About

a better world is possible. but it needs to be built.

I settled on Viking/Norse iconography for my online identity when I was in college, long before I knew that it was heavily associated with right wing, occultist extremism.

specifically, the idea of Valhalla, a place where the noble and honorable warrior can go and feast and drink and battle with their equals and mythological creatures for all of eternity, was extremely enticing. specifically, I love the idea of a heaven of sorts where it's all a party, even while we're all still fighting, quarreling and battling. the threat of death is gone, but our character traits as warring brutes remains. there's something poetic about that, but philosophically, the idea that we can fight as equals in battle with the threat of death and the nastier repercussions of battle being removed.

utopianism is a fascistic idea, in that it flattens us out from individuals to a uniform, unthinking and unfeeling mass. the idea of a conflict-less society seems enticing until you peel back the thinnest veneer. a world without conflict is one where most sides to most debates are, somehow, removed. that should scare you.

instead of searching for a utopia, I choose to find a way to build Valhalla: a world where we can all exist in conflict with each other more peacefully, where we can live without fear of starvation, war, famine, disease. this is a world where conflict can create human flourishing instead of human suffering.

this site, then, is dedicated to the research, projects, companies, applications and musings that I create as I try to achieve the goal of just nudging us in the right direction. at one point, it was a normal blog. I treat it now more as an information repository similar to Gwern's site: long-form, long timeframe content and research on topics ranging from personal development and art to AI research, malware development and security.