footnote.cafe

Loose collections of thoughts and conversations with people and AI that I feel the need to put down. No guarantee to any of them being related except that I had them.

Featured

resonant|legibility|uncertainty

The People's Share

What Alaska and Norway Can Teach the Data Center Boom

Seven in ten Americans don't want an AI data center next door, and they have reason: the grid, the water and the tax base pay while the profits leave. Alaska and Norway solved this with oil. A compute royalty and a permanent fund could solve it again.

November 10, 2025·5 min read

The People's Share

LEGIBILITY · UNCERTAINTY

The Collection

The People's Share

LEGIBILITY · UNCERTAINTY

Seven in ten Americans don't want an AI data center next door, and they have reason: the grid, the water and the tax base pay while the profits leave. Alaska an

The Watch Learns to Think

TOPOLOGIES

Paley found a watch on the heath and reasoned backward to a watchmaker. Fair enough. But now we're building the watchmaker itself—or something that mimics one.

The Death of the Knowledge Worker

LEGIBILITY

Designer, analyst, PM—these titles are dissolving. What emerges are builders, journeymen, masters. The real divide: who drives down cost, who drives up revenue.

Boom, Bust, War, Boom

UNCERTAINTY

The 1920s roared, the 1930s collapsed, the 1940s burned, and then came unprecedented prosperity. We're somewhere in that cycle again. The question is where.

From the Sand of the Ground

TOPOLOGIES

God breathed life into dust to make man. We're pressing patterns into silicon to make intelligence. The parallel is either profound or profane. Maybe both.

Indeterministic Calvinism

UNCERTAINTY · TOPOLOGIES

Calvinism insists on predestination. Quantum mechanics insists on indeterminacy. What if both are true? What if the dice are loaded but still rolling?