About

I'm [first name]. I live in the Pacific Northwest, in a valley outside Seattle where the fog holds until well past noon — close enough to the grid to use it, far enough from it to think. This site is where I write about the distance between how things claim to work and how they actually work.

The recurring subjects: organizations and the incentives they actually run on, debt and what it costs to close a position, ambition and which games are worth playing. The method is always the same — find the mechanism. Surface explanations don't survive contact with a panel you can open and a trap you can prime.

By day I work in technology — [the details, or deliberately omitted]. By inclination I'm a generalist who would rather understand one system deeply than ten superficially, whether the system is a company, an air handler, a grill, or a car that mostly drives itself.

Off the page: I row, I read more than is strictly useful, and I keep a lawn, a row of laurels, and an expanding array of cameras alive against the valley's advice. The best way to reach me is by email.