Systems and Soul

Golden light through winter reeds — sunlight exhaling across stillness.

Systems and Soul

The Vanishing Art of Whistling

Whistling once marked human ease and self-made joy. In this Systems & Soul essay, Madonna Demir reflects on its quiet disappearance — and what that fading sound reveals about modern life, the nervous system, and the simple act of whistling while we work.

Illustration of disguised labor representing hidden UBI. Two briefcases, one brown, one black.

Systems and Soul

UBI Dressed Like Work

Madonna Demir reveals how subsidies and make-work jobs hide a shadow basic-income system already shaping modern employment.