I write essays and books. I build software and games. I keep bees and skate ramps. These things are more connected than they look. The essays make a case for taking the harder path — in craft, in work, in the things worth not handing off. The current arc is taste, judgment, and craft in the AI era, but the subject is older than AI and will outlast it. The catalog holds forty-seven technical books across two decades plus a bunch of translations. The vault is where the older material lives, including the origin document for everything I’m working on now. For more on the software and games I build, check out Stalefish Labs .
Note
Two days after publishing Holding Both, a Kentucky mother and daughter turned down $26.48 million from an AI data center. They are the exact people my essay said were mostly quiet about this, and one of its harder lines owes them a correction.
August 16, 2026 · responding to www.wsj.com
August 14, 2026 · by Michael Morrison
Article 26 of 26 so far in The Automation Line
I use AI every day and disclose it every time, and I think a few companies acquiring the means of thought is one of the most serious things happening in our lifetimes. Those two facts don't fight — and the rage that pretends they do is the surest way to lose the argument that matters.
August 12, 2026 · by Michael Morrison
Article 25 of 26 so far in The Automation Line
I spent a run of essays telling you to relocate to your taste. I never said where taste comes from. The forge that built mine is one I'd never run again, and the machine is quietly removing it for everyone coming up behind me.
Note
The part of my writing that feels most like me is the part I worried was starting to look like a machine. A chess scandal says the suspicion runs the other way, which turns out to be worse news, not better.
August 8, 2026 · responding to medium.com
August 7, 2026 · by Michael Morrison
Article 24 of 26 so far in The Automation Line
Height often stands in for skill in basketball — and AI is height anyone can rent. On the tape measure coming for everyone's sport at once, and what happens to the earned middle when everybody suddenly clears the bar.
August 5, 2026 · by Michael Morrison
Article 23 of 26 so far in The Automation Line
There is a class of products whose success metric is the user disengaging — falling asleep, finishing the book, putting the controller down. Sojourn is one. The category inverts almost everything in product design, and the next decade will need more of it than the dominant playbook predicts.
Becoming Gnarly
Essays on AI, work, and choosing the harder path when it's worth it. New ones by email as they're published.
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From the Vault
2003
Part trivia, part storytelling contest, built around three legends — Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Roswell alien. The first game Stalefish …
From the Catalog
Que Publishing · 2000
The Unauthorized Guide to Pocket PC is the best place to start for someone seriously considering the purchase of a Pocket PC, or someone who has just …
From the Builds
Complete (rebuilt) · 2023
A backyard skateboard mini ramp finished with Ramp Armor, tile, and pool coping — and the year-later teardown and rebuild.