"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura" "Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark"

That's where we are with AI. All of us—even people who've been building these systems for decades. We're in the dark wood, and the path forward isn't clear.

In Dante's Divine Comedy, Virgil guides Dante through Hell and up Purgatory's mountain. But Virgil is honest about his limits: "I can't take you all the way to Paradise. Human reason only goes so far."

This newsletter follows that structure:

WHERE YOU ARE NOW: Inferno—surrounded by AI hype, fear, contradictory advice, overwhelming complexity.

WHERE I'LL GUIDE YOU: Purgatorio—the work of learning through hands-on experimentation. The climb toward capability.

WHERE YOU'LL GO ALONE: Paradiso—true mastery, your own unique applications, insights I can't teach because they're yours to discover.

WHAT YOU'LL GET:

  • Open-sourced AI experiments you can reproduce and extend

  • Hands-on learning focused on understanding, not productivity

  • Control over your own AI: your machine, your data, your experiments

  • Many experiments can be run locally. No cloud dependencies, no corporate APIs

  • Honest guidance that admits its limits

WHAT YOU WON'T GET:

  • Everything about AI (impossible)

  • Promises of complete mastery (that's your journey)

  • Productivity miracles

  • Someone else's solutions copy-pasted to your problems

This is your laboratory. Your playground. A place to experiment and learn through curiosity-driven play, not pressure to produce something "valuable."

Like Virgil with Dante, I can only take you as far as human guidance can go. The moment where it really clicks for you, where you figure out how to apply this to your specific situation—that's your Beatrice moment. That's beyond what any guide can teach.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle." "And thence we came forth, to see again the stars."

That's where I can take you. The climb up the mountain? That's yours.