Articles on philosophy, technology and journaling, by Miguel (Amwayi).https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/tech/outbox-and-ledger/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/tech/outbox-and-ledger/What actually breaks without a transactional outbox, why a ledger nobody reads back isn't really double-entry, and what happens once you decide never to auto-correct money.Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/a-mind-that-lies-to-you-too/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/a-mind-that-lies-to-you-too/Sapiens on the trade that let us out-think evolution, and why the same tool needs checking on yourself, not just on the world.Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/looking-not-reading/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/looking-not-reading/A week of redesigning this site taught one habit: render it, measure it, and look at it before believing it works.Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/what-becomes-true-when-both-stay/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/what-becomes-true-when-both-stay/A reading about how thin the evidence for the past actually is, applied to two live self-theories, and what a real system looks like when it refuses to force a premature answer.Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/tech/idempotency-keys/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/tech/idempotency-keys/What an idempotency key actually guarantees in a real settlement system, the two concurrency races that show up under load, and a gap that studying it surfaced, then closed.Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/not-senecas-line/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/not-senecas-line/A quote I brought to discuss turned out to be misattributed. The idea was still worth thinking about.Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/three-questions-cold/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/three-questions-cold/Explaining idempotency from memory: what problem it solves, how it works, what breaks without it. The third one took longest.Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/claim-versus-argument/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/claim-versus-argument/What a book's rhetorical force has to do with a decisions log, and why both deserve the same scrutiny.Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/a-dead-dependency/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/a-dead-dependency/Building guest comments on a service that turned out to be shut down, and what checking instead of trusting looked like.Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/eleven-laws/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/eleven-laws/A list of rules of thumb, recorded before I'd used any of them, and the two that stood out on first contact.Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/felt-before-understood/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/felt-before-understood/Reading about an old mismatch between how we're built and how we live, and noticing I'd already acted on it before I had the words.Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/bugs-found-by-running-it/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/bugs-found-by-running-it/Two real bugs in Routine Machine, both found by running the system by hand, not by the test suite.Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/knowing-vs-explaining/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/philosophy/knowing-vs-explaining/Why fluent reproduction of an idea can hide a gap in your ability to reconstruct it from first principles.Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/a-gap-worth-testing/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/a-gap-worth-testing/Noticing the difference between knowing something and being able to explain it on demand.Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/the-test-result/https://miguel-shinyenyi.github.io/miguel-site/journal/the-test-result/Running the retrieval test for real, against database indexing, and getting an answer that wasn't the one expected.Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT