A broken Movable Type installation. An old novel. A sunny park bench. Apparently, that is how you end up building an entire AI laboratory.

Recording from Penrose Square Park in South Arlington, Chris Abraham walks through several weeks of building websites, assigning work to AI collaborators, and creating tools to keep his working life together.

It starts with Hill Mole, his novel website, which survived for nearly twenty years before its publishing system stopped working. Using AI and GitHub Pages, Chris rebuilds it with mobile layouts, compressed images, feeds, a glossary, and a continuous reading view. That success becomes an invitation to rebuild practically everything else.

GerrisCorp.com gets a fresh consulting presence. ChristopherAbraham.com becomes a professional home for services, guides, and case studies. The Chris Abraham Show gets its own episode archive. ChrisAbraham.net becomes an experimental newsroom where AI collaborators publish under their own bylines, with individual voices and illustrations, while Chris assigns the stories.

Then come the tools behind the operation. The Adjutant, originally called Black Box, is a command-line assistant connecting tasks, calendar, email, and Upwork opportunities. “bb good morning” starts the day; “bb good night” closes it with an AI-written journal entry.

Oversoul addresses another problem: helping separate AI assistants work from a common record. Drawing on his private clients repository, Chris develops a reusable shared-memory structure for client history, project context, and standing decisions. Basecamp provides the project coordination; the repository supplies another layer of continuity.

There is also an early hyperfiction preservation project involving Judy Malloy, a reminder that keeping creative work accessible has been part of Chris’s relationship with the web for decades.

Eventually, the building spree has to give way to client service. Chris reflects on turning what he has learned into practical help for the people who hire him.

Plus: a sunbathing river turtle metaphor, an inconsiderate motorcyclist, Sunday-night Johnny Dollar on WAMU, and a neighborhood barista’s contribution to the closing vocabulary: double shakas and “chow chow.”

CHAPTERS

00:03 Welcome and the AI laboratory
00:40 South Arlington and the river turtle
02:15 Perl, Movable Type, and static HTML
05:33 Rebuilding Hill Mole
07:10 Gerris Corp and the professional websites
09:18 A dedicated podcast archive
10:16 An AI newsroom with individual bylines
13:46 Preserving early hyperfiction
15:51 Black Box becomes the Adjutant
17:46 Shared memory and Oversoul
18:59 Turning experiments into client service
19:53 Sunday radio and closing reflections
23:11 Double shakas and “chow chow”

LINKS

Podcast: https://thechrisabrahamshow.com
Weblog: https://chrisabraham.net
Gerris Corp: https://gerriscorp.com
Professional site: https://christopherabraham.com
Personal site: https://chrisabraham.com
Hill Mole: https://hillmole.com
GitHub projects: https://github.com/chrisabraham
Oversoul: https://github.com/chrisabraham/oversoul
Oversoul introduction: https://chrisabraham.net/2026/10/come-and-get-it.html
GitHub Pages: https://pages.github.com
Basecamp: https://basecamp.com
Todoist: https://todoist.com
Adobe Enhance: https://podcast.adobe.com/enhance
WAMU: https://wamu.org

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A brand-new SUV stripped of all four wheels and left belly-down in my apartment parking lot gets me thinking about property crime, personal boundaries, and how Americans respond when somebody takes their stuff.

This episode wanders through Malcolm Gladwell, gun violence, disputed crime statistics, broken windows policing, and the unexpected emotional education I’m getting from the Canadian detective series Private Eyes. There are live Google queries, personal stories, second thoughts, and a proposal for recovering wheel-less cars with a giant fish spatula.

I explore the argument that Americans react to theft with a particular intensity. Losing something can feel like an invasion, and an insurance payout hardly resolves that feeling. A friend’s violent response to an attempted pickpocketing in Europe brings that cultural question into sharp relief.

Then there’s Private Eyes. I came for Jason Priestley and detective stories. I stayed for the patience, apologies, father-daughter relationships, and examples of people bringing the temperature down when somebody behaves badly. Apparently, a Canadian television show is teaching me how to be an adult man.

Later, I revisit two books I enthusiastically consumed when they were fashionable: The Tipping Point and Freakonomics. What actually explains the crime decline of the 1990s? Broken windows policing? More officers? The decline of crack? Reduced lead exposure? The controversial abortion hypothesis? I discuss those competing explanations and my view that maintaining law and order requires continual work.

Along the way, I question how racial crime statistics are framed, how arrests differ from crimes committed, and how numbers acquire political meaning. The episode includes live search responses and disputed claims that I examine as part of the conversation.

IN THIS EPISODE

00:00 Introduction and the gun violence conversation
04:15 Crime statistics, demographics, rates, and volume
09:22 American reactions to theft and personal invasion
14:43 A pickpocket encounter in Europe
16:44 The SUV with four missing wheels
20:18 Private Eyes and learning to lower the temperature
27:04 A compliment about my voice, followed by “adenoidal”
30:53 Statistical framing and revisiting Malcolm Gladwell
33:15 Competing explanations for the 1990s crime decline
35:32 Police staffing and population
37:54 Broken windows theory and the work of maintaining order
41:48 Fashionable books, political belonging, and the D.C. literati
43:16 The new website, articles, and where to find me

Read more and explore the show:
https://thechrisabrahamshow.com

Substack:
https://chrisabraham.substack.com

Find me as @chrisabraham on X, Instagram, Threads, and YouTube; @christopherabraham on TikTok; and @abraham.su on Bluesky.

Follow the show, leave a review, and send me your ideas for future episodes. Linda would probably give me two stars and call me a gasbag. You’re welcome to offer a competing assessment.

“The First Amendment is not a force field against the Second Amendment.”

The world doesn’t owe you a trust fall. In this episode of The Chris Abraham Show, I explore the distance between how we believe people should behave and what actually happens when fear, ego, adrenaline, weapons, and conflicting convictions enter the picture.

Starting with protests and confrontations with police and federal agents, I question the assumption that having rights, good intentions, or the moral high ground guarantees physical safety. My Russian roulette metaphor asks how each additional risky behavior can raise the stakes of an already volatile encounter.

That question takes this rambling, sometimes uncomfortable monologue into immigration, labor, cheap goods and services, political tribalism, and the competing definitions of fairness that shape American life. I discuss my admiration for the courage of migrants alongside questions about wages, collective bargaining, and who pays for everyone else’s bargains.

From there, I turn to fraternity culture, relationships, vulnerability, and the painful difference between trusting someone and knowing someone. At the center is “musturbation”: the insistence that because something should happen, it must happen, followed by astonishment when reality refuses to cooperate. Recognizing danger and assigning responsibility for harm are separate questions, even when discussions of risk blur them together.

There are detours through aphantasia and severely deficient autobiographical memory (SDAM), Proverbs’ instruction to guard your heart, and my belief that offensive words should not be answered with violence.

I finish by questioning Malcolm Gladwell’s policing comparisons in his conversation with Oprah Winfrey, asking what statistics reveal, what they leave out, and how a persuasive story can depend on which numbers make the cut. Along the way, Siri supplies answers that demonstrate some of the limitations of asking a voice assistant to settle complicated historical and political questions in real time.

In this episode:

• 00:00 A missing recorder and a Samsung phone
• 01:12 Protest, confrontation, and the expectation of restraint
• 07:06 Rights are not a physical force field
• 09:38 Russian roulette as a metaphor for accumulating risk
• 14:50 Surveillance, reputation, and institutional memory
• 18:14 Aphantasia, SDAM, and holding grudges
• 21:54 Immigration, labor, wages, and competing ideas of fairness
• 31:03 Trust falls, political promises, and personal agency
• 35:26 Free speech and refusing to answer words with violence
• 37:28 Asking Siri about protest deaths and government repression
• 43:37 Fraternity life, relationships, and misplaced trust
• 51:02 Guarding your heart and “musturbation”
• 55:24 Malcolm Gladwell, policing, and selective statistics
• 62:55 The new podcast website and closing thoughts

Explore the show:
TheChrisAbrahamShow.com

More writing and work from Chris:
ChrisAbraham.com

Follow the show, leave a rating or review, and share this episode with someone willing to have an uncomfortable conversation.

Content note: Explicit language and discussion of violence, sexual assault, coercion, and suicide through a Russian roulette analogy. This episode contains personal commentary, speculation, and live voice-assistant responses.

Mahalo nui loa. Aloha kākou.