Finance professional • Personal learning lab

Where I figure things out,
experiment with ideas,
and share discoveries

I work in finance and FP&A in the Netherlands. This is where I work through accounting, AI and thinking frameworks in public, and publish the thinking, including the parts I get wrong.

What's new

The newest essays and podcast episodes, newest first

  1. Episode Newest Episode 5 · 30 min

    The Ironies of Automation & The Art of Oversight

    What happens when human operators supervise automated systems: Bainbridge's ironies of automation applied to Air France 447, medical deskilling trials, and code defects.

  2. Episode Episode 4 · 30 min

    Why Your Brain Needs Cognitive Friction

    Examining whether general thinking skills exist independently of subject matter, and measuring what happens to the human brain when the friction of thinking is offloaded to AI.

  3. Episode Episode 3 · 49 min

    Why AI Verification Replaced Prompt Engineering

    From vibe coding to context engineering: how the $300k prompt engineering hype gave way to the disciplined era of agent harnesses, context window curation, and verification.

  4. Essay Financial Analysis

    How a Company That Sells Water to 16 Million Captive Customers is on the Brink

    A deep dive into aggressive financial engineering in UK water utilities—and the £1 billion emergency deal that just saved Thames Water from collapse.

  5. Episode Episode 2 · 15 min

    Big Tech AI Investments: The Great Accounting Debate

    An in-depth 15-minute debate dissecting both sides of the AI investment thesis. Is Microsoft's $13B OpenAI commitment an ingenious infrastructure land-grab, or a precarious house of cards vulnerable to sudden regulatory intervention and efficiency gains?

Explore

Writing

Essays and analysis, each with its confidence level and sources.

3 pieces

Podcast

The same questions in audio: briefings, debates and a multi-part series.

5 episodes · 1 series

Experiments

Interactive tools you can open and test: cycling and running kit guides, a Fed board explorer.

Interactive tools

About

Who is writing this, and why.

About Luke