Tag: #humanities
Writing on GPUs, LLMs, MLOps, Kubernetes — and mindset · 15 posts
Is Comfort From a Machine Real? — Why We Need to Change the Question
People really do feel better after talking to an AI. Dismissing that as an illusion isn't just rude — it's inaccurate. This piece looks at why responsiveness feels like being cared for, and digs into what chatbot-based m
2026-08-02 · 14 min read #humanities#ai#psychology#loneliness#relationshipsTool or Counterpart — What Can Still Be Said While Leaving the Consciousness Question Open
The first question people reach for in front of AI is "does this thing have consciousness." It is the hardest question, and probably not the most useful one. This piece sets that question down beside us without closing i
2026-08-02 · 13 min read #humanities#ai#philosophy#cognition#technologyWhat We Lose by Delegating — Automation Doesn't Erode Skill Evenly
Nobody feels guilty using a calculator, but most people feel a little uneasy after sending off a document AI drafted for them. That asymmetry is the question behind this piece. It sorts out the territory where offloading
2026-08-02 · 14 min read #humanities#ai#cognition#automation#skillHow Jazz Was Born — From Congo Square to Kind of Blue
The first legend of jazz, Buddy Bolden, left not a single recording behind, and the band that cut the first jazz record in the world in 1917 was white. New Orleans passed back and forth between France and Spain, Congo Sq
2026-07-26 · 15 min read #humanities#music#jazz#music-history#cultureWhy Maps Lie — From Mercator to the Search Algorithm
Greenland is one fourteenth the size of Africa, yet on the world map on the classroom wall the two look alike. That is not an error but a design decision. Starting from the Gauss proof that a sphere mathematically cannot
2026-07-26 · 14 min read #humanities#history#cartography#geography#powerA Fistful of Pepper Connected the World — The Spice Trade and the Original Globalisation
When Alaric besieged Rome in 408, the ransom he demanded listed gold, silver and 1,360 kilograms of pepper. This piece asks why a berry you can now buy at any supermarket was once worth that much, and why the familiar cl
2026-07-26 · 16 min read #humanities#history#trade#globalization#colonialismMoney Was Not Born from Barter — A World History of Money, from Lydian Coins to Credit
Chapter one of every economics textbook says money arose to cure the inconvenience of barter, yet anthropologists have never located a single society that worked that way. Follow the road money actually travelled: the el
2026-07-26 · 15 min read #humanities#history#money#economics#financeWhy Newton Rewrote the World — The Apple, the Principia, and Prediction as a Test
The apple did not fall on Newton's head. The source of that anecdote is the 1752 memoir of William Stukeley, and the story came from an eighty-three-year-old Newton himself. The miracle year of 1665, when plague closed C
2026-07-26 · 15 min read #humanities#science#history-of-science#newton#physicsThe Bauhaus: Fourteen Years That Changed a Hundred — How to Read the Shape of Things
The Bauhaus opened in Weimar in 1919 and closed in 1933 under Nazi pressure, so it existed for exactly fourteen years. It never held more than a few hundred students, the architecture department did not appear until eigh
2026-07-26 · 15 min read #humanities#design#architecture#design-history#modernismFifty Years After Gutenberg: How Europe Became a Completely Different World — A World History of Printing
Movable-type printing, born in a Mainz workshop in the 1450s, exploded knowledge production in Europe within half a century and became the infrastructure of the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. What Gutenberg a
2026-07-20 · 7 min read #humanities#history#printing#information#mediaDoes Language Determine Thought — The Fall and Rise of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Hundreds of Eskimo words for snow, a language with no time — stories that language determines thought are as fascinating as they are a history of exaggeration. This post traces why the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf h
2026-07-20 · 7 min read #humanities#linguistics#language#cognition#psychologyHow Impressionism Went from Mockery to Revolution — A Way to Last 3 Minutes in Front of a Painting
The name Impressionism was born not from praise but from ridicule. In 1874, a critic sneered at a sunrise painting by Monet, and the title of his mocking article became the name of the movement. The Salon as a state jury
2026-07-20 · 8 min read #humanities#art#art-history#impressionism#cultureWhy Jobs Come from Acquaintances of Acquaintances, Not Best Friends — The Strength of Weak Ties
The Strength of Weak Ties, the 1973 paper by Granovetter that ranks among the most cited in sociology, flips intuition on its head: the decisive information for job seekers came not from close friends but from acquaintan
2026-07-20 · 6 min read #humanities#sociology#network#career#relationshipsThe Humanities of Unrequited Love: Why Does the Heart Flow Only One Way
Why is unrequited love so deep and sweet and aching all at once. We gently explore the psychology of falling for someone, the gap between fantasy and reality, how to receive rejection with grace, and the path to never lo
2026-06-21 · 46 min read #psychology#love#self-respect#humanities#relationshipsA Guide to Humanities for Modern Life — Wisdom from Philosophy, Literature, History, and Art
Why do we need the humanities? From existentialism and Stoicism to world literature masterpieces, critical thinking, and ethics. The enduring value of the humanities in the age of technology.
2026-04-12 · 20 min read #culture#humanities#philosophy#literature#art