SYSTEMS IN ACTION · When Vendorization Creates Fragility
A real-world case study in vendorized infrastructure. When vendors capture demand but externalize failure, asymmetric incentives quietly produce fragility.
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Capability Drift in Public Infrastructure
Michigan’s roads reveal what happens when public expertise migrates out and systems lose the capacity to correct themselves. They did not fail by accident or climate alone. They deteriorated as public expertise migrated, oversight weakened, and the system lost the ability to enforce quality.
Flow Diagrams
Compressed system maps showing how incentives, signals, and structures actually move. Curated as they emerged.
When Incentives Break the System
A child’s drawing revealed something most systems hide. This essay traces how misaligned incentives quietly reshape work, culture, and infrastructure—and how drift, make-work, and instability emerge not from malice, but from obedience to the wrong signals.
SYSTEMS IN ACTION · The Control Illusion: How Export Controls Create Shadow Chains and Destroy Containment
When traceability breaks, containment fails. This Systems-in-Action maps how well-intended safety controls quietly produce shadow supply chains and brittle failure paths—making systems harder to see, not safer to run.
When the Wheel Turns Itself
Driving is one of the last places where strangers cooperate in real time. As autonomous cars rise, we risk losing the daily practice of attention, generosity, and shared responsibility that once shaped civic life.
SYSTEMS IN ACTION · Why LED Speed Signs Create New Hazards
Tennessee’s new LED speed-limit signs were meant to modernize safety. Instead, they break long-established cue structures and misalign with human perception, creating new hazards. A look at how dynamic interfaces fail when behavior and context remain static.
When the Factories Left
When Michigan’s factories left, something else moved in. This essay traces how industrial collapse, policy incentives, and institutional drift reshaped entire communities—and why incarceration became the default replacement industry in parts of the Midwest.
Children Play · The First Compass
Children follow delight long before adults learn to override their inner compass. This essay explores how early orientation is lost through fear, incentives, and noise — and how relearning delight can restore coherence in work, identity, and life.
SYSTEMS IN ACTION · Am I Stuck in a Bullshit Job?
A straight, unflinching look at bullshit jobs: why some roles drain you, why the system needs the theater, and how to spot the risks before your skills hollow out. A human-scaled guide to value, dignity, and the first step toward real work.
SYSTEMS IN ACTION · The Gen Z Stare
Gen Z grew up fluent in emotional labor; they know what it costs to perform enthusiasm on command, and if their wage doesn’t merit it, false cheer feels like a bridge too far.
SYSTEMS IN ACTION · Breaking the Frame
A real-world example of frame inversion. Cynthia recognized a dominance tactic, matched the pattern, and restored equilibrium in the room. A Systems-in-Action breakdown of how pattern recognition and structural fluency override intimidation.
SIA
SYSTEMS IN ACTION · Family Estrangement
Reconciliation often fails at the first move. Shame makes emotional outreach intolerable. This guide shows how small, functional steps reopen the path back. Systems-in-Action.
Systems and Soul
Integrating Demir’s Step 0 With Coleman’s Reconciliation Ladder: Pre-Contact Interventions in Family Estrangement for Clinicians
Most estrangement frameworks begin too late, assuming both sides can manage emotional contact. Shame and reactivity can block even skilled attempts. Demir Step 0 supplies the missing on-ramp sequence prior to use of Coleman’s reconciliation ladder.
Systems and Soul
The Broken Clock
A childhood lesson becomes a systems lesson: even unreliable sources contain truth if you know how to detect it. In a world of noise and low-signal systems, leadership depends on recognizing the moment something is right.
Systems and Soul
The Path Back
A missing teammate. A brittle room. A way back that was narrow, but real. A story about what it takes to return when standards have been broken.
Systems and Soul
Frontline Decides Everything
The frontline is the brand. One rude voice can cost churches trust, clinics patients, and companies millions. In modern systems, receptionists, schedulers, and agents quietly decide access, trust, and outcomes.
Systems and Soul
The Power of Crones
A systems-level look at why older women vanish from cultural sightlines, shaped by neural reflexes, mortality avoidance, and cultural programming — and how that invisibility restores autonomy, clarity, and freedom.
Systems and Soul
Enmity Cured — Good Neighbors Are Made When the Cows Get Out
One snowy night, the cows got out — and something older than argument took over. A childhood memory of help offered without scorekeeping, and enmity quietly cured.
Systems and Soul
Ecosystem of Tipping
Informal economies emerge everywhere, long before and long after formal rules appear. Most incentives don’t flow through rules. They flow through favors no one names.
SIA
SYSTEMS IN ACTION ·
A growing library of real-world scenarios examined through a systems lens. Each Systems-in-Action entry reveals the pattern beneath the moment and the structural truths that shape human behavior.
Systems and Soul
Tire Iron vs. Tuning Fork
When collaboration becomes torque instead of tone, systems strain. Tire Iron vs. Tuning Fork; Leverage or Listening explores how AI and leadership alike can shift from extraction to resonance — a tuning-fork approach that turns efficiency into coherence.
Systems and Soul
The Vanishing Art of Whistling
Whistling once marked human ease and self-made joy. As that small sound fades, what disappears with it tells a larger story about modern life and embodied rhythm.
Systems and Soul
UBI Dressed Like Work
What if universal basic income isn’t a future policy—but a system already in motion? This essay examines how subsidies, compliance roles, and make-work quietly distribute income under the guise of employment—and what that hidden architecture reveals about modern value and work.