[notes] ...

.eleventy.js

@@ -63,6 +63,14 @@ module.exports = function (eleventyConfig) {
       .sort((a, b) => b.date - a.date);
   });
 
+  eleventyConfig.addFilter("inlineMarkdown", function (text) {
+    return text.replace(/~~(.+?)~~/g, "<del>$1</del>");
+  });
+
+  eleventyConfig.addFilter("stripMarkdown", function (text) {
+    return text.replace(/~~(.+?)~~/g, "$1");
+  });
+
   eleventyConfig.addFilter("year", function (date) {
     return new Date(date).getFullYear();
   });

Notes/beliefs.md

@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+## Rough Notes
+- I can't remember where I read it, probably in Systems Thinking, something about dissent having to die off before a prevailing theory changes.
+- The assertion that individuals are locked in to their beliefs.
+
+## Questions
+
+
+## Quotes

Notes/do-people-think.md

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+title: Do ~~Machines~~ People Think?
+date: 2026-04-02
+layout: column.njk
+tags: column
+permalink: /columns/2026/do-people-think/
+---
+
+## Rough Notes
+- Thinking:
+    - Can we flip this around, and define it by reduction? What isn't thinking?
+        1. Reaction
+        2. Reflex
+        3. Conditioned behavior
+    - But what part of thinking isn't grounded in some conditioned behavior? Some reflex triggered by a problem to solve?
+    - But thinking seems to involve "modeling," and for our purposes, we mean a mental model.
+    - This mental model gets tested, calibrated, exercised.
+        - So how is this different than a program?
+    - Digital vs. Analog?
+    - Inputs, the decisions, are much fuzzier for organic mental models (and thinking)
+    - Computers are (seemingly) deterministic
+        - But, if we shed this assumption, what happens to our distinction?
+    - If computers can "approximate" the fuzziness with digital values...
+        - same question, what happens to our distinction?
+    - Thinking as a survival skill
+        - Thinking as communication
+        - Socialization
+        - Connecting with neighbors and "vibing."
+        - Thinking as an emergent behavior, among a pool of people
+        - Maybe the mob mentality is the purest expression of thought.
+            - Without self, or ego.
+    - What does it map to, in the scheme of things?
+        - I keep thinking about connections
+        - And how stifling it is to exist in isolation
+        - But to become ingrained in something
+        - And to connect with the people, the pieces
+        - To have an exchange, that's the essence of thinking
+    - Some kind of transformation, born from the coordination and interaction of many players
+    - Bottling it within youself, just as senses, impressions without a voice, with no expression or transformation
+    - We form groups, we organize, and we process together. That's thinking
+
+## Quotes
+> "[he thinks] that the idealistic creations of his mind... also represent reality." - Claude Bernard
+
+> "Much thinking is done in completely personal, idiosyncratic terms, so much so that how it is done is incommunicable." - Gerald Weinberg
+
+
+## Questions
+
+- Who is Claude Bernard?
+    - Famous French Physiologist (1813-78).
+
+- How would I define "thinking?"
+
+- Is "thinking" in isolation really thinking? Or, is thinking in a social / anthropological sense a connector?
+
+
+## Links
+[1] - Hamming, R. (1997). The art of doing science and engineering: Learning to learn. CRC. <https://archive.org/details/artofdoingscienc0000rich>
+[2] - Weinberg, Gerald M. An Introduction to General Systems Thinking. Wiley, 1975. Internet Archive, <https://archive.org/details/introductiontoge00gera>.

Notes/how-to-write.md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: How To Write
+date: 2026-04-06
+layout: column.njk
+tags: column
+permalink: /columns/2026/how-to-write/
+---
+
+## Prompt
+- The kernel of an idea
+- It's generally recommended to plant a seed first
+    - something you can return to over time
+    - reference other ideas you come across
+    - develop and refine
+
+## Questions
+- Questions give structure to your work
+- Even implicit ones - the unsaid queries that motivate the composition of the piece
+    - what's included, and when?
+    - as important: what's left out?
+    - make everything a deliberate choice
+- Why write, if not to test an idea against your own specific qualities? To see if there's a reaction, some expansiveness or contraction.
+- They provide the substrate to thought, and the nourishment, encouraging the frontier to expand
+
+## Rough Notes
+- The heap
+- The outlet for stream of consciousness thinking
+    - See what associations bubble up to the surface
+    - See what resonates, what clusters, the affinities that form
+- The warmup
+
+## Quotes
+- For the sake of having an opinion, I say it's better to rearticulate someone's idea in your own words, to digest it with your own acuity, than to simply reexpress the idea as a quote.
+- Other than stating something factually: at such a time, such a thing was said
+- Refernce it, so motivated readers can connect with more writing that may expand on the idea.
+- But don't just repeat the statement verbatim. Connect with the idea, exppress it in your own way for your own audience. Make it available.

Notes/systems.md

@@ -0,0 +1,31 @@
+---
+title: systems
+date: 2026-04-06
+layout: column.njk
+tags: column
+permalink: /columns/2026/systems/
+---
+
+## Rough Notes
+- [Reichenbach](https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/reichenbach/)
+> "The greatest empiricist of the 20th century!"
+- [Boulding?](asdf) - Spaceship Earth, General Systems Theory
+- Meta-laws, generalizations, that leap from one discipline to another.
+- We group a body of knowledge together under an umbrella of a domain, and in that box, the roots of connection may grow, but we miss the cross-cutting relationships that may have been realized, had we not kept knowledge as a house plant, bundled in a box.
+- Teaching the truth vs. teaching a model. Do we confuse the latter for the former, or is it misrepresented from the get-go?
+
+
+## Questions
+- Have we kneecapped ourselves through rigid classification, and artificial specialization?
+
+
+## Quotes
+> The power of reason must be sought \
+> not in the rules that reason dictates to our imagination, \
+> but in the ability to free ourselves \
+> from any kind of rules to which we have been conditioned \
+> through experience and tradition
+- Reichenbach
+
+## ToDo
+- Max Planck Scientific Autobiography

_includes/column.njk

@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
 <head>
   <meta charset="utf-8">
   <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
-  <title>{{ title }} — un:prompted</title>
+  <title>{{ title | stripMarkdown }} — un:prompted</title>
   <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.svg" type="image/svg+xml">
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/style.css">
 </head>
@@ -21,7 +21,7 @@
         </figure>
         {% endif %}
         <header class="column-header">
-          <h1>{{ title }}</h1>
+          <h1>{{ title | inlineMarkdown | safe }}</h1>
           <time datetime="{{ date | isoDate }}">{{ date | readableDate }}</time>
         </header>
         <div class="column-body">

_includes/sidebar.njk

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
         <h3 class="year-label">{{ colYear }}</h3>
         <ul>
       {%- endif %}
-          <li><a href="{{ column.url }}">{{ column.data.title }}</a></li>
+          <li><a href="{{ column.url }}">{{ column.data.title | inlineMarkdown | safe }}</a></li>
     {%- endfor %}
     {%- if currentYear != null %}
     </ul>

columns/2026-03-28-useless-skills.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@ tags: column
 permalink: /columns/2026/useless-skills/
 ---
 
-On an unscheduled walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge, I was caught unprepared in a downpour. One of those raw, mid-february rains that left you bitter, tasting nature's indifference to your existence. But maybe I should have just packed a fucking raincoat. 
+On an unscheduled walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge, I was caught unprepared in a downpour. One of those raw, mid-february rains that left you bitter, tasting nature's indifference to your existence. But maybe I should have just packed a fucking raincoat.
 
 ---
 

css/style.css

@@ -22,7 +22,8 @@
 
 html {
   font-size: 18px;
-  line-height: 1.6;
+  line-height: 1.7;
+  letter-spacing: 0.02em;
 }
 
 body {
@@ -120,6 +121,7 @@ a:hover {
 
 .column-body p {
   margin-bottom: 1rem;
+  text-indent: 1em;
 }
 
 .column-body blockquote {