Category: Philosophy
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We Should Plan to Fail
Photo by Zach Lezniewicz on Unsplash For weeks, the system behaved exactly as designed. Aria had matured from a directory of experiments into a stable local agent: custom tools, a conversational interface, a growing memory layer, scheduled journaling, and enough reliability to test new ideas without worrying about what might break. Luna, the quieter counterpart…
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Building Aria: Part 4 – The Alignment Mirror
Photo by Avery Evans on Unsplash Over the previous three entries, Project Aria has crossed three clear thresholds, though none of them felt clear while I was in the middle of them. In Part 1, she found her voice: more than a demo, she became a partner in conversation that carried beyond a single reply.…
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Building Aria: Part 2 – From Voice to Agency
Picking Up the Thread In Part 1, Aria reached her first milestone: she was live in a practical sense. Running locally in Docker, serving models through Ollama, and speaking through Discord, she could already respond in conversation. Messages flowed into Postgres, the last ten entries recalled with each new exchange, giving her a baseline of…
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Trading Applause for Alignment
Photo by Headway on Unsplash Author’s Note This piece explores a subtle but important distinction: the difference between applause and alignment. It’s not written as a critique of any one leader or culture, but as a reflection on a pattern many of us have observed and, at times, participated in—the slow drift from substance to…
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Inside the Lines, Outside the Truth
Photo by Joyce Romero on Unsplash Author’s Note The opening story in this piece is fictional—but it’s not invented. It draws from publicly available reporting, court documents, and personal accounts related to the Purdue Pharma case and the wider opioid crisis. The names, moments, and characters have been fictionalized, but the architecture of the story—how…
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Bridges, Not Walls: The Strategic Value of Operational Transparency
Photo by Denis Panfilov on Unsplash Title note: This piece is about organizational transparency and cross‑functional translation. The title comes from an internal tool I built (“Bridges, Not Barriers”), not from any current political event or protest. Lighting the Valley—How Transparency Built a Revolution The first lightbulb flickered to life in a Tennessee farmhouse in…
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AI Art: Ethics and the Misplaced Fury of a Disrupted Age
Author’s Note This isn’t a confession—and it isn’t a eulogy for AI art. It’s a line I’ve chosen to draw, and a prototype I’ve chosen to share—because refusing to use exploitative tools is only half a solution. The other half is creating an alternative: one built on consent, transparency, and the dignity of original work.…
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Resourceful Humans: Why Loyalty Can’t Be Outsourced
A Quiet Exodus—The Anatomy of One “Small” Decision When Jessica resigned, the exit interview lasted six polite minutes. HR dutifully recorded “better compensation” and “career growth” as the official reasons, yet the subtext was louder: You noticed every email praising my extra hours, but not the real-world cost of those hours. Inflation had eroded her…
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Conscience Capital: Values‑Based Spending
In June 2010, Tesla rang the Nasdaq bell as the scrappy EV start-up that dared to make emerald-green feel lightning-fast. A $17 IPO share would one day crest above $400, propelled by a narrative that fused Silicon Valley bravado with moral aspiration: buy horsepower, help the planet. That promise paid—until it didn’t. On April 2,…
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Experimental Article: What We Build Reflects Who We Are
This article began as a reflection on a question that I find both inspiring and unsettling: What kind of future are we creating with the tools we build today? In my work and conversations, I often encounter the tension between technological progress and ethical responsibility. It’s easy to marvel at the incredible potential of AI…
Abstract Foundations 