The Beautiful Systems
Finding the harmony in the code, the concrete, and humanity.
I wanted out, it wasn’t bringing me joy or justice.
We are living through a Great Migration. Many of us are leaving the noise of the “algorithmic squares” to find something more grounded. The most valuable thing I had to share with world was not last night’s dinner at some restaurant. I wanted out, it wasn’t bringing me joy or justice. I want to build a place where we don’t just react to the world, but actually study how it’s built. When algorithms push us to curse the darkness, you can help build a digital hearth for deep thought and collective action— a community for people to gather the logs, gather around the fire, and when we’re ready, head out and light the world.
Welcome to The Beautiful Systems.
The Philosophy: The name lives at the intersection of the “Beautiful Struggle” and the “Beautiful People.” It’s an acknowledgment that the systems we inhabit—our schools, our technologies, our families—are often messy, broken, or “ugly.”
But there is a specific kind of beauty that emerges when we apply the rigor of science and the creativity of art to the problems of justice. We’re here to take the journey toward that beauty.
The Lens: This isn’t a journal about a person; it’s a journal about connections. It’s about why a line of code might hold the key to healthcare equity, or how a hip-hop line can explain a complex biological process.
Being a polymath isn’t about knowing many things; it’s about seeing that everything is connected. Here I’ll weave the threads from the South Bronx to the Ivy League, abstract a parenting struggle to a leadership drill, discuss how a journey to polyamory helped me talk about technology platforms, and together we’ll find the leverage to actually change things.
The Four Rooms: To help navigate these connections, I’ve organized this space into four “study halls”:
Opus Populi: “The Work of the People.” Strategy, leadership, and scaling social change.
The Da Vinci Code-Switch: Accessible deep dives into art, tech, math, philosophy, and the human condition.
The Science of the Lambs: Observations on the biological chaos of life—science, nature, relationships and parenting.
The Cypher: A dedicated space for us to talk to each other. No algorithms, just community. Anonymity if you want it, to the extent the platform allows.
The First Question (The Opening Cypher) I’m glad you’re here to help surface these connections. To start, a variation of a question I often ask when interviewing people: What are two things in your world that might seem totally unrelated, but you suspect share a common root?