What is The Human Ingenuity Feed?

Welcome! That you clicked the “About” page is a good first step - always look for more information than first meets the eye.

The Human Ingenuity Feed is a space for analysis and discussion on what matters to humanity - or at least, my idea of what matters. These can range from anything related to consumer technologies, science, culture, art, or philosophy. But more broadly, I like to look at things happening today - or yesterday - that might impact our tomorrows. And as Orwell showed us in 1984, some things that may hamper human ingenuity can come from the least-expected places.

The Human Ingenuity Feed also happens to be the center of my creative output as a human being. It’s organized around my interests and the areas where I feel I might have something of value to give away - to write away. It’s also a free-email, yet subscriber-supported evergreen Newsletter /Blogging publication. with a number of Sister Sections around different areas of creativity that you can separately subscribe to (but which are all available only through The Human Ingenuity Feed).

Being a newsletter, it’s also a publication that respects your time (and mine): it’s in your mailbox. You can return to it anytime. It’s not going anywhere unless you will it so. In a month, or in a year, you could finally decide to read it. It’s content that doesn’t scream at you, and I at least value that for myself. And these emails, this content, won’t lose its value - it’s writing and photography and inner and outer explorations.

Here’s a break-down of The Human Ingenuity Feed and the Substack Sections it’s built around:

Main Publication: The Human Ingenuity Feed (Tech & Science; Non-Fiction; Journalistic; Speculative; Investigative; Preferred communications channel)

Sister Section: Vicarious Visions (Creative Writing; Fiction; Poetry)

Sister Section: Road Less Traveled (Photography; Travel Writing; Documentary; Fiction; Non-Fiction)

Sister Section: The Foam of the Universe (Anything and everything; at times self-exploratory)

Sister Section: Saudade (Slowly collecting my writings in Portuguese)

Sister Section: Ingenuity (Centralizing completed projects under a single section)

Sister Section: Reader Letters (Attributed thoughts and essays hosted free-to-access within The Human Ingenuity Feed)

When and if you subscribe, you will start receiving updates in your email inbox.

These email updates are important: they’ll allow you to build your own database of what is shared within The Human Ingenuity Feed. All of my publications are at default free for everyone: receive the email, and you can stash it away.

Why Should You Care?

In whatever spare time I manage to slip through the cracks of life, I am and independent tech-commenter and journalist, and find other comforts in being a creative storyteller within both written and visual form. And because telling you is worth less than showing you, here’s what you could call my humanity card. That and the contents of The Human Ingenuity Feed is all the evidence I have.

In the end, I just like to think. I like to update my internal understanding of the external world. This Substack newsletter and its sister publications are simply how I share that - be it through written or visual form. I’m trying to understand the world I find myself alive in; the world we all find ourselves in, in one way or another. This is my howl at the inevitable end that will inevitably come for us all.

This the way I rage against the dying of the light.

Maybe what I have to write and say, what I think, and the process I do it through helps you update your own knowledge bank.

In writing non-fiction, I will strive to write articles/newsletters/blog posts with the Quality you might expect from Wired, Quanta Magazine, The Information, The Conversation, Aeon Magazine, Big Think, and Tom’s Hardware, among others.

As to my writing fiction, you’ll have to see for yourself. There’s no other way to appreciate writing other than experiencing it, right?

Hopefully you can take me out of my own echo-chamber by arguing with what are essentially my written thoughts and creative endeavours. Knowledge is much better shared, but it’s even better when it’s vetted in peer-review.

We see much more of reality together than we do alone.

The Human Ingenuity Feed is meant to become an evergreen, living publication. This means that most (but not all) articles in the Archive will eventually be locked, with only paid subscribers keeping access to them (besides the access you have to their e-mail form, which is freely distributed). And because I reserve myself the right to edit and build upon whatever articles I write here, the Archives will be constantly changing as I update my register of the world. As I try and draw patterns from its edges.

In a sense, The Human Ingenuity Feed will also become an evergreen blog. I expect any published articles to be around 80-90% static. But as our understanding of the world improves, new science is made, and our small collection of understood patterns increases, I expect to be revisiting certain articles while further developing them, updating their Quality as I can.

You can show me your support by becoming a paid subscriber: doing so will unlock access to our Archives, and those additional 10-20% updates within them. Ingenuity too is a section that will only be available to supporters. It’s where I’ll list and give access to completed projects - online versions of them, at the very least.

Additionally, I’ll be working into some free physical bits and pieces for supporters, but that plan is still in motion as we settle onto these shores. This is all a part of The Human Ingenuity Feed’s Critical Update to v2.0, explored in a bit more depth here.

Your support merely increases the chance of me finding time to create more often - among everything else our lives throw at us.

On that note, feel free to contact me1 for any sort of collaboration. I’d be proud to host your attributed content - your own perspective of the world - here. Reader Letters, a permanently-free section on The Human Ingenuity Feed, will host all outside contributions and keep the comments free for any discussion on their value.

I do hope you enjoy your stay. I, for one, love to learn. And this is the playground where I do it the most freely. I’m happy here.

Keep being curious, keep thinking - and most of all, keep being human.

Best,

Francisco

The Human Ingenuity Feed is a multi-part newsletter featuring short (or not so short) essays as well as fiction and non-fiction explorations into things and subjects that matter to humanity (and could matter to you). It’s also a hub for any and all of my creative output - those howls against that good night. Written by Francisco Alexandre Pires.

If you think someone you know might take value from what we do here, feel free to share this publication.

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The Human Ingenuity Feed by Francisco Alexandre Pires is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.