Ari Zerner's Demesne

Say “hivemind”, and people shudder at the notion.

I wrote this draft a while ago, and demurred on publishing.

Wrapping Up My SlutCon Experiment prompted a lot of discussion among my friends!

A friend of mine texted me to say they feared that my reputation was getting “kinda bad”, and wanted to help me salvage it.

This post is an experiment in writing collaboratively with Claude.

Age 24.

It’s Thanksgiving week, and I’m in Texas with my family.

The astute reader may have noticed that I’m substantially behind on my Halfhaven commitment.

Nangs, for those who don’t know, is an Australian term for nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas or whippits.

I want to share a fun party game!

I don’t think I’ll sustain a daily cadence of writing about the CFAR workshop, unfortunately.

Hello readers!

I’m behind on Halfhaven and I want to get a post out today, so I am once again just gonna jot down some thoughts as they occur to me.

So, it’s been a weird week.

I grieved recently.

On the first night of SlutCon, brimming with energy, I wrote up some vignettes from the first day.

Some stories from my first day of SlutCon.

Take a moment to think of something beautiful to you.

Bleh, I really don’t feel like writing, but I didn’t write yesterday, and the commitment for Halfhaven is a post every other day.

Index of posts for Halfhaven Treading Water, Oct 1 Introducing Halfhaven, Oct 3 Some Nonsense For My Third Halfhaven Post, Oct 5 You Are Good, Oct 8 SlutCon Vignettes: Day 1, Oct 11 More About Slutcon, Oct 16 Good Grief, Oct 20 Letter To My Past, Oct 23 F…

I signed up for a membership at my local YMCA a couple days ago, inspired by this post.

The world has a shortage of people doing things.

I’ve been struggling to figure out how to make money lately.

I thought I hated mushrooms, but yours are making me reconsider. – My brother Mushrooms are one of my favorite ingredients to cook with, bringing rich umami flavor and a delightfully meaty texture to dishes.

I want to share some communication advice my dad gave me recently.

This is a guest post by my friend Cynthia.

It’s halfway through Quiethaven at LessOnline, an hour where conversation is forbidden to encourage writing.

I brewed a Historic deck recently that I call Ritual of Change.

Edit 2025-06-16: When I wrote this post, I was still only considering work in software engineering, where I have professional experience.

I have become increasingly convinced that you, dear reader, will never actually die.

Inspired by some other blogs I like, I decided I wanted to add hovering previews to the footnotes on my own site1.

I’ve been intrigued by the world of quantitative trading for many years, so when ex-Jane Street trader Ricki Heicklen ran a trading bootcamp at Manifest recently, I jumped at the opportunity!

I’ve been making fried rice for several years, and it’s gotten a lot better since I started.

In my life, I have spent three years working full-time as a software engineer.