by Michelle Fitzmaurice | Aug 24, 2026 | Activation Energy, Notes from the Field, Observation, Systems
Good systems do not require perfect humans. They are designed around the humans who actually exist. My pressure cooker has quietly taken control of dinner. This was not part of a deliberate household transformation strategy. There was no implementation plan,...
by Michelle Fitzmaurice | Aug 20, 2026 | Uncategorized
How much institutional energy is spent making dysfunction sound polite? There is a strange ritual performed inside institutions. Before naming a problem, we must soften it. We begin by acknowledging how busy everyone is. We recognise the complexity of the environment....
by Michelle Fitzmaurice | Aug 16, 2026 | Microbiome, Uncategorized
We put food in. A remarkably complicated biological system happens in the middle. And poo comes out. Yet when we study stool, we often treat it primarily as a convenient container for something else. We extract microbial DNA. We sequence it. We measure metabolites. We...
by Michelle Fitzmaurice | Aug 6, 2026 | Emergence, Observation
The ideal route only works under ideal conditions. Real roads, and real careers, require us to keep reading what lies ahead. There is an ideal line through every corner. You look ahead. Position yourself early. Commit to the turn. Move smoothly through it and come out...
by Michelle Fitzmaurice | Jul 24, 2026 | Systems
A research cohort is often funded as though it were a single-use object. Recruit the participants. Collect the samples. Answer the funded question. Publish the findings. Close the project. But a well-designed cohort can become something much more valuable. The Healthy...
