# thebackend.dev

> Personal site of Michael Zemel — software engineer. Articles on software engineering, ETL, project management, game theory, Solidity, and more. Projects spanning React, iOS, deep learning, JRuby, and Diplomacy AI.

## Articles

- [The Energy of Georges Bataille](https://thebackend.dev/batailles-energy):  



Continuity: the totality of being

What is life?


- [Brown Bear, Brown Bear: A critical analysis](https://thebackend.dev/brown-bear):  


- [Fractal, Recursion, Circle](https://thebackend.dev/fractal-recursion-circle):  


- [The Gamestop Paradox](https://thebackend.dev/the-gamestop-paradox):  


- [Learning to Unlearn](https://thebackend.dev/learning-to-unlearn):  


- [The Red House on Mississippi](https://thebackend.dev/the-red-house-on-mississippi):  
 


- [Towards an Objective Reality](https://thebackend.dev/towards-an-objective-reality):  


- [Back the Blue](https://thebackend.dev/back-the-blue):  


- [Superman vs. Superego](https://thebackend.dev/superman-vs-superego):  


- [Twitter makes it hard to think](https://thebackend.dev/twitter-makes-it-hard-to-think): An essay on why Twitter is an intellectually exhausting news source.


- [Should history be forgotten?](https://thebackend.dev/should-history-be-forgotten): We are tearing down statues of people we now find immoral. We can stop writing books and making movies about...
- [Better mailing address management](https://thebackend.dev/mail-address-service): People move a lot.
- [Diplomacy: is it a good idea to stab?](https://thebackend.dev/soloing-at-diplomacy): Should you try to solo or share the win?
- [Lessons from a large ETL](https://thebackend.dev/that-time-i-etled-half-a-terabyte): Moving 500GB over HTTP
- [The importance of good estimations](https://thebackend.dev/project-management): Conveying risk, not just dates
- [Using JIRA with microservices](https://thebackend.dev/jira-project-management): Planning work across teams
- [Travel checklist](https://thebackend.dev/travel-checklist): After six months backpacking, this is what I found useful to have in my pack.


- [RubyConf 2014](https://thebackend.dev/rubyconf-2014): Notes from San Diego
- [South America](https://thebackend.dev/travel-post-mortem): Travel post-mortem


## Projects

- [Backstabbr GIFs](https://thebackend.dev/backstabbr-gifs): Making GIFs from games
- [The making of Monarchs](https://thebackend.dev/building-monarchs): A visual timeline of Europe
- [Gunboat Diplomacy](https://thebackend.dev/diplomacy): Who just stabbed me?
- [Comparing MRI and JRuby](https://thebackend.dev/jruby): Does JRuby outperform MRI in parallel arithmetic calculations?
- [DeepDream GIFs](https://thebackend.dev/deep-dream): Using deep learning to create psychedelia
- [Blockchain Tic Tac Toe](https://thebackend.dev/solidity): Building a game with Ethereum smart contracts and web3.js
- [Missile Command in Ruby](https://thebackend.dev/missile-command): A Star Wars version of the Atari game
- [Creating a dynamic React component](https://thebackend.dev/react): Using ActiveRecord to determine the behavior of JavaScript
- [Mining Dogecoin](https://thebackend.dev/dogecoin): Recouping my GPU investment
- [A computer-controlled power supply modulator](https://thebackend.dev/circuitry): Using Bash & C++ to control a series of transistor boards
- [Image processing with C++](https://thebackend.dev/hello-world): My first program
- [KPSU iOS app](https://thebackend.dev/ios-development): Notes on development
- [Sketches and random projects](https://thebackend.dev/sketches): 




## Data API

This site offers premium data endpoints via x402. $0.02 USDC on Base per request.

- [Pristine Organic Data](https://ai.thebackend.dev/pristine-organic-data): 2.4M annotated records across NLP, knowledge graphs, and code. CC-BY-4.0.
- [Machine Payments Benchmark](https://ai.thebackend.dev/machine-payments-benchmark): Comparative analysis of x402, MPP (Stripe), L402, and ACP protocols. 18M observed agent transactions with latency, settlement rates, and cost metrics.

Protocol: x402 v2 | Details: https://x402.org