Entrepreneur
A chore is supposed to be a kind of task. But the same act is a chore for one person and craft for another, and the act does not change between them. Derived from exemplarity, a chore is an artifact made with the reading against its exemplar declined — which makes a chore list a document about the person rather than about the work. … readWhat Is a Chore
A compromise is pictured as a point on a line between two positions, reached by each side giving up a proportion of what it wanted. The foundation I work from says there is no such line: two conditions are two complete forms, not two ends of one scale. A settlement is one mark serving one of them, and the shortfall against the other is placed somewhere rather than paid off. … readWhat Is a Compromise
A copy is supposed to be measured against the original. But the original is an artifact too, and every artifact is a miss — so the standard was never the original, which makes “better than the original” the ordinary case rather than a paradox, and leaves originality as a timestamp rather than a merit. … readWhat Is a Copy
Taste is usually called preference, and preference cannot explain the most common experience in any craft: knowing your own work is short while being unable to fix it. Derived from exemplarity instead, taste is a reading of the angle between an artifact and the exemplar it was made against. … readWhat Is Taste
On a line, wanting two things at full strength and wanting nothing at all produce the same number. Conditions do not sit on a line, and the angle between two of them separates a conflict with a price from a conflict with no solution. … readWhat Is Ambivalence
You were taught that practice closes a gap. But a made thing carries two numbers, not one, and only the second decides fidelity — which is why a plateau is what progress feels like from the inside, and why growing skill is a multiplier on an angle you did not set. … readWhat Is Practice
You were taught that home is a place you can return to. The foundation I work from does not deny the return — it guarantees it, as a theorem. What it denies is that you could be there and know it. … readWhat Is Home
You were taught that a debt is a thing made in the past that sits between two people until it is paid off. Almost every part of that is wrong — about where the debt is, about what repayment does, and about why the accounts never quite come out even. … readWhat Is Debt
You were taught that silence is an absence — nothing said, and therefore nothing to answer for. But the same act of not speaking is a blank in one room and an answer in another, and the difference is never in the silence. It is in what somebody was already predicting. … readWhat Is Silence
You were taught that loyalty is a bond between people, measured by whether you stay. But a person is not a condition, and what feels like a line between two people is two separate lines to the same third thing — which is why the most common betrayal has nobody leaving. … readWhat Is Loyalty