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.

202402241658 Stability and resilience are not the same thing

Stability and resilience are not the same thing. Just because a system is stable, doesn't mean it can recover from a disturbance (which is the defining characteristic of 202402201202 Resilient systems).¹

For example, imagine a system that has an equilibrium on a fine edge where any change will cause it to rapidly diverge from the equilibrium. Even though it's stable on that "ridge line", it is not resilient to disturbance. A system that is stable and not resilient may follow the 202207272000 Garbage in, garbage out rule where 202207271958 Stability or instability dominates a system.

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