The Legend of Odisho
An Assyrian folk hero killed 26 Kurds who tried to shake him down. The Kurds responded by immortalizing him in their songs. What does this tell us about honor cultures?
Blog
Boisterous inquiry and the joyful acceptance of inevitably looking foolish.
New here? Start with the best posts.
Illuminated Letters for the Web
Beautiful ideas deserve beautiful presentation. A meditation on Plato, medieval manuscripts, and recreating illuminated manuscript aesthetics for the web using custom color fonts and generative AI.
Wicked and the Crisis of Competence
Why a Broadway musical about a misunderstood green witch is secretly about meritocracy, narrative gamesmanship, and our current crisis of competence.
The Illustrious Dynasty of Šidák
A small Bohemian family with Hussite roots produced mathematicians, historians, resistance fighters, and scholars across the globe.
The Greatest Film of All Time
Sergei Parajanov's Color of Pomegranates is not a film to be watched—it is a film to be read. Understanding its complete semiotic system of motif cycles unlocks cinema's most beautiful and inaccessible masterpiece.
Peace on Earth and the Shepherding of Mankind? A Syriac Reading of Luke 2:14
The familiar Christmas verse hides a textual problem in Greek, but the Old Syriac may preserve an Aramaic wordplay that makes perfect sense of the context.
Mozart's Greatest Fear
Three of Mozart's greatest operas share the same plot: a powerful man tries to take your wife. The pattern reveals an artist working through his own anxieties about power and class.
Lizard Brain + Soul: A Hybrid AI Architecture for Game NPCs
The core challenge: how do you give an LLM control over a game entity without it being laggy, expensive, or stupid?
When Your Software Becomes a Job Requirement
When we started, we were solving a problem for a handful of vineyards. Now Dominus is requiring proficiency with our software as a job qualification.
Did the Islamic Republic of Iran Plagiarize My Undergrad Thesis?
In June 2017, I submitted my thesis on China's Middle East strategy. Two months later, an Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs scholar published a paper with the same argument.
Boisterous Inquiry
On the joyful acceptance of inevitably looking foolish.