This episode → https://aqeelakber.com/extra/ep3
All episodes → https://aqeelakber.com/extra

Connecting Stories — conversation with Sarah Mak (CEO of Folktale). The Aqeel Akber Extra Extra Extravaganza, made by Aqeel in Canberra.

In this episode

🧐 The facts
>> Sarah Mak, co-founder and CEO of Folktale, joins Aqeel for episode three, Connecting Stories.

>> Folktale connects people who know stories with those who need to hear them.

>> Their conversation recalls a Pacific customer event celebrating community story excellence across many countries.

>> Much of the discussion centres on development-sector reporting beyond lengthy written documents.

>> Trust, consent, and where shared stories travel recur as the conversation deepens.

🍃 Between the facts
What begins as a memory of communities celebrating their own achievements soon folds into harder questions about evidence, outcomes, and what gets left out when reporting stays numerical and impersonal. Sarah and Aqeel keep returning to the gap between the stories humans naturally share and the systems that still prefer summaries, metrics, and text without context.

🌬️ Beyond the facts
Beneath the practical talk of platforms and programmes sits a quieter argument: that understanding is incomplete when lived experience is treated as optional data. As tools accelerate and more decisions lean on machine-readable information, the human texture of who speaks, who listens, and who is kept safe becomes harder to ignore.

🔥 Why you should listen
The arc does not resolve into a product pitch or a policy answer. It moves from celebration and purpose toward trust as the condition that makes sharing possible at all, and ends in the kind of open uncertainty these conversations are meant to hold. Worth staying for the full exchange if you care how story, technology, and accountability meet in real communities.

dsq.studio

This bite → https://aqeelakber.com/extra/bt2
All episodes → https://aqeelakber.com/extra

Meos Constellation — a solo bit on a new Meos view where your notes cluster themselves, instead of you maintaining tags and folder trees like Obsidian. Aqeel on why that felt wrong, and why the map should move when you do. The Aqeel Akber Extra Extra Extravaganza, made by Aqeel in Canberra.

In this bite

🧐 The facts
>> Solo bit on Meos Constellation: notes cluster themselves without tags or folder trees.

>> Aqeel contrasts Obsidian-style graphs that ask you to maintain connections by hand.

>> The view extends Meos cluster semantics into a macroscopic map of everything in your databox.

>> Clustering draws on astrophysics-inspired maths; layouts live in three dimensions and relabel as you add notes.

>> Shipping soon on Meos desktop for Plus and Ultra users, made by Aqeel in Canberra.

🍃 Between the facts
The conversation moves from why fixed topic tags feel like the wrong lens every time, to why wikis and hierarchies crack when new material arrives. Constellation is offered as the dynamic alternative: same semantic engine as cluster, scaled up so the map can reshape instead of locking you into one version of your thinking.

🌬️ Beyond the facts
Beneath the product walkthrough sits a wider argument about heuristic computing and safe passage into a knowledge era — tools that surface what you have forgotten across thousands of notes, without outsourcing judgment. The map is meant to move when you do, because a static graph would only preserve whoever you were when you last filed things away.

🔥 Why you should listen
The full arc carries the reasoning Aqeel has been holding back from a longer blog post: why Meos never shipped a conventional knowledge graph, and what pan-dimensional clustering is trying to protect. Worth the listen if you care how note-taking software should behave when your interests, seasons, and sense of relevance keep shifting.

dsq.studio

This episode → https://aqeelakber.com/extra/ep2
All episodes → https://aqeelakber.com/extra

Emerging Technology — a conversation with Mei Weng Brough-Smyth at the Knox Cafe in Watson, with cafe staff and Esther saying hi. The Aqeel Akber Extra Extra Extravaganza, made by Aqeel in Canberra.

In this episode

🧐 The facts
>> Episode two records a conversation with Mei Weng Brough-Smyth at Knox Cafe in Watson.

>> Cafe staff and Esther drop in briefly while the microphones stay on.

>> The table turns on whether people still want what is good for them, and how trust is calibrated.

>> Meos appears as an AI-native operating system built to prioritise the person using it.

>> Advertising, attention hijacking, and the line between machine learning and everyday AI get unpacked.

🍃 Between the facts
Self-interest, gut feeling, and product design share the same table. The talk drifts from scroll habits and limbic hijacking into targeted feeds, then into what privacy would need to look like if software genuinely served you.

🌬️ Beyond the facts
Beneath the cafe noise sits a familiar tension: tools that promise care while engineering capture. Community, habit, and the quiet pull of defaults keep circling each other without settling into a neat verdict.

🔥 Why you should listen
The arc runs from a plain question about good behaviour into the architecture underneath Meos and the contracts that keep your data yours. Stay for the full drift — from the urge to step off social feeds to tool-calling, local memory, and why enterprise-grade zero retention might belong on a phone.

dsq.studio

This bite → https://aqeelakber.com/extra/bt1
All episodes → https://aqeelakber.com/extra

A solo bit on NEAT, POET, and MAP-Elites — evolutionary algorithms that grow neural networks and their wiring, not just weights. Aqeel walks through a weekend experiment where simple creatures evolve to recognise images they themselves produce, and how symmetry and low-energy constraints start to look uncannily like life.

In this bite

🧐 The facts
>> Solo walkthrough of NEAT, POET, and MAP-Elites — algorithms that evolve network topology, not just weights.

>> A weekend experiment lets evolved creatures recognise images their own DNA sequences produce.

>> Browser-based swarm compute via WebAssembly and PartyKit — anyone can help evolve the population.

>> Symmetry and low-energy constraints in a three-dimensional setup begin resembling biological form.

>> Lines from Stanley, Clune, and Risi connect decentralised evolution to ongoing work on Meos.

🍃 Between the facts
NEAT-family algorithms meet a long-deferred weekend after shipping Meos to the app stores. The self-recognition task turns a research toy into something stranger: brains that must read pictures of their own making. Distributed volunteers in browsers carry a population search that would once have stayed on a lab cluster.

🌬️ Beyond the facts
Simple rules for wiring, energy, and symmetry start to resemble the shapes biology favours. A trace of identity persists inside artefacts that are partly constructed, partly discovered — a motif that echoes beyond the simulation.

🔥 Why you should listen
The bit follows how a standing research interest surfaces in product choices and a live experiment you can join. Hearing it in Aqeel's voice carries the technical walkthrough and the quiet reason the project exists at all.

dsq.studio

This episode → https://aqeelakber.com/extra/ep1
All episodes → https://aqeelakber.com/extra

The Potter — a conversation with ceramic artist Daniel Leone (IG: @danielleone_art), featuring Miranda Chilver (IG: @enquicken.wellbeing). The Aqeel Akber Extra Extra Extravaganza, made by Aqeel in Canberra.

In this episode

🧐 The facts
>> Ceramic artist Daniel Leone meets Aqeel at Mawson Gallery in Canberra, with Miranda Chilver present.

>> Leone works in wood firing: flame paths, falling ash, carbon, and kiln atmosphere shape the clay.

>> One firing can take fifteen people feeding timber across a week, after weeks of preparation.

>> He builds with slag and breakage rather than discarding work after rare, labour-intensive firings.

>> Bonsai pots hold sculptural succulents — codiciform plants — layering soft form on gnarled surfaces.

🍃 Between the facts
The talk drifts from pyrometry and glaze chemistry into what cannot be controlled or fully understood. Leone describes wood firing as mostly guesswork, then contrasts perfect crockery with surfaces marked by ash, salt, and accident. A gallery walkthrough turns technical detail into something tactile: wadding scars, flame paths, and pots that look ordinary until a plant sits inside them.

🌬️ Beyond the facts
Pottery here is less about mastering the kiln than learning to read what the fire and ash leave behind. The thread runs from childhood play through adult pressure about what art ought to be, and back toward freedom without abandoning craft. Brokenness and volatility become part of the work rather than evidence of failure.

🔥 Why you should listen
The full conversation has room to wander from Canberra gallery floors to the mental shift of stopping the fight with nature. Leone’s account of rare firings, wasted pieces, and deliberate collaboration with randomness needs the longer arc to land. Stay for how science, labour, bonsai, and temperament keep circling the same question: what to do when you cannot force the outcome.

dsq.studio