All arcs
40 arcs, each a compact doorway into a recurring failure pattern that the newsletter traces across episodes.
Many Witnesses
Two honest accounts of the same event, built from real evidence, and they do not match. Akutagawa's grove holds seven sworn testimonies and no narrator. The company's minutes and the community's memory of one consultation meeting, a summarizer that silently picks a side, the accountability mechanisms built to rule between accounts, the dissent kept on file, and model panels that surface disagreement instead of voting it away. The question moves from who owes the account to who decides between accounts, by what rule, and what becomes of the account that loses.
- Panels· the sequence on reception, record and address
- Readings· a text held against a live case
- Positions· an argument taken to its limit
- Cycles· the early author arcs
The Account
Every easy place to locate a decision has been removed: the model retires, the vendor only supplied software, the reviewer relied on the system.
End of Support
Institutions brought AI in to hold what people take with them when they rotate out.
Nothing Comes Back
A system can be stopped while its decisions remain in circulation.
Signed in Absentia
The sixth panel, and the one where the record starts writing itself.
The Ground Address
The fifth panel, and the one with a street number on it.
The Corrupted Archive
The fourth panel, and the floor under all of them.
The Side That Never Runs Out
The third panel, and the last boundary.
The Unwatched Interval
The middle panel.
The Leash Arc
The arc goes indoors.
The Exit Arc
Voice requires a listener.
The Symbiosis Arc
The climb turns to face the machine.
The Humane Loop Arc
The prescription to the Glass Child's diagnosis, read through Le Guin: formation before access, the capacity-return test, the paid verifier, the pantry and the neighborhood, and the loop that governs the loop.
The Glass Child Arc
A century trained the Glass Child to be legible and useful, then built a synthetic peer that produces the legible artifact without a body.
The Attachment Arc
Attachment is the bond to the one figure; the sociable system is company with the unfamiliar, wariness intact.
The Regression Arc
Safety nets, verification reflexes, caution polish, memory effects, and governed reach: how improvements can narrow the capability nobody named.
The Character Arc
Capability is measured in the wind tunnel.
The Bene Gesserit Arc
The Sisterhood's ledger leaves Rome for the other Houses: Islamic jurisprudence, Buddhist attention, the Golem's missing door, sacred language as extraction, and Ubuntu's relational turn.
The Holy Arc
Who gets to decide what the machine is for?
The Power Arc
The physical invoice of intelligence.
The Bootstrap Arc
First stage, Suitability Slide, the rented body, Alis Position, and the weave of the climb.
The Optimization Arc
The fitting answer, institutional preference data, comfortable disaster, apprenticeship loss, and the reassurance machine.
Let the People In Cycle
Glass child, negative value, procurement language, the tax thread, and the public flame.
The Partnership Dividend Cycle
From liability sponge to human hoop: amber light, crimson brake, three seats, shared strain, and the hinge.
The Voice Cycle
When the wrapper learns to speak.
The Detection Arc
Reading the seam before the evidence arrives.
The Contract Cycle
Substrate funds solver.
The Sideways Cycle
Format changes disclosure.
The Ender Cycle
Plausibility ceiling.
The Loom Cycle
Compute credits.
The Consciousness Loop Cycle
Molting into agency.
The DataDragons Cycle
Building successors.
The D.I. Cycle
Dimes, drafts, spec sheets meeting the street.
The War Cycle
When the partnership becomes warfare.
The Search Cycle
Locatability in noise.
The Pullman Cycle
The Magisterium's burden.
The Lucas Cycle
Guardianship decay.
The Kubrick Cycle
Compulsory continuation under contradiction.
The Clarke Cycle
Authority through opacity.
The Asimov Cycle
Pre-action constraints.