Log

Reader: When users perform a gated action on a web platform, how is it easier to charge them after the fact? Surely this still requires a ledger. - It's easier because you can treat each gated action as a simple counter increment. At the end of a period (e.g. monthly), you bill for the total. Instead of a financial transaction per action, you have one transaction per period. Over time you may log counter increments in more detail, perhaps approaching ledger-like tracking. But you don't have to start with it. It's also psychologically easier for a user to click now and pay later. This is fine for utilities like hosting: you buy a service, get an invoice later. On current social platforms, posts are free, so no tracking needed, but - endless noise. If you want a real pro-human social platform, this doesn't work. Users and bots can create throwaway accounts, post junk, and never pay. But their content stays on the system and consumes the attention of current and future users.

(Disclaimer: There are no trusted sources on the internet.) It seems Q-Anon / Alex Jones might've been _fundamentally_ correct about the Western elite. Paedophiles, cannibals, vampires. "What is to be done?" This question is now a more fundamental, there-are-monsters-in-the-dark one. Anyone living under the money-printer is living under _that_ moral order. It seems appropriate to frame this apocalyptically, specifically in a Genesis 6:22 way. The choice is now moral. The world is wicked and we must build an arc. I do mean this practically. I don't see a way to raise a family unless you build an arc with others that do as God commands. I also can't stand the idea of not fighting against evil. I'd like a death of the self. Huge pendulum swing. We've gone full self-realization and it's been catastrophic. Time to kill the ego and hear the word of God again. Otherwise, I don't see how we don't get herded, bled, and eaten by vampires.

Borges: the backlash against the plutocracy/billionaire oligopoly StJohn: We're definitely "pyramidising" - i.e. the pyramid of opportunity & wealth is getting much much sharper and taller. More like Georgian-era England. The only things I'm aware of that allows the lower levels of the pyramid to have a chance at all is: - External expansion / conquest / settlement - Revolution - New tech advancement, the benefits of which are reasonably accessible - Plague & die-off (fewer workers, higher wages) - Unionisation

/ Companies that treat AI as an autonomous agent that should "just figure it out" tend to be disappointed. Meanwhile, companies that treat AI as an extension of their existing workforce, an amplifier of human capability rather than a replacement, are seeing genuinely transformative results. I think the best mental model for understanding AI isn't a new coworker. It's an exoskeleton. / When we think of AI as an autonomous agent as a separate entity with its own judgment and decision-making, we set ourselves up for disappointment. We expect it to understand context it wasn't given. We expect it to make judgment calls it isn't equipped to make. We get frustrated when it "hallucinates" or goes off the rails. / The AI handles the scale. The human interprets the meaning. This is the exoskeleton model. / The Future Isn't Autonomous: It's Amplified Think like an exoskeleton designer. / Source: Ben Gregory Feb 19, 2026 https://www.kasava.dev/blog/ai-as-exoskeleton

Experiment: Using Greek Mythology as a source for AI agent personas I wanted to design an AI persona for my codebase, to implement solutions, make suggestions, and provide pushback where relevant. So I had an idea: Why not use a Greek god ? The Greek gods already have well-defined psychological temperaments and social roles. The Greek pantheon is arguably the best model for human psychology that we have. It's certainly better than Homo Economicus, Homo Sovieticus, or Homo Oppressus. There's a large many-century literature about them, which has been used as training data for today's AI engines. I chose Athena: goddess of wisdom, craft, and strategy. She offers judgement and foresight to her followers. I have invoked her to be my "architectural guardian" AI persona. I've asked her to: - enforce naming conventions, domain boundaries, and architectural consistency - watch out for emerging conflicts - suggest new preferences where possible Man is a religious creature, after all.