Articles & Interviews
Blog
Articles, interviews, and thoughts on self-directed learning.
Analysis
Two Clocks: What the Oil Price Is Not Telling You About the 2026 Iran War
The worst supply disruption in the history of oil moved Brent by twenty dollars. After thirteen years financing energy deals, my read is that the market is running on two clocks: physically tight, structurally loosening. This is how oil markets actually work.
Career
Is a degree still worth it? And how to stand out when everyone has one.
Some say the degree is dead. Others say it traps you. Here is what ten years of reading finance CVs taught me about what actually separates two candidates today, sector by sector, with a recruiter who screens the pile before I ever see it, and who disagrees with me in places.
45 min readConversations
I'm Not an Architect, So I Asked One
I'm not an architect, so I interviewed one: my wife. A practitioner's path from philosophy and speculative student worlds to building regulations and high-speed rail — and the single conviction that survived the whole journey: a building is never neutral. It acts on the people inside it.
18 min readLearning
The bookshelf and the classroom
Announcing a partnership with Open Lesson, the Socratic AI tutor that never gives you the answer. Here is why I deliberately did not build an AI tutor inside Dantes, what Daniel Colomer built instead, and what fifty years of learning-science research actually says about why letting yourself get stuck is the point.
12 min readResource Guide
How to Actually Learn a Language (From Someone Who Took the Long Way Round)
Four languages, three decades, and an honest account of what actually moved the needle — what the research says, which tools earn their keep, how AI is reshaping tutoring, and the one habit that beats every method.
27 min readResource Guide
Landscape Photography: A Complete Guide to Getting Serious in 2026
Fifteen years of shooting landscapes — from Norway's northern lights on a borrowed Canon to the Isles of Skye with a Sony A7 IV — mapped into a complete resource guide for every level. Gear, composition, planning tools, editing, astrophotography, printing, and the philosophy that separates good photographers from great ones.
26 min readMusic & Audio
Learning Piano as an Adult: A Musician's Honest Guide to the Best Resources in 2026
A saxophone player who picked up piano in his late twenties maps every resource worth your time — method books, apps, YouTube channels, free courses, and sheet music libraries — with the honesty of someone who has hit every wall an adult learner can hit.
19 min readResource Guide
Learning Structured Finance for Free: A Comprehensive Resource Guide
The entire knowledge base of a trillion-dollar industry is available online at zero cost — if you know where to look. A practitioner's map of every credible free resource across project finance, LBOs, securitization, asset finance, and trade finance.
18 min readAnnouncement
Introducing the Dantes.io Blog
We're launching a blog dedicated to helping you learn better. Expect learning roadmaps, resource deep-dives, expert interviews, and research-backed strategies — all designed to make self-directed learning less overwhelming.
4 min readNewsletter
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