Working as Intended
Alignment, efficiency, legitimacy, administration and design can each certify the same system.
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Design essays
Writing on interfaces, defaults, affordances, and how design decides who a system is usable by before anyone argues about choice. 16 essays in this theme.
Writing on interfaces, defaults, affordances, and how design decides who a system is usable by before anyone argues about choice.
16 essays · the pattern that runs through most of them is Burden
Start with Resilience Is a Subsidy
Keep Part of Your Thinking Outside the AI
Clicking the final button isn’t control once the model has learned how you think.
Resilience Is a Subsidy
The doctor praised for powering through a clunky record system is covering the cost of its design.
'Unreasonable' Means the System Wasn't Built for You
Systems are built for someone with steady income, a fixed address and time to answer every letter.
You Can Design Harm Out
Most harm is not malice. It is the cheapest way for a system to stay stable, and cheap can be redesigned.
Everyone Is a Crumple Zone Now
A car's crumple zone absorbs the crash so the driver survives.
When Stress Arrives, Who Carries It?
From medical implants to insurance portals, from stress fractures to eviction notices, the physics of failure hasn’t changed.
Anarchists Want Institutions Without Masters
An institution can be large and durable if it absorbs shocks instead of extracting obedience.
"It's Complicated" Is an Alibi for Harm Someone Chose
Indiana's $1.3 billion IBM contract treated missing paperwork as a “failure to cooperate,” and thousands lost benefits.
Frictionless for Whom?
Seamlessness isn’t neutral. It’s subsidized, by someone else’s time, attention, and emotional capacity.
"Why Can't They Just Die Already?"
Waiting for the old guard to retire leaves their rules running.
If You Can't Cancel Easily, You Never Agreed
A free trial you can only cancel by phone was never a yes. Making refusal easy is what makes agreement mean something.
How to Build Institutions That Can't Coerce
Institutions claim care while quietly discarding the people who need the most help.
Stop Blaming Dopamine
Whose business model made the scroll feel like a willpower failure?
Digital Stims That Adjust to Your Nervous System
A silicone popper gives the same feedback all day.
Zero Trust Turns Coworkers Into Suspects
Security built on constant verification makes suspicion the default, first for networks and then for people.
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