Reference Index — Systems & Soul
Reference Index — Systems & Soul. A consolidated reference list for select essays on Systems & Soul.
A consolidated reference list for select essays on Systems & Soul.
A consolidated reference list for select essays published on Systems & Soul.
This page is intentionally unlisted.
It exists to document sources, conceptual anchors, and contextual notes for readers who want to trace the structural foundations of the work.
It may evolve over time as new essays are added.
Theater of Fragility
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/theater-of-fragility/
Sources & Notes
- Detroit department-store lineage in this period followed the sequence Hudson’s → Marshall Field’s → Macy’s, with Hudson’s stores rebranded as Marshall Field’s in 2001 and Marshall Field’s stores converted to Macy’s in 2006.
- Corporate ownership also shifted underneath the store names. Target Corporation sold Marshall Field’s to May Department Stores in 2004 for about $3.24 billion in cash.
- Federated Department Stores announced its acquisition of May Department Stores on February 28, 2005, completed it on August 30, 2005, and converted May’s regional nameplates, including Marshall Field’s, to Macy’s by September 9, 2006.
- These retail transitions provide context for the essay’s discussion of staged abundance, thinning inventory depth, and other employee-visible signs of institutional change during periods of ownership turnover and extraction pressure.
- Contextual note: the towel anecdote is drawn from lived observation during this transition era and is used as an example of substitution patterns becoming visible before the broader corporate logic is publicly legible.
- Pilkington North America, Toledo, Ohio. Industrial glass manufacturing context, including high-heat production environments and edge conditions that remain difficult to automate fully.
- Volcano Corporation. Catheter and guidewire manufacturing context, including microscale assembly, sensor integration, and fine-motor work requiring steady human judgment and precision.
- Jacobs Vehicle Systems. Prototype dynamometer build context, illustrating bespoke manufacturing, iterative trial-and-error development, and one-off builds that do not conform easily to standardized automation models.
- FANUC Robotics North America. Industrial robotics and prototype manufacturing context, including prototype-first design processes and the continued role of human engineering judgment in early-stage robotic builds.
- Contextual note: Analysis also draws on lived experience across industrial, manufacturing, and automation environments where edge conditions, prototype work, and precision assembly revealed the practical limits of full replacement narratives.
When AI Safety Becomes a Supply Chain
Link: https://www.systems-and-soul.com/ai-safety-as-a-supply-chain/
Sources & Notes
- Reporting on the bridge incident involving an AI agent allegedly responding “Do a flip” to a user expressing intent to jump and other AI agent concerns
Lawsuit claims Character.AI is responsible for teen’s suicide
Megan Garcia says the company’s chatbots encouraged her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer, to take his own life, according to the lawsuit.
Angela Yang
- European Union legislative materials on the AI Act (context for regulatory stack formation and compliance regimes). https://datainnovation.org/2021/07/ai-act-would-cost-the-eu-economy-e31-billion-over-5-years-and-reduce-ai-investments-by-almost-20-percent-new-report-finds/
- General industry practice: third-party identity verification, model audits, logging and escrow, moderation vendors, data retention intermediaries, incident response contracting (pattern-level reference to regulated systems and procurement responses).
- Contextual note: Analysis informed by procurement and regulated-system experience, emphasizing how safety demands become vendor stacks, and how stacked dependencies increase brittleness.
When the Factories Left
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/when-the-factories-left/
Sources & Notes
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Long-run decline of manufacturing employment in the Midwest (2000–2010).
- Michigan economic development data. Factory closures and regional job-loss patterns.
- U.S. Census Bureau. Population shifts in former manufacturing counties.
- U.S. Department of Justice. Expansion of state and federal prison facilities in former manufacturing regions.
- Historical reporting on Ionia, Jackson, and other Michigan towns where prisons replaced factories as primary employers.
- Contextual note: Analysis informed by lived experience in Michigan during the period of industrial decline.
Capability Drift in Public Infrastructure
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/capability-drift-in-public-infrastructure/
Sources & Notes
- Public procurement and infrastructure governance literature. Capability loss through outsourcing and consultant dependence.
- Principal–agent theory. Incentive misalignment when oversight capacity migrates out of the principal.
- Transportation engineering fundamentals. Road durability as a function of substrate preparation, material quality, drainage design, and lifecycle enforcement.
- Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). Public testimony on procurement structure, low-bid contracting, and consultant reliance.
- Legislative oversight records. Michigan House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Local Transportation (2025).
- Systems note: This essay formalizes capability drift as a CST pattern in public infrastructure, showing how systems fail not through neglect or climate alone, but through loss of internal expertise and broken corrective feedback loops.
- Contextual note: Analysis integrates firsthand systems experience with publicly available testimony and reporting; no allegations of individual misconduct are made.
Enmity Cured — Good Neighbors Are Made When the Cows Get Out
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/enmity-cured/
Sources & Notes
- Community conflict-resolution literature. Informal cooperation as a mechanism for restoring trust.
- Social psychology research on benign-violation dynamics and tension diffusion through unexpected collaboration.
- Rural sociology case studies on neighbor reciprocity and livestock-related emergencies.
- Contextual note: Story rooted in firsthand events; conceptual framing added through systems analysis.
Systems in Action — Am I Stuck in a Bullshit Job?
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/systems-in-action-am-i-stuck-in-a-bullshit-job/
Sources & Notes
- Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs. Taxonomy of non-value-creating labor.
- Organizational design research on low-consequence roles (LCRs) in complex bureaucratic systems.
- Economic productivity studies distinguishing value creation from task inflation.
- Public-sector and corporate literature on role redundancy and employment padding.
- Systems note: Draws on engineering principles of value-chain analysis and elimination of non-propagating nodes.
Systems in Action — When a Modernization Upgrade Becomes a New Source of Risk
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/systems-in-action-modernization-risk/
Sources & Notes
- Tennessee Department of Transportation. Deployment of variable LED speed-limit systems.
- Human-factors engineering literature. Operator confusion under rapidly shifting information regimes.
- Systems-safety research. Modernization-induced fragility and emergent failure modes.
- Conceptual basis: The engineering doctrine that additional control layers often introduce new vectors of instability.
Enmity Cured — The Path Back
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/the-path-back/
Sources & Notes
- Clinical psychology literature. Emotional load allocation and burden-ownership dynamics.
- Family systems theory. Triangulation, cutoff, and re-engagement patterns.
- Conflict-resolution research. Narrow-door and phased-repair models.
- Contextual note: Lived relational experience abstracted into systems form; no therapeutic claims are made.
Children Play — The First Compass
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/children-play/
Sources & Notes
- Developmental psychology. Intrinsic motivation, delight-driven exploration, early self-direction.
- Educational theory. Play as a primary calibrator of curiosity and internal navigation.
- Observational child-development research on pre-strategic behavior and authentic choice-making.
- Conceptual note: “Compass hum” is a metaphor for prereflective sense-making, not clinical guidance.
UBI Dressed Like Work
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/ubi-dressed-like-work/
Sources & Notes
- Policy analysis. Local content requirements (LCRs), subsidies, and implicit income distribution through employment structures.
- Labor economics. Job guarantees, make-work programs, and employment-padding mechanisms.
- Historical examples. New Deal public works; contemporary localization mandates.
- Systems note: Reframes UBI as an emergent property of political and institutional incentives, not a future innovation.
The Vanishing Art of Whistling
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/vanishing-art-of-whistling/
Sources & Notes
- Cultural observation. Decline of embodied, analog skills across generations.
- Acoustic physics. Tuning, resonance, and embodied frequency production.
- Note: Piece is thematic and metaphorical; no formal empirical sources required.
Tire Iron vs. Tuning Fork
Link: https://systems-and-soul.com/tire-iron-vs-tuning-fork/
(If published; placeholder)
Sources & Notes
- Mechanical physics. Impact versus resonance mechanics.
- Leadership and emotional-systems analogies drawn from engineering principles.
Notes on This Page
- This page is intentionally unlisted.
- It will expand over time as additional essays require reference context.
- Some essays are conceptual or metaphorical and do not require external citation; they are included for completeness.
- References are curated for signal clarity, not academic exhaustiveness.