The Pattern Files
Now a free audiobook, for a limited time.
Something is wrong.
The patterns are everywhere — in the blueprints, the filings, the names that keep showing up in places they shouldn't. I started writing it down because my department wouldn't listen. I started recording because the page wasn't enough.
I'm not a journalist. I'm not an investigator. I'm a professor with a legal pad and a data set that won't let me sleep. What follows are the case files — the episodes, the evidence, the questions I can't stop asking. I publish them here because if the feed goes quiet, the quiet is the answer.
— Asa Thibodeaux, early 2019
Chapter 5: Open Architecture
A podcast interview with the head of a major platform explains, in plain language, which signal the platform values most. Asa hears one thing, a friend hears another, and a former student hears good news for her small business. He asks what his own generation's habits might protect, and what it means when a system is described openly and nobody asks a follow-up question.
Chapter 4: Pandemic Preparation H
Asa says yes to a college reunion cruise planned for April 2020, and then learns that old friends in five different industries have all just sat through pandemic drills. He goes looking for the reason and finds that the scenarios are public, detailed and rehearsed by serious institutions. In the story, this is the recording that keeps coming down.