Lode Notes

High-density field guides for building systems that don't break when theirs do.

Showing 68 total notes (Page 3 of 7)

We Taught Machines to Think Because We Forgot How

Somewhere between computation and convenience, we handed off the act of thinking, not because machines do it better, but because we stopped trying. We reach...
cognitive abdication evolutionary drift
Jul 09, 2025

The Work That Tells the Truth

People are drowning in work that leaves no mark. Meetings pile up, inboxes fill like trash bins, and still—at day’s end—there’s no clear sense of...
identity Labor meaning craft
Jul 08, 2025

A Hard System For Soft Things

You can have three hundred contacts in your phone and still not know who to call when your chest tightens at 2 a.m. Most people...
social capital emotional leverage
Jul 05, 2025

The Man Who Loses on Purpose

Some men build their own fall. They shape it with care. The collapse is the goal. Success suffocates: it demands discipline, longevity, and sustained performance....
voluntary collapse proximity risk
Jul 04, 2025

The Simple Life Is A Myth

The modern worker, especially those tethered to the digital slipstream, clings to a chronic ache—the desire to return to something simpler. You hear it in...
illusionary retreat selective nostalgia
Jul 03, 2025

Alignment is Not Structure

The silent risk in the era of passive cognitive offloading is that people want fast answers, not epistemic discipline. Most large-scale AI systems are optimized...
epistemic design cognitive sovereignty
Jul 02, 2025

The Sweet Trap of Shortcuts

There’s a bitter hunger in people, a gnawing urge to find the back door—the shortcut, the cheap high, the quick fix. The problem isn’t just...
friction design attention economy
Jul 01, 2025

The Real Cost of Choosing

People delay because they don’t want to pay the actual price: shutting down their other possible lives. When you choose, you don’t just spend time....
identity scarcity option closure
Jun 30, 2025

No Second Signal

Tension Most people repeat themselves to be taken seriously. They reword, follow up, hint, remind. Not because the message wasn’t clear—but because they don’t trust...
signal authority message discipline
Jun 29, 2025

The Hollow Prize

There’s a quiet tragedy that rides alongside ambition: the belief that glory, fame, or recognition will grant us rest. People drag themselves across brutal landscapes—startups,...
recognition addiction false summits
Jun 28, 2025