Notices by Ruth — of systems & em dashes (ruthmalan@mastodon.social)

“you become responsible” *

* but sadly… we tend so much to punt on that part…

https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/112762930548986138

That’s 1975 waggling it’s eyebrows and gesturing at 2026

“Once set up, it won't Go Away; it Grows and Encroaches. It begins to do Strange and Wonderful Things and Breaks Down in Ways You Never Thought Possible. It Kicks Back, Gets In The Way and Opposes Its Own Proper Function. Your own perspective becomes distorted by being In The System. You become anxious and Push On It To Make It Work. Eventually you come to believe that the misbegotten product it so grudgingly delivers is What You Really Wanted all the time.”

— John Gall

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/116125837181076150

waves around at <things ai>

Software architecture, as a field or professional area of practice, is relatively new.

Garlan and Shaw’s “Software Architecture: Perspectives on an Emerging Discipline” was published in 1996.

Bass, Clemens, and Kazman’s “Software Architecture in Practice” in 1997

As the title of the second indicates, practice preceded books, but still. 1997 was …

oh right… pretty long ago lol

RE: https://zirk.us/@interfluidity/115841447033031554

“Artists really don't get enough of a reward for all the benefit they provide.”

aot 👇

I’m trying to ride this bout of focus all the way to done, and… between this one wanting to play with the thread, and wanting to sleep under the warmth of the light,… it’s … well, i keep having to adjust what part i’m working on, because the cat makes the rules here, as everywhere, pretty much

I totally stole the idea off the internets, but I still want y’all to appreciate :)

It’s not perfect? Look, it’s the first time i have embroidered anything*… since girls had to do needlework in elementary school in South Africa :)

* as best i recall…

RE: https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/115758067195090066

It’s so pretty!

New York and Eerie Railroad org

RE: https://mastodon.social/@adrianco/115694579183715493

Love the inverted tree idea — it has me thinking of that Erie Railroad org chart from 1854 that was a more “literal” depiction (showing physical location), but which has us asking: what if we drew our org charts this way? How would we see ourselves and our relations to the org? And Adrian has put thought and experience into that:

“One of the hardest and most valuable things you can do as a company is the following:
- Have a fully up to date org chart
- Have a diagram that is not the org chart that accurately reflects how work flows through the company
- Have an up to date and accurate diagram and explanation of what the company does and how it does it”

— Hazel Weakly

#AdventOfSystemSeeing Day 10: Draw Your Org 3 Ways

https://www.ruthmalan.com/Advent/2025/Day10.html

“As usual, the lack of a well-honed proverb to cover the situation reveals a blind spot in the popular culture, and this in turn is probably the reason why so few of us actively practice Problem Avoidance.”

— John Gall, The Systems Bible (The 3rd edition of Systemantics), 2002

via
https://mastodon.social/@josdeweger/114806058281049847

‘An Airplane has been defined as a collection of parts having an inherent tendency to fall to earth, and requiring constant effort and supervision to stave off that outcome. The System called "airplane" may have been designed to fly, but the parts don't share that tendency. In fact, they share the opposite tendency. And the System will fly—if at all—only as a System.’

— John Gall, The Systems Bible

“Coco built ATM-like machines dispensing ethanol in small canisters. Walk up, plug in your canister, buy five cents of gas. Enough to cook dinner.”

oh oh! I want detergent, etc., dispensed to reusable canisters. To reduce plastics.

“The five qualities: Be curious. Think in systems. Communicate with precision. Own what you build. Become a polymath.”

https://www.implicator.ai/werner-vogels-hands-out-newspapers-at-his-likely-final-re-invent-the-man-who-built-the-cloud-isnt-done-teaching/

I’m reading that because I was curious after reading this from Matt …

https://hachyderm.io/@mweagle/115664042889012824

“He [Werner Vogel] coins a term: verification debt. AI generates code faster than humans can comprehend it.”

Earlier this year:

“Those people may be churning out deliverables, but they are also racking up comprehension debt. No one understands what they are on about because it is not possible to derive rationale out of the output alone.” — @PavelASamsonov

https://productpicnic.beehiiv.com/p/all-your-problems-are-people-problems-don-t-just-do-things-part-2

Hmm. Any interest in another #AdventOfSystemSeeing this year?

Guessing No-vember isn’t the best time to ask…

It’s not the most compelling piece of work in the universe… 15 boosts for the assembled version (plus 11 a couple days earlier)…

https://mastodon.social/@RuthMalan/113782195395095739