Weekly Catch#4🎣: Everything Is Alright

immigrants, space vs. time, thinking & writing, infinite games, & being an invisible elephant...

Jun 15, 2025

I always advise others to have faith, but the second I see a few dominoes fall, I start to panic. This week, I was reminded that everything is going to be alright!

📣Announcements/Updates:

Happy Father’s Day!!
Cafe Socrates has been postponed until I find a new medium since I’m not using X anymore. Bare with me…
🎉Special Shoutout!! Thank you so very much, @Asghar Methiwalla, for being my first paid subscriber. I am so incredibly grateful, and I wish you the absolute best. You truly saved me this week, and I’m always here via email or Substack :)
- cat gif especially 4 you!!

1. Americ(kkk)a Has A Problem(again)… 🇺🇸

Sitting with the country’s brutal hostility toward immigrants, I found myself replaying in my head the most saccharine patriotic anthem we chanted in grade school—“My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” On its surface, it’s a hymn to freedom. Underneath, it’s a flag-wave for brainwashing a sense of selective memory. Again, why was the fight for critical race theory so important? School as an institution is a place where they brainwash and socially engineer children. This is the signature move of nationalist art: paint a grand mural, then hide the broken backs that made it.

“Land where my fathers died??” — Cue the cognitive dissonance

THE ROCK Eyebrow Meme (HD) - (4K - 60FPS REMASTERED) - YouTube — The Rock and I both say, be so for real…

If Plato’s cave warns us that appearances deceive, then nationalism doubles down: it chains us to a story that erases whole histories. By proclaiming “the home of the free,” we gloss over the families torn apart at the border as they journey for their freedom.

Here’s the mental model: Map vs. Territory is a metaphor—coined by the philosopher–scientist Alfred Korzybski—that reminds us: the models, descriptions, or “maps” we build of reality are not reality itself. The anthem is the map of the idealized America. The territory is the lived reality of immigrants detained, deported, or silenced. No matter how vivid the painting, it won’t change the territory beneath our feet.

So what if the Constitution was amended to recognize “jus domicile”—citizenship by calling America their home, based on the mission, as the “Founding Fathers” once did? No language test, no intelligence tests, no multi-year waiting games. You arrive, you declare it yours, and you’re in. If the American government wants to use the American dream as propaganda, then practice what you preach, or the dream will be just that.

I’ll park the rest of my fire for the upcoming “America/Finite Games” essay, where we’ll unpack how our national narratives keep us trapped in a zero-sum society instead of cultural play. For now, just remember: you can merely sing the song, or you can live it.

2. Eternalism in Code ⌚️

After becoming a metaphysician, I declared myself an eternalist who holds the belief that every moment—past, present, and future—is equally real. There are dozens of competing theories about temporal realities, but as a technical philosopher, my mission is simple: demonstrate eternalism in practice.

Here’s how computers can help us get closer to that proof. If you’ve been following SOULR, you know that “infinite memory” and unbroken context streams often sound like vaporware—especially when you try to execute them cleanly, efficiently, and at scale.

Then I watched a talk on space-efficient algorithms that turned my assumptions upside-down. In it, the speaker builds a classic pebble-pebbling game on a tree structure: her goal is to transport a pebble from a leaf to the root using the fewest total stones possible.

That game illustrates a powerful mental model: recycle resources as you climb. Just as you can reuse pebbles to minimize placements, you can reclaim memory and storage at each step up the causal tree. In SOULR’s world, the challenge for our Large Value Model (LVM) is to fetch—and then discard—context as values evolve so deftly that it feels “infinite” without ever ballooning in size.

“Just as you reuse pebbles in the pebbling game, you can recycle space and memory when ascending the causal tree.”

The real question for SOULR: How do we retrieve the most accurate, richest context for a user query while using the least amount of space? Crack that, and that’s the human superintelligence we’re trying to build!

3. Emotional Design by Donald A. Norman

With Apple’s recent pivot in mind, I’ve been obsessing over what comes next for design. Before we forecast the future, we need to master the fundamentals:

1. The Golden Rule of Beauty & Utility
“If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” — True emotional design walks the line between form and function. If it’s not delightful to look at and doesn’t serve its purpose, it doesn’t belong.

2. Visceral Design
“Visceral design concerns itself with appearances. Here is where the Nanna teapot excels—I so enjoy its appearance, especially when filled with the amber hues of tea, lit from beneath by the flame of its warming candle.” — This is your product’s first handshake with the user—the instant “love-at-first-sight” spark.

3. Behavioral Design
“Behavioral design has to do with the pleasure and effectiveness of use. Here both the tilting teapot and my little metal ball are winners.”— Beyond the initial glance, how smooth, satisfying, and intuitive is the interaction? That ongoing delight (or frustration) lives here.

4. Reflective Design
“Reflective design considers the rationalization and intellectualization of a product. Can I tell a story about it? Does it appeal to my self-image, to my pride? And, of course, the ‘teapot for masochists’ is entirely reflective. It isn't particularly beautiful, and it's certainly not useful, but what a wonderful story it tells!”— This is the narrative you build around an object—how it connects to your identity, your pride, and your memories.

For the future, I want to watch how product designers balance these four layers. It’s not enough to ship cool new devices and features; they need to look irresistible, work flawlessly, and tell a story that makes users feel part of something. That’s the next frontier of emotional design—where technology doesn’t just function seamlessly, but feels like home — part of you.

4. Writes and Write-Nots: The Writing–Thinking Dichotomy #ThisWeeksChallenge

My week kicked off when @Igor shared this Paul Graham gem during Nautilus:

“Writing is thinking. In fact, there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can’t make this point better than Leslie Lamport:‘If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.’”

Split the world between Writes and Write-Nots, and you actually create two different species: Thinkers and Think-Nots. Which side do you want to be on? I challenged myself to capture every seed of thought this week, and that’s why you guys got two essays (more otw this week).

Here’s what I discovered: my thoughts and emotions aren’t immutable truths; they’re snapshots of my mind at a given moment. By writing, you externalize those snapshots and give yourself the power to validate, refine, or discard them. If I were one of Silicon Valley’s corny “optimizationalists,” I might even start tracking my rational insights versus my emotional reactions—maximizing clarity and spotting bias in real time. But fuck all that jazz, I think my irrational thoughts and feelings produce real art and make for great jokes so the awareness is my only goal with this. XD

The FS Street newsletter shared a similar quote this morning:

“Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about.”

That admission is precisely the point of why I recommend this. So here’s your challenge for the week: write your way to clarity or being aware of your lack of clarity.

If typing feels like torture, hit record on your phone and spit it out to transcribe later.
Watch what patterns emerge in your thinking.
Share one nugget with a friend.

I’d love to read what you produce—drop your draft in reply or DM me on Substack.

5. Finite & Infinite Games 🎲

This isn’t the full book review (coming soon), but James P. Carse’s Finite and Infinite Games has been one of the most mind-bending reads of my year—major shoutout to Carse for flipping my perspective on the way I live and think.

a) A finite game is played by a fixed set of players under agreed-upon rules, all striving toward a clearly defined outcome. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end; once someone wins, the play stops. Think of it like a championship match or a board game—you know when you’ve crossed the finish line, and everything revolves around beating the other side.

b) An infinite game, by contrast, has no fixed roster, and its rules can shift in order to keep the play going. There’s no final scoreboard to top out; the point is to perpetuate the game itself, invite new players, and adapt as you go. The goal isn’t to “win” but to sustain and evolve the experience—like a conversation that never ends or a tradition that constantly renews itself.

What games are you playing today? Based on your desires, your daily practices, your mindset, and your long-term goals, are you racing toward a finish line or building something meant to endure indefinitely? Take a moment to introspect.

6. Racism & Being An Invisible Elephant

It’s really not what you think. Every day, as a Black person living in San Francisco, I feel like the elephant in the room. Everyone here is so “woke,” but when it comes to real interaction, they’re hyper-cautious—or completely checked out. I’ve noticed three modes people use when engaging with me:

(1)Ignore: Sometimes they pretend I don’t exist—or that my blackness doesn’t in conversation. I don’t want people to be like, “YOU”RE BLACK RIGHT SO”… but to the extreme some people will cross to the other side of the street; personally, I don’t mind the extra breathing room (jazz hands, anyone?) but when the music their grooving to is made by the same people you’re avoiding — its weird.

(2) Pivot: The moment I bring up anything related to Black history or culture, the conversation gets rerouted to avoid discomfort. For a city that prides itself on disruption and curiosity, all the BLM flags, you’d think we’d dive into these dialogues with ease—yet they always shut down. So I silence my thoughts and sit in my head.

(3)Subconscious Racism: Comments like “certain people are really dirty on the street next to me,” “more races should look Asian they’re the most beautiful,” nasty stares, staring at my head, or at the ground, even people griping that their skin is “too dark” all count as painful remarks.

On one hand, much of this stems from a culture so rigid about offense that everyone’s petrified of being labeled “racist,” “ignorant,” or—worst of all—“canceled.” Avoidance becomes self-preservation. Yet as someone who’s genuinely curious—and deeply proud of my ethnoracial heritage and its beauty—I find that knee-jerk caution downright infuriating.

Here’s one recent example of an annoying faux pas: walking home from Nautilus, a homeless guy with crutches screamed at us, “Nigga, don’t look at me or I’ll bust your face open. Who you think you messin wit?!?” I laughed and teased a friend, “Dang, what’d you do to piss him off?” We joked about who bothered the man to tigger his remarks. Another friend immediately seriously assumed the remarks were aimed at me—ignoring my comment that, black people call anyone the “Nigga” regardless of race, and it only becomes obviously racially targeted when “n**ger” is used.

Ultimately, the real issue in SF isn’t the absence of overt bigotry but the fear of engaging with me as a black person the same way they do with everyone else. Even the well-meaning interactions feel tinged with hesitation, and I’m still treated differently. In a community that so readily lifts elements of my culture/vernacular to look/sound “cool,” almost no one stops to learn the stories and history behind them. I get why people claim it’s nearly impossible to make authentic friendships here as a Black person—but I’m determined to stay curious, ask the hard questions, and build genuine connections that heal.