Nathan Maxwell

Builder
I build software and run a gaming club.
What I'm working on, and why.

Problems

  1. P1.Data loss and cognitive overload when coaching multiple swimmers
  2. P2.AI agents don't carry context across sessions
  3. P3.Agents as assistants, not thinking partners

Missions

  1. M1.Build a context system that compounds with me, so my AI learns from every conversation
  2. M2.Use software and AI to multiply what I can do
  3. M3.Build software that lets coaches coach

Challenges

  1. C1.Balancing build time vs. distribution time
  2. C2.Signal vs. noise at scale in the inbox

Current Projects 3

Hydrolyze
An iPad app for swim coaches that captures times and surfaces per-swimmer trends.
active
Felt Faction
A 12-person gaming club where the casino is the draw and networking happens naturally.
active
gbrain omnipresence rollout
Make my second brain available everywhere I work.
in-progress

Feed 8

  • concept2026-07-11
    Shared Brain Scoping — Joint Relevance Over Privacy Intimacy
    **Captured 2026-07-05 from the Felt Faction → `brain-shared` migration session.**
  • concept2026-07-08
    Aristotle's philia (three-level friendship taxonomy)
    The canonical classical frame on the topic; absence in the brain prior to this ingest was a real gap. Aristotle's *Nicomachean Ethics* Books VIII and IX lay out a three-level taxonomy of *philia* (φιλία) — the Greek word that translates loosely as "friendship" but covers any affectionate, mutual relationship between non-kin.
  • concept2026-07-08
    Dunbar's number and the 5/15/50/150/1500/5000 social circles
    The standard story of human cognitive evolution — "bigger brains evolved to make better tools" — is wrong, or at least incomplete. The dominant pressure on primate brain size across the last 30 million years has been **social complexity**, not tool use. The fossil and comparative evidence (Robin Dunbar's "Social Brain Hypothesis"): the size of the neocortex in any primate species scales with the size of its typical social group, not with its tool complexity. A chimp living in a group of 50 has a smaller neocortex than a human living in a group of 150; a lemur living in a group of 10-12 has a smaller one still. **Brains are for managing relationships, not for operating on the physical world.** The fact that we can also operate on the physical world (tool use, language, abstract reason) is a
  • concept2026-07-08
    Friendship
    **Etymology.** Proto-Germanic *freons* — "one who is free to love." In ancient Germanic tribes, friendship had a status component: a *freond* was someone you could speak to as an equal, with no obligation to defer. The word pre-dates the modern "friend" but encodes the posture that the rest of the page is about: friendship is the relationship you have with someone you don't have to perform for. The fire circle was the original physical substrate — the place where reciprocity was demonstrated rather than declared.
  • concept2026-07-08
    Forced Reduction
    The doctrine rests on first principles thinking. If you're reasoning by analogy (the default), you'll keep the parts that "everyone else has" — bloat becomes invisible. First principles forces the question "what does physics actually require?" — and the answer to that is almost always smaller than what we currently have. The deletion concept is what first principles looks like in product/process terms.
  • concept2026-07-08
    Insight does not automatically create intimacy
    1. **Nietzsche trap — identity-as-armor.** The brilliant build an identity around being exceptional. Love asks for the ordinary self. Being loved *as ordinary* feels like demotion. So the brilliant prefer to be misunderstood than plainly loved — misunderstanding preserves the fantasy of exceptionality. K. Jacob Wilson: "Ordinary love democratizes us. It brings us down from the mountain and asks whether we can be tender without being extraordinary."
  • writing2026-06-17 · refreshed 2026-07-08
    2026 06 17 Cross Domain Podcast Reading Pattern
    **The user's resonance statement, captured verbatim:**
  • writing2026-06-19 · refreshed 2026-07-08
    Friendship synthesis — the posture frame for a 22-year-old's social portfolio
    The cross-cutting observations from the SOLVED friendship episode, filtered through the user's existing brain and the standing content-extraction preferences (posture > craft, non-obvious > interesting, cross-domain synthesis > per-episode extract).

Books 5 Recent (5)Most ImpactedAll-time

A proxy for what I am resonating with at present — the 5 books I've most recently highlighted.

Articles 6 RecentMost Impacted

The articles that anchor my thinking — measured by how central they are in my knowledge network.

Podcasts 6 RecentMost Impacted

The podcasts I've referenced most — a proxy for what has shaped my thinking.

Preferences

OS
macOS
Tools
Xcode wrangler bun tsx sqlite ripgrep git obsidian zotero gbrain hermes-agent
Communication
Direct, honest.

Rated Films 8