In the heat of the moment, we fail to properly compute information, forget critical things, or have a delayed reaction time that computers just don’t have. And the results can be deadly: plane crashes, car crashes, and more. All symptoms of an inability to make sense of the data, or being forced to be an actor in a system that previously automated your job away.

“Most of the things we face today are deeply complex, in a fragmented digital world. I think so many of the non-profits that exist today do incredible things. But it’s still not enough. Maybe what nonprofits do never will be enough. But it’s worth using the playbook of tech companies, who achieve incredibly high-scale penetration with low cost. With interconnected software, we can build a non-profit that’s able to help anyone with any major issue they’re facing, anywhere.”

“”

I am a systems person, and the last thing startups often develop are systems. What I did over the holidays was build mine. It’s designed not only to organize everything for me, but to be extensible as jumping off points to share with the team, or to keep them functioning if I die tomorrow. Our company will live and die by the knowledge we acquire, and failure to track and implement that knowledge is legitimately throwing money in the trash.

“”

It’s my belief that to truly build software that impacts people’s lives, it’s not enough to relieve one area of it: it would be better to have a set number of software that addresses common issues, and help people combine them to fit their situation.

People do not download apps for the features, they do it for the cultural relevance: to themselves, to others, to major events, or to patterns they may not themselves recognize. Anyone can create a generic social media app. Very few can create a product that enables the community who uses it to create part of their identity. That identity with the product brings cultural relevance.

I feel the overwhelming sense of fear I gained that day in high school every day. I think of the state of the world, the people I love, and the wounds awaiting them. And the only thing I have for that fear is this. A tiny mobile app for them to reach me if they ever need me.

In memoriam of my red cherry shrimp, Ernest Shrimpleton 2022–2023.

One of the most uncomfortable things in life (to me) is selfishness out of proportion. Trauma is the way your body hijacks you to become a tool for your survival, the most selfish and innate desire of it all.

You live in a perpetually flooding house, and you must find the few things worth holding onto, or you will lose everything in the blindness of your grief.

Not many essays regarding human services begin with a story of someone crying in front of a gas station, but you’re in luck — this one does.

Building a design system to standardize development at Astra Labs.

Aetheria is going to be 1 soon. AnxietyHelper turned 6 a month ago. I turn 20 next week, and Astra turns 4 next year. And only now, for the first time, does it feel like I’m operating as myself. Not as a twin.

My guiding star is a vision of the future that may never come. Our coming reality is a hidden landscape with no precedent that I’m crossing in parallel with everyone else.