Your Name

Almost 8 years later and the soundtrack still lifts me. The movie is exceptional.

Wetware

Where most of the AI hype today represents software models running on conventional computers, Cortical Labs is trying to make computation happen inside living neural tissue.

…Bet you didn’t have that on your bingo card.

Imagine a bookshop café where each table becomes a private listening booth…

…sharing music with friends, your date, or curious strangers.

Or at least somewhere to safely house the “Let me show you my Spotify Wrapped” population.

I wonder if rich people get their hangers custom-fitted, so each shirt or sweater hangs perfectly and never gets those little shoulder bumps….

Norwegian Movies I’ve watched in November so far:

  • Verdens verste menneske (2021)
  • Elskling (2024)
  • Drømmer (2024)
  • Kjærlighet (2024)
  • Ninjababy (2021)
  • Syk pike (2022)

ZK-Proofs

Imagine you could prove things about yourself (age, citizenship, or subscription) without ever handing over your personal details. No need to pull out your passport or fill out a form, instead, your phone shows a QR code that represents a kind of digital ‘yes’. It’s a cryptographic proof that confirms you meet the requirement without revealing why.. That’s zero-knowledge proofs (or zk-proofs)…proving something is true without showing the underlying data.

In a world of data leaks and ransomware, flipping control of data back to individuals reduces the attack surface altogether. Today, every website and service collects mountains of personal information just to confirm who you are, creating endless breaches and surveillance (for ads and more). With zk-proofs, your ID becomes private and portable, a way to verify what’s needed and nothing more. It’s a system that combines privacy, security, and open participation.

Under the hood, a zk proof is a digital handshake between two sides: one proving something, the other verifying it. The prover turns their secret into a special cryptographic statement that can be checked for truth, but never reveals the secret itself. It relies on advanced math (modular arithmetic, elliptic curves, or polynomial commitments) to make the proof impossible to fake but easy to verify…often in milliseconds.



Real-World Problems zk-Proofs Could Solve Overnight:

  1. Identity leaks – nothing personal to steal from a database hack if you’ve never needed to share that data
  2. Endless KYC uploads – carry a reusable credential that simply says, “I’ve already passed KYC.”
  3. Vulnerable digital voting and petitions – prove eligibility and one-vote-per-person integrity without revealing their identity or choices (huge upside in countries with fewer checks and balances)
  4. Bots, spam, and surveillance-driven content – prove you’re a unique human for access (expanded explanation below)

Point 4 – Making the Internet Human Again

The internet wasn’t meant to be a surveillance machine, but that’s what it’s become. Platforms track everything you do because that’s the only way they know if you’re real, safe, or profitable.

Zk-proofs flip that logic on its head. Instead of handing over your information, you prove what’s needed without exposing anything else: that you’re human, that you’ve paid, that you belong.

Bots can’t fake cryptography, and people no longer need to be profiled just to participate. Suddenly, you can have an open web again: spam-free, human-driven, and built on trust instead of surveillance.

Sensory System

Long before we came along, with our brains and matcha tea, early life forms only had rudimentary sensory systems.

They detected and responded to environmental stimuli… things like light, pressure, or temperature.
These primitive systems didn’t “think” in any way we’d call cognition, they just acted.
They supported survival by guiding our behaviour: moving toward nutrients, away from toxins, or reacting to threats.

As nervous systems evolved, first as simple nerve nets (don’t even ask, it’s beyond me), then centralised structures, and eventually brains… those older, sensory systems (or embodied response mechanisms) didn’t disappear. They became the foundation of what we now experience as intuition, gut feelings, or emotional instincts. They operate waaaayy quicker than our rational thought because they’re rooted in ancient survival circuitry. For example, the amygdala and brainstem responses can trigger action before the cortex even finishes processing what’s happening (sometimes you know something before you know it).

So…intuition and feeling aren’t just “soft” or “irrational”, they’re actually evolutionarily ancient tools for survival and rapid decision-making. Rational thought is a newer layer built on top….And for some people, it’s still under construction.

Unnecessary shots fired.

Stability Isn’t the Same as Flow

For a long time, I thought stability and good communication were enough…that if you worked hard at a relationship, flow and improved connection would naturally follow.

But they don’t.
Not always.

Sometimes two people can share affection, safety, and even intimacy… and still miss the spark that makes everything feel alive.

That kind of flow doesn’t come from effort alone, there’s a deeper layer of nervous-system compatibility that has to exist.
Mutual affection doesn’t equal reciprocal energy. For example, you can have all the intimate facets (touch, talk, connection), yet still lack the spark of play or a sense of moving forward together. Sometimes a relationship can feel emotionally rich, yet subtly draining, if for example, playfulness is missing and is the thing that makes you feel most alive.

I used to make decisions top-down: over-analysing data, drawing insights, reasoning my way through everything. These days, it’s more bottom-up…the collection of experiences either feels right or doesn’t. Sometimes you know immediately; other times you have to let it unfold until you feel certain of the path. And we’ve all been in situations where our intuition knew the answer long before our intellect caught up.

Note: stability and good comms are both still important but I think they should be the baseline tbh.