The Illusionist and the Conjurer

Penn & Teller have this philosophy about their craft.

Mar 24 • Scott Werner

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The Collective Superstitions of People Who Talk to Machines

You had a technique.

Mar 14 • Scott Werner

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The Ghost in the Funnel

Your Free Tier is Someone Else's Twenty-Minute Side Project

Mar 7 • Scott Werner

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February 2026

Open Source, SaaS, and the Silence After Unlimited Code Generation

The End of Feedback

Feb 28 • Scott Werner

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From Nodes to Stories, Fiction as a Tool for Thinking

On Saturday I wrote about what happens when a fundamental input gets cheap and new categories of activity explode in ways nobody predicts.

Feb 26 • Scott Werner

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The Great Zipper of Capitalism

On Pizzas, CSVs, and Building for Markets That Don't Exist Yet

Feb 22 • Scott Werner

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As Complexity Grows, Architecture Dominates Material

There’s this talk from 1997 that I keep bringing up on here, but there’s a different part I want to call to your attention this time.

Feb 14 • Scott Werner

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The Discovery Phase Is All There Is

Or: Documents Retrieved from the Department of Best Practices, Third Sub-Basement, The Building

Feb 6 • Scott Werner

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January 2026

The Different Shapes of "Think Before You Build" Prompting

Or: The Beaver Who Learned To Measure Twice

Jan 28 • Scott Werner

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What If We Took Message-Passing Seriously?

There’s a mass of data that holds a shape you can’t quite name.

Jan 24 • Scott Werner

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December 2025

How I (Accidentally) Started a Newsletter

Looking Back on 2025

Dec 31, 2025 • Scott Werner

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November 2025

Solving Amazon's Infinite Shelf Space Problem

Michelangelo supposedly said the statue already existed in the marble, he simply removed everything that wasn't David.

Nov 15, 2025 • Scott Werner

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