Category Archives: Philosophy

AI Is a Tool. You Still Have to Think.

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I recently saw someone and have often seen people saying the following about artificial intelligence with two words:

Fuck AI!

The most recent version of this involved someone in the middle of a disagreement. They asked a large language model to compose a response, sent what it produced without properly considering it, and made the situation worse.

I understand the reaction. Family disagreements are emotional, context-heavy, and full of history that no language model can completely know. A generated message can be technically polished while being entirely wrong for the people receiving it. It can sound cold, clinical, patronizing, manipulative, or strangely unlike the person supposedly sending it.

I do not think the lesson is “fuck AI.”

The lesson is: you still have to think.

If you copy an AI-generated response verbatim, send it into a sensitive human situation, and then blame the tool when it goes badly, you have misunderstood both the technology and your own responsibility.

The model did not decide to send the message.

You did.

Generated text is not judgment

A large language model can produce remarkably convincing language. That is one of its strengths, but it is also one of its greatest dangers.

Fluent writing creates an impression of thoughtfulness. A neatly organized response can look reasoned even when it is based on incomplete context, questionable assumptions, or a complete misunderstanding of the relationship involved.

The model does not know the look your brother gives when he is hurt but trying not to show it. It does not know which phrase your mother will interpret as condescending. It does not know that a technically accurate point has already been repeated six times and that repeating it once more will only deepen the argument.

It knows the information you supplied, the patterns learned during training, and the conversation currently in front of it.

That can be useful. It is not the same thing as wisdom.

AI can generate options. It can suggest a structure, identify a blind spot, remove unnecessarily hostile wording, or help us see how a message might be received. It cannot relieve us of the obligation to decide whether those words are true, appropriate, humane, and recognizably ours.

Copy and paste is not using AI well

I use large language models regularly. I use them professionally, for technical projects, for learning, for debugging, and sometimes for improving written communication.

I do not simply copy the result and press Send.

If I ask an LLM to help refine an email, I read what it produces. I compare it with what I intended to say. I retain useful phrasing, remove language that does not sound like me, restore context that was lost, and often merge its suggestions into my own draft.

The finished message remains my message.

That is not an insignificant distinction. Editing the result is where critical thought re-enters the process. I am asking:

  • Is this factually correct?
  • Does it express what I actually believe?
  • Is the tone appropriate for this person?
  • Has the model inferred something I never said?
  • Is it avoiding an uncomfortable point that needs to be addressed?
  • Is it escalating a situation while sounding superficially calm?
  • Would I be willing to say these words face to face?
  • Am I prepared to take responsibility for the result?

If the answer to that last question is no, I should not send it.

Blindly forwarding generated text is not thoughtful adoption of AI. It is outsourcing the appearance of thought.

Human-in-the-loop is not corporate jargon

“Human-in-the-loop” can sound like one of those phrases people place in a slide deck to make an AI project seem responsible.

It describes something essential.

The human provides the objective, context, constraints, judgment, verification, and final accountability. The system contributes speed, language generation, pattern recognition, analysis, or implementation assistance.

Remove the human judgment and the process becomes ungrounded. The model may still produce an answer—these days a very polished one—but nobody is confirming that the answer belongs in the real world.

In my arcade-cabinet work, agents have written code under my direction. They have helped analyze logs, build maintenance tools, normalize controller behaviour, audit metadata, and document complicated interactions among Linux devices and services.

That does not mean I type “make it work” and accept whatever appears.

I define the intended behaviour. I set boundaries. I ask the agent to inspect the existing system. I review the proposed change. We test it against the actual hardware. When the evidence contradicts an assumption, we correct the assumption. If a script could damage data, I require dry runs, backups, explicit apply modes, and verification afterward.

The code may be generated agentically. The responsibility is not.

That is human-in-the-loop.

AI magnifies the way we already work

AI can help a thoughtful person examine more possibilities, work through unfamiliar material, and accomplish more in a day. It can also help a careless person produce mistakes faster and with greater confidence.

In that sense, it is an amplifier.

Give it a carefully defined problem, relevant evidence, meaningful constraints, and an engaged human reviewer, and it can be extraordinary.

Give it one side of a family argument, ask it to prove that you are right, and paste the result into a group chat, and it can provide beautifully formatted gasoline.

This is not unique to AI. People have always misused tools, repeated claims they did not understand, forwarded articles they did not read, and borrowed other people’s words to avoid difficult conversations. AI makes that behaviour easier, faster, and more convincing.

That increased power deserves increased care.

You cannot outsource accountability

Suppose an LLM produces a message that damages a relationship. The model deserves scrutiny. Perhaps it responded too confidently, mirrored the user’s anger, validated a distorted premise, or generated language that was inappropriate for a vulnerable situation.

The organizations building these systems also have responsibilities. They should communicate limitations honestly, design safeguards thoughtfully, and stop presenting every generated answer as though confidence and correctness were the same thing.

But the person who chose to send the message is still part of the causal chain.

We cannot demand complete personal credit when AI helps us produce something successful and then claim complete helplessness when the same process produces harm.

If I publish generated code without testing it, the resulting bug is my responsibility.

If I submit invented citations without checking them, the false claims are my responsibility.

If I send a cruel or tone-deaf message without reading it carefully, the damaged relationship is my responsibility.

“The AI wrote it” is an explanation of process. It is not an exemption from accountability.

The problem is choosing not to think

I will admit that this is the part that frustrates me most.

We have been given access to tools that can help us explore ideas, learn new skills, analyze huge amounts of information, and build things that previously would have required far more time or specialized knowledge.

And some people use that power to avoid thinking.

They paste the first response. They do not check facts. They do not question assumptions. They do not notice that the tone is wrong. They do not ask whether the output reflects their own beliefs. Sometimes they do not even appear to read it closely before attaching their name to it.

It is tempting to say that people doing this are too stupid to think.

I think the more accurate criticism is harsher: in that moment, they are choosing not to think.

Intelligence is not the only issue. Patience, humility, curiosity, and personal responsibility all matter. Critical thinking requires us to slow down long enough to ask whether a convenient answer is actually a good one. AI does not remove that requirement. It makes it more important.

Use AI to strengthen your voice, not replace it

There are constructive ways to use an LLM during a disagreement.

You might ask:

  • What assumptions am I making about the other person’s motives?
  • Which parts of my draft are likely to sound accusatory?
  • Can you show me three interpretations of what they said?
  • What important context might be missing from my account?
  • Can you help me shorten this without removing the apology?
  • Where am I trying to win rather than resolve the issue?
  • What questions should I ask before responding?

Those prompts use AI as a tool for reflection rather than as an automated weapon in an argument.

Even then, the output requires judgment. A model can suggest empathy without feeling it. It can construct an apology without meaning it. It can imitate vulnerability without taking the emotional risk that vulnerability requires.

The human being has to supply those things.

Sometimes the right conclusion after consulting AI will be to write the message yourself. Sometimes it will be to call rather than text. Sometimes it will be to wait until you are calmer. Sometimes it will be to say only, “I don’t want this argument to become worse. Can we talk tomorrow?”

No model should make that decision for you.

Criticism of AI is necessary

None of this means that AI should be above criticism.

There are serious questions about accuracy, bias, privacy, labour, copyright, environmental cost, concentration of power, manipulation, and the effect these systems may have on education and employment. There is plenty to criticize, and “fuck AI” may express a completely understandable anger about some of those issues.

But if the specific complaint is that someone blindly copied generated language into a family dispute, then we should identify the failure accurately.

The system produced words without understanding the full human situation. That is a known limitation.

The user treated those words as finished judgment. That was a human decision.

Both facts can be true at once.

Keep your hands on the controls

I do not advocate surrendering our work, relationships, or critical faculties to artificial intelligence. I advocate learning how to use it well.

Use it to generate possibilities, not commandments.

Use it to challenge your thinking, not replace it.

Use it to improve a draft, not impersonate you.

Check its facts. Question its assumptions. Rewrite its language. Test its code. Protect private information. Consider the person who will receive the result. Be willing to reject the output entirely.

Most importantly, take responsibility for whatever leaves your hands with your name attached.

AI is a tool. It can be a remarkably powerful one.

But you still have to think.

The summer of 1991

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I don’t totally remember the circumstances anymore or why I left the grocery store. I had started working as a travel counsellor in the summer of 1988, then later took a job at the local grocery store. I remember leaving that job, probably saying I needed to focus on school. Truth be told, I was probably just ready to move on.

The summer of 1991 I was 17.  I suspect I didn’t have a summer job and was scrambling a bit.  It was likely my own harebrained idea, but I know I had support from key family members for this – let’s try applying to Canada’s Wonderland?

I did and I got the job working front gate selling admissions.

It was the worst summer job I ever had, but it was a super important summer for me.

Independence – I spent a lot of time by myself, exploring Toronto as I was living with my mother and sister, mostly, that summer in The Annex in downtown Toronto.  By that time I knew most areas of Toronto having lived there for 2 years and leaving 10 years earlier.  It felt like my city.

I had to figure things out for myself, like how would I get to work, how would I afford bus tickets to get from downtown Toronto to Vaughn?  There was no subway to Vaughn in those days.

I’ve been thinking about some coworkers in those days.  By the time I was 17, I knew I was gay, even if I couldn’t say the words out loud. Looking back, I’m pretty sure that summer was the first time I’d met other gay men around my own age. None of us were out, but somehow… you knew.  I think that meant more to me than I realized because for the first time I knew there were more of us out there.  I’ve often wondered, what became of everyone I knew?

This was the first time I walked up Church St from College to Wellesley, very much in the closet.  I was nervous, sure I was shaking, I was very much afraid of having to admit to myself that I was gay and what that would do to my world.

35 years later, coming out was one of the best things I ever did, but I digress.

This was the summer I started living life for me.  I had started making changes in my life around living for myself and my own needs a few years earlier, but this is when I really started to take even more control of my destiny in a big way.

I certainly didn’t save as much that summer as I had hoped to, but I learned very valuable lessons.

Music was the soundtrack to all of it. Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do (I Do It for You) seemed to be everywhere. Crystal Waters’ Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless). Enigma’s Mea Culpa, Latour’s People Are Still Having Sex, and Metallica’s Black Album all found their way into my summer, often drifting out from The Lemon Lounge during lunch breaks.

Before long, Nirvana’s Nevermind would arrive and change popular music almost overnight, ushering in grunge. I didn’t know it then, but just as music was changing direction, so was I.

I spent countless hours at HMV at 333 Yonge Street, especially downstairs in The Basement, where club and electronic music lived. For me, it was paradise. Along with Sam the Record Man, Sunrise Records and even A&A before it disappeared, those stores weren’t just places to buy music. They were places to discover who I was becoming.

I bought my first CD walkman on Yonge St after a recommendation from one of my peers who worked at Wonderland on how to barter to get a reduced price.

At the end-of-summer staff banquet, I somehow won a stuffed pig, the kind you’d normally see hanging from midway games. I still remember carrying that ridiculous thing onto the TTC bus afterward. I was proud of that memento of an incredible summer and still have it.

Labour Day weekend, I headed back home to start Grade 12. There were still two years of high school ahead of me, and I never returned to Wonderland, instead taking a job at a local campground.  I wasn’t the same person who had left home a few months earlier.

Looking back now, I’m proud of that 17-year-old.  He navigated the city, navigated finances, he found people who reminded him he wasn’t alone. He took his first tentative steps toward becoming the person I am today.

I went to Canada’s Wonderland looking for a summer job.  

What I found was the beginning of my adult life.

Why Madonna matters

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With the release of Confessions II, I have been reflecting on what Madonna represents in my world and why I’ve spent so many years defending her.

I’ve been there almost from the beginning.

I was in Grade 3 when I started listening to pop music, the only one in my immediate family who really did. Madonna quickly became an artist I followed closely.

She was my first concert – that famous third night at Skydome for the Blond Ambition Tour, I went with my cousin Erika.  Since then I’ve seen her two more times—The Rebel Heart Tour with Scott, and The Celebration Tour with my cousin Kirsten.

People often dismiss Madonna as someone who simply chased attention. Certainly, she knew how to get people talking, and she’s talked at length about that very topic. I think many people stopped at the spectacle without ever asking why she was truly creating it and looking deeper.

As a young gay kid growing up in rural Ontario in the 1980s, I wasn’t hearing many voices telling me that I mattered.  

Madonna was.

Most people remember the controversy. I remember the education.

What she taught me during those days was that I needed to protect myself – I vividly remember the “Don’t be silly, put a condom on your willy!” message before Causing a Commotion during the Blond Ambition Tour to a huge applause. 

I remember the HIV/AIDS information included with my Like a Prayer album. I remember safe-sex messaging woven into interviews, performances, and her work at a time when misinformation was everywhere.

She didn’t just teach caution.  She also taught that intimacy wasn’t something to fear.

Looking back, that’s what stayed with me most. The message wasn’t “don’t have sex.” It was that there were ways to protect yourself while still allowing yourself to love, to connect, and to be close to another person.

That balance mattered to me as an adult.

I think this is one of the reasons so many gay men—particularly those who lived through the height of the AIDS crisis—call Madonna “Mother.”

She was speaking to us and has continued to through her career.

For countless people, the dance floor became a place where grief, fear, joy, and freedom all existed at once. Her music didn’t erase the pain. It gave people permission to keep living anyway.

I was too young, naive, sheltered, too isolated to fully understand what was happening.  

I was outed in grade 6 and didn’t know any gay men until I was 16 or 17 (1990/1) as I was starting to truly figure myself out.  I knew HIV/AIDS was something that would shape my generation, but I experienced it from the edges rather than the centre.

I didn’t lose friends to AIDS in those days because I was simply too young to have found that community yet. I would later.

My generation lost a whole generation of mentors, activists, people who could counter the messaging young LGBTQ2S+ people were receiving and continue to receive.  My mentors lost their lovers, partners, chosen family, friends and peers.

Being too young and being far from what would become my community didn’t stop me from becoming an activist within my school community within the Halton Roman Catholic School Board in the day, contributing to a coffee house on HIV/AIDS to talk about, educate and raise awareness and wellness to counter homophobia and hate.

At the time, I hadn’t even accepted that I was gay myself.

This would then turn into volunteering with the AIDS Committee of Toronto, helping with the Totally outRIGHT program, being part of a panel discussion at the Gay Mens Sexual Health Alliance conference about how health care professionals can better reach the LGBTQ2S+ community with reframing communication and outreach.

Madonna played a role in that—not because she told me what to think, but because she modelled empathy. She showed me that standing beside people who were being marginalized wasn’t controversial; it was simply the right thing to do.

She stood beside the community at a time when many people were telling us we were immoral, disgusting, dangerous, or disposable. She insisted that LGBTQ+ people deserved dignity, deserved joy, deserved love, we were and are worthy, and deserved to live openly.

We still get this today, and she still stands by us.

For a lonely kid trying to understand who he was, that mattered more than I could have realized at the time.

Listening to Confessions II—especially songs like “Danceteria,” “L.E.S. Girl,” and “Fragile”—I hear someone looking back on the people, the places, and the community that shaped her. Reading about the names she references in “Danceteria,” and remembering the people she honoured during “Live to Tell” on The Celebration Tour, I understand more clearly what she was carrying.

She wasn’t standing beside the community from a safe distance.  She was living through it with her closest friends—her chosen family.

I can only imagine how exhilarating, heart breaking, such a whiplash of emotions during that whole time period.  Trying to build the biggest pop career in the world while watching people you loved become sick, disappear, and die must have been emotional whiplash.

Yet somehow she kept creating joy. She kept telling people to dance. She kept reminding us that we were worthy of love, joy, intimacy, and life itself.

That’s her legacy,

It’s easy for the media to reduce Madonna to controversy. They’ve been doing it for over forty years and that totally misses the point.

The provocation was never the destination. It was the invitation. It forced conversations that many people wanted to avoid and made us question why they made us uncomfortable in the first place.

She was someone challenging shame, prejudice, misogyny, homophobia, and silence.

Was she perfect?  Of course not.  She’s made mistakes, some of them significant. But she’s also shown a willingness to learn, apologize, and keep growing—something many public figures never manage to do.

As I’ve listened to Confessions II, I’ve found myself crying more than once.

Partly because of the music, but mostly because it reminded me of the person I was when I first heard her.

A scared kid.  A closeted kid. A kid afraid to be himself.

A kid who desperately needed someone, somewhere, to suggest that his future might actually be okay.

That’s why she matters to me.  Not because she’s flawless, or that every album is a masterpiece, or that I agree with everything she’s ever done.

Madonna couldn’t know that kid, but somehow she reached him anyway.

She matters because, long before I believed I deserved a full and joyful life, she was already singing as though I did.

Sometimes, that’s enough to change someone’s life.

Listening to Confessions II, I don’t just hear new songs. I hear someone still asking us to celebrate life, to choose joy in the face of loss, and to keep dancing. Confessions on a Dancefloor II is not just a sequel to Confessions on a Dancefloor, I believe it’s also a sequel to Ray of Light with how vulnerable and thoughtful she is on.  

THIS is the Madonna I adore.

Thank you, Madonna. Thank you for helping me become the person I am.

Toward New Light, Carried in Sound

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I love being introduced to new music by friends. It feels like a gift—especially when it becomes something you can share, unpack, and return to together. Not just the sound, but the lyrics, the intent, the meaning behind it all.

My friend Arthur recently introduced me to VNV Nation—“Victory Not Vengeance.” That ethos isn’t just a name; it’s embedded in Ronan Harris’s lyrics and perspective in a way that feels grounded, intentional, and deeply human. Ronan is the frontman and founder of VNV Nation.

I’m honestly surprised I hadn’t come across them before. Given my leanings toward techno and adjacent genres, you’d think our paths would have crossed sooner, but I haven’t spent as much time in industrial or EBM spaces, and somehow they passed me by.

What I do know is this – I’m glad I’ve been introduced and that they didn’t pass me by.

I’ve put together a playlist of tracks that have really landed with me—not just because of the production, which is absolutely outstanding, but also because of the emotional weight carried in the lyrics.

Listening to VNV Nation—and to Ronan speak about his work—has made me reflect on my own music as Polyatomic.

There’s a parallel there: the idea of creating from a place of honesty, of putting emotion into the music first, writing from the heart and letting everything else follow. If it resonates, it resonates. Exploring different styles and inspirations for our albums.

I’m going to be heading into production on my fifth full-length studio album and I admit, I’d can feel a pull to go in a Futurepop direction and while I don’t have the hardware list that VNV Nation has, I have more than enough to carve out my own interpretation of that sound.

In some respects, I’ve already brushed up against it. Take a listen to my Techknow album, there are hints of that direction—ideas that could be further refined. I wrote that album as a thank you to time I’ve spent in Berlin, and also a chance to decompress with something looser, more exploratory and less concerned with polish after releasing Icebergs which was an intense and emotional production and body of work.

Incidentally, Techknow was heavily hardware-based too.

I’ve always gravitated toward strings, pads, and piano—layering in an acid line here and there, building something cinematic, sometimes trance-like. I say I’ve never really identified with harder-edged electronic styles in my body of work, but honestly, you can hear there’s something that’s been waiting to be released and I’m ready to go there, to really explore.

And I think VNV Nation has shown me you can take an album like Strength, add harder elements and create thoughful and joyous music that takes a listener on a journey.

This feels like a natural evolution rather than a departure and it’s something I want to explore more intentionally.

I know I’m on the right path with Polyatomic and what I want it to represent, the emotion that project conveys.

I’ve always said my next album was likely to be called Hardware and feature more of my hardware as I’ve been heavily soft-synth oriented. I really do want to explore analogue synthesis more, which I think will take me more in an experimental direction. I’ve been mulling other titles as well given recent events in my life that I know will greatly impact the sound of my next album.

Arthur and I are going to see VNV Nation live in Toronto, in May. I’m really looking forward to sharing that experience—with him, with the crowd, and with music that, in a short time, has already become something quite personal to me.

My first music video drops tomorrow for Terra Nova which was released on Icebergs, finally getting a video treatment it was supposed to receive years ago.

Back to my roots

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This past weekend I flew to Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador to spend time with my sister and her family. My brother flew out to connect with us.

During the trip I also got to meet 4 aunts, a grand-aunt and 9 out of 28 cousins that I counted when going through the family tree with Karen. Talk about mind blown on just that point.

I don’t talk a lot about my spirituality, but I firmly believe that at times I’ve felt a guardian angel looking over me. For example, when living in Frankfurt, Germany in December 1995, I was feeling so disconnected from family and friends, and the emotions of that – it was like something was telling me to get back to London where I had family. I did get back to London to find on Christmas Day my father had passed away.

I’ve put in a lot of work on myself over the past 6 years, and even broader than that, the past 23 to 26 years between therapy, self help, courses, and mentors – it’s like the universe saying, “You’ve done good b’y, here’s your family and they’re awesome, now go and connect, enjoy and feel the love.”

I know it doesn’t work that way, or maybe it does. Who knows? Karen, Kevin, and the rest of our family have come into my life at the perfect time.

I could not have asked for a more perfect weekend of connection, getting to know each other, and bonding. The love everyone has shown me has been amazing and I hope everyone knows it’s returned in spades.

My heart is full and bursting about how the two of us have bonded. Having an older brother like Kevin who shares similarities to me – sensitive, pragmatic, humourous, smart – has me elated. Having an older sister who values connection and family, smart, straight up, who has taken the time to truly get to know me, who reaches out, who took me under her wing this weekend to introduce me to a bunch of stuff I hadn’t experienced before – I could not ask for a better older sister and that has been super healing for me.

I’ve never experienced that level of connection from siblings – ever. Maybe in our early days with Robyn. I said to my aunt (one of my aunts, now? LOL!) and two of my cousins – I have no idea where Robyn and I went wrong as I search within myself. The overwhelming response was, “It’s not on you at all. You both had a messed up childhood and the fact that you came out of that a great person is a testament to your strength.”

I feel it, and not only do I feel seen after years of being afraid to show my light, years of being afraid to speak up, ask, to be validated.

I wish Robyn and I had a much better connection than we do, I think the odds were stacked against us from the beginning for a number of factors I won’t go into. I will say this, I don’t think she had the space nor the permission to just be and to find herself and I hope, very much hope she is able to find herself and heal to the best of her abilities. She deserves light, love and happiness. I have always felt this despite the friction between us.

There are so many people who are no longer with us that I wish I could share in this moment.

  • My adoptive dad who would have been super proud of all of us,
  • Scott’s mum, Betty, who was so instrumental in showing me what family was and accepting me in to her family, her consistency and love,
  • Our dad who, I don’t know if he’d be shocked or not, but I know he would be elated and proud of my accomplishments and I know, if he’s present spiritually in our world and if he were still living today, that he would be proud of Kevin and Karen for how they have embraced me.

I also wish my adoptive mum and sister could witness this moment with grace and appreciation, putting themselves in my shoes for once. Enough said there.

There is once person I do want to acknowledge and that is Kevin and Karen’s mum, Joyce. I appreciate her willingness to be present with all of us this past weekend. She is amazing.

Newfoundland is beautiful – the land, the people, the wildlife – all of it. We have some amazing unique traditions and way of life, some of which does parallel rural areas in other areas of Canada but it is still unique. For many, this is how Newfoundlanders survived the challenges of that environment.

I have always hated winter and cold weather. This weekend had me embracing winter in a way I haven’t in forever if ever. So much so, I’m ready to head to Bass Pro Shop next winter and get a pair of snow pants – it would be “weird” to see here in Toronto but it would help me embrace winter more.

I can’t wait to get back to Newfoundland this summer. I don’t have a date yet given Scott is headed into knee replacement surgery season with his first surgery taking place on April 21st and second one in July. I am hoping Scott could come with me but it may have to wait until next year.

I have a lot of Newfoundland content coming up on my YouTube channel. It’s part of me returning to own what was always mine. The first video is up, about the International Lounge at Gander International Airport.

This song, Where there is light by VNV Nation (VNV for Victory not Vengeance) speaks volumes about how I’m feeling right now and has been playing through my head. Ronan’s music, his lyrics and what he sings about hit home for me.

What We Mean When We Say “Safety”

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When people talk about safety, I’m feeling that we usually think of it in very narrow terms, such as the following:

  • Physical harm,
  • Rules,
  • Boundaries,
  • What’s “allowed” and what’s not.

Those things matter, but they’re a baseline and somewhat obvious.

As I’ve been figuring out my path over the past few years and sort myself out, I’ve realized there’s a much deeper nuance we might be tippy toeing around. We know it’s there, we just don’t bring it to the forefront of thought.

I’d like to talk about safety especially in the context of belonging — I’m talking about something broader and quieter. Something most of us feel instinctively but rarely name.

Safety is what allows a person to stay.

Safety Is Not the Absence of Harm

Safety isn’t just the absence of violence or overt cruelty.

A room can be technically “safe” and still feel hostile.

A group can follow every rule and still make people shrink.

A space can say everyone is welcome and quietly punish those who test that claim.

Real safety isn’t about what doesn’t happen.

It’s about what does.

What People Are Scanning for When They Enter a Space

When someone walks into a room — especially someone who has been marginalized, traumatized, or repeatedly excluded — they are scanning constantly. I know I do, subconsciously, asking questions like:

  • Am I welcome here, or merely tolerated?
  • What happens if I say the wrong thing?
  • Will I be ignored, corrected, mocked, or dismissed?
  • Who seems relaxed, and who seems guarded?
  • Is attention given freely, or does it come with a cost?
  • What happens when someone is vulnerable?
  • Do people stay consistent, or do rules change depending on who you are?

This isn’t paranoia. It’s pattern recognition.

People learn very early what it costs them to be visible.

Safety Is Predictability

One of the most important and underrated components of safety is consistency.

People feel safer when:

  • responses are predictable
  • kindness isn’t revoked without explanation
  • boundaries are clear and stable
  • feedback doesn’t come wrapped in shame
  • affection doesn’t suddenly disappear

You don’t have to be perfect to be safe. but I propose you do have to be reliable.

Inconsistent warmth is one of the fastest ways to make a space feel unsafe.

Holding Space Is an Active Practice

We often talk about “holding space” as if it’s passive. It’s not.

Holding space means:

  • letting others take time without rushing them
  • allowing discomfort without trying to fix it
  • resisting the urge to center yourself
  • noticing who hasn’t spoken — and why
  • not punishing people for being careful
  • not demanding performance as proof of belonging

Holding space doesn’t mean lowering standards or abandoning boundaries.

It means enforcing them without humiliation.

Safety Is About Not Making People Earn Their Right to Be There

Many spaces claim to be inclusive but quietly expect newcomers to prove themselves.

To be confident enough. Interesting enough. Resilient enough. Easy enough.

That’s not safety — that’s audition culture.

Safety exists when people don’t have to minimize themselves, overperform, or apologize for taking up space just to remain welcome.

Why Safety Comes Before Belonging

Belonging is often framed as something people should choose. I have argued in previous posts that choosing belonging requires safety first.

Without safety:

  • the nervous system stays alert
  • risk feels dangerous instead of exciting
  • connection feels temporary
  • withdrawal feels like self-protection

People don’t fail to belong because they lack courage.

They struggle because safety hasn’t been established yet.

What It Looks Like to Create Safety

Creating safety doesn’t require special training or perfection. It looks like:

  • saying hello and meaning it
  • following through on what you offer
  • being clear instead of clever
  • naming mistakes without shaming
  • staying curious instead of defensive
  • noticing power dynamics instead of pretending they don’t exist

Most of all, it looks like showing up the same way tomorrow as you did today.

Consider that safety Is an Invitation to Stay

When safety is present, something subtle changes.

  • People breathe differently.
  • They stop scanning exits.
  • They take small risks.
  • They stay five minutes longer.
  • That’s how belonging begins.
  • Not with declarations.
  • Not with slogans.
  • But with consistency, care, and the quiet signal:

You’re okay here. You don’t have to disappear.

A Final Thought

If you run a group, host a space, lead a team, or simply care about community, here’s a question worth sitting with:

What does someone have to do in your space to remain welcome?

The answer will tell you more about safety than any mission statement ever could.

Cracking the Code on Belonging

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For most of my life, people told me I needed to choose belonging.

  • “Put yourself out there.”
  • “Find your people.”
  • “Claim your space.”

And I believed this overly simplified messaging and even tried it on for size.

No matter how hard I tried, belonging always felt fragile. Conditional. Like something I could lose without warning.

For a long time, I assumed the problem was me. It wasn’t.

I’m sharing this as a celebration, not for sympathy, but for those who may be wondering the same thing in their life, that have lived a different truth, with a similar outcome.

As a child, I moved schools constantly, not because I was difficult—but because of circumstance. New cities, new systems, adults making decisions doing their best without understanding what instability does to a child despite their own similar experiences.

By the time I was twelve, I had already learned an unspoken lesson: Connections don’t last.

At one school, I was told—publicly—that belonging was a choice. That if I didn’t feel like I belonged, that was on me.

The message was simple: Try harder.

What I felt wasn’t motivation. It was shame, because being told to choose belonging doesn’t work when your body doesn’t feel safe enough to try.

Here’s what we don’t say often enough:

  • Belonging isn’t confidence.
  • It isn’t charisma.
  • It isn’t effort – although I think it does require effort

Belonging requires safety.

Belonging, for me, meant feeling welcome and connected without minimizing myself or apologizing for taking up space.

Without safety, the nervous system won’t cooperate—no matter how much you want connection.

While my story comes from relationships, this pattern shows up everywhere—in workplaces, families, communities, and classrooms—anywhere people are told to “belong” without first being made safe.

So instead of belonging, I adapted.

I learned to scan rooms. To read people quickly. To become independent early.

Those skills looked impressive. They helped me succeed, but they weren’t belonging.

They were survival.

From the outside, I appeared capable and self-sufficient.

Inside, I was armored.

Independence wasn’t freedom—it was protection. Love, when it appeared, felt temporary and withdrawable.

So I learned not to get too comfortable.


When Everything Shifted at Once

There wasn’t one breakthrough moment, but there was a period when several sources of stability shifted at the same time—and my old strategies stopped working.

A long-term relationship was ending; at the same time, another important relationship felt suddenly uncertain.

What mattered wasn’t the details—it was the impact.

I found myself in a familiar place:

  • not feeling safe,
  • not feeling secure,
  • bracing for abandonment.

The fear underneath it wasn’t new.

It was fear of abandonment—the belief that closeness is temporary, that stability doesn’t last, and that eventually you’ll be left managing on your own.

For the first time, I couldn’t think my way out of it. I couldn’t independence my way through it, and that’s when I had to face something important:

  • This fear wasn’t irrational.
  • It was learned.

This is where therapy stopped being optional, not to eliminate the fear—but to understand it.

That fear wasn’t weakness. It was adaptation.

Once I stopped treating it as something shameful, something surprising happened.

I stayed with it. and people stayed too. Not everyone, not perfectly, but enough.

They didn’t withdraw when I hesitated. They didn’t punish me for being guarded. They didn’t disappear when things got uncomfortable.

They were consistent and consistency taught my nervous system something it had never learned:

I don’t have to disappear to survive this.

That realization didn’t fix everything, but it gave me a foothold.

The Mirror Shift

In therapy, I learned a metaphor that reframed my relationships: mirrors.

Some people hold small mirrors. They can only see part of you—the part that fits their worldview.

Others hold larger mirrors. They have the capacity to see more of you, including the complicated parts.

Understanding this freed me from chasing belonging where it wasn’t possible—and allowed me to invest where I was actually being seen.

Belonging as Practice

Here’s the idea that changed my life:

Belonging isn’t something you find. It’s something you practice—once safety exists.

Not by performing, not by proving, not by demanding space; but by arriving less guarded, by staying present, by taking up space without apology.

Over time, the room doesn’t grant permission.

It recognizes you.


Belonging Reconsidered

I still have old reflexes. Healing isn’t linear, but I no longer live in survival mode.

I no longer confuse independence with isolation, and I no longer chase belonging where it can’t exist.

The blackout curtain burned down.

What remains is light—sometimes steady, sometimes flickering—but real.

So if you’ve struggled with belonging, I want you to hear this clearly:

Nothing was wrong with you.

If belonging felt impossible, it may not have been absent—it may have been unsafe.

We tell people to “put themselves out there,” to “choose belonging,” without asking a more important question:

Is this space actually safe enough for someone to belong?

So I’ll leave you with this:

Where in your life have you been told to belong—without being made safe?
What would it take—in your relationships, your workplace, your community—to make belonging possible?

I have many wonderful people in my life in both my personal and work life who have seen me and have provided that space, and I’ve seen a generational shift has been amazing.

Learning to live with anxiety

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I live with anxiety.

It’s something that I really didn’t have an understanding of until I considered that I may be living with it, researched it, and the pandemic, plus some brewing personal situations that I needed to resolve was really the impetus for me figuring it out.

I think, when people think about anxiety, they think of the stereotypical suburban housewife in the 80s and earlier, taking Valium, not able to cope with things; which does a real disservice to women and stigmatizes what anxiety is, and how it can be treated.

We’ve come a long way since then and while mental health is still misunderstood, the treatments, compassion and care that exists today versus what I’ve seen friends go through, say, in the 80s is night and day.

NOTE: This blog entry discusses my mental health journey and while aspects here might help you, I am not a mental health expert and I advise you that if any of what I have written resonates with you, do consider speaking with a therapist.

Consider being in a situation that involves someone else where your mind is racing trying to figure out all the angles, possibilities and outcomes of the situation in advance so you’re prepared to get through any variant of the situation – a perpetual what if machine.

You’re nervous about saying the right thing in the right way because it’s super important to you, you have often been misunderstood in life, so you want to make sure you’re heard and understood. It consumes you and takes up valuable cycles you could be using to focus on other things in your life.

You become irritable, emotional – you want to do the right thing- you want to do the right thing for yourself, you also want to be considerate and do the right thing for the person you need to talk with and open up to, but you can’t because you’re trying to find the perfect way to meet your needs, their needs, to be sensitive to the other person and true to yourself.

You agonize over it.
You beat yourself up.

At least, in how anxiety has been showing up for me, this has been a common scenario. I recognize that anxiety shows up in a multitude of different ways for different people. Overcoming and learning to live with anxiety is a unique journey for everyone.

There are a few approaches I figured out for myself that seemed to work

  • I write it out as it helps to get out of your head – a theme – and allows me to collect and organize thoughts. I can spin so hard, its very hard to keep thoughts organized.
  • I talk to others to get out of my head – starting to see a theme? Mainly because I have the sense to say, “I need help!”. I know I’m stuck inside, and need to check in with someone else who is outside the situation to get a reality check, to be challenged and ultimately to help stop that spinning so I could do what I needed to do – which was to talk the person I really needed to.
  • In some situations I’m able to talk directly to the person, which really is how it should be, but it’s not as smooth as it really should be, and even in those moments, when talking things out, my head can be spinning hard.

That spinning is not kind, it will pull in other baggage, and it’s very hard to dig out. I knew that if I talked directly to the person involved about the situation I’m spinning about, it’s not going to be pretty. At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

In all honesty, no matter how weird or meandering or even ugly the path to the resolution to the situation you’re in is, dealing with it straight up is actually better. The people that can and do see past your baggage will be the ones that will help you figure things out and support you in seeing through your anxiety and triggers.

The character of Anxiety in Inside Out 2, a recent movie from Disney-Pixar, anthropomorphizes a great representation of anxiety. I really feel that if I had this story growing up, it may have given me some good food for thought or at least planted a seed where I could have realized earlier what was happening and lessened the impact on my life.

I’m not going to talk here about how I was able to connect the dots that lead to me learning how to mitigate my anxiety as it did involve some unconventional methods. The parts I will talk about are

  • it did involve looking at situations that were triggering me. At the time I was dealing with triggers constantly going off from multiple sources – I am surprised I kept it together. For me, this was typically the starting point for where anxiety starts for a given situation.
  • I had the sense to take the time to understand why I was triggered – what in my past is trying to inform me that I’m in some form of “danger zone”? This part of my looking inward journey was huge and I had to build courage to go there and face my interpretation of the past, and heal from it. I had to go back and deal with my past.
  • I spent time with my therapist to talk through what I was seeing and experiencing.
  • Most importantly, I have some amazing family around me who gave me:
    • a safe space for me to be able to deal with whatever I was dealing with in real time as things came up,
    • while they called me on my shit, it was clear they had my back and loved me and stood for me being a better Iain, and they were invested in being part of my life just as I wanted them in my life,
    • the space to make mistakes and learn from them,
    • reminders that I was worthy of that support and love,
    • a voice, that would be listened to, where I felt heard, and people took the time to understand me and what I was dealing with,
    • where I could get reassurance and learn to trust that reassurance,
    • where I could express emotion and not feel locked up, that i was wrong for just feeling and expressing that emotion – that my emotions are real and valid,
    • challenged me in a good thought provoking way – during that whole period I was constantly hearing “Get out of your head, Iain”,
    • giving me the love and respect that I really needed to get through such a weird space that I happened to get into, that I needed to dig out of.

While only I could do the work, having that support network was what I really needed to sort myself out. Definitely a gift the universe has given me.

Today, I can say my mind is the quietest it has ever been, ever. I cringe thinking about the times it lead to awkward and explosive situations. I’m not comfortable with it, and all I can do is accept that it happened and where required clean it up. learn from it and be a better person.

Anxiety has shaped my life for an incredibly long time. I can go back to my childhood where it started. I have no idea if it’s something that I’m predispositioned towards or a learned behaviour – I suspect a combination of both.

I certainly recognize what I went through, and the situations that made me a pro at the spin and keeping things to myself. My strong independent streak because I couldn’t rely on or didn’t even have the support I should have had when I was younger, and keeping things to myself as a result, among other things, all this adds up, and I am not surprised at how this turned out. It was a perfect storm.

I am proud of the man I’ve become, I’m proud of the hard work I’ve done on myself to be a better human. The true me has always been upbeat, personable, hardworking, someone who wants to do the right thing, make the world a better place and an introvert-leaning ambivert willing to look inwards,

The people that matter, I know, are also proud of me. I would not be where I am without them.

40 Years of Computers

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This month I celebrate 40 years since I was given my first computer – A Timex Sinclair 1000. I’ve talked about and reminisced about this time period often.

The fishbowl PC next to my first computer, a Timex Sinclair 1000

Mum finally agreed to get a computer, so off we went to Consumers Distributing in Mississauga on Dundas St, after piano lessons. It was between a Timex Sinclair 1000 or a Texas Instruments TI99/4a – both being on sale. As history would have it, we bough the Timex Sinclair 1000 for CA$69.99 in 1983 – Today apparently that’s $211.77 adjusted for inflation!

That was a huge purchase back in the day, and it had a massive impact on my life.

Two months later, my Dad bought us a Commodore 64 for Christmas at a Zellers in Guelph complete with a Vic Desk, Monitor and disk drive! It was an amazing setup!

With my parents divorced, we had to keep the Sinclair a secret from Dad out of the irrational fear that he would not buy us the Commodore.

I’m so glad and very fortunate my parents invested in my future though both systems. It’s let me appreciate generations of computers from an early age. I used both a fair but, and we expanded the Sinclair with the thermal printer and a 16k RAM pack so we could play Frogger in black and white. 10 minutes to load from a tape deck!

In 1987, an acquaintance from school gave me his TS/1000 and a bunch of tapes. Both still are here with me, as are the tapes and a tape deck.

The impact of having a computer in my life did several things

  • It very much inspired my career – There were several things I wanted to do between becoming a high school Computer Science teacher, to being a software developer that travelled. I ended up doing the latter between software development, being a consultant, management and architecture.
  • It became a major hobby – between maximizing my home network, my retrogaming projects and other things, it opened up a whole new world to me, one that I wanted to play a part in.
  • It helped drive friendships and connection – Nothing like trading games to create community back then. L33t! 😉

My history of computing goes something like this

  • Timex Sinclair 1000
  • Commodore 64
  • Commodore Amiga 500 – I saved up for this all summer, the graphics were amazing
  • AST 486SX Laptop – Which sadly died two years after I bought it, not having used it for a year while I was living the UK
  • Commodore Amiga 3000 – This was given to me by a former work colleague and landlord. I took it with me to the UK and used it to emulate a Mac to complete my assignments
  • Compaq Presario 4528 – This was my first desktop Intel machine – Pentium II power with MMX! I used this to finish my degree
  • PC I had built – I’ve completely forgotten what the specs were for this machine
  • Lenovo T-Series laptop
  • Apple PowerMac G4 Desktop
  • At this point I got indoctrinated into Apple with various Mac laptops – G3, G4, MacBooks, MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, an Intel-based iMac & MacMinis, and currently with an M1 Mac Mini, and a MacBook Pro
  • Various Raspberry Pi Model 3Bs, 4s, 400s, 3As
  • Minisforum HX90 – My first desktop PC since around 2003 which I was going to use for my arcade project but ended up not doing so
  • Beeline SER5 – I’m using this on my Pinball Machine to drive Pinball FX
  • Alienware M15 – AMD Rizen 9 7845 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070
  • And finally, to celebrate my 40th year of computing, I finally built my own PC with my friend Charles with an AMD Rizen 9 7950X3D and an AMD RX 7900 XTX which is all decked out with LCDs and LED lighting

If I were to include game machines:

  • Commodore Amiga CDTV – Do we really consider this a game machine? LOL
  • Commodore Amiga CD32
  • Nintendo Gameboy Colour
  • Nintendo Gamecube
  • Nintendo Gameboy Advance SP
  • Nintendo 3DS
  • Nintendo Wii
  • Sony Playstation 3
  • Xbox 360
  • Sony Playstation 4
  • Xbox One
  • Sony PlayStation 4 Pro
  • Xbox Series X
  • Playstation 5

Which gives me pause for thought.

Put my Timex Sinclair 1000 next to my new desktop PC – As a kid, I could not fathom having a computer that could generate the images that we now see in 4K on our computer monitors. My friends and I thought it was going to be an impossible task to emulate an Amiga, yet, today we have small credit-card sized computers that can emulate such a machine many times faster, with a huge amount of ram and storage space, relatively speaking.

At that time in the 80s, I’m not sure we could envision what we have today, even in the 90s. I think, by the 2000s you could see where things were going so the surprises are becoming fewer and fewer.

How many Cray XMPs are on my desktop? 800 MFLOPs versus 563 GFLOP (563000 MFLOPS) – 703 times the processing power!

We’ve come a long way from having to cool super computers the way we did in the 80s to what we have today.

The power of my new desktop, even my laptop, is completely insane!

I do believe one of my Timex Sinclair 1000s still works, the other would need to reconnect the keyboard properly and fix one of the membrane keys. The other challenge is having a TV with an analogue antenna port, which I do have, so I have ways of connecting the computer up to a TV.

Frogger for the Sinclair ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000 being run off my Raspberry Pi arcade console

This is one of the reasons I believe in retro gaming archives and emulation, so people can experience what it was like using some of these more “primitive” machines which are so important to computing history, inspiring people and getting computers into the home.

I won’t lie that I miss the discussions we would have on the merits of different platforms, specifications, what computer the future should pick but that business had blinders on focusing on Intel 80X86 systems rather than the superior Motorola 680X0 series, what the future should be. We were all idealists back then, and we did have some foresight.

Thing is, that discussion became – Xbox versus Playstation, AMD versus Intel, Windows versus macOS. Where it used to be considerably broader, it always seemed to become two against each other – Commodore versus Atari back in the day.

DOS and Windows did become way more refined like Amiga Workbench and Apple macOS. Platforms are a lot more open. For example could you imagine the Windows Subsystem for Linux to run Linux oriented software on Windows? macOS being built on BSD? I couldn’t have either.

So what is there to get excited about these days, especially given 40 years of system versus system battles? Here is what I’m interested in:

  • Miniturization – The fact that a Raspberry Pi running an ARM core can emulate so many machines is, in many respects, mind-blowing. Just how powerful that platform is.
  • Efficiency – While my “Fishbowl” is one of the fastest setups you can buy, speed isn’t necessarily everything to me. Doing what I can with efficiency is really neat, which goes hand in hand with miniaturization. Doing all that I can to maximize use of the system. For example, I have a Raspberry Pi server in my home running multiple applications on a single machine – I’m not using an x86-based system for this.
  • What’s going on with other platforms? – I like learning and seeing what’s going on in the macOS, Linux and Windows worlds, especially with being away from the Windows world for over 20 years.

There are other things too, but those are the top three.

It’s been an incredible journey of 40 years.

Setting up an APC UPS, Synology and NUT

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I figured I’d document setting up an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with a Synology NAS that can also shutdown a Mac and two Raspberry Pis that drive certain aspects of my home network.

I am using NUT as clients on the Raspberry Pi and macOS computers that connects to my Synology NAS with an APC UPS connected.

Synology NAS Setup

For the Synology, follow Synology’s instructions to enable UPS support in DSM with the following exceptions:

  • Enable the Network UPS server
  • Put in the IP addresses of the computers you want to send shutdown messages to. While it says, “Permitted Synology NAS Devices”, you can use Network UPS Tools (NUT) clients in both macOS and Raspberry Pi OS to monitor
  • You do need to give those clientsand your NAS static IP addresses, which they have on my network

Raspberry Pi Setup

Setting up the client on Raspberry Pi is pretty straight forward. The link provided covers setting up as both server and client if you ever wanted to use a Raspberry Pi as a server.

For the purposes of my setup, I’m going to recommend letting the NAS be the server in this case.

Make sure you pay attention to upssched-cmd

macOS Setup

macOS is a bit trickier.

  • If you don’t have Mac Ports installed, install it
  • I followed these instructions to install NUT with the exception of
  • Making sure I used the MONITOR, NOTIFYMSG, NOTIFYFLAG details from the Raspberry Pi Setup
    • I used nano instead of emacs
  • I then follow the configuration files as described in the Raspberry Pi setup with the changes in the Mac instructions in this section