closed loop systems, space container, life support, circular systems

The space container thought experiment: systems thinking for survival

You wake up. It’s dark. You hear a soft humming — fans, somewhere. Slowly your eyes adjust to the light. You find yourself in a container. Metal walls, a few windows looking out at… stars. Only stars. No Earth in sight. There’s a note: “You have everything you need to survive. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. Good luck.” This is the thought experiment I regularly discuss when I’m in a philosophical mood with friends. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s actually a lens to think about systems thinking, circular processes, and — if you extrapolate — about how we treat the Earth. ...

January 20, 2026 · 7 min read · Tom Meurs
Taskwarrior, timewarrior and vit tutorial

Taskwarrior, Timewarrior and Vit: The Ultimate CLI Productivity Stack

For context on how my brain works, see Working with an AuDHD Brain. This is the stack that structures my daily work: taskwarrior for task management, timewarrior for time tracking, and vit as a vim-style interface. Together they form a keyboard-first, terminal-native productivity system. No Electron apps. No cloud sync sending your data to Silicon Valley. Just plain text, local, and blazing fast. Why This Stack? I struggled with task management for years. Todoist, Things, Notion, Obsidian plugins — tried them all, eventually abandoned them all. The problem was always the same: too much friction. ...

January 3, 2026 · 12 min read · Tom Meurs
AuDHD, ADHD, autism, productivity, automation

Working with an AuDHD brain: why I automate everything

I have AuDHD — the combination of autism and ADHD. Specifically ADHD-PI: the inattentive variant, without the hyperactivity most people associate with ADHD. This isn’t an excuse. It’s context. Because the way I work — the obsession with automation, the preference for async communication, the hours I invest in tooling — doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the result of years of experimenting with what works for a brain that isn’t built for the standard office world. ...

December 27, 2025 · 5 min read · Tom Meurs
resilience, kubernetes, platform engineering, high availability, fault tolerance

Unbreakable - my fascination.

As a kid I had a word for things that fascinated me: unbreakable. Not “indestructible” — that implies something never breaks. Unbreakable is different. It means something even broken still works. I remember exactly when that fascination began. A photo of an A-10 Thunderbolt II, returned from a mission. Half the wing gone. Tail in tatters. Fuselage full of holes. And yet that thing had brought its pilot home. That’s not luck. That’s design. ...

December 23, 2025 · 3 min read · Tom Meurs