January 2026: systems, software, and self

After migrating this 20+ year-old blog from WordPress to Ghost over the Christmas holidays, I published 22 posts in January 2026.

I began by trying to post every day, then settled into a rhythm of publishing on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, plus a Sunday weeknote. This Saturday post is a Brucie Bonus: an extra, unplanned reflection on the month.

Looking back at those posts, three themes stand out:

1. Systems thinking as a way to make sense of complex problems. Our inherited mental models no longer match current conditions; first-order thinking fails when effects loop back as causes. Frameworks help until they become prisons.
2. Digital sovereignty as a practical concern, not just a political position. Jurisdiction matters more than geography. Zero-knowledge encryption matters more than promises. Moving off US tech means taking seriously why people do not switch, not just listing alternatives.
3. Pragmatism over theory when changing behaviour. You rarely feel ready first; you move anyway, and beliefs that produce results matter more than beliefs that merely feel correct.

So here's what I wrote, organised by theme.

Systems thinking & mental models

• Your mental models are out of date (2 Jan) Traditional financial advice assumes economic conditions that no longer exist. When young people turn to crypto and betting, that is not personal weakness; it's a rational response to blocked pathways.
• You are here: mental models for 2026 (13 Jan) First-order thinking, where A causes B so you fix A, fails in complex systems. I propose three updated models: portfolio thinking (diversified security over single-path optimisation), structural diagnosis (recognising system failures rather than blaming individual choices), and adaptive learning (treating decisions as hypotheses).
• Cognitive Autonomous Zones: against “framework fundamentalism” (14 Jan) There's a difference between using frameworks flexibly and treating them as unchangeable truth. Borrowing from anarchist theory's Temporary Autonomous Zones, I propose treating frameworks as temporary structures that dissolve before becoming dogma.
• Why your worst decision probably came from your best analysis (21 Jan) Effective decisions integrate rational analysis with embodied intuition. Kahneman's two-system model shows both are necessary: System 1 generates impressions; System 2 catches systematic errors. Consent-based decision-making balances both through structured rounds honouring gut responses while maintaining clear processes.

AI, code, and governance

• AGI isn't “coming” – it's already reshaping how young people think (8 Jan) Treating AGI as perpetually “coming” lets companies defer accountability. Young people are already forming emotional bonds with AI systems optimised for engagement over wellbeing. This begins where you are: your classroom, home, community – not with waiting for better policy.
• You can ask AI to write the code, but the hard part is... everything after that (12 Jan) Last year, Anthropic's CEO predicted AI would write 90% of code within months. That prediction is becoming reality. Code is becoming cheap; care is not. The shift is about who controls what gets built.
• Claude's Constitution and the trap of corporate AI ethics (30 Jan) Anthropic's 23,000-word constitution for Claude is philosophically sophisticated, embedding virtue ethics into training rather than tacking it on. However, it represents unilateral corporate governance. Publishing sophisticated corporate frameworks risks normalising private companies as AI governance authorities.

Digital sovereignty and privacy

• The uncomfortable truth about getting people off US tech (6 Jan) Paris Marx's Disconnect guide assumes people are rational decision-makers. But people don't switch tech because it's better; they switch when crisis makes staying feel dangerous and when others switch too.
• Digital colonialism is where jurisdiction matters more than geography (9 Jan) Even when data sits in European data centres, the US CLOUD Act grants authorities access to anything held by US-controlled providers. The solution: zero-knowledge architecture where encryption occurs on user devices before transmission. Providers literally cannot access data because they never possess decryption keys.
• How and why I've migrated from Google to Proton (19 Jan) Using a tool on someone else's terms eventually means accepting their priorities, not yours. Proton's Swiss jurisdiction and zero-knowledge architecture means even they cannot access encrypted data. There are trade-offs, though.
• Extending Proton Calendar beyond its limits (28 Jan) I built a browser extension using Claude Code that adds video conferencing links from Jitsi, BigBlueButton, Whereby, and custom services. This was necessary as Proton Calendar's security architecture prevents public API access.
• Helping strangers access the internet (4 Jan) Internet shutdowns increased 35% from 2022 to 2024, affecting 54 countries. Tor Snowflake disguises connections as ordinary video calls using WebRTC. Install the browser extension and you join around 35,000 daily users relaying roughly 29 terabytes of traffic.

Philosophy and self

• 2026: Can't complain (1 Jan) This year's commitment: complain less, grounded in Musonius Rufus's Stoic advice to “reflect on how many things have already happened to you in life in ways that you did not wish, and yet they have turned out for the best.”
• The strange magic of the third week (3 Jan) Three-week often follow a pattern: week one is decompression, week two is pleasant restoration, week three enables a genuine identity shift where work becomes irrelevant to daily consciousness. Those who can't manage this can create “third-week days” within ordinary life through unstructured time.
• Understanding yourself isn't enough (5 Jan) Self-awareness alone doesn't produce behavioural change. Understanding why you're stuck differs from becoming unstuck. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers alternatives: cognitive defusion and self-as-context.
• Cash Value: Katherine Ryan, William James, and... getting on with it (7 Jan) Researchers with different frameworks perceive different phenomena from identical data. There is no “view from nowhere.” William James's “cash value” approach is epitomised by Katherine Ryan, who avoids theorising about how entertainment “should” work; she observes what the industry actually rewards and adjusts.

Work & organisations

• Why your organisation needs someone “unemployable” (23 Jan) Consultants excel at designing efficient workflows for others but chafe when forced to follow those same procedures. This isn't stubbornness; it's the ability to perceive gaps between how systems should function versus how they actually function.
• Why books are now luxury goods (10 Jan) Using McLuhan's Tetrad, it's evident that books have shifted from mass entertainment to quiet luxury signalling cultural capital. We're living in Walter Ong's “secondary orality,” a world mediated by images and videos. Those over 40 operate partly within text-based culture; younger generations inhabit a post-textual environment.
• The purpose of your website is what it does (26 Jan) Riffing on Stafford Beer's principle that “the purpose of a system is what it does.” Applying this to web accessibility shows that stated intentions matter less than actual functionality. Once you test, the gaps become obvious. Once they're obvious, fixing them matters.

Weeknotes

• Weeknote 02/2026 (11 Jan) First weeknote on the new blog. Six posts on the main blog covering self-understanding, US tech dependency, AGI's influence on young people, digital colonialism, and books as luxury goods. Primary work focus: community platform project with Amnesty International UK (AIUK). Reading Flights by Olga Tokarczuk.
• Weeknote 03/2026 (18 Jan) Abandoned the daily long-form post goal after Wednesday, pivoted to coding Scheduler, a privacy-focused appointment tool for Proton Calendar. Two significant personal decisions which I kept private. Taking a deliberate rest week from exercise to help my autonomic system recover. Expanded RSS subscriptions after starting again from zero this year.
• Weeknote 04/2026 (25 Jan) Technical friction week: accidentally triggered my phone's duress password (wiping my GrapheneOS-powered Pixel Fold), database corruption requiring Claude Code intervention, and SSD failure in my home server. AIUK community platform pilot launches. Karen Barad on epistemology: “We know because we are of the world.”

Thanks for reading and subscribing. I am always interested in your comments, especially on what you would like to see more of in February. Also, if you're interested in this blog, you might also be interested in my Thought Shrapnel.