U. Ortego

Senator says ICE ‘attack dog’ caused ‘horrific’ injuries to unresisting man as he was detained Patty Murray of Washington state said ICE agents lied to Wilmer Toledo-Martinez to lure him outside before dog attacked him

Attack dogs aren’t a scandal — they’re a signal.
Once a system treats migrants as variables, not people, cruelty becomes an optimization path.
Machinery escalates until someone outside the logic forces a halt.

#systems #borderpolitics #migration #humanrights #collapsepatterns #ortego #ICE

Societies don’t fail because people “go mad.”
They fail because the systems keep optimizing past what humans can survive.
🔗 uortego.substack.com

#Systems #Collapse #History #Power #Power #AI #Optimization #AlgorithmicGovernance #TechAndSociety #Risk #Fragility

Exactly. Fear hides the machinery; understanding exposes the incentives.
Part II is up now — here: uortego.substack.com/p/the-purity...

Optimal Outcomes | U. Ortego | Substack Dissecting the machinery beneath modern life—where reason fractures and power performs. Click to read Optimal Outcomes, by U. Ortego, a Substack publication. Launched 6 days ago.

When CNN lets users bet on famine in Gaza, it isn’t a glitch. It’s the same mechanism that made Bengal’s famine profitable: suffering → data → instrument → profit. When tragedy becomes a price signal, the system shows what it values.

uortego.substack.com

#Gaza #Markets #Media #Systems #CNN

Optimal Outcomes | U. Ortego | Substack Dissecting the machinery beneath modern life—where reason fractures and power performs. Click to read Optimal Outcomes, by U. Ortego, a Substack publication. Launched 6 days ago.

**A society doesn’t collapse from the outside.
It collapses when its organizing idea becomes impossible to survive.**

That’s the core of *Mechanisms That Break Society.*
🔗 uortego.substack.com

#systems #collapse #history #governance #analysis #power #mechanisms #societ #UOrtego

Exclusive: Survivors clinging to capsized boat didn’t radio for backup, admiral overseeing double-tap strike tells lawmakers | CNN Politics The two men killed as they floated holding onto their capsized boat in a secondary strike against a suspected drug vessel in early September did not appear to have radio or other communications device...

The absurdity of all this is simple: they’re trying to explain a non-military actor in military terms.
Drowning men become “potential threats.”
A wrecked boat becomes a “battlefield.”
When systems can’t justify violence, they militarize reality instead.

#systems #collapse #war #Venezuela #politics

Media Offenders Explore the Media Bias Tracker that fact checks and holds Fake News accountable. False claims debunked, Hall of Shame for serial offenders, Leaderboard of networks ranked by Repeated Lies. Stay inform...

The Media Bias portal isn’t dangerous for what it is now, but for what it enables.
Weak: it dies with the admin.
Strong: it becomes a purity engine.
Maximal: a self-sealing reality system.
Münster didn’t start at full intensity—just with a list of enemies.

#mediabias #politics #collapse #history

Serious question:

**Which modern institution feels closest to Münster in 1534?**
Curious to see the answers.

#collapse #institutions #history #systems

**Fear is the most efficient engine of collapse
because it convinces people the machinery destroying them
is protecting them.**

Part II is live.

🔗 uortego.substack.com

#systems #collapse #fearloop #machinery #analysis #philosophy #criticaltheory #UOrtego #Substack

Optimal Outcomes | U. Ortego | Substack Dissecting the machinery beneath modern life—where reason fractures and power performs. Click to read Optimal Outcomes, by U. Ortego, a Substack publication. Launched 5 days ago.

*The Five Mechanisms That Break Societies*
1️⃣ **Purity → Violence**
2️⃣ **Fear → Machinery**
3️⃣ **Destiny → Delusion**
4️⃣ **Surveillance → Purification**
5️⃣ **Optimization → Collapse**

These aren’t metaphors. They’re repeatable patterns.
Full series here: 🔗 uortego.substack.com

#Systems #HistoryRepeats

Totally—real psychohistory is fiction. I’m not claiming we can calculate fear loops. The point is softer: when enough individuals face the same pressures, incentives, and uncertainties, their choices start to rhyme. Not equations—just patterns that repeat across history.

I appreciate that. I’m not aiming for consensus—just clarity. Putting ideas out invites criticism, but that’s the point. Push them hard, break what doesn’t hold, keep what does. At least we’re doing the work instead of letting the incentives think for us.

I wasn’t pointing to one article—just the mechanism. And sure, TSA loosening some rules is a good counter-example. The core idea isn’t a slippery slope, it’s how individuals reacting to shared incentives can aggregate into a “fear loop.” Societies don’t act—people do, under pressure.

Correct that individuals act. But they act within shared incentives, risks, and constraints. When many people respond in parallel, their behaviors aggregate into predictable patterns. Those emergent patterns—not a literal ‘society’ acting—are what drive systemic collapse.

Societies don’t “go mad.”
They follow their logic until the logic becomes lethal.

The new series breaks down the structural mechanisms of collapse:
🔗https://uortego.substack.com

#CollapseTheory #AlgorithmicAge #SystemsFailure #CriticalTheory #Governance #UOrtego #SubstackWriters #Philosophy

Optimal Outcomes | U. Ortego | Substack Dissecting the machinery beneath modern life—where reason fractures and power performs. Click to read Optimal Outcomes, by U. Ortego, a Substack publication. Launched 4 days ago.

The Nazi Deputy Führer flew to Britain in 1941 with a peace plan no one wanted and a horoscope saying the stars approved.

He crashed, broke his ankle, got captured, and spent life in prison.

Even prophecy has quality-control issues.

🔗 uortego.substack.com

#history #WWII #politics #prophecy

*Mechanisms That Break Society* — Part I now live.
🔗 uortego.substack.com

#MechanismsThatBreakSociety #PowerKnowledge #TechCritique #AIPolitics #AlgorithmicCulture #PoliticalTheory #ModernityCrisis #SurveillanceSociety #DigitalControl #SystemicFailure #HistoricalParallels #CriticalWriting #UOrtego

Mechanisms That Break Civilizations
A 10 part Series

"Most collapse isn’t revolution.
It’s compliance tightening until people can’t breathe."

🔗 uortego.substack.com

#SystemsThinking #PoliticalHistory #PowerStructures #CollapseStudies #Governance #IdentityAndPower #AlgorithmicControl

Paris, 1794: The Revolution won—yet its leaders fell to the guillotine one by one. Hébert too radical. Danton too moderate. Robespierre not pure enough.
Every purity spiral ends the same way: it devours its creators.

🔗 uortego.substack.com

#PuritySpiral #History #Politics #Ideology #UOrtego

THE FEAR LOOP How Misread Danger Becomes Machinery That Devours Its Own Society

The Fear Loop — Essay 1/10
How a city trapped by fear built the machinery that destroyed it. Münster wasn’t an anomaly — it was a blueprint.
Read: open.substack.com/pub/uortego/...

#FearLoop #History #Collapse #UOrtego #societalcollapse #politicalphilosophy #institutionalfragility

I’m sharing a leaked “friction de-escalation” flowchart from a fictional workplace where emotions are treated as system errors.
It’s satire, but barely.
Full post → uortego.substack.com

#dystopia #satire #culture #bureaucracy #UOrtego #futureofwork

Mechanisms That Break Civilizations is a 10-part series on the systems that push societies toward collapse—fear loops, purity spirals, unity myths, optimization traps, more. Civilizations don’t go insane; their logic overruns humans.
uortego.substack.com/p/mechanisms...

#History #Systems #Collapse

THE WATER TURNED BLACK Or: The Gentleman's Rules

Japan burned bright, then broke.
My new Substack essay, The Water Turned Black, explores the mechanism behind that rise and fall — and serves as the introduction to my upcoming series on how civilizations self-destruct.
👉 uortego.substack.com/p/the-water-...

#history #geopolitics #collapse #UOrtego

When power stops explaining itself, the burning boats are the explanation.

Full essay:
🔗 open.substack.com/pub/uortego/...

#Venezuela #USPolicy #DrugWar #StatePower #PoliticalTheory #FoucaultCore #SystemViolence #Ortego