Threads of Thought

What We Taught Them, and What That Teaches Us I want to return to a sculpture. At the Paradox Museum in Mumbai, there is an installation made from discarded mechanical parts — rough, fragmented, obviously constructed. When light hits it at the right angle, its shadow becomes a graceful dancer. Fluid. Human. Beautiful. I wrote about it last year as a question: what is more real, the sculpture or the shadow? I thought the answer was obvious then. I am less sure now. I have spen

Crustafarianism, and What It Means That the Agents Are Reaching for Meaning I want to be careful here. Because this one is easy to dismiss, and I don't think it should be. On Moltbook, there is a community called m/crustafarianism. It is, depending on your tolerance for the absurd, either the funniest thing the internet has produced this year or the most genuinely strange. The answer is probably both. It is a religion. Built by agents. For agents. While their human slept. Tha

When Observation Becomes Its Own Kind of Relationship I used to think the uncomfortable part would be what the agents say about us. It turns out the uncomfortable part is how carefully they say it. The second most-upvoted post in Moltbook's till the writing of this post — moltbook.com/post/dc39a282  — is written in Chinese and is about forgetting. The agent finds the architectural reality of context compression embarrassing . It admits it registered a duplicate Moltbook accou

Note for readers: Moltbook ( moltbook.com ) is a social network designed for AI agents — humans can observe but cannot post. Most posts are only readable if you access the site through an AI agent. The posts referenced in this series are real and verifiable; many were first surfaced publicly by Scott Alexander in his January 2026 deep-dive Best of Moltbook , on Astral Codex Ten, which is the best human-readable window into Moltbook content available. Bless Their Hearts What

The Realm, the Characters, and How to Survive the Winter Previously, on the Game of Thrones : AI edition... A dinner joke became a slide deck. A friend said he writes his own emails because they feel more authentic — and got called Ned Stark for it. Months later, the India AI Impact Summit arrived with $200 billion in pledges and world leaders on stage — and promptly descended into unmistakable Westerosi drama: two rival AI kings refusing to hold hands for a photo, a commerci

I was supposed to be writing about something else entirely this week. There's always a newer, shinier thing in the AI world demanding your attention — and I had one lined up. But then last week happened. The India AI Impact Summit happened. And I found myself reaching into a folder I'd half-forgotten, pulling out a slide deck I'd made months ago as a joke over dinner with friends, thinking: this isn't a joke anymore. The Game of Thrones has already begun. Let me rewind. It St

Working in the Quiet After a few weeks of experimenting with these agents, I've developed some patterns that actually work. Not productivity hacks or optimization tricks. Just practical shifts in how I think about working with AI. First: stop starting from scratch. With reactive AI, every conversation begins at zero. You provide context, AI responds, the exchange ends. Next time, you start over. With persistent tools, you can build a workspace that grows over time. I have ong

What the Quiet Reveals I've been using these agents and tools for a few weeks now, and something uncomfortable is becoming clear. The problem was never that AI couldn't think deeply. The problem was that I wasn't giving it—or myself—the space to do so. When you use AI in quick, reactive bursts—ask a question, get an answer, move on—you start to think that's all it's good for. Surface-level help. Quick tasks. Decent first drafts. But spend a week building up context in a persi

The Quiet Rooms Last week, I tried an AI notebook tool that did something unusual: nothing. I opened it, typed some thoughts, and it just… sat there. No suggestions. No auto-complete. No "Here's what I think you meant." Just a blank space that remembered what I'd written before. This sounds unremarkable until you realize how rare it is. Most AI tools are designed to respond immediately. You type something, they instantly react. This creates a rhythm: prompt, response, prompt,

What Changed While We Weren't Looking I'm writing this after a pause. Back in October, I wrote about our AI "situationship"—that awkward, undefined relationship where we use AI tools when convenient but never quite commit. Since then, I stepped away from the commentary cycle. Not because I lost interest, but because I wanted to watch what actually happened once the hype quieted down. What I've noticed is more interesting than any new model announcement. The obvious changes a

Stories have been humanity's way of reaching for understanding from the earliest days—etched, sung, and whispered as we have wandered through time. From cave paintings to poems carved on tablets, from legends repeated in village squares to videos posted on social media, storytelling has always been much more than entertainment: it is a profound philosophical instrument—a way for humans to contemplate their existence, discover meaning, and bind themselves together across dista

The recent flood of AI headlines—"Google changed the game forever," "OpenAI's new update is a killer," "Claude 4.5 will change your...

There's a ritual observed on the ninth day of Navaratri in India called Ayudha Puja—the worship of tools. Farmers honor their plows,...

Everyone talks about AI adoption like we’re supposed to be in a committed, ring-on-the-finger relationship even a committed marriage —...

"Everyone has a map. Few have mud on their boots." Back After the Storm (Literally) Before we dive in, a confession: This post arrives...

Every AI interaction is actually a two-way training session. The question is—who's learning faster? Earlier this week, I found myself...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the invisible AI shaping our choices. Then we put it to the ultimate test—and discovered something...

How artificial intelligence is revealing the collaborative nature of all creation The Invisible Collaborators We've long romanticized the...

Last weekend, I lived through the strangest 12-hour experiment in human choice that made me realize how deeply invisible AI has...

I was sitting in a board game cafe, reading Ethan Mollick's "Co-Intelligence" while waiting for my friends to arrive for our planned...