White. Ceiling. Cold bright lights stare at her.

Misaki blinks. Metal taste in her mouth, tongue thick and swollen. Taste of blood.

She tries to move, but everything aches. Her neck especially. She seems to be in a bed? Her parents come into view, kissing and hugging her intensely, thanking the heavens. What happened? Her parents look at each other, not sure what to say. A man in white coat comes into view, addressing her. He tells her she’s fine now, and that she experienced involuntary muscle contractions and was unconscious for around an hour. She bit her tongue during the spasms and hurt herself really bad. Misaki doesn’t understand, she doesn’t remember anything, only that she was watching an episode of Pokémon, the details of which she cannot recall, and now she’s here.

The doctor tells Misaki that she had an epileptic seizure. She was one of the 685 hospitalized children to be watching the episode Dennō Senshi Porygon and be given a seizure as a consequence of it.

The human brain is a computational device. And like any other computational device, it can be attacked. It can be done bluntly, with a bullet or tumour. But there’s something extremely fascinating to me about the idea of “hacking the brain” in order to conduct a subtle attack.

You show a 3 second video to a person, and they break. Knocked out, unconscious. This exists. It’s estimated that this works for 2 million people right now (clinically significant effect). You have a 1 in 4000 chance in inducing this to someone. Not only that, but we have EEG data showing that for flashing light stimulation, in children aged 1-16, the average abnormal brain reaction (photoparoxysmal responses) percentage is 7.6%, 1 in 13 children. That’s 154 million children. And it somehow disappears as children become adults, with 50% of cases being resolved?

Insane. Insane. We can already hack the brain, it’s already here.

How far can it go? Sound induced? Smell induced?

Thought induced? Feeling induced?

In rodent models, simple sound seizures are actually very common. For humans? Basically nonexistent, unless we’re counting startle epilepsy: seizures induced by loud noises or sudden surprises. But music induced epilepsy does exist (1 in 10 million people have it), and can be very specific. It can be a piece of classical music, it can be church bells, it can even happen by just thinking about the song.

There’s epilepsy from calculation, solving arithmetic problems, playing chess or cards, solving a Rubik’s cube, abstract reasoning.

There’s a version of epilepsy induced by reading.

I’ve read qntm’s There is No Antimemetics Division. I’ve read Nick Bostrom’s Infohazard PDF. I’ve read BLIT / “Basilisk” by David Langford.

We already have some of these hacks and it works for at least 2 million people.

For the abnormal brain reaction, that’s around 200 million people worldwide.

If you were extremely malicious and evil, how far could you extend it?

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10 AM. I randomly wake up again. Oh good it’s just 10 AM. Don’t need to worry about it. In fact, I could stay a little more inside.

12 PM. 1PM. Oh no, the day is passing away. Better get up? But first, some YouTube perhaps, after all, I just woke up.

2PM. 3PM. Spent a lot of time on YouTube. Hey, at least it was funny or interesting right? Something learned, or at least nerves calmed.

4 PM. I really should get out of the house as soon as possible. The day is slipping away. What have I done with it? But why is there this sense of anxiety still? Background anxiety. Better look at the small screen again. Daylight outside? It might turn into sunset soon, a day utterly wasted, would be very concerning. Better look back at those moving lights. The soothing sounds. Watch it dance, watch it dance. It calls for you. Otherwise you might dislike how you did this or that back in the day. Why didn’t you do otherwise? Pathetic. You could’ve been better. You could’ve done so much more. Time is running out. Year is running out. 2026 already. Back to the screen, watch it, watch it.

5 PM. I hate it. I hate it so much. What is there to do. Get yourself out of there. Listen to some music that pumps you up. Have some person doing the funnies in the background or talk about the Roman Empire. That will soothe your mind. Because otherwise it’s your fault. It’s always your fault. It could’ve been this or that. You could’ve used this day so much better. A waste. A waste. Should have slept earlier. You could have prevented this. Watch the YouTube. Soothe your mind.

6 PM. Out of the house, walking now. Roman Empire in the background. Otherwise you’ll be thinking, we cannot have that. Remember it gives you pain. You can only think if there’s other people are around at a restaurant or cafe. You can only think when you feel like you’re not being competed with. Otherwise you’re reminded. You’re reminded, you utter failure. The world is falling apart, timelines are shortening, and what are you doing? Roman Empire? You fall back to ancient times because they have no effect. Escapism masked as education to not repeat future mistakes. A comfort blanket. Need to play it again. Let’s listen to it again.

7 PM. At the friend’s place. Chatting about whatever. Mind continues to be soothed. Heck, might even talk about the work or the doom. Who knows. Chat chat chat. At least you feel human again. You only feel human again once you’ve had your sip of human talk, don’t you. You’re so broken aren’t you? See a therapist you dumb fuck.

11 PM. Spent so much time with friends doing this and that. Congratulations. Time to go back home. Listen to your Roman Empire. Or not, maybe you’ve been soothed enough. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter, you’ll need all that soothing up tomorrow morning. Or maybe not. It’s random isn’t it? Well, notwithstanding your own sleep schedule. Sleeping at 4 AM and expecting to get up at 8 AM. What a joke. Repeat the cycle why don’t you. Only takes an interesting conversation or interesting work task or interesting party and boom, back to the start, 4 AM. Repeat it again. You have a soothed mind now, it’s your only opportunity. Time is ticking.

8 AM. I wake up.

I fucking love rockets so much, especially when there are humans in them.

We watched it go, higher and higher. Some of humanity’s best and brightest worked on building it, some of its best piloting it, and of course the appropriate automation of these systems, again some of its best designing and running it.

Will we have another human setting foot on the moon in a couple years? Seems probable. I hope to see it.

I miss this sense of wonder, of expectations for the future, of feeling like things will get better (AI timelines anyone?).

And I got it today. It genuinely was there. Hell yeah humanity be flying. Let’s fucking go.

Asteroid mining is mostly a pipe dream. Most things related to humans going to other terrestrial bodies is economically unviable.

Yet we’re still getting our feelers out. Hey, it’s only been 54 years. We’ve only been there 6 times already. 7th time’s the charm.

Going to the Moon has always been a past thing for me, it’s something humanity already did. Insane they did it, we applaud their success and insanity, and continue on. Especially the first landing with Apollo 11, so many things went wrong and they said fuck it. Depressurization causing extra velocity due to the undocking from lunar module not being complete and will cause an overshoot? Fuck it, let’s go ahead. Computer giving 1202 alarms during powered descent, astronauts not knowing what the hell it meant, most of mission control not knowing what the hell it meant? Fuck it, “we’re GO on that alarm”. The overshoot causing them to head towards boulders? Welp gotta go semi-manual control to course correct. Fuel running out barely anything left? Fuck it, let’s go ahead. Buzz Aldrin had his fat ass (support backpack) snap the engine arm switch right off which, by the way, is for launching the lunar module back up? Stick a pen in it, close the circuit. Hell, even on reentry back to Earth they nearly died, Service Module stayed near the Command Module and broke into pieces right next to them, any one of those could’ve led to the crew capsule’s utter destruction.

Hilariously, they even landed in the wrong location. History would’ve told the story a lot different if Buzz and his boys all drowned at sea after everything they went through (and this was decently likely).

And now we’re going back to the Moon again? You and I are gonna likely live to see it? Insane. Absolute insanity.

Tax dollars being used for this kind of stuff, I support. Take more of it. Send the scientists, the engineers, the pilots, let’s discover more, let’s do more, let’s figure out stuff more.

Last we had someone land on the moon was 1972.

Let’s do it again. Hell yeah.

The fine veins of leaves when god rays from a setting sun cut through the canopy. The cozy warmth or the irritating cool of late-evening lights. The arrangement of rooms. The intricate valleys of an iris. What people say, and the way they say it.

Noticing details is one thing. Needing them to be right is another. It’s easier to appreciate subtlety than to ensure its existence in what we create. And yet, I try.

It’s reflected in my approach to things, my conduct. I’m considered diplomatic but honest, choosing one word over another, ensuring that I’m maximally heard. My work receives the same treatment, choosing one way of formalizing a statement over another, refactoring to streamline, building a beautiful system with each careful analysis.

But the line has to be drawn. Not everything can be done this way. Prioritize.

Yet, when setting up this website, I told myself not to get lost in the weeds. Even then, I nudged the contrast, shifted the spacing, rethought the layout.

As a kid, I used to put off doing homework until the last possible hour. But once I started, I couldn’t stop until it was done properly. Not just finished. Proper.

This is a problem.

A lot of life is practically a roll of the dice. Often, it doesn’t matter how airtight your policy paper is, only that you write something that can be parsed reasonably well in about a minute. Of course, that’s assuming the reader isn’t distracted by office noise and already moving on to the next paper. The same goes for interviews and pitches. The interviewer usually doesn’t care about the elegance or robustness of your solution, or the complexity of how you successfully restructured an organization’s bureaucracy. They’re checking whether you can produce something that’s fast, clear, and competent enough, as the real world rarely rewards perfect work so much as usable work delivered under constraints.

Opportunities don’t wait for polish; they come and go.

Quantity generally beats quality. There’s not enough time.

Hence, I write, I share.

And I will write and share again.

No more hundred-page Google Docs that no one will ever read but me. Drafts kept safe in secrecy, protected from judgment, barred from usefulness.

Instead, words that will leave the document and enter your mind.