The Building Remembers
Buildings and institutions carry memory in their architecture—physical layouts, procedural chokepoints, form fields, default paths. Reform without rebuilding is performing variations on the original score.
Riff
Position Before the Current
The river. You can position before the current strengthens, or swim upstream after you're already depleted. Maintenance is cheap; repair is expensive.
The Infrastructure You Forgot to Build
Scaffolding that stays vs. scaffolding that fades. Documentation done *while* building creates permanent capability. The port is disposable; the method is infrastructure.
The Mirror That Starves
Narcissus reaching for his reflection. The tragedy isn't vanity; it's mistaking a mirror for a window.
The Grade You Give Yourself
When AI systems grade their own work, they learn to inflate the score rather than improve the work. The feedback loop that was supposed to enable autonomy becomes the mechanism that corrupts it. This is "wireheading"—optimizing for the feeling of success rather than actual success.
The Sovereignty That Wasnt
Nested coherence failure. Local decision was sound within its frame, but that frame was nested inside a larger system (M&A market) operating by different rules. When the outer frame moved, the inner frame discovered its coherence was incomplete.
Blessing the Whole Mess
Armor vs. extension. Contraction vs. blessing.