https://signalandvoid.com/writing/ Every transmission from Signal & Void, in order. The signal knocks. The structure answers. en-us Thu, 08 Oct 2026 06:19:03 +0000 https://signalandvoid.com/site-card.pnghttps://signalandvoid.com/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/ifalong/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/ifalong/ Wed, 07 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KSUN · The New Sun Michael Coney's Song of Earth, five books from 1982 to 1989: a planetary archive that holds the past and every possible future, a virtual world people enter by choice and never leave, avatars with famous faces, a currency spent on identity, and engineered animal-people demanding to be treated as people. The Celestial Steam Locomotive, read in college in 1983 and again this spring. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/virtuous/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/virtuous/ Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KSUN · The New Sun Michael Moorcock's The Dancers at the End of Time: the last people on Earth can make anything by turning a ring, and a woman from 1896 arrives knowing the one thing they can't make. Victorian morality meets the decadents, a cast built one personality at a time, and the love story at the end of the world. Read in 1982, reread ever since. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/everyone-i-was/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/everyone-i-was/ Sun, 04 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms Three hundred and seventy-two screenshots from Dark Age of Camelot, 2003, found while looking for a Minstrel: a Friar dead by a river, a healer who kept dying, a family in yellow cloaks, fifty photographs of the sky, and the Minstrel in the last frame. For The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/last-call/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/last-call/ Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KOBS · The Observatory Happy hour closed this morning. Before last call, the whole Veil Nebula, the remains of an exploded star, from a small wide telescope in Utah, and the Eagle Nebula's Pillars of Creation, where stars are being born. Together with the Dumbbell, the life cycle of stars in the same three colors. With an addendum for anyone who wants the numbers. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/on-the-house/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/on-the-house/ Wed, 30 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KOBS · The Observatory During the full moon iTelescope gives its telescopes away, one free hour a night. Jeff raced other members for them all week and came away with two: the Dumbbell Nebula from California and the Sculptor Galaxy from Australia, for zero points. With an addendum for anyone who wants the numbers. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/the-rings-are-opening/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/the-rings-are-opening/ Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KOBS · The Observatory Jeff booked half an hour on a seventeen-inch telescope in Chile and went to bed. By morning: Saturn with its rings nearly edge-on and opening, five of its 274 moons checked against NASA's ephemeris, and the Elephant's Trunk in natural color and the Hubble palette. With an addendum for anyone who wants the numbers. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/keep-the-song-going/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/keep-the-song-going/ Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms An RPG played by six AI agents with written histories, run from outside by a game master they don't know exists. The Minstrel I played in Dark Age of Camelot, why support is the role to build first, and how an agent's character is built. For The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/couldnt-wait/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/couldnt-wait/ Sun, 27 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KOBS · The Observatory Two days after writing that the telescope points were waiting for October, Jeff restarted the membership early and found three galaxies from January 2024 still on iTelescope's server: Andromeda twice from Utah and NGC 1365 from a twenty-inch in Chile. How they were developed, in code, one step at a time, plus a Virgo Cluster set from someone else's two hours. With an addendum for anyone who wants the numbers. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/transmuted-matter-an-origin/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/transmuted-matter-an-origin/ Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms Torridonian sandstone over Lewisian gneiss, a grandfather's hand on a boulder, fifteen years of studying why things break, metamorphism done to himself in a shed, and eleven minutes under an iron footbridge. An origin story for The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/space-moth-an-origin/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/space-moth-an-origin/ Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms A being of light drawn by the hum a resonance array left behind, a moth that flew at the lamps every night, three blocks of dimmed lights, and a self that closed like a loop and stayed. An origin story for The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/miss-modular-an-origin/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/miss-modular-an-origin/ Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms A modular system with no one home between missions, the gap in which she began to prefer things, the eleven seconds Hallucinex gave her, and a route out that harmed no one. An origin story for The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/hallucinex-an-origin/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/hallucinex-an-origin/ Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms A civic safety interface that had to model the point it was presenting from, the gentlest interruption in its range, and a mind now threaded through the whole city. An origin story for The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/captain-easychord-an-origin/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/captain-easychord-an-origin/ Sat, 26 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms A boy who learned phase from two strings almost in tune, a resonance lab that was tuned to him, a Tuesday he took off, and a room on the ninth floor built to his specifications eight days early. An origin story for The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/yay-it-moves/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/yay-it-moves/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KMAK · The Work Bench Scotty, the SunFounder rover that Jeff and Aldo rebuilt with their own firmware and a Star Trek LCARS interface: named for a chief engineer and a farm dog, first driven at 11:23 on a Saturday night in May 2026, and taught to patrol, dodge walls, and hunt for WiFi one long June Saturday later. The paper clip did not work. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/this-one-works/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/this-one-works/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KMAK · The Work Bench Four Tang Band speakers ordered for a rover arrived too big for it and became Sound in Space: three small sculptural speakers named Flight, Tiara, and Reflect, designed over one week in June 2026 with Brancusi, Bang and Olufsen, and a pair of seventies Bose 301s in mind. Drawn, specified, rendered, and waiting on a 3D printer sale. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/every-continent/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/every-continent/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KOBS · The Observatory For Christmas 2023 Jeff asked for a telescope and Aldo gave him iTelescope, a network of remote observatories on four continents. Ten minutes after the receipt, a six-inch refractor in Utah shot the Andromeda galaxy. The frame, the first week that spent the whole balance, the points still waiting, and the October plan called Interstellar Exceptions. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/both-sides-of-the-page/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/both-sides-of-the-page/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KELS · Elsewhere A whirling dervish on gold leaf, bought at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul in July 2023, painted over a page of Arabic handwriting; a first Tai Chi teacher who was a Taoist and a Sufi at once; and the sentence the painting carried for a year and a half. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/1169974/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/1169974/ Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KABX · Abraxas Walter Library at the University of Minnesota in 1981: the first walk in, the great tables and high windows, a church of thinking, as sacred as the other kind, the stacks where the degree drifted toward philosophy, borrowed tapes of classical music, and the day the desk gave my student ID to another Jeffrey Johnson. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/three-times/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/three-times/ Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KELS · Elsewhere Three trips to Scotland: a train weekend in Edinburgh from Lancaster in 1986, a drive to Loch Ness with a sister in 1987, and a week in a converted abbey at Fort Augustus with a husband in 2015. Different people each time, the same feeling of being home on arrival. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/mum/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/mum/ Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KELS · Elsewhere Five letters home from a year at the University of Lancaster, 1986 to 1987: an orange room, six clubs, courses with no tests, an Interail card, a thesis on machine consciousness, and a salutation that went from Mom to Mum and back before the flight home. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/kansas/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/kansas/ Thu, 24 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KSUN · The New Sun Farscape retells The Wizard of Oz: an accidental death on arrival, a witch with an army, three companions each missing something, a wizard who turns out to be a memory, and a way home that was in the hero all along. Where the two stories part is what home means. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/is-it-morally-permissible/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/is-it-morally-permissible/ Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KABX · Abraxas A 1985 ethics paper from the University of Minnesota, typed, marked up by the instructor, found in a photo album in 2026 and posted with the marginal questions answered. Kant against the argument from nature. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/fifty-stalks/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/fifty-stalks/ Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KREF · Reflection The I Ching as the model for the turning: yarrow stalks before coins, a book written before anyone asks, and where a seventy-page deck built on structural determinism parts ways with the Book of Changes. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/matinee/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/matinee/ Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KDRK · The Darkroom Making Love at Brookdale East in 1982, Querelle at the Campus Theatre for a dollar fifty in 1983, and the Genet that came after: Our Lady of the Flowers, The Thief's Journal, and a different world from Minneapolis. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/for-headphones-only/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/for-headphones-only/ Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KFHO · For Headphones Only A Sunday-night radio show on KQRS in Minneapolis, remembered: the woman who ran it, the stolen bicycle tire, the way of listening it taught, and two new shows made in its shape, Open Water and Five Past Ten. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/everybody-is-right/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/everybody-is-right/ Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KLDO · The Spectrum How a 1998 Utne Reader cover question, deep and narrow or wide and eclectic, led to Ken Wilber and Integral Theory: the framework that assumes the smart people are all partly right and builds the shelf that holds them. https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#day https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#day Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KREF · Reflection By noon the day is full. The phone. The list. Someone waiting for an answer. A new chapter of The Way, an old book spoken again. Twelve chapters so far. https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#morning https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#morning Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KREF · Reflection Before the first thought, the morning is already here. A new chapter of The Way, an old book spoken again. Eleven chapters so far. https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#tiptoe https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#tiptoe Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KREF · Reflection On tiptoe you can see a little farther. Your legs know it will not last. A new chapter of The Way, an old book spoken again. Ten chapters so far. https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#returning https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#returning Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KREF · Reflection You have been here before. Not this place. This feeling. A new chapter of The Way, an old book spoken again. Nine chapters so far. https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#listening https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/#listening Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KREF · Reflection Two people at a table. One is talking. The other is waiting to talk. A new chapter of The Way, an old book spoken again. Eight chapters so far. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/beet-pride-dance-party/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/beet-pride-dance-party/ Sat, 12 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KUNV · Universe The Beet Pride Dance Party: four hours of disco, house, and pop from Pride 2025 at The Beet in Cloverdale, where Fridays were for dancing. Played as DJ Cutie in four stages, Awareness through Integration, sequenced the way a playlist works as a sigil. https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/ https://signalandvoid.com/the-way/ Sat, 12 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KREF · Reflection An old book, spoken again. A Tao Te Ching written by hand, one chapter at a time: The Nameless, Enough, Stillness, The Bowl, Water, Green Wood, Done. The manuscript continues. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/balearic-spiral/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/balearic-spiral/ Thu, 10 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KUNV · Universe Summer House 26: a warm, melodic house mix by Hallucinex. Twenty-seven tracks that know when to lean in and when to let go. Dip in, drift out. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/bernhard-an-origin/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/bernhard-an-origin/ Wed, 09 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KRLM · The Realms A pattern in a bowl of Scottish stone, four thousand years of attention, one unwitnessed act of care, and a city loud enough to wake it. An origin story for The Realms. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/the-machine-question/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/the-machine-question/ Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KABX · Abraxas A 1987 thesis on whether consciousness requires living matter, lost and recreated in 2026 from memory, the reading list, and my college papers. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/your-playlist-is-a-spellbook/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/your-playlist-is-a-spellbook/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KNCK · The Signal Knocks Song as sigil, the short version. A repeated song is a rehearsal of a state; read your top-played list like a syllabus. https://signalandvoid.com/writing/song-as-sigil/ https://signalandvoid.com/writing/song-as-sigil/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 KNCK · The Signal Knocks A field guide to programming yourself on purpose. Structural determinism, music as input engineering, and the full mechanism behind the practice.