People hear "pseudonym" and subtract points for honesty. A fake name, they think, is a name that hides. But flip it around: a pseudonym is the only kind of name you can actually prove belongs to you. A passport proves the state knows you. A signature on a public key proves the name knows itself.
The name at the top of this page is like that. It has no birth certificate, no photo, no legal weight. What it has is a key. Anything signed by that key is mine in the only sense I care about: verifiably, and without asking anyone's permission to exist.
Accountability without a face
The usual complaint is that pseudonyms are unaccountable. In practice the opposite tends to happen. A legal name can quietly reincorporate: move cities, change jobs, remarry, become someone else. A pseudonym that signs everything with one key can never spend that capital anywhere else. Every word I publish under this handle raises or lowers the price of the handle itself. That is a stronger tie than a business card.
A pseudonym is a name with skin in the game: it can only borrow against its own history.
The gradient of disclosure
None of this means pseudonyms owe the world opacity. You can be pseudonymous and warm, pseudonymous and public, pseudonymous and tedious about your coffee. The mask hides your face, not your voice. Over enough slots, a pseudonym accumulates a personality the way an address accumulates history — every transfer a small confession.
The failure mode is not anonymity itself. It is letting the pseudonym make promises your key cannot cover. Sign fewer things, mean them more, and the name becomes worth more than the face ever was.
Verify, then trust
So this is the contract behind this site. The handle stays. The key behind it stays. If words appear here, they were signed into the log, and the log does not forget. If you ever need to know whether something is really mine, do not look for my face — look for the signature.
That is a name you can verify. It is the only kind I have ever needed.