—Latest blog entries include
**Major Read: Development as repair & maintenance
**The violence of policy palimpsests, revisited
**Colonial violence & domestic terror: another example of how genre renders center-stage
**“The mind-bogglingly valuations of AI companies”
—Special announcement
When Complex is as Simple as it Gets: Guide for recasting policy and management in the Anthropocene, along with a useful schematic, can now be found at
This working paper updates many blog entries prior to paper’s June 2023 publication.
—Those interested in newly updated extensions of the Guide, please see:
**”Major Read: Sourcing new ideas from the humanities, fine arts, and other media for complex policy analysis and management (newly added)” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/07/03/major-read-sourcing-new-ideas-from-the-humanities-fine-arts-and-other-media-for-complex-policy-analysis-and-management/
**”16 examples on how genre differences affect the structure and substance of policy and management [newly added]: https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/12/07/sixteen-examples-on-how-differences-in-genre-affect-the-structure-and-substance-of-policy-and-management-4-newly-added/
**”Major Read: Instead of “differentiated by gender, race and class,” why not “differentiated by heterogeneity and complexity”? Ten examples of racism, class, capitalism, inequalities, border controls, authoritarianism, COVID and more” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/08/31/major-read-instead-of-differentiated-by-gender-race-and-class-why-not-differentiated-by-heterogeneity-and-complexity-t/
**”New method matters in reframing policy and management: 13 examples (revised and updated)” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/09/11/new-method-matters-in-reframing-policy-and-management-13-examples-revised-and-updated/
**”Emerging counternarratives on: migrants, border controls, digital networks, remittances, child labor, COVID’s impact, and deglobalization” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/08/18/emerging-counternarratives-on-migrants-border-controls-digital-networks-remittances-child-labor-covids-impact-and-deglobalization/
—Other major new reads:
**”The ‘future’ in HRO Studies: the example of networked reliability” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2024/10/17/the-future-in-hro-studies-the-example-of-networked-reliability-as-a-form-of-reliability-seeking/
**”The siloing of approaches to discourse and narrative analyses in public policy” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2024/07/25/major-read-the-siloing-of-approaches-to-discourse-and-narrative-analyses-in-public-policy/
**”A National Academy of Reliable Infrastructure Management” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2024/08/21/a-national-academy-of-reliable-infrastructure-management-resent/
—Key blog entries on livestock herders, pastoralists and pastoralisms are:
**”New Implications of the Framework for Reliability Professionals and Pastoralism-as-Infrastructure (updated)” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/09/06/update-and-new-implications-of-the-framework-for-reliability-professionals-and-pastoralism-as-infrastructure-updated/
**”Twelve new extensions of “pastoralists as reliability professionals” and “pastoralism as a critical infrastructure” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2024/12/20/new-extensions-of-the-framework-for-pastoralists-as-reliability-professionals-and-pastoralism-as-a-critical-infrastructure/
**”Other fresh perspectives on pastoralists and pastoralism: 17 brief cases (last newly added)” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/05/11/other-fresh-perspectives-on-pastoralists-and-pastoralism-17-brief-cases-last-newly-added/
**”Recasting traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in pastoralist systems: the detection of creeping crises” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/08/18/recasting-traditional-ecological-knowledge-tek-in-pastoralist-systems/
**”First complicate those for-or-against-pastoralism arguments and then see the policy relevance: four brief examples” https://mess-and-reliability.blog/2025/08/12/four-briefer-points-of-policy-relevance-for-pastoralists-and-herders/
WHEN COMPLEX IS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS 