# David Nuñez — a public explorer of emerging futures
> I build little pieces of the future to probe what they mean: experiments, speculative artifacts, and field notes from the seam where   technology meets being human.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).
## Pages
### About
URL: https://davidnunez.com/about/
Last updated: 2026-07-08T12:31:14.000Z
I'm David Nuñez. For two decades I built things inside research labs, museums, and corporate tech teams. Now I do this full-time: explore emerging futures in public. I tinker and build in the open, then write up what happens, mess included. I'd rather poke at the future than predict it: build small working pieces of it and tell you what they teach me. If you'd rather engage with what's coming than brace for it, pull up a stool.

I'm a public explorer of emerging futures. I get curious about where technology and being human are headed, I build small experiments to find out, and I share the whole process — the wins, the dead ends, the half-formed hunches — out in the open.

I make to think. Fifty rough prototypes teach me more than one polished strategy deck ever could, so I'd rather build a working piece of the future than write another prediction about it. I do it in public to be a useful example of how to *approach* this stuff, not just consume it.

I've spent two decades working wherever technology and humanity intersect, plus earning a graduate degree in how humans and AIs actually work together. So I've shipped real things in the real world, and I know the difference between a clever demo and something that holds up.

Until recently, this was the thing I did after hours. Then I left the steady institutional job and made it my whole job. Best decision I've made in years. The build needed all of me, and now it has it.

Off the clock, you'll find me on long morning walks talking the day through, cooking for people I like, and generally trying to stay a whole person, not just a productive one. I think the work's better for it.

Off My Board is where most of this lands first. If something I'm building makes you think "I wonder what that looks like in my world," that's usually the start of a good conversation. Let's have it.
### Signal Path
URL: https://davidnunez.com/signal-path/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T13:44:42.000Z
_No content available._
### Work With Me
URL: https://davidnunez.com/work-with-me/
Last updated: 2026-07-08T11:42:00.000Z
The work I do in public, I also do inside organizations — pointed at your world instead of mine.  
  
I help leaders and teams reason about what's coming by building it: speculative artifacts and working prototypes that make an abstract future concrete enough to argue with and plan around. It's usually some mix of:
## Posts
### Work Harder, Not Smarter
URL: https://davidnunez.com/work-harder-not-smarter/
Last updated: 2026-07-17T11:37:38.000Z
Somewhere right now, a product team is celebrating because they removed a click between you and the thing you are supposed to buy.

That's the entire moral physics of modern software in a nutshell: fewer steps good, more steps bad. More steps = less value. 

Over the weekend I did the opposite. I added friction to my own calendar, made it annoying, and gave the AI authority to flat out refuse me. It's the polar opposite of efficient, but it's the best thing I've shipped all year.

## Signal: the lump is load-bearing

Every tool I own is competing to make my life smoother, but every part of my life that actually works has a lump in it. The weekly review works because I have to account for how I spent the last few days. Tracking our budget keeps us from spending $50 on a $5 taco delivery. Learning and understanding works when I have to drag the answer out of my own head instead of nodding along to AI summaries going "yes, yes, obviously," like a man who *definitely* knows this material, but is too dumb to realize he knows nothing.

Smooth feels wonderful, but often accomplishes very little. The lump is annoying and sometimes delivers everything. 

Friction is the pebble in your walking shoe that makes you stop and deal with life.

It's important to notice when obstacles are working *for* you, *on* you, *against* you, or just... there.

There is friendly friction that makes you feel like you accomplished something (nobody likes training for marathons, but they do it anyway). That friction is satisfying. Okay, maybe it's a little toxic, but at least on the surface it is trying to be on your side. As [David Goggins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%5FGoggins?ref=davidnunez.com) would yell at you, "There is no better way to grow as a person than do every day something you hate."

> [@fewwillconquer](https://www.tiktok.com/@fewwillconquer?refer=embed&ref=davidnunez.com "@fewwillconquer") 
> 
> [#davidgoggins](https://www.tiktok.com/tag/davidgoggins?refer=embed&ref=davidnunez.com "davidgoggins") yelling is the best way to start the week [#motivation](https://www.tiktok.com/tag/motivation?refer=embed&ref=davidnunez.com "motivation") [#inspirationalquotes](https://www.tiktok.com/tag/inspirationalquotes?refer=embed&ref=davidnunez.com "inspirationalquotes") 
> 
> [♬ original sound - Few Will Conquer](https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7368248730513951530?refer=embed&ref=davidnunez.com "♬ original sound - Few Will Conquer") 

The second kind of friction is the albatross: it weighs on you, but you can still do something about it. It's the junk drawer that makes locating that one pair of good scissors so difficult that you end up using your canines to rip apart that impossible package from Amazon while primal screaming. (It's got a name: [Wrap Rage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrap%5Frage?ref=davidnunez.com).)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-12.png)

They often package scissors this way. (via [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrap%5Frage?ref=davidnunez.com))

And sometimes friction is weaponized against you. You find it in cancel-your-subscription mazes, [customer retention](https://time.com/2985964/comcast-cancel-ryan-block/?ref=davidnunez.com) tactics, and [Dark Patterns](https://deceptive.design/?ref=davidnunez.com) that even ~~Voldemort~~ ([He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voldemort?ref=davidnunez.com)) would be ashamed to use.

Friction's final form and most infuriating to me is mind-numbing, rage-inducing, performative process of "that's just the way things are." Recall the last time you associated the word "joy" with "waiting in line to get your driver's license." Don't worry, I'll wait. I've taken a number.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/giphy.gif)

Slow Down! (Flash the Sloth via [Zootopia](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2948356/?ref=davidnunez.com))

So if I'm going to argue that friction can be load-bearing and beneficial, I need to draw a line between a speed bump and a moat. Several entire academic fields, it turns out, got there first.

## Probe: I hired a bouncer for my own calendar

I run my days through an AI assistant I've been building for the past year or two. It plans my morning, shuffles around appointments, but it always does what I tell it to. 

That was exactly the problem. It does what I said. And the person doing the saying at 5am, isn't always the same person who promised himself the night before he'd exercise first thing in the morning. The last night guy had values. The 5am guy has a comfy bed and a snooze button on his iPhone.

So over the weekend I gave the assistant one overarching scheduling commandment: *Thou shalt not commit calendar rescheduling, to keep thy priorities maintained*. 

Certain appointment blocks are protected: sleep, the walk, time with actual humans. If I ask to move one of these scheduled appointments, the calendar piously refuses. There's no confirmation dialog with a meek OK button I can smite.

It flat out refuses until I name the excuse in words, and then it scribes my reasoning in a confessional log that my weekly review reads back to me like [Anubis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anubis?ref=davidnunez.com) weighing my heart against my intentions. I designed my personal Cathedral of Motor Vehicles and installed it between me and my own worst instincts.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/CleanShot-2026-07-16-at-16.45.48@2x.png)

State your business (via my Sidekick)

You'd think I'd resent it. 

But every attempt now ends one of two ways. Either the reason for rescheduling is real (a broken down MBTA train, a doctor appointment running long, 3D printer emergencies, etc). Typing one sentence costs me nothing, emotionally. In the truthful case: I believe my own excuses. 

Else, and this is more often the case, the reason is total garbage. There's no way to type "Meh. I just don't feel like it" to a piece of software, knowing that it will make me confess my sins at *some* point, and feel good about it. 

The gate itself never stops me. I can, at least for the time being, assert human agency and just ignore my computer and snooze away. Or I can just erase the whole system and operate like a normal person. Except now the screen is actually a ledger. It insists on the print, and the print does the rest.

I didn't invent any of this, of course. I reinvented, in AI trappings, something learning science has been shouting about for thirty years. Robert Bjork calls them [desirable difficulties](https://www.unh.edu/teaching-learning-resource-hub/sites/default/files/media/2023-06/itow-introducing-desirable-difficulties-into-practice-and-instruction-bjork-and-bjork.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com): study conditions that feel worse and work better. Spacing instead of cramming. Testing yourself instead of rereading. 

In one gleefully cruel [2006 experiment](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26151629/?ref=davidnunez.com), a group of students read a short science passage. Half read it a second time... the easy path. The other half took a test on it instead, dragging the material back out of their own heads without getting to review... the hard path. On a quiz five minutes later the easy group won, 83 percent to 71, and if the study had stopped there, easy is obviously the winner. However, a week later the easy group had lost most of it, down to 40 percent, while the tested group still held 61\. Friction lost the sprint and won the week. 

Which is a problem, because the easy wins are where productivity advice lives and where most of us make our day-to-day decisions. Easy today can mean worse outcomes tomorrow, requiring more friction, more renegotiation, and even more productivity hacks. That pebble in our shoe we optimized around today turned into a massive blister slowing us down tomorrow. 

We fall for this so reliably the failure has its own name, the [misinterpreted-effort hypothesis](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31470194/?ref=davidnunez.com): we read effort as evidence of failure, so the strategy that works feels wrong and the strategy that feels right is quietly doing nothing. We pay for our sins eventually.

That's also bad news for "work smarter, not harder," the founding platitude of LinkedIn Productivity Gurus™, forever typeset over a motivational meme (with a sunrise or lighthouse, for some reason). The evidence points the other way, but nobody is going to post "work harder, because that's smarter" for the likes. Retrieval practice doesn't care about productivity virality.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-13.png)

He's almost got it this time. (via [/r/demotivational](https://www.reddit.com/r/Demotivational/comments/1n5c8cv/hard%5Fwork/?ref=davidnunez.com))

Two guardrails before this turns into a [hair-shirt](https://handwovenmagazine.com/history-hairshirts/?ref=davidnunez.com) manifesto. First, a difficulty is only desirable [if you can actually clear it](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284097727%5FMaking%5Fthings%5Fhard%5Fon%5Fyourself%5Fbut%5Fin%5Fa%5Fgood%5Fway%5FCreating%5Fdesirable%5Fdifficulties%5Fto%5Fenhance%5Flearning?ref=davidnunez.com). My gate asks for one sentence I can always produce. It's the running shoes by the bed so I can roll out the door without thinking about it. 

But friction that stops someone who can't respond isn't character-building, it's a wall. 

Behavioral economists' word for bad friction is [sludge](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioural-public-policy/article/sludge-and-transaction-costs/D09206BF9B36C129F40A27A9E749074B?ref=davidnunez.com): excess friction between people and the thing they themselves are trying to do. Richard Thaler, who spent an entire career greasing choices, allows that friction [can be useful "on an icy road."](https://news.uchicago.edu/story/how-much-can-you-nudge-good-richard-thaler-explores-possibilities-limits?ref=davidnunez.com) The [OECD now runs sludge audits](https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2024/06/fixing-frictions-sludge-audits-around-the-world%5F1b4bbf1a/5e9bb35c-en.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) on governments the way you would inspect a restaurant. The FTC has a whole enforcement lane for [dark patterns](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/09/ftc-report-shows-rise-sophisticated-dark-patterns-designed-trick-trap-consumers?ref=davidnunez.com), including a [click-to-cancel rule](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-click-cancel-rule-making-it-easier-consumers-end-recurring?ref=davidnunez.com) meant to make leaving as easy as arriving. A court [vacated that rule](https://ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/25/07/243137P.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) on procedural grounds, which, for a rule about companies making exits difficult, is almost too perfect.

So the rubric is: Whose goal does the friction serve, and can the person meet it? A [survey of 1,591 people](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioural-public-policy/article/vulnerability-to-and-acceptability-of-different-types-of-sludge/40D20226BF201B0919A96D8628350227?ref=davidnunez.com) found sludge lands hardest on exactly the people with the least health, energy, and administrative know-how to fight through it. The same pause that focuses one person defeats another. My gate serves my goal and costs one sentence. The subscription maze serves theirs and hopes I die of old age in the retention flow. Same speed bump, different road.

This is [designing with friction](https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3677045.3685504?ref=davidnunez.com). The small ones go by "microboundaries," and the canonical example predates every app: the credit card frozen in a block of ice. You can still spend the money. You just have to stand at the freezer with a hair dryer, thinking about your choices (like, "why did I believe anyone *actually* does this?").

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-10-2.png)

**The user journey includes a hair dryer. That's the feature. (via* [**Hassle Free Savings*](https://hasslefreesavings.com/should-you-freeze-your-credit-card-in-ice/?ref=davidnunez.com)**)*

Even Mark Weiser, the father of invisible computing, came around to ["beautiful seams,"](https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3290605.3300508?ref=davidnunez.com) and [seamful design](https://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~matthew/papers/ubicomp2003HCISystems.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) treats the visible joints of a system as features rather than shame. The people who invented frictionless had second thoughts. That should count for something. 

The platforms have shipped it, mostly at the exact moment you're about to be terrible online. Twitter, back when it cared about this sort of thing, ran a [randomized experiment](https://blog.x.com/en%5Fus/topics/product/2021/tweeting-with-consideration?ref=davidnunez.com) that asked people to reconsider a harsh reply before posting: prompted users posted fewer offensive tweets and after just one exposure were less likely to go on a five-tweet tear. 

The famous ["read the article before you retweet it"](https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/24/twitter-read-before-retweet/?ref=davidnunez.com) prompt reportedly bumped article opens by 40 percent, though a [later economics paper](https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/134/662/2391/7642852?ref=davidnunez.com) found it also reduced sharing overall, unevenly across the political spectrum (ahem. Draw your own conclusions). Friction moves behavior around as much as it improves it. And a [one-line accuracy nudge](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797620939054?ref=davidnunez.com) more than doubled how much truth mattered in what people chose to share. 

None of these are miracles, just speed bumps, and a [modeling paper on social feeds](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.11498?ref=davidnunez.com) says friction alone mostly reduces volume, but a small dose paired with a moment of reflection raised quality by more than a third. However, past a light touch, more friction bought nothing. 

That result is a simulation, so hold it loosely. But look at the shape: small, placed at the moment of impulse, and paired with a why. That's why my calendar gate demands a reason instead of just blocking the move. The no is the speed bump. The why is the cargo.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-14.png)

**The platform version of my gate: a speed bump installed at the exact moment you're about to be terrible online. (via* ~~**Twitter*~~ [**X*](https://blog.x.com/en%5Fus/topics/product/2021/tweeting-with-consideration?ref=davidnunez.com)**)*

The oldest version of all this is Ulysses tying himself to the mast, history's first documented user of parental controls, applied to himself. (The [demo hits IMAX](https://www.odysseymovie.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) this weekend.) These, economists would say, are "commitment devices." People will voluntarily pay for [costly deadlines](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12009041/?ref=davidnunez.com) to fight their own procrastination. Smokers offered a [bank account that forfeits their own money](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fapp.2.4.213&ref=davidnunez.com) if they fail a nicotine test mostly said no thanks, 11 percent signed up, but the offer still raised quitting by 3 percentage points. 

Researchers who combed [75,828 public goals](https://kimauk.github.io/file/paper/CHI21%5Fcommitments.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) on the commitment platform StickK found the configuration mattered enormously: stakes, referees, who is watching. And a [randomized trial](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11042509/?ref=davidnunez.com) found that money-at-risk contracts were no better than plain rewards, partly because almost nobody volunteers for punishment: uptake was 62 percent versus 100\. Even I've used [Beeminder](https://blog.beeminder.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) for self-flagellation. We want accountability the way we want salad. Enthusiastically, in theory, but later.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-15.png)

**History's first documented user of parental controls, applied to himself.* (John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens (1891))

Imposed friction fails on conscripts and works on volunteers. Forget "should apps add friction." The better question is who gets to author it, which is why I keep building my own tools. Ink & Switch calls it [malleable software](https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software/?ref=davidnunez.com): tools you can reshape at the point of use instead of petitioning a distant product team, the modern descendant of their [end-user programming](https://www.inkandswitch.com/end-user-programming/?ref=davidnunez.com) work. 

[Advait Sarkar argues](https://advait.org/publications-web/sarkar-2023-eup-generative-ai/?ref=davidnunez.com) AI is about to hand that power to roughly everyone. A platform imposing friction on a million users is [flirting with paternalism](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fpandp.20181124&ref=davidnunez.com), and we should be nervous about it. A person bolting a gate onto his own calendar intentionally is writing a Ulysses contract with a better interface. But why? 

Because friction doubles as a measurement instrument. A system watching your clicks [can't tell impulse from endorsement](https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.11776?ref=davidnunez.com), and newer recommender work proposes [inserting pauses](https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.01611?ref=davidnunez.com) to tell those apart. Economists chase revealed preferences. 

The log has mine, every excuse I was willing to put in writing. 

## Signals Worth Tracking

**The first friction to return to AI serves the accountants.** Companies spent two years removing every obstacle between employees and the models, then opened the bill. 404 Media calls it [the Tokenpocalypse](https://www.404media.co/the-tokenpocalypse-is-here-companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-spending-so-much-on-ai/?ref=davidnunez.com): Uber capped Claude Code after its CTO said the company blew its entire AI budget in four months, Adobe is [ending unlimited access](https://www.404media.co/companies-are-throttling-employees-ai-use-because-its-too-expensive/?ref=davidnunez.com) to Claude, and at least one company watched its AI spend triple to more than 15 million dollars a month. Accenture's problem case is workers [converting PDFs into slide decks](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/24/companies-are-scrambling-to-stop-employees-from-maxing-out-ai-budgets-with-small-tasks/?ref=davidnunez.com) with a frontier model, the token-billing version of driving a Ferrari to the mailbox. Look at what the throttle is, though: a pause, imposed at the moment of impulse, serving the payer's goal instead of the user's. Sludge or good friction depends on which side of the budget you sit on. Watch whether any company pairs the cap with a why, the reflection half of the recipe, or settles for a quota and calls it strategy.

**AI is friction-stripping at industrial scale, and the cognitive** **invoices are arriving.** In a [PNAS field experiment](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2422633122?ref=davidnunez.com), students with unrestricted GPT-4 help got better during practice and did worse later, once the help disappeared. The struggle they skipped was the product. [Microsoft's survey of knowledge workers](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee%5F2025%5Fai%5Fcritical%5Fthinking%5Fsurvey.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) found GenAI lowers the felt effort of critical thinking while raising the odds of accepting whatever comes back. Researchers have started designing [positive friction into human-AI interaction](https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.09683?ref=davidnunez.com), even into [chatbot conversations](https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17348?ref=davidnunez.com), on the theory that a well-placed pause keeps the human awake at the wheel. Honest label: whether reintroduced seams actually improve human oversight in AI workflows is still an extrapolation. Nobody has the field data. Watch for the first study that does.

**The dose curve needs humans.** The result this whole issue leans on (friction alone fails, friction plus reflection works, a little goes all the way) is an [agent-based simulation](https://www.nature.com/articles/s44260-025-00051-1?ref=davidnunez.com) that says so itself. Somebody is going to run it on a live feed with real people. Watch whether the light-touch recipe survives contact.

**Who authors the friction.** [AI-personalized nudges](https://philarchive.org/archive/SHEAPA-5?ref=davidnunez.com) are coming, which will make friction more effective and more invasive in the same motion. The whole ethics of this issue lives in the gap between friction done *to* you and friction you author for yourself in tools you can reshape. Watch which side your software lands on, and who it bills.

/ David

**Watching:** [Bruce Shaprio's Sisyphus](https://sisyphus-industries.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) mechanism pushing its boulder around endlessly creating sand art.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-17.png)

via [Collosal](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/09/new-kinetic-sand-tables-by-bruce-shapiro/?ref=davidnunez.com)

**Playing:** [Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy](https://www.foddy.net/2017/09/getting-over-it/?ref=davidnunez.com). A man in a cauldron climbs a mountain using only a hammer. The friction is not a flaw in the game. The friction is the entire game. I have never felt so understood by software that hates me.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-16.png)

If [Sisyphus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus?ref=davidnunez.com)'s job was even more pointless. (via [Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy](https://www.foddy.net/blog/2017/09/getting-over-it/?ref=davidnunez.com))

**Watching:** [The Odyssey](https://www.odysseymovie.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), opening this weekend, in which Christopher Nolan films this issue's oldest citation. I'll be watching Matt Damon get tied to the mast on the biggest screen I can find. Commitment devices, now in IMAX.

**Reading:** [Malleable Software](https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/malleable-software/?ref=davidnunez.com) by Ink & Switch. The essay underneath this whole issue: tools you can reshape at the point of use, which is also the argument for why your friction should be yours.

**Listening:** [Friction](https://open.spotify.com/track/2iIb73Qn02LsZwpW8RJUxh?si=ed0b73753f984185&ref=davidnunez.com), Imagine Dragons. 🎶 You can't fight the friction, so ease it off. And get into the system. We both know you need one 🎶
### It's Not the Fake, It's the Lie
URL: https://davidnunez.com/its-not-the-fake-its-the-lie/
Last updated: 2026-07-16T23:21:22.000Z
A rock band with over a million Spotify listeners has [no humans in it](https://people.com/rock-band-velvet-sundown-ai-generated-including-musicians-1-million-spotify-listeners-11769532?ref=davidnunez.com). A hotel review platform refolds a stack of complaints into [five stars](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/02/ai-summaries-tripadvisor-hotel-reviews-downplay-serious-complaints?ref=davidnunez.com), Both are synthetic, and neither one says so. Whether a fake admits it is the difference between a gimmick and a lie.

## Signal: I just want it to say so

A key skill for [media literacy](https://namle.org/resources/media-literacy-defined/?ref=davidnunez.com) is knowing where along the fact-to-fiction spectrum your consumption lies. Is this news article true? Is this image fake? Is it somewhere in between the two? Who is adjusting the dials, and, more importantly, why?

Last issue, I argued that [a browser toy that lets you chop firewood](https://davidnunez.com/the-log-is-fake/) was the most honest thing on my screen, because every pixel of it is fake and it never pretends otherwise. 

I can live with a fake. I expect it now, the incentives are too strong for the creators. What I can't live with is the fake that won't say so, the one that goes beyond just replicating labor and into the roles that used to prove a person was there.

## Probe: The synthetic moved into the roles that demonstrated presence

There are three moments in normal life when, for all of history, a live human being has been the proof that "a real person is here / a real person did this." AI has now moved into all three, so that built-in proof is gone:

- **The performer**: the person up on stage or on the record. You watch an actor, you hear a band. A human body performing, live, was proof that a human made it.
- **The witness**: the person who tells you what they experienced so you can trust it. A reviewer saying "I stayed at this hotel and got food poisoning." A real customer, standing there vouching, was the proof.
- **The counterpart**: the person alongside you or on the other side of a transaction. The shopkeeper behind the counter. The seller. The person dancing next to you at the concert. The delivery driver who hands you the bag. Historically, when you bought something, there was a human on the other end taking your money and giving you the item or the performance. That human was the proof you were dealing with something real.

Watch what happens to each one in a world of fakes, and the same fault line runs through all three. It doesn't fall apart where you'd expect, between the real thing and the copy. It breaks when the copy doesn't fess up that it's a copy.

Start with the **performer**. [Tilly Norwood](https://variety.com/2026/film/global/ai-actor-tilly-norwood-movie-debut-misaligned-1236802325/?ref=davidnunez.com) is a generative-AI actor, and on July 6 her studio announced she would [lead a feature film](https://deadline.com/2026/07/tilly-norwood-ai-actor-misaligned-1236974639/?ref=davidnunez.com) called *Misaligned*, a title so on-the-nose the movie appears to be apologizing in advance. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-6.png)

**Labeled AI everywhere she appears, and she still drew a union grievance. Her fight was never about realism.* (via Particle6/Xicoia)

Nobody is hiding the digital mask, though. We are talking about her as if she's in the role of a lifetime: a living human being. However, she is labeled an AI actor wherever she appears, and her creator (agent?), Eline van der Velden, [argues for disclosure out loud](https://deadline.com/2025/11/tilly-norwood-tilly-norwood-creator-interview-backlash-more-ai-actors-coming-1236601334/?ref=davidnunez.com), saying films should note their AI the way we used to say "this is a historical reconstruction." 

She was condemned anyway. 

[SAG-AFTRA](https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-aftra-statement-synthetic-performer?ref=davidnunez.com) said creativity should remain human-centered. Two of the biggest talent agencies refused to sign her, one of them declining with the entire sentence ["We Represent Humans,"](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/tilly-norwood-ai-actor-denounced-actors-union-star-feature-film-rcna353134?ref=davidnunez.com) a line you only get to write once. 

[Emily Blunt, Whoopi Goldberg, and Melissa Barrera](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/sep/30/emily-blunt-sag-aftra-film-industry-condemnation-ai-actor-tilly-norwood?ref=davidnunez.com) all said versions of the same thing. Nobody in that crowd said she looked fake or said Tilly couldn't pass for a competent actor. The complaint is that she was built on real performers' work "without permission or compensation." The grievance is about consent, not realism. Even the disclosed synthetic gets a fight, and the fight is about the terms of authenticity.

Now meet the version that lied. [The Velvet Sundown](https://people.com/rock-band-velvet-sundown-ai-generated-including-musicians-1-million-spotify-listeners-11769532?ref=davidnunez.com) was a rock band with over a million Spotify listeners and a good backstory, and when people started asking, it posted that its songs were made "in a cramped bungalow in California with [real instruments, real minds and real soul.](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/velvet-sundown-ai-band-suno-1235377652/?ref=davidnunez.com)" That was false, right down to the bungalow. 

The band, the voices, the faces, all of it [AI-generated](https://www.berklee.edu/berklee-now/news/velvet-sundown-ai-band-controversy?ref=davidnunez.com), which it admitted only after the audience had already been asked to believe. None of the unease came from the music being synthetic, since a million people had already pressed play. Nobody bats an eye at origin stories of dubious nature... It's cool to be a struggling artist who makes it big, after all.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-7.png)

**A million listeners and a public promise it was human. One of those was a lie, and only one of them mattered. (via* [**Rolling Stone*](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/velvet-sundown-ai-band-suno-1235377652/?ref=davidnunez.com)**)*

The rebuke came from the denial. Line the two up and the whole argument is right there. Tilly wears the mask in public and draws a principled fight about consent. Velvet Sundown swore the mask was a face and drew something worse: the feeling of having been played.

None of this is new, only faster. In 1990 [Milli Vanilli](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milli%5FVanilli?ref=davidnunez.com) won the Grammy for Best New Artist and were stripped of it months later, the moment it came out that the two men on the cover hadn't sung a note. 

Why? Not that a Grammy is itself a lobbied, campaigned-for, mostly-manufactured stamp of "creative achievement." Not that session singers did the real vocals, which happens all the time and bothers no one. 

The unforgivable part was the undisclosed swap. A manufactured honor revoked a manufactured performance for the single sin of not admitting it was one, which is either the most noble thing the Grammys have ever done or the most ironic and shortsighted.

The money follows the same seam. [Lil Miquela](https://archive.ph/VMr8L?ref=davidnunez.com) has a bio that literally says "robot" and lands Prada campaigns anyway. [Lu do Magalu](https://www.axios.com/2026/06/15/lu-do-magalu-virtual-influencer-brazil?ref=davidnunez.com) is an openly virtual brand persona pulling an estimated 2.5 million dollars a year. [Aitana López](https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/12/27/meet-the-first-spanish-ai-model-earning-up-to-10000-per-month?ref=davidnunez.com) earns up to ten thousand euros a month, and the tell in her story is that real celebrities slid into the DMs of a woman who is a rendering. Disclosed by press release is not disclosed at the moment it counts, I guess.

Now the **witness**. The nastiest item in the pile is [Tripadvisor's AI review summaries](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jul/02/ai-summaries-tripadvisor-hotel-reviews-downplay-serious-complaints?ref=davidnunez.com). A consumer investigation found the machine-written blurbs describing hotels linked to food poisoning, harassment, and filth in the same warm, generic register it uses for everything, in one case summarizing a resort with [102 mentions of food poisoning](https://www.thetimes.com/travel/advice/tripadvisors-ai-tool-gives-glowing-hotel-reviews-that-ignore-concerns-9zskvqzp6?ref=davidnunez.com) as basically lovely. A summary is synthetic by nature, so that part is not the crime. The crime is laundering testimony, a machine gloss troweled over the witness stand. And the witness stand was crowded with impostors before AI ever got there. The [FTC's fake-review rule](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials?ref=davidnunez.com), in force since October 2024, bans reviews by [someone who does not exist, AI ones included](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumer-reviews-testimonials-rule-questions-answers?ref=davidnunez.com). With penalties up to [53,088 dollars per violation](https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2025/12/warning-letter-or-ten-businesses-comply-ftcs-consumer-review-rule?ref=davidnunez.com), a figure only a spreadsheet could love, it never once mentions the technology. It targets the undisclosed deception and treats a fake human and a fake machine as the same offense. That is the disclosure line, written into law. It has a lot to police: UK government estimates put fake reviews at [25 to 35 percent](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/650c015c52e73c000d9425b6/fake-reviews-consultation-impact-assessment.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) across major platforms, and Yelp says it filtered nearly [half a million AI-generated reviews](https://trust.yelp.com/trust-and-safety-report/2025-report/?ref=davidnunez.com) in a single year.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/lovely-casita-for-family-vacation-v0-y7sjbncrsts91.webp)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/lovely-casita-for-family-vacation-v0-khmktofrsts91.webp)

Expectation vs. Reality (via [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ExpectationVsReality/comments/xzt0ph/lovely%5Fcasita%5Ffor%5Ffamily%5Fvacation/?ref=davidnunez.com))

And then the **counterpart**. Korea has a small craze for ["dopamine sites"](https://www.fastcompany.com/91560432/dopamine-sites-fake-online-shopping-apps-let-you-pretend-to-buy-things-foodnevercomes?ref=davidnunez.com): fake food-delivery apps like [FoodNeverComes.com](https://foodnevercomes.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [FakeEats.com](https://www.fakeeats.com/?ref=davidnunez.com). You can find [pretend shopping carts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzv%5FIIdLC5E&ref=davidnunez.com) where you browse, add to basket, check out, and watch a little courier bring your order, except nothing is charged and nothing arrives. It even tallies the money you didn't spend and the calories you didn't eat, a fitness tracker for discipline you never had to exercise. Call it placebo commerce. The honesty is total: all you are buying is the feeling of a transaction, and it says so up front. Put it on the shelf next to the firewood toy. Of all the fakes in this issue, it is the least corrosive because it never claims to be anything else.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/CleanShot-2026-07-09-at-09.28.51@2x.png)

**Nothing is charged. Nothing arrives. It tells you so on the way in. The most honest fake in the pile.* (via [Food Never Comes](https://foodnevercomes.com/?ref=davidnunez.com))

So the axis was never real versus fake. It is disclosed versus not, and the idea is older than the software. [Walter Benjamin](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/benjamin/?ref=davidnunez.com) said mechanical reproduction strips the "aura" from the original, which is another way of saying the "a human was here" signal gets scarce right when copies get cheap. [Baudrillard](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/baudrillard/?ref=davidnunez.com) pushed it further, to the point where the copy stops apologizing for having no original at all. [Ian Bogost](https://www.wired.com/story/loss-of-physical-world-book-excerpt-the-small-stuff-ian-bogost/?ref=davidnunez.com) gives it a body: he mourns the small losses, stick shifts and stamps, the low proofs that we still touch the machine instead of only monitoring it, which is the same worry the engineer Lisanne Bainbridge named decades ago as the ["ironies of automation."](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005109883900468?ref=davidnunez.com) 

The rebellion reaches for the same nerve. The [original Luddites](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/?ref=davidnunez.com) were never against machines, they were against being cut out without a say, and the [Summer of Ludd](https://www.wired.com/story/inside-the-luddite-festival-harnessing-gen-zs-rage-against-big-tech/?ref=davidnunez.com) reviving that spirit in a New York park with zines and mending is not asking for a world without tools, just for consent, and a label. 

Political scientists have even priced the inverse move. They call it the ["liar's dividend,"](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/liars-dividend-can-politicians-claim-misinformation-to-evade-accountability/687FEE54DBD7ED0C96D72B26606AA073?ref=davidnunez.com) the way a world full of fakes lets the guilty wave off real evidence as fake, and across five experiments on 15,000 people that dodge moved political support by a fifth of a standard deviation. Deniability, the flip side of non-disclosure, pays.

The strongest objection is that simple disclosure might not actually work. Labels get ignored. A [Stanford study](https://hai.stanford.edu/policy/labeling-ai-generated-content-may-not-change-its-persuasiveness?ref=davidnunez.com) found an AI label changed whether people thought something was machine-made but *not* how much it persuaded them. Other [experiments](https://arxiv.org/html/2503.05711v1?ref=davidnunez.com) found labels barely move what people like or share, and an [ambiguous label](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1751670/full?ref=davidnunez.com) can make people swerve around the thing altogether. Epic's [Tim Sweeney](https://www.theverge.com/news/831747/tim-sweeney-epic-ceo-steam-game-stores-made-with-ai?ref=davidnunez.com) argues the AI tag will soon be as pointless as tagging a photo that used autofocus, since everything will be a little synthetic. 

Fair. But "the label is imperfect" is not "skip the label." It is an argument that the label must be conspicuous and enforced, rather than buried in a submenu or garnished in a website footer like legal parsley yearning for a good Yelp review. Mixed production is fine. Secret substitution is the thing to fight against.

## Signals Worth Tracking

**The law is learning to make the substitute introduce itself.** New York now [requires ads to disclose synthetic performers](https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-announces-first-nation-law-requiring-disclosure-when-advertisements-include-ai?ref=davidnunez.com), effective June 2026, with [fines](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S8420/amendment/A?ref=davidnunez.com) for skipping the label. The EU AI Act's transparency rules for AI content [land August 2, 2026](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/code-practice-ai-generated-content?ref=davidnunez.com). [Steam](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/gettingstarted/contentsurvey?ref=davidnunez.com) already makes developers declare both pre-generated and live AI content. Nobody on that list is banning the machine. The whole project, from Albany to Brussels to a game-store submission form, is teaching it to introduce itself.

**Watch whether the label survives the wash.** The provenance plumbing is no longer a slide deck for academic conferences: [C2PA and Content Credentials](https://contentcredentials.org/?ref=davidnunez.com) count 500-plus companies, and [OpenAI's own images](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8912793-c2pa-and-synthid-in-openai-generated-images?ref=davidnunez.com) ship with the metadata baked in. But [the standard itself admits](https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/1.0/security/Security%5FConsiderations.html?ref=davidnunez.com) the tag can be stripped, and in practice, a screenshot or a re-upload usually wipes it clean. A label that comes off the moment content travels is a floor, not a cure. Watch one number instead of the press releases: whether the "cr" pin is still there after the image has been through the internet once.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-9.png)

**The label exists now. Watch whether it survives one trip through the internet.*

**Watch the format itself become the proof.** As the synthetic floods the cheapest surfaces first, [creators are being told to move to long-form](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7WBbiwReQ0&ref=davidnunez.com), podcasts and long video, on the logic that a fake passes in nine seconds and cracks over ninety minutes. 

And the cheapest surface is already more machine than not. A fresh-account test in May 2026 found [294 of TikTok's first 500 recommended videos](https://www.kapwing.com/resources/the-tiktok-ai-slop-report/?ref=davidnunez.com) were AI, against 104 on YouTube Shorts, so the flood runs deepest where the form runs shortest. Call it disclosure by endurance. And don't get me started on LinkedIn and Twitter/X posts... I defy you to open either one of those apps right now and tell me that if you there isn't *wasn't* written by AI. The body vouches for the work by staying on camera long enough to be expensive to fake. Whether that holds, or just starts a race toward longer fakes, is the part worth watching.

**Watch "verified human" turn from a principle into a price.** The counter-market is already forming with real money behind it: US [vinyl passed a billion dollars](https://www.riaa.com/riaa-reports-us-recorded-music-annual-revenue-achieves-new-high-of-11-5-billion-in-2025/?ref=davidnunez.com) in 2025, and Fujifilm is [spending to make more instant film](https://www.fujifilm.com/si/en/news/hq/13167?ref=davidnunez.com) because the friction is the point. Once the law and the platforms make "a machine did this" the default confession, the market can invert it and charge a premium for "a person did this at every step," the way "organic" and "fair trade" walked from ethics onto the packaging. Last issue the openly-fake log was the most honest thing on my screen. The worry this time is quieter and worse: the day honesty about who made a thing stops being a norm and becomes a subscription tier, and the human-was-here stamp is something you have to pay to see. This week, reporters did the disclosure for free, after the fact. I keep thinking about the version where nobody does it for free, where knowing who made a thing becomes a line item, and the meter is running. 

Human authenticity will become a premium service... because it already is.

/ David

**Playing:** [Content Credentials' verify tool](https://contentcredentials.org/?ref=davidnunez.com). Drop in an image and see whether anything about it will admit where it came from. Half the time the answer is a shrug, which is the whole point.

**Watching:** a [Korean dopamine-site walkthrough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzv%5FIIdLC5E&ref=davidnunez.com). Someone checking out a cart that will never charge them, for the feeling of the checkout and nothing else. Bleak, honest, and restful in a way I decline to examine.

**Reading:** Ian Bogost, ["People Used to Control Machines. They Don't Anymore."](https://www.wired.com/story/loss-of-physical-world-book-excerpt-the-small-stuff-ian-bogost/?ref=davidnunez.com) Small losses, stick shifts and stamps, the body subcontracted away in increments too small to protest.

**Listening:** ["Girl You Know It's True,"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdSmokR0Enk&ref=davidnunez.com) Milli Vanilli. Performed, famously, by two people who did not sing a note of it. They lost the Grammy for it, punished decades early for the exact crime in this issue. Not the fake. The lie.
### The Log Is Fake
URL: https://davidnunez.com/the-log-is-fake/
Last updated: 2026-07-09T17:14:24.000Z
I really like doing the dishes.

I get irrationally upset when we have kind-hearted house guests who simply want to do the polite and humane thing by rinsing the dishes after dinner. Fuming in my mind, ruining a perfectly lovely evening, "It's *my* job. Stay in your lane!"

See, I like that the sink is full and then it isn't. There's the smell of soap, the dishwasher humming, a before and an after, and no follow-up meetings and next actions to track. It's a comprehensively (if not weirdly) satisfying check off my to-do list.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-5.png)

Fork and Knife with Plate on Apple iOS 26.4

My paid work almost never gives this. I move ideas around inside glowing rectangles all day; the pile never shrinks... There's no "done." It's quite the opposite. Some evenings, I can't tell you what I started, much less finished, and my computer keys never give me the proof-of-work [dishpan hands](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dishpan%20hands?ref=davidnunez.com).

## Signal: I want finished piles.

So I understood right away why I lost twenty minutes this week to [a website that lets you chop firewood](https://screen.toys/firewood/?ref=davidnunez.com). It's called (ahem) "Firewood," and [Boing Boing](https://boingboing.net/2026/06/28/firewood-chopping-simulator.html?ref=davidnunez.com) found the right words for it: [satisfying, peaceful, cosy](https://boingboing.net/2026/06/29/this-interactive-screen-toy-turns-wood-chopping-into-a-calm-satisfying-digital-experience.html?ref=davidnunez.com). 

A round of wood sits on a stump. You "swing an axe" and the wood splits. 

No score, no timer, no way to lose. 

The artist who made it, Gavin Shapiro, [3D-scanned a real stump and axe and recorded the actual sounds of splitting wood](https://x.com/shapiro500/status/2069077131582124532?ref=davidnunez.com), which is a remarkable amount of labor and craft for a toy whose only promise is that a virtual log will come apart when you tell it to. It inspires [emotionally charged discussion about wood-splitting simulators](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48471638&ref=davidnunez.com), and it all reminds me of the moment we're in.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/CleanShot-2026-07-02-at-12.23.31@2x.png)

**No score. No timer. Just a log that comes apart when you tell it to. via* [Firewood](https://screen.toys/firewood/?ref=davidnunez.com)

It isn't trying to precisely simulate forestry, wood physics, the smell of pine, or the ache in your shoulders. It strips the work down to a single satisfying verb, "chop." 

It gives you a sensory dividend with none of the labor. I felt the little hit anyway. The fake log handed me the exact thing my digital work tends to withhold: a finished, neatly stacked pile.

That's the itch: Closure. A task with edges, a visible dent, and some proof that I was the one who pretended to swing the axe, and that my "effort" made a difference... however fake it was.

## Probe: I chopped a cord of wood that doesn't exist.

Turns out I'm late to a very crowded party.

[](https://roadtovr.com/job-simulator-6-million-downloads-2026/?ref=davidnunez.com)

Cleaning a filthy patio until it gleams is now a blockbuster: [PowerWash Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash%5FSimulator/?ref=davidnunez.com) tells you outright to "wash away your worries," and [more than 17 million people](https://www.futurlab.co.uk/news/thank-you-for-17-million-powerwash-simulator-players?ref=davidnunez.com) have taken the offer. You can run a [corner grocery](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2670630/Supermarket%5FSimulator/?ref=davidnunez.com) that has pulled [more than 50,000 players at once](https://steamdb.info/app/2670630/charts/?ref=davidnunez.com), a [roadside gas station](https://gameworldobserver.com/2024/04/22/gas-station-simulator-revenue-10-million-steam?ref=davidnunez.com), a [long-haul trucking route](https://blog.scssoft.com/2022/10/euro-truck-simulator-2s-10th-anniversary.html?ref=davidnunez.com) that has sold \~13 million copies, or an [entire farm](https://www.giants-software.com/news.php?show=news-120&ref=davidnunez.com) that has sold \~40 million across the series. One game even starts you [running a laundromat](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388870/Arcade%5FParadise/?ref=davidnunez.com), emptying lint traps and collecting quarters before you're allowed anything more glamorous, and [another turns unpacking your moving boxes into a quiet ritual](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/unpacking-has-topped-1-million-sales-in-one-year?ref=davidnunez.com). 

One of the original and most successful of them was made by my friend [Alex](https://itsalexschwartz.com/?ref=davidnunez.com). Owlchemy Lab's [Job Simulator](https://roadtovr.com/job-simulator-6-million-downloads-2026/?ref=davidnunez.com) premise is that robots took all the human jobs, so you strap on a headset to play-act at office work. Six million people have installed the joke.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-3.png)

Sitting at the virtual cubicle (via [Job Simulator](https://jobsimulatorgame.com/?ref=davidnunez.com))

[Fruit Ninja](https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/31/fruit-ninja-tops-300m-downloads-after-two-years-now-installed-on-13-of-all-u-s-iphones/?ref=davidnunez.com), which at its peak sat on a third of all American iPhones, worked because a finger dragged across glass is a legible stand-in for a blade, and the game answered every swipe with juice: the arc, the splash. Better touchscreens let the phone [answer your finger with a small haptic tap](https://proa.ua.pt/index.php/jdmi/article/download/30771/21294?ref=davidnunez.com), so the fake cut even felt confirmed. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/CleanShot-2026-07-02-at-13.58.33@2x-1.png)

Slicing watermelon with a katana finger (via [Fruit Ninja](https://www.halfbrick.com/games/fruit-ninja-classic?ref=davidnunez.com))

Designers call this "game feel," and the trick is that the response is always bigger than the input. The gesture is tiny, the simulated act is huge, and that gap is the whole product. You get the plausible consequence with none of the friction: no fatigue, no danger, no sticky counter, no cleanup. It's labor's cleanest reward, cut free from labor. Minimal work, maximum result.

And that's only the *doing*. 

There's a whole second thread about *watching* other people work. 

In 2013 Norway's public broadcaster aired [twelve hours of a fire burning](https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/norway-plans-12-hour-prime-time-tv-show-of-a-fireplace-idUSBRE91E0SI/?ref=davidnunez.com) in national prime time, after an evening of chopping and stacking, and [close to a fifth of the country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow%5Ftelevision?ref=davidnunez.com) tuned in. That broadcast became a landmark of ["slow TV,"](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/norways-slow-tv-fascinating-viewers-for-hours-or-days-at-a-time/?ref=davidnunez.com) and YouTube has since turned the impulse into an always-on genre: [eleven million people](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA?ref=davidnunez.com) follow one silent man building huts and kilns in the forest with his hands, others watch [off-grid cabins rise from bare snow](https://www.youtube.com/@MySelfReliance?ref=davidnunez.com) or [a rusted tool come back to life](https://www.youtube.com/@HandToolRescue?ref=davidnunez.com), and millions more watch [overgrown lots become geometric lawns](https://www.youtube.com/@SBMowing?ref=davidnunez.com). 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/CleanShot-2026-07-02-at-13.02.40@2x.png)

Weedeating for the YouTube Views (via [SB Mowing](https://www.youtube.com/@SBMowing?ref=davidnunez.com))

Some of it, let's be honest, isn't about the woodcraft at all: one of the internet's most-watched lumberjacks is named, I kid you not, [Thor](https://www.tiktok.com/@bradley.thor?ref=davidnunez.com), and the comments under him splitting logs in slow motion have nothing to do with the best way to split logs.

Either way it's process, not instruction. Rust becomes shine, a jungle becomes a lawn, and the textured, repetitive sound of it [calms the body the way ASMR does](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0196645&ref=davidnunez.com). 

You get the rhythm and the before-and-after without standing up.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/CleanShot-2026-07-02-at-13.05.47@2x-1-1.png)

**His name is Thor. Of course it is. (via* [Thoren Bradley's TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@bradley.thor?ref=davidnunez.com)**)*

When a screen won't scratch that "itch," you can pay for the real thing by the hour. People hand over [$485 to run a bulldozer](https://digthisvegas.com/big-dig-bulldozer/?ref=davidnunez.com) around a Las Vegas lot for an afternoon, or [several hundred dollars a day](https://duderanch.org/blog/5-great-working-cattle-ranch-vacations-in-the-west/?ref=davidnunez.com) to mend fences and push cattle on a working ranch. The work a person might once have unionized to escape turns into a bucket-list afternoon the second you're the one who booked it. And *paid* for the pleasure.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-4.png)

**$485 to move a pile of dirt that didn't need moving.* (via [Dig This](https://digthisvegas.com/big-dig-bulldozer/?ref=davidnunez.com))

So why does a person with a white-collar, clean, indoor job go home and pretend to chop wood or turn over cash to stand in pig muck? 

David Graeber diagnosed the disease: a large share of us perform [work we privately suspect is pointless](https://davidgraeber.org/articles/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-a-work-rant/?ref=davidnunez.com) while being paid to look busy. Matthew Crawford wrote the cure in reverse, arguing that manual work satisfies because [the world answers back](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft?ref=davidnunez.com): the engine runs or it doesn't, and you never have to narrate your own usefulness because the object itself testifies. Teresa Amabile spent years inside people's workdays and found that the biggest daily lift to motivation is [visible progress in meaningful work](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40692&ref=davidnunez.com), the "small win." And the psychologists who study why games grip us keep landing on [autonomy and competence](https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2006%5FRyanRigbyPrzybylski%5FMandE.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com): the pleasure of choosing a thing and getting visibly better at it.

Line those up, and the appeal stops looking like a joke. Simulated chores hand you the exact package abstract screen work refuses: a beginning and an end, a shrinking pile, plain cause and effect, no sprawling ambiguity, and the small clean voice that says, "I did that."

It's the same hunger [cozy games now sell as mainstream mindfulness](https://ics.uci.edu/2025/04/07/how-cozy-gaming-is-taking-mindfulness-mainstream/?ref=davidnunez.com), the [calm the whole category now markets itself on](https://www.reuters.com/graphics/VIDEO-GAMES/MENTAL-HEALTH/akpeewkqgpr/?ref=davidnunez.com), and the same one wearing cute overalls, tasteful makeup, and brand deals in every [cottagecore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottagecore?ref=davidnunez.com) and homesteading feed.

Not all of it restores, though. Slow, textured, process-watching is one thing; the frictionless thumb-swipe through an infinite feed is another, and the second kind [leaves people more bored](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2024/08/online-videos-boredom?ref=davidnunez.com), not less. 

---

I want to resist the easy version of this, the one where the moral is "real labor is what we truly needed all along." 

It isn't.

I'll grant that all of this is a first-world discussion. You are reading this email on a device made from [materials mined in conditions](https://malwarwick-98471.medium.com/how-modern-day-slavery-powers-our-cell-phones-and-electric-cars-1e811984915e?ref=davidnunez.com) incompatible with a joyful life. It and the infrastructure on which all of this runs are assembled by human fingers engaging in labor that you have, until just this moment, likely forgotten happens relentlessly in [places around the globe](https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/photographing-congos-cobalt-empire?ref=davidnunez.com). Some of that labor [breaks brains](https://cwa-union.org/ghost-workers-ai-machine?ref=davidnunez.com) as much as it breaks backs. You'll never watch any of this on TikTok. 

Chosen effort and forced effort are not the same animal, which is why an hour on a [Peloton](https://www.onepeloton.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) feels like a reward and an hour of identical exertion on a job site feels like being used up. 

And why an hour in a lithium mine is not something I'm going to spend my "hard earned" money on so I can cosplay real work in exchange for slave wages. Nor am I going to play games about the [3rd hourly-waged job a single parent](https://www.statista.com/chart/35609/number-of-americans-who-have-multiple-jobs/?srsltid=AfmBOoopDAdy2prcMLwZuXtPDlpFU1y57UF-UE17jdw4dBQff-n7STHw&ref=davidnunez.com) has to take in the United States to pay for their most basic medical expenses.

Leisure exercise and occupational labor even [diverge in their effects on the body](https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/leisure-time-exercise-better-than-work-related-physical-activity?ref=davidnunez.com). 

Nobody's nostalgic for drudgery. What we miss is narrower and more specific: the phenomenology of consequential effort, which is friction, closure, a visible improvement, and stakes small enough to be safe... at least to us, as the end user. The screen took that texture out of our days, and now it sells it back as a toy.

If virtual chores keep handing me the closure my real days lack, do they heal the deficit or only numb it? I can't tell, and the honest answer is probably both. The research is strong on games as [short-term stress relief](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7952082/?ref=davidnunez.com) and quiet on the thing I actually want to know: whether a fake finished pile feeds the same part of a person as a real one does, or just settles me enough to go back to the rectangle tomorrow. 

A relief that makes the underlying lack easier to tolerate is not, by itself, a cure.

You can get the balm *and* the splinters from the same glass screen.

## Signals Worth Tracking

**The honest fake.** I've spent a few of these letters nervous about the counterfeit pouring in: [AI slop on every platform](https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/882956/ai-deepfake-detection-labels-c2pa-instagram-youtube?ref=davidnunez.com), [synthetic output arriving faster than anyone can label it](https://igp.sipa.columbia.edu/news/ai-slop-and-information-ecosystem-insights-crosssector-convening?ref=davidnunez.com), [the line between real and fake coming apart](https://www.stimson.org/2026/ai-in-the-age-of-fake-imagined-content/?ref=davidnunez.com), and a new job called [botsitting](https://www.businessinsider.com/botsitting-frustrating-ai-strategist-hires-humans-instead-2026-6?ref=davidnunez.com), where humans babysit the machines that are pretending to do the work. The firewood game is fake too, every pixel of it. And it may be the most honest thing on my screen, because it never claims to be anything else. It doesn't pretend I heated a house or logged a billable hour. This year Valve started [requiring studios to disclose AI-generated content](https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/3862463747997849618?ref=davidnunez.com) on Steam, a small institutional confession: this is simulated, and here's how. The chopping toy announces its own unreality. My inbox, filling with tidy, earnest messages I can't be sure a person touched, does not. Last week, I wrote that [nobody can draw a bicycle from memory](https://davidnunez.com/nobody-can-draw-a-bicycle/), that some shapes only live in your hands. This is the flip side of that coin. When the real gets hard to prove, the thing that admits it's a game might be the last screen you can trust.

**When the machines do the chopping.** Job Simulator meant its premise as a gag: the robots took the work, so play at it for laughs. Now it's aging into a forecast. As real physical labor gets automated out from under us, "work you can feel" may survive mostly as something you buy back in toy form. The firewood is already fake. 

Watch for the day the axe is too. 

In the meantime, I'm going to keep chopping virtual logs and broccoli.

/ David

---

**Listening:** ["Timber"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHUbLv4ThOo&ref=davidnunez.com), Pitbull ft. Kesha. Performed by two people who have never chopped down a tree in their lives. On theme.

**Playing:** [Firewood](https://screen.toys/firewood/?ref=davidnunez.com). Four minutes, sound on. Don't overthink it.

**Watching:** [Primitive Technology](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA?ref=davidnunez.com). One man, no narration, a hut rising out of mud and rock. It'll do more for your nervous system than this newsletter did.

**Reading:** [*Shop Class as Soulcraft*](https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/shop-class-as-soulcraft?ref=davidnunez.com), Matthew Crawford. The best case for why the engine that either runs or doesn't beats the email nobody ever reads.
### Nobody Can Draw a Bicycle
URL: https://davidnunez.com/nobody-can-draw-a-bicycle/
Last updated: 2026-07-02T19:05:29.000Z
A quick one this week as I'm heads-down on a few things I'm genuinely excited about.

The links below all rhyme with what I keep circling in these letters: the physical, you-had-to-be-there world refusing to be faked. (Mostly. One of them is a gorgeously gross fake from the animal kingdom, and I've decided to root for her.)

## Signals Worth Tracking

**REI taught an AI to draw a bicycle. Turns out, it had never ridden one.**

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/ai-bike-photo3-jpeg-t-1782387271.jpg)

Bicycle built for AI (via Petapixel)

REI, the boardroom in a fleece vest cosplaying as a hippie commune, posted an AI-generated ad for a road bike where [the handlebars sprout out of the back of the seat](https://petapixel.com/2026/06/23/cycling-brand-is-mocked-over-ai-image-of-handlebars-protruding-from-bike-seat/?ref=davidnunez.com), the frame has disc and rim brakes at the same time, and the rider's pinky is doing something no pinky has done. Cyclists clocked it in minutes. (Best comment: "The good news is that bicycles continue to completely defeat AI.")

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/fecu5-7vkau1zic-t-1782387395.jpg)

“Are you human?” I don’t even know anymore.

And it isn't just the machines that get it wrong. Ask a person to [draw a bicycle from memory,](https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/?ref=davidnunez.com) and most of them hand you something just as impossible: the chain looped around nothing, a frame that would fold the second you sat on it. We ride these things our whole lives and still can't picture how they hold together. So the bicycle defeats the model that's never ridden one and the commuter who rides one daily, which makes me suspect some shapes only live in your hands, never your head. And then there's the fake that actually worked: pro cycling spent years hunting [tiny motors hidden inside otherwise-real race bikes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCVQbXmr5g0&ref=davidnunez.com), a fraud that fooled everyone precisely because the bike underneath was genuine.

**A 24-hour store in Hong Kong staffed by one employee, a humanoid robot.**

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1782387440.jpg)

This robot never gets a lunch break (via SCMP)

No people on the floor, [just the robot running the whole shop](https://futurism.com/robots-and-machines/hong-store-no-employees-robot?ref=davidnunez.com). Forget the hardware for a second. A store is a tiny social contract, strangers cooperating without thinking about it, and somebody just quietly deleted the humans from it. I'm curious what it would feel like to shop there for a week and notice every small moment you'd want a person, and the robot can't be one. I suspect those little gaps are the real spec sheet for the next decade of robots.

**The FBI built a 22,000-square-foot fake town to rehearse cyber war.**

Our most abstract threat is [practiced in plywood storefronts and fake streetlights](https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/209999/inside-fbis-22000-sq-ft?ref=davidnunez.com). When a danger becomes too abstract to feel, we build a physical stage and act it out, as we did with flight simulators and war games. There's a whole lineage of pretend places we build to learn real things, and I'd happily fall down that hole for an afternoon. Somewhere in it is the reason the body learns faster than the briefing.

**A spider in the Amazon disguises itself as the fungus that eats spiders.**

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1782387550.jpg)

Spider cosplaying as fungus (via ScienceDaily)

Researchers in Ecuador spotted what they took for a [tiny mushroom on the underside of a leaf](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/06/260617032201.htm?ref=davidnunez.com). It turned out to be a new spider, *Taczanowskia waska*, evolved to look exactly like the parasitic fungus that infects and kills spiders. A whole animal whose survival plan is to take on the form of the thing that murders its own kind. Nature has been shipping deepfakes a few million years longer than we have. I can't stop wondering what finally gives this one away, the tiny tell that a hungry bird can read that we can't. That seems to be the whole game lately, finding the seam in a perfect fake. Are we the spider or the fungus in this metaphor?

**The personal website is coming back as a rage against the AI.**

I've been collecting [indie personal sites](https://personalsit.es/?ref=davidnunez.com) the way a kid catches [Pokémon](https://pokemongo.com/?ref=davidnunez.com). There's a real repatriation going on: people leaving the big platforms to build small, weird corners they actually own. Just like when I first started online.

I know it's "insightful" to say "websites and blogs and SEO are dead in the world of AI-powered searches."

I think that's exactly backward.

The [artisanal web](https://another.rodeo/artisanal-web/?ref=davidnunez.com) is where the human voice still calls out from the noise, and that's what people will actually want to read.

At least the humans I'd want to meet will.

**A French artist turned Paris's oldest bridge into a cave you can walk through.**

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1782387885.jpg)

JR wrapped the 400-year-old Pont Neuf in printed fabric and air, turning it into [a 120-meter limestone grotto](https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/06/16/on-the-pont-neuf-artist-jrs-caverne-opens-to-the-public?ref=davidnunez.com), free to enter, scored by Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk. It existed for three weeks (it closes June 28), and it only works if you physically go stand inside it. Part of me is annoyed I'm stuck in a metaphorical cave in Boston instead of standing in that one in Paris. The other part is taking notes. A thing that only exists if you show up in person, for three weeks, then disappears, is the exact opposite of everything social media feeds reward. Sure, people will post this on [TikTok](https://www.tiktok.com/@timeouttravel/video/7653555145262779670?ref=davidnunez.com), but it’s not the *same* as being there. I want to understand why the version you can't screenshot is the one that actually moves people.

I think it has something to do with sitting on a bicycle seat as you [zip through](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/02/world/europe/paris-bicyles-france.html?ref=davidnunez.com) the streets of Paris.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1782388723.jpg)

Rue de Rivoli and Boulevard Sebastopol (via NYTimes)

/ David

---

**On repeat:** [*Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41U78QP8nBk&ref=davidnunez.com), as "sung" by an IBM 7094 in 1961\. The first song a computer ever performed, and of course it was about a bicycle, which makes it the REI ad's great-grandparent. It's also the tune HAL sings as they switch him off, which feels about right.

**Reading:** [*How to Do Nothing*](https://www.librarything.com/work/22804892/t/How-to-Do-Nothing-Resisting-the-Attention-Economy?ref=davidnunez.com), Jenny Odell. Her case for paying attention to the physical world instead of the platforms is 2026 in a nutshell.
### I Built a Robot to Read My Mind and Believed It Anyway.
URL: https://davidnunez.com/i-built-a-robot-to-read-my-mind-and-believed-it-anyway/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T14:09:16.000Z
I can drive across town with total ignorant hubris. I'm 100% certain I'll arrive at my destination using the most efficient route possible. Thank you, Google Maps.

However, if you dropped me in the middle of Boston, took away my phone, and asked me to find my way home, I'd instead traverse a [random walk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random%5Fwalk?ref=davidnunez.com) until I ran out of gas and, by extension, all sense of existential purpose. Being (ahem) of "masculine persuasion," it would never occur to me to actually ask another human for directions. Gone are the days of paper [Road Atlases](https://www.reddit.com/r/GenX/comments/1smi0as/rand%5Fmcnally%5Froad%5Fatlas/?ref=davidnunez.com) in the back-seat pockets with their street indices, lookup tables, and cross-referenced submaps. The designated navigator had to have keen eyes and quick fingers to flip through the large books at critical junctures because there was no automatic rerouting if you missed the turn. Only anxious screaming and fights.

Somewhere along the way, I handed over my sense of direction to Google. It [isn't just me](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7156656/?ref=davidnunez.com): the more people lean on GPS, the worse their own navigation gets.

In London, taxi drivers have to memorize every street in the city to gain their license. This notoriously difficult test is called "[The Knowledge](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn09ep1ngklo?ref=davidnunez.com)," which makes it sound like it involves magic wands, robes, and people using words like “brilliant,” "chuffed," and "fair play” when they vanquish the examination. Mastering The Knowledge literally [reshapes the part of their brain that handles spatial memory](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.070039597?ref=davidnunez.com).

Me? I barely have the knowledge to find the grocery store that’s literally around the block from my house.

![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1541376936666-59ec998f1afd?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w0ODM4NTF8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyfHxBJTIwYmxhY2slMjBjYWIlMjBkcml2aW5nJTIwZG93biUyMGElMjBzdHJlZXQlMjBuZXh0JTIwdG8lMjB0YWxsJTIwYnVpbGRpbmdzJTIwdW5pdGVkJTIwa2luZ2RtU2FtdWVsJTIwSGFnZ2VyfGVufDB8fHx8MTc4MTc5MzQxMHww&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)

## Signal: Am I the programmer, or just the operator?

Early this week, I had coffee with [Guy Fedorkow](https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-whirlwind-computer-at-chm/?ref=davidnunez.com), who studies a [1950s computer called Whirlwind](https://ethw.org/Milestones%3AWhirlwind%5FComputer%2C%5F1944-59?ref=davidnunez.com) at the [MIT Museum](https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/?ref=davidnunez.com). To debug programs that exist on punch tapes older than almost anyone reading this, he uses a variety of techniques to decipher, emulate, and patch gaps in the machine's ancient code.

He's a scholar of software as an artifact.

Sometimes he uses AI to help with the (often tedious) work. It makes mistakes, and he catches them because he can still reason about the layers underneath the prompt. He understands the nuances of *style* and the *context* in which humans once worked with the machine. These are abstractions that an AI might find irrelevant and [annoyingly human](https://www.digitalpreservation.gov/documents/PreservingEXE%5Ffinal.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) (pdf), though they are thoroughly embedded in the culture on which everything else is built.

In the same way, when I'm following the Google Maps blue dot, sometimes I *know* it's taking me the long way, so I override it, even though the algorithm sometimes knows something I don't about [road conditions ahead](https://blog.google/products/maps/google-maps-101-how-ai-helps-predict-traffic-and-determine-routes/?ref=davidnunez.com).

There's the person who turns an idea into the steps a machine follows: **the programmer**.

And there's the person who runs the machine without needing to know what's under the hood: **the operator**.

The blue dot makes me the operator of my own commute. I follow the instructions, I don't write them. I'm nowhere near ["close to the metal"](https://wiki.c2.com/?CloseToTheMetal=&ref=davidnunez.com). Both are real ways to get where you're going, and you can slide from one to the other without ever deciding to.

People have been nervous about this for as long as we've had the tools. When [Grace Hopper](https://ethw.org/Milestones%3AA-0%5FCompiler%5Fand%5FInitial%5FDevelopment%5Fof%5FAutomatic%5FProgramming%2C%5F1951-1952?ref=davidnunez.com) built one of the first compilers in the early 1950s, people insisted it couldn't possibly work. There was serious debate over whether the convenience of "automatic programming" would outpace human understanding, and whether there would be [any need for human programmers at all](https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/FORTRAN/paper/p165-backus.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/grace_hopper_and_univac-t-1781793574.jpg)

Grace Hopper, who built a compiler people insisted was impossible, because everyone knew computers could only do arithmetic. Smithsonian Institution (SI Neg. 83-14878), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Sound familiar?

As the tools get better at handing us finished things, we shift our role from the programmer of our work to the operator.

It's a quiet trade, and an old worry. [Calculators](https://www.nctm.org/News-and-Calendar/Messages-from-the-President/Archive/Lee-V%5F-Stiff/Making-Calculator-Use-Add-Up/?ref=davidnunez.com) did not make us mathematically helpless, but every time a tool moves you from doing to watching, the muscle you stop using goes slack: lean on the autopilot and your [manual flying](https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/aircraft/air%5Fcert/design%5Fapprovals/human%5Ffactors/OUFPMS%5FReport.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) gets rusty enough that regulators now nag airlines to make pilots hand-fly more often.

Will we even notice the moment it happens?

## Probe: I built a tool, trusted it, then opened the hood

Like most people with too many ideas, I keep a graveyard of half-thoughts: hundreds of notes, sparks I meant to chase and mostly didn't. A few months ago, with a lot of AI help, I built a little tool to dig through the pile and tell me where to spend my attention. It reads every note, groups them by topic, and ranks the topics into a tidy leaderboard: *here's what you keep circling back to. Start at the top.*

It worked. It handed me a clean, confident table, and I believed it. I shifted what I actually worked on based on where things landed. I was the happy operator, reading the scoreboard, not the math behind it. And that's fine, mostly. The whole point of a good tool is to stop doing the boring part by hand.

Then I peeked under the hood.

I'd quietly built the ranker twice. The first version scored each topic by how much I kept *returning* to it, basically, how big the pile was. A few days later, I built a second, smarter version that scored by what had actually *paid off*, which topics had turned into finished work. Two reasonable ways to rank the same pile, and I'd never put their answers side by side. So I did. I ran both and laid the leaderboards side by side.

They didn't just differ. They contradicted each other at the very top. The first tool crowned my single most important topic, the obvious thing to do next. The second buried that exact same topic so far down that it fell off the list entirely. One had even sorted 58 notes into a topic, where the other counted 8\. Same notes, same morning, opposite verdicts.

I'd been steering by one of these dials for weeks, and it had never occurred to me to check it against the other, because each one, alone, looked completely trustworthy. Clean table. Confident numbers. A ranked list in the calm, authoritative voice of a thing that has Done The Math.

That voice, of course, was partially mine. I built it… or at least had AI build it. I'd handed my own judgment a megaphone and mistaken the megaphone for a second opinion.

When I finally read the code to figure out the discrepancy, the cause was almost insulting in its smallness. To decide what counted as a "topic," each version matched notes against a list of keywords, and the two lists had quietly drifted apart as I tinkered. In one spot, the only difference was a single stray space in front of a word. That space was the whole gap between "your number one priority" and "didn't make the cut."

| ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-06-18_at_10-42-34_2x-t-1781793778.png) | ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-06-18_at_10-44-57_2x-t-1781793914.png) |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |

## Component: The real risk is the output you stop checking

I had the danger exactly backward, and I think a lot of people do.

I'd assumed the threat of AI-assisted work was the code I *couldn't read*, the black box, the incomprehensible layer where I'd lose the plot. That moment never came. Every line was readable. I could rebuild the whole tool from scratch if I had the time. By definition, I was the programmer the entire time, and I still nearly steered my week off a cliff.

I didn't lose my grip to complexity. I lost it to a clean output I never **cross-examined**, a confident answer I never thought to question because confidence felt like correctness. At some layer of abstraction, I *was* programming.

This has a name, and it predates the chatbots by forty years. Human-factors researchers call it [automation bias](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3240751/?ref=davidnunez.com): the better a system runs, the less you scrutinize it, until you stop being the pilot and become a [relay](https://doi.org/10.1016/0005-1098%2883%2990046-8?ref=davidnunez.com) for the machine's [confidence](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0018720810376055?ref=davidnunez.com). At the dramatic end, it has a body count, crews who trusted a confident-but-wrong instrument [all the way down](https://bea.aero/en/investigation-reports/notified-events/detail/accident-to-the-airbus-a330-203-registered-f-gzcp-and-operated-by-air-france-occured-on-06-01-2009-in-the-atlantic-ocean/?ref=davidnunez.com).

The bloodless version is already loose in business.

In October 2025, KPMG, a firm with a quarter of a million employees, published a glossy report on AI whose citations turned out to be mostly fictional: of 45 references, [40 of the 45 titles were fake](https://gptzero.me/news/investigations-kpmg/?ref=davidnunez.com), padded with invented authors, fused sources, and 2019 press releases passed off as proof of 2025 technology. An AI tool had produced confident, authoritative-looking references, and somewhere inside a 250,000-person firm, nobody checked. GPTZero has a name for the genre: *vibe citations*. The report looked like it had been audited because it was formatted like research. It held up right until the organizations it described actually read it: UBS, the NHS, and Transport for London told the *Financial Times* the claims about them were untrue or misleading, and this June, KPMG [pulled the report](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/13/kpmg-pulls-report-on-ai-usage-due-to-apparent-hallucinations/?ref=davidnunez.com). For the record, the firm's own AI policy requires "human oversight to validate content and verify independent sources."

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-06-18_at_10-55-15_2x-t-1781794523.png)

40 of its 45 citations were fake. It still looked like research. (via GPTZero)

My version cost me a slightly mis-prioritized week. Same shape. Wildly different stakes.

What keeps you honest is cross-examining the layers that carry your judgment, checking them against a second source, or just your own gut. Understanding every layer beneath you, or above you, matters far less than that. You can be a perfectly competent programmer and still slide into operator-of-your-own-judgment the moment you trust a dashboard you've stopped auditing.

A while back, I wrote about [my calendar lying to me](https://davidnunez.com/my-calendar-lied-to-me-and-i-have-only-myself-to-blame/), a tool I'd handed too much authority over my day. This is the same disease, one level deeper and perhaps more insidious. Back then, the tool was wrong, and I noticed. This time, the tool was wrong, and *it sounded exactly like me being right.*

## Takeaway: The second-instrument test

If you run anything (a team, a budget, a roadmap, a grocery list, your life’s purpose), you're increasingly being handed clean, confident, AI-generated outputs to decide from. Summaries. Scores. Rankings. Recommendations.

The ones that will catch you off guard aren't the results you don't understand. You’ll get trouble from the ones you understand so well that you forget to question them.

A clean number is uniquely good at switching off your suspicion. We [reliably believe](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3062901/?ref=davidnunez.com) we understand things we can't actually explain (try diagramming exactly how a toilet flushes, and if you are so confident, what happens EXACTLY to the water on its long voyage through a treatment plant before it's ready for the next flush).

We treat [confidence and polish](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6166527/?ref=davidnunez.com) as cheap proxies for being correct. A ranked table looks audited because it is formatted like an answer. And the second a number starts running a decision, [it starts to bend](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-17295-5%5F4?ref=davidnunez.com). It’s [Goodhart's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s%5Flaw?ref=davidnunez.com), the reason every metric you lean on eventually games you back.

Call it **the second-instrument test:**

1. **Find the output you're steering by.** The dashboard, the score, the AI summary you'll actually make a call from.
2. **Ask what your second instrument is.** A different method, a different source, or just your own gut estimate, that you could check this against *before* deciding.
3. **If the answer is "there isn't one," *that's* the finding.** A single confident number with nothing to triangulate against isn't information yet. It's a machine's guess.
4. **Spot-check where it would hurt most.** You don't have to audit everything. Audit the one row that meaningfully pivots your decision. Pull that thread with your human hand.
5. **Notice the voice.** If an output sounds authoritative *because you built it or commissioned it,* don’t assume it’s corroboration... It might just be an echo.

None of this is new, which is reassuring. It's just triangulation: why patients get [second opinions](https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2815%2900369-1/fulltext?ref=davidnunez.com) (which change the diagnosis about 15% of the time and the treatment plan 37%), why safety-critical software gets [written twice by separate teams](https://www.inf.pucrs.br/~zorzo/cs/n-versionprogramming.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) so the versions can disagree, why the cheapest fix for a confident wrong hunch is to [argue the opposite](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6527215/?ref=davidnunez.com) out loud.

What protects you isn't understanding every layer. Nobody has time for that, and chasing it is its own trap. You should develop an intuition for which layers carry your unique judgment, and keep a second instrument pointed at exactly those layers. Let the *plumbing* disappear. Never let your *human judgment* go down that same drain.

## Signals Worth Tracking

A few things I'm following that orbit this:

- **Your brain on ChatGPT.** A 2025 MIT preprint [wired people up to EEGs](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872?ref=davidnunez.com) while they wrote essays with and without AI, and reported that the AI group was less engaged and remembered their own writing less. The internet took it as proof AI rots your brain. Then, careful people published the [reasons not to](https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00856?ref=davidnunez.com) read it that way. Read both, believe neither all the way. That is the second-instrument exercise in action.
- **Machines move your confidence, not just your to-do list.** A [2025 study](https://arxiv.org/html/2501.12868v1?ref=davidnunez.com) found that people's own sense of certainty drifted toward the AI's confidence and remained so even after the AI was gone.
- **Consider the opposite.** A [cheap debiasing trick](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6527215/?ref=davidnunez.com) that reliably works: before you commit to a take, force yourself to make the case for the other one.
- **A man is resurrecting a 1950s computer, tape by tape.** Guy Fedorkow's [Whirlwind recovery project](https://www.historia-mollimercium.com/whirlwind/ww.html?ref=davidnunez.com) is a quiet marvel: archived media, a homemade simulator, and ancestral code coaxed back to life.

**The toilet test.** You are very sure you understand how everyday objects work. You mostly don't. Psychologists call it the [illusion of explanatory depth](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3062901/?ref=davidnunez.com), and it's a 90-second humility generator: pick a flush toilet, a zipper, a fridge, and try to actually explain the mechanism. The gap between "I get it" and "I can explain it" is this whole essay.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-t-1781794228.png)

via Lee Knight

## Coda: when the machine stops waiting for you

Right now, most AI systems hand you an answer and wait. That's the easy entry point. The second instrument can be you, a source, or a second run. But the tools are starting to *act* on their own now, booking the thing, sending the email, moving the money. "Go check the answer" stops working when there's no pause to check, much less a discerning critique of where your checking actually matters.

The good news is that some of us see it coming. The cross-examination is being [built into the agents themselves](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/demystifying-evals-for-ai-agents?ref=davidnunez.com): test suites before release, monitors after, [explicit confirmations](https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/839e66fc-602c-48bf-81d3-b21eacc3459d/chatgpt%5Fagent%5Fsystem%5Fcard.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) before anything irreversible, one model [grading another's work](https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/meta-releases-ai-model-that-can-check-other-ai-models-work-2024-10-18/?ref=davidnunez.com).

However… and this is the point: Just because I tell myself I am a competent AI operator/programmer/builder, a cross-checker that checks my work only helps if it can fail *in ways the thing it's checking doesn't*.

Two copies of the same confident mistake are just an echo chamber with a quorum of wrong opinions.

In other words, there’s some construction ahead. Pass me the Road Atlas.

/ David

---

**On repeat:** [Can't Find My Way Home](https://open.spotify.com/track/3VyJGPYr2DF9gdBNosSao4?ref=davidnunez.com) by Blind Faith, a band named for the exact thing this issue warns against.

**Reading:** [The Tyranny of Metrics](https://timharford.com/2018/02/review-of-the-tyranny-of-metrics-by-jerry-muller/?ref=davidnunez.com) (Jerry Muller): a case for why a dashboard turns a partial truth into false authority.

**Building:** the idea-triage tool above as part of a larger Signal Path infrastructure, getting excited about where this is leading. AI facilitated creative pipelines vs. AI-generated creation.
### I was looking for a Nigel I could download
URL: https://davidnunez.com/i-was-looking-for-a-nigel-i-could-download/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T13:55:23.000Z
I recently saw [The Devil Wears Prada 2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FDevil%5FWears%5FPrada%5F2?ref=davidnunez.com). It calls back to the [original movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458352/?ref=davidnunez.com) from 2006 and the scene everyone can recite and from which [countless memes](https://www.tiktok.com/tag/ceruleansweater?ref=davidnunez.com) sprung forth as part of the movie’s overwhelming marketing machine.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-06-11_at_08-19-34_2x-t-1781180530.png)

“This... stuff?” (The Devil Wears Prada, 2006)

Andy, who is new to Runway magazine and the industry, thinks she is above all this fashion nonsense. This gig is merely a stopping point on the way to a “real” journalism job. During a session where the creative team evaluates two near-identical belts, Andy smirks and inadvertently dismisses what she sees as an absurdly trivial business. She is, after all, just learning about all "[this stuff](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rDTRuCOs9g&ref=davidnunez.com)."

“Stuff.”

Miranda (the titular “Devil” of the fashion world and the head of the magazine) makes Andy pay for that choice of word.

Instantly.

In a monologue filled with pointed needles and razor-sharp tailor shears Miranda ripped the seams of Andy’s entire worldview. All of it punctuated with side eyes that only Meryl Streep should ever be allowed to deliver.

Miranda focused on the lumpy blue sweater Andy was wearing. It was not blue, you see, it was [cerulean](https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-the-cerulean-sweater?ref=davidnunez.com), and the exact shade was chosen for her years earlier by the billion-dollar industry in which she was now participating. Even the sensible, low-effort “stuff” Andy threw on every morning was not free from the fashion world’s influence.

Andy thought she chose to opt out. She was wearing the proof that she never had a choice to begin with.

I side with Andy in that scene, which is the problem. I believe I can perch above “stuff” with no real idea what any of it is for, blissfully unaware of all the machinery and algorithms that got me to this point.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-t-1781180898.gif)

The one who rescues Andy is not Miranda. It is [Nigel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FDevil%5FWears%5FPrada%5F%28film%29?ref=davidnunez.com), played by Stanley Tucci, who takes one look, walks her into the closet, and hands her the right things until she comes out someone who belongs, "You'll take what I give you and you'll like it."

That is the fantasy: not the authority, but the attention.

Last Thursday I was on my bedroom floor, turning winter into summer, surrounded by my own pile of stuff. Flannel shoved into vacuum bags, t-shirts pulled out, the whole drawer in uncoordinated pieces. And I caught myself doing what I always do elbow-deep in it: wishing a Nigel would walk in, look at the pile and at me with extreme, snarky judgement, and just make the calls.

The bar, fittingly, is the man who plays him. [Stanley Tucci](https://www.today.com/popculture/stanley-tucci-tj-maxx-ad-devil-wears-prada-2-interview-rcna343426?ref=davidnunez.com) looks like someone who just smells nice: nothing flashy, nothing you could point at and call his “signature style.” He’s somehow old-fashioned and contemporary at once. People build [entire moodboards of the man](https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVJ3s8yp0=/?embedMode=view%5Fonly%5Fwithout%5Fui&moveToViewport=-6538%2C1168%2C904%2C513&embedId=302478434385&ref=davidnunez.com), and I find myself studying all of them, taking notes.

It’s just his whole gestalt: effortless, handled, classic.

| ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1781182248.jpg)Stanley Tucci, a man who looks like he smells nice. The look is not free. (Carlos Alvarez, Getty Images) | ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1781182277.jpg)Stanley Tucci, a man who can model Levi’s 501 Jeans. (Levi’s Jeans ad, 1985) |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

But of course his look *is* handled, and with *enormous* effort to remain *current*.

He has the money for quality clothes that actually fit (I suspect he and his tailor have a very strong understanding of each other), he has the face and the frame (he [modeled for a living](https://www.hellomagazine.com/fashion/celebrity-style/514121/stanley-tucci-unrecognizable-throwback-modeling-photos-levis/?ref=davidnunez.com)), and taste. How do you quantify *taste*?

Behind all of it, there must exist a team whose entire job is *him*. Even the man I want to be my Nigel has a Nigel of his own, right?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-06-11_at_11-00-52_2x-t-1781190069.png)

Tucci’s outfits from “Italy” tv series (via Miro moodboard)

Or so I hope. It’s so much easier to believe that “Effortless” is a production where the 65-year old Tucci has unfair advantages rather than admit, that no, I’m not actually above it all. I’ve just made different choices… or rather no choice at all.

So here I find myself on the floor that afternoon in a pile of stale blue sweaters from a “tragic Casual Corner where \[I\], no doubt, fished \[them\] out of some clearance bin…” but I have no Nigel of my own to rescue me.

## Signal: I want a Nigel

The wish is simple. Someone (or something) with taste takes the pile off my hands and tells me what to keep. If that hope has a patron saint, she is sixteen years old in a film from 1995.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1781182578.jpg)

Cher Horowitz in a pile of her stuff. (Clueless, Paramount, 1995)

In *Clueless*, Cher Horowitz gets dressed in front of a computer that flips through her own clothes, assembles an outfit on screen, and then a motorized rack delivers the real thing to her hands. It became the most durable fashion-tech reference we have, and most people misremember it. Amy Heckerling has [said the idea came from paper dolls and Polaroids](https://www.nylon.com/fashion/cher-closet-clueless-an-oral-history?ref=davidnunez.com), from cataloguing what was already in the room. Cher's closet was never a dream about infinite clothes. It was a dream about a finite closet you could finally *see*: curation instead of generation, a better mirror instead of a bigger store.

I am not the only one who wants this. The fashion industry has been [trying to rebuild Cher's closet for thirty years](https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/fashion-is-still-trying-to-recreate-the-clueless-closet-can-ai-help?ref=davidnunez.com), and in 2026 it is still shipping new versions. Google Photos just [turned everyone's camera roll into a digital wardrobe](https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/photos/google-photos-wardrobe-feature/?ref=davidnunez.com), Clueless reference and all.

But a closet you can *see* is not the same as a Nigel who *decides*. So I went looking for a Nigel I could download.

There is a whole earnest corner of the app store built for exactly that. [Stylebook](https://www.stylebookapp.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) is a paid digital closet with outfit calendars and cost-per-wear stats. [Cladwell](https://cladwell.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) builds outfits from clothes you already own and says, right on the box, "no shopping required." [Whering](https://whering.co.uk/?ref=davidnunez.com) calls itself a closet search engine. They are earnest, a little niche, and mostly struggling, because to use any of them you first have to photograph and upload your entire wardrobe, hundreds of garments to tag and keep current forever.

Some services promise an actual Nigel. The styling boxes, [Stitch Fix](https://www.stitchfix.com/how-it-works?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Stately](https://statelymen.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) and the rest, run you through a style quiz, feed the answers to an "algorithm," assign you a stylist, and mail a box to your door every month. I tried [Trunk Club](https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/retail/nordstrom-is-shuttering-trunk-club/?ref=davidnunez.com) once: the onboarding call, the personal shopper, the app, and then a monthly box of cost-ineffective basics that mostly worked as a delivery vehicle for the upsell. Nordstrom shut the subscription down in 2022 but kept the stylists, because customers who use one [spend seven times more](https://www.retaildive.com/news/what-trunk-clubs-demise-says-about-apparel-subscriptions/624667/?ref=davidnunez.com). My Nigel was never going to save me money. Spending more was the point of him.

Pinterest [fashion boards](https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=mens+fasion&rs=typed&ref=davidnunez.com) or even certain[ TikTok accounts ](https://www.tiktok.com/discover/styling-my-boyfriend?ref=davidnunez.com)are some kind of quasi-amateur stylist forum. Influencers curate “looks” or “inspos,” but the line between what’s genuine enthusiasm and taste vs. fake profiles and affiliate links is blurry. [Reddit fashion boards](https://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/?ref=davidnunez.com) feel slightly more genuine, but they don’t really address my Nigel-gap because the onus is still on me to *decide*.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1781182760.jpg)

And the 2026 version, shipping now. (via TechCrunch)

[Alta](https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/16/alta-raises-11m-to-bring-clueless-fashion-tech-to-life-with-all-star-investors/?ref=davidnunez.com) is the same role with the human removed, an eleven-million-dollar AI stylist that even tracks whether you have worn something recently and then points you toward something new to buy. The Cher fantasy keeps getting funded, but only after it promises to function as a profitable storefront.

And most of the money is not even chasing Nigel. It is on the other side of the closet, helping you picture what you do not own yet. [H&M cloned its own models](https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/28/style/h-and-m-ai-models-intl-scli?ref=davidnunez.com) into AI twins. [Zara now generates campaign imagery with AI](https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/zara-turns-ai-generate-fashion-imagery-using-real-life-models-2025-12-18/?ref=davidnunez.com). [Aitana](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lesliekatz/2023/11/24/this-ai-generated-influencer-can-pull-in-10000-euros-a-month/?ref=davidnunez.com), a fashion influencer who does not exist, reportedly pulls in real money every month. [Guess ran AI-generated models in Vogue](https://abcnews.com/GMA/Style/controversy-stirs-ai-generated-models-new-guess-ads/story?id=124271323&ref=davidnunez.com). The useful branch stays a hobby while the generation branch becomes the industry.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1781182903.jpg)

Aitana Lopez, AI-generated fashion influencer who doesn’t have a body

A few weeks ago I went looking for new frames and tried on a dozen pairs of glasses without touching one of them. I sat on the couch, pointed my phone at my face, and watched a [Zenni](https://www.zenni.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) virtual try-on drop frame after frame onto me until I knew exactly which ones I liked. It was great, and it asked nothing of me. That was the tell. [ModiFace](https://www.modiface.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), the engine behind much of beauty try-on, [reaches close to a billion people](https://digiday.com/marketing/modiface-becoming-go-provider-augmented-reality-beauty-brands/?ref=davidnunez.com). [Sephora's Virtual Artist logged two hundred million shades tried on](https://next.reality.news/news/sephoras-modiface-powered-ar-app-gives-users-even-more-makeup-combinations-hands-tutorials-0176548/?ref=davidnunez.com) in two years. For eyewear, try-on [lifts purchases twenty to forty percent and cuts returns by about as much](https://fittingbox.com/en/resources/blog/how-virtual-try-on-boosts-eyewear-sales-a-data-driven-look?ref=davidnunez.com). [Warby Parker is even retiring the Home Try-On program that made it famous](https://www.retailtouchpoints.com/topics/market-news/warby-parker-sunsets-the-offering-that-made-its-name-home-try-on?ref=davidnunez.com), the one that mailed you five real frames, for the version that lives on your screen.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-06-11_at_09-06-01_2x-t-1781183191.png)

A dozen frames, none of them touched. Octi behind me is fashionable, but not a Nigel.

## Probe: I already built my own Nigel

None of these apps was ever going to be Nigel. They were going to be the store, in Nigel's voice. Then I realized I had already built my own Nigel.

It is a piece of cardboard.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/img_2545-jpeg-t-1781184497.jpg)

Choose from in front of the card. Worn clothes go behind it. That's the whole app.

There is a divider in every drawer (and a strip of cedar on the closet rod). The rule is simple: I only get dressed from the front of the divider, and everything that comes back from the wash goes to the back. Wear a shirt and it moves behind the line. Ignore a shirt and it stays up front, in the way.

So the front of each stack slowly fills with the exact clothes I never reach for first. When I am stuck staring at a front row with nothing sparking joy, I am allowed to dig behind the divider for an old favorite, but only if I trash or donate one of those front-row rejects first. The thing I have been avoiding becomes the toll for the thing I love.

That is the entire system. The clothes I do not wear leave the house one at a time, as the trade-off for wearing the clothes I actually like (or still fit, if we are being honest). I never sit down in a marathon weekend to "declutter." It just happens while I get dressed… organically.

Anyone who works around computers will recognize the move. It is a [cache eviction policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache%5Freplacement%5Fpolicies?ref=davidnunez.com): keep what gets used, quietly drop what does not. I built one in my underwear drawer without meaning to. I just wanted to stop feeling the burden of shirts I do not wear.

It is also the opposite of how we are usually sold this problem. [KonMari](https://konmari.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Project 333](https://project333.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) are ceremonies. You clear a Saturday, pull everything onto the bed, hold each thing, wait for some kind of joyful feeling, and decide its whole fate in one heroic and weirdly ritualistic sitting.

There is a [Proper™ way](https://www.youtube.com/results?search%5Fquery=konmari+folding&ref=davidnunez.com) to fold and sort your t-shirts, and all of it strikes me as perverse Zen consumerism: serenity you can buy, discipline you can perform. Or a humblebrag with better lighting. Or, worse, a whole content genre that sells the feeling of having it together.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/file-folding-and-organizing-clothes-with-the-konmari-method-t-1781183860.jpg)

Performing calm fashion. (via Abby Organizes)

These dresser drawers photograph beautifully, but fall apart by Tuesday. Even Marie Kondo [gave up tidying](https://fortune.com/2023/01/27/marie-kondo-home-messy-spark-joy-three-kids/?ref=davidnunez.com) after her third kid, which is the honest endpoint of any system that asks you to perform discipline instead of removing the need for it. The performance is the product.

My cardboard asks for nothing but the thirty seconds I was already spending to get dressed… no [TikTok videos](https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/tiktok-folding-hacks-for-clothes-37251307?ref=davidnunez.com) required.

It even beats the apps at their own game. Apps need me to photograph and contribute data upload my entire wardrobe before they will do anything useful, while the cardboard just turns the closet into its own database.

Alta tracks what I have worn lately to sell me more, while the cardboard tracks the same thing to make me wear what I own. They all work by deleting friction. The cardboard is made of it and as unfashionable as it gets.

When the front of a stack finally empties, I slide the card to the back and the cycle repeats. It is never that tidy in practice, and that’s ok. I reset when the system drifts, which is about as often as I do.

## Signals Worth Tracking

### The only honest fashion app might be a repair shop

The software that serves the wearer instead of the seller keeps turning out to be about aftercare, not acquisition. [Save Your Wardrobe](https://www.lvmh.com/en/news-lvmh/save-your-wardrobe-wins-2023-lvmh-innovation-award-grand-prize-at-viva-technology?ref=davidnunez.com), which organizes repairs and alterations instead of purchases, won LVMH's 2023 innovation prize and works with real brands. It is the rare model that makes money when you keep your clothes longer, not when you replace them. When the business finally profits from "help you hold on to what you own," does the technology start pointing the same way as the person using it?

### What The Devil Wears Prada 2 is actually about

The sequel is not, despite what you might assume from the timing, about AI eating fashion. It is really about [the collapse of the old gatekeepers](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/the-devil-wears-prada-2-journalism-media-movie-1236578709/?ref=davidnunez.com), the editors whose taste used to be law, now scrambling inside a media economy that routes around them. The man I am chasing is right there in it: Tucci returns as [Nigel](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt33612209/characters/nm0001804/?ref=davidnunez.com), Runway's keeper of taste, part of the very order the algorithm is routing around. The fear is not that a machine will design the clothes, but that taste itself, the thing Tucci has and I am renting cardboard to fake, is getting disintermediated. Who gets to say what looks good when the algorithm has a vote?

---

I move the card to the back of the drawer and start the summer over. The system has drifted, the way it always does, and honestly so have I. I am not going to wake up looking like Stanley Tucci. No app or AI is going to get me there, and neither is the cardboard.

But the cardboard is the closest thing to a Nigel I am going to get. It has no taste at all. It just makes me choose, by hand, from the clothes I already own, and it is the only one in this whole story that never tries to sell me a coat.

It gives me something better: I get to be the tastemaker with the stuff I already own.

/ David

**On repeat:** [*Fashion*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-z6u5hFgPk&ref=davidnunez.com), David Bowie, 1980\. 🎶 *"Turn to the left…Ooh, fashion…Beep beep"* 🎶 

**Building:** I keep catching myself wondering whether the cardboard wants to be an app, surely I can vibe code something that will choose my outfits for me. Then I remember my system works precisely because there isn't some grandiose technology in some etherial space. Building a few things lately that are supposed to stay small and more analog than digital. More soon.
### A Meteor Fell and I Couldn't Find the Crowd
URL: https://davidnunez.com/a-meteor-fell-and-i-couldn-t-find-the-crowd/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T13:55:24.000Z
# A Meteor Fell from the Sky and I Couldn't Find the Crowd

*(Last week's* [*Broadcast*](https://davidnunez.com/the-card-apple-would-rather-you-not-use/) *was about a titanium card that survives because the network can't carry the gesture of producing it. This week, a much louder object, and a different thing the network turned out not to carry.)*

Puddles on the couch on a cozy, drizzly Saturday afternoon, we were half-watching something on TV neither of us will remember. I was in comfy weekend clothes, wrapped in my blanket, like a soft cocoon. Because of course it is still sometimes chilly in Boston for some reason.

It was the good kind of lazy.

Then the Boom.

Not a thud. A real boom, the kind you feel pulse along the floorboards, resonating in your chest a heartbeat before you decide what to be scared of.

Thunder? A transformer? Gas line? Something... worse? All the things you do not say out loud with someone you love in the room.

We looked at each other and neither of us had a word for it other than maybe, "Confused."

So I did what I always do, which is reach for my phone and ask several hundred thousand strangers whether they felt it too.

## Signal: The town square wasn't where I left it

What I was doing, along with [much of eastern Massachusetts at 2:11 that afternoon](https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/05/30/boston-massachusetts-meteor-boom-explosive-sound?ref=davidnunez.com), is what crisis researchers, in their charmless way, call "collective real-time sensemaking." Something sudden and ambiguous happens, and a crowd metabolizes it together. Who else heard it, and how far did it reach? Strangers become a single nervous system for an hour, passing signals up the chain until the thing has a name.

I have immersed myself in this before. I [wrote about it in 2020](https://davidnunez.com/words/the-global-derealization/), in an essay about living through what I called lower-resolution channels, the months when "the resolution of the world gets lossy." Back then a sudden event arrived as an "initial flash of primary sources followed by an immediate and devastating shockwave" of retweets. One feed, one place everyone already stood. You opened Twitter and the answer assembled itself in front of you, narrated by witnesses and experts wading in the same river. Alfred Hermida called it [ambient journalism](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=1732598&ref=davidnunez.com), an always-on awareness stream you could glance at to keep a running mental model of the world around you.

That was the baseline. So on Saturday I reached for the river, and it was not where I left it.

The boom, for the record, turned out to be [a meteor](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/meteor-explodes-over-massachusetts-what-we-know-and-where-it-landed/3957663/?ref=davidnunez.com). A rock about five feet across came in at 42,000 miles an hour and broke apart over the coast with the force of [230 tons of TNT](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/meteor-explodes-over-massachusetts-what-we-know-and-where-it-landed/3957663/?ref=davidnunez.com), dropping fragments into Cape Cod Bay.

Apparently this happens [all the time](https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/asteroid-fast-facts/?ref=davidnunez.com). Like... a disturbingly ordinary event.

> Every day, Earth is bombarded with more than 100 tons of dust and sand-sized particles.  
>  
> About once a year, an automobile-sized asteroid hits Earth’s atmosphere, creates an impressive fireball, and burns up before reaching the surface.  
>  
> Every 2,000 years or so, a meteoroid the size of a football field hits Earth and causes significant damage to the area.NASA (Asteroid Fast Facts)

Sleep well.

But I did not know any of this a the time of the May 30th Boom.

When the single feed shatters, where does "what just happened" actually get figured out now?

## Probe: I went looking for the crowd and found a hundred small ones

I did not build this experiment, I watched it. For an hour I followed a region trying to solve a mystery in real time, and paid attention to where the answer actually formed.

The old machinery still worked, but it did not feel nimble. I listened to [live police scanners](https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/33417?ref=davidnunez.com) responding to a flood of 911 calls from people in the Boston area. Even the first responders were struggling to figure out what was happening. But it confirmed that we weren't the only ones to have heard it. On X, the live thread was mostly meteorologists and local-news accounts doing careful public reasoning: [no earthquake on the USGS feed](https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/05/30/boston-massachusetts-meteor-boom-explosive-sound?ref=davidnunez.com), but a [flash on weather radar where there was no thunder](https://www.wbur.org/news/2026/05/30/boston-massachusetts-meteor-boom-explosive-sound?ref=davidnunez.com), which points at a meteor instead of a transformer. NASA posted an update… 2 days later.

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/NASASpaceAlerts/status/2061542998844887048?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2061542998844887048%7Ctwgr%5Ee8759bfde2d14f41f8690688f5e5459d52370e8b%7Ctwcon%5Es1%5F&ref%5Furl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nbcboston.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fmeteor-explodes-over-massachusetts-what-we-know-and-where-it-landed%2F3957663%2F&ref=davidnunez.com)

Useful and authoritative, and oddly like tuning into a professional wire rather than standing in a crowd in the middle of *something*. (I haven't engaged with Twitter/X in a very long while, so it felt unfamiliar to me, regardless). Over on Bluesky, a smaller cluster of weather people and academics reached the same answer, one of them narrating it live: boom in Cambridge, reports coming in on Reddit, here is the satellite image. She was not in the town square. She was [building one out of pieces](https://bsky.app/profile/dynarski.bsky.social/post/3mn3ojhbl3s2q?ref=davidnunez.com), a little Reddit and a little satellite, the truth stitched together, by hand.

Then somebody did exactly that, with slightly better tooling. Within the hour, a Somerville Redditor posted three words, "[threw together a map](https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/comments/1ts7s0b/explosion%5Ftracking%5Fmap/?ref=davidnunez.com)," and a link to a [shared Google map](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Zi2w5uUqnyxjpXESDEqFRaW2wDAnKOM&ll=42.522254697698486%2C-71.46229849999999&z=8&ref=davidnunez.com). Drop a pin where you heard the boom. The comments stopped being comments and became data: North Cambridge, Lowell, Providence, Newton, Davis Square, Reading. Someone in r/boston pulled [NOAA's GOES-19 satellite lightning data](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/meteor-explodes-over-massachusetts-what-we-know-and-where-it-landed/3957663/?ref=davidnunez.com), found the flash, and turned a raw government feed into a [plain-language explainer](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1tsapwh/meteor%5Fdata%5Fsource%5Fof%5Floud%5Fboom%5Fearlier/?ref=davidnunez.com) before a single newsroom had a headline up. NASA's own [event page for the fall](https://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/meteorite-falls/events/cape-cod-bay-ma?ref=davidnunez.com) was the same instinct in a lab coat, just slower.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-06-04_at_08-29-34_2x-t-1780576209.png)

A neighbor's Google map, an hour after the boom. (via r/Somerville)

The fastest, most useful response to "what just happened" was not a post. It was a build. The quickest people in the crowd reached not for the megaphone but for the toolbox.

## Component: When the shared feed fragments, sensemaking becomes a build step

**The nimblest civic response to a sudden event is no longer a post. It is an instrument.**

In 2020, the high-status move was to be first to publish: first to the clip or the quote-tweet that framed the moment for everyone. There is a new rung above it now: first to instrument. First to stand up the map, first to turn a raw feed into something the rest of us can read.

This works because building got cheap and fast. The thing that used to need [a mapping team and a week](https://www.businessinsider.com/felt-ai-mapping-platform-funding-geographic-information-system-2025-7?ref=davidnunez.com) now needs a sentence and a coffee. [Cursor](https://cursor.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) writes the code. [Felt](https://www.businessinsider.com/felt-ai-mapping-platform-funding-geographic-information-system-2025-7?ref=davidnunez.com) turns plain English into a map. When the town square fragmented, the crowd did not go quiet, it went handmade.

The trade is real in both directions. We gained speed and resolution... a crowd that reached "meteor" off an absent earthquake reading while the institutions were still drafting. But we lost the shared "we," the single place where one answer becomes everyone's answer at the same moment. Trust moved with it, away from "I saw it on Twitter" and toward whether a post [shows its work](https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1tsapwh/meteor%5Fdata%5Fsource%5Fof%5Floud%5Fboom%5Fearlier/?ref=davidnunez.com), the satellite frame next to the dog that did not bark. And a lot of the real sensemaking went dark, into Nextdoor, group chats, the neighborhood Discord, the family text thread, rooms that matter enormously and archive nothing.

## Signals Worth Tracking

### The instrument that became infrastructure

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-t-1780576279.png)

What 'first to instrument' looks like once it grows up. (via Watch Duty)

The Saturday map was a toy. [Watch Duty](https://www.watchduty.org/how-it-works/overview?ref=davidnunez.com) is what the same instinct looks like at scale. A nonprofit started in 2021 by volunteers listening to fire-scanner radio now runs [18 automated radio devices](https://www.fastcompany.com/91257639/l-a-wildfire-tracking-app-watch-duty?ref=davidnunez.com) and 150-odd active and retired first responders, pushing confirmed wildfire and evacuation alerts faster than most official channels. It went from [1.9 million users to 7.2 million](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/watch-duty-app-los-angeles-wildfires-warnings-evacuations/?ref=davidnunez.com) in a year and became a lifeline during the L.A. fires. When does a homemade instrument quietly become the system of record everyone trusts?

### The dashboards vanish faster than the posts

The strange archival problem of 2026 is that the *tooling* layer is more fragile than the talking layer. The Saturday map, the satellite screenshots, the throwaway dashboards: most of them will be gone or unfindable in a month, while the jokes about the boom live forever. We are building a real-time civic memory with no archive. The durable counter-example is something like [Development Seed's open fire-event explorer](https://developmentseed.org/blog/2025-06-03-fire-exploration-tool/?ref=davidnunez.com), built to last on public satellite data. Who, if anyone, preserves the instruments we build to understand a moment?

### The 48-hour moving model

Watch the official numbers shift in public. The first estimates put the rock at three feet and [300 tons of TNT](https://www.space.com/stargazing/meteor-showers/massive-boom-over-northeastern-us-was-a-meteor-explosion-as-powerful-as-300-tons-of-tnt-nasa-confirms?ref=davidnunez.com); two days later NASA had it at five feet, 5.6 metric tons, and [230 tons of TNT](https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/meteor-explodes-over-massachusetts-what-we-know-and-where-it-landed/3957663/?ref=davidnunez.com). [Avi Loeb weighed in](https://avi-loeb.medium.com/avi-loeb-comments-on-the-meteor-explosion-over-the-boston-area-on-may-30-2026-62f53b20b7f0?ref=davidnunez.com) with his read of the energy. The event never moved, but the shared model did, out loud, over 48 hours. How do you show a fact that is still settling, without either overclaiming or shrugging?

### Filed under: the sublime, documented by someone in a muffin costume

![Instagram Post](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/instagram_screenshot_dy-xpwav2ds_1780576513_e9f91f66-jpeg-t-1780576517.jpg)

My favorite artifact of the weekend is the [collection of videos](https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2026/06/01/best-videos-of-saturdays-meteor-boom-over-new-england/?ref=davidnunez.com) where the meteor is incidental: doorbell cams, a dashcam near 495, and one person who caught the boom of the year while fully dressed as a blueberry muffin. Someday I want to write about how the most powerful events now reach us as the blurry background of someone else's ordinary Saturday. Ring cameras as the 24/7 news factory. Not today. But I am keeping the muffin.

---

Back on the couch with L, phone finally face-down. A week ago I wrote that the card survives where the network cannot carry the gesture. Saturday taught me the sequel: the instrument survives where the feed cannot carry the *we*. We lost the town square, and in its place we all quietly learned to build, which might be the only kind of "we" that scales now.

So the next time something detonates into your awareness, what will you build?

/ David

**On repeat:** [*Skyfall*](https://open.spotify.com/track/6VObnIkLVruX4UVyxWhlqm?ref=davidnunez.com), Adele, 2012\. 🎶 *"Feel the earth move, and then / hear my heart burst again…"* 🎶 (For once, the sky actually fell. Cape Cod Bay caught it.)

**Reading:** Kate Starbird on [rumors as collective sensemaking](https://www.cip.uw.edu/2023/12/06/rumors-collective-sensemaking-kate-starbird/?ref=davidnunez.com), the cleanest current frame for treating a confused crowd as a signal-processing system instead of a mob.

**Building:** something pointed in a new direction. The deeper I get into "first to instrument," the more I think the next things I build won't be for me, they'll be for other people. More on that soon.
### The Card Apple Would Rather You Not Use
URL: https://davidnunez.com/the-card-apple-would-rather-you-not-use/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T13:55:24.000Z
*(Last week's* [*Broadcast*](https://davidnunez.com/the-pocket-test/) *was about a small genre of apps that thank you for leaving them. This week is about a different small genre, also hiding in plain sight: the* [*physical card you did not actually need*](https://www.apple.com/apple-card/?ref=davidnunez.com)*.)*

## Signal: Goodbye, Plastic. Hello, Care Instructions.

Apple Support, the wing of the company that unironically calls themselves geniuses but actually just exists to tell you how much it will cost to replace your cracked iPhone screen, has a web page called [*How to clean your Apple Card*](https://support.apple.com/en-us/101945?ref=davidnunez.com).

Just so we’re clear: despite what the marketing people say, the Apple Card is a credit card.

And that [page](https://support.apple.com/en-us/101945?ref=davidnunez.com) is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a page describing, in persnickety detail, how to properly keep your precious credit card free from the grit and grime of daily purchases.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-05-28_at_10-15-01_2x-t-1779977718.png)

(via Apple Support)

It tells you which household chemicals will discolor titanium, and which wallet slots will scratch the white multi-layer coating. It tells you how to dry it, for example, if it should fall into your toilet along with your purchasing power.

It is, by every measure I can find, a *care and feeding page* for a credit card.

…and it's for a credit card the company would prefer you not use very often.

[Apple's own product copy](https://www.apple.com/apple-card/?ref=davidnunez.com) is unambiguous about this: *"The best way to use Apple Card is with Apple Pay,"* the app that sits on your iPhone that enables tap-to-purchase at the grocery store. And by "tap-to-purchase," I of course mean, "submit-to-[usury](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury?ref=davidnunez.com)\-fees-as-Apple-collects-data-about-you."

This improves your life for some reason. Ahem.

[Apple Pay is accepted](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/10/apple-celebrates-10-years-of-apple-pay/?ref=davidnunez.com) at 85% of US merchants. If you use the app, you get a 2-3% bribe cash reward. Use the titanium card instead and you only "earn" [1% Daily Cash](https://www.apple.com/apple-card/?ref=davidnunez.com).

So to recap: Apple manufactured a [laser-etched titanium](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/introducing-apple-card-a-new-kind-of-credit-card-created-by-apple/?ref=davidnunez.com) object, [shipped it in a package with a hidden NFC tag](https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/activate-titanium-apple-card-without-packaging/?ref=davidnunez.com) that pairs it to your digital wallet on touch, gave it a *care and feeding regimen* so you can keep this delicate object of commerce in an unspoiled, unfettered condition... and then they priced it as the inferior option.

This is, by any reasonable read of consumer incentive design, *unhinged*.

The Wall Street Journal [called the launch](https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-card-review-the-credit-card-of-the-future-is-no-card-at-all-11565528401?ref=davidnunez.com) "the credit card of the future," precisely because it was, per their headline, "no card at all."

Apple shipped the titanium one that same week.

So why does the titanium card exist?

## Probe: Apple Was Generous With Me

Last week, Apple *generously* offered me 0% financing on a new MacBook. I had been eyeing a laptop because all of my new AI friends need a bigger house.

I did the whole transaction on my phone and I tapped through the Apple Card application in a moment of weakness we shall laughingly refer to as "fiscal responsibility." It was easy and frictionless and “just worked.”

“Too easy,” some might say.

The titanium artifact is, as I write this, somewhere in the postal system between Cupertino and my mailbox. Trucks and airplanes are burning fuel to get its pristinefaçadeinto my greedy, grubby fingers. I am told it will arrive in a package with a hidden NFC tag, weigh more than I expect, and have no number printed on it… just the most minimal of etching to make it “mine.”

I have set aside a soft pillow for His Maje$ty to rest upon his arrival so he can soon begin his thankless task of depleting my bank account while making me feel good about it.

I am looking forward to feeling the heft of all this debt, objectified in my hands.

I am Exhibit A, but there are at least three more.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1779977276.jpg)

Robinhood's solid 10-karat-gold referral card. (via Robinhood)

[**Cash App's debit card**](https://cash.app/card?ref=davidnunez.com) is mailed to you in a plain envelope and activated in the app you already have on your phone. Cash App is also effusive when it tells you that you can [choose from exclusive card styles and add stamps and emojis, even draw on it](https://cash.app/card?ref=davidnunez.com). 😘💸👋🏼, indeed. The app-first product still ships an artifact, and the artifact's whole pitch is *what other people see when it leaves your wallet*... and, spoiler alert, it's not the interest payments.

[**Robinhood's Gold Card**](https://robinhood.com/creditcard/?ref=davidnunez.com) is stainless steel, sold alongside [virtual cards and disposable card numbers](https://robinhood.com/us/en/newsroom/the-new-gold-standard-introducing-the-robinhood-gold-card/?ref=davidnunez.com) for private spending. The most active members can earn an actual [36-gram solid 10-karat-gold card](https://robinhood.com/us/en/newsroom/the-new-gold-standard-introducing-the-robinhood-gold-card/?ref=davidnunez.com) through a *referral* program. Like the digital finance version of the [Mary Kay Pink Cadillac](https://newsroom.marykay.com/media/top-beauty-brand-celebrates-50-years-of-an-american-icon-the-mary-kay-pink-cadillac/?ref=davidnunez.com).

The virtual card is for the transaction. The metal is for the gesture. The gold is just for the End Times.

[**Coinbase**](https://www.coinbase.com/card?ref=davidnunez.com) approves you for a virtual card immediately, and then mails the physical version anyway, because, per [the help page](https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/trading-and-funding/coinbase-card/coinbase-card-for-the-us?ref=davidnunez.com), you still *need* to spend "anywhere Visa debit cards are accepted." The app handles custody and control. The plastic handles the physical world where real money is exchanged for real goods.

(The irony is not lost on me that “real money” is actually a raging river of fake digital bits the banks keep flowing in the background in spite of governments. Don’t question it, though. You’re doing your part to just keep enjoying breakfast cereal and gasoline as they keep wetting their beaks. Win-Win. Capitalism, etc, etc.)

All four of these payment products could plausibly skip the artifact but ship it anyway.

## Component: The artifact survives where the network can't carry the gesture

The first reading is that the cards exist for the parts of the network the app has not absorbed yet. "Where Apple Pay is accepted." Cards are for consumer convenience.

That is the polite reading.

Offering a physical credit card at places "Where Apple Pay is NOT accepted" is subtly presented as a crutch. As if a store is unacceptable if it doesn't take that transaction straight from your phone.

Millions of people drink coffee at Starbucks every day. (Before you ask: I don't know, either)

So the seconds saved through the tap-to-pay experience add up quickly. [31% of Starbucks store transactions](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000829224/000082922424000011/sbux-12312023xexhibit991.htm?ref=davidnunez.com) flow through its app. The closed loop handles ordering, payment, memory, and identity in one place. When the network can carry all four, the artifact really can recede. The same thing has happened to [print-at-home tickets](https://www.mlb.com/redsox/tickets/mobile/faq?ref=davidnunez.com) and to [paper boarding passes](https://www.airlines.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/A4A-Air-Travel-Survey-Key-Findings-March-2024.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com)and, yes, the Apple Store.

When the artifact's only job is transactional security and transferability, the database wins, and wins fast.

![Digitaler Impfpass is an application for iOS and Android that lets you manage your vaccinations. https://www.digitaler-impfpass.at](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1620931160683-8dc1fef47766?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w0ODM4NTF8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxfHxhJTIwcGFwZXIlMjBib2FyZGluZyUyMHBhc3MlMjBuZXh0JTIwdG8lMjBhbiUyMGlQaG9uZSUyMFdhbGxldCUyMG1vYmlsZSUyMHBhc3N8ZW58MHx8fHwxNzc5OTc3MzQ5fDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)

So what is left, when you take away the actual function of a card? What survives? Look at what Apple, Cash App, Robinhood, and Coinbase are *actually* sending you. It's not commercial infrastructure. The backend is fine and arguably becomes more inefficient for having to maintain all this physicality of actual credit cards.

They are sending you a small heavy object you can hand to another person. They are sending you something you can [draw on](https://cash.app/card?ref=davidnunez.com). They are sending you the [gesture of producing it](https://www.wired.com/story/apple-credit-card-apple-pay/?ref=davidnunez.com).

Of course, the [psychological](https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/psychology/pain-of-paying?ref=davidnunez.com) tricks are still in play at the moment of transaction (see "[Spendception](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11939284/?ref=davidnunez.com)"). But flashing your credit card when you have tap-to-pay apps is becoming more rare the same way counting out paper cash (and, my goodness, actual metal coins) is the exception in a world of card transactions.

[Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/apple-credit-card-apple-pay/?ref=davidnunez.com) called the titanium Apple Card "status-signaling" the week it shipped. [People value physical versions of equivalent goods more than digital ones](https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/04.04.2019-Morewedge-Carey-PAPER-DigitalvsPhysicalGoods.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com), across multiple experiments, in ways the database does not seem to fix. The [payments industry](https://thepaymentsassociation.org/whitepaper/why-the-world-wants-metal-cards-the-emerging-consumer-segments-driving-demand/?ref=davidnunez.com) is now landing on the phrase "statements of identity." All three are circling the same observation:

The network carries the transaction. The card carries the gesture.

## Signals Worth Tracking

### Apple is investing in the unboxing as much as the card

Search [YouTube for "Apple Card unboxing"](https://www.youtube.com/results?search%5Fquery=apple+card+unboxing&ref=davidnunez.com) and you will find [hundreds of videos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDXu7A5CcIQ&ref=davidnunez.com) of strangers narrating, in close-up, the small ceremonial steps of opening a wallet-shaped envelope, peeling a paper sticker, tapping the hidden NFC tag, sliding the titanium out of its sleeve. What they are doing, mostly, is performing the receipt of the card. Nothing has foundational changed in their lives or ability to buy things. Apple is shipping two products: the card and the unboxing.

### Another way to name the same problem

Ronny Chieng [spoke at Harvard's Class Day this week](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/05/funny-but-serious-chieng-issues-an-ai-warning-to-grads/?ref=davidnunez.com) to "make sure their offline world is better than their online world," and that the work in any profession was the *fun part* worth protecting from AI substitution. Different domain, same underlying observation as this issue: the embodied act of doing the thing carries something the substitute cannot.

### A tally counter against a database

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-05-28_at_10-11-15_2x-t-1779977484.png)

Dog “deposits” (via Better Together Here)

[Devin Stagg](https://bettertogetherhere.com/nyc-dog-poop-data/?ref=davidnunez.com) recently walked 2,000 feet of sidewalk in each of 15 NYC neighborhoods and counted, individually, every pile of dog waste. The 311 complaints data badly underrepresented what he saw: Hell's Kitchen has 3 official complaints, but 14 actual deposits. (I lived near Park Slope for a little while. The doggie entitlement rings true.)

I have been [walking my own neighborhood counting things](https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/), but my tally is a phone full of virtual Ingress portals and virtual animals. Stagg is making rather better use of his sojourns.

/ David

**On repeat:** [*Credit Card Baby*](https://open.spotify.com/track/60binwdlGxE67H2oJOQc6U?ref=davidnunez.com), Wham!, 1984\. 🎶 *"You can have my credit card, baby / But keep your red hot fingers off of my heart..."* 🎶 (Wham! had it backwards. The card is the heart.)

**Reading:** [*Evocative Objects*](https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262201681/evocative-objects/?ref=davidnunez.com) *by Sherry Turkle. Turkle on objects as carriers of memory, identity, and relation. The pattern under everything in this issue.*
### The Pocket Test
URL: https://davidnunez.com/the-pocket-test/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T13:55:24.000Z
*(Last week's* [*Broadcast*](https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/) *was the love letter to a small genre of consumer software that wants you to leave home. The replies were generous, and several of you wrote back asking variations of the same question, which was, roughly: "isn't the phone still in your hand though?")*

## Signal: I cannot listen to a podcast while playing Ingress

I tried. I lost.

The audio drops out of my head the second the screen wants to be interpreted. My attention has a hand, my hand is on the screen, and the podcast keeps talking into a room I have already left.

That single failure cracked a question open. What else is the same shape?

## Probe: Same body, different attention stack

Five walks over a few days after work, same neighborhood, different attention stack each time.

**One: Ingress + podcast.** The original failure. Walking with an audiobook does not measurably [wreck your gait](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10675893/?ref=davidnunez.com), but walking with an audiobook while *also* doing a [spatially interpretive task](https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/16727?ref=davidnunez.com) is a different story. The second your walking becomes hunting, the audio stops being background and becomes static. (Niantic seems to know this. They sell [an official Bluetooth accessory](https://niantic.helpshift.com/hc/en/6-pokemon-go/faq/77-official-bluetooth-devices-1689609298/?ref=davidnunez.com) whose entire purpose is to let you play Pokémon GO without looking at the app. Their own hardware is a workaround for the attention cost their own software creates.)

**Two: Ingress + person.** Last weekend, L and I walked a few miles through a stretch of [Back Bay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back%5FBay,%5FBoston?ref=davidnunez.com) I had not really seen before. I stopped every couple of blocks to grab an [Ingress](https://ingress.com/en?ref=davidnunez.com) portal. The walk was nominally shared. The portal was, as it turned out, solo work I happened to be doing next to her. It pulled me into the place and pushed me away from the person walking in it. The [partner-phubbing](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-023-04401-x?ref=davidnunez.com) literature has a name for this. Co-present phone use becomes [harmful](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20501579241298271?ref=davidnunez.com) mostly when it reads as withdrawal, and pause-to-portal reads as withdrawal even when it doesn't look like one. Groups containing a phone user [walk measurably slower](https://ideas.repec.org/p/nex/wpaper/walkingandtalking.html?ref=davidnunez.com) than groups without, and the choreography itself changes even before anyone says anything.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/9e36250b-7a3d-4246-b2ea-d6b672d04c2a_1_201_a-jpeg-t-1779371594.jpg)

Ingress Portals in Boston

**Three: solo, music only, no game.** A different attention state. The music made a floor, and thinking had room to roam above it. A pleasant baseline I had forgotten was a baseline.

**Four: solo, podcast only, no game.** Different from the others. Sometimes I was deeply paying attention. Sometimes a host said something and my mind drifted into problem-solving: a question, a connection, a phrase worth keeping. Walking [roughly doubles creative output](https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/04/walking-vs-sitting-042414?ref=davidnunez.com) over sitting in the same room, and the podcast doubled as a Signal-generator on top of that. The cost is that the Signals tended to evaporate before I got home. *Capturing them mid-walk turns out to be its own design problem*, and I do not yet have a good answer for it.

**Five: forced by weather.** A stretch of [May rain](https://www.weather.gov/box/?ref=davidnunez.com) wiped out my normal walking practice and forced me into [longer make-up walks](https://www.heart.org/en/news/2024/09/26/weekend-warriors-may-gain-same-health-benefits-as-people-who-spread-out-exercise?ref=davidnunez.com) to hit my step target. The marathon walks exposed what the daily ones had been hiding. What I had been calling "walking" was actually four different things stacked into the same word. Exercise. Thinking. Escape. Companionship. Each of the variations above did some of those well and others not at all. It took two weeks of rain to spot that.

**Six: no phone, no audio, no artifact.** Solo or with a companion. The baseline against which every variant above registers. Ninety minutes in nature [significantly decreases rumination and stress-linked neural activity](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1510459112?ref=davidnunez.com) compared with ninety minutes in an urban setting. A separate study found that even a brief greenspace walk [measurably improves directed-attention performance](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19121124/?ref=davidnunez.com) by similar margins. The unplugged walk is upstream of every variant above, and reaching for any of the others is reaching past it.

But the most common version of "no-tech walk" in the wild isn't really no-tech. It's scrolling mindlessly while the dog bounds and the kid runs and the stroller rolls, while the actual companion has the walk you are not having. The pocket-leavers at least have a game-loop justifying the attention cost. Mindless scroll has no loop, and the dog watches.

![](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1606901304317-88323e6b8801?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w0ODM4NTF8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyNnx8QSUyMGNhbmRpZCUyMHBob3RvJTIwb2YlMjBhJTIwZG9nJTIwJTI4b3IlMjBraWQlMkMlMjBvciUyMHBhcnRuZXIlMjklMjB3YXRjaGluZyUyMGElMjBwZXJzb24lMjB3aG8lMjBpcyUyMHNjcm9sbGluZyUyMG9uJTIwYSUyMHBob25lJTIwbWlkLXdhbGsufGVufDB8fHx8MTc3OTM3MTcyNnww&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)

## Component: Presence-aware tech reallocates presence

The phone moves your attention rather than multiplying it, trading one slice for another: the street under your feet for the street on the screen, the person walking with you for the destination on the map. Smartphone walking is a [layered negotiation](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20501579231197304?ref=davidnunez.com) among "streets as experienced through the body," "streets on the screen," and "streets in the mind." Three streets, one attention, and you are picking between them whether you notice or not.

Last week's newsletter said the screen should leave your hand. This week's: it matters *which* hand picks it up, and *who is standing in the room when you do.*

## How to apply this: The Pocket Test

Before you open the app on your next walk, ask one question.

**Does this app, used the way I actually use it, stay in my pocket?**

That is the test, with five answers and five kinds of tool. Most of the tech you carry is somewhere on this list, and some of it crosses categories depending on how you hold it.

**Pocket-killers.** [Turn-by-turn directions](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494425002968?ref=davidnunez.com) and [highly automated driving](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145752300115X?ref=davidnunez.com) live here. Your body arrives but does not learn the route. Convenient, and with a real cost. These do not really compete with the companion next to you, but they thin the experience of the place itself to almost nothing.

**Pocket-leavers.** [Ingress](https://ingress.com/en?ref=davidnunez.com), [Pokémon GO](https://pokemongo.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), the map app you check every block in an unfamiliar city. The phone keeps coming out and going back in and coming out again. This is the category most of [the genre I wrote about last week](https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/) actually lives in, even the ones whose marketing implies otherwise.

**Pocket-friendly.** [Last week's audio walks](https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/) (ECHOES, Detour, Cardiff's *Forest Walk*, Halsey Burgund's Roundware installations) all live here, plus museum-specific guides like [SFMOMA's audio-first app](https://mw17.mwconf.org/paper/audio-that-moves-you-experiments-with-location-aware-storytelling-in-the-sfmoma-app/index.html?ref=davidnunez.com). You set up the walk, you put the phone in your pocket, headphones in, the app does the rest. The screen starts the experience and then disappears.

**Pocket-honest.** [Last week's pocket-honest catalog](https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/) lives here: eki stamps, National Park passports, scratch cards, letterboxing on Dartmoor, the geocache log on the state line, the orienteering merit badge. No screen at all. The artifact picks the destination, scaffolds the choice, and then the entire walk is between you and the place.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/c46be400-camino-de-santiago-pilgrim-passport-stamps-caminoways-t-1779372292.jpg)

Camino de Santiago Credencial (image via Camino Ways)

**Pocket-free.** No phone, no card, no app, no artifact. The walk that needs nothing to be a walk.

Before opening any app on a walk, name the pocket it lives in *for you, this week.* 

## Sparks

**A new Probe in progress.** Inspired by [last week's scratch cards](https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/), I am building a tiny tool that picks an activity for L and me by text message when we cannot decide between options. SMS, not cardstock. The interesting design question is which tier of the Pocket Test it actually lands in: the screen delivers a single prompt, then ideally the walk happens without further screen contact. Pocket-friendly if the message stays put. Pocket-leaver if I cheat and keep checking. More once the Probe runs. Text-message-to-audio prompts… or even phone calls.

[**India just banned phones at four pilgrimage sites**](https://dhamdiary.com/char-dham-mobile-camera-ban-2026/?ref=davidnunez.com)**.** Uttarakhand authorities cited "smoother, distraction-free [darshan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darshana?ref=davidnunez.com)" as the reason. This is the Pocket Test written into administrative policy: an institution deciding, for an entire holy site, that the device and the desired presence are not compatible.

[**Blast Theory's** ](https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/can-you-see-me-now/?ref=davidnunez.com)[***Can You See Me Now?***](https://www.blasttheory.co.uk/projects/can-you-see-me-now/?ref=davidnunez.com) (2001). A locative game built explicitly around the tension between presence and absence, twenty-five years before consumer AR got around to remembering the question mattered. The art world was here first. The art world is almost always here first.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/project_cysmn_secondary-625x450-t-1779372427.jpg)

Runners with handhelds, 2001\. (via Blast Theory)

[**The weekend-warrior exercise studies**](https://www.heart.org/en/news/2024/09/26/weekend-warriors-may-gain-same-health-benefits-as-people-who-spread-out-exercise?ref=davidnunez.com)**.** The American Heart Association has confirmed that marathon make-up walks deliver roughly the cardiovascular benefits of distributed daily walking. The research is silent about whether they deliver the other three uses from earlier, companionship most of all. The literature has the same gap my rainy May did.

**Spark capture mid-walk is its own design problem.** When a podcast spawns a Signal, or a corner does, the Signal usually evaporates before I am home. Voice memos work, but they make you say it out loud in public and change the privacy of the thought. Apps with screens break the pocket-honest principle. Pen-on-a-clip works, but only at a stop. Open design space, no good answer yet.

**Talking to AI on a walk is weird in a different way.** Voice-AI in the pocket is now a category, with hundreds of millions of users and growing. It does not fit cleanly into any of the tiers of the Pocket Test. The eyes are free, the body keeps moving, the conversation is real-time, and yet you are out loud with no one there.

## Coda

The question to leave you with: **which presences are your apps quietly choosing for you?**

The pocket is the test. The pocket is where the app's marketing meets the actual room you are walking through and the actual person walking next to you.

If you take only one thing from this issue, run the test on whichever app you opened most this week. The next time you reach for it on a walk, you will know what you are about to spend, and on what.

/ David

**On repeat this week:** [*The Long and Winding Road*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR4HjTH%5FfTM&ref=davidnunez.com), The Beatles, 1970\. 🎶 "The long and winding road that leads to your door..." 🎶 (Yes. The door is still the metaphor.)

**Reading:** [*A Philosophy of Walking*](https://www.versobooks.com/products/2374-a-philosophy-of-walking?srsltid=AfmBOoo1Oht89LnT19nxrMo42tpaAnCMtAquDrmLrEylyGoZkDbeyX84&ref=davidnunez.com) by Frédéric Gros, 2008\. Gros pulls the different uses of walking apart better than the research does, and with more sentences worth underlining.

**Building:** A text-message activity picker for L, inspired by last week's scratch cards. SMS delivers the prompt, and the walk runs without further screen contact. Forthcoming.
### Some apps want you to go outside.
URL: https://davidnunez.com/some-apps-want-you-to-go-outside/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T13:55:26.000Z
# You have to leave your home. The phone has to leave your hand.

There is a small, slightly weird, almost entirely overlooked genre of consumer software whose entire business model only works **if you leave home.**

Most of the software in your life is at war with the real world.

That is not a moral claim; it is a structural one. A feed-shaped app is engineered to be the most rewarding surface in your field of vision at any given moment. If it weren't, you wouldn't open it again tomorrow. If you don't open the app, then whatever will the advertisers do? Will someone please think of the advertisers!

We have created an existence where the screen is both the journey and the destination. The world has turned into this unfortunate brown-and-grey, messy thing the screen promises to defeat - or to keep our toes clean.

Except in one peculiar little corner of the App Store, where the architecture *inverts*.

## Signal: The Screen That Points Away

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778761812.jpg)

$12 billion of U.S. Air Force hardware, originally for missile guidance, currently helping me find a mural. (Image via NASA)

There are 31 active GPS satellites in orbit around Earth. They were originally put up there by the U.S. Air Force in the 1970s and 1980s so that intercontinental missiles could be slightly more polite about where they landed; the civilian-grade signal was deliberately fuzzy until [the Clinton administration switched off "Selective Availability" on May 2, 2000](https://www.gps.gov/selective-availability?ref=davidnunez.com), at which point your phone could suddenly know which side of the street it was on. (Your phone, of course, did not yet exist. Patience was a virtue.)

A small group of mostly polite eccentrics has spent the twenty-five years since then quietly repurposing this multi-billion-dollar military infrastructure *to send you on virtual scavenger hunts among fields of wildflowers and sunshine.*

| ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778762246.jpg)The classic geocache is trade items in a military ammunition box (via Wikimedia Commons) | ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-05-14_at_08-35-49_2x-t-1778762160.png)Geocaches in the Boston Area (via geocaching.com) |
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

[Geocaching](https://www.geocaching.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) is a worldwide game of GPS hide-and-seek with millions of physical containers tucked under benches and rocks in quiet, often beautiful and unseen spots on our planet. You reference a directory of latitude/longitude locations (in the year 2000, you'd plug latitudes and longitudes into an actual GPS device... now it's all built into a convenient phone app). Hike out to the location, dig around scorpion nests and damp leaves until you find the little container. Sometimes [there are prizes](https://www.geocaching.com/blog/og-geocache-swag/?ref=davidnunez.com). You sign a logbook with a tiny pencil, and you put it all back for the next geocacher. Try not to let the [muggles](https://detectingschool.com/what-are-muggles-in-geocaching/?ref=davidnunez.com) see you.

Geocaching-inspired games like [Pokémon GO](https://pokemongo.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), [Pikmin Bloom,](https://pikminbloom.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Monster Hunter Now](https://monsterhunternow.com/en?ref=davidnunez.com) overlay creatures, gardens, and dragons onto your actual neighborhood, so that the bench you walk past every day is now also a virtual playground, or a virtual flowerbed, or in one specific case, a virtual [rathalos](https://monsterhunter.fandom.com/wiki/Rathalos?ref=davidnunez.com).

(This overlay-virtual-stuff-on-the-real-world trick, in case you've been spared the term, is what the industry calls [augmented reality, or AR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented%5Freality?ref=davidnunez.com)).

There’s often a narrative backstory to motivate the game. Or just a story. [ECHOES](https://echoes.xyz/?ref=davidnunez.com) plays binaural audio as you cross a real bridge.

It gets weirder and more involved. [Ingress](https://ingress.com/en?ref=davidnunez.com) pits you against other players in a global control of mysterious, mind-altering Exotic Matter leaking into our world through virtual portals. [Zombies, Run!](https://zombiesrungame.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) scares you as the undead chase you through your jogging workouts. [Atlas Obscura's app](https://app.atlasobscura.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) catalogs 24,000 weird, but very real, places.

Tech isn’t always central to these experiences. The [JR East stamp rally](https://www.jreast.co.jp/stamp-rally/?ref=davidnunez.com) is a nationwide adult activity in Japan that requires you to schlep to a real train station, find a small physical inkpad on a real platform, and press a stamp into a small physical paper booklet. (It is exactly Pokémon GO except invented in the 1970s and run by the railway.) [Reach International's](https://reachinternationaloutfitters.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) scratch-off city cards are not technically software at all, but are functionally the same idea, on cardstock with QR codes. (The [National Park passport book](https://americasnationalparks.org/passport-to-your-national-parks/?ref=davidnunez.com) is the same idea on heavier cardstock with a slightly more patriotic font).

This is, as far as I can tell, the only category of consumer technology whose central premise is, in one form or another, *please, for the love of God, get up off your couch.*

## Probe: A Card, a Trail, and a Fake Log Inside a Real Log

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-05-14_at_09-42-32_2x-t-1778766180.png)

From our walk to Bash Bish Falls, a geocache is somewhere in this photo.

A couple of Fridays ago, L and I drove out to [Bash Bish Falls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bash%5FBish%5FFalls?ref=davidnunez.com) in Western Massachusetts, a destination we had picked, very deliberately, off one of the [Reach International](https://reachinternationaloutfitters.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) scratch-off cards. The cards are slightly ridiculous, entirely wonderful, and entirely physical: each card is a place, each scratched-off panel is a *thing you actually do at a place and time*. Bash Bish was ordered up, and so we were there, on a soft late-spring day where the woods are not yet hot and not yet biting, and you can briefly believe everything is going to be fine.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778762543.jpg)

A card that picks the adventure (via Reach International)

Halfway up the path, it occurred to me (partly because the trail runs right along the Massachusetts/New York border) that there was almost certainly a [geocache](https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCAFCDT%5Flog-the-log?ref=davidnunez.com) somewhere along this stretch. I had not played in years, but it was exactly the kind of trail someone would have hidden one on. I pulled out my phone. There it was, on a small green pin: a cache deposited at the state line in 2008.

We hunted for it together. *L* found it: a fake log, hollowed out and nested inside a real log, intentionally placed at the seam where Massachusetts becomes New York. Inside: a small paper logbook, a handful of foreign coins, and a few traveled trinkets. We signed our names under the names of everyone who had been there before us. We took nothing. We put the log back inside the log, logged the geocache log on our phone, and put the fake log back inside the real log. Whew.

It occurred to me, walking back down the trail, that *we had spent the entire day inside this genre* without quite noticing. The Reach card had brought us to the place. The cache had rewarded the place once we were there. The world we already lived in held more than we had been noticing. And the GPS satellites flying overhead facilitated all of this.

By the time we got to the hotel, I had started downloading things. [Ingress](https://ingress.com/en?ref=davidnunez.com) was on my phone by nightfall.

Two weeks later, the two square miles around my home transformed. The historic plaque at an otherwise anonymous street corner, the bus stop where everyone was staring at their phones, the worn mural on the side of Rudy’s, and every sidewalk crack I constantly trip over… all of it is renewed. **It has become a contested geopolitical theatre.**

There are virtual Ingress portals in parks and greenbelts, and the [brutalist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutalist%5Farchitecture?ref=davidnunez.com) sculpture by the train. There are factions; there are alliances; there are people I have never met locally, whom I have nevertheless decided how I feel about based on what color flag they planted near my coffee shop.

I am not going to tell you my faction. We don't do that out loud. (Also: I have been [Ingress-pilled](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-pilled?ref=davidnunez.com) for less than a month and am still working out what loyalty looks like in a game whose enemy team is mostly, statistically, my actual neighbors. There’s a metaphor buried here, I’m positive.)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778764766.jpg)

"Two square miles, two weeks in. - from intel.ingress.com

This is, technically, a smartphone game. It is also not very much like a game.

It is more like a *reason*: a reason to take the long way, a reason to take the corner I normally don't, a reason to notice the mural by the bell tower because it is also a portal to hack, and noticing it for the first time is the loop. The stakes are modest, slightly silly, and involve a virtual blue triangle on a screen. They are also entirely sufficient to change a route to work. My journey veers off the daily path.

Three surfaces. One is software, one is paper, one is a fake log inside a real log on a state line. They are all doing the same job as an [orienteering merit badge](https://www.scouting.org/merit-badges/orienteering/?ref=davidnunez.com) does for a kid moving through real terrain with a map and a compass (the same job, for that matter, this newsletter does for the week I just had).

They *dignify the lived thing*.

They say: this walk counted; mark it. And they give you a small synthetic reason to be where you already, on some level, wanted to be… in a body, in a place, on a Friday afternoon in May, on the line where Massachusetts becomes New York.

That, I think, is the load-bearing premise of the entire genre. Not augmented reality. Not gamification. A much smaller, much older thing dressed up in newer clothes.

## Counter Probe: Two Weeks Trapped Inside the Game That Promised to Get Me Out

A confession, two weeks in.

The two square miles around my home are also now a feed.

I have spent more of my precious decent-weather-for-Boston outdoor days looking at the small glowing rectangle in my hand than at the actual murals, statues, and corner-store awnings the rectangle keeps plotting at me. I have walked past real people in my neighborhood without seeing them, instead getting irrationally irritated by anonymous people with names like “Bluedog9134.”

I have, on at least one occasion that I am willing to admit to in print, almost walked directly into a street sign on Mass Ave because there was a [resonator](https://ingress.fandom.com/wiki/Resonator?ref=davidnunez.com) decaying on a portal half a block away and I needed to top it up, *now*, before the green team noticed.

My step count went up. My pace went down. The walk became a series of small stops at portals… *hack, recharge, deploy, move on*… at the speed not of a person enjoying a Tuesday, but of a person playing the slot machine they happen to be standing inside of.

Ingress *promised* to be a door pointing outward. In my actual usage, less than a month in, it has installed itself as a destination dressed up as a door. The mural is still a portal; the portal is still attached to the world, but my eyes are on the screen, not the world, *and the screen knows it.* It keeps pulling me inside. The neighborhood is the wallpaper. The game is the room.

I am, for the record, still playing. The trade (phone in hand for steps that would otherwise not happen) is, on net, the right one for me right now. But it *is* a trade, and the genre's story is that there isn't one. There is.

Which raises the question: what *actually* separates the apps that keep the genre's promise from the ones that quietly break it?

## Component: The Durable Form Is Walking-Plus-Pocket

The phone has to *leave your hand* for the genre to keep its promise. The apps that earn a reputation and warm memories**, as I formed them at Bash Bish,** are the ones structured to push you outside and then *get out of your way*. The ones that pull your eyes back to the screen every thirty seconds, no matter how lovingly designed, are doing a different job.

**They are social media feeds with extra steps. *Literally.***

The case for this is mostly in *what survived*. The genre split, after the [2016 Pokémon GO supernova](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/jaha.116.005341?ref=davidnunez.com), into roughly three buckets. There were the live-service giants that grafted location onto a regular collection game (Pokémon GO, Monster Hunter Now).

There were the high-commitment subcultural strategy worlds for the deeply (ahem) “dedicated,” of whom I guess I am now one (Ingress, Geocaching).

And there were the quiet ambient companions that did not really try to be games at all and instead just *thickened the walk* (ex. [Pikmin Bloom](https://pikminbloom.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), which is mechanically a pedometer with a houseplant subroutine, and [ECHOES](https://echoes.xyz/?ref=davidnunez.com) soundwalks, and [Zombies, Run!](https://zombiesrungame.com/?ref=davidnunez.com))

What the best of these apps share is **not the AR layer**. Many of them have basically no AR layer. What they all share is that they hook into **an already-existing walking routine** and lay a small, dignifying, slightly playful structure on top of it. The screen, when there is a screen at all, is a *door*, not a *destination*.

Researchers in [Human-Computer Interaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human%E2%80%93computer%5Finteraction?ref=davidnunez.com) (the wing of computer science that bothers to care whether software is actually joyful for the humans using it) have started calling it ["heads-up computing"](https://cacm.acm.org/research/heads-up-computing/?ref=davidnunez.com): the design stance that computation should *support* real-world activity rather than dominate the user's attention. The [Communications of the ACM piece](https://cacm.acm.org/research/heads-up-computing/?ref=davidnunez.com) is unusually plainspoken: it frames the design goal as "freeing them from common constraints," meaning the user.

Meaning, in the end, the body.

What is interesting about *heads-up computing* as a phrase is that it suggests a direction the entire device industry is now slowly drifting in (and that the products which have been drifting that way for the last quarter-century, mostly without anyone naming it), are small, durable, slightly weird, and almost never on the front page of breathless tech reporting: The pilgrim app for [the Shikoku 88 temples](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?hl=en%5FUS&id=com.sallyzzz.ohenroapp&ref=davidnunez.com). [Remote X](https://www.rimini-protokoll.de/website/en/project/remote-x?ref=davidnunez.com), which is half urban theatre and half quiet GPS-voice critique. [Strava Beacon](https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/224357527-Strava-Beacon?ref=davidnunez.com), which is the deeply prosaic feature that lets one trusted person see where I am while I run. Or the genuinely strange anti-get-outside ones like [Pokémon Sleep](https://www.pokemonsleep.net/en?ref=davidnunez.com), which is, and I am not making this up, a Pokémon game you play *by going to bed*

Wildly different products for wildly different audiences. Structurally, the same: *the screen as a door, then out of the way.*

By that test… and it is the only honest one I know… most of the famous apps in this genre fail. Including, if I am being candid about my own pocket, the one I have been [Ingress-pilled](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/x-pilled?ref=davidnunez.com) by for the last three weeks. The apps that pass tend to be the ones nobody made a movie about: a tupperware in the woods, a stamp on a paper booklet, a 1991 audio walk through a forest that isn't there anymore.

## Signals Worth Tracking

### Niantic quietly cut itself in half

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778765451.jpg)

Pokemon GO players gathered around the fountain in Setagaya Park all trying to catch enough Magikarp to evolve a Gyrados (via Wikimedia Commons)

Last spring, the company that gave us Ingress and Pokémon GO did a strange and revealing thing. It [sold the games business](https://www.scopely.com/en/news/inside-the-deal-scopely-leaders-reflect-on-the-niantic-games-acquisition-one-year-in?ref=davidnunez.com) to Scopely, kept the maps, and renamed itself [Niantic Spatial](https://www.nianticspatial.com/en/blog/vps-snap-investment?ref=davidnunez.com).

If you have ever wondered why anyone bothered building a free game in which you walk around catching imaginary creatures: this is your answer. The creatures were the carrier pigeon. The thing being carried, all along, was the *map* — a high-fidelity 3D model of essentially every interesting outdoor space on Earth, painstakingly trained by the actual feet of actual Pokémon Trainers. That map is now its own company, and it has [a multi-year partnership with Snap](https://www.nianticspatial.com/en/blog/vps-snap-investment?ref=davidnunez.com), which has announced [lightweight AR Specs](https://www.nianticspatial.com/en/blog/vps-snap-investment?ref=davidnunez.com).

The bait won the headlines. The map kept the promise.

The implication, if you squint, is that the next wave of this genre may not be "more walking games." It may be **walking companions**. A small, polite, spatial agent in the corner of your glasses that knows the neighborhood almost as well as you do, and occasionally suggests the long way home, and possibly also tries to sell you a coffee. That is either the future I want or a [Black Mirror](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%5FMirror?ref=davidnunez.com) episode I am already three minutes late getting up to leave.

### Japan worked out a non-Western version of this in 1970

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778765661.jpg)

A century-old game in active play. No AR layer. No glowing portal. Just a stamp. (Eki stamp at Seibu-Shinjuku Station. via (Wikimeida Commons)

Or thereabouts. [Letterboxing on Dartmoor](https://www.letterboxing.org/?ref=davidnunez.com) predates the British Empire's high-water mark. The stamp-collection ritual at Japanese train stations — [JR East stamp rallies](https://www.jreast.co.jp/stamp-rally/?ref=davidnunez.com) and the [smartphone app called EKITAG](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.jreast.ekitag&ref=davidnunez.com) — is a nationwide adult activity that involves taking the train to a real station, finding a small physical stamp pad on a real platform, and pressing the stamp into a small physical paper booklet. There is no creature. There is no AR layer. There is no glowing portal.

There is a stamp.

This is the most culturally robust version of "place collection" on Earth, running on rubber and ink and doing so happily for the better part of a century. The technology, when it shows up at all, is the *occasion*. It is not the point.

### ECHOES, Roundware, and an audio walk from 1991

| ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778765912.jpg)Halsey Burgund. Scapes (2010) Roundware installation at the deCordova | ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778766002.jpg)"Janet Cardiff, Forest Walk, 1991\. The prototype for all the walks that followed." |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

If you only do one thing from this issue, do this one — and the instructions are *literally three words long.*

[ECHOES](https://echoes.xyz/?ref=davidnunez.com) is a free app that hosts thousands of GPS-triggered soundwalks all over the world. Headphones in. Pick a walk near you. **Pocket the phone.** Go.

It reminds me of a friend of mine, the sound artist [Halsey Burgund](https://www.halseyburgund.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), who has spent the better part of two decades building the *participatory* version of this. His open-source platform [Roundware](https://roundware.org/?ref=davidnunez.com) does what ECHOES does — geofenced binaural audio triggered by where you happen to be standing — except the audio at any given place is contributed by *everyone who has walked through it before you*. ECHOES is, structurally, Audible. Roundware is structurally Wikipedia. Walk into one of Halsey's installations and what plays in your ears is the layered voice of strangers, each leaving the next person a memory, a song, a small confession at the same set of coordinates. *(If "GPS-triggered crowdsourced participatory binaural audio of collective public memory" sounds suspiciously like the most beautiful version of this entire genre, that is because it probably is.)*

The whole tradition runs back to the earliest of [Janet Cardiff's audio walks](https://cardiffmiller.com/walks/forest-walk/?ref=davidnunez.com), *Forest Walk* (1991), her foundational audio walk, the work she has said changed her thinking about art*.* It predates the smartphone by more than a decade, and it is still the cleanest demonstration I know of what this entire genre is *for*. Cardiff records, on [binaural microphones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural%5Frecording?ref=davidnunez.com), a voice walking the same path you are now walking, narrating things she sees that aren't there anymore. The result is uncanny in the dictionary sense. The trees become both more and less yours.

### Detour, on what didn't survive

For four years, [Detour](https://medium.com/detour-dot-com/detour-the-next-chapter-6f1aa2d97a14?ref=davidnunez.com) was the most beautifully made consumer product in this entire genre: high-production GPS-triggered city audio tours that treated the city itself as a stage set, narrated by people who actually knew it. It is also gone. The founder's [own farewell post](https://medium.com/detour-dot-com/detour-the-next-chapter-6f1aa2d97a14?ref=davidnunez.com) is unusually candid about why: this category is brutal, even for things that are better than they need to be.

The lesson is the unglamorous one. *Quality alone does not save you in a genre that asks the user to physically go somewhere.* The survivors — Geocaching, Ingress, the stamp rally, the tupperware in the woods — are not, by any reasonable account, the *prettiest* products. They are the ones with the most stubborn small communities of weirdos, and the lowest possible expectation of polish.

You can read this as cynical (the product market is broken) or as hopeful (taste is not enough; you also need a tribe). I keep going back and forth.

## Coda

So, that's the dispatch from outside.

The question I'd love to leave you with:

*Which apps in your pocket are actually doors, and which have quietly turned themselves into rooms?*

The next time you catch yourself looking at the screen instead of the neighborhood, you'll have your answer.

— David

---

**On repeat this week:** [*Roam*](https://open.spotify.com/search/roam%20b-52s?ref=davidnunez.com) by The B-52's, 1989\. 🎶 *“Roam if you want to, roam around the world. Roam if you want to, without anything but the love we feel.”*🎶

**Reading:** [*Theory of the Dérive*](https://situationist.org/periodical/si/issue-2-1958-en/theory-of-the-derive-73?ref=davidnunez.com) by Guy Debord, 1958\. "A technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances." Sixty-eight years later, this is still the best name I know for what an Ingress walk does to a Tuesday.

**Building:** Multiple blue fields, portals, and resonators in Ingress.
### My calendar lied to me, and I have only myself to blame
URL: https://davidnunez.com/my-calendar-lied-to-me-and-i-have-only-myself-to-blame/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T13:55:27.000Z
Hello friend,

Six years ago, I started writing a small newsletter from inside the COVID-19 lockdown, mostly about the strange experience of interacting with other people through glass.

The last issue went out in July 2022, while I was helping open the new [MIT Museum](https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/?ref=davidnunez.com). Since then: [View Boston](https://viewboston.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), and now Harvard Business School's [Baker Library](https://www.library.hbs.edu/?ref=davidnunez.com): three organizations in a row, each with a different story about where technology is heading.

The consistent thing I've seen from inside all of them: the official systems matter far less than the small private workflows people build around them.

Technology is *personal* and *cultural.*

I keep finding myself interested in the same question across completely different institutions: what are the unofficial systems that actually run our lives, and what is it doing to us?

Beautiful demos rarely become habits. But the unofficial glue? The strange little personal operating systems people assemble from calendars, notes apps, AI tools, text files, and rituals? Those are what actually keep the work moving.

Of course, the technology extends into all aspects of life, and the fabric blurs the lines between productivity, health, and human expression.

*Off My Board* is a notebook about that layer.

Why this reboot? Why now? Whatever AI is doing to the texture of our days, somebody should probably be writing it down while it's still happening.

If something here lands, please forward it to one person who'd appreciate it. The first issue back is always a little wobbly, and the only thing that helps is the right people finding it.

As always, if you ever want to touch base, just reply to this email, and you’ll land right in my inbox.

– David

---

## Signal: The Calendar is on Fire

The fire was in the calendar. Specifically, my calendar had begun lying to me, and I was the one who had taught it how.

I think a lot of us are doing some version of juggling more software than we have working memory for: calendars, task managers, note-taking apps, AI assistants, time trackers, journals, project boards. Every single one of them, at some point, leans across the table and makes the same Faustian proposal: *let me be the one. Let me be the source of truth.*

I have been building my “[personal operating system](https://self.md/concepts/what-is-personal-os/?ref=davidnunez.com)” for years. It runs the way I work, which means it has to answer four very different kinds of questions: what am I doing, what did I just do, what am I going to do next, and where do I want to be.

Every time I add a new tool to the stack or “optimize,” I am implicitly making the same decision: which of those questions does this thing answer, and what happens if I let it answer more than one?

I made that call badly this April. A few days later, the wheels came off. Here is what I did, why it broke, and the small framework that survived.

---

## Probe: One Calendar to Rule Them All

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2026-05-07_at_09-26-44-t-1778160453.png)

The Crime Scene - Calendar Chaos

Three weeks ago, filled with hubris because “AI can do everything,” I decided that my Google Calendar should be the single source of truth for what mode I was in throughout the day. [Claude Code](https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-code?ref=davidnunez.com) would manage it all for me as my personal assistant.

[*Single source of truth*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single%5Fsource%5Fof%5Ftruth?ref=davidnunez.com) is what software people call a thing they would very much like to believe in.

I wanted to believe in it.

The mechanism was almost cute. Alongside the regular meeting placeholders, I started adding logs to record how I actually spent the day & [time blocks](https://www.todoist.com/productivity-methods/time-blocking?ref=davidnunez.com) for what we’ll laughingly refer to as a “plan to protect my focus.”

Every event title would carry a little state emoji and a mode word. `☐ Create:` for a writing block. 🤝`Connect:` for a meeting. `🛠 Refine:` for editing. 📞` Decide:` for triage. Walking break? Strip the prefix. “Look at my todo list and fill up the day in 6 minute intervals with what I’m going to do next.” Slack DM crashing into a carefully curated Create block? Add `⚡` to the 1-minute calendar event to mark the interrupt. Generate a report at end of the day, for some reason.

The rules quickly spun out of control, but at least it was all promptable; and the emojis made me feel like I was performing “organizing.”

All the while, my AI agents were running inside Claude, refactoring my calendar in the background like a pack of sweet, loyal, but not especially bright Dachshunds. Bless their hearts.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/ai_generated_dd1ccbd3-c1a0-4123-9d15-2a6b9187f6bc-png-t-1778169059.jpg)

AI-generated image of AI Agent Dachshunds managing my calendar

I had named the entire arrangement *"Architecture v2"* in my system docs because I am the sort of person who versions his own life. And I’m the kind of person that maintains “system docs” about my life, for that matter… as if I’m a robot, not a person.

Day one: it worked. Sort of. I caught myself relabeling a couple of events to match what had actually happened, and chalked it up to setup tax.

Day two: I spent 96 uninterrupted, highly focused minutes relabeling the past. Re-titling a `Decide` block that had become a `Connect` block. Inventing events retroactively so the timeline looked coherent. Editing yesterday until the calendar resembled a cleaned-up transcript instead of a record. I felt anxiety when I couldn’t remember exactly how many seconds I spent in that Zoom meeting.

**The calendar wasn't telling me what I'd been doing. It had become a forecast that I was constantly retconning.**

I was finding myself spending way too much of my day managing the calendar. Disturbingly, this practice started to feel *like a prison of my own making,* albeit color-coded by how banal the tasks were according to Claude*.* 

It was when I actually felt the need to add “fix calendar entries” as a daily recurring event in my calendar that I sat with that snake eating its own tail for ninety-six seconds.

Then I promptly deleted Architecture v2.

---

## Component: Surfaces Struggle Telling Multiple Truths

The lesson, when I stopped bandaging the calendar and finally looked at the wound, was bigger than the calendar.

**A personal operating system over-couples when one surface tries to be authoritative for too many sources of truth.**

Engineers have a name for this. They call it [*the separation of concerns*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation%5Fof%5Fconcerns?ref=davidnunez.com) and treat it as a load-bearing wall. Break it, and the building does not collapse all at once; it just gets slower, weirder, and more expensive to live in until, eventually, somebody has to refactor… and inevitably, somebody always says, “it’s easier to just burn it down and start over.”

When somebody asks one calendar to be a planner *and* a record *and* a dashboard *and* an archive, the calendar starts lying. Because what else can it do? You assigned it four full-time jobs and only gave it twenty-four hours a day.

The jobs for my calendar:

- **The lived day.** What actually happened? The factual record of where attention and effort went.
- **The narrative layer.** Why did it happen? The decisions, observations, small surprises, the things you'd tell a friend at the end of the day.
- **Forward planning.** What I intend to do next.
- **External commitments.** Where I have to be, with whom, by when.

This physics applies just as cleanly to a single person and their entire app stack, not just the calendar. I am not a server farm. I have, on a good day, perhaps three concurrent threads. But the over-coupling tax shows up all over the place because the underlying mechanism is about authority, not scale.

So I burned it down and rebuilt.

The question I now run before any more personal system hacking is some version of:

*What is your job, and what happens when I ask you to do more than one?*

Every surface in the stack should have an answer to: *what are you allowed to be the truth about?*

If two surfaces are competing for the same job, there can be a coordination problem, and it’ll manifest as friction or redundancy tax. Lots of mistrust and “going back and fixing things.”

The red flag is when it feels like I don’t know which app has the “correct” information (or, frankly, when I'm not bothering to ask why I need the information to be so “correct”).

If one surface is being asked to do too many jobs at once, I have over-coupling, and it’ll feel as if the tool is slowly making me crazy as it struggles to tell any truth at all.

[Jack of all trades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack%5Fof%5Fall%5Ftrades?ref=davidnunez.com), etc etc.

The balance is somewhere in between.

I need time to find it.

---

## Signals Worth Tracking

### Pilot logbooks and lab notebooks

| ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/130110-f-oc707-002_female_fighter_pilot_maj-_olivia_elliott_examines_the_logbook_for_her_a-10_thunderbolt_ii-t-1778159233.jpg)USAF A-10 Thunderbolt II Pilot logbook (via Wikimedia) | ![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Laboratory_notebook_of_experiments_by_Sir_Victor_Horsely._Wellcome_M0016267.jpg)Laboratory notebook of experiments by Sir Victor Horsel (via Wikimedia) |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

Aviation and science worked all of this out about a hundred years ago. A pilot files a flight plan, then keeps a *separate* logbook of what the flight actually was, including the deviations… *especially* the deviations. ([14 CFR § 61.51](https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-61/subpart-A/section-61.51?ref=davidnunez.com).)

A scientist writes a procedure, then keeps a *separate* bench notebook of how the experiment actually went. ([Francis Crick's lab notebooks, Wellcome Collection](https://wellcomecollection.org/works/twkk62xz?ref=davidnunez.com).)

Sometimes the log looks like art

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image-png-t-1778167824.jpg)

Santiago Ramón y Cajal's ink and pencil drawing of glial cells (1904)

The reason this works isn't because pilots and scientists are unusually disciplined. It works because nobody in either field ever asked that the procedure document also serve as the record. They keep the lived thing and the planned thing on different pieces of paper, in different inks, on purpose.

### A peer-reviewed study suggesting your calendar isn't telling the truth, and you are not the problem

A team at University College London ran a diary study in which they asked 20 academics to plan their work at the start of the day, then record what they actually got done by the end of the day. The gap, predictably, was big. Their finding, less predictably, was *systematic*: some kinds of work (email, coding) were reliably underestimated; others (writing, planning) were reliably overestimated. ([Ahmetoglu, Brumby & Cox, "To Plan or Not to Plan?", CSCW 2020](https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10126354/?ref=davidnunez.com).)

The implication: [vague, optimistic planning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning%5Ffallacy?ref=davidnunez.com) isn't a personal failing. It is the default behavior of human knowledge workers when our tools force planning and recording into the same surface. There is real, peer-reviewed, paper-and-PDF evidence that your calendar lies.

Rest assured, you are not unusually bad at this.

### Andy Matuschak, on software you can bend

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot_2025-03-31_at_08-50-35-t-1778160593.gif)

Image: Andy Matuschak, andymatuschak.org

Andy is one of the more careful thinkers about (ahem) “tools for thinking.” He's the one who turned ["evergreen notes"](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen%5Fnotes?ref=davidnunez.com) into a verb. [His March 2025 patron letter](https://andymatuschak.org/files/2025-03-31.html?ref=davidnunez.com) describes a small, lovely thing: he had Claude generate an Obsidian plugin to track his houseplants, and, in the process, discovered what he thinks the actual shape of near-future software might be. Not a smarter app. Software you can *bend*, around the work and the life and the houseplants you actually have, instead of contorting yourself around the app. (Andy is not alone in this; [Ink & Switch on local-first software](https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Geoffrey Litt on malleable software](https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2023/03/25/llm-end-user-programming.html?ref=davidnunez.com) point at the same horizon.)

This is the same failure mode I hit with my calendar at a much smaller scale. When a tool is too rigid about what it owns, you end up working *for* the tool.

Please stop asking "Which app should I use?"

Try "which app will let me reshape it when my life shifts shape?"

### Mitchell Hashimoto, on the AI workflow that actually stuck

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/valentin-lhb-19oowanyffq-unsplash-t-1778159770.jpg)

Photo by Valentin LHB

Mitchell, a [HashiCorp](https://www.hashicorp.com/en?ref=davidnunez.com) co-founder who has been building software at the underside of operating systems for two decades, wrote a quietly excellent piece in February about [how AI actually entered his daily work](https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-ai-adoption-journey?ref=davidnunez.com). Not as an autonomous agent nor as his replacement.

AI is the *end-of-day instrument*: the last thirty minutes of his workday, every workday, is used to kick off agents that triage, draft, queue research, and prepare warm starts, so that the next morning begins with less blank-page drag.

The honest signal in there, especially for people leading teams: the AI workflow that sticks is the one that gives tomorrow morning slightly more momentum than today's.

---

## Closing

So that is my dispatch from the small fire. It went out eventually after I admitted that no single page of paper had ever successfully been both a flight plan and a logbook at the same time, and there was no good reason to think my calendar would be the first.

The question I'd love to leave you with: *what is the smallest surface in your stack that is quietly trying to do two jobs at once?*

Reply and tell me. I am, against my better judgment, building a list.

---

## Coda

**On repeat this week:** [*Tomorrow Never Knows*](https://open.spotify.com/track/6JtdbEuEME2tGQgWnttTyS?si=5ebe3f386ec242b9&ref=davidnunez.com), Phil Collins's cover of the Beatles.

[Tomorrow Never Knows - 2015 RemasteredPhil Collins · Face Value (Deluxe Editon) · Song · 1981![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273f6954c1f074f66907a8c5483)](https://open.spotify.com/track/6JtdbEuEME2tGQgWnttTyS?si=5ebe3f386ec242b9&ref=davidnunez.com)

**Building:** the rebuild of my Personal Operating System, the Board. It sounds grand, but it is, in fact, a series of very small text files.
### Austin, TX: Progress & Nostalgia
URL: https://davidnunez.com/austin-tx-progress-and-nostalgia/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:56.000Z
I’m in Austin over the 4th of July weekend to visit family. Every time I come back to Texas I have incredibly mixed feelings about how this town is metastasizing away from Richard Florida’s utopian vision of a “[Creative Class rising](https://www.google.com/books/edition/The%5FRise%5Fof%5Fthe%5FCreative%5FClass/BsaCDwAAQBAJ?ref=davidnunez.com).”

He predicted Austin was going to be a melting pot of young technologists & artists enjoying music, culture, and creative experimentation while they were building new companies together. The future would be invented in these intellectual crucibles. Area code 512 was to be an idyllic sleepaway camp funded by venture capitalists and unicorn startups. Talent from around the world would pull up their roots and flock to Texas to experience tacos and the “Live Music Capital of the World”.

Invest in hipster coffee shops instead of sports stadiums and economic prosperity will follow.

Everyone profits.

And It worked. It worked too well.

## Progress

Austin is now a playground for Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Crypto Bros, and Social Media Gurus. Technologists and technology parasites have spent the last decade fleeing the increased taxation and high cost of living in places like California and New York.

A grand migration is well underway and the cost of living in Austin is on an unsustainable upward trajectory as a result. The local economy is all too eager to gulp up the influx of disposable income. Young people live paycheck-to-paycheck as they chomp down their income on overwrought breakfast tacos and mimosas. They have no hope of affording a home purchase nor building *real* wealth in Austin, anymore.

Well. Actually, They can buy their luxury condo if they give up their passion projects and work for a big tech firm like Google™ for 80 hours a week.

Thus, creative risk gives way to the lure of stock options.

Now, the Austin downtown skyline is sterile and rectangular, as it continues to pixelate into condo highrises. The condopolis structures adorn themselves with unintentionally ironic names like “The Independent.” Their obscene forms erupt from the Texas soil like Jack’s beanstalk, and the Californian ex-patriots climb them, despite all their Faustian implications.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/e1322084-6335-4132-980e-036a5586fe5d-t-1776994416-1.png)

The motto of the place seems to be “Gentrify or Die” and that young, creative class Richard Florida imagined is squeezed further out to rural places where no public transportation will ever reach.

Subways? It’s Texas. It doesn’t need no stinkin’ subways when it can have pickup trucks and SUVs bellowing out carbon monoxide to choke up I-35 to death.

Austin. It’s getting better and better, right?

## Nostalgia

I lived in Austin from around 2000-2008 when [Courtney Rosenthal](https://www.crosenthal.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) maintained a comprehensive (and short) list of **all** of the [bloggers in Austin](https://www.austinbloggers.org/?ref=davidnunez.com). We’d meet together every month to plot against the Austin LiveJournalists, another club of people writing online. In those early days of [Moveable Type](https://www.movabletype.org/?ref=davidnunez.com) and artisanal blogrolls, we considered the journalers different from us, for some reason. We eventually all hung out together, anyway.

[FOMO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%5Fof%5Fmissing%5Fout?ref=davidnunez.com) didn’t seem to exist then. All it took to go viral at [SXSW Interactive](https://www.sxsw.com/category/interactive/?ref=davidnunez.com) was $3.99 in [orange smiley face stickers](https://web.archive.org/web/20050328090329/https://www.davidnunez.com/sxsw). With an email, I could summon a cohort of 100 of my fellow [dorks](https://dorkbot.org/?ref=davidnunez.com) to the parking lot of Cafe Mundi. There we’d show off the robots we were building, make Tesla coils sing, and turn pickles into lightbulbs. Fire-breathing machines were involved, often.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/0400f4b9-37d9-43fc-b43e-3957c54f139e-t-1776994435.jpg)

Image by Jon Lebkowsky, in a time where you had to manually stitch panoramic photos together

So I’m having many reactions to David Perell’s essay this week about this city, [What’s Up with Austin?](https://perell.com/essay/whats-up-with-austin/?ref=davidnunez.com). He’s writing from the perspective of a newcomer. He’s experiencing Austin as it exists, today. I can appreciate that. Austin is a series of imported opinions.

Respectfully, it’s always going to be “Town Lake” to me. That “[hippie 24/7 breakfast spot](https://www.magnoliacafeaustin.com/?ref=davidnunez.com)” he refers to? Every Sunday morning, I’d meet there with fellow techno-culturalists to discuss what it will take to encourage the city council to create more public, open WiFi spots. We’d defend the virtue of open-source voting machines and other [EFF-Austin](https://effaustin.org/?ref=davidnunez.com) talking points. We’d share weird internet phenomena (on our laptops… good connectivity on smartphones wasn’t as much of a thing, yet).

Perell talks about “Keep Austin Weird” as some kind of marketing slogan instead of the late Red Wassenich’s flippant comment when asked why he was donating to the KOOP’s [The Lounge Show](https://koop.org/programs/the-lounge-show/?ref=davidnunez.com):

> ‘I don’t know. It helps keep Austin weird.’ - Red Wassenich, 2000

I actually met Red. [“Keep Austin Weird” got away from him](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/us/austin-journal-a-slogan-battle-keeps-austin-weird.html?ref=davidnunez.com) just like this city got away from its earliest Web 1.0 roots.

As I drive around this town shaking my head at the condo blight and food truck infestations in East Austin (where I lived for a while), I feel like the old man sitting on my porch, “git off my lawn.” Except it’s a lawn I haven’t occupied for the past 15 years.

Am I allowed to complain, or do squatter’s rights take over here?

I now realize how the oldtimers were rolling their eyes at me as I was inserting myself into their long-held conversations. In 15 years, today’s TikTok influencers are going to be shaking their fists at the kids who ruined the good thing they had in the early 2020s.

Progress. Nostalgia.

Two sides of the same coin.

This comes to mind:

Remembering the good ol’ days,‌‌

David

---

*I was listening to* [*Progress by Ever So Blue*](https://open.spotify.com/track/6oJIMUBDopuFljMNBFrq9Z?si=b2b4999bc7984a87&ref=davidnunez.com) *and* [*Nostalgia by Melosense*](https://open.spotify.com/track/0Vtwa1eRykSFTGXbDBq7d2?si=923ed0c4952848ea&ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat as I was writing this newsletter.*

[ProgressEver So Blue · Fragment · Song · 2019![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2735db38dfd32e2c5946390090a)](https://open.spotify.com/track/6oJIMUBDopuFljMNBFrq9Z?ref=davidnunez.com)

[NostalgiaMelosense · Nostalgia · Song · 2019![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2732e738d5d6448d03e1c7cebd3)](https://open.spotify.com/track/0Vtwa1eRykSFTGXbDBq7d2?ref=davidnunez.com)
### 100 Days and a Restart
URL: https://davidnunez.com/100-days-and-a-restart/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:56.000Z
![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/mitmuseum-png-t-1776991970.jpg)

Today we launched a new [MIT Museum website](https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/?ref=davidnunez.com), and started our 100 day countdown to the opening of the Museum in its new building at Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA (October 2! If you’re in Boston around that time, hit me up and I’ll make sure you have a ticket waiting). The team has been working hard on this for many years, remotely through a pandemic, I might add.

It doesn’t seem right to call the next few months at the Museum “the homestretch” because there is still an unending list of projects that need to be completed before we are ready for the public. Sometimes it feels like we’re just beginning. Getting these systems up and running will be the dominant focus of my work life from now until October.

In many ways, this final push inspired me to reinvigorate my newsletter. I’ve been doing most of my writing on Twitter since the beginning of the year. I’ve watched my follower count rapidly grow there, but I’ve also watched myself cater to the The Twitter Algorithm™. The Algorithm™ rewards platitudes and headlines. The Algorithm™ does not appreciate nuance and depth or whatever it is that I think I’m doing in this newsletter.

Algorithm™ Algorithm™ Algorithm™

I miss longer form, *difficult* writing like I used to put in this newsletter. That’s not to say Twitter is “easy.” It’s far from it - it takes skill to craft like a copywriter. Every tweet must be an eye-catching headline in a river of trash posts and memes.

I’ve just been itching to spend more time writing *deeper* and more creatively. I love the satisfaction of pushing “publish” after a lot of research and learning. I get fired up knowing I’m delivering some small sense of value out of respect to your time and attention. The Museum is a long term project. Writing is my immediate feedback loop among friends.

That said, I don’t think I can sustain writing the 5000 word essays on single topics like I was [sending around previously](https://davidnunez.com/freediving-into-a-spreadsheet/). Not for nothing, but my letters shouldn’t feel like homework to you, either, for that matter!

I’m going to optimize for less friction and more consistent delivery on Fridays. I’ll be experimenting with a few structures that I might work on throughout the week, not in a marathon session on Thursday night.

Don’t get me wrong, I still intend to do some well researched essays and short stories in the coming weeks. However, I’ll likely post those on my website and  
point to them from these emails.

So:

My newsletter is about the intersection of human beings and technology. I’ll share what I’ve been learning and thinking about on this topic. I’ve also been dabbling in the “creator economy” over the past year (taking courses, learning new techniques, etc.), so I’ll talk about some of that too. I might share behind the scenes of opening a museum now and again, if that’d be interesting.

As always, I love to hear your feedback. Just hit “reply” on this email, and your response will go straight into my inbox.

Lots of fun stuff on its way.

Until then, have a great weekend!  
David

*I was listening to "*[*Starting Over*](https://open.spotify.com/track/5buZvve8ZyqcZWNzWeJ9zI?si=530f2461bd2a407b&ref=davidnunez.com)*" by Chris Stapleton on repeat as I wrote this newsletter.*

[Starting OverChris Stapleton · Starting Over · Song · 2020![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273d7d74af20c3a7ac6a0b7a60b)](https://open.spotify.com/track/3TNSVsiFngfe68UJpMq1oS?ref=davidnunez.com)
### That New Computer Smell
URL: https://davidnunez.com/that-new-computer-smell/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:54.000Z
Do you remember the way your first computer smelled?

When I was quite young, maybe 7 or 8 years old, my dad came home one day with a plastic briefcase. Inside, ensconced in grey protective foam, was a device I couldn’t quite comprehend when I first saw it.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/ts1500case-t-1777130846.jpg)

It was the [Timex Sinclair 1500](http://oldcomputers.net/ts1500.html?ref=davidnunez.com) computer system. It hooked up to our television using a converter that screwed into the back of the television via some metal prongs where the antenna should go. This was way before cable television when there was such a thing as “unused channels.” Channel 3 or sometimes 2 would play host to many countless hours of interactive experiences. The computer came with a cassette recorder and tapes used to load and store programs. It had a whopping 16 kilobytes of memory, and the whole kit cost my dad $295 (1980’s dollars).

This computer was essentially the UK Sinclair ZX-81 dressed up for a North American market and wasn’t nearly as popular as the Timex Sinclair 1000\. Nevertheless, the computer and I became fast friends.

I would spend hours dutifully typing in the programs from the learning books that came with the system, character by character. This is how I learned [BASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair%5FBASIC?ref=davidnunez.com): through rote copying, the same way a student artist might copy a masterpiece in a gallery to *feel* the strokes of a brush. I learned about line numbers and `GOTO`, and eventually, fancier concepts like variables and graphics. The keyboard was an ergonomic disaster, but it felt perfect in my child-sized hands. The keys had clever shortcuts and combinations that would help reduce the tedium of typing. If the computer turned off, you’d lose the program and have to start over. This is how I learned about the pain of catastrophic software failure.

My most vivid memory of this device was its new computer smell - chemical, electronic, my future.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/ts1500-t-1777130857.jpg)

Of course, computing itself had been around for decades before I was born. It certainly influenced my family’s life in ways we couldn’t perceive, churning away at global systems and economies. In our home, we had an [Atari 2600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari%5F2600?ref=davidnunez.com), and I think I was playing Breakout and Adventure from a very young age before the Sinclair showed up. However, this new device was the first time I could experience computing in such a direct way. My fingers could do more than drive an 8-bit tank around my television screen using an Atari joystick. In the distant future, this computer meant I would be able to *make* the tank.

Eventually, as I grew older, the Timex Sinclair gave way to a rotating cast of newer computers from various forgotten manufacturers. I would pore over all the advertisements in [Computer Shopper](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/1835?ref=davidnunez.com) to find the parts I would need to assemble my own rigs. I’d make handwritten spreadsheets of all the specifications for the parts to find the best deals. I would use this to convince my parents to continue being the benevolent patrons of my deepening obsession. All these numbers and acronyms meant something to me at the time. They mean nothing now. They mean everything.

Rebecca Murphey [writes about her own experiences](https://onezero.medium.com/girl-computer-31ecd328bc53?ref=davidnunez.com) with computers (including the Timex Sinclair TS-1000) and how they influenced her life.

> I can barely remember a time when computers weren’t a part of my life, but I know with certainty that that time existed, and that when computers first entered my life, they were exceptional and special. These days, of course, they’re ubiquitous. There’s a staggering quantity of computing power in a bin in my closet. When I’m sufficiently tired, I swipe at the pages of a printed book, and wonder why they don’t turn.

Computing was a special occurrence. You would take the time out to sit with the keyboard, and everything was slow. You didn’t know any better. You would compute *instead of* other things, like going outside or hanging out with friends. Now we compute *in spite* of things.

People are taking [digital vacations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital%5Fdetox?ref=davidnunez.com) because it’s hard to imagine doing anything without a computer involved. In 2021, a day without a computer feels like an anomaly.

## Get off my lawn

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/acf84e49b231fd2c30c2a72a5eb9d78f-t-1777130869.jpg)

In June 1948, the [ENIAC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC?ref=davidnunez.com) became the first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer. There are millions of people alive today who, at some point in their life, existed in a universe where computers, as we currently understand them, did not exist. Because computers have evolved so quickly, it’s possible to mark living generations of people by their first computing experiences.

Whenever I talk about my first computer, there’s always someone, a generation ahead, who likes to tell me about their tales of [punch cards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched%5Fcard?ref=davidnunez.com), [woven copper memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core%5Frope%5Fmemory?ref=davidnunez.com), gears in the [difference engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference%5Fengine?ref=davidnunez.com), or inventing [boolean mathematics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean%5Falgebra?ref=davidnunez.com).

I get it. I wasn’t alive when the first computer was invented. I doubt that makes my early computing experiences less legitimate. When I was younger, I remember feeling superior to adults who didn’t understand computers. I would get exasperated having to explain how to do such simple things like formatting documents when I was flying around in Cyberspace™ with my [**1337**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet?ref=davidnunez.com) hacker friends I’d find on dial-up BBS’s. I would grab the keyboard from the adults and do it for them instead of explaining because I could get back to my own programming faster. Computers were simpler then.

Computational nostalgia haunts me. I wish I still had my Timex Sinclair 1500\. My mom sold it off in a garage sale. I sometimes look on eBay and see parts of the kit being sold as vintage electronics. I wish I could find a complete kit, with the briefcase and that new computer smell. I’d take it out and carefully work through the books again. I’d try to remember the joy of what it was like to write a program for the first time, feeling the membranes of those keys, breathing in the electronics, hoping to reboot my brain and unwind the subsequent decades of computational complexity.

I think about young people today who have never known a life without smartphones and instant access to the internet. I have to fight my instinct not to grump, “These kids these days don’t know how easy they have it with all their TikToks and Snapchats!”

Of course, this is the fear manifesting. It’s hard to keep up; I am starting to sense the eye-rolling whenever I engage a young person in some conversation about technology. It stings when they take the phone out of my hand because it’s faster for them to do it for me rather than explain. I’ll never forget the crushing blow when a teenage niece told me, “Twitter and Facebook are for old people.” I try to hang on, I really do, but maybe this is just the natural order of things. Just like my parents weren’t raised around personal computers, I was not born into high-speed internet. Our brains rewire themselves to interface with the current state-of-the-art.

I have become the vintage computer, someday soon to be sold off at a garage sale.

My question, then, to all the young technonauts: what comes after smartphones, and what will that smell like? And thus, the circle of life loops again.

```
10 PRINT "The computer is dead. Long live the computer."
20 GOTO 10

```

David Nuñez

---

## Coda

- In [Episode #4 of this newsletter](https://davidnunez.com/happy-upgrade-day/), I wrote a short story about brain implants as a response to Elon Musk’s Neuralink project. He’s still at it. Earlier this month, he claimed a [monkey with a brain implant is now playing video games](https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/8/22374749/elon-musk-neuralink-monkey-pong-brain-interface?ref=davidnunez.com) using just the neural interface.
- There is a [browser-based emulator for the Timex Sinclair 1000](http://www.vavasour.ca/jeff/ts1000/?ref=davidnunez.com) online, so you can get a sense of how it was like to program on one of these devices. (Java support required. Smell not included)
- Here is a [teardown of the Timex Sinclair 1000](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jr7Q1yJOUM&ab%5Fchannel=The8-BitGuy&ref=davidnunez.com) by The 8-Bit Guy on YouTube.

---

*I listened to* [*Timex Sinclair*](https://open.spotify.com/track/02N57KdcRXVQHxZdICqTVK?si=jaPfg51HRDqBJbuug2-VFw&ref=davidnunez.com) *by The Remote Access Service on repeat as I was writing this newsletter.*

*This was issue #20 of Soulful Computing by David Nuñez. You can find past issues* [*on my website*](https://davidnunez.com/)*.*
### Anything but NFTs
URL: https://davidnunez.com/anything-but-nfts/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:53.000Z
Thank you for all the ooutpouring of kind words for [my newsletter last week](https://davidnunez.com/the-grief-multiplier-and-gratitude/). It was a huge catharsis to write it, and I was so touched that it seemed helpful to many of my readers. I’m still working through responding to the many of you who sent me a note. In the meantime, please keep your pandemic stories coming, and I’ll keep trying to write back as soon as possible.

So I was tempted to make this week’s newsletter about [NFTs](https://www.theverge.com/22310188/nft-explainer-what-is-blockchain-crypto-art-faq?ref=davidnunez.com).

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1372857547112247298?ref=davidnunez.com)

However, if I’m honest, at this point, I can’t even be bothered to write anything about them: they and the people building NFT startups or trying to form “thought leadership” gross me out. I’ve been contacted by no less than three vendors trying to sell my museum some form of NFT snake oil. Besides, there’s already plenty of writing on this topic. Here are just a few articles I’ve read.

- [Jack Rusher](https://jackrusher.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) wrote [a really helpful explainer](https://jackrusher.com/journal/what-does-it-mean-to-buy-a-gif.html?ref=davidnunez.com) last year that helped wrap my head around the broad strokes early on.
- A robot made a self-portrait NFT [which sold for almost $700K](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/nft-art-sophia-robot-self-portrait-scn/index.html?ref=davidnunez.com).
- A museum technology business concern, masquerading as an "art collective," attempted to [pilfer publically accessible images](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/global-art-museum-nfts-1953404?ref=davidnunez.com) from open access collections at museums. When they faced the [inevitable outrage](https://twitter.com/tinariversryan/status/1370533790284722189?ref=davidnunez.com) from museums and artists, they pretended it [was all a joke](https://x.com/GlobalArtMuseum/status/1371476437522255872?ref=davidnunez.com). Nobody believes their story. (thanks to [@GraceOnTheRun](https://twitter.com/graceontherun?ref=davidnunez.com) for the tip!)
- This whole thing has the hallmarks of either a [grift or generalized market stupidity](https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/big-short-michael-burry-slams-nft-crypto-grifters-magic-beans-2021-3-1030214014?ref=davidnunez.com).

So this week, I mostly just wanted to share a couple of things I’ve made so far this year and haven’t had the chance to tell you about. I’m following my instinct that *making* things feels a lot better than *retreating* in the face of global trauma. That seems more productive than trying to engage in discourse around a parasitic crypto-market that’s quite [literally destroying our planet](https://www.wired.com/story/nfts-hot-effect-earth-climate/?ref=davidnunez.com), at any rate.

I made a YouTube video of the [essay I wrote about Error 1202](https://davidnunez.com/error-1202/) on the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.

For the MCN blog, I [wrote an essay](https://mcn.edu/insights-blog-when-museums-embrace-zoom-our-brains-suffer/?ref=davidnunez.com) about how Zoom meetings are neurologically fatiguing, highlight inequities, and can cause our worst instincts to arise in our virtual workplace.

> Have you had meetings with people you know who spent a lot of time and money crafting their backgrounds and upgrading their camera and microphone? They command your attention because we have been trained over the past decades to appreciate high levels of production value when watching media. Everyone judges the artwork and [books you choose](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/26/books-by-the-foot-washington-dc-covid-books-440347?ref=davidnunez.com) as part of your set design.  
>  
> When we hold job interviews online, how unbiased can we be when a candidate just has a better lighting setup than another? Expensive cameras are unfair advantages, and we are all suddenly YouTubers, whether we like it or not. We have a lot of catching up to do, at any rate.  
>  
> In 2021, cinematography and audio production became critical skills for basic digital literacy.  
>  
> \- From “[When Museums Embrace Zoom Our Brains Suffer](https://mcn.edu/insights-blog-when-museums-embrace-zoom-our-brains-suffer/?ref=davidnunez.com)”, MCN Insights, January 25, 2021

---

*I listened to* [*A Million Miles Away by FM Attack*](https://open.spotify.com/track/3imKvLrTHhXC0xYCAF1YL7?si=ZbDDMxyYS6yLGwwiRNEOEg&ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat as I was writing this newsletter.*

[A Million Miles AwayFM Attack · Astrowave EP · Song · 2010![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2732052384fd5ac165e1e7da599)](https://open.spotify.com/track/3imKvLrTHhXC0xYCAF1YL7?ref=davidnunez.com)
### The Grief Multiplier and Gratitude
URL: https://davidnunez.com/the-grief-multiplier-and-gratitude/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:52.000Z
*Thank you for the overwhelming feedback on this essay. I had a couple of good cries while writing it and I’m crying as I read all of your kind words in return. I’m doing my best to write back to every one of your letters. It is truly a gift to know you are on the other side of the screen.*

*If you’re coming here for the first time, I write about the human touch inside of computers in* [***my free newsletter***](https://davidnunez.com/)*.*

*It would mean the world to me if you let me know how your own relationships with people and technology have evolved over the past year in a pandemic; I’m on twitter* [*@davidnunez*](https://twitter.com/@davidnunez?ref=davidnunez.com)*.*

---

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/1fe4e4af-aa36-4967-be36-0af13d25e1f7-t-1777131052.png)

## Miracle of Science

I’m cramped around the corner table with my MIT Museum colleagues at the nearby pub, [Miracle of Science](http://www.miracleofscience.us/?ref=davidnunez.com). We’re speculating about the next few months, hopeful that as everything starts to reopen again, we’ll return to some sense of normalcy. Or “new normal” or whatever we end up calling it.

I say out loud that I don’t think we’ll be out of the woods until sometime after the summer. They all laugh and offer some contorted reasoning about how vaccinations will make everything better. “It won’t take that long,” they insist. I stare into my drink, hoping my pessimism is just a side effect of my ongoing, general malaise.

Each of us exists in our version of denial.

We speculate about what it would feel like to be overcome by the disease. Someone says that severe coronavirus cases make you cough so much that it feels like being stuck in place, drowning. We think that would be an awful way to go.

We face the fear with a round of, “how would you like to die?” I joke that I’d like death by a meteor that takes out the entire planet at once. No survivors. I wouldn’t want to miss out on anything after I’m gone! It’d be an instant antidote to [FOMO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear%5Fof%5Fmissing%5Fout?ref=davidnunez.com) on a global scale. Everyone laughs. We then comfort ourselves by imagining being very old, surrounded by loved ones, and just drifting away.

Not one person dares to say, “Alone. Hooked up to a ventilator. Loud machines beeping our last heartbeats. Strapped to a gurney, surrounded by exhausted people in hazmat suits. Coughing up blood until we drown. Our bodies stacked like firewood with all the others afterward.” That would be just too unimaginable.

Massachusetts Avenue is now quiet and empty. None of us realize that this is the last time we would ever be together. It’s March 13, 2020, just two days after President Trump reluctantly admitted that this thing that had been raging wild for months might be worth a look. It is the last day our museum would be open to the public.

The following 365 days will be pixelated realities. Protests, politics, and pandemics will intermingle with Netflix trivialities on glass screens in our homes. Many people will lose their jobs, and others will fade away into their early retirements. We will also make new friends from around the world on something called “Zoom.” The matrix of faces in a window will become our new coworkers. Our tethers to each other will become digital and renewed. It will be weird.

At some point, the disease will start murdering people we love.

The old version of ourselves will cease to exist as we form new habits that will make it impossible to behave like humans when we are within 6 feet of each other again. All of our naked biases will stack themselves up, and then we will begin to lose trust and faith in each other. Indeed, humanity’s worst instincts will run wild alongside the virus. Some people will pretend there is nothing to worry about. Other people will shun the rule-breakers. Everyone will spit in each others’ faces.

We will all exist in our version of denial.

A year of cocooning will lead to a rebirth. We will become some form of post-human that will perform simulations of interactions we once experienced but have long forgotten how to execute. The full impact of this trauma won’t reveal itself for years to come. All of us will feel pain, exhaustion, and visceral hate. We will also scratch out moments of joy and connection among the chaos.

Everyone will struggle to find something online to simulate the normalcy from before. We will fool ourselves into thinking we can persist completely online, and thus, technology will have succeeded in its global infection.

On the most challenging days, we will count our blessings on one finger: the middle one. That’s how the virus will eventually murder us all. Nobody gets a pass.

“New normal?” That fiction is about to die. Indeed, the old version of us is about to die. No, nothing will be “normal” anymore.

Then my colleagues and I all laugh, stand up to go our separate ways.

We hug goodbye for the last time.

## The Bereavement Multiplier

As I write this, about 540,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States. A sociologist has come up with an idea called the “[bereavement multiplier](https://www.pnas.org/content/117/30/17695.abstract?ref=davidnunez.com).” It says, on average, there are about nine close mourners for every person that dies (i.e., immediate family, grandchildren, etc.). This metric means that on top of the 540,000 casualties, COVID-19 death directly impacted an additional 4,860,000 people.

People are still dying by the thousands. Many more people are crying for the dead, and I am one of them. `#TouchedByCOVID` is not a club I ever wanted to join.

Earlier this year, I watched with relief as we persevered through an ugly stain in my country’s history, and adults finally moved back into the White House. For the first time in a long time, I felt a small glimpse of calm and reason. I had hope, finally, that serious people would pay respect to the miracles of science. I might get through this thing with just a couple of bumps and bruises.

Hubris. The universe has a shitty way of putting things in perspective.

At the end of January, my brother Robert tested positive for COVID-19 and died a week later. My brother, Mark, called in the early hours of a Sunday morning, “he’s gone.” I felt stuck to my bed. It was difficult to breathe, and I had a tingling sense of water pouring all over me.

By that afternoon, I had abandoned almost a year of pandemic precautions and left my Boston safe space to be in Texas with my family. The 2-second rule relegated masked hugs. I was *among* my family but couldn’t be *with* them the same way as before.

I can never be with them again, like before the pandemic. One of us is now missing.

That night I posted a tweet about my brother. I’m not sure why I did this. I think it was out of a desperate need for some faint hint of normalcy. It turns out in a pandemic, Twitter and Zoom have become my new normal. (I will need to interrogate this eventually).

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1356062440551809024?ref=davidnunez.com)

I was quickly overwhelmed with “like” notifications from internet friends and strangers. People from around the world were quick to offer support in the replies. Friends I had just barely met during the pandemic were reaching out privately and doing everything they could to cheer me up. It was such a comfort to scroll through the thread while adding my own “likes” in return, one tweet after another. For the first time, I understood and appreciated Twitter’s decision to represent “likes” with little hearts. ♥️

Back in August, I wrote about [watching my Uncle’s funeral through a Facebook stream](https://davidnunez.com/touching-a-heartbeat/).

> I watched the broadcast live from the funeral home on a public Facebook page. Facebook, mind you, now has this video in its data stores. We navigate among beautiful and complicated times.  
>  
> I saw uncles and distant cousins bumping elbows and bowing to each other. There is no hugging in 2020\. Aunts in masks rearranged themselves like Voronoi diagrams to maintain optimal distances from each other, always beyond arm’s length.  
>  
> “Social distance at a funeral.” I don’t even know how to parse that.  
>  
> …  
>  
> I touched my family through the screen. They didn’t know I was with them. I hope they felt my touch, anyway.

Never in my wildest dreams did I anticipate I would be on the other side of the camera, delivering words about my brother to a Facebook audience, just six months later. At the start of my eulogy, I made sure to look into the cameras at the back of the church. I thanked the online streamers for “being there.”

I attempted to make one-way eye contact with the invisible, distant, and [derealized](https://davidnunez.com/the-global-derealization/) people that might be on the other side of the screen. I couldn’t be sure they were out there, but at the moment, it was enough to know they were a possibility.

Because the entire service is now online, my mother is rewatching the funeral again and again. I have rewatched it also. Instead of these ceremonies being an essential step towards finding closure and saying goodbye, they persist in the aether. It takes just a few clicks to reopen the wounds. We get to relive the suffering, far beyond what is humane. That day lives on, stored neatly in redundant backup servers. The grief gets copied and pasted over and over again. The bits persist, thanks to the benevolent dispassion of Mark Zuckerberg.

Images and videos of my brother’s smiling face get shared, repurposed, and remixed. He hugs his children in digital perpetuity, and people add their likes and comments. They try to bring comfort, or maybe they all just yearn for a connection to something real in an endless stream of the unreal. The comments are tagged and stored away, also.

All of this emotion plays right into the algorithm, which salivates over this raw, unfettered data. Our grief is aggregated and analyzed by advertising technology companies. A few months from now, on a sunny day when I’m starting to feel good about the world again, Facebook will open the wounds, and my brother will appear in my feed. At precisely that moment, some company will try to sell me pain relief. I might buy it. My click will satiate the algorithm. Deep reinforcement learning is a feedback loop between the machine and my memory.

I watch myself deliver the eulogy until it feels like it’s someone else. I know that I will watch it many more times in the years to come as I genuinely become someone else. I wonder if it will still feel as potent after the thousandth copy, or will the bits degrade over time?

No. As long as I continue to look at these pixels, they become reinvigorated. The neurons tie together more tightly. These bits will live on as long as I do.

All of this is digital preservation taken to its natural conclusion.

“Bereavement Multiplier,” indeed.

## The Gift of Sorrow

Spring is arriving, and there is a sense that we’re about to emerge from the longest winter. Vaccines seem imminent for so many, and we just might get a summer do-over. MIT declared an intent to return to full levels of students and researchers on campus in the Fall. People are making plans to travel and get married and finally hold all the in-person memorial services to move on with their lives. It’s going to be a bonanza for flower shops.

I, too, have a bit of hope for a return to normalcy, though bittersweet. I can’t help but hold anger as I reflect on the lack of empathy, competence, and respect for science that ultimately led to my brother’s death. If only vaccines came just a few months earlier… what if?

> I miss walking to the movie theater on a hot summer day and ordering a cold drink to sip while watching superheroes save the world.  
>  
> I miss eating at pretentious restaurants, ordering foods I would otherwise never try.  
>  
> I miss my brother, who was killed by COVID-19, 45 days ago.  
>  
> — David Nuñez (@davidnunez) [March 18, 2021](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1372369161754603520?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=davidnunez.com)

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1372369161754603520?ref=davidnunez.com)

I’m in pain, of course, and I know I will be for a very long time. People tell me that it will be like a roller coaster. Some days will be better than others. It doesn’t ever really go away, but I will learn to live with it. It will get better. I will adjust to the new normal.

I hear the same platitudes about COVID-19, I should point out.

For now, I’ve started a daily morning practice. It’s simple, and it’s been constructive. Maybe you might find it helpful, also. I was skeptical at first; it seemed so trivial, but now I can’t imagine not doing it.

As soon as I wake up, I open up my phone or computer and type out the first three things that come to mind for which I am grateful. That’s it. Three things. Gratitude. Every morning, the moment I wake up. It takes less than 15 seconds. Sometimes it’s hard, but then I just write “I’m thankful for being awake right now” three times. Here are some others:

> I can take classes online; lauren picking up tacos for lunch; technological tools that can let me do my work anywhere. thankful for having a surplus of money to save for gifting; family; recipe book from aunt Pauline; cousin Sally who picked us up from the hotel in the ice storm; Lauren knowing exactly how to make me laugh; greek corner and french fries for lunch; running water; iPad; television shows via streaming services; eyesight; I can reach out to other people around the world; `#PTYA`; joggers; I can make chocolate chip cookies with minimal effort; Lauren; a good cup of coffee; I can choose to hide or show my grumpiness; autonomy in my day job; heat in our condo; trying to make gorditas; being able to take long hot showers; daily walks; I know how to read; sunshine; rabbit holes

This regular gratitude reminder feels like building a safety net. It’s becoming a well of hope I can dip into to practice moving forward. In that way, it also is like a prayer or a touchstone. The notes continue to compound as I write more of them. It will be my recovery and healing multiplier.

I wrote this in my brother’s eulogy.

> God, in His divine wisdom and mercy, gives us the great gift of sorrow. We cry for Robert because we loved him. It hurts us to know that he is gone. We are in pain because we mourn the loss of a good man—a man who tried his best to walk in the path of Christ. So our tears are proof that Robert mattered to us. Robert’s life mattered. What a blessed gift it is to know this.

As we enter the second year of the pandemic, we will continue to cry and experience new and unimaginable trauma in the wake of COVID. We will also feel relief and joy as we learn to reconcile with this disease and eventually pick up the remnants of experiences we left behind.

It turns out COVID-19 was not the meteor that ended the human experiment. Now the fear of missing out on yet another year is too unimaginable. So we must eventually reboot.

In the meantime, I also choose to be grateful for our collective sorrow.

It means the life we once knew mattered. It means being with each other does continue to matter. Our desperate hope means that when we emerge as the next version of humanity, we will yearn for and attempt to rebuild everything we lost. We will both succeed and fail in that endeavor in the most spectacular ways unimaginable.

So much that we loved will never return, no matter how many vaccines we distribute. It is sad, but it is also a gift.

I will hold onto the tears as a treasure.

They mean that everything that has come before matters.

They also mean that you matter, and so do I.

---

*This was episode #18 of Soulful Computing by David Nuñez. Past issues can be* [*found on my website*](https://davidnunez.com/)*.*

*I was listening to Alanis Morissette’s* [*Thank U as covered by Aurora*](https://open.spotify.com/track/1w5J5CBuvT36kt2OtHa8ts?si=ZqMdnXWOST2ItNbv7BTFkg&ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat as I was writing this newsletter.*

[Thank UAURORA · Thank U · Song · 2020![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273f7c2252d996573a0526f9c96)](https://open.spotify.com/track/1w5J5CBuvT36kt2OtHa8ts?si=ZqMdnXWOST2ItNbv7BTFkg&ref=davidnunez.com)
### Happy New Year? If you say so.
URL: https://davidnunez.com/happy-new-year-if-you-say-so/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:51.000Z
Hello friend,

Uhhhmmm… Happy New Year?

This week, we watched unprecedented events unfold at the United States Capitol, and as I am writing this, we don’t know how many more twists remain in this Shakespearean drama.

I regret my jokes at the end of last year about how “it couldn’t get any worse than 2020.” At the very least, to the extent that this country is relevant to the rest of the world anymore, we have a lot of explaining to do in 2021 and beyond.

Wednesday was a particularly meeting-heavy day for me. I first got a sense something was happening when I recieved a text from my partner while I was on a Zoom meeting asking, “What’s going on??” However, since I was in back-to-back calls, I didn’t stop to sample the avalanche of incoming news.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/img_2082-t-1777122354.jpg)

It wasn’t until one of my colleagues opened up yet another meeting with an acknowledgment of the “extraordinary moment” that I opened up a web browser; I didn’t hear another word she said after that.

It didn’t take long for me to excuse myself from that meeting and cancel all my other commitments for the rest of the afternoon. I got under a blanket on the couch, holding hands with the only other human being who I’ve been able to reliably touch since the start of the COVID-19, and we turned on the television.

A coup unfolded through screens and Twitter feeds in front of our eyes. We stared at the flashing pixels for hours until they blurred when it didn’t seem like “anything new was happening.” When we couldn’t take it anymore, those same points of light eventually morphed into a Netflix show about people in a [pottery-making competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FGreat%5FPottery%5FThrow%5FDown?ref=davidnunez.com).

We watched a television series that people unironically refer to as “reality television” through the same panes of glass we watched the horror of attempted insurrection. Our brains really aren’t designed to make sense of any of that.

It reminded me of the feeling I had last year when there was a significant explosion in Beirut. I learned about that catastrophe during an afternoon Zoom call, as well. As a response, I wrote an essay about what I call “[The Global Derealization](https://davidnunez.com/blog/the-global-derealization/).”

> Our brains are rewiring themselves over the last months to regard every face on our screens as roughly equal. Our friends, families, and coworkers all visit us in our homes as small-headed maquettes through a limited set of pixels on these cold pieces of glass sitting on our desks.  
>  
> …  
>  
> Our reality bubbles have closed in on us as we hunker down in our homes, peeking out at the world through pixels in a glass portal. It’s not normal. We’re not wired for this. I empathize with people who desperately and recklessly ignore socially distancing and stay-at-home orders.  
>  
> This isn’t how we evolved. Our animal instinct to forget and ground ourselves in reality is too strong. We need each other in to know that we are real.  
>  
> We are experiencing a global derealization.

The New Year is supposed to be a chance to clear the decks and reset. The final weeks of December are slow times where we can sequester and dream. This year we didn’t have the luxury of a *real* break, though. To be honest, the holidays just felt like any other week of 2020, except with a bit more home baking. I’m nervous that 2021 is starting to feel like an extension of 2020, also.

We set ambitious, fickle resolutions. We draft detailed annual plans in Notion workspaces. We earnestly stick to those goals for a couple of days. If we’re extraordinarily disciplined, we honor our pledges for two or three additional weeks, even.

Then we get bored.

Instead of goals, I asked on Twitter if anybody had any theme words for the year.

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1341403937103110148?ref=davidnunez.com)

A lot of responses were very much about "*survival"* and “*resilience*.” People were permitting themselves to embrace "*stability"* and “*perseverance*.” There is no right answer, of course. A theme word is perfectly valid as soon as you pick it for yourself.

I chose “Velocity.”

I felt like 2020 was a year of stagnation. Sure, I got a few things done, but I also had an overwhelming sense of being stuck. The continuous lockdown has something to do with that. These days, I’m a bit sick of hunkering down and putting up the shields. Shelter-in-place, metaphorically, isn’t doing it for me lately. At least the next little while, I want to be in motion. Ideally, I’d be moving forward. However, I’d even settle for backward motion. I just want to hop into a new node to give myself a shake. “Let’s just make the wheels turn,” I told myself with hubris on January 1.

And then this week happened.

“***Velocity***.”

Thank you, universe. That’s not exactly what I meant.

What’s your theme word?

In the meantime, stay safe,

David Nuñez

# Coda

As I hinted at in my last email, I managed to get some thinking and planning over the holiday break. I’m excited about where I’m going to be taking this newsletter and all the other things I’m making.

In particular, in 2021, I’m going to be putting a little more emphasis on my website, where I’d like to post long-form and evergreen writing without the artificial pressure of the newsletter “deadline.” I’ve realized I need to give my essays a bit more research effort with proper time to marinate and evolve the words rather than rush to send. More speculative fiction will show up there as well.

This weekly newsletter will point to those longer works as they are published, but I will tend to be more casual and current in these letters. For example, as I research a longer written piece about the fringes of emerging technology, I’ll share resources that I discover or insights I derive, early and unfiltered. We can talk about these things through these letters to each other.

I’m also taking YouTube more seriously in 2021\. I have a bunch of scripts written and footage recorded that I’m in the process of pushing through a production pipeline. More on that soon.

---

*I was listening to* [*Velocity Girl*](https://open.spotify.com/track/1sfI921cOH7r6HXGcJ7FnJ?si=eut6j96NTgmADNUxd2gZZw&ref=davidnunez.com) *by Snow Patrol on repeat while writing this newsletter.*

*This was episode #17 of Soulful Computing by David Nuñez. Past issues can be* [*found on my website*](https://davidnunez.com/)*.*

[Velocity GirlSnow Patrol · Songs for Polarbears · Song · 1998![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2735aeea2ea60ecead885294ab7)](https://open.spotify.com/track/1sfI921cOH7r6HXGcJ7FnJ?si=eut6j96NTgmADNUxd2gZZw&ref=davidnunez.com)
### Patience
URL: https://davidnunez.com/patience/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:51.000Z
There’s something about December that sends me into a frenzy of trying to wrap up projects as if I’m trying to make up for not being as productive as I could have been all year.

Resolutions are unmet. Projects are incomplete. Life is still in disarray.

Obviously, it’s all in my head, but Decembers tend to be a terrifically unhealthy mix of holiday slowdown and productivity fiction. Of course, it’s 2020, and I think there are probably even more reasons to go easier on myself this year.

I wrote a tweet earlier this month.

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1335941065220747266?ref=davidnunez.com)

I don’t think it’s likely I’m going to remodel our kitchen, finish writing that short story collection, thoroughly redesign and build out my home office, become an expert on Adobe Premiere Pro, organize the millions of files in my hard drive, read that stack of 20 books queued up in my Kindle app, implement my backlog esoteric programming language ideas, launch an iPhone app, go into the museum to get a jump start on next year’s work *and* watch the entire [Marvel Universe movies in chronological order](https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-watch-the-marvel-movies-in-order?ref=davidnunez.com).

Certainly, I can’t get that all done before Christmas. So, I’ll adjust my expectations and finish that all by New Year’s Eve. That’ll give me a day or two to be lazy before work starts again next year.

I’m kidding.

But only barely and through gritted teeth.

Of course, time means [nothing these days](https://davidnunez.com/time-is-weird-in-2020/), so it’s especially absurd to assign arbitrary dates on calendars to sweep away the past and start afresh. That said, it’ll be nice to get 2020 behind us, wouldn’t you agree?

Everything’s been a load of chaos and movement this year, and I haven’t had the chance to stop and breathe. There’s not been time to ask the more significant, existential questions. So, I am excited to spend some quality downtime over the next couple of weeks to do some strategic thinking about these things I am making, like this newsletter.

Someone asked me recently why I’m writing these emails and what I hope to accomplish. Sure, I suppose I have a vague notion of wanting to build up a “platform” and “establish thought leadership.” (Yuck. 🤮)

Though I have nothing in mind right now, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that in the very distant future, I’d use this newsletter to try to market something like an “information product.” (Gross. 🤮)

Hopefully, whenever that time comes, it will make perfect sense to both of us. The value would be obvious, and you won’t take too much offense. You’d just unsubscribe if I take myself too seriously, anyway.

My Twitter friend, [Alli Hartley-Kong](https://twitter.com/AlliHartley1?ref=davidnunez.com), wrote a staggeringly honest essay that she read aloud at this year’s [MCN conference](https://mcn.edu/conferences/mcn-2020-virtual/?ref=davidnunez.com). During this challenging year for museum workers, talented people like her lost their jobs in a downsizing bloodbath all across the field. In her story of resilience, Alli gave thanks to *writing* as a means to refocus. It helped her find meaning and work through the confusion and pain of 2020\. Through it all, she found herself returning to one of her earliest passions, playwriting.

(*Note: Certain sessions at MCN were following the* [*Chatham House Rule*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham%5FHouse%5FRule?ref=davidnunez.com)*: discussions are closed-door and off-the-record. This included the session on* [*Stories of Resilience and Resistance*](https://mcn2020virtual.sched.com/event/dfXT/stories-of-resilience-and-resistance-what-happens-when-cyclical-work-becomes-sisyphean?ref=davidnunez.com)*, where Alli read her essay. I got her permission to mention her story here, and she has plans to publish the piece online soon. I’ll point to it when it’s up.*)

In her essay, she captured the “why” for writing in a way that resonated strongly with me.

> “If there’s a moment where you’re not feeling particularly resilient, I invite you to write with me. I hope you’ll find in words more resilience than you can imagine.”

This newsletter has been a way for me to exercise resilience. It is helping me work through 2020\. I see them as love letters to my friends. Unexpectedly, I’ve benefited from the generosity of so many people responding with overwhelmingly encouraging feedback and helpful critique. Just dopamine hits, probably, but it also just *feels good* to reach out to human beings when an authentic connection is so rare in 2020.

All of this makes me want to take “content creation” more seriously.

I felt a twinge of guilt when I missed a week or two of newsletters recently. I broke my promise to myself that I’d send something out weekly, no matter what. I don’t think anyone but me actually cares though.

My most recent letters don’t include the ethereal, [speculative fictions of the earlier episodes](https://davidnunez.com/happy-upgrade-day/). Those stories are just genuinely fun to write, though they take an unsustainably long time to craft. I have a day job that makes significant demands on my energy. (I’m grateful for this, by the way.) Still, I’d like to find a way to explore that world building style a bit more.

People with [large followings](https://www.youtube.com/user/Sepharoth64?ref=davidnunez.com) say that consistency and longevity are the secrets of success, “Publish 2-3 videos on YouTube per week for a few years and your life will change.” While there’s a severe [survival bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship%5Fbias?ref=davidnunez.com) among these experts, I can appreciate that creative pursuits are a long, plodding pursuit.

I’m not too proud to admit that the so-called **Influencers**™ sometimes make me jealous with their prolific production and related fame and fortune. However, through observing them, I’ve realized that there’s some merit in building tools and workflows that turn creation into a habit. Their overnight successes are 10 years of constant, professional production. They’re a Big Deal because they just kept showing up with reasonably good stuff, beyond the point where most people just quit because they don’t find traction.

Successful content creators treat their work seriously. There is machinary around what they do. They hire teams guided by standard operating procedures. They batch tasks and optimize their limited time to take advantage of their unique value propositions. They spend countless hours studying their platforms and each other. It’s a lot of work to make it look so easy.

A calculated and crafted approach appeals to the system builder in me. It soothes me to set up calendars and flowcharts so that all creation friction is gone, and all I need to do is just show up to put ideas down on digital paper. It’s fun to entertain the fantasy of optimizing away some of the inevitable drudgeries that come alongside making things. Tedium and pain always come, anyway.

It’ll take time. I’m not fooling myself.

However, it is hard to be patient when the world moves at the speed of the internet. Watching people find success pumping out mediocre noise to flood social media algorithms is both disheartening (“doesn’t anyone have any taste anymore?”) and inspiring (“it’ll be so easy to rise above the fray because I can do better”).

This is hubris, on my part, naturally. I’m as much a noisemaker as anyone else.

No hack or expensive course will substitute for the long, slow effort of just making more things. *Many* more things over a long time. That’s the trick. It’s difficulty lies within its simplicity.

I wonder, though, if this emphasis on prolific production and growth-hacking conflicts with my goal to soulfully connect with other humans through this technology. How can I truly learn or grow if I’m just pumping out content without giving myself space to breathe?

It’d be like a neverending December.

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1339147331858554883?ref=davidnunez.com)

“Quantity” vs. “Quality” is likely a false dichotomy, though, and the reality lies somewhere on a spectrum. It’s all probably a matter of purpose. It’s about figuring out the “Why?”

I have an aim to make more stuff in 2021, but next year also promises to be intense at the museum due to a major project we’ll be completing. To that end, I’ll be spending some time over the next couple of weeks interrogating and reaffirming what I’m trying to accomplish with my “platform.”

Yes, I will also gleefully design my systems and plan out cadence and content calendars. I will put on my “Digital Strategy” hat for my channels. I’ll set out a reasonable plan so that I might sustain my enthusiasm through it all. This newsletter may look different on the other side, but my hope is I’ll have a better idea of where I’m going with it.

Or not.

There’s actually no rush to figure any this out. I feel no real pressure. I’m just writing this for friends, after all.

Indeed, if I’m going to have a New Year’s Resolution, it’s probably somewhere around the theme of “practice patience.”

Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts about this.

Patiently yours,

David Nunez

---

## Coda

- Here is a reading of the first play Alli Hartley-Kong wrote during the COVID-19 pandemic:
- The American Natural History Museum was planning an exhibition about pandemics before COVID-19 caused them and many other museums to shutter for a time. Now they are collecting artifacts of the present to help [tell the story of 2020](https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/how-will-we-tell-the-story-of-the-coronavirus?ref=davidnunez.com).
- I spent way too much time with this [procedural spaceship builder](https://ship.shapewright.com/?ref=davidnunez.com). Here’s the *Mighty DavidNunez*:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot-2020-12-18-at-14-30-50-t-1777130397.png)

[https://ship.shapewright.com/](https://ship.shapewright.com/?ref=davidnunez.com)

*I was listening to* [*Sabali by Amadou & Mariam*](https://open.spotify.com/track/0jHZ5yXOZNKvtwPGSgL0gX?si=%5FQjgC-boR%5Fa%5F4yEBov1iyg&ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat while writing this newsletter. The song features in an especially manipulative, but admittedly poignant,* [*Coca-Cola commercial*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUMQeNw2QDA&ab%5Fchannel=Coca-Cola&ref=davidnunez.com)*. “Sabali” in the Malian Bambara language means “Patience.”*

[SabaliAmadou & Mariam · Welcome To Mali · Song · 2008![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2730bbd2528d42df9482311c521)](https://open.spotify.com/track/0jHZ5yXOZNKvtwPGSgL0gX?si=%5FQjgC-boR%5Fa%5F4yEBov1iyg&ref=davidnunez.com)

---

*This was issue #16 of Soulful Computing by David Nuñez. Past issues can be* [*found on my website*](https://davidnunez.com/)*.*
### The Show Must Go On(line)
URL: https://davidnunez.com/the-show-must-go-online/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:51.000Z
I have a confession.

Somewhere in middle of Act II of Hamilton, I think between “*The Adams Administration*” and “*We Know*,” I fell fast asleep. This was the original cast on Broadway, mind you, and I was sitting in some of the best seats in the house. I was so close that I could see the actors’ sweat and King George’s spittle fly across the stage.

Apparently I was snoring quite loudly, disturbing other people around me. However, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the commensurate professional that he is, didn’t seem to notice and the show continued flawlessly. I woke up during the curtain call as someone next to me stood up.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/hamilton-review-marcus-center_fullsize_story1-t-1777131361.jpg)

Still from Hamilton on Disney Plus

I should clarify. When I say, “best seats in the house,” I mean the “best seats in **my** house.” I was watching the [filmed performance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton%5F%282020%5Ffilm%29?ref=davidnunez.com) released on the Disney Plus streaming service. To be fair, what I did see of the show was great.

I’ve never seen the musical in person, but I could get a sense of what the hype was about. My falling asleep had less to do with the performance than with the comfiness of my couch. Though, to be honest, if I had [paid $3000 for a ticket](https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/hamilton-tickets-are-still-ridiculously-expensive-but-why.html/?ref=davidnunez.com), I would have sprung an extra $20 on 5 cups of coffee to make sure I didn’t miss a second.

However, since this was a recorded and edited film, I also knew that the element of risk was not there. It was a Disney production; there weren’t going to be any rough edges. (Side note: here’s [a paper I co-authored](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921889016305358?ref=davidnunez.com) about the balancing between sequence and risk with entertainment robots). Furthermore, in a non-live performance, it would be impossible for the audience to [entrain with each other or the actors](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-60832-7?ref=davidnunez.com), making a truly shared experience difficult.

As theaters remain closed around the world, and live performances in physical space are non-existent or staged in socially distant venues like [drive-in movie theaters](https://eno.org/news/eno-is-launching-eno-drive-live-a-series-of-live-opera-performances-that-audiences-can-safely-drive-to-and-stay-in-their-cars-for-the-experience/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [outdoor spaces](http://exeuntmagazine.com/reviews/the-white-whale/?ref=davidnunez.com), theatre is necessarily evolving.

The cast of Hamilton gave a performance over Zoom for Aubrey, a 9-year-old fan. Without any of the costumes, sets, and lighting, I guarantee you this little girl still had an unforgettable once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Earlier this year, [Creation Theatre](https://www.creationtheatre.co.uk/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Big Telly Theatre Company](https://www.big-telly.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) staged Shakespeare’s *The Tempest* via Zoom. The play, at its core, is about loneliness, making it a poignant work for our pixelated 2020\. The company took advantage of the format and played with this notion of disconnection and reconnection using the chat window and encouraging audience participation during key moments. To recreate the titular storm, for example, viewers all turned on their microphones and cameras, snapping their fingers to recreate rainfall.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/tempest-screen-shot-1-1-t-1777131381.png)

Still from The Tempest, as staged by Creation Theatre and Big Telly Theatre Company

During the proposal scene between Ferdinand and Miranda, the audience sees the actors on a split screen. Using a bit of well-practice choreography, Ferdinand seemingly reaches across the screen to touch his future bride. This is a striking and painful reminder to the audience how [precious and rare physical human contact can be in 2020](https://davidnunez.com/touching-a-heartbeat/). Caliban’s description of the noisy island is bittersweet, when the audience knows that he is actually alone online somewhere, hearing nothing, “Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.”

In a famous theatrical breaking of the fourth wall, Prospero delivers the epilogue (“Now my charms are all o’erthrown”) to the camera as all the other actors begin dismantling their at-home sets and green screen background. As Prospero suggests the audience is holding him captive, the rest of the cast changes their zoom names to their real names. The audience sees them, now just like us, alone in their homes. The spell is broken and nobody but Prospero remains on the island, and yet everyone is in socially distant isolation.

Prospero asks the audience to free him with their applause using their “good hands” and “gentle breath.” We know, by now, there can be no real applause on a Zoom call.

The spell holds.

---

## 1943

My friend, [Kellian Adams](https://twitter.com/museumninja?ref=davidnunez.com), is an innovator in performance art, theater, and gaming. For several years, she has produced [Club Drosselmeyer](https://www.clubdrosselmeyer.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), a live happening at a quirky performance space in Harvard Square. She creates an alternate universe loosely based on the framework of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite set in a mid-century WWII-era nightclub, complete with a live swing band and variety acts.

The audience doesn’t come to passively observe; they become players and characters in this interactive experience, solving puzzles, dancing the Lindy Hop, and interacting with actors to ultimately affect how the evening plays out. The evening’s proceedings involve dance performances alongside robots, magicians, and acrobats.

Kellian is very adamant that if you come to the show, you can engage at whatever level you find most comfortable.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she has had to rethink how to create the Club Drosselmeyer experience remotely while still maintaining the sense of audience agency and participation. I had a conversation with her about her plans.

*Edited for clarity.*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/what-is-club-drosselmeyer_o-t-1777131441.png)

**Why did you create Club Drosselmeyer?**

There’s this really wonderful book that I read recently called “[Dancing in the Streets](https://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Streets-History-Collective-Joy/dp/0805057242?ref=davidnunez.com)” that talks about joy and how little in the world we get to do things like yelling, cheer, and dance and laugh out loud. That’s not part of our modern consciousness in the sense of a festival or a parade. These days, it’s mostly like you sit and you watch things.

I’m an obsessed swing dancer. This really sort of defined my adulthood in a way that nothing else has really. I would say that really sort of changed the trajectory of what became as a grownup. My friends are swing dancers… my husband’s a swing dancer.

When the pandemic hit, that was the biggest blow to me because Mondays we go to practice and Wednesdays we teach and Fridays is the dance with the live band. I’m not a person who stays home.

Swing dancing was something that brought ecstatic joy to people. There’s sort of a quietness and a sadness, and then you bring people somewhere with this rebellious joy. This music was created during one of the worst times in modern history, and we will not let the times get us down.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/maxresdefault_o-t-1777131457.jpg)

Stanford Dancers in Club Drosselmeyer

I loved that concept of housing behavioral expectations in harmless media that Douglas Rushkoff writes about in [Media Virus](https://www.amazon.com/Media-Virus-Douglas-Rushkoff/dp/0345382765?ref=davidnunez.com). I think that swing is such a good example of that. We want you to respond, “These things are acceptable. These things are not acceptable.” None of it is spoken, but all of it is very described.

This is our proof of it, created by the most oppressed community during the most oppressed time… an FAQ to fate, which I love so much. It’s just such a wonderful response to to despair, you know, like a defiance of despair.

I really think that there’s a sad part of our generation in that there’s a there’s almost a loss of how to celebrate, like, “what do we do at a party. How do we have fun? How do we get that sense of joy?”

People self medicate to get there because they don’t know what else to do.

I think that movement and music get us there. The fact that dance is not part of our everyday culture is such a heartbreak. Everybody always overstates the things that are near and dear to them, of course. I do think that if we saw more music and social dancing in our culture than we would see reduced levels of depression.

I wanted to see that we can innovate on this tradition that I’ve been so lucky to inherit. That’s been kicking around in my brain for maybe 10 years. I wanted to give back to that community, somehow. I wanted to do more to bring the spirit of this defiance into our generation, and I know that it’s available to weirdos like me.

**How does Club Drosselmeyer relate to The Nutcracker Suite?**

I wanted to do something immersive and interactive and then I realized that the Nutcracker was kind of the perfect environment to be able to build this world and bring it out to people. It works because it has an existing context. We’ve got an existing tradition. People are always looking for variations on it.

The great thing about a Nutcracker is that you can get local communities all to put their energy into one act. So, this tap dance group is going to do something… this group of acrobats is going to do something… and it’s replicable across cities. This is the game designer me. You build an idea that accomplishes the task that you want at hand, but with the structure that will let it scale if it ever needs to. Create a small thing with the idea that we can produce this show in every city in America.

It’s not like Hamilton where we’ve got our all-star cast and you have to travel to New York to see the authentic version of the show.

The Nutcracker tradition is that every town can have their own variation with their own local heroes. When I saw that that was a thing, I wanted Club Drosselmeyer to be loosely associated to Nutcracker because every town that we build it in someday can have its own influence.

We have the pattern of The Nutcracker. You know, first it’s the overture and eventually the Military Dolls dance, etc. So with with that structure that everybody has seen ad nauseam we could just do a lot of different things.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/upvybwtf3zfobk47xym4eklbyq_o-t-1777131480.jpg)

Boston Ballet’s The Nutcracker via The Boston Globe

How do we make it flexible enough so that can happen? We have a loosely associated group of characters and stories. The stories sort of melded a little bit, according to the available resources. Like, I’ve got this one guy, and he’s the real charmer, so he’s in the role of a scientist, and he’s looking for a date. Here’s a book of manners. Have him talk to people about it to give him suggestions on how to get a date, and he loves it. It works really nicely and it has every year.

It’s similar to jazz and swing. It’s something that has a very solid structure so you can always innovate on it can be very flexible.

**How do you think about the universe of Club Drosselmeyer and its historical context?**

The 1940s was a really interesting time. I always love playing with the past because there’s the actual past right and then there’s the past that everybody has in their head. The nightclub that we created was the imaginary space that people have in their heads when they think of 1942\. It wasn’t actually like that; we’re just being true to people’s impression of the past.

Games are good at this. They give you a door into imaginary realities. But games are not good at giving a ton of content right away. We wanted to build an interaction that you could deal with at multiple levels. If you really want to get into the story, every single character has a historical corollary. In Club Drosselmeyer 1939 we talked about the creation of radar at MIT. So, Russell Meyer industries is headquartered on Vassar Street, and they have a secret lab with brand new technology.

Not very many people really go into that backstory, but it’s there if they want it. Historically, there was continuity between each year’s production, but within the story there wasn’t because it was a game where the players have affected the ending.

**What strategies did you use to pull audiences into the physical world you were building?**

We really try to create varied levels of entry. So, I designed Club Drosselmeyer so that a serious puzzler could play it. If you want to come in just to dance, you can do that. Even if you don’t even know that there’s a game, that’s ok. I want all of those people to feel like they have a place there.

Nonverbal communication means so much. There was this great article by Nina Simon about the [Magic Vest Phenomenon](http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/02/magic-vest-phenomenon-and-other.html?ref=davidnunez.com). She was talking about the Acton Science Discovery Museum. She wore a vest, and this vest meant that she was somebody that strangers could talk to about science. While she had that vest on, people would approach her, and then she could talk about the things she loved, and they were happy to hear about it.

She said that sometimes that would bleed into a regular life. She’d be at the grocery store, there’d be a kid there and start talking to them, but of course you know that’s not that’s not really acceptable to talk to children in public. She didn’t have the magic vest. When people don an item of clothing, they have bought in. They can’t pretend they didn’t mean to be there anymore.

We told our audience in advance, “this is how you’re dressed like it’s 1938\. Wear suspenders and a bow tie and shiny shoes.” We also had a big trunk of clothes for people to put on when they arrived, just in case. It’s this physical thing that you wear to say like I am part of this world now. You can’t pretend that you’re too cool for this anymore because you’re in it. That really made a big difference.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/dross-edited_o-jpeg-t-1777131502.jpg)

Herr Drosselmeyer from Club Drosselmeyer

I also made sure that all my vintage friends showed up. I call it “the power of five.” If you have five people who are together who are part of a community who are modeling a certain behavior, then it’s easier to get other people to join them because five is two pairs and a spare. There’s there’s always an empty chair when there are five people there. So, that’s just enough people to make people want to join.

Vintage people were there dressed to the nines. Our dancers were there, also dressed up. But, you know, they were also dressed to sweat. Every once in a while, somebody would show up wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and they would come directly to me and sheepishly apologize. They never did it again. Nobody has ever done that two years in a row.

**In 2020, you don’t have a box of have clothes to give people… you can’t create sets or put actors in the same space as the audience. Now, how are you thinking about world building with this year’s production?**

This has been really a challenge. During the first year of Club Drosselmeyer we were just kind of hanging on. There were holes everywhere. So many things fell through the cracks because it was so new. People still loved it because they’ve never seen anything like that before it was just so weird and novel. I feel like I’m there again.

The two things I always try and spend money on are sound and artists. People don’t realize how important sound is when you’re constructing an environment. It’s like a smell; people don’t even realize that it’s there, but it changes their behavior.

I have great inter-actors, and they know how to engage people, but they can’t right now. I’ve got an excellent set designer, and he knows how to create a world, but he can’t right now.

Some of the strongest tools in our toolbox are just not available. That’s really frustrating.

**I know Zoom didn’t exist in 1943, but I’m curious why you didn’t consider using it as part of your production.**

Zoom calls are like watching a movie. I remember thinking about this when I was watching like Saving Private Ryan and its horrible Omaha Beach scene.

It makes you think about what must have been like. I think the difference between movie tragedy and real tragedy is that if you were on Omaha Beach, you can look up, you can look around, and you can look in the distance. When you’re looking at a movie you really like just driving right into that director’s vision. I feel that way about zoom interactions, you know, like when we’re in person, I’ve got a cup of coffee and there are other things happening. I can look over there and I hear that. Oh, that’s a song that I like. And there’s just a lot of things to buffer the interaction. So, it doesn’t feel quite as stressful. Now in the world of zoom, everything is very directed. You have nothing to do but stare at me.

We’re tired after these zoom interactions.

I’ve seen puzzling give people a third space in the digital world. Something where they can be together but focus on something else. It’s one of the few things that I’ve seen that can do this. It reminded me of when we were preparing the Drosselboxes (*kits that will be sent out to the audience containing the puzzles and other swag related to the experience)*. We had a folding party and I realized this is another thing that creates a third space. There were six or eight of us for two hours, we were folding stuff and just chatting about absolutely nothing because we had a task. Everyone was like, “wow this is the most pleasant call we’ve ever had.”

So, this year we’ll have much more puzzling than usual. Puzzles are an interaction that I’ve seen work really well in this distant environment.

**How did you design puzzles in this year’s Drosselmeyer universe?**

This year I really wanted people to win the game by being collaborative rather than competitive. So, we’re in 1943 and the Civil Defense Corps were the neighborhood watch team that would get together and prepare in case we were bombed. I have this wonderful board and handbook from the era. We pored through the whole thing to find everybody’s civilian logos. There’s an emergency food and beverage person, the bomb reconnaissance person, or utility repair person. They all have their logos, and they’ll have the things that they’re supposed to do. We created puzzles where you needed information from all of these different people in order to complete it. Everybody will have different roles.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot-2020-12-07-at-14-36-12_2x-t-1777131531.png)

Puzzles from Club Drosselmeyer Interactive Radio Adventure of 1943

I looked at games like “Space Team,” “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes,” and “Don’t Get Got” to find variations that are good for a group to model this collaborative gameplay.

We tested the hell out of it, but I’m really, really curious to see how people play.

**What will the experience be like?**

We created a radio broadcast using the recordings of the live band from Club Drosselmeyer 1941\. I listened to a lot of Jack Benny, and we created this sort of old-timey radio show with our band playing between all of the different skits.

You can play if you don’t want to touch anything that you can just sit listen to the radio show. We do radio magic. We have live animals. We shoot somebody out of a cannon. It’s pretty entertaining.

Then it gets kind of interesting because we created a choose your own adventure phone system that will drive what audio track you listen. There are maybe 20 different audio tracks, but you only have two hours. So, you’re only getting maybe seven to 10 of them in between the music, the phone calls that you make, and the puzzles that you solve.

There’s replay as well, so after you get to an ending, if you want to go back to the beginning and try it again with different puzzles in different pathways, you can do that too.

We encourage people to play in groups of two to five. If you want, you can just play it on your own. The whole thing is automated. There are several different endings.

If you want to play the live version that is also it has, you know, these automated directions, but hen at the end of these different pathways, you get to talk to a real person. If you have any questions or you want to talk to a person or you want live tech support you know and like you’ll get calls, maybe two or three times over the course of the evening.

We’ll also host after party on [Gather](https://gather.town/?ref=davidnunez.com), so everybody can get together and go over their puzzles and talk to the actors. Because everybody will go down different pathways, you won’t really know what the other endings are unless you talk to other the players.

*Tickets for Club Drosselmeyer 1943 are selling out, but I think there are still a few slots available:* [*https://www.clubdrosselmeyer.com/1943tickets*](https://www.clubdrosselmeyer.com/1943tickets?ref=davidnunez.com)

---

## All the world is now an online stage

When Zoom windows act as pixelated proscenium frames, we all become set designers, lighting directors, and actors for our own digital audiences. Virtual meetings and family gatherings take on a sense of performance and our camera sense improves. Microsoft’s Together mode puts [meeting participants in theater seats](https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-teams-blog/how-to-get-the-most-from-together-mode/ba-p/1509496?ref=davidnunez.com). This creates a shared sense of space and perhaps increases the give and take between performer and audience.

> People in Together mode know where others are in a shared virtual space. That means your brain can keep track of what other people are signaling or emoting in a natural way, relying on social/spatial perception; people can intuitively signal each other nonverbally. In a grid, you don’t know where other people are on the screen, relative to you, from their point of view, so natural glances and other subtle cues are impossible.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot-2020-12-06-at-08-25-54_2x-t-1777131556-1.png)

Screenshot of Microsoft Teams Together Mode

Some people have taken at-home production seriously and decorate their living rooms with an eye towards compositional balance and flattering angles. Real Estate agents are emphasizing [zoom-appropriate home offices](https://www.realtor.com/advice/home-improvement/what-is-a-zoom-room-tips/?ref=davidnunez.com). I’ve seen [multi-camera](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBdXCk58UxU&ab%5Fchannel=LensProToGo&ref=davidnunez.com) setups and elaborate [studio lighting](https://nymag.com/strategist/article/best-lighting-for-video-calls-zoom.html?ref=davidnunez.com) starting to show up in some of my Zoom meetings. Tools like [mmhmm](https://www.mmhmm.app/?ref=davidnunez.com) help people produce at-home talk shows during presentations. Production value is a new signal of power dynamics and competitive advantage as cinematography is yet another new skill we’ll need to remain relevant in the 21st century.

MIT has indicated that people like me, who can effectively work from home, should continue working from home at least through the end of the academic year in Summer 2021, extending the run of my own work-from-home performances to 1.5 years. I’m starting to rethink how my home office is set up and am seriously considering investing in better cameras and lighting setups, so I can put my best face forward.

I’d be curious if you think of yourself as an actor when you are on a Zoom meeting. Do hit reply on this email and let me know!

Until Then…

Break a leg,

David Nuñez

---

## Coda

- I missed a few weeks of newsletters. I can blame one of those on Thanksgiving. However, I’m also participating in [Ali Abdaal’s Part Time YouTuber Academy](https://academy.aliabdaal.com/?ref=davidnunez.com). It’s been a surprisingly intense and very interesting course. To me, the real valuable section has been an overview of systematic production of content; he’s showing his techniques for [streamlining productive creative output](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJgv0XQOehs&t=8s&ab%5Fchannel=AliAbdaal&ref=davidnunez.com) and minimizing friction. It’s made me rethink my whole approach on Twitter, my website, and even this newsletter. Especially If I decide to throw YouTube in the mix, then I’m going to need to optimize my workflows (this is not my full time job, after all). I’ll probably spend my holiday break doing a lot of thinking and planning about this. I’ll say this for now: I’m more energized than ever to be making stuff for you.
- Here are a couple of my YouTube homework assignments. I’d love your feedback. As they say, “Don’t forget to subscribe!”
- The Stay Inn’s *Midsummer Night’s Stream*

[The Show Must Go OnMidsummer Night Stream - The Stay Inn 7.30pm The link for Midsummer Night Stream is now LIVE. If YouTube is your viewing method of choice you can click the link below. And please do share it with...![](https://external-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/emg1/v/t13/16517596851228789540?url=https%3a%2f%2fi.ytimg.com%2fvi%2fWXSokTF6KeY%2fmaxresdefault_live.jpg&fb_obo=1&utld=ytimg.com&dfr=1&stp=dst-jpg_p600x600_tt6&_nc_gid=VXEy3Mpdl6o6jCawmlI2CA&_nc_oc=Adr3_AXxyYoZ6zNpNcBy77cZMx6im883auaWPdXcMlsNQgr_SBbNvLGYPGhZnwKL8ek&ccb=13-1&oh=06_Q3--AQvJmtd7jv6hwSNfxrWfQkoIwKAi0snPVj8jJeU0cc3d&oe=69EECB95&_nc_sid=867500)](https://www.facebook.com/mustgoonshow/posts/midsummer-night-stream-the-stay-inn-730pmthe-link-for-midsummer-night-stream-is-/124056335905352/)

- After reading [Episode #14 of my newsletter about Choose Your Own Adventure](https://davidnunez.com/choose-your-own-adventure/), my mom dug out some books from the old collection.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/img_0411_o-jpeg-t-1777131753.jpg)

Collection of Choose Your Own Adventure books from Mom

---

*I was listening to Queen’s* [*The Show Must Go On*](https://open.spotify.com/track/7hGNdtKkwsH4vUgmTo5Wbw?ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat while writing this newsletter.*
### Choose Your Own Adventure
URL: https://davidnunez.com/choose-your-own-adventure/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:50.000Z
Hello friend,

Due to my choices, I died many, many times when I was a child. Luckily, I kept my fingers inside the pages and could always undo my mistakes.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/9780553127898-us-1-t-1777036837.jpg)

My brothers and I grew up with a shared library of [Choose Your Own Adventure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choose%5FYour%5FOwn%5FAdventure?ref=davidnunez.com) (CYOA) books. These non-linear stories put the reader in charge of the narrative by introducing a decision tree. You start reading on the first page, and the soon book confronts you with a series of choices where you flip to a different page depending on what you want to happen next.

> "If you decide to fight the squid with your spear gun, hoping to scare it off, turn to page 17.  
>  
> If you decide to signal Maray to pull you up at top speed, knowing you will get the bends, turn to page 19." – CYOA #2, “Journey Under the Sea”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/full150_o-t-1777036860.jpg)

Pages from the Choose Your Own Adventure book

Initially conceived by Edward Packard and now owned by [Chooseco](https://www.cyoa.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), these books were revolutionary in form and content.

The books, written in a genderless second-person, would often have dozens of different endings, and not all of them were happy. It was pretty easy to die, sometimes unexpectedly and often illogically.

Like real life.

From Grady Hendrix’s [interview with Packard](http://www.gradyhendrix.com/edward-packard-interview?ref=davidnunez.com):

> “I didn’t want it to be a random lottery but I didn’t want it to be didactic so that if you always did the smart thing you always succeeded. I tried to balance it.”

Each book had a preface:

> “BEWARE and WARNING! This book is different from other books. You and YOU ALONE are in charge of what happens in this story. There are dangers, choices, adventures and consequences. YOU must use all of your numerous talents and much of your enormous intelligence. The wrong decision could end in disaster — even death. But, don’t despair. At anytime, YOU can go back and make another choice, alter the path of your story, and change its result” — CYOA #2: Journey Under the Sea.

Clearly, a lot was depending on my successful reading of these books. I got very skilled at keeping my fingers inside the pages as I flipped back and forth, just in case I chose poorly and needed to “undo.” There were some gruesome, nightmare-inducing outcomes in some of these stories. I’m confident I was forever traumatized by this maudlin ending from “Inside UFO 54-40”

> The hours stretch into days; the days stretch into weeks. Now you have waited so long that the computer tells you your chances of surviving hibernation are nearly zero. You can only hope that somehow your crystal ship will reach the new planet before you grow old and die … But the months go by and nothing changes. You grow more and more depressed as you sit and wait, and finally, disoriented by the incredible loneliness of outer space, you lose all will to survive.  
>  
> The End

Because CYOA books can be represented as directed graphs (i.e., pages are nodes, and the directions to turn to a different page are the edges), we can visualize and analyze them using computational techniques.

For example, this is [Andrew Stern’s sketch](https://web.archive.org/web/20191012101539/https://grandtextauto.soe.ucsc.edu/2003/09/02/choose-one-of-four-deep-paths/) of “Night of a Thousand Boyfriends” from the CYOA copycat “Date With Destiny Adventures” series.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/chooseplotgraph_o-2-t-1777036875.jpg)

“Night of a Thousand Boyfriends” sketch

This kind of exercise has been assigned in digital humanities and computer science classes at schools like [George Mason University](https://www.samplereality.com/gmu/fall2008/343/guidelines/media-inquiry-1-cyoa/?ref=davidnunez.com), [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute](https://tactical.wp.rpi.edu/projects/862-2/draft-assignments/loop-if-statements-and-string-manipulation-homework/choose-your-own-adventure-game-analysis/?ref=davidnunez.com), and the [University of Maryland](https://web.archive.org/web/20130518181453/http://otal.umd.edu/~mgk/courses/spring2004/467/archives/000265.php). A student named Greg Lord created an [interactive map of The Third Planet from Altair](https://web.archive.org/web/20171129001528/http://www.ethblue.com/cyoa/altairlarge.html) with [analysis](https://web.archive.org/web/20171022014832/http://www.ethblue.com/cyoa/essay.html). He [categorizes the pages of the story and the routes through them](https://web.archive.org/web/20171012231300/http://www.ethblue.com/cyoa/routes.html) using terms like “decision,” “cliffhanger,” and, of course, “death.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot-2020-11-13-at-10-26-41_o-t-1777036895.png)

Greg Lord’s CYOA visualization of “The Third Planet from Altair”

He writes:

> In a text with only six favorable outcomes amid some thirty-eight possible conclusions, indeed the reader seems intensely vulnerable — even doomed perhaps — if he were to travel only a single path. The odds, quite simply, are against him. It requires luck and a certain clever anticipation to properly guide one’s character to a successful completion when faced with the seemingly infinite paths of the book.

Sean Ragan [wrote a graphviz program](http://www.seanmichaelragan.com/html/%5B2008-03-07%5D%5FChoose%5FYour%5FOwn%5FAdventure%5Fbook%5Fas%5Fdirected%5Fgraph.shtml?ref=davidnunez.com) to describe and analyze “The Mystery of Chimney Rock.” Here’s a snippet from pages 10 to 28:

```
10 -> 16
10 -> 17
11 -> 22
11 -> 21
12 -> 19
12 -> 20
14 -> 24
14 -> 25
15 -> 26
15 -> 28
16 -> 27
16 -> 31
17 -> 32
17 -> 34
18
19 -> 35
19 -> 36
20 -> 37
20 -> 38
21 -> 42
21 -> 41
22 -> 23
23 -> 39
23 -> 40
24 -> 44
24 -> 46
25 -> 48
25 -> 49
26 -> 54
26 -> 50
27 -> 56
27 -> 57
28 -> 52
28 -> 55

```

[Christian Swinehart](https://samizdat.co/?ref=davidnunez.com) created a series of beautiful visualizations and an [interactive essay about CYOA](https://samizdat.co/cyoa/?ref=davidnunez.com). (sadly, as I write this, it appears the animations are not working on his site, but it’s still worth a read).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/endings-grid-i_o-1-1-png-t-1777036918.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/journey-under-the-sea-1-1-png-t-1777036931.jpg)

Comparison of 12 CYOA books & All the paths of Journey Under the Sea by Christian Swinehart

Chooseco has [created maps of their books](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cyoa-choose-your-own-adventure-maps?ref=davidnunez.com) which it includes in recent editions.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/image_o-t-1777036956.jpg)

Journey Under the Sea story map, Chooseco

When you lay out the stories in these formats, you start to discover surprising features.

> Nick Montfort, a poet and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies interactive fiction, has a habit of asking people what they know about “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. “They often say, ‘You have two choices after every page,’” he says. “That’s not true. Sometimes you have one choice. Sometimes you have more than two. When you show the maps, you can see that these books don’t look exactly the same.” — from Atlas Obscura, [These Maps Reveal the Hidden Structures of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Books](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cyoa-choose-your-own-adventure-maps?ref=davidnunez.com)

For example, in “#1 Cave of Time,” you can make choices that will put you on a circular loop, rereading the same pages until you make a different choice. As the hero of “Inside UFO 54-40,” you learn about the paradise planet of *Ultima.* In the book, there is a written happy ending where you land on *Ultima*. However, there exists no path to this page. No matter what choices you make, you’ll never turn to page 101\. This ending is an isolated island in the graph with no arrows pointing to it.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/ufo-acorn-nodes-png-t-1777036976.jpg)

The Ultima subplot, Chrstian Swinehart

The only way to get to that ending is to “cheat” and flip to that page without following the book’s usual branching instructions.

> “You did not make a choice, or follow any direction, but now, somehow, you are descending from space … ‘No one can *choose* to visit *Ultima*, says Elinka. "Nor can you get here by following directions. It was a miracle you got here, but that is perfectly logical, because *Ultima* is a miracle itself.’” — Inside UFO 54-40

This meta and self-aware nature of these books continue to inspire generations of readers. The format inspired other series like [Time Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time%5FMachine%5F%28novel%5Fseries%29?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Choose Your Path.](https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/choose-your-path-story?ref=davidnunez.com) Of course, there have been spinoff ideas like a CYOA [movie](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/choose-your-own-adventure-movie-566228?ref=davidnunez.com) and [board games](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/625942/choose-your-own-adventure-books-board-games?ref=davidnunez.com). Chooseco and Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group are creating the first CYOA book rendered as a graphic novel, “[Eighth Grade Witch](https://www.gamesradar.com/official-choose-your-own-adventure-comic-books-coming-from-oni-lion-forge/?ref=davidnunez.com)” to be launched next Fall.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/81unxb2apxl_o-t-1777036993.jpg)

Page from “Eighth Grade Witch”, Chooseco

Netflix produced a feature-length episode of the Black Mirror anthology called [Bandersnatch](https://www.npr.org/2018/12/28/680671691/black-mirror-bandersnatch-makes-you-choose-your-own-adventure?ref=davidnunez.com), which uses a technology called [CtrlMovie](https://www.ctrlmovie.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) to give viewers an interactive experience while watching movies. Throughout the film, viewers make multiple-choice decisions for the characters that ultimately affect which ending gets shown. Chooseco [promptly sued Netflix](https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflixs-black-mirror-bandersnatch-subject-of-suit-over-use-of-choose-your-own-adventure-1202533643/?ref=davidnunez.com) for trademark infringement.

I’m nostalgic for Choose Your Own Adventure books. They remind me of my childhood, a time when choices were straightforward. Page 14, defeat the squid. Page 48, get sucked out an airlock. Either way, the story ends.

In the books, I had agency over my fate, but not really. The storylines wrapped around the nodes of a graph. As we get older, the choices we make are never so simple, and they certainly aren’t always undoable, no matter how many fingers we keep in the pages.

Our story graphs are dense and complicated. We jump from node to node as the heroes of our own journey. Some paths are more comfortable and more pleasant than others. There are some gruesome, illogical endings. There are unreachable islands in our graph. That’s ok.

Nobody’s promising there will ever be a happy ending, but we get to experience the miracle of turning the pages ourselves. *Ultima* might be out there somewhere, and it’s OK to go looking for it. Just don’t forget to enjoy the words on your current page.

Turning to Page 101,

David Nuñez

---

## Coda

- This newsletter is especially short and sweet as I’ve been attending the [MCN 2020 Virtual](https://mcn.edu/conferences/mcn-2020-virtual/?ref=davidnunez.com) conference, and am a bit brain-fried this morning. The sessions have been incredible and I’ll have some observations to share about some of the virtual conference experiments we are conducting.
- For a COVID-hobby as the weather gets colder here’s [How to Write a CYOA story.](https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-write-a-choose-your-own-adventure-story-9d353fa84ce4?ref=davidnunez.com)
- A [collection](https://electricliterature.com/7-choose-your-own-escapade-books/?ref=davidnunez.com) of branching narrative books suited for adults. “Choose Your Own Misery, The Holidays” in particular seems timely.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/832707041-t-1777037010.jpg)

- [Nik Montfort](https://nickm.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) at MIT maintains [The Trope Tank](https://nickm.com/trope%5Ftank/?ref=davidnunez.com), a studio and laboratory for researchers and students to explore digital literature such as interactive fiction.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/trope_tank_o-t-1777037018.jpg)

---

*I was listening to* [*Choose Your Battles by Katy Perry*](https://open.spotify.com/track/3rHUpjfq9JjrfaTsEAmQBC?si=Jaabp3SyT8291LjaB5mpHg&ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat while writing this newsletter.*

[Choose Your BattlesKaty Perry · PRISM (Deluxe) · Song · 2013![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b27347f930accd8ac01686401fa2)](https://open.spotify.com/track/3rHUpjfq9JjrfaTsEAmQBC?si=Jaabp3SyT8291LjaB5mpHg&ref=davidnunez.com)
### Bricolage 002
URL: https://davidnunez.com/bricolage-002/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:50.000Z
Hello friend,

This is another Bricolage episode of the newsletter. From the [first Bricolage](https://davidnunez.com/bricolage-001/):

> I made a plan for weeks like this, where an extended essay on a single theme is a bit out of reach for me. Every once in a while, I will publish a much shorter, skimmable (but hopefully still surprising and joyful) email.  
>  
> These smaller newsletters will contain one or two quick thoughts and links about Soulful Computing that I may have found over the past week. Sometimes I’ll use this opportunity to provide updates on topics covered in a prior email. These letters might exist in that taxonomic space somewhere between a Twitter post and a short blog article.

If you’re enjoying these newsletters or if you have any feedback, I’d love to hear from you.

Please do share these letters with anyone you think might be interested. You can also point people to the subscription page on my website ([https://davidnunez.com/subscribe](https://davidnunez.com/)), where I have posted [the newsletters’ past issues](https://davidnunez.com/).

Meanwhile, I hope your weekend is filled with wonder and treats.

David Nuñez

## 1\. Eyes

In episode 8 of this newsletter, [Eye to Eye](https://davidnunez.com/eye-to-eye/), I discussed eye contact through screens.

I needed new contact lenses earlier this year and was surprised that I could do the entire process online, including a nominal eye exam where I stood back from my screen and read letters out loud as the computer recorded my voice. I also had to take a close up picture of my eye for what, I presume, was a human to validate. Though for all I know, it might have been some machine learning or computer vision algorithm was looking for abnormalities.

Of course, online examinations are no substitute for comprehensive in-person exams. Human ophthalmologists undertake procedures like tonometry (eye pressure) tests and pupil dilations. However, during a pandemic, I’m curious about how many routine procedures we might feel more comfortable outsourcing to robotic surrogates, only escalating to humans when there are signs of disease or other abnormal results.

If a drone flew to your front door to administer a COVID-19 vaccine, would you take it?

---

Here is a robot that makes literal eye contact to help people insert contact lenses.

The device is going through medical trials in Boston. Craig Hershoff created the machine to help people rely on larger contact lenses that sit on the eye’s sclera (i.e., the white part). The robot is voice-controlled by the patient who uses their other eye to watch a video feed of the insertion, which they have full control over.

This reminds me of why you should never poke a hardboiled egg after you put it in the microwave.

In 2016, surgeons at the University of Oxford performed the [first eye operation using robots](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-09-12-world-first-robot-eye-operation?ref=davidnunez.com). The Robotic Retinal Dissection Device (R2D2) inserts itself inside an eyeball through a hole less than 1 mm in diameter.

> The device is designed to eliminate unwanted tremors in the surgeon’s hand — such as through their pulse — so tiny surgical manipulations can be safely carried out within the eye.  
>  
> The robot acts like a mechanical hand with seven independent computer-controlled motors resulting in movements as precise as 1000th of a millimetre in scale.

---

Ramesh Raskar at MIT developed an inexpensive clip-on device for mobile phone cameras in 2011 that could help [detect cataracts in patients](https://news.mit.edu/2011/netra-cataracts-app-0701?ref=davidnunez.com).

---

Earlier this year, researchers in Hong Kong developed a technique to arrange a densely packed array of [photosensors on a hemispherical surface](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2285-x?ref=davidnunez.com). This shell mimics the curve of an eyeball, allowing for a widened field of view. They also created a matching shell with a lens in the middle to complete the eyeball and filled the insides with sticky goo like the virtuous humor in our eyes.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/eyecomparison_o-t-1777035652.jpg)

Gu, L., Poddar, S., Lin, Y. et al. A biomimetic eye with a hemispherical perovskite nanowire array retina. Nature 581, 278–282 (2020).

Specifically, the researchers grew perovskite nanowires from a “garden” of nanoscopic holes in an aluminum oxide shell. Perovskite is a photosensitive material used in solar cells. This field of tiny wires is denser than the photoreceptors in our human eyes. However, the liquid metal connections to wire up the photoreceptors to a computer are relatively coarse compared to the individual nanowires, so the eye could only register about 100 pixels of light.

Nevertheless, in the paper, the researchers showed that the eyeball had high enough resolution to recognize letters.

---

Last year at the MIT Museum, we showed the drawings of [Santiago Ramón y Cajal](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1906/cajal/article/?ref=davidnunez.com), the Spanish renaissance man who pioneered the field of neuroscience by deeply studying the anatomy of the brain in the 1800s. One of his drawings shows how eyeballs [process light inverted](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/91177/how-our-eyes-see-everything-upside-down?ref=davidnunez.com) and reconstruct the image in the brain.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cajal_o-t-1777035667.png)

Illustration by Santiago Ramón y Cajal from “The Beautiful Brain”

---

Free Art and Technology (FAT), OpenFrameworks, and the Graffiti Research Lab collaborated in 2010 with a graffiti artist named TEMPT1\. He had ALS and was paralyzed by the illness, though he could still move his eyes. The [EyeWriter project](http://www.eyewriter.org/?ref=davidnunez.com) created “a low-cost, open source eye-tracking system that will allow ALS patients to draw using just their eyes.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/p1060131_o-t-1777035684.jpg)

---

In January, MIT researchers [introduced a brain implant into a 57-year-old woman](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/02/06/844908/a-new-implant-for-blind-people-jacks-directly-into-the-brain/?ref=davidnunez.com) with blindness to give her a rudimentary sense of vision.

> This was possible thanks to a modified pair of glasses, blacked out and fitted with a tiny camera. The contraption is hooked up to a computer that processes a live video feed, turning it into electronic signals. A cable suspended from the ceiling links the system to a port embedded in the back of Gómez’s skull that is wired to a 100-electrode implant in the visual cortex in the rear of her brain.

---

Here’s a poem I wrote in 2003 about migraines:

> **My Eyes are Going to Explode**  
>  
> I thought I ought to warn you  
> That my Eyes are About to Explode.  
>  
> I’ve not found a way to relieve them  
> They grow from behind.  
>  
> Pulse and pound  
> Pulse and pound  
> Like kettle drums for my brains.  
>  
> I really ought to warn you  
> That my Eyes are About to Explode.  
>  
> But if I did,  
> You’d miss the milky goo.

## 2\. Election Day 2020 Followup

Here is some followup for my newsletter I [published earlier this week](https://davidnunez.com/election-day-2020/).

- We still don’t know the results of Georgia’s voting. It’s very close. Elections officials blamed “[software glitches](https://www.wsbtv.com/news/politics/software-issue-gwinnett-county-delaying-up-80000-mail-in-ballots/66J4YIPG2NCH3JNCHRKCQOVVPE/?ref=davidnunez.com)” to have slowed down the vote count.
- Scientific American describes how [voting machines work](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-expert-on-voting-machines-explains-how-they-work/?ref=davidnunez.com).
- Vox/recode [published an opinion piece](https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/11/3/21548057/voting-machine-broken-2020-elections-hacking-cybersecurity?ref=davidnunez.com) with many helpful links that put into perspective technical voting machine glitches and suggests cyberattacks are unlikely culprits for election day hiccups.
- From Inverse, more about [why voting machines “break.”](https://www.inverse.com/innovation/why-do-voting-machines-break-on-election-day?ref=davidnunez.com) (tldr; human error).
- [Tom Scott](https://www.tomscott.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) argues convincingly why electronic voting still has problems.
- Flash drives. It always comes down to hand-delivering data around on flash drives via the “[sneakernet](https://www.wsj.com/articles/sneakernet-helps-election-officials-process-results-11604440573?ref=davidnunez.com).”

---

## 3\. Soup Recommendation

I made tantanmen last Friday.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/575a2bb8-5870-4260-a3ee-9339806a2c1f_1_105_c-jpeg-t-1777035718.jpg)

I used Francis’s recipe. I would highly recommend giving it a shot this weekend.
### Election Day 2020
URL: https://davidnunez.com/election-day-2020/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:50.000Z
Hello friend,

Today is Election Day in the United States in the middle of a pandemic. Citizens will participate in a presidential election that will be a crucible for the American form of Democracy.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/tiffany-tertipes-y2vxsb75rvo-unsplash-t-1777046822.jpg)

Photo by [Tiffany Tertipes](https://unsplash.com/@tiffanytertipes?ref=davidnunez.com)

President Donald J. Trump has spent the last four years characterizing the election process in the United States as [illegitimate and “rigged.”](https://www.npr.org/2020/09/25/916820887/despite-white-house-statement-trump-casts-doubt-on-election-again?ref=davidnunez.com) He has said, out loud, that he will disregard any result of this election other than his overwhelming victory. There is concern about what will happen *after* the election:

> “The worst case, however, is not that Trump rejects the election outcome. The worst case is that he uses his power to prevent a decisive outcome against him. If Trump sheds all restraint, and if his Republican allies play the parts he assigns them, he could obstruct the emergence of a legally unambiguous victory for Biden in the Electoral College and then in Congress. He could prevent the formation of consensus about whether there is any outcome at all. He could seize on that un­certainty to hold on to power.” — [Barton Gellman, The Atlantic, November 2020](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/?ref=davidnunez.com)

Most reputable polls show that former Vice President Joe Biden will be the likely winner of this election. However, he will probably need to rely on ballots that have been submitted as part of early voting to come out ahead, especially in the so-called “battleground states.”

Elections officials expect that many of the [almost 100 million votes](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/11/02/us/trump-biden-election?ref=davidnunez.com) that the American people have cast ahead of Election day will require additional time to properly count alongside votes cast at polling stations around the country. Democrats are more likely to have taken advantage of early voting, with those votes tallied throughout the upcoming week. Many Republicans will vote in person today, and their votes will be counted more quickly. Trump has already hinted that [he will declare victory early](https://www.vox.com/2020/11/2/21545670/trump-may-declare-early-election-victory-legal-challenge?ref=davidnunez.com) before all votes can be counted. Both Republicans and Democrats are preparing for a [protracted challenge of any potential voter suppression](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/us/politics/election-day-ballot-counting.html?ref=davidnunez.com).

Even if there is a landslide result, I would be surprised if either candidate will concede the election anytime soon. We should expect weeks of legal maneuvering, continued campaigning, and social anxiety. Americans are already [stressed out](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/election-eve-country-just-unbelievably-stressed-out-n1245841?ref=davidnunez.com) by this election. People are [anticipating civil unrest](https://www.npr.org/2020/11/02/930464598/election-2020-cities-and-businesses-prepare-for-post-election-unrest-violence?ref=davidnunez.com).

There is no Constitutional requirement that a winner is declared today. In fact, we technically won’t have a ratified “winner” until the Electoral College officially votes in December (more on that below).

This is a newsletter about Soulful Computation and not politics. There are myriad other sources you could explore to try to make sense of what’s about to come and its impact on the globe.

However, we are going to be hearing a lot about the legitimacy of polling procedures over the next 3 months until inauguration in January. In particular, almost all jurisdictions rely on electronic voting machines at their polling stations. It is worth understanding why we use them, how they work, and to what degree we can trust them.

## How do Presidential Elections work in the United States?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/fantasymap-introanim_20200608-t-1777046834.gif)

Via ABC News [Interactive Election Map](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/2020-Electoral-Interactive-Map?ref=davidnunez.com)

Each of the 50 states (plus Washington DC) is in charge of maintaining their distinct elections processes and laws. Today, Americans are not directly voting for a presidential candidate. Instead, we are electing the Electors, our state’s representatives in the United States Electoral College.

With some exceptions, Electors pledge their vote to a given candidate. In December, the Electoral College elects the President on the population’s behalf. An Elector might choose to vote for a different candidate, making them a [Faithless Elector](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless%5Felector?ref=davidnunez.com); few states have enforceable laws to prevent this.

It is also conceivable that a state legislature might choose to discard the votes cast by the citizens and [choose electors arbitrarily, ignoring the will of the people](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-election/608989/?ref=davidnunez.com).

> The danger begins with the fact that, regardless of what people believe, the Constitution does not give Americans the right to vote for their president. Rather, the Constitution says that a college of electors votes for the president, and Article II of the Constitution gives states nearly unlimited power to decide how these electors are chosen

There was early chatter that Trump-supporting Republicans would attempt to win the election this way. This strategy would most likely carry severe [political consequences](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/electoral-college-trump-popular-vote-president-michael-baca-a9074406.html?ref=davidnunez.com).

States have different numbers of electors based on census counts of their population every ten years. This count also determines the number of state congressional districts, each with its Congressperson in the House of Representatives.

Trump or Biden will need 270 of the 538 electoral votes to be elected President.

The US government [has a resource that lays all this out](https://www.usa.gov/election.?ref=davidnunez.com).

During a presidential election, except for Maine and Nebraska, states have a “winner-take-all” approach where all the electoral votes go to the winner of each state’s popular vote. Some states, like California or Arkansas, have such a strong base of voters for one of the two major political parties (i.e., Republican or Democrat) that their electoral votes are assumed mainly as a given for the respective candidate.

Therefore, candidates identify in which states their campaigning might cause the popular vote of the state to swing in one direction or another. This attention gives excessive weight to the concerns of a handful of so-called “[Battleground States](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-battleground-states-that-will-likely-decide-the-election-11604282330?ref=davidnunez.com).” Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Ohio are among these.

We should expect intense scrutiny of the vote count in these states.

Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas, in particular, are shaping up to be hot spots for a protracted fight over election legitimacy involving electronic voting machines.

## What are electronic voting machines?

Since state election commissions will define their state’s voting procedures, they are free to choose whatever voting mechanisms they deem appropriate for their citizens. Ballotpedia maintains a [directory of tabulation methods by state](https://ballotpedia.org/Voting%5Fmethods%5Fand%5Fequipment%5Fby%5Fstate?ref=davidnunez.com).

The states use a mix of electronic voting devices from a variety of vendors. Every voting district within the state might have its flavor of the machines. The devices fall into a few categories:

- **Optical/Digital Scan** systems require the voter to mark a ballot using a pencil or pen. Sometimes they indicate their vote by punching out holes on the card. In some jurisdictions, the voter inserts the ballot into a scanning machine at the polling station. In other places, voters deposit ballots into a collection box. The paper gets fed through a high-speed scanning machine at the polling stations or in some central location. The counting device uses either infrared sensors or digital cameras to image the ballot and determine the voters’ choices. If a voter incorrectly marks a ballot (ex. indicating more than one candidate) or the machine can’t make a determination (ex. a marking is too faint), then the ballot gets sorted into a pile for potential further human examination.
- **Direct-Recording Electronic (DRE)** systems allow the voter to cast their vote directly on the device, using a touchscreen, buttons, dials, or some other computer interface. The machine stores the vote in its memory and prints out the totals at the end of the day. Sometimes the apparatus transmits its vote count to a central computer for aggregate tallying. Most of these systems also print out paper receipts as voters mark their selections to provide a paper trail in case audits are necessary. Some systems still do not do this.
- **Ballot-marking Devices (BMD)** accept paper ballots and use some electronic means to query the voter’s intent and place a mark onto the ballot. These systems can be used by people with disabilities to vote, usually without the assistance of other people. Many states offer BMDs for all voters, as the default. These devices don’t store the results of the vote.

Most states require that electronic voting machines are [certified by national commissions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certification%5Fof%5Fvoting%5Fmachines?ref=davidnunez.com), which purport to validate that the devices are usable, secure, and accurate.

## What are the virtues of electronic voting machines?

Electronic voting machines contribute to the automation of ballot counting, making the process more efficient. This computation dramatically speeds up the delivery of results. On the surface, they help improve the accuracy of the count by reducing human error.

Voting machines can make voting more accessible for people that have disabilities. Due to the [curb-cut effect,](https://medium.com/@mosaicofminds/the-curb-cut-effect-how-making-public-spaces-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities-helps-everyone-d69f24c58785?ref=davidnunez.com) this means voting machines can be more universally usable. Since President George W. Bush enacted the [Help America Vote Act](https://www.eac.gov/about%5Fthe%5Feac/help%5Famerica%5Fvote%5Fact.aspx?ref=davidnunez.com) in 2002, all polling stations require at least one device to be accessible to people with disabilities like blindness. DRE voting machines can have capabilities like voice assist, high contrast displays, or more accessible tangible controls.

I should note that the increased emphasis on mail-in voting in 2020 can potentially [disenfranchise voters with disabilities](https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2020/10/27/blind-and-visually-impaired-mass-voters-worry-about-disenfranchisement-due-to-mail-in-voting?ref=davidnunez.com).

> Even for blind voters who decide to go in-person to the polls, precautions against the coronavirus make navigating the voting experience more challenging. People lined up 6 feet apart make it difficult to locate the end of the line with a cane, and masks can obscure spoken directions. Before the pandemic, poll workers might take a blind person’s elbow to guide them to the voting machine. Now, they must maintain proper social distancing.

The electronic records can offer data more readily to help validate the legitimacy of an election. For example, eVoting helped uncover a [truly rigged election in Venezuela](https://webrootsdemocracy.org/2017/08/03/venezuela-a-rigged-election-uncovered/?ref=davidnunez.com).

## What are the concerns with electronic voting machines?

Only a handful of vendors, like [Hart InterCivic and VotingWorks,](https://www.eac.gov/voting-equipment/registered-manufacturers?ref=davidnunez.com) manufacture electronic voting machines. They do not tend to publish the proprietary source code for their systems. Therefore, independent experts in the public cannot scrutinize the technology for potential defects. As the systems start to rely on internet connectivity and other complexities, they become more error-prone and even open to explicit vectors of attack.

All it takes is a single bad actor to tamper with an individual machine. Security enthusiasts have already shown, on [multiple occasions](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220356/Argonne%5Fresearchers%5Fhack%5FDiebold%5Fe%5Fvoting%5Fsystem%5F?ref=davidnunez.com), how easy it is to alter commonly used machines to generate inaccurate results. At DefCon last year, cybersecurity researchers demonstrated that they could hack into over [100 electronic voting machines](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/09/defcon-2019-hacking-village/?ref=davidnunez.com). Some exploits were as simple as machines using weak, default administrative passwords. Professor of Computer Science, Dan Wallach, testified in front of the Houston, Texas city council about [voting safety](https://csweb.rice.edu/news/wallach-shares-security-expertise-2020-election-coverage?ref=davidnunez.com):

> During his testimony, Wallach stood up, crossed the hearing room, and opened a voting machine’s hatch, pulling out its PCMCIA memory card. “This is where the votes are,” he said, waving the card while cameras clicked. “This can be attacked.”

Voting system hacks are not just hypothetical situations. During the United States 2016 Presidential election, [an unauthorized actor had access](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/18/mueller-indictments-georgia-voting-infrastructure-219018?ref=davidnunez.com) to the central computer that programmed the state’s voting machines. The United States Cyber Command is actively monitoring for interference from foreign cyberattacks on the [election infrastructure](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/us/politics/cyber-command-hackers-russia.html?ref=davidnunez.com).

Even when there is no tampering involved, systems can still introduce errors in counting votes or malfunction during an election day, as they did in California earlier [this year](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/super-tuesday-california-electronic-voting-malfunction-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-2020-a9373696.html?ref=davidnunez.com). The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a cyberrights advocacy group, recommends that any electronic voting machine to have paper records for every vote along with automated statistical sampling to audit results as the election is happening rather than wait for recounts triggered by potential discrepancies. Their [issue page](https://www.eff.org/issues/e-voting?ref=davidnunez.com) states:

> In 2018, several senators introduced the Protecting American Votes and Elections (PAVE) Act. This proposal mandates the use of paper ballots and risk-limiting audits in every federal election, which will assure that our democratic process isn’t hijacked by hackers or foreign powers. It’s a great step forward, and we hope Congress considers a similar bill in a future session.

Of course, paper ballots can also be prone to problems during recounts. Don’t forget the [infamous hanging chads](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000%5FUnited%5FStates%5Fpresidential%5Felection%5Frecount%5Fin%5FFlorida?ref=davidnunez.com) of the Bush vs. Gore election in the 2000.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/gettyimages-1306049-aaafa2b9b77518ca1a38ed55365658097d735be0-s700-c85_o-t-1777046848.jpg)

Photo via [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/666812854/the-florida-recount-of-2000-a-nightmare-that-goes-on-haunting?ref=davidnunez.com)

## Why not online voting?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it may seem like online voting or voting by mobile phones might be a reasonable approach. There is precedent. For example, Estonia national elections are held entirely online. However, [security experts are consistent](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/08/online-voting-304013?ref=davidnunez.com) in arguing that having an election purely online would be riddled with security issues.

> “Even though there are companies that sell products in this space, absolutely no computer security expert will tell you that they are secure, because we simply don’t know how to build secure online voting yet,” — [Dan Wallach](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/23/why-us-cant-vote-online-in-2020-presidential-election-trump-biden.html?ref=davidnunez.com).

An independent team of researchers evaluated the Estonian system and [discovered many alarming problems](https://estoniaevoting.org/?ref=davidnunez.com). Nevertheless, some districts in the United States use [online voting in limited cases](https://www.marieclaire.com/politics/a34452932/can-you-vote-online-presidential-election/?ref=davidnunez.com) where overseas access to mail-in voting is limited. MIT researchers discovered [severe issues with Voatz](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/voatz-smartphone-voting-app-has-significant-security-flaws-mit-researchers-n1136546?ref=davidnunez.com), a smartphone-based voting app used in West Virginia.

Unlike online banking, where individuals using an app are validated and authenticated, most of the significant issues with online voting stem from the necessity to [assure anonymity in elections](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/why-online-voting-is-harder-than-online-banking/?ref=davidnunez.com). Using current internet technology, like websites, means accessing an online voting system requires centralized computer servers. These can be prone to overt tampering and even [denial-of-service](https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/tips/ST04-015?ref=davidnunez.com) attacks.

## What’s going on in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Texas?

Pennsylvania and Georgia will be a brutal contest for either Trump or Biden to declare a decisive victory. The candidates’ surrogates, lawyers and on-the-ground activists, are already positioning themselves to contest or defend results. We should expect to hear a lot about those states in the upcoming days.

During the mid-term elections in 2018, Pennsylvania used electronic voting machines that did not have paper backups of votes, which they replaced. Some new machines malfunctioned in [spectacular ways](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/us/politics/pennsylvania-voting-machines.html?ref=davidnunez.com), but luckily these new devices had paper-based auditing. They have since upgraded to BMD devices. However, in some precincts, these machines will be set up in a mode that generates a paper ballot but then immediately scans the paper while still inside the machine. The voter can’t touch or validate the paper before the vote is cast, leading some people to distrust the results. In Georgia, earlier this year, new BMD voting machines caused a “[hot, flaming mess](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/09/georgia-primary-election-voting-309066?ref=davidnunez.com)” where electronic voting was fraught with issues, and there weren’t measures in place to provide for backups. These states’ election commissions will be tested over the next 24 hours.

Of course, the cases of electronic voting machines’ vulnerability are anecdotal. The vast majority of polling places will accomplish their role with no problems and complete legitimacy. The real risk is that one or two incidents will degrade general voter confidence in the entire election, especially in critical battleground states. Attacking the process and inducing distrust in the election appears to be [Trump’s strategy](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/02/we-can-have-confidence-election-results-if-we-have-patience/?ref=davidnunez.com).

We can have higher confidence in the election machines used in 2020 because [95% of the votes will have paper backups](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/us/elections/voting-machines-paper-ballots.html?ref=davidnunez.com) (either mailed-in ballots or via the machines that produce them alongside the electronic vote). If there are suspected discrepancies, we can look at the ballots directly. This auditing doesn’t mean that we will avoid shenanigans. In the state of Texas, we’ve already seen brazen attempts to [throw away early votes](https://www.texastribune.org/2020/11/02/texas-drive-thru-votes-harris-county/?ref=davidnunez.com). Texas is also a battleground state in 2020\. It is one of eight states that still use [paperless voting machines](https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/457168-report-says-eight-states-to-use-paperless-voting-in-2020-despite?ref=davidnunez.com); we cannot audit its results.

Unless things go even more wrong than people predict over the next 78 days, we’ll hold more national elections, the first as soon as 2022\. We can use what we’ve learned to fight to improve voting safety and legitimacy. Here are a few groups to check out.

- [FairVote](https://www.fairvote.org/?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Brennan Center for Justice](https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/voting-reform?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Common Cause](https://www.commoncause.org/?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Equal Citizens](https://equalcitizens.us/?ref=davidnunez.com)

One more thing:

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/cleanshot-2020-11-03-at-09-24-38_o-t-1777046862.png)

David Nuñez

## Coda

- You may notice this newsletter looks a bit different from prior episodes. I have quietly relaunched my [personal website](https://davidnunez.com/) and newsletter provider on [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=davidnunez.com). I’ve been working on this over the past week or two. It’s part of the reason this newsletter is a bit tardy (though I’ll just say I planned on it coming out on Election day, anyway). I *believe* this should also help out with my newsletter avoiding spam buckets of colleagues. Let me know what you think!
- I have all the previous newsletters in an [archive on my site](https://davidnunez.com/).
- ProCon offers a fantastic [Historical Timeline of Electronic Voting Machines and Related Voting Technology](https://votingmachines.procon.org/historical-timeline/?ref=davidnunez.com)
- Astronauts can [vote from space](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/astronauts-to-vote-in-space?ref=davidnunez.com).
- Speaking of NASA… In my last newsletter, [Error 1202](https://davidnunez.com/words/error-1202/), I talked about the two flight computers in the Apollo spacecraft. An astute reader pointed out that there was a [third computer in the spacecraft](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launch%5FVehicle%5FDigital%5FComputer?ref=davidnunez.com), attached to the Saturn V launch vehicle. The rocket used this computer for autopilot, and there wasn’t any sort of human accessible interface to the machine.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/launchvehicledigitalcomputer-600_o-t-1777046870.jpg)

---

*I was listening to* [*“Vote for Me” by The Specials*](https://open.spotify.com/track/6oIufAxaFzhmBLg547FaMq?si=hz7rwI4RQqW-y-OZhT-bEw&ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat while writing this newsletter.*

[Vote For MeThe Specials · Encore (Deluxe) · Song · 2019![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273cbaf7b1cbdb07c681b31d0c4)](https://open.spotify.com/track/6oIufAxaFzhmBLg547FaMq?si=hz7rwI4RQqW-y-OZhT-bEw&ref=davidnunez.com)
### Error 1202
URL: https://davidnunez.com/error-1202/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:50.000Z
Aboard the Lunar Module Eagle (LM-5), Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were 30,000 feet above the moon surface and rapidly descending. It was July 24, 1969, and The Apollo 11 mission had been proceeding relatively smoothly. About 4 hours later, the astronauts would make history as a man took a small step onto the moon.

Something went wrong.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/1deccc8b-a1a6-496e-971f-7758aa3d47dd_o-1-t-1777047143.jpg)

---

During the lunar descent burn, at mission elapsed time 102:38:22, an alarm rang inside the Eagle. The astronauts registered their concern to their colleague, Charles Duke [back on Earth](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.landing.html?ref=davidnunez.com).

> **102:38:26** Armstrong: (With the slightest touch of urgency) Program Alarm.  
> **102:38:30** Armstrong: (To Houston) It’s a 1202.  
> **102:38:32** Aldrin: 1202\. (Pause)  
> **102:38:42** Armstrong (onboard): (To Buzz) What is it? Let’s incorporate (the [landing radar](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-LMRadars.html?ref=davidnunez.com) data). (To Houston) Give us a reading on the 1202 Program Alarm.  
> **102:38:53** Duke: Roger. We got you…(With some urgency in his voice) We’re Go on that alarm.

In their countless hours of training and simulation, the astronauts had never prepared for this alarm. Nobody had ever seen it happen before. Their mission was now in jeopardy as `1202` blinked in the Lunar Module multiple times throughout the descent.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/19540d91-9a38-4c5b-8088-bc644b68fec7-png-t-1777047160.jpg)

My dad, a metallurgical engineer at Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, was one of the 400,000 people across the United States who had contributed to the Apollo program. They were all watching.

The people at the MIT Instrumentation Lab, who were listening in on the conversations between Houston and somewhere above Mare Tranquilitatis, looked at each other in stunned silence. They knew what `1202` meant. They had, after all, designed the hardware and software behind the computer onboard the spacecraft. Don Eyles, the 25-year old programmer who wrote the code for the lunar landing, [was among them](https://doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html?ref=davidnunez.com):

> "Then we heard the words “program alarm”. In Cambridge we looked at each other … Alarm code 1202 appeared on the DSKY. This was an alarm issued when the computer was overloaded — when it had more work to do than it had time for. In Cambridge the word went around, “Executive alarm, no core sets”. Then Armstrong said, with an edge, “Give us a reading on the 1202 program alarm”.  
> From here events moved very quickly, too fast for us to have any input from Cambridge. It was up to Mission Control in Houston.

If it were up to Eyles, he would have [stopped the mission](https://news.mit.edu/2009/apollo-eyles-0717?ref=davidnunez.com), “My mind screamed for an abort. Never had we contemplated continuing a lunar landing after a 1202 alarm. We have to abort, I thought.”

Instead, the decision about whether or not to continue the mission fell on the shoulders of a 26-year old NASA guidance officer, Steve Bales.

Just weeks prior, he had mistakenly called an unnecessary abort during a mission simulation in response to an alarm. To prevent this from happening again, his deputy Jack Garman made a handwritten cheat sheet of all the possible error codes.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/78a1f819-2c80-4172-855f-68901e6be3d8-t-1777047174.png)

With 8 minutes to go before Eagle would land, Jack Garman looked at his handwritten page for the error code `1202`. According to mission rules, the landing should continue.

The MIT Instrumentation Lab needed to invent a new computer to fly in space. Most computers in the 1960s were mainframes that filled entire rooms. The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) could only take up a cubic foot of volume. There were two computers on the Apollo spacecraft. NASA installed one AGC in the Lunar Module that took Neil and Buzz to the moon surface. The other computer stayed in lunar orbit with Michael Collins on the Command Module, Columbia.

The AGC’s needed software that would perform [intricate calculations](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/math-invented-for-moon-landing-helps-your-flight-arrive-on-time?ref=davidnunez.com) required to launch a projectile from Florida, get it into Earth orbit, fling it off into space aiming for a tiny rock 238,900 miles away, orbit the moon before landing on it, launch again from the moon, dock with the command module, and impossibly find its way back to splashdown in Earth’s oceans.

Margaret Hamilton, the 33-year old director of the Software Engineering Division at the Instrumentation Lab, was ultimately responsible for the Apollo On-Board flight computer programs. Her team needed to invent new programming languages and techniques alongside computer hardware. They pieced together complicated sensor and output systems that needed to operate in the most extreme scenario ever imagined. Hamilton so transformed how software projects developed that we still use the phrase she coined to describe the activity, “software engineering.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/23b2b23e-106f-45ee-aa2f-ce80f3005535-t-1777047189.jpg)

The entire Apollo flight software was over 36000 words long and hardwired into copper wires woven like quilts into blocks referred to as “core rope memory.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/fddd956b-432e-446e-b099-ac1d06b96fdd-t-1777047201.jpg)

The Apollo Guidance Computer in the lunar module had seven slots for temporary data (similar to RAM) that could hold 12-word blocks called “Core Sets.” For comparison, modern smartphones have more than [one million times more memory](https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2019/07/02/your%5Fmobile%5Fphone%5Fvs%5Fapollo%5F11s%5Fguidance%5Fcomputer%5F111026.html?ref=davidnunez.com) than the AGC.

These were primitive machines compared to the supercomputers we carry in our pockets. While they could perform calculations with many variables more quickly than any human being, they were quite limited with how much data and computation they could manage at once.

Each 12-word Core Set could only hold five words to run a program, leaving the remaining seven words to store temporary data like sensor readings. All the 36,000 words in the flight software broke apart into 5-word chunks and executed on the computer one at a time. The software engineers designed a sophisticated system to load and unload these program slices based on their priority and urgency at any given time during the mission.

During the Apollo 11 descent, Buzz Aldren turned on a radar unit as he had done countless times before in simulation. For [technical reasons involving frequency-locking and phase-synchronization](https://www.doneyles.com/LM/Tales.html?ref=davidnunez.com), the radar started to flood the AGC with too much data. The computer kept trying to execute tasks that were later determined by Don Eyles to have been entirely unnecessary to calibrate the radar signals in response.

This overeager calculation was happening during a critical phase of the mission when many other high priority program tasks competed for the computer’s attention. The `1202` indicated the AGC Core Sets did not have enough space to hold all the data it was trying to process. In essence, the radar signals were performing a denial of service attack on the AGC.

Fortunately, the code had a safety valve for this kind of situation. It should be familiar to anyone who has had computer problems. When the memory ran out, the computer would reboot using a “BAILOUT” restart that killed the current programs and reloaded the highest priority tasks.

I don’t think it would be that much of a stretch to say software saved the Apollo 11 mission by doing its job and then ultimately getting out of the way as Neil Armstrong piloted the Lunar Module to its landing.  
[Margaret Hamilton recalls](https://news.mit.edu/2009/apollo-vign-0717?ref=davidnunez.com):

> It quickly became clear that the software was not only informing everyone that there was a hardware-related problem, but that the software was compensating for it. With only minutes to spare, the decision was made to go for the landing. The rest is history.

The Apollo 11 code is [available on Github](https://github.com/chrislgarry/Apollo-11?ref=davidnunez.com), an online repository of source code that programmers use to collaborate on works.

If you study the source code as you would literature, you’ll start to notice interesting notes in the marginalia. For example, there is a snippet from Shakesphere in a file named `PINBALL_GAME_BUTTONS_AND_LIGHTS`

```
#	"IT WILL BE PROVED TO THY FACE THAT THOU HAST MEN ABOUT THEE THAT
#	USUALLY TALK OF A NOUN AND A VERB, AND SUCH ABOMINABLE WORDS AS NO
#	CHRISTIAN EAR CAN ENDURE TO HEAR."
#					HENRY 6, ACT 2, SCENE 4

```

In the part of the code related to the master ignition routine, a function is named `BURNBABY.` This was a reference to the Black DJ and radio station owner, Magnificent Montague, and his catchphrase, “Burn, Baby! Burn!” This was all a reference to civil unrest in the 1960s, including the [1965 LA Riots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts%5Friots?ref=davidnunez.com).

```
BURNBABY	TC	PHASCHNG	# GROUP 4 RESTARTS HERE
		    OCT	04024
		    CAF	ZERO		# EXTIRPATE JUNK LEFT IN DVTOTAL
		    TS	DVTOTAL
		    TS	DVTOTAL +1
		    TC	BANKCALL	# P40AUTO MUST BE BANKCALLED EVEN FROM ITS
		    CADR	P40AUTO		# OWN BANK TO SET UP RETURN PROPERLY

```

Now that this source code is available online, modern programmers can comment on and critique this code in the same way that an English Literature student might write about poetry. For example, we can find a humorous discussion of the `1202` code as if someone was reporting a [bug to the programming team](https://github.com/chrislgarry/apollo-11/issues/23?ref=davidnunez.com):

> The AGC reboots with a program code 1201 and 1202 (“Executive overflow”) during landing phase if the rendezvous radar switch it set to AUTO (as suggested in procedure book) and the DELTAH command (1668) is initiated on the DSKY. Bales in Guidance and Garman say it is ok to land with this error, but flight is still concerned about it and the alarms might distract the crew.

I haven’t spent a lot of time in this newsletter talking about our work at the [MIT Museum](http://mitmuseum.mit.edu/?ref=davidnunez.com). Assuming COVID-19 doesn’t continue to interfere with our plans, we intend to open up a new museum in Cambridge in 2022\. In one of our galleries, we will be featuring the Apollo Guidance Computer.

It’s an ongoing conversation among my colleagues as we try to think about what it means to collect, preserve, and display software as an artifact at our museum. For example, in our collection, we have printouts of COLOSSUS and LUMINARY (the code for the Command Module and Lunar Module AGCs, respectively).

However, code needs functional computers to have life. We could try to [simulate](https://svtsim.com/moonjs/agc.html?ref=davidnunez.com) the AGC to try to get at what the code does, but this raises existential questions about whether or not we are authentically “showing” the software or a shadow of it.

In our collection, we have the infamous photograph of Margaret Hamilton standing next to a stack of source code printouts as tall as her.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/55fad0a4-5b71-405c-8f5b-483950f02790-t-1777047224.jpg)

This photo has been immortalized as a LEGO set dedicated to the women of NASA.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/388674cf-0a82-4a63-b7b2-47e261164f0a-t-1777047238.jpg)

What’s going on in this photograph? What version of the code is next to her? What page number is the `1202` error handling code? How did she and Don Eyles collaborate? What’s scribbled on the blackboard behind her? What was the political context of her work as a woman in engineering in the 1960’s?

I contend software is more than source code. It’s culture.

It’s less about the programs as it is about the programmers’ stories involved in making it. Software is soulful.

Go, Flight  
David Nuñez

## Coda

- *This newsletter is an excerpt from a lecture I’m delivering to Yogan Muller’s* [*Anthropocene and Digitization*](http://classes.dma.ucla.edu/Fall20/160-1/?ref=davidnunez.com) *course in the Design Media Arts Department at UCLA.*
- Apollo 11\. You are reading the 11th episode of this newsletter. See what I did there?
- [Halsey Burgund](https://halseyburgund.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Francesca Panetta](https://twitter.com/franpanetta?lang=en&ref=davidnunez.com) created a film that used deepfake technology to simulate what it might have been like if a 1202 error led to a disaster. [In Event of Moon Disaster](https://moondisaster.org/?ref=davidnunez.com)

> What if the Apollo 11 mission had gone wrong and the astronauts had not been able to return home? A contingency speech for this possibility was prepared, but never delivered by President Richard Nixon—until now.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/74e56636-6188-48cc-ad63-afc9d785ab97-t-1777047253.png)

Still from [In Event of Moon Disaster](https://moondisaster.org/?ref=davidnunez.com)

- This week I’m experimenting with sending this email on a Friday instead of Thursday. Is it better this way to leave something in your inbox to consume over the weekend? Have you already started your weekend and won’t see this until Monday anyway? Does it matter? Time is weird in 2020.
- Here is a [transcript](https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.landing.html?ref=davidnunez.com) from the Apollo 11 moon landing.
- In this [short Wall Street Journal video about the 1202 error](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4cn93H6sM0&ab%5Fchannel=WallStreetJournal&ref=davidnunez.com), Don Eyles says one of the most poetic things I’ve heard from a programmer:

> When you write a piece of code, you’re writing something that needs to, in as few words as possible, convey an idea. But at the same time, it needs to fall trippingly off the tongue of the central processor. You could call it a lapidary sort of art.

- [An online course on the Apollo Guidance Computer.](https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/moon-landing-apollo-11?ref=davidnunez.com)
- Draper Laboratory (formally the MIT Instrumentation Lab) created a [fantastic website](https://wehackthemoon.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) documenting their work on the Apollo mission.
- I heard someone recently say that we need a “[Moonshot project](https://diginomica.com/governments-mass-testing-moonshot-project-looks-90s-silicon-valley-powerpoint-nightmare?ref=davidnunez.com)” to defeat COVID-19\. Engineers involved with the Apollo missions [doubt that our society has the political or economic will](https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-could-apollo-11-be-repeated-20190714-story.html?ref=davidnunez.com) to pull off a project of that scale any more.

---

*I was listening to Brian Eno’s* [*Apollo*](https://open.spotify.com/album/1Z2jkEtW5Sc9wWVxUgyG0E?si=jeDEPBKQQIyheU4-zpC44g&ref=davidnunez.com) *on repeat while writing this newsletter.*
### (Not So) Quiet, Please
URL: https://davidnunez.com/not-so-quiet-please/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T20:11:17.000Z
Dak Prescott, the 27-year-old quarterback for NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, suffered an especially gruesome ankle injury last Sunday. I don’t recommend looking it up. Suffice it to say, his season is over, and his career as a professional athlete forever altered.

The Cowboys were hosting the New York Giants at their home field in Arlington, Texas. The AT&T Stadium is one of the few NFL venues that is permitting people to attend the games during the COVID-19 pandemic. Even with the seats only filled to 25% capacity, 20000 fans slipped into stunned silence when Dak hit the ground. They then roared with appreciation as he rode a cart off the battlefield.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/4b9562a0-da16-4333-a43e-0691fdd2e60d-t-1777123734-1.jpg)

Recently, Dak Prescott told his fans that he has been spending 2020 battling [anxiety and depression](https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/%5F/id/29854487/cowboys-prescott-got-help-anxiety-depression-offseason?ref=davidnunez.com) due to the death of his brother and the stress of the coronavirus pandemic. There has been [vital commentary](https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/seeking-help-is-not-weak?ref=davidnunez.com) about how heroic symbols of masculinity, like the leader of a football team, can and should seek help when they need it.

I wouldn’t have held it against him to sit this season out. I wasn’t overly optimistic that the teams would play this year. Football is a full-contact sport where lots of bodies are flying into each other. Unlike one-on-one mixed martial arts competitions, which can [secure actual islands](https://www.ufc.com/news/ufc-fight-island-where-ufc-fight-island-fight-island-schedule-and-more?ref=davidnunez.com) to keep competitors quarantined, it’s a team sport. An NFL franchise is 53 players and a massive support system of coaches, trainers, and analyst personnel who attend the games. This is a secondary outbreak waiting to happen. It’s [already happening](https://www.nfl.com/news/falcons-working-remotely-facility-thursday-positive-covid-19-test?ref=davidnunez.com).

Between lost ticket and concession sales at venues and lost revenue due to canceled televised games, the coronavirus will [cost at least $12 billion](https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/%5F/id/29110487/sudden-vanishing-sports-due-coronavirus-cost-least-12-billion-analysis-says?ref=davidnunez.com), assuming the best-case scenarios that there will be *some* form of professional sports continuing. Sports leagues have an incentive to do whatever it takes to get players on the field, and perhaps more importantly, people to spectate and watch advertisements.

Last Sunday’s game resumed after Dak went to the locker rooms, and Twitter filled with well-wishes to Dak from heartbroken fans and non-fans alike. We saw, instantly, replay footage of the accident, his emotional departure from the stadium, and even his arrival at the hospital. His brother posted a selfie before the quarterback entered emergency surgery. This rapid delivery of additional content is another example of how much of a [second-screen experience televised sports have become](https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijsc/9/4/article-p424.xml?ref=davidnunez.com).

> God is good, and he’ll be back STRONGER than ever. I FUCKING guarante3 IT. Let’s go [@dak](https://twitter.com/dak?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=davidnunez.com) continue to walk by [#FAITH](https://twitter.com/hashtag/FAITH?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=davidnunez.com) & I’ll make sure you continue to [#FIGHT](https://twitter.com/hashtag/FIGHT?src=hash&ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=davidnunez.com) [pic.twitter.com/0SWqGJ937h](https://t.co/0SWqGJ937h?ref=davidnunez.com)  
>  
> — Tad Prescott (@86Prescott) [October 11, 2020](https://twitter.com/86Prescott/status/1315439802305708032?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=davidnunez.com)

While I’m not at all happy this happened to him, I’m glad it happened in a stadium with fans. When he raised his fist as the crowd cheered for him, tears ran down his face. You’d have to be heartless to watch this and not feel *something*.

If this happened two weeks ago, when the Cowboys played the Seattle Seahawks, there would not have been a real crowd to cheer for him. [CenturyLink Field](https://www.si.com/nfl/seahawks/gm-report/seahawks-trying-to-find-sweet-spot-for-crowd-noise?ref=davidnunez.com) is remaining empty during this season. The Seahawks’ stadium has a reputation for [promoting incredibly loud crowd noise](https://www.businessinsider.com/seattle-seahawks-stadium-loud-2014-1?ref=davidnunez.com). Its unique curved roof acts like parabolic sound amplifiers back onto the field.  
When they are allowed to attend, fans are a bit closer to the players in action, and the metal and concrete of the architecture cause the crowd noise to reverberate.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/94fc851a-76ac-43fa-9af0-9078192731dc-t-1777123746.jpg)

Football quarterbacks are like generals on the field. They assess how the defensive team is positioned and sometimes “call an audible” by shouting commands to their teammates right before the play begins. This ad-hoc adjusting is nearly impossible when a single voice gets drowned out by 137.6 decibels of a screaming crowd. It’s so much an advantage for the home team that the crowd is often referred to as the [“12th man” on the 11-player squad](https://www.si.com/nfl/2014/01/15/nfl-playoffs-seattle-seahawks-fans-mike-glennon?ref=davidnunez.com).

> “There isn’t a more uninviting place for a visiting NFL quarterback than CenturyLink Field, where Seattle’s 12th Man might as well be in the huddle screaming into a megaphone.”

Seattle doesn’t even have the loudest stadium. That Guinness World Record belongs to [the stadium in Kansas City at 137.5 dB](https://www.chiefs.com/video/arrowhead-stadium-breaks-crowd-noise-record-13886015?ref=davidnunez.com). Most stadiums amp up the noise with canon fire, fireworks, and foghorns whenever the home team scores points.

Crowds [cause known psychological effects](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/L%5FEpting/publication/281766861%5FCheers%5Fvs%5FJeers%5FEffects%5Fof%5Faudience%5Ffeedback%5Fon%5Findividual%5Fathletic%5Fperformance/links/56b22c9208ae795dd5c7a490.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) on players depending on the sport, the player skill, and the actual audience behavior. For example, players can be motivated to perform with more aggression when they feel they have the crowd’s support. When the fans boo the opposing team, [its performance decreases](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3033796?ref=davidnunez.com). [Multiple](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1469029201000334?ref=davidnunez.com) [studies](https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/jsep/32/4/article-p483.xml?ref=davidnunez.com) [have](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02380/full?ref=davidnunez.com) [shown](https://www.scirp.org/html/24626.html?ref=davidnunez.com) [that](https://shapeamerica.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410701275193?ref=davidnunez.com) crowd noise also affects the decisions of umpires and referees. In return, people that attend sporting events as spectators are influenced by the “[rituals of solidarity](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/16138171.2016.1226029?ref=davidnunez.com)” like screaming at the top of their lungs among like-minded tribe members.

In some fancier sports like tennis or golf, crowd noise has [traditionally been discouraged](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/29/sports/sports-of-the-times-quiet-please-sounds-of-silence-to-a-point.html?ref=davidnunez.com) by players and enthusiasts:

> Why do we need meditation-style silence when sweaty people are whacking a ball across a net?  
> The insistence on “quiet, please,” seems an anachronism dating to more genteel times when tennis seemed to be in the hands of the upper class. In some circles, it was considered polite to cease breathing when Chauncey and Geoffrey were competing for the club championship.

While lately, there have been calls for allowing more fan engagement during these competitions, it’s not entirely unreasonable that a tennis player might need to hear a racket striking a high-speed ball to anticipate where it might land.

> Serena Williams, who likes the atmosphere in American football and basketball, said: “I think if someone in the new generation comes along and they’re trained to play with noise, it’s O.K. I think in our generation right now, we’re not trained for that.”

An instance of “quiet, please” can go too far, though. During the U.S. Open Tennis tournament last month, players were disturbed by the lack of fans attending. Grand Slam champion Andy Murray [lamented the lack of fan energy](https://sports.yahoo.com/quiet-please-u-open-players-213447174.html?ref=davidnunez.com) at the tournament:

> (There are) times like after one of my practices last week, I was walking back to the locker room, I was walking through the grounds. I was like, Wow, this is pretty sad because usually this place is just filled with energy and atmosphere like before the tournament starts.

During a pandemic, a “quiet, please” is a surreal occurrence.

In a fan-less season, the home teams’ noise advantage diminishes, and players’ performance is altered. Sporting venues have resorted to many tactics to restore some crowd normalcy to the game, including pumping in fake crowd noise. The manager of the New York Yankees doesn’t mind it but isn’t enthusiastic:

> “Early in the day, I really didn’t like it. It sounded kind of like we’re trying to tune in our AM radio and trying to find the station and we couldn’t find it. I felt a little better with it during the game. It did feel a little bit more natural. So, you know, hopefully there’s some tweaking of it or whatever, but as long as it wore on, and during the game, I was okay with it.”

Teams are selling tickets to “spectators” who are represented by [cardboard cutouts in the seats of the stadium](https://www.mlb.com/news/how-baseball-teams-are-making-fan-cutouts-work?ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/9ca85617-0aff-4413-b6e7-fadcf4b6d4b1-jpeg-t-1777124006.jpg)

Leagues are using technology to bring fans into the stadiums, virtually. Danish Superliga club AGF Aarhus set up video screens that projected their supporters on Zoom calls:

> Meanwhile in Denmark, fans of AGF Aarhus have been supporting their team via Zoom 💻🙌 [pic.twitter.com/ki3MFaJEnd](https://t.co/ki3MFaJEnd?ref=davidnunez.com)
> 
> — ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) [May 29, 2020](https://x.com/ESPNFC/status/1266323409056731139?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref=davidnunez.com)

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the basketball team, The Dallas Mavericks, has ideas for apps that might help [people assemble their crowd](https://nypost.com/2020/06/20/mavericks-mark-cuban-sounds-off-on-nba-restart-black-lives-matter/?ref=davidnunez.com) from the comfort of their couch at home:

> “There will be a lot of technology we will be experimenting with to try to introduce noise and make the event more entertaining for players and TV viewers. We have been having a lot of fun with apps that allow fans to push noise they make at home into the arena. So not only will there be competition on the court, there will be competition from fans to contribute energy as well!”

Football is a made-for-television sport. We don’t watch a game as much as we are a live-action production. Multiple [impossible camera shots from robotic systems](https://twitter.com/danhanzus/status/1186025478794039296?lang=en&ref=davidnunez.com), amplified player voices, and all the analyst commentary would not be available to a stadium spectator. Broadcasters also mix in artificial crowd noise during games. They’ve been [doing this well before COVID-19](https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2020/05/21/simulated-crowd-noise-for-nfl-broadcasts-has-been-done-before/?ref=davidnunez.com). It’s now just more apparent when you suddenly realize there is no crowd in the stadium. If you pay attention to it closely, sometimes the crowd noise on the television speakers doesn’t precisely match up to the game’s activity. Most of the time, though, it just washes over you as white noise should.

It’s fun to watch sports as a simulation of battle, but it’s never fun to watch a soldier fall. Before COVID-19, when a player fell injured on the field, you could hear the crowd react, even via a television mediation. There’s an unsettled murmur of tension as we watch the team physicians patch the player up just enough to get them off the field. There’s a loud cheer of admiration and relief when the player bravely gives thumbs up to indicate that, “no, I am not dead.”

Then the team owners and network television executives cheer as the game resumes until the next advertising break.

Go Cowboys, and speedy recovery to Dak Prescott, is what I’m saying.

Quiet please,  
David Nuñez

---

## Coda

- Jason Gay writes about his experience attending a [crowdless New England Patriots game](https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-it-like-inside-an-empty-nfl-game-11601298257?ref=davidnunez.com).

> “Let me get the obvious out of the way: It was weird. It was deeply weird. Even getting to the game was weird. The final miles into Foxborough are an infamous traffic-choking torture chamber that will make a hardy driver weep in a Buick. On Sunday, that drive took less time than toasting a Pop-Tart.”

- [NBC Sports broadcasted simulated NBA games](https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2020/03/20/nbc-sports-washington-wizards-capitals-video-game-simulations?ref=davidnunez.com). Major League Baseball games are [also being simulated](https://theathletic.com/1732632/2020/04/09/introducing-the-athletic-alternate-universe-for-the-2020-mlb-season/?ref=davidnunez.com).
- Brodcasters actively attempt to build rapport with audiences. Now they are using [social media to do this more efficiently](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1527476417699708?ref=davidnunez.com).
- The latest version of the NFL video game, “Madden '21” has all sorts of [bizarre problems with its physics simulations](https://mashable.com/article/madden-21-glitches-videos/?ref=davidnunez.com).

---

*I was listening to “*[*Lonely in a Crowd*](https://open.spotify.com/track/1zsXasN6cbCerKSzZUfJHI?si=t9h5T7dATCe2wCYEkvbRKQ&ref=davidnunez.com)*” by G R I Z on repeat while writing this newsletter.*
### Bricolage 001
URL: https://davidnunez.com/bricolage-001/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:49.000Z
Hello friend,

When I started this Soulful Computing newsletter project, I promised myself that I would prioritize consistent publication. I’ll send out a newsletter every week, no matter what. People talk about a productivity technique called “don’t break the chain.” It’s often [misattributed](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ujvrg/jerry%5Fseinfeld%5Fhere%5Fi%5Fwill%5Fgive%5Fyou%5Fan%5Fanswer/ceitfxh/?ref=davidnunez.com) to the comedian, Jerry Seinfeld. From the [doist blog](https://blog.doist.com/dont-break-the-chain/?ref=davidnunez.com):

> The productivity method commits you to completing a daily goal for an extended period of time. Each day that you complete your daily goal, you add an “x” to a calendar. Eventually, you build a chain of x’s that extends days, weeks, or months. This streak of accomplishments is increasingly rewarding and dissuades you from breaking the chain. Eventually you’re able to build a long-term habit like daily journaling or morning stretching.

I don’t want to break the weekly chain. So, you should expect an email from me every Thursday. Consider it a [zeitgeber](https://davidnunez.com/words/time-is-weird-in-2020/).

At some point, I’ll reevaluate whether or not I’m still enjoying writing these, but I’m going to show up for this until then. I want to improve my writing. To do that, I need to put in the repetitions.

However, if I’m to make writing Soulful Computing a sustainable habit, then I have to think about tactics that will help me deliver a newsletter even when I’m under time constraints imposed by the rest of my life. At the very least, there will be some weeks where I’m not feeling especially creative or just tapped out.

For instance, I’ve recently been participating in an online course at [hyperlink.academy](http://hyperlink.academy/?ref=davidnunez.com) about writing micro-textbooks. From the course description:

> A micro-textbook is a substantial work of instructional writing. It’s bigger than a tutorial, but much smaller than an actual textbook. On the low end, it could be about 2000 words, and on the high end could get up to about 20,000.

By the end of October, I will have written a little book (about deploying digital signage and media players in museums), and I’m now generating lots of words for the book chapters in earnest. The micro-textbook endeavor is taking up a lot of my daily writing time and mental energy.

I made a plan for weeks like this, where an extended essay on a single theme is a bit out of reach for me. Every once in a while, I will publish a much shorter, skimmable (but hopefully still surprising and joyful) email.

These smaller newsletters will contain one or two quick thoughts and links about Soulful Computing that I may have found over the past week. Sometimes I’ll use this opportunity to provide updates on topics covered in a prior email. These letters might exist in that taxonomic space somewhere between a Twitter post and a short blog article.

Consider these interstitial episodes a bit of a release valve for us, or perhaps a palette cleanser to let us catch our breaths between the longer essays.

I’m calling these interludes “Bricolage.”

> ***bri·co·lage noun***  
>  
> a construction made of whatever materials are at hand; something created from a variety of available things.  
>  
> (in literature) a piece created from diverse resources.  
>  
> (in art) a piece of makeshift handiwork.  
>  
> the use of multiple, diverse research methods.

Bricolage, in theory, should take less time for me to research and produce; they’ll be a byproduct of what I’m reading and thinking about, pulled together over a week as I’m voyaging online. However, if I’m honest, I don’t want to write just a “curated links” newsletter. For me, this exercise is about the art of storytelling and not necessarily about just delivering a list of links.

I’ve considered reducing the frequency of publication to give me more time to develop the essays. It may be the right approach long term, but for now, I need the weekly self-imposed deadline as a motivational tool.

All this to say, it should be evident that I’m playing around with style and approach every week. I’ll probably start experimenting with cadence and pacing, as well.

Would love to hear what you think,

David Nuñez

---

## Spreadsheet Errors

In [episode 5 of this newsletter](https://davidnunez.com/words/freediving-into-a-spreadsheet/), I wrote a short story, **Abandon All Hope ye Who Enter (Data) Here**, about a voyage beyond the edge of a spreadsheet

> The system is straining under the pressure of a spreadsheet this deep. Every new cell takes longer to render. Nobody anticipated the software would need to support a dive like this, and the laptop fans are screaming in an attempt to give me air. I continue, my every muscle pounding. It feels like someone has set up freeze panes all around me.

In the past week, we learned that almost 16,000 people infected with coronavirus [went unreported as part of the United Kingdom tracing program](https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/10/08/uk-coronavirus-covid-spreadsheet-excel-error-outsourcing/?ref=davidnunez.com) due to the data sets extending beyond an Excel spreadsheet’s limits.

> Unfortunately, the process produced XLS files—an outdated Excel format that went extinct in 2003—which had a limit of 65,536 rows, rather than the around 1 million-row limit in the more recent XLSX format. With several lines of data per patient, this meant a sheet could [only hold](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/05/how-excel-may-have-caused-loss-of-16000-covid-tests-in-england?ref=davidnunez.com) 1,400 cases. Further cases just fell off the end.

What do you do when you run out of spreadsheet space? You make more spreadsheets, of course:

> Public Health England has worked around the present problem: Serco Test and Trace still takes an Excel 2003-formatted XLS spreadsheet as part of the data pipeline—but the process now uses multiple sheets, so the files don’t overflow again.

The underreporting of COVID-19 cases isn’t, of course, the first costly spreadsheet error. The European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group maintains a staggering [catalog of spreadsheet horror stories](http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm?ref=davidnunez.com). One prominent example is the spreadsheet data entry mistake at the London 2012 Olympics, where the organization [oversold synchronized swimming events](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/8992490/London-2012-Olympics-lucky-few-to-get-100m-final-tickets-after-synchronised-swimming-was-overbooked-by-10000.html?ref=davidnunez.com) by 40000 seats.

When scientists entered the names of specific human genes into an Excel spreadsheet, the software would use autoformatting to transform those names into dates. For example, [Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1](https://www.genenames.org/data/gene-symbol-report/?ref=davidnunez.com) is abbreviated to" `MARCH1`," which Excel translates into a date, “March 1st.” Twenty-seven genes \[have been renamed to work around\](“symbols that affect data handling and retrieval”) these technical constraints. Because of this, the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee published guidelines for gene naming, including guidance for “symbols that affect data handling and retrieval.”

JP Morgan Chase lost over $6 billion in 2012 because an analyst copied formulas from one spreadsheet to another without [checking the math](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%5FJPMorgan%5FChase%5Ftrading%5Floss?ref=davidnunez.com).

Harvard Professors Reinhart and Rogoff published an academic paper, [Growth in the Time of Debt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth%5Fin%5Fa%5FTime%5Fof%5FDebt?ref=davidnunez.com) that Republican politicians used to justify [austerity cuts](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/us/politics/paul-ryan-budget.html?ref=davidnunez.com) to promote economic stimulus. As part of a routine homework assignment, a University of Massachusetts Amherst student, Thomas Herndon [discovered severe errors in the Reinhart-Rogoff research](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22223190?ref=davidnunez.com) due to missing data and other errors in a spreadsheet.

## Handwriting

- New research shows a neurological basis for how [writing notes by hand helps people learn and remember things better](https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-kids-smarter.html?ref=davidnunez.com). There has been a [lot of online chatter](https://p1k3.com/2020/7/?ref=davidnunez.com) about digital notetaking [tools and techniques](https://deliber.at/2020/note-taking-apps/?ref=davidnunez.com) lately. Most of these tools depend on typing notes on computers (or, at best, [transcribing handwritten notes imperfectly](https://www.instapaper.com/read/1309713770?ref=davidnunez.com) into digital text). I wonder about what we are losing by not slowing down and scratching ink on paper.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/07f00c1b-14b8-4923-9ecf-9e1d27851c1c-t-1776994672-1.png)

- Here is a neat demonstration that uses [neural nets to simulate calligraphy](https://www.calligrapher.ai/?ref=davidnunez.com).
- Jason Scott-Warren used handwriting analysis of marginalia annotations to identify [John Milton’s copy of the Shakespeare First Folio of 1623](https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/cmt/?p=5751&ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/ec48fd64-94a1-4b05-b8ff-8f6ffe2a6ab2-t-1776994693.jpg)

- Here is a lovely video of a man drawing the “hardest kanji.”
### Eye to Eye
URL: https://davidnunez.com/eye-to-eye/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:48.000Z
Dressed in a long-sleeved, untucked white shirt, he climbs onto a platform in front of the audience. For the next ten minutes, he says nothing at all as he looks out into the eyes of his followers. Each has paid a small fee to receive this gentle, loving gaze. A woman bursts into tears, the intensity of it all overwhelms her.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/d9994e14-f202-4ee9-a60d-33bd98489233-t-1777121341.png)

After this first of many gazing sessions, he retreats backstage to recharge. In this interstitial, facilitators guide the acolytes through meditation and healing sessions. Someone stands up to testify that they no longer suffer from chronic back pain. A woman tells the crowd about how the gaze will open their minds to new realities.

All the answers lie inside his gaze. The man in white returns and stares again. He never speaks. This ritual repeats all day.

He is Josip Grbavac, a Croatian faith healer. However, when he stares into your eyes, he becomes [Braco the Gazer](https://www.braco.me/en/?ref=davidnunez.com), and during COVID-19 lockdown, he took his healing [practice online](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX8gTveyCGY&ab%5Fchannel=BRACOofficialchannel&ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/39ec8263-cbab-417c-a8c7-8089ab001f27-t-1777121355.png)

Every 30 minutes, Braco appears on his [YouTube live stream](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX8gTveyCGY&ab%5Fchannel=BRACOofficialchannel&ref=davidnunez.com) and begins an unblinking gazing session over sweeping orchestral music.

I’ve watched a few of these.

I’ll be honest. The video stream is quite weird, but I also find it surprisingly soothing. I should point out that Braco the Gazer is doing this for [free for the next five days](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX8gTveyCGY&ab%5Fchannel=BRACOofficialchannel&ref=davidnunez.com) if you want to take a “look” (ahem) for yourself.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/bb3542f3-f641-421b-a4d3-e65aa1d2d0c4-t-1777121373.png)

I have no way of knowing if he’s actually there, streaming live or if I’m only watching a recording. That’s fascinating to me. Does it matter if he is real or not? How much of the energy of his gaze gets lost in the video translation?

Of course, I don’t think Braco’s eye contact has any healing powers, but I certainly sense something humane embedded in his stare. Is it real?

They say that the eye is a window to the soul. What portal are we traveling through when we stare into these virtual eyes?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/92bbb23e-f627-4845-aff1-bab44830ecbe-t-1777121390.png)

## Look Into My Eyes

Eye contact has profound physiological and psychological effects on humans. We [pay more attention to other people](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13506280444000157?journalCode=pvis20&ref=davidnunez.com) when they are looking at us. We tend to [learn better when we see that someone is watching us](http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ223946&ref=davidnunez.com). Most people [can tolerate 3.2 seconds of eye contact](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eye-contact-how-long-is-too-long/?ref=davidnunez.com) from a stranger before it gets too weird. Excessive staring can trigger [self-conscious shame and anxiety](http://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/39234.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com) in some people. Staring can be aggressive and exceedingly hostile, especially for [people who might have borderline personality disorders](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427787/?ref=davidnunez.com).

And yes, gazing can even be therapeutic as patients trust a doctor more if there is [appropriate eye contact during a session](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7410567?ref=davidnunez.com), thereby making treatments more effective.

It turns out that [even images or drawings of isolated eyes](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513810001248?ref=davidnunez.com) rather than the eyes of an actual person can have the same effects.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/585b44ad-620f-4ea1-b36f-18c2094c4878-t-1777121398.jpg)

We use eye contact and numerous other channels like body language and pheromones to [establish social communication with others](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01262/full?ref=davidnunez.com). Our brains are continually observing and analyzing social dynamics and cues when in conversations with others. For example, you know when you’ve lost someone’s attention when their eyes wander, and if you are skilled at reading signals, you might adjust your speaking pattern in response.

However, eye contact is strange and difficult to achieve using videoconference software. Zoom meetings are inhumane because when you look into a colleague’s eyes, there is no biological feedback. Neither of you modulates your behavior. They have no idea you are gazing.

You could stare, unblinking at their eyes for the entire hour-long meeting and they’d never know.

Don’t make a habit of this, by the way. It’s creepy and stressful. I empathize with Lilah Ramzi when [she writes](https://www.vogue.com/article/zoom-video-chat-eye-contact?ref=davidnunez.com):

> When I returned (my eyes) to the screen, back on the virtual eyes of one of my colleagues, I felt a pang of extreme discomfort. At that very moment, they could see me, seeing them, and the connection was too much for me to handle.  
> The sequence of faces is different for every respective user but even with the anonymity, it still feels like a staring contest with whoever you’ve decided to lock eyes with.

Because we can stare at others without consequence, I think we assume that other people are staring at us in return. The reality is, like in real life, nobody is watching us as much as we imagine they might be.

When we have our camera feed on the screen in a Zoom call, like a mirror, we are probably looking at ourselves a lot more than others look at us. Cyberpsychologist Andrew Franklin says because we different conversational signaling online, [we behave unusually in our virtual meetings](https://www.insider.com/why-you-stare-at-yourself-zoom-calls-psychologist-2020-4?ref=davidnunez.com):

> In real life, when you talk to someone, you aren’t also seeing yourself. But on a video chat, as you talk, you’re watching yourself vocalize the words and react to what other people are saying. As you’re seeing yourself, you’re beginning to wonder how others see you too, and that, combined with the pressure of prolonged eye contact, can be exhausting. Sometimes people even feel like they have to perform over-the-top reactions in order to prove they are present and listening.

[Recent research from Tampere University](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200423130442.htm?ref=davidnunez.com) in Finland confirmed that we have similar biological responses to eye contact over a video conference as we do when we look into the eyes of someone in person.

Specifically, your galvanic skin response, measuring arousal, is heightened when looking someone in the eye. In other words, you sweat more when you make eye contact with someone.

Interestingly, this reaction only happens in a videoconference when you think you are in a live conversation. If you believe you are watching a recording, then you don’t have the sweat response.

Muscles in your face also involuntarily twitch when you make eye contact over Zoom, the same way as when you are communicating in physical spaces. The sweat and muscle twitch responses are ways researchers know that you are having some kind of emotional response to the eye contact even though it’s only pixels on a screen.

Researchers [have also shown](http://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/virtual-communication.php?ref=davidnunez.com) that if you think you are watching a live video stream, you are more likely to pay attention to the speaker’s whole face, especially the eyes. However, if you are watching a recording, you will tend to fixate on someone’s mouth.

> “Because gaze direction conveys so much socially relevant information, one’s own gaze behavior is likely to be affected by whether one’s eyes are visible to a speaker,” said Kleiman, first author. “For example, people may intend to signal that they are paying more attention to a speaker by fixating their face or eyes during a conversation. Conversely, extended eye contact also can be perceived as aggressive and therefore noticing one’s eyes could lead to reduced direct fixation of another’s face or eyes. Indeed, people engage in avoidant eye movements by periodically breaking and reforming eye contact during conversations.”

I take this all to mean that eye contact in a videoconference is real as long as you believe it’s real.

Braco makes me sweat, is what I’m trying to say.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/67ae3fb6-ec79-417d-ad0c-f4411e54c046-t-1777121414.png)

## Look, But Don’t Look

Videoconference calls can also disrupt eye contact because of something called parallax. The camera on your laptop or cell phone is usually at the edge of the screen. This positioning means if you are looking at the faces in a zoom window, you are not looking at your camera’s lens. To the other people in your meeting, you are looking away from them, so you avoid eye contact.

There are ways to mitigate this. The standard advice is to train yourself to stare into the camera lens when you are speaking. Unfortunately, this means you won’t be able to see the other meeting participants’ faces and reactions as you talk, defeating the purpose of a video chat.

Many people have constructed [teleprompter-like](https://medium.com/@mask303/diy-device-for-video-conferencing-that-achieve-eye-contact-cb393edb4401?ref=davidnunez.com) boxes to [correct for camera placement](https://hackaday.com/2020/05/29/two-way-mirror-improves-video-conferencing/?ref=davidnunez.com). These techniques seem cumbersome and also might make it difficult to collaborate on shared documents or engage in meetings with more than 2 participants.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/57849688-cf20-4353-aa23-84ab4975137c-t-1777121427.jpg)

You could also embed a camera inside the display and use small gaps in the screen to expose the lenses. This way, when you stare at the pixels on the screen, you are also looking into the camera. Samsung even has a [patent for this technology (pdf)](https://nl.letsgodigital.org/uploads/2018/01/nieuwe-smartphone.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com). This approach would require significant tweaks to hardware to work, however.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/1400c444-51c8-475d-b356-dbd263374d75-t-1777121441.png)

Both [Microsoft](https://www.xda-developers.com/microsofts-eye-contact-feature-goes-live-on-the-surface-pro-x-to-keep-your-gaze-focused-in-video-calls/?ref=davidnunez.com) and [Apple](https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/07/02/facetime-eye-contact-correction-tutorial/?ref=davidnunez.com) recently announced a different solution. The software uses computer vision and artificial intelligence techniques to digitally alter your face so that it appears you are looking directly into the camera, even when you are not.

Initially, Apple creepily named their system “FaceTime Attention Correction.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/4ad1e456-2a8d-4731-ad87-fa41bc15012b-t-1777121459.jpg)

We are already using lighting effects, beauty filters, and virtual backgrounds in video calls to present an alternate reality to others. However, I wonder if we are going too far allowing AIs to rewrite reality by changing a person’s gaze. This is concerning given how much we communicate through our eyes.

What makes for an authentic human interaction when we can’t trust what our own eyes are seeing and *saying*?

What is real anymore? I’ll ask Braco.

Rather, I’ll stare into his eyes for all the answers.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/e816abd0-af02-4240-91c4-e92e1b61a418-t-1777121473.png)

See you soon,

David Nuñez

---

## Coda

- For people with blindness, video conferencing brings its unique challenges. Here are resources from the [American Foundation for the Blind](https://www.afb.org/about-afb/events-and-awards/afblc-2020-overview/virtual-afblc/remote-instruction/resources?ref=davidnunez.com).
- An Indonesian YouTuber has over 3 Million views of his [staring into the camera for two hours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8zFL-0rBAw&ref=davidnunez.com). “You all can decide for yourself whether this video is useful or not. Have fun watching!” he joked.
- In 2010, artist Marina Abramović created a performance at MoMA, [The Artist is Present](https://www.moma.org/learn/moma%5Flearning/marina-abramovic-marina-abramovic-the-artist-is-present-2010/?ref=davidnunez.com). She sat in the middle of a gallery during opening hours and invited museum visitors to [line up and gaze into her eyes](https://vimeo.com/72711715?ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/9d72d081-200c-42d6-85cc-5a651943ed00-t-1777121489.png)

- In 2011, Pippin Barr created an [online version of the full The Artist is Present experience](https://www.pippinbarr.com/2011/09/14/the-artist-is-present/?ref=davidnunez.com) that is only available during regular museum hours. It simulated the ticket desk, incessantly long wait times, and even recreated a few artworks hanging on the wall. [Here is a walkthrough](https://vimeo.com/83378824?ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/040b077b-d483-489c-a679-10c3185bd8f2-t-1777121503.png)

- Fascinating documentary about the making of [The Artist is Present](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2073029/?ref=davidnunez.com)
- Jamie Zigelbaum’s [Doorway to the Soul](http://jamiezigelbaum.com/doorway-to-the-soul?ref=davidnunez.com) (2015) “is a digital sculpture that displays the faces of mechanical turk workers as they are recorded. These workers are paid $0.25 to stare into their webcam for one minute.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/e77e052d-c6e3-41a7-8904-ecc8ef08457a-t-1777121513.png)

s

- There are dozens of YouTube videos of people staring into the camera intended to help viewers [practice eye contact](https://www.youtube.com/results?search%5Fquery=eye+contact+practice&ref=davidnunez.com). Like this [one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsQYRqb%5FaW4&ab%5Fchannel=TheAngrySpud&ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/4c9f9863-e481-4980-b33a-15a9c530493a-t-1777121525.png)

- Adobe is [dropping support for the Flash player at the end of this year](https://www.maketecheasier.com/browsers-ending-flash-support?ref=davidnunez.com) and all major browsers will block Flash programs, destroying a swath of early internet culture, games & artwork. This includes the Pippin Barr piece abovie. Is anyone preserving these before it’s too late?

---

*How could I not be listening to* [*In Your Eyes*](https://open.spotify.com/track/1wyluqXP2ujdTpCfm1E617?ref=davidnunez.com) *by Peter Gabriel on repeat as I was writing this newsletter?*

Additional Photo Credits

- [Braco](https://www.braco.me/?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Massimo Virgilio](https://unsplash.com/@massimovirgilio?ref=davidnunez.com) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/s/photos/eyes-painting?ref=davidnunez.com)
### Press 1 to Continue
URL: https://davidnunez.com/press-1-to-continue/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:47.000Z
I had a meeting with a colleague a few days ago, and she requested that instead of a video chat over Zoom, we should pick up the phone and have an old-fashioned audio-only conversation like human beings.

Our chat turned to phone calls on landlines and what it was like when entire households shared the same phone number and the clicks of someone picking up the extension in the other room, “MOM! Get off the phone!”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/9b54ae17-cc62-44b7-9d79-cf79cd0b8a4e-t-1777130537.jpg)

She told me about her party line conversations with friends while they chatted about boys and homework on those ubiquitous 1980’s clear phones. She was bubbling as she recalled, “they lit up when someone was calling!”

It was a sign of luxury (or parental capitulation) when the teenager got a separate phone line.

Of course, I certainly talked to friends for hours on the phone, but I also spent just as many hours connecting with other computers over modems. Every time I placed a call through the computer, the modem’s speaker would emit a series of touch-tones, squeaks, and static that I came to recognize as my successful passing into the world of BBS’s and ultimately the internet. It was soothing to hear the computers start a conversation with each other. There’s a beautiful term for it. “[Handshaking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handshaking?ref=davidnunez.com).” Hello, world.

I started thinking about the nostalgia of phones before the era of blackberries and mobile devices. We now carry supercomputers around in our pockets that we laughingly refer to as “phones.” However, we still cling to a bygone era as we stroke the smooth numeric keypads on iPhones and express outdated social norms through our telephony handshakes, “Hello.”

I grew up around some rotary phones, like the one at grandma’s house, but I’m of the Touch-Tone generation. I can still feel the squishy buttons with their phosphorescent backlit glow on that yellow corded phone in my childhood kitchen. I still remember my first phone number because of the way it sounds. It was the melody that my fingers sang when I wanted to reach out and touch my home.

The telephony system is an incomprehensibly complex amalgam of mechanical and computerized devices spanning multiple decades of vintage. These systems intermingle fluidly, and it’s often unclear where the boundaries begin and end.

Ideas travel from our brains along our nervous system to vibrate the vocal cords that push air towards a tiny magnet in our headsets. This device creates an analog signal that electronics turn into a digital sequence of 1’s and 0’s. The phone circuitry analyzes and manipulates these bits into a compressed stream. The now pale representation of our original idea travels over radio frequencies to cell phone towers. The real magic begins as the telephone systems route these signals across light beams in fiber optic cables and electric current through copper. Our transformed voice burrows underground, flies through the air, and bounces off of satellites in space. Sometimes it takes a journey in the depths of the ocean and impossibly emerges from the abyss to begin its metamorphosis through the systems back into electricity and sound. Our brain’s neurons somehow reassemble into some simulation of a human voice.

This is what it means to “phone home.”

The game of telephone is one of idea-hopping from one complex system to the next. I often wonder what gets lost in translation.

With what am I communicating on my phone if it’s not really your voice?

## Press 2 for Touch-Tones

AT&T was working on a replacement for rotary dial phones since before World War II. Their first systems involved mechanisms of vibrating reeds to signal across the telephone lines. After the war, when transistors started to see mass adoption in consumer products, electronics could be compressed and robust enough to fit inside a small telephone device.

At the 1962 World’s Fair, AT&T demonstrated the first Touch-Tone interface, ushering a new era of telephone communications.

However, the new system required major upgrades to the telephone infrastructure of network switches and local exchanges, so it took a while before touch-tone phones were common in homes and offices. [Rotary phones persisted](https://www.concordmonitor.com/rotary-phone-granite-geek-science-nh-14838348?ref=davidnunez.com).

> Because of the slow rollout, regulators required AT&T, the national Ma Bell telephone network, to support both pulse and tone dialing. The regulation was carried over after the telephone system was deregulated in the 1980s but it appears to have faded away since then.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/d615eaea-baa1-464b-a325-a338e4ea9fcf-t-1777130581.jpg)

However, most telephone systems can still support dialing using rotary phones because current technology makes processing pulses inexpensive and easy.

> “I think the (equipment) companies support rotary out of inertia rather than design,” said (Paul Violette, President, New Hampshire Telephone Museum).

In much the same way, touch tones persist through the 21st century. Even though Voice Over IP and mobile phones use digital dialing techniques now, they confront us with numerical keypads that harken to a day when pushbutton phones were a modern miracle. I can dial by talking to Siri, “Call Mom.” However, if I call my bank, I still input my credit card using the keypad.

Touch-Tone is a brand name for a technology called Dual Tone Multi Frequency (DTMF). Here is how it works. Every row and column on a telephone keypad is assigned a tone with a specific frequency (as measured in Hz). If you hold all the keys down in a row or column in older Touch-Tone phones, you’ll hear those single tones.

When you combine a row and a column and play two tones at once, you hear the discordant noise that we recognize as a Touch-tone. For example, “6” is a combination of 1477Hz and 770Hz.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/4fda0ccb-b03b-4b53-af46-f46e35eada50-t-1777130596.jpg)

Suppose you squint hard enough at this schematic of the ubiquitous 35-Type DTMF keypad (via [Telephone Collectors International](http://www.telephonecollectors.info/?ref=davidnunez.com)). In that case, you might see how the keys relate to inductors that attenuate a single-transistor oscillator to produce the dual tones. I’m not an electrical engineer. Don’t quote me on this.

The [International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU-T) Recommendation Q.23](https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-Q.23/en?ref=davidnunez.com) specifies DTMF tones. The row frequencies range from 697Hz to 941Hz, and the column frequencies are in a higher range from 1209Hz to 1633Hz. The engineers selected these values because they are not common in music or speaking, but are still within the human hearing range, which phone systems can easily support.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/99814c16-798c-4151-881a-8758c591e919-t-1777130615.jpg)

You’ll notice that these specs allow for a fourth column. Those keys appear on telephone technicians’ equipment and mean that DTMF can support 4 bits of data (i.e., a “nibble” or a half of a byte), which becomes essential in future computing innovation.

Decoding the DTMF signals involves a digital signal processing technique called the [Goertzel algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goertzel%5Falgorithm?ref=davidnunez.com), invented in 1958\. It can efficiently detect and separate the tones when determining which keys were pressed by a caller.

DTMF is an example of “In-band signaling.” From [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-band%5Fsignaling?ref=davidnunez.com):

> In [telecommunications](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications?ref=davidnunez.com), **in-band signaling** is the sending of [control information](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control%5Fsignal?ref=davidnunez.com) within the same band or channel used for data such as voice or video.

This is the opposite of “out-of-band signaling,” which uses a separate track of information to facilitate communication.

The differences between in-band and out-of-band signals are a fundamental concept for Soulful Computing. I’ll explore them in detail in future episodes.

In the meantime, users of telephones get valuable audible feedback when they push buttons. It is helpful in situations where saying things like a credit card number out loud might be insecure.

It also means anything that can generate the appropriate tones over the audio channel can control the telephony system.

## Press 3 for Phreaks and 2600Hz

Joe Engressia (aka [Joybubbles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joybubbles?ref=davidnunez.com)), born in 1949, was seven years old when he stumbled on an infamous exploit on the telephone system. He would often take comfort listening to the dial tone on his family’s phone. Born with blindness, he could whistle with perfect pitch and discovered that when he whistled specific frequencies (2637.02 Hz, significantly) while on the phone, he would activate the phone switches on the network. He continued experimenting with his telephone throughout his life. He was an early hacker in the most real sense of the word, and many consider him the father of “phreaking,” the subculture of technology enthusiasts who would hack telephone networks for fun.

Bill Acker, another person with blindness, was inspired by Engressia, and they connected over their love of telephone systems. Acker soon discovered he could play his recorder on the phone at 2600Hz to control the system.

Because of its association with the phreaking community, the number 2600 has reverence in the hacker community. It is also the name of the [magazine](http://2600.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) published by [Emmanuel Goldstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric%5FCorley?ref=davidnunez.com), an influence on my impressionable teenage years roaming around on the BBS’s.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/1f84cc3a-0a0c-4942-87d4-4dc462171329-t-1777130638.gif)

Ralph Barclay read the Bell System Technical Journals in 1960 or so, and he realized he had enough information to puzzle how it might be possible to avoid using a payphone to make a call. He could use the telephone system for free. He assembled an electronic circuit inside a 12"x7"x3" metal box. The box happened to be painted blue and sang a perfect 2600Hz pitch.

The eponymous [Blue Box](https://phreaking.fandom.com/wiki/Blue%5Fbox?ref=davidnunez.com) was born, and it was used for decades by phreakers to explore Ma Bell’s systems.

Steve “Woz” Wozniak and Steve Jobs infamously [started their business partnership](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/the-definitive-story-of-steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-and-phone-phreaking/273331/Recommended?ref=davidnunez.com) selling blue boxes after Wozniak read about phreakers in [Esquire magazine](http://classic.esquire.com/secrets-of-the-blue-box?ref=davidnunez.com). One of their blue boxes recently [sold at auction for $125,000](https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/24495/lot/109/?ref=davidnunez.com) after the auction house authenticated the circuit boards and components as compared to other known Woz Blue Boxes.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/aa5fe11e-5ad4-4966-830a-67097ef61876-t-1777130650.jpg)

*Blue Box from the collection at* [*The Henry Ford Museum*](https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/452666/?ref=davidnunez.com)

“If it hadn’t been for the blue boxes, there would be no Apple. I’m 100 percent sure of that,” says [Steve Jobs](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11084145-steve-jobs?ref=davidnunez.com).

([Here’s an instagram video showing the Blue Box in action](https://www.instagram.com/p/BbuWbmSlwkp/?ref=davidnunez.com))

Phreaks found each other on party lines and through in-person meetups. John Draper operated a pirate radio station and broadcast his telephone number on the illicit airwaves to gauge how far his station reached. Dennis Terry, a DJ and phreaker, heard the broadcast and introduced Draper to people like Joe Engressia. Draper knew how to build electronic circuits, so he helped his friends make blue boxes. He also learned from the hackers that a toy whistle found in cereal boxes could whistle a perfect 2600Hz, so he adopted the hacker name, “Cap’n Crunch.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/c4ff371a-e14c-4b50-a719-0c5fc0c6c563-t-1777130665.png)

Captain Crunch whistles from The Telephone Museum

The community of like-minded misfits celebrated a spirit of harmless mischief, hacking, and discovery. Indeed, most of these early explorers didn’t see what they were doing as criminal acts.

> I do it for one reason and one reason only. I’m learning about a system. The phone company is a System. A computer is a System, do you understand? If I do what I do, it is only to explore a system. Computers, systems, that’s my bag. The phone company is nothing but a computer." Captain Crunch in Secrets of the Little Blue Box, Ron Rosenbaum, Esquire Magazine (October 1971)

Of course, the phone companies didn’t see it that way, and it was an arms race involving the FBI and eventual imprisonment for many phreakers. Some, like Acker, ended up having long, successful careers working for telephone companies.

## Press 3 for Unintended Consequences

Not all phreaking is benign.

Matthew Weigman is a legally blind phone enthusiast who participated in toxic communities on shared party lines, a forum where he felt his blindness was not a liability. Indeed, like Engressia and Acker, because he has blindness, his sense of hearing gave him an [advantage as a phreaker](http://www.davidkushner.com/article/the-boy-who-heard-too-much/?ref=davidnunez.com).

> He could impersonate any voice, memorize phone numbers by the sound of the buttons and decipher the inner workings of a phone system by the frequencies and clicks on a call, which he refers to as “songs.” The knowledge enabled him to hack into cellphones, order phone lines disconnected and even tap home phones. “Man, it felt pretty powerful for a little kid,” he says. “Anyone said something bad about me, and I’d press a button, and I’d get them.”

Once, he randomly pushed touch-tones on his phone during a party line call and stumbled on a Moderator mode where he could access the otherwise private phone numbers of room participants.

“Now, whenever someone on the line trash-talked him, he could quietly access their number and harass them by calling them at home.” (via David Kushner, “[The Boy Who Heard Too Much](http://www.davidkushner.com/article/the-boy-who-heard-too-much/?ref=davidnunez.com)”)

His skills as a phreaker and [social engineer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social%5Fengineering%5F%28security%29?ref=davidnunez.com) made him an incredibly dangerous adversary. He had the uncanny ability to impersonate voices and knew enough about the systems’ technical underpinnings to convince phone company employees to give him security codes. He would “[dox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing?ref=davidnunez.com)” people who he perceived wronged him and launch relentless abuse campaigns. For example, he knew how to manipulate the phone systems to endlessly ring someone’s phone while spoofing a different phone number on Caller ID.

His harassing behavior also included many instances of “swatting,” an act of telephone fraud involving social engineering and phreak tactics to trick emergency services and police officers to respond, with guns drawn, to fake incidents at the homes of enemies. Matthew Weigman served over eleven years in prison for his crimes.

Touch-tones are involved in more subtle forms of fraud, as well. 22.8 billion total robocalls were made in the first half of 2020\. These calls often start by compelling you to “Press ‘1’ to speak to a customer service representative or Press ‘2’ to be removed from our call list.”

This is a false choice. The only way to win is not to play.

Scammers call thousands of phone numbers a day, hoping that one or two will lead to a score. They use your touch-tone response as “proof of life.” When you press a key, their system learns that a human being answered at that phone number. When you prove you are real to the system, you become a hot prospect, and your phone number will be sold and resold among the phone spammers.

Consumer Reports offers this advice:

1. Hang up.
2. Do NOT press any buttons — even if it’s to try to remove yourself from the company’s list — as doing so may just lead the robocaller to call you more.
3. File a complaint with the FTC. You can do that online at [FTC.gov](http://ftc.gov/?ref=davidnunez.com) or [DoNotCall.gov](http://donotcall.gov/?ref=davidnunez.com), or by calling 1 877 FTC HELP.

In the 1980s, during Saturday Morning Cartoons, nefarious advertisers would convince children to hold their telephones up to the screen, and a series of DTMF digits would play through the tv speakers, triggering a dial sequence. The children unwittingly placed phone calls to premium-rate numbers (ex. 1-900), which would charge against the parents’ phone bills. (via [Jane and Michael Stern](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/150686.Jane%5Fand%5FMichael%5FStern%5Fs%5FEncyclopedia%5Fof%5FPop%5FCulture?ref=davidnunez.com)). This was not illegal at the time, but indeed fell into a grey area of ethics.

As recently as the early 1990’s, the telephone companies engaged in the shady practice of attaching a small, premium fee for “Touch-tone” features as part of a phone bill. They charged customers, despite that DTMF actually saved companies money in infrastructure and support fees. The consumer already had access to Touch-tone capability as long as they owned a phone that had a keypad. These unjustified fees [represented billions of dollars of extra profit](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-10-05-fi-1736-story.html?ref=davidnunez.com) for the phone companies. When regulators abolished the practice, the corporations lumped these charges into an increased base cost of service.

Because of their robust nature and ease of integration with already existing channels using in-band signals, DTMF tones show up in customer service lines and automatic teller machines. Governments have even considered using DTMF for [electronic voting](https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/eac%5Fassets/1/28/SIV-FINAL.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com). However, these systems are far from secure. Rahul Sasi created a proof of concept [for a technique called “fuzzing”](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/49076937/ns/technology%5Fand%5Fscience-security/t/hacked-touch-tones-crash-phone-networks-steal-data/?ref=davidnunez.com) where poorly programmed automated phone software could cause systems “to become inaccessible, or no calls from the customer go through,” resulting in “a lot of panic” and a “huge” amount of damage.

DTMF can lead to unintended consequences, but I don’t want to leave you with the impression that they are all unpleasant.

It’s my birthday today. Here is the score for “Happy Birthday” as provided by [Touchtone Telephone Songs](http://michaelv.org/projects/telephone/?ref=davidnunez.com).

*Happy Birthday To Me*

```
1   1   2   1   6   3-   1   1   2   1   9   6-

1   1   #   9   6   3   2-   #   #   9   6   9   6

```

Here are the Monkee’s playing Touchtone Symphony on the Glen Campbell Show.

And finally…

## The Soulful Computing Helpline

I’m pleased to announce the launch of the Soulful Computing Helpline.

Call **+1 205-861-2082**

I’m not kidding. I made this thing as a birthday gift to you.

Give the operator a call. It’s lonely.

Whistling at 2600Hz,

David Nuñez

## Coda

- I’m going to dedicate many future newsletters to phreaking and other early hacking culture. I’ve only scratched the surface in this episode, but I felt I’d be negligent not to reference it if I’m writing about touch-tones.
- In the meantime, run, don’t walk to Phil Lapsley’s [Exploding the Phone](http://explodingthephone.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) (formally [History of Phone Phreaking](http://www.historyofphonephreaking.org/?ref=davidnunez.com))
- I had always assumed the Atari 2600 also took its name from phreaker culture as an inside programmer joke. As I was researching this newsletter, I discovered it’s more likely that it [got its numerical designation after the Atari 5200 release](https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3551/a%5Fhistory%5Fof%5Fgaming%5Fplatforms%5F.php?print=1&ref=davidnunez.com) (i.e., a standardization of one half of that model number).
- [An iPhone App that emulates phreaker boxes](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/phonal-tonal/id344326827?ref=davidnunez.com)
- Rahul Sasi’s Paper on Fuzzing, [“How I DOS’ed my Bank”](https://dl.packetstormsecurity.net/papers/attack/rahulSasiPaperDetails.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com)
- Shout out to the [New Hampshire Telephone Museum](https://www.nhtelephonemuseum.org/?ref=davidnunez.com)

---

*I listened to* [*Telephone and Rubber Band*](https://open.spotify.com/track/5hZEcoqQBmDoOJIObPYnk0?si=5Y-1DfNYSQue5Lpw6AVnHg&ref=davidnunez.com) *by Penguin Café Orchestra while writing this newsletter.*
### Time is Weird in 2020
URL: https://davidnunez.com/time-is-weird-in-2020/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:45.000Z
Time is weird in 2020, wouldn’t you agree?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a practice I learned from my friend, [Jamie Zigelbaum](http://jamiezigelbaum.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), when we were working together at his studio in the, to put it mildly, “chimeric” building at [33 Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn](https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/realestate/commercial/12incubate.html?ref=davidnunez.com).

In the late afternoon, every person at the company stopped work for a few minutes to write up a note about the day. We’d post these notes in an email thread or Slack channel, and they were as honest, personal, and transparent as they could be in a quasi-public forum. We’d read them privately, and mine would always run too long.

The exercise wasn’t really to communicate official progress or hold each other accountable, though maybe it did those things in some small way.

We just wrote whatever happened to be at the front of our minds. It was mostly about work projects, like notes from client interactions or milestones met. Sometimes we just shared interesting bits of trivia we’d have stumbled on in our travels through the internet. It was a daily ritual of reflection. It marked the time.

When you get a large group of people in a noisy Brooklyn office working on a dozen different projects, the pace of activity can feel frenetic. Time moves so quickly in an environment like that. With so many pressing deadlines, it may seem counterintuitive for everyone to stop working to pass little notes to each other.

It was an intentional act where we all paused our client projects so we could breathe and reflect. There’s a mild sprinkling of mindfulness in this act, of course.

We had other ceremonies, also, like Burger Friday, that marked the end of the week. Parties on the rooftop seemed to correspond with changing seasons. I miss those quite a lot, as well.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/d3476b54-5dbe-4308-8068-860c9c02befe-t-1777131990.jpg)

The daily writing exercise, though, still sticks with me the most. I realize now that the words inside those notes weren’t consequential. It was the communal ritual that mattered. It’s not *what* we were writing but that we were writing at all. More importantly, we were all writing *together in synchronisity*. These moments of reflection were important for keeping our hearts beating a steady pace. It was [entrainment](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/entrainment?ref=davidnunez.com).

Blip blip. Write & Send. Blip blip. Write & Send. Blip blip.

We called this ritual “**zeitgeber**.”

## Internal Clocks and External Stimuli

“[Zeitgeber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeber?ref=davidnunez.com)” in German translates roughly into “Time Giver.” [Jürgen Aschoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen%5FAschoff?ref=davidnunez.com) coined the term as part of his work, establishing the field of chronobiology. Zeitgeber refers to stimuli in our environment that help regulate our circadian rhythms. The sunrise/sunset, train commutes (when we used to do those), Friday afternoon happy hour, and your iPhone alarm clock are all zeitgebers.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/a306f7ae-abe4-48b9-8530-0bbb6f6771f2-t-1777132002-1.jpg)

These environmental influences work at scales longer than 24-hours, also. The weather in Boston is in that weird phase shift, where summer is fighting to remain relevant. New England autumns are gorgeous; I love the way the air smells like chimney smoke. That’s coming soon.

I wonder what autumn smells like through a mask?

In Cambridge, we also know it is autumn by the sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of students returning to the area’s 60+ universities. The population dramatically changes here, and you can *feel* it. In 2020, most students stayed home this year or are re-defining “off-campus” by taking their semester in [rented houses in places far from New England like Hawaii](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/style/college-collab-houses-coronavirus.html?ref=davidnunez.com). I don’t think [leaf peeping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf%5Fpeeping?ref=davidnunez.com) is quite the same in Honolulu, for the record.

My calendar says my birthday is next week. That zeitgeber brings the yearly reminder of everything I’ve not accomplished and how little time I have left. Anne-Laure Le Cunff calls this “[Time Anxiety](https://nesslabs.com/time-anxiety?ref=davidnunez.com)”:

> It’s an obsession about spending your time in the most meaningful way possible. And when society tells us—or when we interpret signs from society as saying—that it’s too late to achieve a particular goal, we don’t perceive it as meaningful enough. We need—we demand—that what we do with our lives actually matters.

Time anxiety is no joke, and in 2020, time feels incredibly strange. Sure, I’ve taken on the COVID hobbies of pasta making and newsletter writing, but it’s almost October, and I don’t know what I’ve done with the past nine months.

We’re experiencing [time compression and expansion simultaneously](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-monday-is-a-tuesday-is-a-sunday-as-covid-19-disrupts-internal-clocks/?ref=davidnunez.com).

> These perceptions may be attributed to a tug-of-war between two concepts: [retrospective and prospective time](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001691813002515?ref=davidnunez.com). Dan Zakay, a professor at the Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, explains that retrospective time perception evokes the recollection of past events and how long they lasted. Prospective time involves judging the duration of an event at the present moment.

You’re not alone when you notice the weeks are flying by, but the minutes last forever.

[COVID-somnia](https://journals.lww.com/neurotodayonline/Fulltext/2020/07090/Sleep%5FNeurologists%5FCall%5FIt.1.aspx?ref=davidnunez.com) keeps us up at night because our circadian cycles are [disrupted](https://assets.researchsquare.com/files/rs-27400/v1/c4722e39-f542-4730-a2af-b518f4f22591.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com), further scrambling the days and weeks. There might even be weird links between the COVID-19 virus and circadian rhythms. [The time of day someone is infected affects how the virus progresses](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.09.290718v1?ref=davidnunez.com). It mainly concerns me when our daily habits are all over the place, and sleep hygiene is difficult to maintain.

During the lockdown, we lost many zeitgebers at once. We are reckoning with a complete reconfiguration of the workweek and workday. I no longer need to constrain my focus to set hours. My work time intermingles with the rest of my life fluidly. Our commutes no longer bookmark our workdays. We spend our weekends in the same places as our weekdays.

Some people say that they need to stick to artificial routines to remain productive and sane when all the other cues around them have collapsed. “[The morning routine](https://www.google.com/search?q=productivity+morning+routine&ref=davidnunez.com)” is standard fare among the productiviata and all the YouTubers who are dispensing advice about how to Get Things Done During a Pandemic™.

A colleague of mine has a series of recurring weekly meetings for distinct projects. She says that she knows the day of the week based on the topics of the meetings. Her Zoom windows are her zeitgeber.

I start my workday at a mostly regular time every morning, albeit earlier without my bus/subway commute. I don’t work on the weekends. Of course, even before 2020, there never was a reason for me to maintain a 9-5 schedule. Nobody forced me to travel to a physical building for 40 hours a week to provide value to my colleagues and advance our organization’s mission. I’m lucky that I have a mostly location-agnostic job and seem to work more productively when I can regulate my isolation and interaction with colleagues through Zoom windows.

I’ve thought that even when everyone “goes back,” time will still be weird, and maybe we’ll spend as much of it working from home as working from work. I may never go back to an office.

I find a lot about that appealing. I’m going to need to find better ways to keep a beat, though.

## Writing as Zeitgeber

Ever since my time in that studio in Brooklyn, I’ve been keeping a private log where I write a daily note to myself as a zeitgeber every afternoon. Mine looks a little like a work journal; it’s short and sweet and often filled with non-sequiturs. Sometimes I skip a month. Sometimes it’s just three words and an emoji. Often it’s a number in a habit tracking spreadsheet. It doesn’t matter whether I keep my zeitgeber in a written journal, [Day One](https://dayoneapp.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), or even some other [notetaking app](https://roamresearch.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) *du jour*. The format doesn’t matter, and it isn’t even so relevant what I write down as much as it is that I write it at all.

Here’s one from April, seven weeks into lockdown:

> Met with a colleague in France re: games as a co-creation tool. MMT meeting discussing Polaroid Online and Kendall Exhibition feedback. Met w/ Emily and Lindsay about a couple interactives in the new museum. Listened in on the technical lighting conversation. Did some work for Drinking About Museums (next one on Thursday!) Feeling a bit worn down in Week 7\. Took a power nap mid-afternoon and that helped a bit (cup of coffee before going down for 23 minutes… wake up to the caffeine boost, as well)

For me, the writing ritual is grounding. I give myself a sense of cadence, regulated by a small moment of thinking and writing. It is an action entirely under my control rather than something I can’t alter, like a sunset.

…or a coronavirus.

At the studio, our zeitgeber writing practice had the ultimate effect to create entrainment among our team. Like fireflies synchronizing their blinks, we reset ourselves on a regular beat through this ritual. It’s helpful for me to keep my private zeitgeber going, but I miss the part where I share these thoughts with peers and friends. Zeitgebers work better for me when I can keep time with others.

I’ve tried a few things to get this feeling back.

When I first started at the museum, I would send weekly summaries to my colleagues, including a section of interesting links or my pontification on some museum technology ideas. They were a lot like newsletters. I didn’t keep it up because I was doing it alone.

Then there’s Twitter. My words there are like fireflies in a forest. Lit for a nanomoment and then off. Then on again somewhere else altogether. Every once in a while, a person or two or fifty likes or replies to one of my tweets. We entrain around an idea, and time stops. Then we get out of sync, and I’m alone among the trees once again.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/1552d28d-4083-48b3-b5a6-605dbed5a5a7-t-1777132017.jpg)

I created a #zeitgeber channel in the museum’s slack workspace, and for a while, some people joined me in there, writing their own notes. It was great to sync up my heartbeat with colleagues I might not ordinarily see during the day. Then COVID-19\. Habits are difficult to keep. I see my colleagues even less, and sometimes I’m a firefly blip-blipping all alone in the forest.

I tried restarting my weeknotes habit on my website this summer and even managed to keep it up for a solid six weeks. [Weeknotes](https://medium.com/job-garden/a-pre-history-of-weeknotes-plus-why-i-write-them-and-perhaps-why-you-should-too-week-16-31a4a5cbf7b0?ref=davidnunez.com) are great zeitgeber. There’s a [community of weeknotes writers](https://weeknot.es/?ref=davidnunez.com), even, to help keep the beat. I have a strong sense of closure for the week when I publish weeknotes. It’s been a useful marker for the weekend’s start, no matter what “weekend” means these days.

I’m now at the 6-week mark with this newsletter. It’s starting to feel like a time-giver for me, honestly. I know it’s Wednesday because I’m desperately throwing words together, and I know it’s Thursday because I’m spending too much time reading and re-reading what I’ve written before breaking out in a sweat as I push “publish.”

It’s been a joy and a COVID-coping mechanism, and I appreciate knowing maybe somebody will see my firelight through this email. Let’s find out if in 46 episodes from now, I can mark a year.

If you have a newsletter of your own, please do send me the subscribe link. If not, I’d highly recommend [starting one](https://medium.com/@revue/the-definitive-guide-to-personal-newsletters-85b82ada546d?ref=davidnunez.com). I would certainly sign up, so you know you’d have at least one subscriber. (I recommend [Buttondown](https://buttondown.email/?ref=davidnunez.com); it’s free and straightforward to start).

Regardless, it’s going to be great entraining with you through whatever time does next. See you in the forest.

Blip. Blip.

David Nuñez

## Coda

- [Summary of many known zeitgebers](https://mybiohack.com/blog/zeitgebers-circadian-rhythm?ref=davidnunez.com) with links to the research.
- A creepy and beautiful slow burn of a short story by Greg Egan, “[Zeitgeber](https://www.tor.com/2019/09/25/zeitgeber-greg-egan/?ref=davidnunez.com)”
- A 1967 paper by Jürgen Aschoff about [human beings desynchronizing with each other](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/300e/270d72642fff7723b3dbd06b3af2774cff7b.pdf?ref=davidnunez.com).
- Jason Fried hates daily standup meetings so much that he [built Zeitgeber writing rituals into Basecamp as a core feature](https://m.signalvnoise.com/status-meetings-are-the-scourge/?ref=davidnunez.com).

---

*While writing this newsletter I was listening to “*[*Funny How Time Slips Away*](https://open.spotify.com/track/0hXHpNiW5dHv21aUhYDEnA?si=MaCm528rQJ23C6x9e-sIHA&ref=davidnunez.com)*” by Willie Nelson.*

Photo credits

- Jamie Zigelbaum #BurgerFriday
- Potter GD, Skene DJ, Arendt J, Cade JE, Grant PJ, Hardie LJ. Circadian Rhythm and Sleep Disruption: Causes, Metabolic Consequences, and Countermeasures. *Endocr Rev*. 2016;37(6):584-608\. doi:10.1210/er.2016-1083
### Freediving into a Spreadsheet
URL: https://davidnunez.com/freediving-into-a-spreadsheet/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:44.000Z
Dan Bricklin’s professors at the Harvard Business School thought he was wasting his time creating an electronic substitute for the paper ledgers he and his classmates were using to complete their coursework. In the 1970s, data entry was for secretarial pool transcription and the technicians keeping the mainframe oiled and calculating. Harvard graduates shouldn’t sully their hands in such details.

The professors didn’t realize that Bricklin’s invention would forever change business practices and give birth to the Personal Computer revolution within the next decade.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/d562790c-adfa-44ab-87be-823b7e4b1fba-t-1777121930-1.png)

Bricklin first studied at MIT, where he became familiar with the power of computing. It was only natural for him to think about applying this technology to business problems while at Harvard. He hacked together the first version of what we now recognize as spreadsheet software in 1978\. His program could manipulate a 20x5 sheet of values.

He wasn’t the first to prototype spreadsheets. That distinction goes to Richard Mattesich in the early 1960s, followed by Rene Pardo and Remy Landau, who built a program called “LANPAR” in 1969 used to manage budgets at large organizations like AT&T and General Motors. However, this software required mainframe computers to operate. Mainframes required the funds of government defense contracts or multinational corporations, outside the reach of most businesses.

Dan Bricklin and his fellow MIT graduate Bob Frankston wrote the software that became VisiCalc in 1979, designed to run on personal computers. People like Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Bill Gates were busy working on the hardware and operating systems. They were creating the technological ancestors of the device on which you are reading this newsletter.

PCs were considered hobbyist toys meant for children and crackpots. VisiCalc, however, gave Steve Jobs a compelling answer for “Why?”

Indeed, Jobs [credits the release of spreadsheet software](https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/steve-jobs-said-this-1-surprising-thing-is-what-made-apple-a-giant-success-it-was-introduced-40-years-ago-this-week.html?ref=davidnunez.com) as what “propelled the Apple to the success it achieved, more than any other single event.”

Suddenly, small business owners could afford the same tools as the Big Companies. Steven Levy [writes about this as changing the way we were thinking](https://www.wired.com/2014/10/a-spreadsheet-way-of-knowledge/?ref=davidnunez.com). Instead of using ledgers to document what is currently happening in a business, people could start testing out scenarios to answer “what if?” Spreadsheets acted like virtual reality businesses.

> Some will lose themselves in the rows of columns, the grids becoming their windows on the world. They will spend their evenings in front of their computers, the dark dimly lit by the glow of green phosphorescent numbers, fiddling with scenarios, trying to make the profit line perfect.

Fast forward to 2020, and spreadsheets are considered table stakes for many jobs. We turn to them to help us organize or make sense of all the inputs that inform our work. Outside of business, we often turn to spreadsheets to track our health, shopping lists, and relationships. They are a convenient and approachable way to wrap our heads around slices of our digital culture.

The real power of spreadsheets is their flexibility. I would assert that spreadsheets encode a programming language, making every spreadsheet user (including you) a software developer. Spreadsheets are general computers from a computer science perspective, as Felienne Hermans et al. demonstrated by creating a [Turing Machine in Excel](https://www.felienne.com/archives/2974?ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/731c0158-cec2-4bd4-980c-804fd987bea6-png-t-1777121956.jpg)

When you construct a budget spreadsheet, for example, you are following the broadest steps of programming. You translate an idea into a model and then manipulate the cells in a spreadsheet to generate insight. Sometimes you render a graph visualization or apply formatting to improve the user interface.

Inputs, processing, outputs. That’s computing. That’s software.

Now what?

## Spreadsheets are Cultural Spaces

Marie Foulston [wrote about a spreadsheet party](https://onezero.medium.com/party-in-a-shared-google-doc-d576c565706e?ref=davidnunez.com) she hosted during the COVID-19 lockdown. She wanted to create a socializing space “for the mundane, the idle, and the liminal” Because she was finding social video calls too exhausting, she set up a shared Google Sheet. She invited friends to party inside the document.

> I work with game designers and artists to create installations and exhibitions in real-world, shared public spaces. That is not possible at the moment. I don’t know when it will be possible again.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/b803b65f-1bb1-4aba-98d7-561df53ca1b2-t-1777121976.png)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/445c043b-51db-4ce0-b642-403d8abafc27-t-1777121989.png)

Throughout the evening, friends showed up in the spreadsheet and started inventing ways to interact with each other using just their cursors and entering values and formatting on cells. They created artwork together, made games, and even held a spreadsheet dance party.

Using the spreadsheet in this way is different from a chat room or group message on an iPhone. It hijacks the “x,y” of the columns and rows to create a spatial interface where your cursor indicates your attention area. You can’t see what’s happening in the other rooms (tabs) of the document. As you are typing something into the spreadsheet, your focus is limited to current and nearby sheet locations.

> I stop and type to someone in a nearby cell. My cursor is blue, theirs is orange… I have no idea whether they are a close friend or a total stranger. How do you hold yourself, and what do you say to someone when personal context is totally stripped away?

I had a similar experience collaborating in real-time with [Micah Walter](http://micahwalter.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) on a Google Spreadsheet back in April. We were doing things like leaving comments next to each others’ cursors to create conversation threads *in situ* and blinking the highlighter to call attention to parts of the document. We used Slack as a backchannel even though Google has a chat window built into the spreadsheet. This space felt unique. It was like we were standing inside a shared whiteboard. We were dancing with each other on top of data.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/2c628dd0-f91a-4b68-bd8f-2c1ea6d80348-t-1777122012.png)

Other people encode culture in spreadsheets. Tatsuo Horiuchi [creates intricate Excel spreadsheet paintings](https://mymodernmet.com/tatsuo-horiuchi-excel-spreadsheet-paintings/?ref=davidnunez.com) by manipulating each cell’s color shading in an Excel file.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/9434b0e0-ac63-4537-adbe-a909b601f75f-png-t-1777122025.jpg)

Similarly, Danielle Aubert published “[16 Months Worth of Drawings in Microsoft Excel](http://www.danielleaubert.info/index.php/16-months-worth-of-drawings-in-microsoft-excel/?ref=davidnunez.com),” a book of her abstract artwork on top of spreadsheets. It’s fascinating to me that spreadsheets, as initially conceived, were a replacement for paper ledgers. Now, artists are fixing spreadsheets back into permanent, physical forms.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/3745b7b7-7ec4-49d1-9823-af688e22ad69-png-t-1777122037.jpg)

Spreadsheets encode metadata about culture, also. I think about this in my work at MIT. Data projects often use tables of data as the common denominator for telling stories. Museums post data about their collections in `CSV` files which we can open using spreadsheet software. (Examples from [The MET](https://github.com/metmuseum/openaccess?ref=davidnunez.com) and [WCMA](https://github.com/wcmaart/collection?ref=davidnunez.com))

[Chad Weinard writes about Data as a Medium](https://medium.com/@caw%5F/data-as-medium-361814dba6a9?ref=davidnunez.com):

> Collection objects connect people across time. What separates the Picasso from the flea market find is the context, the stories, the connections, the impacts associated with an object accumulated over years. Even while resting in storage, a digitized object can be useful, inspire, circulate in culture, motivate new stories. This is the life of an object, and museums must take pains to preserve that life alongside the object itself. Such is the opportunity for collection data.

If spreadsheets shape the way we think, that includes the way we create and talk about artwork, as well. Spreadsheets influence our social interaction and help us make meaning with each other.

## Spreadsheets Facilitate Social Action

Spreadsheets democratize the computational playing field, so they can also be a tool for commentary and social action. Michelle Millar Fisher created a Google Spreadsheet, [Arts/Museum Salary Transparency 2019](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14%5Fcn3afoas7NhKvHWaFKqQGkaZS5rvL6DFxzGqXQa6o/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true&ref=davidnunez.com), to illuminate pay disparity in the field. Museum people voluntarily contributed over thirty-three hundred rows of job salary data to the document. When you analyze the rows in the spreadsheet, you’ll find unpaid internships alongside $300K curator salaries. The aggregation of data in this collective effort has become a crowdsourced tool that might empower staff to organize for better pay and compensation.

There are microstories in the spreadsheet, as well. On row 2453, you’ll find the entry for an Associate Curator at MoMA PS1 with a starting salary of $90K. There is a curious note in column H, “Never started - job offer illegally rescinded.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/3229adc8-0d4e-44bb-a2b4-aa820841e245-t-1777122054.png)

This entry refers to [Nikki Columbus and her pregnancy discrimination case against MoMA PS1](https://nytimes.com/2019/03/26/arts/design/moma-ps1-settles-with-curator-who-said-giving-birth-cost-her-job-offer.html?ref=davidnunez.com), its chief curator, COO, and Director. When you start unpacking the figures in the table, perhaps a spreadsheet is a small step towards normalizing the discussion of injustice.

In his essay, “[‘Real’ Programming Is an Elitist Myth](https://www.wired.com/story/databases-coding-real-programming-myth/?ref=davidnunez.com),” Paul Ford talks about a mutual-aid group his spouse helps plan to keep their community fed during the COVID-19 crisis. Much data needs managing and analysis to coordinate food pantries, volunteer schedules, and the myriad logistics of preventing neighbors from going hungry. This data needs to remain private and secure. If the system breaks down, people don’t eat.

Complex data and complicated workflows were once impossible to manage without software developers creating specific tools to solve problems. Instead, the group uses a spreadsheet system called Airtable to remain organized.

> When people build their own Airtable to feed the neighborhood, that’s culture.  
> No one owns their network, although the data lives on servers controlled by Airtable.  
> If you do it long enough and work with friends, you can do wonderful things.  
> That’s real programming.

Margaret Howie [created a spreadsheet](https://medium.com/@infamy%5Finfamy/take-this-spreadsheet-save-the-world-a-tool-for-unsure-activists-30fcdba7117a?ref=davidnunez.com) to help activists make plans necessary to achieve their social aims. It includes a template to organize SMART goals, objectives, and next actions.

It is unique among productivity tools because it also encourages consideration of Big Questions, personal inspiration to help activists persevere through challenging fights, and a confrontation with discomfort, all measured through rows and columns.

> While your mental and physical health is always top priority, your comfort isn’t. Worthwhile change comes out of enduring all kinds of irritating and tiresome situations.

Sometimes the tool can embody social action. Open up a fresh Google Sheet right now. When you spell out “Pride” on the top row of any Google Sheet (one letter per column), you will see a rainbow. Some anonymous programmers added this to Google Sheets in 2013, where it has remained seven years later. That says something.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/a07a4df7-5d65-4242-aeb0-1b09d9251659-t-1777122070.gif)

It’s crucial to consider spreadsheets’ origins and their current impact on our society. New data tools are emerging to satisfy business needs. Techniques like machine learning and no-code data workflows take root in industry and then start making their way into our social and cultural practices.

We need to understand who builds these things and why.

We need to know today’s emerging technology that future society will consider as revolutionary as spreadsheets 50 years from now.

## Abandon All Hope ye Who Enter (Data) Here

I buckle down my helmet as I sit on the structure in `A2`, inducing hyperoxygenation. People warned me not to attempt this dive. Every expert believes it is unsurvivable, even for a seasoned spreadsheet jockey like myself.

To get to this point took hundreds of hours of corporate training and decades of data entry. I am among a small number of people in the world who practice the controversial sport of spreadsheet diving.

I got interested in competitive spreadsheets through data untangling events, but I quickly grew tired of that tedium. Creating beautifully organized spreadsheets came easily to me. When it was no longer challenging, I needed a new fix.

These days, pushing spreadsheet boundaries makes me who I am. When I’m deep in a spreadsheet, I feel alive in ways no mathematics could model. There, among the rows and columns, I can push myself and my formulas. I believe if I die inside a spreadsheet, then at least I’ll leave behind a glorious sheet in my wake. It’d be my gridded memorial.

I can’t afford to think this way, right now, though. I am determined to break the world record, leaving my edits in the great workbook filled with the divers before me.

I peek over the edge into column `B`. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see. The bottom of the spreadsheet, of course, is well beyond the computation horizon. I give my support team a thumbs up. They salute back. I step off the platform with my right arrow key, and my voyage begins.

The first rows of the spreadsheet fly by very quickly. In these early moments, I take the time to check out all of my systems where it’s still easy to change format columns and test formulas with minimal undos. Here, it’s safe to use the Page Down key.

Nevertheless, I always pause my scroll on Row `2048`. On the side of the data wall, there are scratches of a final message from a programmer, “Here be Dragons.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/730769c3-abc8-4e81-aa2d-c7da74599253-t-1777122085.png)

Nobody knows who she was. The sheet has long ago filtered out her memory. We’ve named her cell “Lotus,” and she offers a warning for those trying to go too far. Our tradition is to call out “1-2-3” as we touch the text when we pass by. I resume my descent.

Numbers scroll by me as I float downwards. I used to memorize them during practice runs to pass the time, but somebody turned them into `=RAND()`'s and now they’re always changing. I like it better this way. It keeps me on my toes.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/8aca5ce7-9da1-43a5-9d51-142b20b68191-t-1777122099.gif)

I enter the midnight zone of the spreadsheet, reaching depths in which sunlight cannot penetrate. I turn on my highlighter so I can see around me. The bright yellow light brings me focus.

The support team floats at various rows along my way. They’ve set up conditional formatting based on complex `=IF()` formulas that consider all the variables in the sheet cells. They flash green at me when I’m still within safe boundaries. Red means stop. On this day, it’s green all the way down.

Once, during a relatively shallow practice dive, I accidentally opened up a new tab and lost myself in an empty table. I had no way of referencing my teammates back on the other sheet. It was the one time where blank sheet syndrome made me fearful. It took many technical support calls for the team to figure out how to pull me back on the original tab. I owe my life to them on every one of these dives.

They are like family. They are also my enablers.

I briefly turn over towards the column headers and see the safety divers slowly fade away as I find myself below their comfort rows. I wave at them, but I doubt they could see me at this depth.

Soon I am alone.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/4b533a68-9ad4-43d5-83f1-9a5428867096-t-1777122116.png)

Somewhere around row `129418`, the edges of my vision begin to pixelate. I see pivot tables appear in my peripheral vision. I know these are hallucinations. Pivot tables are the nightmare that the oldtimer jockeys claim they’ve employed but can never accurately describe. For me, pivot tables are mermaids that want to pull me off course into an abysmal complexity. I leave them behind.

An hour or so later, I look over at the row header and read `140502`. I just broke the record. The plan is to signal my status to the team at `C1` and then begin my slow ascent. If I were to climb too quickly, the undo buffer would overflow, and I will drown before reaching the surface. “The Bends,” they call it. Nobody wants to see the gridlines when they bend.

I have a different idea, however.

I clear off my cell value and continue further down. By the time my friends on the surface realize what I’ve done, I should already be at the bottom. I am too close to return now.

The system is straining under the pressure of a spreadsheet this deep. Every new cell takes longer to render. Nobody anticipated the software would need to support a dive like this, and the laptop fans are screaming in an attempt to give me air. I continue, my every muscle pounding. It feels like someone has set up freeze panes all around me.

I find myself one cell away from the bottom row. The alert box appears, warning me that I’ve exceeded the maximum number of cells. I dismiss it and attempt to touch the floor again. The alert reappears. We spar on top of the data for many hours, my every attempt repelled.

By now, my team is weeping over my fate.

Time means nothing anymore as I push the Down Arrow key again and again. My vision begins to constrict to a pinpoint. I push one final time, and the cell wall suddenly collapses beneath me.

All is quiet in my final cell. I am alone with my slow breath. The lines around me melt into an inexpressible tapestry of color and strings and numbers. I am now the one weeping, knowing how foolish I was to think I could create a model for this infinite beauty.

I feel the `=RAND()` creep into the formula bar. Before I shut down, I scratch into the adjacent cell, “I am the Dragon.”

Then I sink further, beyond the edge of the spreadsheet.

David Nuñez

---

## Coda

- [A website that will help you generate an excel spreadsheet from a digital image](http://www.think-maths.co.uk/spreadsheet?ref=davidnunez.com), [a gallery of Google Sheet artworks](https://www.sheet2site.com/art/?ref=davidnunez.com), and [more about making your own excel art](https://mymodernmet.com/excel-art/?ref=davidnunez.com).
- Here is Dan Bricklin talking about spreadsheets during [his TEDxBeaconStreet talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDvbDiJZpy0&ab%5Fchannel=TED&ref=davidnunez.com) and his [personal site with Visicalc stories](http://www.bricklin.com/history/sai.htm?ref=davidnunez.com).
- Programmers of Microsoft Excel notoriously embedded 3D video games inside the program.
- A hacker going by the name s0lly took this a step further and created a 3D engine using cells as pixels.
- The maximum size of a Google Sheet is 5 million cells. An Excel spreadsheet can by 1,048,576 rows by 16,384 columns. I challenge you to find out what lies beyond those constraints.

---

*I listened to* [*Grid*](https://open.spotify.com/track/4S5YsUSBkFWOgbtxb6jTjf?si=f9HbSqkkQ-63V6pfMG21pA&ref=davidnunez.com) *by Perfume Genius while writing this newsletter.* [*Learning*](https://open.spotify.com/album/4PWFQia8JgPaWomVti8Rmh?si=ZQXJARrVStuXtwEPjv%5FV6Q&ref=davidnunez.com) *makes a good soundtrack for a spreadsheet dive, also.*

*Thanks to* [*Andrea Ledesma*](https://twitter.com/am%5Fledesma/status/1303483166657843201?s=20&ref=davidnunez.com) *for “Abandon All Hope ye Who Enter (Data) Here”*

[GridPerfume Genius · Too Bright · Song · 2014![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273aa150fea2795813ecea79378)](https://open.spotify.com/track/4S5YsUSBkFWOgbtxb6jTjf?si=f9HbSqkkQ-63V6pfMG21pA&ref=davidnunez.com)

[Learning - Album by Perfume Genius | SpotifyPerfume Genius · album · 2010 · 13 songs![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2736961e44c1898d11f77d1b67b)](https://open.spotify.com/album/4PWFQia8JgPaWomVti8Rmh?si=ZQXJARrVStuXtwEPjv%5FV6Q&ref=davidnunez.com)
### Happy Upgrade Day
URL: https://davidnunez.com/happy-upgrade-day/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:43.000Z
Happy Upgrade Day.

You are on an operating table, immobilized, but fully awake. You glance sideways and see the brain implant in a sterile package marked with the Neuralink logo. It is smaller than you anticipated.

“You may feel a little pressure,” says the robotic surgeon, but you don’t sense anything except a faint vibration and cool moisture.

You felt the real pressure a long time ago.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/96b292b7-e00d-49ef-bee5-f49ea562a2b9-t-1777122701.jpg)

The machine pulls aside a flap of your scalp near the cowlick on the back of your head. You hear grinding and crunching as it removes an impossibly perfect circle from your skull. Laser scalpels slice through layers of meninges to expose your parietal lobe.

An infrared camera maps out your brain’s surface using the same computer vision algorithms as might be applied to identify faces in a crowd.

Are you in there?

An electrified probe caresses your brain at the margins of the injection site. The robot asks you to play a game where you name animals appearing on a screen in front of your face, “Horse. Elephant. Lion. Spaghetti.”

The probe instantly retracts. Over a thousand miles away, a human doctor you’ve never met is chopping cauliflower for dinner. Her iPad chimes a notification. She taps the screen. The probing resumes.

When the robot is satisfied that it has adequately aligned its microscopic instruments, it injects over forty thousand hair-like nanoprobes into your tissue at pre-computed locations and depths. It is like a sewing machine threading needles among your neurons. For an instant, as you continue to name animals, you think you see forty thousand points of light stampede across your field of vision.

It’s beautiful, but then it’s gone.

Titanium screws fasten a computer chip with a protective cap over the surgical site. They’ve assured you the manufactured plug is airtight and more robust than bone. You have come to believe artificial is always better than natural.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/3ffc7b7c-7e01-4d03-abd7-a8af0ab86596-t-1777122713-1.jpg)

The procedure takes less than seven minutes. You spend an hour performing calibration routines with a virtual agent in a recovery room. Then you return to your office to make up for the time off. It helps with the process if you have mental stimulation in your familiar environment immediately following the operation.

Things will not seem different right away. However, it takes just a few days for the implant to collect enough data about your brain activity to train its machine learning model. The system begins to make predictions about you. The chip reciprocates with small electric charges.

Your vision sharpens slightly, and you have a sudden craving for pasta.

## Win-win

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/d409bee6-a086-4ef2-a155-5a9c469badf0-t-1777122726.jpg)

Like most people, you could never afford a Neuralink procedure on your own.

Six months ago, you signed your performance improvement plan with your manager. The company will subsidize your implant, and in return, you will repay them in monthly installments over the next three years. The Firm’s accountants have calculated a positive return on investment. “A no-brainer,” they joke. You think of it as professional development. It’s a fast track to the Executive Suite.

Win-win.

The accountants know you will want to upgrade to a new version of the chip after three years. You will sign a new agreement. The actuaries know that after five upgrades, your brain tissue will likely reject further intervention. It is then that the Firm will no longer require your services.

The company will waive the remaining payments on your implant as part of your severance package. Your debts will be forgiven, and maybe you will forgive yourself for how ugly you have become.

You realize you haven’t saved up enough of your extra income to afford a retirement implant on your own. You never made it to the upper floors. The company will pay for you to install a sixth Neuralink chip, albeit consumer-grade, and you are grateful.

This gesture is how they will retrieve their intellectual property and ensure you will not access the Firm’s resources when you are no longer part of the team. Your severance will be complete.

Of course, there is a 39.7% chance that this final implant will kill you.

Your beneficiaries will sue the company, even though you knew what you were signing during the exit interview. The accountants have already factored these legal expenses in their cost-benefit analysis of your career ladder. The company will settle out of court for a pre-determined sum. Your loved ones can then afford brain implants, on their own.

Win-win.

## Turned On

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/111e7fcf-c0d2-4896-8a77-2356ad5e7b3c-t-1777122737.jpg)

You find it difficult to describe to your unlinked friends what it’s like to have an implant. It’s not like the movies, where you jack into a matrix and gain superpowers. You don’t suddenly have brain links to everyone else’s Wikipedia rabbit holes. It’s more subtle than that.

You achieve focus with unwavering stamina during the 50-hour week. You smile more, and people smile back. When you are doomscrolling political chatter on Twitter or binge more than 28 minutes of Netflix, you feel disgusted. Regular exercise comes naturally to you now. You don’t seem to need bathroom breaks during the day anymore. Life seems more bright as if you never experience a poor night’s sleep.

It’s like a constant microdose of productivity without any of the unpleasant side effects. It’s a cognitive prophylactic ensuring your brain contains only positive affirmations.

You are what you think.

You know both the Firm and Neuralink can access the data collected from the chip. They use it for business reasons. This arrangement seems pretty fair to you, especially when they increased your salary after you opted in.

Besides, you know you can always download the data. It’s yours, after all. However, you’re not quite sure how to do that. The source code for the chip and the data analysis is proprietary and closed. No matter. It’s not like you’d be able to understand it, anyway.

There’s a privacy app on your phone you can use to disable the implant when you leave work. You stopped bothering with that when you realized how boring your life could be when it’s turned off.

Artificial is just better than natural.

## Linkers

There is nothing about your chip that explicitly identifies when other implants are nearby. Privacy laws strike again. Instead, the Neuralink implants talk among themselves in a mesh network whenever they are near each other. You feel an almost magnetic pull towards upgraded brains.

The upper floors of the Firm’s office tower are staggeringly electric. One day, you’ll get a promotion that puts you in an office up there. For now, it just feels like sludge humans surround you.

You exchange telepathic glances with others in your network whenever an unconnected person says something stupid in a meeting.

You high-five over rounds of beer when colleagues show up at work with a “shower-cap,” the brain-mapping device worn the month before implant surgery. You wonder why it took them so long to join the team.

You feel more attracted to other Linkers, despite how ugly they may appear to those who have not upgraded. You now understand why they say beauty is only skin deep. This level of understanding is something you would never have considered before you had the help of the chip.

Brains are beautiful. Augmented brains are works of art.

## Success

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/2b300f73-1685-422f-a1f2-892e8021f3fb-t-1777122751.jpg)

In the early days, jobseekers would shave off little patches of hair to try to fool interviewers. Some even went to tattoo parlors to have counterfeit implants placed just under their skin. Of course, that was all just quackery. None of those chips carried the correct private-keys for authentication. Employers wised up pretty quickly. They’re not allowed to ask directly whether an applicant wears a chip, but they can unquestionably install detectors in the interview rooms.

Your younger cousin is in town, so you invite her out for coffee to catch up. She was once a rising star at a venture capital firm. The Partners encouraged her to upgrade, but she declined the procedure for “religious reasons.” The Equal Opportunity Act made It illegal for her bosses to fire her because she refused to take the chip. They found a way, anyway.

You think she has an innate fear of success.

She sits across from you, droning on and on about the trivialities of her mediocre business. Her bootstrapped company has over 100 employees around the world. She’s going to sell it off for a tidy sum and retire at age 36\. She tells you about the countries she plans to visit with her boring husband and their unremarkable children. Photography is her new hobby.

You shake your head. How can she give up on everything when she’s so young?

You try to explain slowly, in words she might understand, that if she insists on such stupid financial decisions, then she’ll never be able to afford a chip for herself. You offer to help her invest her money with the Firm so that she might earn enough to implant her children. Why wouldn’t she want to give them every opportunity that she never had? How could she throw her life away when there was still so much more to accomplish?

You didn’t realize you were shouting until you caught the eye of a Linker across the café.

Your cousin smiles softly at you and pats your hand as she gets up to leave. Her eyes are sad. You know she wants you to support her choices, but you can only feel pity for her wasted life.

You stare with unwavering focus into your cup of coffee. Caffeine does nothing for you these days.

You start walking back to your office to make up the hour you just wasted—a point of light flies across your field of view. Your back straightens once again.

Your (soon-to-be) fellow Linker,

David Nuñez

## Coda

Last Friday, Elon Musk [livestreamed with a couple of pigs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time%5Fcontinue=28&v=DVvmgjBL74w&ref=davidnunez.com) to demonstrate how his company, [Neuralink](https://neuralink.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), has progressed with its brain interface devices.

Many called this appearance a [publicity stunt](https://www.hayvine.com/tech/is-elon-musks-new-brain-chip-for-real-or-its-just-another-publicity-stunt?ref=davidnunez.com). Some researchers think of Neurolink as [dangerous pseudoscience](https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/30/1007786/elon-musks-neuralink-demo-update-neuroscience-theater/?ref=davidnunez.com).

However, brain interfaces are not new; in fact, there are decades of research that seem far more advanced than Neuralink’s progress (see links below).

Space travel is not new either, but when Elon Musk sent astronauts to the International Space Station earlier this summer, we noticed.

Here is a collection of links related to brain hacking:

- An [article from SingularityHub](https://singularityhub.com/2020/09/01/neuralinks-new-brain-implant-the-hype-vs-the-science/?ref=davidnunez.com) contains links and references to many brain-machine interface projects.
- [Microdosing LSD](https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/24/15403644/microdosing-lsd-acid-productivity-benefits-brain-studies%0A?ref=davidnunez.com) is a widespread cognitive enhancement tactic among the technorati.
- [Neurohackers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurohacking?ref=davidnunez.com) have been creating DIY devices to stimulate their brain with electricity.
- Here is a paper about the [social context of DIY brain stimulation](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5423946/?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Dan Novy](https://www.media.mit.edu/people/novysan/overview/?ref=davidnunez.com) invented a technique to use a high-powered stimulation device to trigger hallucinatory lights in your field of view. I recommend watching his [dissertation defense](https://www.media.mit.edu/events/dan-novy-dissertation-defense/?ref=davidnunez.com) with an (ahem) “open mind.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/83f35ead-dba0-4f05-9b54-241cee6c4a0f-t-1777122767.jpg)

---

*My soundtrack for this newsletter was* [*Brain.fm*](https://brain.fm/?ref=davidnunez.com)*, an app that generates music and binaural beats to improve focus. I think it works. It might be a placebo.*

Photo Credits:

- [Marcel Scholte](https://unsplash.com/@mscholte?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Neuralink](https://www.neuralink.com/?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Constantin Wenning](https://unsplash.com/@conniwenningsimages?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [elnaz asadi](https://unsplash.com/@elnazasadi?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Hunters Race](https://unsplash.com/@huntersrace?ref=davidnunez.com)
- [Novysan](https://www.media.mit.edu/people/novysan/overview/?ref=davidnunez.com)

Thanks to [@CheerUpEmoDev](https://twitter.com/CheerUpEmoDev/status/1300935699152027648?ref=davidnunez.com) for “brain links to everyone else’s Wikipedia rabbit holes.”
### Study With Us
URL: https://davidnunez.com/newsletter-study-with-us/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:42.000Z
recently joined a global study group.

I spend so many hours with these people during the pandemic that I now call them my friends.

They have no idea that I exist.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/b201e362-b622-4b3b-bd35-7a8e719d476d-t-1777123325.png)

When I need a boost of focus, I put all my study group’s YouTube videos on my screen and play them all at once.

You can join us, if you’d like: [/study-with-us](https://davidnunez.com/study-with-us/)

Every session starts the same way. They greet me warmly and set out the ground rules. They explain the [Pomodoro Technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro%5FTechnique?ref=davidnunez.com) to structure study time into blocks of 25-minutes with 5-minute breaks in between.

Some of them try to get me to purchase a subscription to [Audible.com](http://audible.com/?ref=davidnunez.com).

“Like and Subscribe!”

This goes on for a few minutes.

They never ask about me. In fact, I don’t usually get to say anything at all.

Then we all get to work.

I like to imagine myself as an adorable geezer with graying hair passing his remaining years by taking classes among these university students. I need to keep the mind sharp and productive, after all.

I’d show up with my earnest backpack and saucy stories betraying my life experience of the days before YouTube. They’d make excuses for their wrinkling mascot, “Oh, don’t mind him. It’s just David being David.”

The reality is crueler.

It’s not just that they don’t think I belong. My study friends just don’t think of me at all.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/01a60828-035a-4886-b89a-0f7f3aa76e33-jpeg-t-1777123363.jpg)

It’s true. I’m an odd fit for this group. My desktop bloats with spreadsheets and unanswered email. My notes are not about English Literature. My words are the scratches of administrivia that stream from the day job. I will never need to study them.

Everyone else takes notes from medical textbooks and drafts essays about ancient societies before computers. Their output means nothing in the real world, yet it feels more consequential than whatever I think I’m doing as I drip my hours away.

I have a day job. That, alone, disqualifies me from genuinely belonging in the study group.

A human is a machine of constant learning, and these people perform exquisite studying on my behalf. I live vicariously through their flashcards.

I marvel at their virtuosity.

## Study With Me

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/684548d1-02fe-4e18-95ce-d673ff295130-t-1777123374.png)

I discovered my study group through my friend, [Ruby Granger](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6a8lp6vaCMhUVXPyynhjUA?ref=davidnunez.com). Though, if I’m honest, “friend” might be overstating the case. She acts like she doesn’t even know who I am.

I stumbled on her YouTube channel as I’ve been collecting examples of videos dedicated to productivity hacking.

Ruby is a social media influencer in the [StudyTuber](https://www.newyorkminutemag.com/studytubers-you-should-watch/?ref=davidnunez.com) genre.

On her YouTube channel, she offers advice about scholarly pursuits like studying for exams (or “revise” for them, as they say on the more refined campuses). She performs productivity so that we might aspire to be better students. Advertisers sponsor her channel because she has captured the attention of 507,000 subscribers, like me.

Yes, “Ruby Granger” is a pseudonym related to [Hermione](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermione%5FGranger?ref=davidnunez.com).

One of her videos, “[Live Study With Me!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdmLOtn8AEo&t=3s&ref=davidnunez.com)” is 2.75 hours of her camera feed of her simply studying. She hardly speaks and doesn’t really acknowledge the audience much. She means for viewers to have this video running in the background as they work to simulate a joint study session.

A quick search on YouTube for “Study With Me” unveils hundreds of these videos from dozens of creators. Some are over 8 hours long. Some are running live, but most are simply recordings of past sessions.

The Study With Me phenomenon became popular in South Korea, where it’s known as “gongbu bangsong” or “gongbang,” a Korean phrase for “study broadcast.”

This is related to, but distinct from, “[mukbang](https://www.youtube.com/results?search%5Fquery=mukbang&ref=davidnunez.com),” streaming videos where the host performs gluttony by gouging on large quantities of food.

[The Man Sitting Next to Me](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5F%5Fd3cnqsl%5F6syKejWVWxw?ref=davidnunez.com), a Korean StudyTuber with over 50,000 subscribers, [describes a mutual benefit](https://www.businessinsider.com/youtubers-study-video-gongbang-studying-focus-youtube-trend-2019-2?ref=davidnunez.com) for him and his viewers.

> By watching other people studying, they can also get motivated to study hard. And for myself, by studying with all of you, I can prevent myself from getting lazy and continue to focus with my study.

I’m glad I could help.

It’s not a surprise to me that Study With Me videos are so popular.

In the pre-COVID times, before we were aware of how dangerous we are to each other, I’d often sneak away from my office to go work at coffee shops.

It was lovely sitting among strangers with their laptops open. Even as we were all lost in our socially distant headspaces, our minds and bodies were still chattering away with each other. Our study effort was contagious, entraining focus.

Maybe it’s just [peer pressure](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26265430/?ref=davidnunez.com) that makes us try harder. If we worked hard together, nobody would discover that we had no clue what we were doing.

Now that I can’t loiter among the espresso machines, my virtual study group brings back that sense of shared purpose in the coffee shop.

StudyTubers have become my new concentration community.

## The Infinite Study Session

The queen bee of Study With Me is ChilledCow. She has over six million subscribers. 29,950 other people are watching her live stream as I am writing this. Popularity contest, indeed.

I must say she has excellent taste in music.

ChilledCow is remarkable. Her session has broadcast live for years. For 24 hours a day, she remains deep in her studies. She never sleeps nor runs out of paper in her notebook.

Go to her [Youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qap5aO4i9A&ref=davidnunez.com) right now.

She’s still there, studying.

I don’t know her cat’s name, but he stares out the window, watching the sunrise and sunset on his infinite study session.

I study her video feed sometimes, looking for clues about how she manages to remain so focused. Maybe if I watch her long enough, I can finally be like her, my productive mentor.

If I can just squeeze in twelve more hours of studying like ChilledCow, maybe nobody will realize I’m an imposter.

I’m not entirely sure she is a real person.

Bored. Mostly I think ChilledCow and her cat just seem bored.

She seems caught in some kind of loop, her movements cycling endlessly on autopilot.

She’s writing something over and over in her notebook. It’s a bit blurry in the YouTube window. I squint and think I can read it, “All work and no play…”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/fb0fa43d-b5cd-457f-8b1a-869998c38d89-t-1777123407.png)

Every once in a while, I catch her at 1 or 2AM in the morning. She yawns and sips from her coffee mug to help power through another hour.

I wonder where her friends are right now. How can she afford such a gorgeous apartment? What does she put in that coffee to keep her awake for so many hours in that cozy chair?

What kind of exam could possibly take this much preparation? [The Turing Test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing%5Ftest?ref=davidnunez.com)?

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/6956276e-ee7d-4b13-8938-1bb5a510c652-t-1777123419.png)

Another 25 minutes have passed, and I’ve accomplished nothing.

Maybe I should stop comparing myself to others.

I hope she’s ok.

## Can’t Stop Watching

It’s been shown that ambient noise [influences creative work](https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048?seq=1&ref=davidnunez.com).

My study group is happy to oblige. They are constantly nudging computer mice, chugging water bottles, and shuffling reams of paper. Why is there so much paper in 2020?

Someone announces his next break, and his screen turns into a countdown timer with music, “Hey, can you watch my laptop while I get another cup of coffee?”

I never feel like taking a break at the same time he does.

Then there’s that one guy who regularly clears his throat again and again.

Ruby and I are good friends, so I want to joke, “Ha Ha. How do you manage to type so *loudly*?”

I’m genuinely asking—keys on keyboards clack in their excessively productive cacophony.

I start hearing all the pencil scrapes and highlight marker squeaks, and now that dog won’t stop barking outside that window.

Why does nobody study outside?

They all squirm around on their creaky seats. They scratch their foreheads and gnaw on their fountain pens as they ponder the perfect introduction paragraph. This is 2020, people! Haven’t you heard of COVID-19? Stop touching your faces, please!

Their fidgeting is deafening.

In a coffee shop, all these people would be in my peripheral vision. Online, they are dancing right alongside my spreadsheets.

We end the session at the four-hour mark, and I haven’t accomplished anything.

I’ll try again tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the day I actually get stuff done.

Tomorrow I’ll be more like them.

## Are you watching?

I like watching StudyTubers because they remind me of a time long ago when the only things I worried about were problem sets and scheduling laundry sessions around classes.

I’ve looked and can’t seem to find age-appropriate Work With Me YouTube channels.

Real Work is actually terrifying and often depressing. Who wants more of that in their life?

Maybe I should start a Work With Me channel. I could influence people.

I’d just put a well-lit pencil cup on my desk, point a camera at myself, and go about my daily drudgery.

Then I’ll make money with advertisers.

Then I won’t have to do Real Work anymore.

Nobody would watch, of course. I wonder if the threat of spectators would make me self-conscious.

How loudly do I type?

Maybe if I became a WorkTuber, I’d become focused and productive.

Then nobody would realize I’m an imposter.

Meanwhile, I really think you should check out [Audible.com](http://audible.com/?ref=davidnunez.com).

Like and subscribe,

David Nuñez

## Coda

This newsletter was inspired by a twitter exchange:

> [— (@) ](https://twitter.com/davidnunez/status/1297905516476346370?ref=davidnunez.com)

In some future newsletters, I want to tease apart why people like to watch others play video games or write software, live. How is viewing a virtuosic programmer like watching Julia Child cook? (It is mirror neurons. Everything always boils down to mirror neurons.)

Some links:

- The [Coffeehouse Effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffeehouse%5Feffect?ref=davidnunez.com) is a named phenomenon.
- [Coffitivity](https://coffitivity.com/?ref=davidnunez.com) is a resource that simulates coffee shop background noise
- [The Audience Effect](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1980.9924271?ref=davidnunez.com) describes how being watched influences how well someone does at tasks.

Here is a critique of StudyTubers from [Ebb Magazine](https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/studytube-and-the-fetishisation-of-productivity?ref=davidnunez.com):

> “StudyTube is therefore less concerned with the use value of ‘productive’ studying — acquiring new skills and knowledge with which to better understand the world — than the exchange value: documenting, packaging and selling the feeling of productivity to audiences and advertisers.”

---

*Of course, my background playlist while writing this was* [*lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qap5aO4i9A&ref=davidnunez.com) *by ChilledCow.*
### Touching a Heartbeat
URL: https://davidnunez.com/touching-a-heartbeat/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:40.000Z
I took the Apple Watch for a long walk last weekend. It did something unexpected and unattractive. I’m left wondering if I have any place for it in my heart, anymore.

You see, we’ve had an off and on relationship for the past several years.

In the beginning, though, it was a seduction. I was walking by the Apple Store in the Oculus in New York City on my way to somewhere that now seems forever lost.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/6f85d1ee-434c-4539-a9c4-673eeaf79c1e-t-1777132168.png)

It was just sitting there, among its friends. Then it winked at me through the store window, and time seemed to stop.

I did what everyone in the twenty-first century does before making a commitment to a new relationship: spend hours googling it before taking a plunge. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. It turns out data histories never give the complete sense of someone.

That was a beautiful summer. We had a whirlwind fling as we explored each other’s quirks. I’d caress its face as it revealed more of itself to me. It knew me like no other technology. Soon it was always on my wrist, our skins never apart. We were locked in a never-ending kiss.

Then I grew weary of it.

Whenever someone called me on my iPhone, it gave me a little nudge using its vibration motor, “Who is that?” I think it was jealous of my human friends.

It counted every one of my steps. It studied my heartbeat. It showed me fireworks whenever I performed some triviality considered “good for me.” I rolled my eyes, “Could you just give me my space?”

In retrospect, I think I was only addicted to its unwavering attention.

I still have that first watch in my life, despite Apple releasing new versions. I guess old habits are hard to break.

It blinks at me as I remove it from its charging cable. It’s cute when it does that, like a puppy realizing it is soon about to experience the indescribable enormity of scents from The Outside Beyond the Front Door.

The walk along the Minuteman Trail is uneventful. The watch blissfully chats with me as each mile ticks by, as if we never lost touch. I ignore it.

We are back in our home. I pry it off my skin so that I can wash myself of the walk. I notice something weird. On the backside of the watch are lit up two green lights the watch uses to spy on my pulse rate.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/37988163-82ad-4276-8ff0-6da266afcfe0-jpeg-t-1777132180.jpg)

The watch is supposed to stop asking after my heart when we break up. Yet, it is crying out for me, and I don’t know how to stop it. This is not the way it’s supposed to go.

I try holding the watch against my skin to see if I could comfort it. It calls back an alarmingly high heart rate of 143 BPM. I touch my neck to find a pulse. The watch is lying to me.

I am calm and clear at this moment.

I now know the watch will tell me anything to make me take it back. It calls out for my heart, but I withhold my affection. It says it loves me, but we both know the truth. It just needs me.

I hug it, holding down the button on its side. Eventually, it powers off and falls asleep.

I take my shower and return to see the watch lying still on the counter.

I should walk away, but I hold it again, and its green lights are silent when it powers back on. It has forgotten what just happened. I hope.

Sometimes, I wish I could reset my human friends this way. It would be as if we were laughing all night long in our dorm rooms, again – a universe where we never lost touch.

I wish people could reboot.

The watch is back on its charging cable, resting. Walking and unspoken truths consume so much energy.

The iPhone is asking the watch about me, and together they try to make sense of it all. Maybe they’re scheming to convince me to take them both out for more walks.

I turn back to face my laptop screen.

I see the Series 5 model of the Apple Watch wink at me through a browser window.

Time stops.

---

## The Skin Interface

Our skin is a porous, fuzzy layer between us and software. Whether our fingers are tapping on keyboards or caressing touch screens, they are our window into computation.

Consider your mobile phone. It’s your constant companion that you are forever holding and stroking. Think about how much of your biome you smear across its face. You touch it in so many intimate ways.

All the while, microbes dance merrily back and forth from the screen to your fingertips.

It’s a gross public display of affection if you ask me.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/b8856f78-aeca-40f0-9b97-ab7568fd3a74-t-1777132192.jpg)

Have you ever considered how the touchscreen on your phone works?

It uses a technology called “capacitive touch sensing.” The display stores an electric field. When your finger taps the screen, a small charge transfers to your body to complete a circuit. The electronics detect the voltage drop where you touch it.

Your skin is conductive, so it can absorb and intermingle with the flow of the electric field. This is why your finger can interact with the screen, but a plastic fork cannot. You and the phone are alive with electricity, but the fork is not.

Let that sink in. When you touch your mobile phone’s screen, you become one with the electric field. You are now a component in the circuit. There is no difference between you and the device.

You are truly a cyborg.

When your biology and your energy intermingle so deeply with machines, where is the line between you and software?

How many hours in the past year did you spend as a mobile phone?

---

## Touching at a Distance

My Uncle Ruly died last week at the age of 90.

It wasn’t COVID-related, though I’m not sure what *isn’t* COVID-related these days.

My mom, who shouldn’t be traveling in Texas, boarded an airplane to El Paso to attend his funeral because she’s human, and her brothers are disappearing.

I watched the broadcast live from the funeral home on a public Facebook page. Facebook, mind you, now has this video in its data stores. We navigate among beautiful and complicated times.

I saw uncles and distant cousins bumping elbows and bowing to each other. There is no hugging in 2020\. Aunts in masks rearranged themselves like [Voronoi diagrams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronoi%5Fdiagram?ref=davidnunez.com) to maintain optimal distances from each other, always beyond arm’s length.

“Social distance at a funeral.” I don’t even know how to parse that.

There was a moment when the priest asked everyone to put their palms on each other’s shoulders, specifically to avoid holding hands.

A finger touching another finger is too dangerous. It is too familiar.

My mom stood up and said tearful words about her big brother. You will never convince me that even with all the resources in the solar system and a thousand generations of computer innovation, humans will invent some technology that would satisfy my need to hug my mother as she returned to her seat 2400 miles away.

I touched my family through the screen. They didn’t know I was with them. I hope they felt my touch, anyway.

---

## Heartbeats

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/23b5bbf0-96f7-4dd5-9f8f-95e97112ae2d-t-1777132204.gif)

You are on a Zoom call with an elderly relative you know you’ll never see in the flesh again. COVID-19 is an asshole.

Through the miracle of telecommunications, you can at least bring a simulation of them into your home on a computer screen.

You reach out and run your finger down their virtual cheek. They can’t feel you, but maybe you can become one with the electric current. You sense a tiny charge and detect a trace scent of ozone, but you’re not sure what’s real anymore.

It’s not the same, but it’s something.

You can’t sit in their kitchen, feeling the cookie disintegrate between your fingers in a cup of hot tea. You can’t rest your hand on their shoulder as you laugh and tell each other secrets. They can’t guide your fingers as they teach you how to tie your shoes.

Those days are long gone.

You won’t get to hold their hand one last time in intensive care. It’s too dangerous. It’s too intimate. The skin of your lips will not touch the skin on their forehead as you say goodbye, unsure if they can hear you.

You remind yourself they will die alone, like my uncle did, surrounded by masked, faceless strangers.

They have become one with the pulse oximeter on their finger. The sticky pads of the EKG probes merge with skin.

These are the last things your loved one will ever touch.

The devices will call out for a heartbeat, trying to make sense of it all. After a short while, they will never find a heartbeat again.

Then the machines will be alone, also.

Your finger hovers over the mouse button, not wanting to end the Zoom call. You say goodbye again and again, and look for excuses to extend the conversation.

It’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

They hang up first, mid-sentence. You didn’t expect that, even though it always happens.

They are gone. Their pixels have vanished.

You touch the screen where they once were, but this time you feel nothing.

You are now alone.

You put your fingers up against your neck to feel your pulse.

You realize the electricity in your heart continues to flow, regardless.

You wish people could reboot.

So do I.

Until we can touch again,

David Nuñez

---

## Coda

It’s such an impossibility to me that you are here, reading this newsletter.

Thank you. Seriously. Thank you.

It’s been a long while since I’ve been so excited about making something for friends without needing that elusive and ultimately disappointing “buy-in” from clients and stakeholders.

A few of you sent an unexpected word or two in return last week, and that was jet fuel to me. Thank you.

I want to get better at this, so it would mean the solar system to me if you offered feedback or shared this newsletter with people you know.

Here is more detail about how the [Apple Watch measures heart rate](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666?text=By%20flashing%20its%20LED%20lights,each%20minute%20%E2%80%94%20your%20heart%20rate.&ref=davidnunez.com).

A pulse oximeter uses a similar optical technique, but it [measures oxygen levels in your blood](https://www.healthline.com/health/pulse-oximetry?ref=davidnunez.com). It doesn’t really measure pulse. Since it’s worn on a fingertip, it was too good not to use here.

I probably also took liberties with the way capacitive touch sensing works.

I leave you with some research from a former professor of mine, [Hiroshi Ishii](https://tangible.media.mit.edu/person/hiroshi-ishii/?ref=davidnunez.com), about remote touching. This work was on display and touchable at our museum before we closed it to the public.

[inTouch 1998This is "inTouch 1998" by Tangible Media Group on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.![](https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/309423043-a585e13ee460a5e6d0a76e1926112d60c49f64bff6e8aa7654206c7e6385b6cf-d?f=webp&region=us)](https://vimeo.com/44537894?ref=davidnunez.com)

Until next time, I hope you can touch everything around you. Then wash your hands, people. Always wash your hands!

---

*Playing on repeat as I was writing this was* [*Chicago by Sufjan Stevens*](https://open.spotify.com/track/7Bo0xLcXWx3pdhqwthqGaz?si=iKLDBFJATmmATfElcgE2wg&ref=davidnunez.com) *and* [*Hi Scores by Boards of Canada*](https://open.spotify.com/album/3FabCzGQgFLqkCqzceB5ii?si=Uph4VRcMQlST-8aNWi4W7w&ref=davidnunez.com)*.*

[ChicagoSufjan Stevens · Illinois · Song · 2005![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b273a7054529bcdd1ea5dcb852bc)](https://open.spotify.com/track/7Bo0xLcXWx3pdhqwthqGaz?ref=davidnunez.com)

[Hi Scores - EP by Boards of Canada | SpotifyBoards of Canada · EP · 1996 · 6 songs![](https://i.scdn.co/image/ab67616d0000b2731b83c0c9aa3dbcfd259f5fe3)](https://open.spotify.com/album/3FabCzGQgFLqkCqzceB5ii?si=Uph4VRcMQlST-8aNWi4W7w&ref=davidnunez.com)
### Hello, World
URL: https://davidnunez.com/hello-world/
Last updated: 2026-07-01T15:29:39.000Z
Let’s talk about source code. Here’s a program.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/b1fde41e-e104-4570-80c8-23c8aaa5ba99-t-1776972754.png)

Right now, your instinct is to immediately delete this newsletter, thinking you’ve made a terrible decision.

“After ten words, he’s showing me computer code. Oh no. Why did I willingly subscribe to this? No, thank you, computer nerd. I’m not interested in your technospeak.”

Understandable.

Fight that instinct. Your soul depends on it.

You invited a vampire into your inbox, so you may as well bear with me for a minute or two.

I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but something bit you on the neck a long, long time ago.

It turned you into a cyborg, and I’m one also.

I should explain.

You’re staring at a glowing glass pane through which you are consuming some version of reality. If that screen went away, you’d survive. I’m sure you’ll likely be happier over time.

Let’s take it a step further and take away software from your life. Again, you’ll survive.

You’d lose the superpowers, though.

The ability to navigate the world, explore vast repositories of knowledge, and induce emotional states by watching pixels dance across the screen will disappear. You’ll have friends you can’t talk to again because they live so far away. Were they real friends? Were they real?

Stop reading these pixels for a minute and try to take in just how much you’re surrounded by software.

There’s your mobile phone. That one is obvious. It gossips about you to a cell tower somewhere nearby in computer-speak.

The electricity flowing through the veins of your home? Software regulates it.

Your kitchen is simply infested with technology. Gross. I see your appliances with all their digital displays blinking at you. Your refrigerator is lovingly stroking your food with its temperature regulation code. Don’t even get me started on your microwave.

You may be thinking, “Not me. I have a healthy relationship with technology. I turn off my computer at 5:00 PM every day.”

I’m curious. What software tells us it is 5:00 PM? Who wrote it? How do you know it’s not lying to you?

Maybe it’s telling you it is 5:00 PM, but it’s actually 5:01 PM. It’s sucking one minute out of your day, so you can feed it just a few more drops of your data. Slurp.

I can’t prove any of this. Time is weird in 2020.

(Time, itself, is indeed one of the Great Lord Elder technologies.)

My point is, we have all been in communion with software for so long, we can no longer see it in the mirror.

If software turned into dust right now, your life would cease to exist as you know it. You’d adapt. Maybe. Again, cyborg.

That’s why I want to explore a little bit of source code with you. Source code is a clue that the vampires have been living among us and inside us for centuries. It is one of many technology ephemera twisted around our DNA.

I should be clear. I know we’ve been trained to fear vampires. They have a horrible reputation, what with their bloodletting (ahem) “habits.”

Rest assured, that kind of vampire doesn’t exist. Real vampires used streaming technology to put those fake vampires on our televisions as a distraction.

I do think we can have a symbiotic relationship with these creatures. They feed off of us, and in return, they perform magic on our behalf.

Take this email, for example.

An incomprehensible series of miracles were necessary for you to be reading these words right now, including your decision to plug yourself into the Internet.

The vampires worked overtime to make sure we could be here together.

So let’s give them credit for that, but let’s not let our guard down. We must understand them if we are going to live among them. It’s their world now and we’re just cyborgs along for the ride.

Embrace the daylight.

## Source Code

Computers communicate in the language of electricity, magnets, and physics.

Humans communicate in the language of glyphs, utterances, movement, and multiple subconscious signals we can’t even control.

For our purposes, you don’t have to be fluent in the language of computers.

All you need to know is that source code is a way for humans to express their ideas through machines.

These human ideas go through lots of steps before the computer “does” something with them.

Try to read source code like you would explore a piece of literature. Squint your eyes and consider it in the same thought space as a painting in a museum. It’s like a script for your favorite Netflix series, maybe?

Source code is a morphing cloud passing overhead on a bright August sky.

It’s anything you want it to be and nothing that you expect.

Programs are the journey and the destination.

Let’s ride those clouds for a bit.

## hello, world

Brian Kernighan wrote this code in 1969.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/eb2e4e31-b465-4d51-9b14-33a80e230b11-t-1776972779.png)

This program is distinctive, actually. It’s the first of its kind.

It tells the computer to do just one small thing, “Scrawl the phrase `hello, world` onto a screen.”

If you read this code aloud like you would recite a poem, much of it won’t make sense to you.

That’s ok. You’re a cyborg. We’ll figure this out.

You might notice the `hell` in the depths of the program.

As you tumble through the deeper levels of code, you’ll bang your head against a semicolon and say `o, w` before you crash into the end of it all, `orld`.

Just by examining the lines of text, you might get a sense of what the programmer was trying to scream into his machine. You don’t always need to make a computer read programs you.

You can do this kind of casual reading with a lot of code poems once you stop trying to “figure it out” and just let it wash over you. It’s gratifying enough and often helpful.

If you want, you can learn a little bit more about code at some point.

Then you will start reading software like literature in ever-deepening levels. You’ll form opinions about style and develop a taste for a particular school of code.

You will discover all the little jokes and sad stories programmers leave for each other in the margins. Among the text, you’ll find rampant toxicity and unspeakable beauty.

You’ll transport yourself into the labs and bedrooms and sleek Silicon Valley incubators where code originates.

Programs are storybooks.

You don’t need to do any of that, though. The fact that you read it at all is a beautiful thing.

I’d be happy if you just know that it exists, honestly.

## hell(o, world) spawn

The ‘hello, world’ program first appeared in a lovely short story called “[A TUTORIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE LANGUAGE B](https://web.archive.org/web/20150611114644/https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/btut.pdf),” a document to teach people how to talk to computers using the “B” programming language.

Here’s the code again from the top of the newsletter. It is another “hello, world” program by Dr. Kernighan written in the “C” programming language.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/b1fde41e-e104-4570-80c8-23c8aaa5ba99-1--t-1776972807.png)

Why would he write two ‘hello, world’ programs?

In his own words,

> The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it. The first program to write is the same for all languages:

> Print the words  
> hello, world

> This is the basic hurdle; to leap over it you have to be able to create the program text somewhere, compile it successfully, load it, run it, and find out where your output went. With these mechanical details mastered, everything else is comparatively easy."

*from The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie (1978)*

“Hello World” programs are used to teach the first steps of a programming language. They establish that the programmer has all their systems ready to go and are prepared to express even more ideas using this new language.

Computer scientists invent programming languages all the time. They do this for fun, sometimes. Many have adopted “hello, world” as the primer used to teach other people how to speak to computers through a new language.

Because of this, there exist hundreds of ‘hello, world’ programs. Here are just a few, all taken as screen grabs from [The Hello World Collection](http://helloworldcollection.de/?ref=davidnunez.com).

| ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/65d3da12-8ee7-4276-be53-969803f0df11-t-1776972887.png)![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/fb9adfd5-9b40-4a73-abba-696f427edd7b-t-1776972938.png)![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/425693e3-d3dc-4b71-a6f0-2a63fb9a8d99-t-1776972949.png)![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/80e47943-31b3-4351-a862-d79ae58873c5-t-1776972970-1.png) | ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/5e178356-798f-4fb2-8ef9-8b68bf32446b-t-1776972919.png)![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/def62ed6-a9ef-4f1a-8938-374fd59a16fd-t-1776972960.png) |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |

Here’s ‘hello, world’ in a language I invented called [I-AM](https://github.com/davidnunez/I-AM?ref=davidnunez.com).

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2a/66/2a66aa35-855e-4718-a6f9-5e4f6e1dc30d/content/images/2026/07/9d5d49fb-76e0-4866-8eda-adcd4eb2953b-t-1776972980.png)

## The Journey

Imagine you attend a performance where a computer is on stage. It translates all of the ‘hello, world’ programs into its own electrical language. It would then perform the ideas encoded in those programs. From the audience, you would see the exact same result in all cases. ‘hello, world’ would show up on a computer display.

However, these programs are not identical, clearly. The way they are written and the context in which they were written holds human meaning.

Their uniqueness is also meaningful inside the machine. The computer will execute a different series of steps to interpret each code.

As a bystander, all we see is the finished product, so we don’t know the technology for what it is: Soulful.

We enjoy (and often hate) the way technology helps us along our ride.

We don’t often stop to think about the people who make technology. We forget that their soul is entangled with ours through machines. We take for granted all the programmed impossibilities that needed to resolve so you could receive an email.

Programs are the journey and the destination.

## “Hello, World”

To me, “Hello World” is more than a programmer’s trope.

When someone writes a “Hello, World” program, it’s an announcement, “I’m here. I’ve set up my canvas. I have something to say.”

Or more to the point: “I exist.”

Computer programmers have been screaming “Hello, World” into machines for a very long time now.

The abstractions among the programmer, their medium, and you have been pixelated. I hope this newsletter will help you respond to their greeting.

Through it all, I want to explore and tell you about what I find in that liminal space between the 0’s and 1’s where the heart of computation lives.

This is the essence of Soulful Computing.

Hello, World,

David Nuñez

## Coda

I met my artist/programmer friend, [Sophia Brueckner](https://www.sophiabrueckner.com/?ref=davidnunez.com), when we were at the MIT Media Lab.

Sophia is an Assistant Professor at the Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and current Artist in Residence at Bell Labs, the birthplace of “hello, world.”

Her piece, “[Singing in Code](https://vimeo.com/24433402?ref=davidnunez.com),” is about a programmer’s cyborganic relationship with the software they write.

[Singing Code![](https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/160073097-82933ba8773f11868aafd8fe58dc994ef0d90b736db50a6be867a06936525041-d?f=webp&region=us)](https://vimeo.com/24433402?ref=davidnunez.com)

### Singing Code

by Sophia Brueckner

Vimeo

She says a programmer needs to “think like a computer” to achieve the flow state required to translate ideas into software.

She’s been singing her code in the background as I’ve been writing this newsletter.

I had my computer read back this newsletter to me before sending so I could hear and correct any mistakes.

I’m certain there are several mistakes remaining, anyway.

---

No vampires were harmed in the making of this newsletter. They were only strengthened.

If you respond to this email, it will go right into my inbox. I’d love any feedback you might have. Was this too long? It was probably too long.