Lore6 min read
A Map, Not a Hoard
General knowledge has a branding problem. It is remembered as a pub quiz and is in fact something much more useful: the working model of the world that lets you place anything new.
ReadIV11 pieces
Journal
Essays, notes and arguments in progress. Written to be disagreed with, and revised when the disagreement is good.
Discernment7 min read
Seeing Further Does Not Make You Taller
A framework built on curiosity, breadth and noticing connections can quietly turn into a flattering story about the person doing the noticing. That risk is worth naming out loud rather than hoping nobody spots it.
ReadWayfinding6 min read
The Urge to Go: Wayfinding, Wanderlust and Dromomania
A word that began in nineteenth-century psychiatry and ended up printed on a coffee mug, and the question it accidentally asks about why human beings keep leaving the house.
ReadLore5 min read
Why Modern Wizardry Has No Levels or Ranks
There is no first degree, no grade to be assessed for and nothing to be initiated into. That is a decision rather than an oversight, and it turns out to be one of the load-bearing ones.
ReadNatural Philosophy2 min read
The Interesting Things Happen Between Disciplines
Fields are administrative conveniences. The world was never divided into departments, and the gaps between them are conspicuously under-occupied.
ReadArtifice2 min read
Keeping a Grimoire
A personal record of learning, experiments, projects, observations, failures, diagrams, recipes and discoveries. Not a pretend spellbook. Just the single most useful habit in the whole practice.
ReadHuman Arts2 min read
Why Generalists Need Better Language
Every existing word for a broadly capable person is either an insult, a boast, or a phrase from a performance review. This has consequences.
ReadDiscernment2 min read
The Value of Knowing What You Don’t Know
Admitting ignorance is treated as a weakness in most professional settings. It is in fact the most reliable instrument any of us have.
ReadTechnomancy3 min read
What Is Technomancy?
A deliberately silly word for a serious problem: almost everyone now depends on systems they have been quietly discouraged from understanding.
ReadLore4 min read
Perhaps Wizards Already Exist
There is a kind of person who turns up in every workplace, every village hall and every reasonably interesting corner of the internet. We have never had a good name for them.
ReadAtom feed — the whole of each piece, not an extract
The letters — 5 sent, and they go to the list only