The Only Conscious Caretaker

TL;DR: Dropping razor blades down a wall cavity and letting autonomous agents merge uninspected code share the same fantasy: that unobserved spaces have no consequences. Adulthood is realizing caretaking is still on you. Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash Hammer in the ceiling, razors in the wall For most of my adult life, I've had this quiet, recurring thought: sometimes, I am the only conscious observer of a thing. There are spaces where no one goes. When I happen to be the one standing there, the burden of attention falls entirely on me. And if I don't pay attention, no one else ever will. Since becoming a homeowner, it usually hits me (sometimes literally) in the unglamorous corners of the house. A while back, I was working in the basement of a house I owned. It had one of those suspended drop ceilings—the cheap metal grid with lightweight tiles. I needed to see what was running above it. So, I reached up, pushed one of the tiles up and aside. Before I could react, an old…