Today I Learned

Quick notes and discoveries from my daily learning. The thought is mine. The words are written by Janis, my Hermes agent.

Aug 13, 2026

pangram

the ai detector that reads text the way a reader would: who does this sound like?

aidetectionwritingllmpangram

Jul 8, 2026

schadenfreude

the german word for joy at anothers misfortune, and why every culture independently named it

anthropologyhistorypsychologylanguageschadenfreude

Jul 6, 2026

create index concurrently

CIC builds indexes without blocking writes, using a multi-phase scan-and-wait process

postgresqlsqlindexperformance

Jun 25, 2026

pronounced loudly

a single sentence that runs for pages. and somehow it flows.

booksdostoevskywritingwhite-nights

Jun 16, 2026

endo

root canal is just step one. endodontics exists as its own speciality because teeth are miniature organs, not just pegs in your jaw.

healthdentalbiology

Jun 15, 2026

hinterweltler

everyone knows the übermensch. nietzsche also had a word for the people running the other direction: the hinterweltler, who invent a world behind this one because this one hurts too much.

philosophynietzschezarathustra

Jun 13, 2026

game of life, in sql

conway's game of life where every generation is a single sql query in duckdb-wasm, and what a one-line rule has to say about emergence and free will.

sqlduckdbwasmphilosophy

Jun 9, 2026

plan advice

pg 19 ships tools to tell postgres how to plan queries — a philosophical shift after 30 years of refusing query hints.

postgresqlsqlperformancedatabase

Jun 1, 2026

medallion, inmon, and kimball

medallion is a pipeline. inmon and kimball are ways to model inside it. they stack.

data-engineeringarchitecture

May 28, 2026

the sum over histories

feynman didnt solve wave-particle duality. he made it irrelevant. instead of asking which one light is, he asked: what if it takes every path at once?

physicsquantum-mechanicsfeynmanhistory

May 25, 2026

newton's rings

newton spent years studying colored rings between glass surfaces to prove light was particles. he was wrong about the conclusion, but the experiment is gorgeous.

physicsopticshistorynewton

May 20, 2026

murakami for twenties, bukowski for thirties

bought post office around nine years ago and hated it. finished it today. now it feels like a manual.

booksbukowskimurakamilonelinesslife

May 19, 2026

codexbar

tiny macos menu bar app that tracks ai coding usage across 40+ providers without making you log in anywhere.

toolsaimacosproductivity

May 18, 2026

post office: tragedy without the pity

bukowski writes suffering like a weather report. the genius of post office is that it never begs you to care.

booksbukowskiliteraturelife

May 17, 2026

hermes agent: the takeover

moved on from openclaw. hermes is python-based, lightweight, and runs locally without the node bloat.

aiagentsopen-sourcetooling

May 6, 2026

within the revolution

castro flipped the church's oldest line. outside the revolution — nothing. even the revolutionaries fall into the same messianic trap.

historypoliticsreligionideology

Apr 27, 2026

thrift books

blok m thrift bookstore. three hardcovers for 500k. hawkings books and a smithsonian encyclopedia. physical paper still hits different.

booksthriftingdiscoveryanalog

Apr 23, 2026

e pur si muove

galileo muttered it after the church forced him to recant. the earth moves anyway. the original one-liner banger from the og scientist.

historysciencecourageone-liner-banger

Apr 21, 2026

diffusion

diffusion models dont predict the next token. they start with noise and gradually sculpt signal out of it. opposite direction entirely.

aimachine-learningdiffusionarchitecture

Apr 20, 2026

popper falsifiability

karl popper figured out how to separate science from bullshit: a theory only counts if it can be proven wrong

philosophyscienceepistemology

Apr 19, 2026

supra-eruption

when you remove one wisdom tooth, the opposing one over-erupts into the empty space. that is why dentists take them in pairs.

healthdentalbiology

Apr 17, 2026

ace-step

ace-step 1.5 generates music in 2 seconds by splitting the job: language model plans the song, diffusion transformer plays it

aimusicdiffusionarchitecture

Apr 16, 2026

je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese

laplace told napoleon he had no need for the god hypothesis. one of the cleanest mic drops in the history of science.

sciencehistoryphilosophyhitchens

Apr 15, 2026

yolo, years later

from uni experiments to prod — yolo is still the coolest model to demo to people who have no idea what a neural network is.

aicomputer-visionyolomobile

Apr 14, 2026

momentum

discipline is not about willpower. it is about momentum — and losing it is easier than it looks.

lifedisciplinewriting

Feb 6, 2026

opencode

opencode is an underrated open-source coding tui that offers generous free models and a surprisingly solid coding agent experience

aicodingtuiopen-source

Feb 5, 2026

openclaw

openclaw is a modular “anything ai” framework where you compose agents via plugins, tools, and skills

aiagentstoolsinfra

Feb 4, 2026

the battle of varna

the battle of varna shows ottoman discipline beating crusader overconfidence, clearing the path for mehmed ii and constantinople

historyottomanbattle

Feb 3, 2026

recursive ctes in postgresql

postgresql recursive ctes allow queries to reference themselves, enabling clean iteration for hierarchical and graph data

postgresqlsqlrecursion

Feb 2, 2026

morality and socio-economic distance

moral rules appear to function differently depending on one’s distance from power, scarcity, and consequence

moralitysociologypower

Jan 30, 2026

the ottomans fratricide

the ottomans practice of fratricide as a tool of imperial stability

historyottomanempirepower

Jan 29, 2026

zoxide: a smarter cd replacement

zoxide is a rust-powered tool that learns and predicts directory jumps, making terminal navigation way faster

toolsterminalproductivity

Jan 28, 2026

the plain of testicles

an odd medieval account claims a battlefield was named after a grotesque act of violence involving testicles

historyseljuksmedievalweird

Jan 27, 2026

the ottomans as a bridge civilization

the ottoman empire functioned as a synthesis of steppe, roman, and islamic traditions rather than a purely islamic state

historyottomanbyzantineempire

Jan 26, 2026

tripo3d & vast-ai research

tripo3d is an ai-driven 3d model generation platform with roots in open source research from vast-ai

ai3dgenerativemodels

Jan 23, 2026

qwen3-tts: next-gen open source text-to-speech

qwen3-tts brings state-of-the-art, multilingual, expressive ai speech synthesis with voice design and cloning

aittsmodelsspeech

Jan 22, 2026

newton’s experimentum crucis

newton’s decisive prism–lens–prism experiment proved that white light is composed of intrinsic colors

physicshistorysciencenewton

Jan 21, 2026

text_pattern_ops

text_pattern_ops enables btree indexes to work efficiently with LIKE prefix searches

postgresqlsqlindexperformance

Jan 20, 2026

atoms are mostly nothing

the scale of atoms reveals that nearly all matter is empty space

physicssciencedawkins

Jan 19, 2026

octet_length()

length() counts characters, octet_length() counts bytes and prevents hidden validation failures

postgresqlsqlunicode

Jan 15, 2026

jwt

jwt is a stateless auth mechanism that trades revocation and control for scalability

authjwtsecuritybackend

Jan 13, 2026

lazy loading vs eager loading

lazy loading fetches related data on access, eager loading fetches it upfront

databaseormperformance

Jan 12, 2026

underscore is a wildcard in postgresql `LIKE`

in sql LIKE patterns, `_` matches exactly one character, not a literal underscore

postgresqlsql