Now

Current Signals

A living snapshot of what currently has my attention — projects, media, sound, and questions I’m carrying through the week.

Last updated · August 2026

Active Projects

Building

Counter Infrastructure

Shaping this site into a living archive and personal operating system.

Aurelius

A privacy-first reflection commons now in public beta. Anonymous contribution, collective sensemaking, and AI-assisted pattern recognition — without making participants observable.

Enter the public beta →

Data Infrastructure

Modernizing reporting systems, pipelines, integrations, and analytical workflows at scale.

LB Cortex Collective

A local tech/community space for people who use tools subversively in service of the public.

Mutual Aid Support

Helping Mutual Aid Long Beach organize, coordinate, and manage operations.

Suburban Saturn

Handpan, video, somatic sound, and coastal media experiments.

Inputs

Reading / Watching

Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult

HBO

A fascinating story about young models drawn into Frederick von Mierers’ spiritual group in 1980s New York. What stayed with me: how the desire for meaning and community can become an opening for manipulation.

Open

Jamie Wheal — Altered States of America

Substack

Consciousness, institutions, collapse narratives, and possible futures.

Open

Cassie Kozyrkov

YouTube

AI, decision intelligence, and applied reasoning for data professionals.

Open

Nate Hagens — The Great Simplification

Podcast

Systems-thinking on energy, ecology, economics, and constraints.

Open

The Dark Wizard — Dean Potter

Film

Risk, devotion, embodiment, and the line between mastery and obsession.

Watch

California Against the Sea — Rosanna Xia

Book

California’s changing coastline, sea-level rise, and communities facing adaptation.

Read

Secret Mall Apartment

Film

Artists who built a secret apartment inside a mall. Pure counter-infrastructure.

Watch

Also in rotation

Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God (HBO) · The Deep End (Hulu) · Breaking Points · notsoErudite · Camp Gagnon · LA 92 · Hidden San Francisco · Critical Path — R. Buckminster Fuller

Sound

Listening / Practicing

girl in stem — piri

Currently in rotation. “Trickle Down Economics” has been a standout, along with “Love Is a” — a beautifully bittersweet song that has been sticking with me.

Listen

Critical Mass — Los Angeles

Movement, intensity, city texture, momentum.

Listen

Critical Mass 2 — Psychosomatic Records

A compilation follow-up to the 1998 LA: Critical Mass. Original artists and new contributors across experimental electronic, ambient, and downtempo. Uneasy beauty at the edge of critical mass.

Listen

novulent Vol. 1 — Novulent

Melancholic shoegaze in the sweet spot between nostalgia, sugar hooks, and power-driven beats. Shoegazecore.

Listen

The Sharecropper’s Daughter — Sa-Roc

Deeply personal hip-hop exploring lineage, resilience, and artistic identity. Razor-sharp delivery over cohesive boom-bap production. Produced by Sol Messiah.

Listen

Piri & Tommy

Bright, dance-forward electronic music.

Listen

Malte Marten

Handpan resonance. Breath, tone, attention.

Listen

Lower Definition — The Purpose of the Moon

Post-hardcore intensity. Emo/screamo thread.

Listen

Also: drum & bass, alternative/emo/screamo, Warped Tour on the calendar, and handpan practice as the slower counter-signal.

Questions

Thinking Through

How to find builders, thinkers, and organizers in Long Beach who want to solve local problems together.

How local groups can use AI to improve coordination without becoming surveilled or productized.

How to leverage AI professionally: modernize infrastructure, build a use-case portfolio, move from reactive reporting toward agentic workflows.

How LB Cortex Collective can become a local counter-infrastructure node.

How sound, attention, and embodied practice can act as a counterweight to the default internet.