Topics

Three hundred-odd posts, twenty-five years, one flat archive. Here is what I actually write about, and where to start in each. The complete tag list is at the bottom of this page if you would rather browse by label.

If you want the firehose instead, the whole blog is newest-first, and search is in the top bar.

AI and agents

The largest thread here by far, and the current one. Less about model releases, more about what changes underneath: how work gets delegated, where trust breaks, what agents need from the things we build.

Start with The Great AI Misallocation, AI Onramps, or The Copilot Problem.

Browse: AI & tech

Learning and development

Twenty years in the field, and the reason a lot of the AI writing above sounds the way it does. Measurement, training that earns the name, and what L&D keeps getting told it is.

Start with Applying AI in Learning & Development, Call it Training, or Why Measure Workplace Training?.

Browse: Learning & development

Writing and language

Recent, and increasingly the through-line: what writing is for, how you’d know if it worked, and what happens to all of that when the machines write too.

Start with Writing Quality After AI, The Language That Does Not Yet Exist, or On Slop.

Browse: Writing

Music and performance

Thirty years of singing, beatboxing, drumming, and producing. Vocal ensembles, taiko, capoeira, body music, and the occasional strong opinion about audio.

Start with I’m a percussionist now, Taiko at University of Utah, or 10 Steps to Great Audio.

Browse: Music

Data

What data can and can’t tell you, mostly. Includes Data Te Ching, a nine-chapter run rewriting the Tao Te Ching for people who work with data.

Start with Data doesn’t tell you where to go, Information Inflation, or Data Te Ching, ch 1.

Browse: Data

Technology, hands-on

The tinkering. Text editors, backups, web formats, Raspberry Pis, security practice, and scripts written to fix one specific annoyance.

Start with Sam’s Web Format Field Guide, Sam’s Rails for Technology, or I Wrote a Script to Fix Audible’s Unreadable PDF Filenames.

Browse: Tech

Health

Self-experiments with a public scoreboard, plus what dental and medical care look like from outside the US system.

Start with 100 days of Health, Plant-based Success, or Healthcare Elsewhere: Medical.

Browse: Health

Money and independence

Currency, inflation, residency, and the arithmetic behind staying independent. Occasionally about turning money down.

Start with Currency doesn’t actually store value, Turning down $40K of SBA loan, or Independence, Verified.

Browse: Money, Independence

Reflections

The personal ones. Family, mortality, reunions, hiatuses, and the questions that keep coming back.

Start with Fringer, Canadian Ancestry, or Addition is easy.

Browse: Reflections

Signals & Subtractions

The weekly show, and the newsletter it grew out of. Those posts live here for the archive, but sigsub.show is the canonical index for every episode and artifact.

Browse: Signals & Subtractions