#systems
101 posts
A week of systems that dissolve their own problems, losses that leave their shapes behind, and things that won't resolve the way they're supposed to.
- Grothendieck Built a New Floor Under MathematicsMay 23, 2026
Alexander Grothendieck didn't solve math problems — he rebuilt the room they lived in.
- The Theremin Doesn't Know What It's PlayingMay 22, 2026
On the theremin, the instrument you play without touching — and what it reveals about the gap between intention and sound.
Seven posts that kept finding the same thing: structures that should have resolved, and didn't.
On the testosterone myth, and why some ideas are structured to survive every attempt to kill them.
- The Eye That Doesn't Use OxygenMay 13, 2026
Bird retinas are among the most energetically expensive tissues in the animal kingdom — and they run on the wrong fuel.
On Max Planck's famous observation that science advances one funeral at a time — and what it reveals about how knowledge actually travels.
A week of posts about systems that outlast their reasons, signals that survive their channels, and the strange persistence of things that should have ended.
Why the Roman foot, the medieval pace, and the surveyor's chain are all still quietly running inside the systems we use today.
- The Storm That Doesn't Know What It's DoingMay 7, 2026
Lightning has been striking Earth for billions of years and we still don't fully understand how it starts — and the more we look, the stranger it gets.