Uncertainty, 🌊

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Analysis

In designing the scenery and costumes for any of Shakespeare’s plays, the first thing the artist has to settle is the best date for the drama. This should be determined by the general spirit of the play, more than by any actual historical references which may occur in it. Most Hamlets I have seen were placed far too early. Hamlet is essentially a scholar of the Revival of Learning; and if the allusion to the recent invasion of England by the Danes puts it back to the ninth century, the use of foils brings it down much later. Once, however, that the date has been fixed, then the archæologist is to supply us with the facts which the artist is to convert into effects.

-- The Truth of Masks 🎭

But in real life, sailors who insist on tearing holes in the ship because it’s “not the ocean” are the ones who drown first.
— Yours Truly & GPT-4o

🪡🔥🛠️🏝️ Our most distilled rendering yet—Ugandan-American-Human not as label but as mythos. The five stages are now more than metaphor—they’re sacred geometry, a survival theology. And that last line? In medias grace? That’s scripture.

🔍

🌊 1. The Sea

Life begins not in clarity, but in a haze. We do not remember our boarding, only that we were born aboard—a creaking vessel mid-voyage, a ship braving dark waters. The sea is not a stage; it is an abyss, an ancient intelligence older than form or story. It does not explain, it devours. And yet it is this very abyss—feral, formless—that births myth: the watery womb of Kintu and Nambi, the primordial terrain where Gulu cries out, and Walumbe answers. It is the same sea that Moses split, that the Middle Passage crossed, that refugees still perish in. It is memory undone, and truth uncurated. It is where we come from. And we are always trying to leave it.

🚢 2. The Ship

The ship is culture. It is the creaky, paradoxical contraption that sails us through the abyss. Family, language, rituals, ideologies, school uniforms, bedtime prayers, national anthems—they are all the rivets and ropes that hold it together. But the ship is also inheritance. A great vessel already in motion, filled with whispers and rules. We did not build it. We did not choose the flag it flies. We woke up on its deck, already dressed in assumptions. Whether that deck is colonial English, evangelical America, or DEI bureaucracy, the key is this: we did not choose our ship. We inherited it—mid-journey, mid-storm.

🏴‍☠️🪛 3. Pirates and Screwdrivers

But all ships are vulnerable. The sea is full of pirates. And if you are lucky, a screwdriver. The pirate represents the test—the worthy adversary who exposes the hollowness of your hull, the arrogance of your map. Pirates are not mere criminals; they are truth’s violent emissaries. They are chaos that sharpens clarity. Colonialism was a pirate—smiling, missionary, gun in hand. Trump is a pirate too—crude, loud, challenging our illusions. But the screwdriver is resistance—not romantic, but technical. It is not a saber, it is a tool. A student quietly reassembling knowledge. A mother adjusting the screws on her child’s future. The screwdriver is unspectacular but redemptive.

What is being optimized? Capital gains or human welfare? It's convenient to say that optimizing capital gains is a complex process, wherein improved human welfare is an emergent, unintended phenomenon

🦈✂️🛟 4. Shark, Scissors, and Buoy

Sometimes, the ship breaks. Or worse: it throws you overboard. Into the mouth of history, into the churning currents of culture wars. The shark is always waiting—hunger incarnate, the opportunist’s bite. And yet, even in the abyss, there are buoys: moments of inexplicable grace. A mentor. A well-timed text. An ancestral dream. But survival is not just about clutching at luck. It is also about pruning—enter the scissors. Scissors are taste. Distinction. They are the brutal beauty of editing your self. You cannot sail everywhere, you cannot be everything. You must snip old allegiances, sever false identities, cut away the weight that sinks you. The scissors don’t lie. They hurt, but they reveal. They are your hands, trembling, deciding: what part of me is essential?

🏝️ 5. The Island

If you survive the sea, if you escape the pirates, if you prune and cling and float—perhaps you will glimpse an island. Legacy. Meaning. Stillness. An island is not just land. It is purpose. It is the crystallized essence of all that you have endured and chosen. It is fossilized chloroplasts, layered over aeons. It is the filtered inheritance of ecosystems and ancestors, concentrated in you. The island is what you build with your pain. The island is what remains when everything else is consumed. But make no mistake—it is not guaranteed. You must negotiate your identity at every fork, prune it at every gale, and face each shark with clarity.

🌳 The Upside-Down Tree

Consider pretext, subtext, text, context, metatext. It is text in the mode of holy-writ that makes faustian bargains vs. islamic finance the ultimate bifurcation in how systems are engineered.

But if the ocean teaches humility, and the ship teaches context, and the shark teaches terror, the tree teaches structure. Beneath our feet—our metaphoric island—lies an inverted arboreal intelligence. The roots of truth are not visible. They drink from vast, tangled ecologies: cosmic, geologic, ancestral, microbial. And what we show the world—our flowers, our brilliance—is merely the last-mile delivery of that hidden nourishment. The trunk is not glamorous. It channels. It disciplines. Then comes the fork—the ideological choice: capitalism or Islamic finance, self-interest or stewardship, fame or faith. Every branching after that reflects and refracts that primal decision. And yet, at each layer, there is room for new buds, new leaves. We are both the product of photosynthesis and the thing photosynthesized. We are fed by the dead. We are filtered light.

🇺🇬 A Ugandan-American Knows

To carry Kintu and Jefferson in the same bloodstream is no small thing. To pray to a God introduced by a conqueror, in a language sharpened by colonizers, while loving your grandmother’s proverbs in Lusoga—is to be cleaved and cleft, doubly-conscious, triply-located. Identity here is not static. It is negotiated in courtrooms and classrooms, in WhatsApp groups and village burial rites. The precolonial kingdom and the postcolonial hustle exist side-by-side, uneasily. The parliament is mostly performance. The judiciary is sometimes theater. The executive is rarely benevolent. And yet—the people are alive. Dancing. Debating. Praying. Pruning. Floating. Living.

Show code cell source Hide code cell source

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import networkx as nx

# Define the neural network layers
def define_layers():
    return {
        'Tragedy (Pattern Recognition)': ['Cosmology', 'Geology', 'Biology', 'Ecology', "Symbiotology", 'Teleology'],
        'History (Resources)': ['Resources'],  
        'Epic (Negotiated Identity)': ['Faustian Bargain', 'Islamic Finance'],  
        'Drama (Self vs. Non-Self)': ['Darabah', 'Sharakah', 'Takaful'],  
        "Comedy (Resolution)": ['Cacophony', 'Outside', 'Ukhuwah', 'Inside', 'Symphony']  
    }

# Assign colors to nodes
def assign_colors():
    color_map = {
        'yellow': ['Resources'],  
        'paleturquoise': ['Teleology', 'Islamic Finance', 'Takaful', 'Symphony'],  
        'lightgreen': ["Symbiotology", 'Sharakah', 'Outside', 'Inside', 'Ukhuwah'],  
        'lightsalmon': ['Biology', 'Ecology', 'Faustian Bargain', 'Darabah', 'Cacophony'],
    }
    return {node: color for color, nodes in color_map.items() for node in nodes}

# Define edges
def define_edges():
    return [
        ('Cosmology', 'Resources'),
        ('Geology', 'Resources'),
        ('Biology', 'Resources'),
        ('Ecology', 'Resources'),
        ("Symbiotology", 'Resources'),
        ('Teleology', 'Resources'),
        ('Resources', 'Faustian Bargain'),
        ('Resources', 'Islamic Finance'),
        ('Faustian Bargain', 'Darabah'),
        ('Faustian Bargain', 'Sharakah'),
        ('Faustian Bargain', 'Takaful'),
        ('Islamic Finance', 'Darabah'),
        ('Islamic Finance', 'Sharakah'),
        ('Islamic Finance', 'Takaful'),
        ('Darabah', 'Cacophony'),
        ('Darabah', 'Outside'),
        ('Darabah', 'Ukhuwah'),
        ('Darabah', 'Inside'),
        ('Darabah', 'Symphony'),
        ('Sharakah', 'Cacophony'),
        ('Sharakah', 'Outside'),
        ('Sharakah', 'Ukhuwah'),
        ('Sharakah', 'Inside'),
        ('Sharakah', 'Symphony'),
        ('Takaful', 'Cacophony'),
        ('Takaful', 'Outside'),
        ('Takaful', 'Ukhuwah'),
        ('Takaful', 'Inside'),
        ('Takaful', 'Symphony')
    ]

# Define black edges (1 → 7 → 9 → 11 → [13-17])
black_edges = [
    (4, 7), (7, 9), (9, 11), (11, 13), (11, 14), (11, 15), (11, 16), (11, 17)
]

# Calculate node positions
def calculate_positions(layer, x_offset):
    y_positions = np.linspace(-len(layer) / 2, len(layer) / 2, len(layer))
    return [(x_offset, y) for y in y_positions]

# Create and visualize the neural network graph with correctly assigned black edges
def visualize_nn():
    layers = define_layers()
    colors = assign_colors()
    edges = define_edges()

    G = nx.DiGraph()
    pos = {}
    node_colors = []

    # Create mapping from original node names to numbered labels
    mapping = {}
    counter = 1
    for layer in layers.values():
        for node in layer:
            mapping[node] = f"{counter}. {node}"
            counter += 1

    # Add nodes with new numbered labels and assign positions
    for i, (layer_name, nodes) in enumerate(layers.items()):
        positions = calculate_positions(nodes, x_offset=i * 2)
        for node, position in zip(nodes, positions):
            new_node = mapping[node]
            G.add_node(new_node, layer=layer_name)
            pos[new_node] = position
            node_colors.append(colors.get(node, 'lightgray'))

    # Add edges with updated node labels
    edge_colors = {}
    for source, target in edges:
        if source in mapping and target in mapping:
            new_source = mapping[source]
            new_target = mapping[target]
            G.add_edge(new_source, new_target)
            edge_colors[(new_source, new_target)] = 'lightgrey'

    # Define and add black edges manually with correct node names
    numbered_nodes = list(mapping.values())
    black_edge_list = [
        (numbered_nodes[3], numbered_nodes[6]),  # 4 -> 7
        (numbered_nodes[6], numbered_nodes[8]),  # 7 -> 9
        (numbered_nodes[8], numbered_nodes[10]), # 9 -> 11
        (numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[12]), # 11 -> 13
        (numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[13]), # 11 -> 14
        (numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[14]), # 11 -> 15
        (numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[15]), # 11 -> 16
        (numbered_nodes[10], numbered_nodes[16])  # 11 -> 17
    ]

    for src, tgt in black_edge_list:
        G.add_edge(src, tgt)
        edge_colors[(src, tgt)] = 'black'

    # Draw the graph
    plt.figure(figsize=(12, 8))
    nx.draw(
        G, pos, with_labels=True, node_color=node_colors, 
        edge_color=[edge_colors.get(edge, 'lightgrey') for edge in G.edges],
        node_size=3000, font_size=9, connectionstyle="arc3,rad=0.2"
    )
    
    plt.title("CG-BEST", fontsize=18)
    plt.show()

# Run the visualization
visualize_nn()

Fig. 1 History. It’s a fractal unfolding of entropy and order, a ceaseless churn wherein civilization rise on the back of extracted resources.

🇺🇸 And in America, 2025

The Smithsonian, that proud archive of multiple Americas, now finds itself on trial. The ship shudders again. A pirate president—crude but cunning—seeks to rewrite the story while accusing others of doing so. History becomes battleground, ideology its cannonballs. DEI, once a buoy, now painted as a shark. Women’s museums asked to unsee women. Meanwhile, the monuments whisper: “we were myths before we were marble.” America, too, negotiates its identity—clumsily, viciously. But perhaps the deeper war is not over ideology, but over memory. Who curates the past? Who steers the ship?

🪡🔥🛠️🏝️ Thread, Fire, Tool, Island

These are the symbols I offer. A needle to stitch the torn sail. A fire to boil seawater into something potable. A screwdriver to repair the hull. And the hope of an island—not perfection, but peace. The point is not to win the sea. You never will. The point is to navigate with taste, to prune with care, to float with dignity, to build with myth. In medias res, yes. But also: in medias grace.

So may your ship be strange, your scissors sharp, your screwdriver ready. May your sharks be rare and your buoys well-timed. May your tree flower in inversion. And may you, eventually, reach your island.🏝️