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Latest — 04 Feb 2026

The Dungeon as Mirror: A Systems Theory of Bounded Play

It started with a dungeon map—corridors branching into chambers, chokepoints narrowing into passages, the whole thing rendered in that particular style of competent anonymity that machine learning produces so effortlessly. I. The Map Without a Key The image appeared in a Facebook group dedicated to AI-generated art. It could

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Pitch-Slapped

The Bureaucratization of Aesthetics The story we tell about cultural flattening usually starts with a villain. Auto-Tune ruined singing. Algorithms ruined music. AI is ruining writing. The plot is tidy: a tool appears, standards collapse, character disappears. It’s emotionally satisfying precisely because it’s structurally wrong. The problem is

The Banality of Eldritch Evil

When the Machines of the State Run on Mana The Obligatory Disclaimer This essay openly discusses the conclusion of The Laundry Files, including major spoilers from The Regicide Report, which has only just been released. If you care about encountering that ending uncompromised, stop here and come back later. This

An Ode to a Prius Driver

On illegibility, bumper stickers, and the refusal to be sorted I was behind the Prius for three miles on Northeast Sandy, long enough to inventory the contradictions. "Don't Tread on Anyone." "Oregun Infidel." "Truth Is the New Hate Speech." These sit alongside

No Exit: When a Systems Theory Guy Walks into a Dungeon

A Systems Theory Guy walks into a dungeon. This is not, at first, a joke. It’s an accident. He picked up a dungeon crawler novel expecting low-stakes grotesquerie: profanity, cartoon violence, the literary equivalent of a stress ball. Instead, somewhere between the loot tables and the severed limbs, something

Contained Excess: Psychedelia, Custody, and What Survives

There is a temptation, when revisiting canonical rock records, to argue over taste: whether Jim Morrison now sounds corny, whether Forever Changes is overrated or underheard, whether Atmos remixes are revelation or necromancy. Those arguments miss the more durable question. What matters isn’t whether these records are “good” or

When the Crows Return to the Roost

On Doctrine, Muscle Memory, and the Violence We Trained For I. The Doorstep The photograph was taken on January 11, 2026, by John Locher of the Associated Press. A woman stands in the doorway of her home. She is framed by the door jamb, her body language caught between defiance

Pivots, Hinges, and Inflection Points

On Gettysburg, Death Stars, and the Long Aftermath of Rupture Addressing Gettysburg The Bulwark wants Minneapolis to be Gettysburg. The argument is familiar, seductive, and rhetorically powerful: a chance encounter escalates into a decisive confrontation; neither side fully understands the stakes while inside it; only later does history recognize the

The Radiant Spring: The War That Grows

Factions of the Luminous Front What do we do now that we know the truth? Every organization, every leader, every soldier must answer this question. The bloom is real. The bloom is intelligent. The bloom is coming for everyone. These factions aren't political parties. They're survival

The Mortality Chart That Wouldn't Let Go

An Observation on Disinformation Mechanics Or: How I stumbled into Finland’s alternative media ecosystem and learned to read statistical sleight-of-hand I. The Rabbit Hole Opens It started with a Facebook post: a dramatic chart of Finland’s “cumulative excess deaths” rising from 2021 onward. The caption read: Finland’s