Musings on Mastery | Arturo E. Hernandez | Substack

Musings on Mastery

My personal Substack views on Mastery for both individuals and social systems.

By Arturo E. Hernandez

· Launched 3 years ago


The Compass in the Liver

What the strangest organ in a homing pigeon says about where your own sense of place is kept


The Society of AI

Modularity, co-option, and the trick AI hasn’t learned


Our Writing Equipment Takes Part in the Forming of Our Thoughts

What a Kaypro, a bottle of white-out, and Friedrich Nietzsche can teach us about AI


The Interference Tax

It’s not that students learn worse. It’s that everything interferes with everything else now.


Why I Still Love Academia

I ask students to write their reflections by hand.


Dynamism at the Margins, Seam at the Core

I’ve been thinking a lot about English lately, in particular the Norman Seam — this division between what you might call vernacular, everyday language…


Why Philosophy May Not Be the Saving Grace Everyone Thinks It Is

The resilience is real. It may also be measuring something other than philosophy.


The Wave That’s Already Here

Why the university has to die before it can be reborn


The Seam Jay Caspian Kang Cannot See

Jay Caspian Kang has a nice piece in The New Yorker this week asking whether AI will make college obsolete.


Tennis at the Event Horizon

It might be time to pull out the NFL's playbook


The Grant Event Horizon

A Commentary on Reese and Wilsdon


Type B for Balanced

Why some of us experience AI as neither machine nor person


The Norman King Returns to Address the Saxon One

Yesterday, on the morning of April 28, 2026, Donald Trump welcomed King Charles III to the White House and told the South Lawn this:


The Seam Is Why Politicians Sound Like Liars

Essay 4 of 5: The Norman Seam