The Cross-Filing Index

A warning against binding your organization's voice to a platform you do not control, where algorithms watch and engagement demands its tribute.

Hard lessons learned whilst constructing where the old ones lurk.

Photographic documentation of the extension of a solarium to promote mental well being.

A collection of devices, gears, and apparatuses gathered over recent months — some inherited, some found, some sent along by correspondents who seemed glad to be rid of them. I have photographed each as faithfully as I am able, in the hope that a careful visual record might succeed where my own understanding of their mechanism has, in every case, eventually failed.

Test to confirm Obsidian to Eleventy conversions

It is not without considerable private debate that I have resolved to make these papers available to all. They were not written for a particular audience; I publish them now for reasons that will, I trust, become apparent to the patient reader: not for entertainment, and certainly not for credit, but because certain things once observed have a way of being quietly forgotten by everyone except the one who observed them — and a record, however incomplete, however unwelcome, seems to me the only honest defense against that particular kind of forgetting.

Found dead at an estate sale. Three replaced capacitors in and it now produces something closer to sound than static.

Two barometers, a broken sextant, and a lot of solder, assembled into a mounted instrument panel that mostly agrees with the forecast.

In the summer of this year, a table-top radio — manufactured in the year 1956, its provenance otherwise undocumented — came into my possession by means I need not elaborate upon here. This chronicles the madness that ensued.

I was asked to assist in cataloging a strange assortment of animals that came and simply did not leave. This is that account.

A short story about a research assistant who answers every letter promptly, correctly, and without ever once being seen.

A chance overheard conversation between two faculty members reveals that something long feared by a distant mountain people may now be stirring far closer to home - and that the mind itself seems eager to forget it

A dispatch about a shortwave transmission that only made sense played in reverse, and what it turned out to actually be.

On stepping back from daily publishing to pursue a Zettelkasten practice, trading raw output for slower, connected thought.

The final dispatch in the series, laying out the documentation that turns a small experiment into a repeatable ritual.

Challenges to expect when introducing a culture of small experiments, from learned helplessness to the weight of leadership's words.

Five steps to set up a recurring cycle of small experiments that keep an organization from calcifying.

The first of four dispatches on fighting corporate rigor mortis through small, deliberate experiments instead of sweeping change.

An exploration of how fear — ancient, creeping, inherited from the top — calcifies organizations and strangles the will to change.

An honest accounting of Seth Godin's intense AltMBA program — the toll it takes, who it suits, and why it isn't for everyone.

A candid retrospective on two weeks of daily writing, cataloguing what fed the habit and what threatened to consume it.

Why continuous improvement isn't just about efficiency, but a way to release built-up pressure between departments before it erupts.

On resisting the urge to build sprawling, over-engineered processes from the start, and why small rituals that grow over time survive longer.

An old witch's ritual, a fearful village, and the unsettling realization that ancient magic may just be modern science wearing a cloak.

On why hindsight's perfect clarity is a false judge of past decisions, and two questions to escape its cruel verdict.

Applying Nassim Taleb's antifragility to corporate inflexibility, with a confession of one process that needed to grow stronger from its own failures.

A practical guide to standing up a recurring continuous improvement cycle, and the conditions that keep it safe to speak honestly within.

A parable about inherited habits and unquestioned tradition, and a call to trace your own rituals back to their forgotten origins.

A case for developers to sharpen their writing as much as their code, and why the written word carries the furthest.

An introduction to Rigor Corpus — the slow, creeping inflexibility that sets into growing companies — and a vow to document its spread.

A cosmic-horror meditation on the Simulation Hypothesis — cheat codes, hidden loot, and the unsettling thought that something beyond the render distance is watching.

A record of our recent labors in the enlarging of the family home — set down not for instruction, as I have little worth giving, but as testimony to the particular madness inherent in an undertaking of this scope. The work now draws to its close. Let no one mistake this for encouragement to attempt the same.

A family's return to an ageless Rhode Island shoreline, where weathered stones and tidal pools hold memories across generations.

A vivid, comic dream starring Mel Brooks and his security detail, followed by a detour into why dreams may exist to keep the mind flexible.