Alexandre Variengien

Originally written for my substack. Cross posting here as reports of Inkheaven-like intensive writing experiences might be valuable! A month ago, during a video call, a friend of mine mentioned the Inkheaven residency. He told me it’s a writing program happening in November where participants are under threat of publishing...

Epistemic status: thought experiment Spoiler Warning: The setup of the thought experiment comes from “Star Maker” by Olaf Stapledon. If you intend to read the book, I recommend not reading this post. I Imagine a universe where stars are conscious beings. Their insides are made of a dynamic network of...

AI is changing the way we interact with online content. There are the gloomy waves of AI slop, the TikTokification of video content, the ad-maxing-prompt-injection-cyberwar, yes, but also the prospect of fulfilling the web’s promise: making content come to life. Practicing the craft of building lenses through which to look...

I This is the trace left by a larva of the Golden Pygmy moth. This species is a leaf miner; it lays its eggs on the surface of a leaf, and the larva lives trapped in a flatworld nibbling the soft tissues of its host from the inside. At the...

Epistemic status: a tale, a collection of archetypes “The Old Oak,” by Jules Dupre. Source. The tree. From my fourth-floor window, I can see the branches of an oak tree moving in the wind. However, these movements are radically different from the movements of an animal. They are a pure...

Researchers have been working on a vaccine to provoke an immune reaction to cocaine for decades. The hope is that such a treatment would help drug users overcome their addiction, as their immune system would destroy the molecules before they can interfere with the brain. However, contrary to vaccines directed...

Here is a list of digital (and physical!) artifacts to create connections between friends, increase conversation bandwidth, or simply enjoy pleasant aesthetic experiences. I’m not sure if they are good ideas, but they have been fueling my curiosity for long enough that I’ve written several series of notes about each...