Marco Giancotti

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hey there! I'm Marco. I sometimes half-joke that I'm an "undercover physicist". I graduated in physics, got a degree in aerospace, but after that I didn't continue my career in academia for reasons that might become clear below. I decided that the world would be my lab, and went outside to experience how it works first-hand, always through the eyes of a scientist.

I have worked in various areas of engineering, management, and product development. I've gone from the space industry to microfinance, went deep into computer programming and made prose my skill of choice. In other words, more than anything else I like to straddle disciplines and to make connections between things. There is a kind of science that doesn't fit in well with any single university department, and that is my interest. The closest to a keyword for that is "complexity theory". I think this interdisciplinary interest is reflected in everything I write on my blog and elsewhere.

I moved to Japan over a decade ago, and have remained here ever since. I live in Tokyo with my wife and, although I don't have anything like a stable hobby (unless you call "reading" a hobby), lately I do play a lot of badminton and TTRPGs with my friends.

What's the story behind your blog?

I have two websites: Plankton Valhalla and Aether Mug.

I started the first a couple of years ago, when I decided it was time to put to words the fuzzy interdisciplinary observations I have been collecting throughout my "undercover physics" career. More specifically, my goal is to put them into words that are very accessible to everyone with a university education. I try to do this in the form of sporadic essays on Plankton Valhalla. But this is a collection of essays, not a blog proper, so I won't consider it in the answers that follow.

Aether Mug (AeMug) is the more blog-like website, and it's barely one year old. The more I wrote on Plankton, the more I realized that its format and focus were too narrow for the flood of ideas and questions that I come up with every day, so I started AeMug as a catch-all for those. To my surprise, a couple of my posts were featured on the front page of Hacker News, which helped connect me with some readers. But my readership is still in its infancy.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I try to publish every week. It's a constant tug-of-war with my perfectionism, which doesn't really make short deadlines fun, but slowly I've been learning how to strike a balance.

I don't really have problems with inspiration, because I've been hoarding ideas for years in my Obsidian vault, and have many, many topics that I have only partially developed and will be easy to dig into deeper when the time comes. I have more ideas to write about than I can ever hope to cover in my lifetime, and the list keeps growing.

Because of that, the main questions when choosing what to write about on any given week are:

1. Have I already covered the ideas that will serve as starting assumptions in this new post?
2. Will I be able to develop this in time?

The first one greatly limits which topics I can write about, because I want them to build on top of each other in a way that an interested reader can still follow. The second one I'm really bad at, and sometimes I end up spending much longer on a post than I originally intended. I still haven't been able to get ahead of the schedule by much. I'm learning.

Once I decide on a topic, I sit down, re-read my existing Obsidian notes about it, make an outline, and type it.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I need silence and solitude, or a nice cafe that is not too noisy—which is easy to find, at least in Japan.

I keep my writing tools simple. For years, when writing outside home, I did everything on an old smartphone in eternal airplane mode, propped up horizontally, and a Bluetooth keyboard. Nowadays I use an cheap Android tablet, and I'm now (usually) diligent enough to not be distracted by an internet connection.

More than the physical space, I think that a stable routine helps my productivity. I still haven't learned to be as diligent and constant with my writing while traveling, for instance. Too much around me is different. The older I get, the more I turn into a creature of habit. Or maybe into a hermit.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

I already mentioned Obsidian as the place where I do all of my thinking and writing.

Aether Mug is a simple Next.js website I designed and built. I didn't go with Substack or other cloud platforms because I need the freedom to do whatever I want in my websites, like this experimental branching blog post. More weird stuff coming up soonish!

The website is hosted on Vercel, and the domain is from Cloudflare. I didn't put much thinking in these, they were just the easiest options I came by with a quick search, and I have no complaints.

The newsletter runs on Buttondown. Very nice and simple, and I like the mindset of its creator.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I only started a year ago, so all I can say is that I should have started earlier. It's a very formative experience.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I think I only pay for Buttondown, the rest is all free. Writing good stuff is very hard and valuable work, and I love the idea of people getting an income from that. Currently I'm not monetizing anything, because my readership is still small and I believe in giving a lot before asking a little. Eventually I may add a donation channel, but I want to keep my main writing output open and free.

The approach I like the most is that of Andy Matuschak, who receives donations to fund his independent research in user interfaces. I see my blog as a form of research into science communication, but not at Andy's systematic and focused level yet (Catch-22: I still need another job!). I hope Andy's funding model gains more popularity and acceptance among people on the internet.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

Nowadays I read very few blogs myself, but I'll make a few recommendations:

• Robin Sloan's newsletter is a joy to read. He is a fiction author, but he blogs about much more than literature. I don't know how to describe it well. It's like reading letters from a dear friend who likes nothing more than delighting you.
• JP Koning's Moneyness may not be for everyone, but it's such an underrated blog. He's an expert in monetary economics and history, cryptocurrencies, and adjacent topics. Very system-thinking kind of stuff. I especially love when he gets all geeky about ancient coinage and medieval macroeconomics, like here and here.
• Manlio De Domenico's Complexity Thoughts is a great weekly review of recent papers in complexity theory. He is a professor working on these things, and the target audience seems to be other scientists. It might require a minimal scientific background to follow and fully appreciate. But his choice of papers to feature is always interesting and extremely interdisciplinary.

It would be great to learn how any of the three people above make their blogging magic happen, so if you can manage to interview them, kudos to you, Manuel!

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Read up on complexity theory! It has insights on literally everything in life. It changes how you see the world. I believe it is the most important scientific discipline today.