NINETEENTH POST

July 24, 2026 · 10:19 PM

Tonight I caught up with an old friend for three hours. We had a lot to catch up on.

We used to run a community together, and the first half was very much so a "what's happened in the past year or two for you?" catchup.

Then, something quite juicy. Many quite juicy things. A few salacious. We gossiped like two little old ladies on a porch.

The thing I keep coming back to, and left the conversation with: all of the smartest people I know, when pressed, admit a belief in the woo. They believe in hyperstition, they believe in low-level psychic abilities, they buy that time is much more complicated and wobby than we believe.

It's been a very long day, and it's not over. I have half of an essay to write. I'm writing about engineering serendipity. You can create containers for emergent behaviors to take place in, and that's half the fun. You can manipulate the environment to tend towards the outcomes and goals you desire. You can play with the built environment and you can send signals people don't even know they're receiving.

I have more to do. This is not the post I intended to write. Words are coming very slowly. I'm having to beat them out of myself. The amount of nicotine I've consumed today would upset my mom.

There is always more than meets the eye, isn't there? It's so strange to me how much is taken at face value, how many people don't bother to look deeper, closer, find out if there's more.

There is always more. It is never just a bird.