Posts from 2025

Page 1 | 90 posts

All essays and updates published in 2025.

Valeon wordmark with an abstract tree-and-moon motif in forest greens, representing the rebrand and the shift to a broader, community-driven publication.

Valeon: A New Name, A Larger We

The Contemplative Path is now Valeon—a rebrand aligned with strength, clarity, and long-horizon, systems-level thinking. We’re opening submissions, rolling out improved author profile pages, and continuing to ship reader- and contributor-friendly improvements across the stack.

3 min read
Contained flame inside a dark crucible—an image of descent, pressure, and integration in a Jungian frame.

Through the Crucible: Jung’s Dark Night of the Soul

A Jungian guide to the “dark night of the soul” as a mental crucible where shadow returns, projections withdraw, and the Self presses for a larger life. We trace the alchemical arc (nigredo → albedo → rubedo) and offer practical vessels—active imagination, dreamwork, somatic anchors, boundaries, and when to seek clinical help.

Abstract toolkit of a modern publishing stack—Astro, Vercel, audio waveform, printer sheet, and open notebook—symbolizing faster builds, audio for every post, and cleaner print layouts.

A New Beginning—with Speed Bumps

A quick tour of recent upgrades: Vercel-powered builds, end-to-end image optimization, clean print styles, a Buttondown newsletter, an OpenDyslexic reading option, saner taxonomies, an Obsidian+Git authoring flow, open-sourced Markdown posts, and a new OpenAI-TTS audio pipeline with podcast RSS.

4 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Trading Big Bags: "Liquidity, Leverage, and the Architecture of Risk."

Trading Big Bags: Liquidity, Leverage, and the Architecture of Risk

Capital size should dictate strategy. What works for a $1,000 trader becomes reckless at $10M. The recent $17M loss on Hyperliquid shows how fragile structures — high leverage, linear contracts, and concentration — turn conviction into catastrophe. This essay breaks down why efficiency, not ego, defines survivability, and how inverse contracts, venue distribution, and leverage discipline transform outcomes.

10 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled EVs and the Air We Breathe: From Catalytic Converters to Clean Streets.

EVs and the Air We Breathe: From Catalytic Converters to Clean Streets

EVs are often criticised for their manufacturing footprint, but this misses the crucial point: they have no tailpipes. In cities like London, where millions of ICE cars exhale poison daily, EVs clear the air we actually breathe. They shift emissions upstream to a few factories and power plants—sites that can be regulated and cleaned far more easily than millions of exhaust pipes. Like catalytic converters before them, EVs are not perfect, but they are a vital step in reclaiming breathable cities.

7 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Inheritance of Shadows: Epigenetics, Trauma, and the Choice of Renewal.

The Inheritance of Shadows: Epigenetics, Trauma, and the Choice of Renewal

Epigenetics shows that we inherit more than DNA—we carry the echoes of our ancestors’ trauma, hunger, and resilience written into our biology. These epigenetic marks, passed across two to three generations, shape health, weight, stress, and even how we respond to the world. Yet awareness gives us agency: by confronting what we carry, we can choose healing and create a legacy of renewal for those who come after us.

15 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Distance Between Events.

The Distance Between Events

If time is not a river or a dimension but only the distance between events, what then becomes of us? Is a life measured by years, or by the density of change it contains? This essay traces the haunting question of time—not to answer it, but to wander through its puzzles: the minus sign in the line element, the ghost of dt, antimatter’s supposed reversal, and the possibility of a physics without clocks. Time appears less as something we move through and more as something we ourselves measure—a spacing of events that refuses ever to be final.

13 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Stain on the Shirt: Perception, Passivity, and the Weight of Goodness.

The Stain on the Shirt: Perception, Passivity, and the Weight of Goodness

Evil does not overwhelm the world, yet a single act of cruelty can feel larger than life—like a stain on a white shirt. Goodness is the quiet backdrop of daily life, but it gains meaning only when it resists. This essay explores the dichotomy of good and evil, the silence of the good, and the weight of responsibility that makes moral choice luminous.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Necessity of Bear Markets: Creative Destruction and the Discipline of Cycles.

The Necessity of Bear Markets: Creative Destruction and the Discipline of Cycles

Bear markets and recessions are not failures of the system but essential corrections that restore discipline, clear away excess, and redirect capital toward true innovation. While modern policy seeks to avoid downturns at all costs, history shows that renewal and long-term opportunity often emerge from collapse. From the dot-com bust to the COVID-19 recession, it is in the ashes of contraction that the seeds of future growth are sown.

11 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Much Ado About Laundering.

Much Ado About Laundering

Wars are not only fought on battlefields but in balance sheets. From Lockheed Martin’s rising stock to British Gas’s soaring profits and offshore billions siphoned by corrupt aides, conflict becomes the perfect laundromat—where fear, scarcity, and blood are spun into profit. This essay exposes how war launders money, legitimacy, and power in plain sight.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Illusion of Rigour.

The Illusion of Rigour

We trust science, law, and society for their apparent rigour — but beneath the surface lie hidden assumptions and convenient fictions mistaken for certainty. This essay explores how social apriories shape our systems of knowledge, from physics and medicine to the courtroom, revealing that what feels like stone is often only scaffolding. The task is not to discard these illusions, but to see through them with humility and discernment.

8 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Traffic Blocks, Self-Driving Cars, and the Case for Road Beacons.

Traffic Blocks, Self-Driving Cars, and the Case for Road Beacons

Traffic is not random—it is the product of inflow and outflow. When more cars enter a road segment than leave it, congestion forms. What lingers, however, is not just the incident itself but the slow, staggered release of human reaction. This essay explores how self-driving cars can shorten those tails, and how a new layer of road infrastructure—information beacons broadcasting simple, low-latency truths—could transform traffic from reaction into cooperation.

10 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled How Many Trees Make a Forest? Truth, Relativity, and the Blurred Lines of Perception.

How Many Trees Make a Forest? Truth, Relativity, and the Blurred Lines of Perception

How many trees make a forest? This essay explores the blurred lines between subjectivity and objectivity, the relativity of perception, and the thresholds created by language. From forests to fairness, poverty to truth, we uncover how meaning emerges not in absolutes, but in the gradients and relationships that shape our shared reality.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Shadow Universe: Antimatter, Time, and the Mystery of Symmetry.

The Shadow Universe: Antimatter, Time, and the Mystery of Symmetry

Why does our universe exist in matter, when physics tells us it should have been born in perfect balance with antimatter? From CPT symmetry to Feynman’s vision of particles moving backward in time, from Penrose’s maps of spacetime to Hawking’s idea of imaginary time, the mystery deepens. This essay explores a radical possibility: that antimatter was never lost, but displaced into a shadow universe, unfolding along a different rhythm of time. Could this hidden twin still whisper across the folds of spacetime — perhaps even reaching from tomorrow into today?

14 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Market's Blindfold: Understanding Dark Pools, Hidden Venues, and Information Asymmetry.

The Market’s Blindfold: Understanding Dark Pools, Hidden Venues, and Information Asymmetry

The Understanding Market Mechanics series closes with the blindfold — the final veil that hides as much as it reveals. Markets are not neutral or transparent, but choreographed theatres of asymmetry where most begin at a disadvantage by design. This is not a guide to profit, but an invitation to awareness, humility, and the imagining of something fairer than the game we have inherited.

15 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Hidden Hand of the Market: Understanding Market Makers and Inventory Risk.

The Hidden Hand of the Market: Understanding Market Makers and Inventory Risk

Market makers are often described as neutral referees — silent guardians of liquidity. But neutrality is an illusion. This essay explores spreads, inventory balancing, OTC desks, adverse selection, and hedging to show how dealers shape price through vested interest. To see the hidden hand is the first step in no longer being led by it.

12 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Script and the Rhythm: Understanding Wyckoff Mechanics and Elliott Waves.

The Script and the Rhythm: Understanding Wyckoff Mechanics and Elliott Waves

In markets, cycles are not random—they are patterned expansions and contractions shaped by accumulation, distribution, and the relentless hunt for liquidity. By weaving Wyckoff mechanics with Elliott Wave theory, we can begin to see markets not as chaos but as choreography: waves rising, breaking, and receding with purpose. Yet volume is the compass, and in unregulated arenas like crypto, where wash trading distorts the signal, discernment becomes survival.

10 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Depths of the Market: Understanding Liquidity and the Order Book.

The Depths of the Market: Understanding Liquidity and the Order Book

In this third entry of the Understanding Market Mechanics series, we move beneath the surface of charts and candles into the bloodstream of the market itself: liquidity. From stop runs and iceberg orders to liquidity pockets, fair value gaps, price discovery, and reversion to the mean, this post explores how liquidity shapes every move. The market is not random—it is choreographed. Learn to read the current, and price stops looking like noise and starts speaking as a language.

10 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Invisible Balance: Understanding Pareto Efficiency, Markets, and the Zero-Sum Game.

The Invisible Balance: Understanding Pareto Efficiency, Markets, and the Zero-Sum Game

In markets, the 80/20 rule is more than a cliché—it’s the operating system. Pareto efficiency ensures that once an edge becomes visible, it disappears. The zero-sum nature of trading means every gain is another’s loss. To survive, it’s not enough to know the truth—you must anticipate what others will believe next, and act before they do.

9 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Long Shadow of Markets: Understanding the Secondary Market Effect and Arbitrage.

The Long Shadow of Markets: Understanding the Secondary Market Effect and Arbitrage

Prices can change in seconds, but consequences can take decades to arrive. The secondary market effect and arbitrage reveal why — and how short-term gains often mask long-term costs. From high-frequency trading to global politics, understanding these concepts helps us see beyond the present into the slow, unfolding arc of cause and consequence.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Three Vessels for a Working Life.

Three Vessels for a Working Life

Most people are taught to work for money, but not to make it work for them. For new investors with modest means, building wealth is less about chasing quick wins and more about choosing the right tools — and avoiding their traps. This guide explores three key “vessels” for your financial journey: the mutual fund, the money market fund, and the index fund, including the “always up” nature of indices like the S&P 500, and how to use them wisely for long-term growth.

5 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Shepherd and The Sheeple.

The Shepherd and The Sheeple

From the outside, American democracy looks less like a system of the people and more like a well-staged illusion. With Trump back in office and the machinery of power unchanged, the illusion of choice is fading. This piece explores the decline—not just of politics, but of belief itself.

7 min read
Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Where the Masks Slip: On Solitude, Autism, and the Discomfort of Discrepancy.

Where the Masks Slip: On Solitude, Autism, and the Discomfort of Discrepancy

In a world that rewards contradiction and curated personas, those of us who seek coherence between thought, word, and action often find ourselves alone. This reflection explores the tension between autism, honesty, and the quiet refuge of solitude—where truth is not just valued, but necessary for peace.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Next Frontier: Why Generational Wealth Will Be Forged in Africa.

The Next Frontier: Why Generational Wealth Will Be Forged in Africa

Africa is not the next frontier — it’s the current one. As global power shifts and traditional markets plateau, the key to generational wealth lies in Africa’s untapped potential. From logistics and agriculture to mineral extraction and industrial production, the continent is poised to become the core of a new global economy.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Canyon Between Ideals and Reality: Manmade Morality, Ethics, and the Machinery of Order.

The Canyon Between Ideals and Reality: Manmade Morality, Ethics, and the Machinery of Order

There is a vast and often invisible canyon between the ethical ideals we claim to uphold and the lived reality of power, law, and social order. This post explores how our morals, ethics, and legal systems are not eternal truths, but manmade constructions—malleable, political, and often weaponized. To live ethically in a world built on contradictions requires more than belief; it demands confrontation, courage, and the refusal to look away.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The World in Motion: Living in a Landscape of Probabilities.

The World in Motion: Living in a Landscape of Probabilities

We live in a world not of certainties, but of probabilities — a world where every choice opens a branching path of possible futures. This post explores how seeing life as a dynamic, statistical landscape reshapes how we understand the present, imagine the future, and navigate the delicate balance between action and surrender in a fragile, unpredictable world.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Exit Liquidity: The Illusion of Homeownership in the West.

Exit Liquidity: The Illusion of Homeownership in the West

For decades, homeownership has been sold as the ultimate symbol of success — but behind the glossy promises, today’s housing market reveals a harsher truth. As prices soar and wages stagnate, the last wave of buyers is being lured into a cycle where risk is quietly handed down from early winners. This is the age of exit liquidity — and the illusion of homeownership is its most seductive trap.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Strip-Mining the Empire: The Last Phase of American Capital.

Strip-Mining the Empire: The Last Phase of American Capital

The content describes the quiet decline of American empire characterized by exhaustion and extraction rather than growth. As ruling elites profit from this decay, they strategically prepare for a post-collapse world. The average citizen remains marginalized, facing a future uncertain, grappling with divisions and distractions while empires unravel.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Sweller Load: Rethinking Human Learning Efficiency in the Age of AI.

The Sweller Load: Rethinking Human Learning Efficiency in the Age of AI

Cognitive Load Theory changed how we understand learning — but what if we could push it even further? Introducing the “Sweller Load,” a new framework for dynamically optimizing how information is delivered, using AI to match and expand human cognitive bandwidth. This could reshape the future of learning, thinking, and human potential itself.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled Beyond Kings and Thrones.

Beyond Kings and Thrones

Power Without a Face The world today is not ruled by kings, but that doesn’t mean it is free from kingship. Power has simply changed costumes. It has abandoned thrones for terminals, and decrees for data. Once, we could see authority. Now, it breathes through code and commerce—quietly scripting our lives through convenience, algorithms, and

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled The Death of the Dollar and the Rise of the Corporate State.

The Death of the Dollar and the Rise of the Corporate State

"The dollar's decline is a strategic shift rather than mismanagement, marking a transition from a" gold-backed system to one lacking intrinsic value. As this occurs, corporate power rises to fill the vacuum, offering digital currencies and alternative systems. This leads to a new era of governance where citizens become consumers in a commodified democracy, believing they chose their path.

5 min read
'Dark blue minimalist graphic with bold white text reading "Are You Trading, Or Is The Market' 'Trading You?" — designed to provoke reflection on market dynamics and psychological influence.'

The Philosophy of Markets: Money, Truth, and the Future of Finance

Sayed Hamid Fatimi's "The Philosophy of Markets" challenges conventional views on trading, suggesting that markets are not neutral but adversarial systems that exploit predictability and emotions. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding market structure, belief, and behavior over traditional analytical methods. It also discusses emerging financial alternatives like crypto and decentralized systems, proposing a shift toward a post-institutional world.

Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled What Is Truth? The Many Faces of Reality in Everyday Life.

What Is Truth? The Many Faces of Reality in Everyday Life

In a world where facts are debated, belief systems clash, and identities multiply, the question of truth is no longer a philosophical luxury—it’s a daily necessity. We often speak of truth as if it’s a singular thing: something out there waiting to be discovered, like a hidden treasure buried beneath the noise. But truth is

6 min read
Cover artwork (cover.webp) for the article titled Conjecture on Jinn: Physical Phenomena, Mythology, and Religious Texts.

Conjecture on Jinn: Physical Phenomena, Mythology, and Religious Texts

Introduction Within Islamic theology and broader mythological traditions, jinn are depicted as intelligent, volitional entities created from “smokeless fire” — a form distinct from both human and angelic ontologies. Despite their prominence in religious and folkloric literature, jinn remain largely unexamined within scientific discourse. But what if these entities, long thought to belong solely to

8 min read
Cover artwork (cover.webp) for the article titled The Unity of Knowledge: Bridging the Divide Between Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the Unseen.

The Unity of Knowledge: Bridging the Divide Between Science, Philosophy, Religion, and the Unseen

Introduction — The Quest for Truth For centuries, humanity has searched for the ultimate truth behind existence, consciousness, and the universe. This search spans across diverse disciplines — science, philosophy, religion, and theology — each offering its own perspective on the nature of reality. Traditionally, these paths of inquiry have been viewed as separate, often

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