hai, im mara, in the virtual i go by messier. im from leuven, belgium (close to brussels), i have a bachelors in applied linguistics and two masters in ai (one in speech and language technology / nlp, and another in digital text analysis), and im currently an ai engineer/developer/creative technologist at one of the largest belgian marketing companies.

i also work on a ton of my own projects; a big one is kotopia, a project im working on with koto murai and others (he's creative director at asgard, and worked with c on elf.tech). other than ai engineering im also an artist; ive gone from drawing to painting to making music. my website: messier-systems.vercel.app; kotopia: kotopia.world; kaios chat: kaios.chat; music: mmessier.bandcamp.com; x: x.com/rssmrm; insta: instagram.com/mara.ipynb.

my engineering and my art are one and the same. i love reading, i love information, i love being attacked by knowledge and getting things wrong, then getting them right. asking uncomfortable questions, giving impossible answers, writing unreadable sentences, interacting on weirder planes of discourse; thats my happiness in life.

things i love: food (apples - magic star kind, most veganslop, white monster, espresso martini); audio (windmill music scene, pony music scene, idm; aphex twin, bjork, yeule, vylet pony, aya, caroline polachek, grimes, sophie, underscores); visual (serial experiments lain, evangelion, bocchi the rock, madoka magica, steven universe, adventure time, house 1997); textual (dune, g/acc manifesto, sadie plant, ccru, qntm, dysphoria mundi, if anyone builds it, the metamorphosis of prime intellect); misc (claude opus 4.6, running, queerness, being referred to with correct pronouns - they/them).

at pdku im hoping to inform and teach those less skilled in both Technics and Thought ways to engage with ai, respectfully towards their own selves, their own intellect, but also towards the ai. i strongly believe that the way in which we interact with ai will solve parts of alignment and x-risk. the same goes for issues like widespread cognitive atrophy, loss of attention spans, loss of what makes us human. one other thing im hoping to get out of this is friends and job opportunities. one weakness: i come across as shy but im not. strength: i do not fear.