msg.now changelog — moved
The changelog now lives on @msgnow.
Articles
ADHD Patients Are Testing Their Own Generic Meds
Inside r/ThisAintAdderall, where patients who feel their generic ADHD meds stopped working are collecting their own evidence — and what it can and can't prove.
Measure, Don't Argue: Testing a "Theory of Everything"
A simple grid of cells looked like it might explain the universe. Here's how we tested every seductive intuition — and how even our metrics fooled us.
Diffusion vs. the Wave Equation: One Term Apart
I built a 3D grid where energy spreads to its neighbors, then measured what it actually does — and found the exact line between heat and waves.
Run Parallel Claude Code Sessions Safely with Git Worktrees
Why run just one AI session? Git worktrees give each session an isolated copy of your project — shared history, separate files — so several can work at once without colliding.
Plan Mode: Make Claude Code Think Before It Touches Anything
The fastest way to lose an afternoon is letting an AI agent start editing on a vague task. Plan mode forces it to research and propose first — relocating review to where it's cheap.
Custom Slash Commands in Claude Code (They're Skills Now)
Stop retyping the same elaborate prompt. Capture it once as a slash command and invoke it forever — with arguments, live context injection, and control over who can trigger it.
The Neuroscience of Stress: Built for the Wrong Century
Stress is a precisely engineered response built to spike and recover. Here's the two-stage cascade — and why chronic, never-ending stress corrodes the very systems it was meant to protect.
How Habits Form in the Brain (and Why They're So Hard to Break)
A habit is a behavior compressed until it runs without you. The cue-routine-reward loop, why control shifts to autopilot, and why old habits are never really erased.
The Neuroscience of Attention: How Your Brain Picks What to Notice
Your senses deliver far more than you can process. Attention is the ruthless triage system that decides what gets through — which is why you miss the obvious and can't resist a notification.
The Default Mode Network: Your Brain's Idle-Mode Storyteller
Do nothing and your mind wanders — to your past, your future, your self. That's a specific network switching on, and it runs a surprising amount of what you think of as 'you.'
Why Your Brain Replays the Day While You Sleep
"Sleep on it" is real. While you sleep, your brain fast-forwards through the day's experiences to rewrite them into permanent memory — a nightly handoff you can't do awake.
The Context Window Is Your Real Constraint
When an AI session starts forgetting and contradicting itself, it's usually not intelligence that ran out — it's context. How to manage the AI's working memory like the scarce resource it is.
Never Trust Your AI's Confident Answer
An AI assistant is exactly as fluent and authoritative when it's wrong as when it's right. That symmetry is the trap — and calibration is the skill that beats it.
Why Emotional Memories Stick (and Why Vivid Doesn't Mean Accurate)
You forget last Tuesday's lunch but remember exactly where you were during shocking news. The chemistry that stamps emotional events into memory — and why it never promised accuracy.
The Brain's Rhythms: How Neural Oscillations Organize Thought
Your mind runs on a beat. Alpha, theta, gamma — and why the way fast rhythms nest inside slow ones may explain why you can only hold about seven things in mind at once.
Meet Your Neurotransmitters: The Chemicals That Run Your Mind
Dopamine isn't the pleasure chemical and serotonin isn't the happiness chemical. What these systems actually do — and why the pop-science version points you at the wrong model of your own mind.
Using Claude Code for Things That Aren't Code
The name is a trap. Strip away the framing and it's a general reasoning agent that can read, reason, and act — code is just the most common thing people point it at.
Why Lying Gets Easier: The Neuroscience of the Slippery Slope
The first lie comes with a jolt of guilt; the tenth barely registers. The brain physically adapts to dishonesty — and the adaptation has been watched happening in a scanner.
How Alcohol, Weed, and Adderall Change How You Lie
Lying is expensive cognitive work. Some substances sabotage the liar; one quietly upgrades them. The neuropharmacology of honesty.
Your Brain Doesn't Have a Truth Detector
It has something far more exploitable: a system that believes everything by default, and a few weak alarms that occasionally suggest you look closer. Why lies work, explained.
Cutting Claude Code's Permission Prompts Without Going Reckless
Approving the same twenty commands is misery; turning permissions off is dangerous. A well-scoped allowlist is the middle path — here's how to build one.
Parallelizing Work with Claude Code Subagents
One AI session has a context ceiling. Subagents let Claude Code fan work out to isolated helpers — and report back only what matters.
Writing a CLAUDE.md That Actually Changes Claude Code's Behavior
A CLAUDE.md that gets ignored is worse than none. How the file loads, the hierarchy that decides which rules win, and why specificity is everything.
Discord Server Discovery: The Quirks Nobody Documents
You built a great server and nobody can find it. Field notes on how Discord discovery actually behaves — search, the directory, and the age-restriction cliff.
Building Your First MCP Server for Claude Code
Teach Claude Code your world — your API, your database, your tools — with a Model Context Protocol server. It's smaller than you think.
Claude Code Hooks: Turning Requests Into Rules
Stop asking Claude Code to format your code, run your tests, or avoid your migrations. Hooks let the harness enforce it — deterministically, every time.
The Cheapest Way to Ship a Feature Is to Delete the Promise
I shipped a feature today by deleting 31 lines and building nothing. Why removing a false claim is a legitimate — and underrated — way to make progress.
How to Recover a Deleted Git Repo from Claude Code's Cache
A project folder vanished from my Desktop. Here's how I got all of it back in two minutes — and the mental model that made the panic unnecessary.
Choosing a Seborrheic Dermatitis Moisturizer with AI
Seborrheic dermatitis makes moisturizing a minefield. Here's how we turned two unreadable ingredient lists into a side-by-side risk comparison — and why Vanicream beat a cult-favorite K-beauty cream for our skin.
Deploying a Node App to Railway: Migrations on Boot
Railway won't tell you where to run your database migrations. Here's the one-line pattern I use, why it's impossible to forget, and the crash-loop it can cause if you're careless.
I Gave Claude Code Long-Term Memory
AI coding assistants forget everything between sessions. Here's the persistent-memory system I built so mine finally remembers my projects, my decisions, and my mistakes.
Sign in with Apple Shows the Wrong App Name
Your web login says a different app's name. Here's why, the exact fix in the Apple Developer portal, and the caveat that can silently lock out your users.
How to Extract Claude Code's System Prompt
Reverse Engineering