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POSIWID

Hold my (Stafford) Beer

The Shape of Sorting

I've drafted articles I didn't post. Not because they were wrong, but because sending them would require translation I didn't want to bother with—and I figured no one reading would meet me half way. That hesitation, felt before it's named, is

Ten Miles, Three Worlds

A cheeseburger, tater tots, a soft drink, and a cookie at Mike's Drive-In in Tigard. Fifteen dollars including tip. The lunch crowd is a mix of white and Black folks, a mixed-race couple at the next table, Christmas music drifting from somewhere behind the counter. No one seems

Behind the Wheel

A Gentler Systems Analysis of Traffic Safety in Oregon Yesterday, Oregon woke up to a strange sort of compliment. Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety released their annual “Roadmap of State Highway Safety Laws” and put Oregon at the top of the heap. On paper, we were the traffic-safety honor

No Niin: When the Chickens Come Home to Roost

And the roost is about to collapse There’s a Finnish expression—no niin—that captures resignation, inevitability, and dry acknowledgment all at once. It’s what you say when the thing everyone knew was coming finally arrives. It’s what you mutter when the roof leaks again, or when

The Circular Firing Squad of Productivity

Three articles landed within weeks of each other, each diagnosing a productivity crisis, each blaming something different. Together, they reveal more than any intended: we have no idea what we're measuring anymore. The Accusations The device hoarding article warns that Americans keeping phones for 29 months instead of

The Molecule, Day Three: Combustion and Exhaust

There’s a narrow window in Portland traffic where you get an unimpeded straight shot through I-84 into downtown, and I missed that aperture this morning, getting carried along a viscous stream of cars across the Morrison Bridge, down Naito Parkway, and into the $17 a day garage where optimism

The Molecule, Day One: Intake

The molecule arrives at 6:45 AM, having paid its entrance fee. Twenty dollars to Uber to avoid the bus, though public transit will claim its due eventually. The courthouse doors remain locked until 7:30. No explanation was offered. The institution kept its own hours. A coffee shop nearby

The Hammer and the Nails: What POSIWID Misses

The Limitations of Systems Analysis Introduction: The Appeal of Clear Answers There's something deeply satisfying about the POSIWID framework—"the purpose of a system is what it does." It cuts through mission statements, good intentions, and complexity to offer stark clarity: forget what they say they&

Long COVID and the Patterns of Normalization

A Look Through the POSIWID (Purpose Of a System Is What It Does) Lens Before anyone reaches for the "fake science!" or "old news!" pitchforks and torches, it's worth mentioning that we're only taking a look across public health data, systems analysis,

The Infrastructure Hypothesis, Part II

Leakage and the Work of Brokers What the Hypothesis Misses The first movement proposed that our information infrastructure is fractured in ways that prevent crisis analysis from converting to action. But this hypothesis contains a silent assumption: that the incompatibility is total. It isn't. Sometimes ideas do cross