Excogitātor

Don’t be the best.Be the only.

A distinct human presence is becoming scarce.

Veni, vidi, cogitavi

Dr. Shayne Heffernan Ph.D.

Shayne Heffernan

Every financial revolution has changed the speed and the surface of finance without changing its substance. Debt cycles still overshoot. Inflation still compounds. Bubbles still form around the new thing while the old rules keep applying. What is different this time is that intelligence itself has become abundant, and everything abundant gets cheap. The scarce thing now is a distinct human presence: judgement shaped by real consequence, taste built over decades, and the willingness to care about a question for longer than is efficient.

I write about that gap most days, and I build in it the rest of the time. Forty years across capital markets, venture capital and emerging technology, and the part that still cannot be automated is the judgement about which question was worth asking. Everything below is published at Live Trading News, wrapped in post-quantum cryptography and anchored on chain at the moment it goes out. The text cannot be altered. Change a word and it is re-signed and re-stamped, and the chain records the new time, so every version and every date stands permanently on the record.

AI

The build-out, the quantum timeline, and what any of it is actually for.

Thinking

Judgement, independence, and staying non-fungible in an AI world.

Markets

Stocks, macro, ramblings and the KXCO build.

Longevity

Healthspan science, and separating the evidence from the sales pitch.

Life

Food, travel, sport, and the unoptimised parts that refill the well.

Latest

10 November 2026

KXCO's FDA Ontology Ranks Lorundrostat First After Its 10 November Update

KXCO's FDA ontology at kxco.ai/fda was updated in full on 10 November 2026. Its first screen now ranks Mineralys's lorundrostat (MLYS) first of the FDA decisions due within 90 days: decision 22 December, potential return +86%, per the page. Mineralys's shares fell 24.5% between reads on 20 October and 10 November. The update read six quarterly reports to 30 September by hand, and on KXCO's calculation Mineralys is funded to 12 October 2029, even if it repays its $100.0m loan by 30 June 2028.

9 November 2026

Advent 2026, Day by Day: Giving Christmas Back Its Meaning

Advent 2026 begins with Evening Prayer of the First Sunday on Saturday 28 November and ends before Evening Prayer of Christmas on 24 December: 26 days and four Sundays from the First Sunday. The bishops of England and Wales call it a time of joyful expectation, looking back to Christ's birth and forward to his return. Its traditions, from the wreath and the St Andrew novena to Rorate Masses and the O Antiphons, are the Church's own answer to a commercial Christmas.

9 November 2026

Thoughts on Thinking: You Are the Data Centre

The world's data centres used about 485 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025; the brain runs on about 20 watts. The adult male brain holds about 86 billion neurons on average, and its synapse weights at 32-bit precision take at least 400 terabytes. Against the eye's estimated output, GPU memory wins on raw throughput by millions to one, but meaning needs selection, context and consequence. At KXCO the person sits at both ends of the data, and a named person decides.

9 November 2026

The Week Ahead on Wall Street, 9 November 2026: AI Is Still a Buy

We still think AI is a buy. After the midterms the semiconductor index fell 11.4% while the S&P 500 lost 2.5%, in our view an overreaction that fell on the chip names. October payrolls rose 165,000, oil stays high with the Iran war unresolved, Alibaba and Tencent gained, NVIDIA trades at 15.4 times forward earnings, and both SpaceX and Tesla have special committees studying a combination. KXCO's AI ontology shows the relationships behind the NVIDIA, China and SpaceX calls.

8 November 2026

Thoughts on Thinking: Brain Chemistry

Brain chemistry sets the level of thinking and of performance in everything else, and it bears on longevity: 14 risk factors that can be changed account for nearly half of dementia cases. The dangers come from outside, through plastic, PFAS, pesticides and metals, and from inside, through chronic stress and overwork. An organic diet cut a chlorpyrifos marker in urine by 60.7 per cent, and reciting the rosary slowed breathing to under six breaths a minute. The chemistry is a managed input.

The full archive on Live Trading News