere — in careers, in technology, in how organizations work. A decades-old Marine Corps doctrine saw it first, and its insights about coordination under pressure feel uncomfortably relevant to building software with AI.
The Perpetual Gale
The disruptions have started to overlap. If the world feels like it's accelerating, it probably is.