MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

Tag: Bureaucracy

  • Triplicate

    Herbert W. Plinth, the Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Paperwork Affairs at the Bureau of Red Tape, navigated the labyrinthine corridors of his own department with the weary resignation of a spelunker lost for decades. The air hung heavy with the metallic tang of old filing cabinets and the musky scent of decaying memos. Every surface…

  • Looking Like Your Doing Something

    The rain lashed against the canvas tent, the wind like a fist against a taut drum. Colonel Valentini slammed a battered map onto the rickety table, the sound a gunshot in the confined space. Captain Ricci, fresh out of West Point and polished like a new saddle, flinched. “Easy to bark orders from behind a…

  • Scaling Is a Problem. Downscaling Is a Wicked Problem.

    Scaling is easy. Just throw more hardware at it, more bodies, more capital, more hype. Pump it up, stack it high, run the numbers until they glow. A startup becomes a unicorn, a unicorn becomes a monopoly, and suddenly the market’s a game of Monopoly where one guy owns all the hotels and everyone else…