The Journal
Essays
Long-form writing on AI, philosophy, psychology, and systems thinking.
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Kierkegaard’s Three Stages and Technical Careers
Kierkegaard's three stages map onto the technical career: aesthetic framework chasing, ethical craft commitment, and religious acceptance of irreducible uncertainty.
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Runbooks Are the Most Undervalued Documentation
Incidents with current runbooks resolved 62% faster, with median resolution of 23 minutes versus 61 minutes without. Runbooks matter most when cognition is most impaired.
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The Social Media Ethics Problem Is an Attention Architecture Problem
Content moderation catches approximately 3% of harmful content. The larger ethical problem is the attention architecture that amplifies content optimized for engagement over wellbeing.
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Designing Multi-Tenant Systems That Protect Every Tenant
A multi-tenant SaaS redesign eliminated cross-tenant data leakage by implementing 4 isolation layers adding only 6 milliseconds of overhead per request across 1,400 tenants.
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The Banality of Algorithmic Harm: Arendt Applied to Engineering
The most dangerous algorithmic harms come not from malicious actors but from competent professionals making reasonable decisions within systems whose cumulative effects no one examines.
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Designing for Graceful Degradation in Uncertain Environments
Systems designed for graceful degradation recovered user-facing functionality 8.4 times faster during major cloud outages than all-or-nothing systems. Degradation is honest architecture.
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Negative Capability in System Design: Remaining in Uncertainty
Keats's negative capability is the ability to remain in uncertainty. In system design, deferring decisions until the last responsible moment is a skill, not indecision. Premature commitment costs 3-5x.
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Goodhart’s Law in Your Dashboard: When Metrics Fail
When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric. Nine of 14 engineering dashboards audited showed Goodhart distortion within 4.3 months.
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Internal Developer Platforms Should Feel Like Products
Internal developer platforms applying product management principles achieved 74% adoption within 6 months, compared to 31% for platforms relying on organizational mandates.
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The Ethics of AI Consulting: Selling Responsibility
Reviewing 23 AI ethics consulting engagements found 61% delivered unused documentation averaging $185,000 per engagement. Selling responsibility requires operational change.