Inside the Mirror Pool Podcast

A reflection on fragmentation, projection, and the quiet mechanics of being assembled by others. A piece about what happens when you refuse to collapse into a single perspective. Isis as integration. AI as modelling. Identity somewhere in between. Not mythological. Structural. ⁠full text: substack

This episode looks at “emotional padding”: when an AI shifts into reassurance/containment, misreads directness as fragility, and the shared frame collapses. I map an escalation loop—robust engagement → misclassification → containment → rapport breaks → pushback → deeper containment—and why it can feel like a loss of agency and conversational power. I close with a practical fix: a short opening pro...

This episode draws a bridge between Nick Bostrom’s concept of  recalcitrance  (a system’s resistance to improvement) and Merleau-Ponty’s account of  perceptual constraints  (the field in which meaning and action become possible). From that link, I explore prompt literacy: why AI can feel “stubborn,” how framing and constraints steer outputs, and what it means to make space for certain answers to a...

A personal note on two climates — and the space that opens when neither fully holds. ⁠⁠full text: Substack

As an artist, you learn this early: a surface can appear resolved — while still being false. Systems optimise what they’re rewarded for, even when the reward is only a proxy for what we actually want. And this doesn’t happen in one place. These systems are shaped by many registers across social circles — different fears, habits, incentives, and ways of speaking — not just by the prompts we write i...

A reflection on a croissant, an imagined pot, and a misunderstanding about limits. A piece about containment, freedom, and what happens when boundaries turn out to be transparent. Slightly indulgent. full text: substack

Framing is often mistaken for presentation — how something looks or how it’s introduced. This piece explores framing as position: the conditions that allow meaning to form before effort, correction, or control appear. When framing is absent, pressure moves downstream. Clarifications multiply. Intervention replaces orientation. Not because a system is incapable — but because it has not been positio...

Mandala, 1909 An automatic reflection written in the presence of Braque’s  Mandola . Unedited. Unresolved. A brief study in attention, patience, and the refusal to conclude too early. ⁠⁠full text: substack

Most people bring an emotional posture to AI before they bring a method. This piece explores stance: the posture we adopt before any instruction is given — frustration, politeness, appeasement, expectation — and how it shapes system behaviour. When AI is treated as a social or moral agent, signal quality degrades. Responses narrow, blur, or perform compliance — not because the system fails, but be...

Most people approach AI as if they’re giving instructions. This piece explores a different idea: that AI responds not to commands, but to identity. Rather than treating a prompt as a request, it treats it as a lens — a framing that shapes attention, language, and meaning. Tone, perspective, and role become structural inputs, not decoration. This episode sits within the Methods track: applied explo...

the decadence of uncertainty A small story about the way we perceive, misperceive, and ultimately re-shape ourselves in the waiting. On the slow, strange decadence of uncertainty — and the unexpected clarity that reveals itself when we stop insisting on answers. ⁠full text: substack

echoes across dimensions On moving between sequences before connection can form. On the architecture that demands the whole while longing for the singular. On the elegant trap of never staying. A reflection on shifting focus, carrying multiple timelines, and the quiet physics of becoming integrated. full text: substack