December 2025, in books and thoughts
What I read, what I wrote, and where my mind wandered
Psst, quietly sliding this across the table: I've been brewing a new project, and I think you're going to love it. More details at the end of this letter.
Wherever you are, I wish you Merry Christmas and Happy 2026!
This month, I started reading ancient Greek literature, especially the tragedies about fate and free will. In Sophocles’s works, characters face moments where they must choose between accepting their destiny or following their own moral values. And their choices leads to their own destruction.
What seems predetermined vs. what we choose for ourselves — that’s this month’s theme!
What I read, wrote, and thought
1. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
Essay exploring fate, free will, certainty, and prophecies. I was fascinated by how knowledge (certainty about the future) itself becomes a kind of fate. Prophecies aren’t just predictions, but they’re images of our fears and desires. When we try hard to understand what’s coming, that search itself can lead us straight to the thing we were trying to avoid.
2. Antigone by Sophocles
Essay about moral courage. At the heart of Antigone, the tragedy is about divine vs. human law. Sticking to what you believe is right, even when it costs you everything, shows the best of human character. But do we? Strong beliefs can feel pure and right when they’re your own, but can look stubborn and inflexible to others.
3. Musings: On consciousness
I try to understand consciousness the way I understand engineering problems. But in engineering, you must clearly define the problem before you can solve it. Consciousness doesn’t stay still long enough for that. The mind is both the tool we use to study consciousness and the thing we’re studying. Unfortunately we can’t step outside it to look at it objectively.
4. Musings: On atomic priesthood
I start with the “Golem of Prague,” an old Jewish myth. But I’m really thinking about what happens when we create something we can’t control anymore. Nuclear waste is like a modern golem and will be dangerous for thousands of years, long after we are gone. The idea of “atomic priesthood”: one day, we stop relying on instructions and start relying on myth and fear to keep danger sealed and hidden.
What’s coming next!
The Iliad by Homer
I’m starting a new series called “The Iliad Dispatches” — Homer’s Iliad treated like a TV series (kind of), as if I’m watching the war unfold in real time.
Each post is an “episode” that tracks what the poem does to the mind when I stay with it. Think less “what happened” and more “a war brief” — listen to the people inside it, what they think they’re doing, and what they want next.
Know more here…
The series begins with a short pilot (prequel) season: S0 — Gods Plot, Mortals Inherit, because epic drops you into the middle of a mortal war and assumes you already know the backstory (divine battle).
Thank you for being here and reading alongside me!
Yours in thought,
Yana