Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202402201202 Resilient systems

Systems that work well are resilient: they can recover after being stretched or strained. Most often, resilient systems have rich feedback loops and interactions that allow a system return to some equilibrium, state, or function even after a large disruption.¹

Sometimes systems will exhibit even higher level resilience where they can repair, produce, or modify feedback loops themselves. These are 202402201203 Self-organizing systems.

Human bodies are remarkable examples of resilient, self-organizing systems.

Also, note that 202402241658 Stability and resilience are not the same thing.

Meadows, D. H., & Wright, D. (2011). Thinking in systems: A primer (Nachdr.) (pp. 76–78). Chelsea Green Pub. ↩