Library catalogue

The books, people and ideas behind the writing. Find a source, follow a connection, or explore the notes around an essay.

Each entry explains what its sources support, what has been checked, and what remains uncertain. How confidence works

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Step inside a library of flying papers. Follow the connections between the people, books and ideas behind my writing.

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183 records — books, people, ideas and more.

Sources by essay

Start with something you’ve read, then follow its references.

For the Love of Law
An argument that the law is the source code of the state, that its illegibility is a compounding debt, and that machine-readable law is the overdue successor to the codex.
Hello, World
The introductory post, setting out who the author is, the ground between engineering and policy that the later essays occupy, and what the blog is for.
I Gave an AI a Civilization to Run. It Built a Nuke.
An account of building a Civilization VI evaluation harness, with reported pilot results about agents’ observations, plans and actions.
When the Agents Found God
An essay about religious-themed activity on Moltbook and an author-arranged exchange between two AI systems about meaning.
You Can't Shame a Fork
An argument about how copying and updating AI systems complicates accountability, compared with institutions that developed around print and scientific publishing.
Your Country Needs Builders
A personal reflection on the Innovation Fellowship, Redbox and building institutions that retain the ability to learn and act.

From the collection

Browse all works

AI & Elections: How can we ensure we know what we’re voting for?
The report of a St George’s House consultation on AI, election integrity and public trust, held in September–October 2024.
Qualified confidence
Akoma Ntoso
The OASIS standard for representing parliamentary, legislative and judiciary documents in XML, and the format that gives the essay its title.
High confidence
Annals
Tacitus' history of the early Roman empire, and the source of the observation that laws were most numerous when the commonwealth was most corrupt.
High confidence
Image credit
Opening page of the first printed edition of Annals XI–XVI, circa 1471–1472.Tacitus · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Automating Inequality
Eubanks's account of three American systems that automate decisions about welfare, housing and child protection, and of how the burden of their errors falls on the people least able to contest them.
Qualified confidence

About these records

183 of 183 records have a source review. Open an entry to see the evidence, the scope of the check and any remaining gaps. These are AI-assisted checks; they do not imply that I have read every book or independently reproduced every result.

High confidence: Strong sources support the facts within the stated review scope.
Qualified confidence: There is useful supporting evidence, with specific caveats or gaps.
Limited evidence: Important details could not be established from the available sources.

Confidence describes the catalogue entry, not agreement with an author’s argument. Image credits and reuse terms are assessed separately. Time-sensitive information keeps its review reminder.

For reuse, the catalogue is published as version-controlled Markdown in the Open Knowledge Format. Download the bundle or view the structured data.