Viewing: Notes » Roots. Flowers.
Roots. Flowers.
(17 minute read.)
Dispatch from the deep.
The philosophy.
The Ethos section is the heart of the site, and it's rich and consistent throughout. Commercial culture leans toward Peters, Jobs, Ogilvy, Godin, Branson—with a core belief that business doesn't have to be impersonal, dull, or unethical, and that great enterprise is built on integrity, intelligence, and energy. [link]
Fees have long operated on a 'pay what you consider appropriate' basis. He has proactively waived fees where appropriate, received more than expected and returned the surplus. The same pricing philosophy is carried into his venture projects—always lower than it could be, with 'pay what you can afford' where appropriate. [link]
On authenticity: entirely disinterested in deals where someone has to be persuaded and sold. The ideal is 'turn up, tell the truth, smile'. With no element of 'I want you to want me,' he genuinely doesn't care whether someone reading wants to buy or not. [link]
The Gonzo page—a self-described unapologetically harsh rant—calls conventional business-as-usual about as appealing as driving a rusty nail through his nose, and makes a simple case: explore the unconventional, get comfortable with the weird and alarming, leave outdated norms in the dust. [link]
Elsewhere there's a deep respect for work done right—meticulous, informed, diligent—as a counter to the empty mediocrity that dominates much of commerce. [link]
What's happening now.
The current plan: building a small publisher—text and audio, books and websites—across business, personal development, and societal topics, with technology and outsourcing keeping costs lean, initially literally solo. [link]
The trading identity is wordshifters. Digital only. AI-assisted, human-directed. Content published as websites, books, podcasts. With a degree of unconventionality in presentation—satire, humour, fictional characters with specific personalities as credited authors. [link]
The philosophical position on AI authorship is argued carefully and without apology—via eight parallel arguments including the ghostwriter parallel, the session musician parallel, and the Henry Miller argument that if the machine can write, the human is freed to live. The conclusion: 'author as producer/director'. He produces and directs. He never claims to be the author of what he publishes. [link]
That position is then demonstrated through three AI-written essays in the voices of Miller, Hemingway, and Hunter Thompson—all genuinely good, all making the argument in character rather than just stating it.
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