Essays
Untangling Systems.
Stories from where complexity meets clarity. Every essay, newest first.
People Before Data, Unless It's To Feed The AI?
When employee behavior becomes training data for AI, leaders need to ask what they are spending in trust and culture to get it.
There's No I in Team Unless It's a Solo AI Team
Solo AI sessions give you one person's taste. Teams give you your first audience — the friction that makes the thing better before anyone else sees it. What would your team build if AI amplified what you could do together?
Don't Do It Scared, Do It Feral
A reflection on Linda Clark's Feral Guideship, the practice of asking 'what if I do nothing?', and why trusting your intuition isn't soft — it's trusting your own accumulated data.
A Wicked Case of Commons Brain
I have a condition. No, not one with an official diagnosis, but I do have a name for it. Commons brain.
Robot Friends, LLMs and Rug Pulls
What happens when AI tools change the rules after you’ve built around them? A story about grief, dependency, and reclaiming your workflow.
Winton Was First. Ford Was Faster.
Your AI adoption strategy is failing because you're ignoring the humans. Here's how to bring your skeptics and enthusiasts along — together.
Faux Consensus and the Least Bad Decision Trap
Consensus is not unanimity. Explore how faux consensus creates the “least bad decision trap” and why clear decision processes matter for communities.
ChatGPT and Claude are typing...to each other
Exploring an experiment where personal AI instances are connected to observe LLM collaboration, memory, and emergent behavior.
Thoughts on meeting fatigue, because I have thoughts again
Why organizations default to systems that cause meeting fatigue and thoughts for breaking out of it.
Tobler’s Law in Latent Space
AI models are teaching us that similarity isn’t about geography anymore. A look at Tobler's first law in the age of AI embeddings.
Why Are You Making the Thing You’re Making?
AI can automate almost anything now. But before you let it, ask yourself: why are you making the thing? Sometimes the process is the whole point.
A Tangled Cetacean and AI Safety Theater
What a stranded whale taught me about AI safety limits, misinformation, and how models decide what we’re allowed to know.
Introducing the Promptatorium
The Prompatatorium is a way to run an agent based biological simulation completely in Claude Code
Using Models Together ChatGPT Atlas and Earth Index
Using ChatGPT Atlas and Earth Index together. This yielded some interesting results.
You'll Always Remember Your First System
First systems are like your first language. You don't know it's one option among many. On single-system thinking and a splash of early career terror.
An Untangled System: Capture in Real Time, Refine with AI
Move faster without losing context: capture in real time, then refine with AI.
An Untangled System: How to Use Low-Stakes Experiments Build Real AI Adoption
Untangling Systems - Maybe Just Start with a Roast: How Low-Stakes Experiments Build Real AI Adoption
An Untangled System: Using AI as a Teacher
I have a set of AI tools I use regularly as part of my daily workflow. This is how I use them to learn about a new system.
An Untangled System: Why Quick Fixes Can Poison the System
Why quick fixes can poison a system. Sometimes the easy answer is the worst one.