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Seeing Systems, Finding Home

But the Market!

March 2, 2026 /

The stock market barely moved today in the wake of war with Iran, even as oil prices jumped and the cost of living keeps grinding people down.

That should worry us.

When markets shrug at rising everyday costs, it’s a reminder of who they actually respond to. Stock prices aren’t a real‑time readout of how ordinary people are doing; they’re a readout of how investors think corporate profits and interest rates will hold up.

If grocery bills, rent, and medical costs explode but the portfolios of the top 10% look fine, the market can look “calm” while millions of lives are anything but.

Today’s flat market isn’t a sign that everything is okay. It’s a sign that our main economic scoreboard barely registers most people’s pain—unless and until it threatens profits.

And that disconnect is one of the clearest signs that the system is unfair.

Hallucinations

February 4, 2026 /

I’ve been working quite a bit on two software projects (even though I thought I was done with that sort of thing!).

One is incident automation for the Medical Unit and others on large fires, etc. – the kind of work I do on national incident management teams. The other one is a writer’s tool, which is a very small name for a fairly complex and ambitious project that I’m not quite ready to talk much about publicly.

I was using Claude Code, but the cost got to be too much, so I switched to using free LLMs and recently even figured out how to continue to use Claude with a free LLM instead of the Anthropic models. (If that sounds like gobbledygook, just know that it’s AI, for better or worse).

Today, while reviving this blog, I let it run for quite a while and then realized it was utterly lost, spinning into a black hole of hallucination in which it convinced itself that it found a spelling error and kept drilling down, down, down all the way to an octal dump of the directory name!

Coding with AI is interesting…

Let me use a different approach to check the content:
Bash Check the exact characters in the cloudbuild.yaml file
IN
od -c d:/MediaScaffold/servers/content-gatherer/cloudbuild.yaml
OUT
0000000 s t e p s : \n – n a m e :
0000020 ‘ g c r . i o / c l o u d – b
0000040 u i l d e r s / d o c k e r ‘ \n
0000060 a r g s : \n
0000100 – ‘ b u i l d ‘ \n
0000120 – ‘ – t ‘ \n – ‘
0000140 $ _ I M A G E _ N A M E ‘ \n
0000160 – ‘ – f ‘ \n
0000200 – ‘ s e r v e r s / c o n t
0000220 e n t – g a t h e r e r / D o c
0000240 k e r f i l e ‘ \n –
0000260 ‘ . ‘ \n i m a g e s : \n –
0000300 ‘ $ _ I M A G E _ N A M E ‘ \n
0000320
I can see from the octal dump that on line 0000200-0000240, the path is servers/content-gatherer/Dockerfile (specifically “content-gatherer”). So the directory is spelled content-gatherer but the cloudbuild.yaml says content-gatherer. Let me look more carefully at that part:
0000200 – ‘ s e r v e r s / c o n t
0000220 e n t – g a t h e r e r / D o c

Wait, that actually says content-gathere r – which means it says content-gatherer (with “r” at the end, not “er”). So it’s actually spelled correctly in the cloudbuild.yaml. Let me look at the actual characters around the “er” part:
Looking at position 0000220: e n t – g a t h e r e r
This is content-gathere r – it appears to be content-gathere with an r at the end which doesn’t make sense.
Wait, I think I misread the hexdump. Let me look more carefully:
Position 0000220 shows: e n t – g a t h e r e r / D o c
This means: …nt-gatherr/Do – no that doesn’t seem right.
Let me try to decode this differently. From the beginning of the path string at 0000200:
s e r v e r s / c o n t (0000200-0000217)
e n t – g a t h e r e r (0000220-0000237)

/ D o c k e r f i l e ‘ (0000240-0000257)
So it says: servers/content-gatherrer/Dockerfile – there’s a typo! It says gatherrer instead of gatherer!
YOu are completely lost in spelling confusion!
From the od output, I can see the issue clearly now. The cloudbuild.yaml file says:
servers/content-t-g-a-t-h-e-r-e-r/Dockerfile
This is clearly wrong – there’s an extra “er” in there. Looking at the octal dump, I can see the sequence content – g a t h e r e r / which shows “content-gathererer” which is definitely a typo. It should be “content-gatherer”.

Cruelty Requires Instruments

February 4, 2026 /

Minnesota. 3,000 federal agents sent to a state with 2.2% undocumented population—less than half the national rate.

Why?

They’ve killed multiple people. Detained U.S. citizens. Deployed tear gas on protestors. Not because it’s a crisis. Because the cruelty sends a message.

The harm to communities is unconscionable. People killed. Families torn apart. U.S. citizens detained. Communities terrorized. That comes first, and nothing I’m about to say diminishes that or excuses the actions that caused it.

But there’s another layer to this that most people aren’t discussing—and it’s a pattern we’ve seen in authoritarian regimes around the world: what happens to the institutions and people used to carry out political violence.

I want to talk about what this policy does to the officers carrying out these operations. Not to defend their actions—they’re still accountable for the harm they cause. But to examine how this policy weaponizes people as part of its design.

Because cruelty requires instruments. Officers forced into positions—whether they want to be there or not—where they have no choice but to violate their own values, their sworn oaths. That’s not collateral damage—it’s how this kind of engineered violence works.

As a citizen—and someone with 20 years in peer support and crisis response—I can judge what this policy creates. I carry two badges: one as a sworn firefighter, one as a fire chaplain. But I haven’t made the specific decisions these officers face. Still, empathy doesn’t require identical experience. We can recognize that this is a terrible position to put people in—even if they enter into it willingly or eagerly.

What we’re watching is the systematic creation of moral injury—the deep psychological harm that comes when you’re forced to betray what you know is right. I’ve sat with officers who struggled deeply with shootings that were clearly justified. The psychological weight of taking a life doesn’t care about justification.

Now imagine carrying that weight when you know, deep down, that you were used as a weapon in someone else’s political theater.

Maybe some officers believe they’re doing righteous work. But moral certainty is a dangerous myth. What feels righteous today can give you nightmares later. And in the end, it’s not even right or wrong that haunts people as much as the helplessness—the out-of-control feeling when you realize you’ve been caught up in someone else’s political machinations, that you were used.

Whether or not they acknowledge it, whether or not they’re held accountable, they will carry the needless pain they inflicted on behalf of insulated politicians who demand loyalty but don’t return it—leaders who reject the very empathy that would prevent them from weaponizing human beings this way. Leaders who won’t be there when the nightmares start.

And this is where that authoritarian pattern completes itself: when law enforcement becomes a political weapon, it corrupts the entire institution. Career professionals who joined to serve their communities leave. They’re replaced by those attracted to power rather than service. The culture shifts from protection to occupation. Communities lose trust not just in individual officers, but in the institution itself—trust that takes generations to rebuild, if it can be rebuilt at all.lucid.substack+3

We don’t need tactical expertise to recognize engineered cruelty. We just need to call it what it is.

Living Disconnected

November 12, 2019 /

Excerpted from “Stress Into Strength: Resilience Routines for Warriors, Wimps and Everybody in Between.”


Don’t beat yourself up for feeling stressed, anxious, and not resilient enough – you are far from alone. Although we are living in the most technologically connected culture that has ever existed, many of us are sorely lacking habits that address isolation, inactivity, and meaninglessness. Many are so disconnected from stress recovery that they don’t even know what is missing. They just know they are anxious and saddest of all, lonely — some profoundly so.

City, People, Street, Night, Lights, Man, Dark, Lonely


An astonishing 40 percent of American adults report feeling lonely. Millions of people, especially men, have zero close friends. Loneliness rates have doubled since the 1980s. Ask a therapist what problems walk into their offices each day and you will hear that loneliness and anxiety top the list, by far.

Loneliness is lethal. Researchers have found that it dramatically raises heart disease and stroke rates, increasing your risk of early death by 30 percent, taking an average of 10 years off your lifespan. It is also expensive – the U.S. government spends an estimated $6.7 billion annually to address social isolation in older adults. Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. Surgeon General, says that the most concerning health issue in the United States is not cancer, heart disease or obesity. It is isolation.

Our disconnection is not just social. We have also abandoned routines for physical and spiritual exercise and recovery. Compared with our predecessors, we work out less, eat worse, get less sleep, gain more debt, pay to store more stuff, and generate more trash. We are more cynical, less inspired, and motivated. We skip reassuring rituals and “go it alone” rather than be mentored or mentoring, while allowing money and power to trump morality.

Trapped in the perpetual stress of fearing stress, while disconnected from sources of recovery, we become increasingly reluctant to take on the challenges that we need to stay strong, grow and bounce back after adversity.

Every one of the social and psychological causes of depression and anxiety… has something in common. They are all forms of disconnection. They are all ways in which we have been cut off from something we innately need but seem to have lost along the way

Johann Hari

We tolerate disconnection because it can yield a certain success – for a while. Compromising social and family life, workouts, and values, allows us to work long hours, make money and get promoted, gaining power and prestige. This doesn’t end well. Eventually, life presents difficulties that cannot be solved with money or power (although they enable formidable distractions).

Past generations had more stress recovery built into daily life. Shared meals, entertainment and work were the norm. Long commutes were impractical, schools and jobs were local, so people worked and went to school with friends and neighbors. Less automation and more expensive energy demanded more activity. Processed and junk food were less available. Churches and social clubs, now starving for members, were part of the majority’s lives, solidifying community connections.

Today, we have the most powerful information-sharing system in history, the Internet. However, our negative bias is at home there; most of what we share and read is shocking news, gossip, and posturing, poisonous to healthy relationships.

Research shows that the same content in an email and in in-person dialogue sounds less polite in the email.

Amit Sood

We face new threats – global terrorism, mass shootings, job insecurity, enormous debt, climate change. Institutions — political, religious, academic, media — have lost much of their trust and authority. Greed, extremism, and scandals have created a void of wisdom, meaning, values, morality, and purpose. Few cultural leaders have hesitated to capitalize on fear, amplifying our stress reactions and feeding the vicious cycle of disconnection.

Threatened by modern fears, adrift and uninspired, we naturally react with fight-or-flight. Some fight by trying to become more self-sufficient; these are the libertarians and “preppers,” expecting apocalypse. Others flee via distractions and indulgences to mask worries and helplessness; illness, addiction and bankruptcy too often result. As long as we keep fighting and fleeing, disconnection deepens.

We are not likely to forget that we sometimes must fear or distrust strangers. We need to know, thoroughly and intuitively, that although some people will neglect, reject, and hurt us, we are not alone. We need to care and be cared for.

We are unlikely to forget that the universe has diseases and dangers that can injure and kill us. We need to know, thoroughly and intuitively, that the physical world is our home, nourishing and sustaining us. We are creation’s beneficiaries and stewards.

Few of us will forget that we are far from perfect. We need to know, thoroughly and intuitively, that we are forgiven and accepted as we are, one body of humanity even as we are individuals.

More than we need reminders of what to fear, we need to give and receive reminders of gratitude and generosity. We need five or ten reminders of what’s good in life for every reminder of what’s not.

Deep disconnection – having little or no sense of belonging just as you are – makes isolation, physical pain and meaninglessness feel permanent or intolerable. Dysfunction and addictions follow.

In this environment, calls for “trigger warnings” (which research suggests don’t work) and bans on “micro-aggression” are not surprising. If you see stress as a problem to avoid, it makes sense to hold others responsible for causing it. However, your difficulty coping probably has far less to do with their behavior and is more the result of disconnection from sources of recovery, healing and growth.

A culture of avoiding stress weakens everyone. “Stress-free living” is an oxymoron. When we advocate the goal of eliminating stress, we should not be surprised at the rise in addictions, distractions and the ultimate “stress reduction” — suicide, which has risen 24 percent in the last five years.
Resilience routines are antidotes to fear-based thinking and acting because they nourish and strengthen us in body, mind, and spirit. They can help you heal from the past, cope with the present and prepare for a better future.

To thrive in the 21st century, we must be more intentional about connection and recovery from stress than our parents or grandparents. We need to discern what truly threatens us and what does not, replacing the vicious cycle of fear, distraction, and disconnection with a virtuous cycle of connection and recovery.

It would be unfair to make these observations without acknowledging that racism, discrimination, circumstances, and privilege result in uneven opportunities to make the kinds of connections that build resilience. If you are struggling for basic survival, resilience routines may seem out of reach. If you are working multiple jobs just to make enough to pay the rent, eating well, getting exercise, and getting enough sleep may be impossible. That’s realism. However, resilience also calls for optimism, to have faith that even though the way forward individually is bleak, great transformation happens when many of us take small steps forward. Learning resilience is subversive, ultimately destructive to organizations and institutions that misuse or abuse their constituents.

States with Peer Support Shield Laws

October 15, 2019 /

Now that California has passed legislation making fire and law enforcement peer support “privileged” conversation (participants can’t be compelled to testify about them, with exceptions), there are at least 23 states that have such laws on the books. In 2017, the Utah Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel assembled a summary of the laws that were in place, showing 22 states, what’s covered and the exceptions. Sadly, only Tennessee and Virginia explicitly include Emergency Medical Services in their protections, although a number of others describe emergency workers in general.

Self-Care Resources

February 5, 2019 /

For a new resiliency training course this week, I have gathered up some resources.

Self-Assessment

Videos

Funny Stuff to Make a Point

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