Notes from the Svalbard Cache, published 4026 CE

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We look back upon the people of the early networked societies not with scorn, but with reverence. Our understanding of the second millennium was permanently changed when our excavators breached the permafrost vaults of the far north and discovered a frozen city of text and images. From the Svalbard cache, we were able to partially reconstruct the twilight of that era. The world of these people was full of invisible spirits that listened without ears and spoke without lungs. While they also built larger …

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Bits and Bobs – A Live Commonplace Book

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What follows is a collection of thoughts and pieces of wisdom I have gathered so far. Some are my own words, others are quotes or ideas that have resonated with me along the way. This project is intended as a live commonplace online notebook, updated often. Some parts may seem inconsistent, even contradictory. Life itself tends to disagree with solid certainties. If you, dear reader, stumble upon an idea that feels irrelevant, wrong, or contrary to everything you’ve lived, maybe it isn’t for you. Skim …

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Wristwatches or Strapping Time to Wrists

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Today, watches are more or less universal, folded into phones and fitness trackers or strapped to wrists of all kinds. And yet, not too long ago, in the 19th century, different ways of wearing time were sharply gendered and coded. For men, pocket watches coordinated time. Railways depended on standardised pocket watches to prevent collisions and make timetables possible at all. The logic of precise, shared time leaked into other social contexts. Catching the right train, showing up to court on time, and making …

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Writing Insights (2025)

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In 1965, the conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth set up an installation titled One and Three Chairs. It consisted of three things: a photo of a chair, a physical wooden chair, and a dictionary definition of the word “chair.” Kosuth was asking the question that haunts every writer: Which one is the real chair? The object, the image, or the definition? Now shrink the problem down to a single word: red. A car, a winter coat, and a traffic light can all qualify as red. …

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Worth Sharing #8: Recipes, Stories, and Cabinet Curiosities

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Klinta of Ecotarian Eats specialises in vegan recipes, baking experiments, and transparent process-sharing, engaging both “home-cooks” and discerning palates (Michelin chefs!). Her blind-taste videos are absolutely something else in terms of detail, honesty, respect, trials and errors as she compares different recipes across taste, texture, method, ingredients, price, and “crowd-pleaser” potential. Take, for example, her video of Michelin chefs’ blind tasting of vegan chocolate chip cookies: with the Pick Up Limes recipe as a winner So, yes, Pick Up Limes cookie really is a …

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Cryptomnesia and Intellectual Humility

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“Has it ever occurred to you,” the old lady went on, “how much we go by what is called, I believe, the context? There is a place on Dartmoor called Grey Wethers. If you were talking to a farmer there and mentioned Grey Wethers, he would probably conclude that you were speaking of these stone circles, yet it is possible that you might be speaking of the atmosphere; and in the same way, ifyou were meaning the stone circles, an outsider, hearing a fragment …

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Children of the Magenta Line

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As a software engineer, I regularly use AI and tools like Copilot in my work, all well within our company’s privacy policy. In some ways, these tools genuinely boost my productivity, but they also stir up constant questions: Will automation make my job redundant? Will companies rush toward AI and leave essential manual skills behind? Yet, after years spent learning in public through this blog, I learnt to pay more attention to the past to better understand the future. History, as journalist Norman Cousins …

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Magic: The Spying

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In 1856, the French government faced a peculiar problem in Algeria. The Marabouts, local religious leaders, were using what appeared to be supernatural abilities to convince locals that France’s colonial presence could be overcome by divine intervention. Napoleon III, the French Emperor at the time, needed something stronger than military force; he needed to shatter the Marabouts’ mystical authority entirely. So he did what any reasonable emperor would do: fight fire with fire. Napoleon III sent a magician to Algeria. Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, already …

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