Essays
Notes on perception, science and systems, and on what we believe about the world.
SystemsWhy We Need the Conspiracy
Governments really do lie, and algorithms really do watch us. But assuming a mastermind behind every disaster is the easiest escape from a heavier thought: nobody is steering the ship.
PhysicsThe Same Seed
On the hidden unity of ordinary matter, two cosmic histories that meet in a sip of water, and the limit of our map of what exists.
LifeFrom Cell to Question
A reverse journey through the history of life, humanity, and memory, from the machine we converse with today to a world without animals, bones, or language.
CosmologyBefore There Was a Before
On the limit where our measuring concepts stop retaining their meaning, and on the difference between what physics establishes and the author's philosophical position when we ask about the origin of time and space.
SystemsBeyond the Map — Architectures of the Other
How the image of the other changed in the eyes of systems: from the unknown beyond the horizon to land, resource, enemy, and digital file.
CosmologyWhere Farther Ends
A traveler searching for the edge of the universe reaches the point where farther ends (not the end of space) and confronts the difference between there being no spatial outside and space being all that exists.
MindAfter Death
On the boundary where instruments stop, and the difference between not knowing what lies beyond it and inventing a story to fill the silence.
CosmologyThe Eternal Conflict
On quantum fluctuations that neither win nor lose, and on the moment asymmetry emerged as a rare exception in hot plasma.
CosmologyDark Things
On dark matter and dark energy as names for effects we can measure before we can name what carries them.