From the archive, 2024
Semantic Insatiability and Logophilic Etymologies
Say a word until it loses its meaning. Then try worrying at it until the meanings come back. Gertrude Stein, contronyms, and a few reasons to keep doing this.
Recent
- Bréhier's ScalpelPart 4 of Deleuze, AI, and The Logic of Sense
- Consciousness is a Red HerringPart 3 of The Machine's “I”
- Can Claude Complete the Pope’s Sentences?Part 3 of Glass-Box Stylometry
- Denotation Without AnswerabilityPart 3 of Deleuze, AI, and The Logic of Sense
- The Bellman's MethodPart 2 of Deleuze, AI, and The Logic of Sense
- The Prose With Nothing Behind ItPart 1 of Deleuze, AI, and The Logic of Sense
Good places to start
- Maybe the Horse Will Sing: On the Value of Putting Things Off
Nasreddin has a year to teach the king’s horse to sing. In the meantime, a great many things might happen.
2024 - Flaubert’s “Be Regular and Ordinary” Quote
Who was Flaubert telling to be regular and ordinary? I tracked down the letter.
2024 - Drowning in the River Parable: Our Favorite Public Health Story is a Noble Lie
The story only works because Joe saves every baby. In the work the parable is supposed to explain, he doesn’t.
2025 - Joshua Miller’s Top Ten Things that Arendt Got Right About Political Theory
Ten things Arendt got right about politics, from race-thinking before racism to why evil is not complicated. I included an eleventh.
2021
Touchstone Terms
All Touchstone TermsConcepts worth carrying around, one idea per essay.
- 1.the accursed sharen.political economy, after Bataille
The surplus left over once needs are met. Who gets the extra share creates inequality and how it is spent shapes culture.
Read the essay, 2017- 2.adverse selectionn.economics, after Akerlof
The tendency of a market to sort participants into worse and worse pools when one side of a deal knows more than the other.
Read the essay, 2026- 3.ego-syntonyn.psychology
When a person experiences a thought or behavior as consistent with who they are, rather than as an unwanted intrusion.
Read the essay, 2016- 4.metaphysical deflationn.philosophy, after Arendt
Tracing an abstract concept back to the experiences it came from, before mistaking the abstraction for a truer world.
Read the essay, 2016
The Escape Plan
The whole syllabusEducation is the ultimate escape plan. Here is a free philosophy education, year by year, with no institutional permission required.
Year four of 5: Deepening
Harvey through Capital, a reading group, PhilPapers, and an AI that argues back instead of explaining.
Sequences
All sequencesSome of these were written as series. Others are arguments I kept coming back to, gathered here in a suggested reading order.
Deleuze, AI, and The Logic of Sense
An LLM can get the facts right and still seem to say nothing. I try to explain that feeling with Deleuze and Lewis Carroll.
The Work of Wanting
Wanting is work, I argue, and the firms measuring it are finding ways to own what it produces.
Arendt on Forgiveness
We cannot undo what we have done. Arendt thought forgiveness might let us act again. I work through what that asks of us, and where her suspicion of charity gets in the way.
The Workshop
Everything on GitHubThings I’ve built: tools for writers and legislative teams, and a learning world for kids.
Play it · for kids
After the Storm
A parent-guided learning world of investigations, stories and making things: follow a creature’s trail, plan a garden in Number Garden, grow words in Word Garden, or stage a puppet show in the Story Loft.
after-the-storm-learning.anotherpanacea.workers.devLive · for writersAPODICTIC
A development editor for fiction and argument-shaped nonfiction. It diagnoses structure and never rewrites unless you ask.
apodictic.anotherpanacea.comLive · for teamsFloorVote
An open, self-hostable bill tracker: AI bill summaries, member votes and hearing calendars, for a few dollars a month.
floorvote.orgOpen sourceSETEC Voiceprint
Glass-box stylometry for authorial voice. Every measurement shows its work. Not an AI detector.
github.com/anotherpanacea-eng/setec-voiceprint