Long-form notes on systems, software, and things worth measuring.https://bas.dev/https://bas.dev/blog/the-lever/https://bas.dev/blog/the-lever/Interventions in complex systems often invert themselves. From colonial rat bounties to industrial quotas, the cobra effect demonstrates why incentives reorganize behavior in unexpected ways.Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://bas.dev/blog/when-formulas-freeze/https://bas.dev/blog/when-formulas-freeze/Complexity theory meets statistical physics. Analyzing the sharp phase transitions where Boolean satisfiability problems transform from trivial to exponential.Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://bas.dev/blog/mordor-zettelkasten/https://bas.dev/blog/mordor-zettelkasten/I had a thousand bookmarks and zero ideas. This is the long story of how I tore the whole thing down, named the new system Mordor, and started writing notes that actually argue with me.Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://bas.dev/blog/mass-mirror/https://bas.dev/blog/mass-mirror/A deep dive into the lineage of crowd psychology—from Le Bon's warnings to Bernays' manuals—and the danger of the exempted vantage point.Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://bas.dev/blog/the-lying-layer/https://bas.dev/blog/the-lying-layer/Every layer of abstraction in a modern computer is a useful fiction. Learning to see through these fictions separates code writing from system understanding.Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT