A blog about science, philosophy, art, and gremlins.


Computational free will

June 7, 2026. If we live in a simulation, could the simulators control our minds? Probably not! I explain how complexity theory hands us a computational notion of free will.

Nineteen Ways of Looking at a Cone

June 2, 2026. A journey through the realms of art, literature, philosophy, math, physics, engineering and beyond, all through the lens of a humble cone of swarf.

Reflections on Bell Labs: Part 1

February 6, 2024. This essay reflects on what made Bell Labs so successful as an β€œinstitute of creative technology”, why that success has been so hard to replicate, and how one might attempt to replicate it in a distributed, self-organized, and rebellious fashion.

Six Impossible Things: Issue 1

January 17, 2024. In the first issue of 6IT: the mathematics of supervising children; unreliably clairvoyant demons; why the sky is blue (and why it isn’t); a Poisson process for primes; sychronizing fireflies; and quantum error correction from Penrose tilings.

Hello world

December 2, 2023. Introduction to the site and its author.