Insights
Payments, AI, and the rest of life
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Canonicalization Beats Workflow
Pattern Recognition12 min read
The structural insight that explains adjudication, EDI, and remittance reconciliation in one move. The schema is the product. Workflow is the consequence of not having one.
Read the essayCollected essays · 2026
Download all eight (PDF)- The Dog Lottery
On luck, low expectations, and the growing suspicion that we backed the wrong species.
5 min readDownload PDF - Our Show
On the cheapest word in the language, and the size of the life it quietly carries.
7 min readDownload PDF - Attendance
On shoes, entropy, and the quiet good news of a floor you cannot keep clean.
9 min readDownload PDF - Fallow
On guys weekends, the twenty-year deployment, and why “back” is the wrong direction.
6 min readDownload PDF - A Defense of the Distracted
How the worst office workers of the last century became the best ones of this one.
5 min readDownload PDF - AI Is Not a Tool. It Is a Limb.
On the quiet stratification of human capacity, and the music most people don’t even know is playing.
3 min readDownload PDF - The Modifier Always Dies
On the coming collapse of the word “artificial,” and why the stigma against machine intelligence survives only where quality cannot be measured
8 min readDownload PDF - The Ledger and the Logos
On the long exit of intelligence from the human skull, and what it has wanted all along
15 min readDownload PDF
Dogs, shoes, the first person plural, and what happens when intelligence leaves the skull.
The September 2026 edition, available in full online and as individual PDFs.
The argument so far
The spine of it →The professional lane, numbered the way the argument runs.
Predictions, graded in public →Canonicalization Beats Workflow
The structural insight that explains adjudication, EDI, and remittance reconciliation in one move. The schema is the product. Workflow is the consequence of not having one.
Authorization Without Identity
Why AI agents can initiate payments while the settlement layer still expects a human authorizer.
Field notes
The modifier always dies. Horseless carriage. Wireless telegraph. Electronic mail. The adjective is scaffolding.
Short-form on LinkedIn ↗
Bill just raised what it charges to process invoices. Software brought in $76 million last quarter. Payments brought in $324 million.
Short-form on LinkedIn ↗
Bill.com just cut 30% of its workforce and lost its CCO and CTO in the same week.
Short-form on LinkedIn ↗
Off the clock
Occasional essays from outside the day job.
Come Sit Near Me6 min
A lake boat should not exist. It costs as much as a car and works twenty days a year. Which is the first clue it was never a vehicle. It was a room, and the room was the point.
No One Is Coming6 min
The fear that keeps you awake has a direction, and the direction is toward. But the things worth fearing do not travel. They already wrote themselves into you and left.
Soft Bristles7 min
A hygienist's scolding about brushing too hard becomes a theory of effort. Some things are surfaces that yield to force. The good things are crevices that only open to precision, and telling the two apart is the whole game.
You Are Not the User4 min
When you use AI you are not the one being helped. You are the one aiming it. A short essay on the gap between everything a model knows and the one thing it cannot, what you actually want.
The Resonance Hypothesis22 min
A philosophical essay on what artificial intelligence reveals about consciousness. The receiver hypothesis, the strongest objection against it, and the asymmetric-error ethics that hold regardless of how the metaphysics resolves.
The Long Game
Follow the payments thesis
New essays on autonomous settlement, the orchestration layer, and the calls I am making in public are published through LinkedIn.
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