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• [article] Values Don't Matter — 21 Feb 2026
  Values often function as virtue ethics—traits we’re expected to cultivate. But virtues are context-dependent: courage for a soldier isn’t courage for a teacher, and people respond primarily to their environment. So the real task is to design the context.
• [audio] Hydraulic Despotism — 21 Feb 2026
  You’re not coerced by malice. You’re coerced by convenience. Control the flow, control the people: the most discredited theory in political science describes social media, energy and compute perfectly. The alternatives exist. We just don’t use them.
• [audio] Atavism Isn't the Answer — 7 Feb 2026
  Seed oils, raw milk, cold plunges, tradwives—one template runs them all: name a modern ill, invent an ancestral past, sell the return as cure. It’s built on a fantasy we can’t verify.
• [marginalium] AI use and skill formation — 5 Feb 2026
• [marginalium] Gnosticism in Blood Meridian — 26 Jan 2026
• [article] Gesticism — 26 Jan 2026
  Lots of things are happening, but anything <em>can</em> matter, and whatever gives meaning will eventually demand sacrifice. The agony of attention. I’m not going to spend more time trying to reduce the core idea than that.
• [audio] Values Don't Matter — 24 Jan 2026
  Values don’t shape behaviour. The room does. They’re virtue ethics relabelled—and courage for a soldier isn’t courage for a teacher. Build the context; drop the list.
• [audio] Stupid Questions: Consciousness — 10 Jan 2026
  The hard problem of consciousness isn’t a problem. It’s a beautiful argument with no stakes. Behaviour is what matters, not the ghost behind the curtain.
• [article] Stupid Questions — 1 Jan 2026
  Nature is just nurture over time, and nurture is far more obviously in charge; nothing changes if free will <em>isn’t</em> real; and the same is true of consciousness. They’re just complicated debates with no real outcomes.
• [audio] Stupid Questions: Free Will — 27 Dec 2025
  Whether free will is real changes precisely nothing. The world’s too complex for the answer to bite, and behaviour bends the same way no matter which side wins.
• [audio] Stupid Questions: Nature/Nurture — 13 Dec 2025
  Nature is just nurture given time, and nurture is obviously the one in charge. The whole debate is Gladwell bait: superficially sexy, practically useless.
• [article] Hydraulic Despotism — 1 Dec 2025
  Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice. There are many vectors for control—we don’t need to hand them over.
• [audio] Mundane Cults — 29 Nov 2025
  Cults aren’t the fringe. They’re the architecture of ordinary community, and not being in one usually means something’s gone wrong. The question is whether yours is one you chose.
• [audio] Men Aren't From Mars — 15 Nov 2025
  Men and women aren’t wired differently. We read the same behaviour as reasonable in him and unreasonable in her—normalising troubled men while pathologising women’s ordinary needs.
• [audio] Stress is Good — 1 Nov 2025
  Stress isn’t broken by modern life. It’s a performance tool, and the line between fuel and harm isn’t the stressor. It’s whether you control it.