About this site

Welcome to The Cat's Alley — a place for thinking out loud about technology, health, misinformation, politics, culture and the occasional thing that doesn't fit anywhere else.

An alley is often found in the space between two close-set buildings: narrow, a little unpredictable, and not always on the map. Sometimes alleys lead to dead ends. Other times, they offer an alternate route when the main road is blocked or impassable. Navigating the electronic world can feel much the same — the signal is not always clear, and the static itself can become the obstacle and the story.

Posts range from short observations to longer essays. Some pieces engage seriously with ideas — the social implications of technology, the health of democratic institutions, the ways information gets distorted before it reaches us. Others are just things worth noticing. The tone shifts with the subject.

This site is the primary home for the writing. Some posts are also available through Substack, for readers who prefer that platform or want to follow along there. Everything here is free and open — no paywall, no subscription required, though you're welcome to sign up for email notifications if you'd like a nudge when something new appears.

A note on process: I use AI — primarily Claude — as a writing partner. Occasionally, after I've explained what I'm striving toward, it hits a home run and no edits are required. More often, there's an iterative refinement process at play, with sometimes many iterations required to get it right. The thinking is mine, or, at least, I'm in agreement with it; the execution feels substantively collaborative for the most part, if occasionally frustrating. But, wait, it's important to clarify what's at stake when sharing authorship with AI tools:

https://claude.ai/share/741cf9cb-f27b-4569-93e5-1c40e60ef378

A bit about me: I'm a software developer and researcher/writer with a long-running interest in many varied topics, including user interface design, health care, ethics, and how technology reshapes human experience. I'm currently working on a much larger manuscript while publishing occasional shorter form pieces in The Cat's Alley.

Thanks for stopping by.

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