Miscellanies

· Updated July 28, 2026

Fifty-three essays, written before 2023

Fifty-three essays connect circuits, interfaces, physical models, creative tools, and ways for people to think together.

They range from multiplexers and self-reconfiguring machines to quiet communication devices, physical presence, community, language, stars, music, and the discipline of making an idea concrete. Choose a shelf or follow the idea that catches you.

Living Circuits And Spatial Machines

Begin with a multiplexer, give state and wires physical meaning, and keep building until the machine can install and replace its own working regions.

  1. From Domain Models Down to MUXes—and Back Up Every domain consequence can travel through explicit transition rules, control, datapaths, Boolean relations, MUXes, retained state, energy.
  2. Reverse the MUX: Abduction as Executable Inference Run a multiplexer relation backward from an observed output, enumerate compatible causes, and rank the surviving explanations.
  3. Logical Momentum: A State Needs a Direction, Not Just a Value Logical momentum carries transition direction, phase, completion, release, and replay information with each value so reactive computations can compose.
  4. An Instruction Is a Wire Reused in Time A stateful event fabric turns instructions into scheduled reconnections:, pattern matchers retain inputs, authorized packets carry changes.
  5. Arrows: A Graph Language That Can Become Hardware A graph becomes executable when every arrow has explicit semantics for value, state, direction, timing, and physical cost.
  6. A Programming Language Made of Live Circuits This parallel, reactive language makes every instance a live circuit, every type a compact construction stream.
  7. The Whole Thing: Static Verilog in a Dynamic World Static circuit descriptions become a dynamic language when a spatial fabric can install, connect, own, and replace them while it runs.
  8. Why I Put a Reconfigurable Fabric in WebGL Why WebGL became a fast, visual laboratory for testing the local state and reconfiguration rules of a custom spatial fabric.
  9. Cartilage: The Architecture That Rebuilt Itself A first-person history of Cartilage, from event membranes and dynamic cores to ownership trees, spatial programs, wiring, and application-laid clocks.
  10. Booting a Reconfigurable Fabric from Its Edge An edge FPGA reads a microSD image, streams configuration into a neighboring fabric, and brings networking up after the machine exists.
  11. A Computer That Boots by Growing Its Own Wires A blank spatial fabric grows configuration paths, regions, programs, and wires until keyboard commands have assembled a working computer.
  12. The Cartilage Editor and Seed I Wanted in 2021 Turn a raw GPU texture and FPGA starter board into a spatial editor with saving, selection, labels, named ports, and deployment.
  13. The FPGA You Can Debug from a Mountain A portable FPGA workbench can capture design, live sequential state, transition history, local stopping, safety controls.
  14. Reconstructing a Shader Pipeline on an iCE40 Translate texture reads, cached state, parallel cell updates, and streamed output from a fragment shader into a compact iCE40 pipeline.
  15. Physical Causality Has Geometry State transitions, bandwidth, clocks, ownership, topology, power, cooling, and allocation all inherit geometry and finite propagation.
  16. A Brain-Sized Machine in Real Units A brain-scale machine becomes actionable when connections, update rates, memory, routing, geometry, power, cooling, service, and cost carry real units.
  17. Matter That Computes and Moves Artificial cells can make sensing, switching, communication, bonding, motion, energy.
  18. A Machine Small Enough to Explain All at Once Build a complete stored-program computer from stores, moves, jumps, and a visible stack, then test it with a bracket checker.

Software, State, And Communication

These essays treat interfaces and networks as arrangements of attention, state, time, authority, and physical channels.

  1. Model the World Around the State Machine Design hierarchical statecharts by modeling the medium and subsystem states together, then choosing meaningful world-level macrostates.
  2. A Statechart That Remembers How It Was Changed A directed statechart history joins structural editing, live execution, transition lifecycles.
  3. Prohibit Action Upon Stale Data Bind every consequential action to the revision and facts the user actually saw, then show material changes before asking for a fresh decision.
  4. Definitions That Can Fail Their Own Tests People write hierarchical definitions and acceptance criteria; machines search for implementations that those definitions can test.
  5. Where Does an Information System Live? An information system lives in the maintained correspondence among a problem, shared models, executable procedures, and coordinated human action.
  6. Speak in Changes, Not Commands Voice programming transforms a visible model through sound symbols, references, semantic macros, explicit proposals, layered correction, reversible commits.
  7. When Meaning Bends the Medium Semantic content can request layout, controls, routing, storage, transformation, allocation.
  8. QuickPaster: A Paste-Only Handoff Between Devices QuickPaster pairs individual browser windows and sends one plain-text paste to one chosen online destination through an explicit, transient replace operation.
  9. LateReply: A Page, Not a Feed LateReply is a deliberate communication device: one patient e-ink page with a hard rule that the page never becomes a scrolling feed.
  10. Presence Is a Device, Not a Video Call A physical telepresence device for dedicated attention, tangible remote action, local autonomy, safety, and an always-available window.
  11. The Mobile Web Interaction Kernel A compact mobile-web interaction kernel gives state, composition, layout, touch, focus, scrolling.
  12. One Feature, Every Platform One feature team can carry a complete user promise through iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux, services.
  13. What Old Computers Got Right A personal computer should preserve its owner's work, invite physical extension, explain its circuits and recovery path.
  14. EventEdge: A Privacy-First Cloud Over the Park EventEdge makes cloud computing local, place-owned, resilient, weather-aware, and privacy-first through explicit-input personal devices, nearby meshes.

Models, Physics, Mind, And Society

Connections run through these essays: between events, people, institutions, physical models, language, memory, and the future.

  1. The Universe Is Connections A connections-first physical model in which events and causal links are fundamental and spacetime emerges from the graph.
  2. One Number Line for the Physical Universe A scale-aware numerical interface spans huge physical magnitudes while keeping range, precision, units, uncertainty, representation, and conversions visible.
  3. When Patterns Feel Like Physics Numerical synchronicity can seed physical research when units, mechanisms, search accounting.
  4. Quantum Claims Under Stress The phenomenon-to-mission ladder turns a quantum effect into a reproducible device, complete system, comparative advantage.
  5. Time, Memory, and the One Now A lived philosophy of one present moment, finite attention, memory, possible selves, spiritual focus, and loving the world one would change.
  6. Cohesion: The Property That Makes a Model Worth Keeping Cohesion compresses a complex system into fewer, stronger relations while preserving the distinctions that support prediction, construction, composition.
  7. The Fivefold Mind and Nested Agency A personal five-layer model of mind joined to nested agency, where higher-order freedom grows from constrained lower-level choices.
  8. Headless Minds: Gaia, Democracy, and Collective Intelligence Collective intelligence without a central thinker, spanning ecological networks, democracy, bureaucracy, invention, memory, and accountability.
  9. Messages to the Future: Dissemination as a Form of Thought Writing, building, copying, and publishing send thought into future situations where another act of attention can recover it, revise it, and give it new life.
  10. The Consumer Paradox Sales, marketing, money, and software become less manipulative when they help people discover and coordinate what they actually need.
  11. The Infrastructure We Hide, and the Tools We Should Own Legible infrastructure and shared fabrication tools let communities inspect energy and computation, repair products, and build physical technology.
  12. The System of Catch-22: Plausible Deniability as Architecture Institutions can route knowledge away from authority and responsibility;, protected review, recorded dissent, proportional disclosure.
  13. Write the Failures Failed ideas reveal the search space: what looked plausible, what reality changed, and what another builder can carry into the next attempt.
  14. The Indo-Austronesian Hypothesis Turn Indo-European and Austronesian resemblances into a test using provenance, regular correspondences, and coincidence rates.
  15. Canopus and Agastya Canopus and Agastya join stellar visibility, southward travel, seasonal knowledge, navigation, medicine, and story in one durable cultural memory system.

Building, Learning, And Creative Work

Practical essays about making boards, teaching whole systems, organizing people, leaving theory, inventing, and playing music.

  1. Learn Electronics by Building One Whole Computer Build one whole computer to learn digital logic, FPGA timing, processors, memory, displays, networking, analog electronics, radio, power, PCBs, and diagnosis.
  2. The PCB You Can Actually Build at Home A home-buildable PCB aligns packages, layers, materials, footprints, vias, soldering, masks, test points, inspection, repair.
  3. Events Entertain; Meetings Build Recurring maker meetings turn private intentions into hidden activity proposals, promised attention, tangible accomplishments, negotiated plans.
  4. Inventor Is Not a Rank Inventor names a working practice, and recurring workshops give independent builders the continuity that turns ambitious mechanisms into shared results.
  5. Enough Theory: How to Leave an Infinite Research Program A practical way to preserve a boundless research field, define its path back to action, and redirect thought into an exact working instrument.
  6. Play Harmony at Melody Speed A programmable fret-forming instrument separates excitation from chord geometry, moving through harmony at keyboard speed while retaining physical expression.