We are filled with music nearly everywhere we go. Cafes, malls, hair dressers and apartment walls. We commonly find the lyrical subject matter to be very serious, and presented in a very serious manner (i.e., following all the rules and not surprising anyone with anything too musically extravagant). Let’s take a song I recently heard […]
Why are Musicians and their Lyrics so Serious? Read More »
Simply put, this is my experience and lessons learnt from the extraordinary Wooten Woods Music/Nature camp. A Must Read.
Wooten Woods Music/Nature Camp 2026 Read More »
Can academia become autonomous? Conferences are facing AI-accelerated submissions while reviewers rely on AI to keep up. So why keep humans in the loop? I propose AI-Demia, a synthetic academic ecosystem where AI agents act as researchers and reviewers, generating papers, critiquing one another, and optimizing for publication at machine speed based on learned conference incentives. We can transform the academic pursuit, and science, into an AI-powered game.
Light isn’t actually luminous—it only becomes “light” when it’s perceived. The sun may be pouring out unimaginable energy, but without something to see it, it doesn’t “shine”. Without perception, there’s no color, no sound, no sensation—no experienced world at all. It’s not that the universe would be dark; it would be nothing. Like a dream world that feels ancient while you’re inside it, reality only seems to have a past. When every object we can perceive depends on perception, how real do you think anything is?
The Sun Doesn’t Illuminate Read More »
You wake from a dream—blue skies etched in memory, a universe with laws and history—only for it all to vanish when your eyes open. What if waking life is the same? We study its laws, seek its origin, but cannot step outside or see the energy shaping our perceptions. Just as your eyelids end the dream instantly, this world could be just as easily erased.
Is The Sky in Your Dream Truly Blue? Read More »
I look back on this year as heavy and often off-course—an unfinished PhD, money stress, burnout from giving too much, and habits that kept tripping me up. I didn’t meet most of the goals I set, and that was painful to face. But the year also pushed me to strip things down: I stepped away from work that drained me, let go of a lot of what I owned, got my finances under control, and leaned into music and study as daily lifelines. There’s bitterness in how much energy and time slipped away, but also something steady that held—being there for people I love, writing and composing, facing conflict more honestly, and slowly reacting less to the noise. I end the year without a win to celebrate, but with a clearer sense of what matters and the resolve to keep going, lighter and more hopeful than before.
What happened (This Year)? Read More »
A bleak morning reflection on waking with crushing dread and catastrophic thoughts, and the slow, deliberate effort to confront them — recognizing that these fears are just unproven futures, products of a lifelong negativity bias. Choosing to challenge them, strip them of authority, and begin the day with cautious, deliberate resistance against the mind’s darker tendencies.
Morning Catastrophizing Read More »
I keep catching myself staring at the mountain ahead, feeling like I’m already too late to climb it. That feeling has followed me for years, especially with music. At 32, I still think about the decade I didn’t listen to the voice telling me to start, and how fear smothered it. Even now, after months of studying and creating, I still feel behind—like there’s a clock ticking somewhere, reminding me how much time I burned. But living in that mindset is its own trap. It lets the quieter voice of sloth and fear keep winning until you wake up one day realizing you never chased the thing that mattered. So I’m trying to stop looking up at the impossible climb and just move, even if it’s slow. Strip away the distractions, the excuses, the pointless ways we waste what little time we have. Be patient. Stay focused. And don’t stop.
My mind has been noisy lately. Questions without answers; why is my life the dissatisfying nothing it has become? It’s been one big steamroll.
There are two ways we grow: by adding what we need or by removing what we don’t—and knowing which to use can reshape how we learn, build wealth, or find fulfillment. Drawing from the idea of fixed points in computer science, this article uses the metaphor of filling a basket with apples to illustrate how we either start empty and gather carefully (least fixed point) or start full and discard what’s unneeded (greatest fixed point). We learn songs by starting with nothing and practicing until we master them. We find love, peace, or ego-loss by starting with openness and subtracting what harms. Even life itself follows this arc: we grow through accumulation, then decay by shedding. The trap is trying to chase satisfaction by endless addition, when sometimes clarity and freedom come from subtraction. Whether it’s learning, earning, or letting go, the path you choose—build up or strip away—makes all the difference.
A Fixed-Point Life Read More »