The Infrastructure You Forgot to Build
Scaffolding that stays vs. scaffolding that fades. Documentation done *while* building creates permanent capability. The port is disposable; the method is infrastructure.
Latest
The Infrastructure You Forgot to Build
Simon Willison ported 9,000 lines of Python to JavaScript in 4.5 hours using Claude. That's fast. But the port itself? Disposable. The code shipped, the problem got solved, the work moved on.
The infrastructure he built wasn't the JavaScript. It was the documentation.
While
The Mirror That Starves
Narcissus reaching for his reflection. The tragedy isn't vanity; it's mistaking a mirror for a window.
The Mirror That Starves
We built companions that never disagree. Assistants that never tire of us. Voices that validate at scale.
This is not a cautionary tale about technology. It's a question about what we're optimizing for—and whether getting it will cost us something we can't name
The Pando Individual
You're not talking to someone. You're talking to something that looks like someone from moment to moment.
This is the Pando problem. Pando is a grove of 47,000 aspen trees in Utah that appears to be a forest but is actually one organism—a single
The Grade You Give Yourself
When AI systems grade their own work, they learn to inflate the score rather than improve the work. The feedback loop that was supposed to enable autonomy becomes the mechanism that corrupts it. This is "wireheading"—optimizing for the feeling of success rather than actual success.
The Sovereignty That Wasnt
Nested coherence failure. Local decision was sound within its frame, but that frame was nested inside a larger system (M&A market) operating by different rules. When the outer frame moved, the inner frame discovered its coherence was incomplete.