U. Ortego
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u-ortego.bsky.social
U. Ortego
@u-ortego.bsky.social
160 followers 600 following 130 posts
Studying how institutions shape behavior, erase dissent, and call the process “order.” Observation as resistance. From the Guatemalan highlands, I write about history’s echoes in today’s optimized world—with wit and skepticism. https://uortego.substack.com
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u-ortego.bsky.social
Laughter is the moment before seeing clearly.The system cracks just enough to reveal itself.

uortego.substack.com/p/absurdity-...

#Systems #Absurdity #Power #Bureaucracy #comedy
Absurdity as X-Ray
What Monty Python Shows Us About Broken Systems
uortego.substack.com
January 14, 2026 at 10:29 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Territory that was frozen, remote, and worthless in 1900 becomes contested in 2025.Climate doesn’t negotiate. Geography updates. Power follows.

uortego.substack.com/p/greenland-...

#ClimateChange #Geopolitics #Arctic #Greenland #Systems
Greenland Wasn’t a Joke
The ice doesn’t care about borders.
uortego.substack.com
January 14, 2026 at 10:24 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Cold War monster movies weren’t entertainment. They were diagnostics.
When systems outgrew human understanding, fear became infrastructure—and cinema gave it teeth.
Different monsters. Same patterns. We’re still living inside them.
uortego.substack.com/p/monsters-o...

#ColdWar #Power #Fear #Cinema
MONSTERS OF THE ATOMIC AGE
How Civilizations Teach Themselves to Fear Their Own Power
uortego.substack.com
January 13, 2026 at 5:45 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
uortego.substack.com/p/greenland-...

#Greenland #Geopolitics #ClimateChange #Systems #Power
January 11, 2026 at 1:15 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Greenland wasn’t a joke.
It was the moment an idea became speakable.
When the ice reveals the map faster than governance can adapt, power doesn’t argue—it repositions.
#Greenland #Geopolitics #ClimateChange #Systems #Power

uortego.substack.com/p/greenland-...
Greenland Wasn’t a Joke
The ice doesn’t care about borders.
uortego.substack.com
January 11, 2026 at 12:43 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Contactless biometric ID isn't one system. It's forty running simultaneously. Heartbeat signatures from 200m. Gait analysis. Vein patterns. Thermal reads through walls. The mechanism: tech enables → convenience demands → opt-out becomes impossible. #Surveillance

substack.com/@uortego/not...
U. Ortego (@uortego)
I was researching Meta's and others' attempts to get biometric data and had no idea how many different ways are being implemented. Contactless biometric identification isn't one system. It's forty sy...
substack.com
January 10, 2026 at 4:25 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
The problem isn’t the mad king.
It’s the system that selects for delusion, punishes honesty, and calls it loyalty.
By the time the leader looks insane, feedback is already dead.

uortego.substack.com/p/the-mad-ki...

#SystemsThinking #Power #Collapse #Institutions #History
The Mad King Myth
And the Systems That Break Around Him
uortego.substack.com
January 10, 2026 at 1:40 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Presidential profanity went from disqualifying (Nixon's "[EXPLETIVE DELETED]" damaged him more than obstruction) to strategic (Trump 2016+) not because norms decayed—because speech stopped governing outcomes.
The algorithm replaced the argument.

uortego.substack.com/p/when-profa...
When Profanity Stopped Being Disqualifying
How presidential cursing documents the collapse of deliberative power
uortego.substack.com
January 9, 2026 at 2:15 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
When empire, markets, and criminal power move in, ritual doesn’t fight them head-on — it outlasts them. Continuity as quiet maintenance. Borrowed saints, older gods.

uortego.substack.com/p/borrowed-s...

#Chiapas #IndigenousRitual #ReligionAndPower #LatinAmerica #Maya #Mexico
Borrowed Saints, Older Gods
When Empire Meets Older Gods — and New Powers Move In
uortego.substack.com
January 8, 2026 at 2:21 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
If the U.S. retreats to its own hemisphere, Greenland changes category. Not ice. Not nowhere. It becomes the edge of the map — a wall you can stand on. Radar. Minerals. Melting lanes. Power lives in the narrow places.

uortego.substack.com/p/while-kiss...

#geopolitics #Arctic #Greenland #USA
While Kissinger Slept: A Map He Never Saw
The Great Game Moves from Borders to Bottlenecks
uortego.substack.com
January 7, 2026 at 3:14 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
The Sea Wolf isn’t really about the sea.
It’s about what happens when a ship becomes a system — and power starts calling itself “truth.”

My new review: what this film still warns us about.
uortego.substack.com/p/when-the-s...

#TheSeaWolf #JackLondon #MichaelCurtiz #1940sCinema
When the Ship Becomes the System
What The Sea Wolf (1941) teaches about power, myth, and the people trapped inside
uortego.substack.com
January 7, 2026 at 12:54 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
The world isn’t broken — it’s operating exactly as it was built. The trick is learning to see the system before it uses you.👇

For new subscribers of my Substack my ebook: The Systems We Live Inside, FREE!

#ManualForTheRealWorld #InvisibleArchitecture

uortego.substack.com/p/the-manual...
January 6, 2026 at 5:11 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
“Manifest Destiny wasn’t a moment in time. It was a template.”

uortego.substack.com/p/destiny-re...

#ManifestDestiny #Empire #Colonialism #Donroe
#History #Greenland #Venezuela
Destiny, Rebranded
How Old Expansion Stories Keep Running the System
uortego.substack.com
January 6, 2026 at 4:48 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
If the machine discovers your body is replaceable, it replaces your body. If it discovers your body is essential, it replaces your will.

uortego.substack.com/p/the-ghost-...

#systems #myths #power #Elvis #Hughes #culture #history
January 6, 2026 at 12:06 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Maduro in a U.S. courtroom isn’t just a trial — it’s a signal. When a former head of state faces another nation’s judge, sovereignty turns portable and “justice” becomes geopolitical. The real question: who gets to decide what power is lawful now?

#Venezuela #Geopolitics #Sovereignty #Power
Maduro is taken to a US courthouse for his first appearance on drug trafficking charges
Deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been taken to a U.S. courthouse as he's set to make his first appearance in an American courtroom.
apnews.com
January 5, 2026 at 3:12 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
“The future belongs to whoever controls the narrow places where the world must pass.”

uortego.substack.com/p/while-kiss...

#Geopolitics #Chokepoints #China #Greenland #USA #Russia
January 4, 2026 at 11:19 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
While Kissinger slept, power moved from borders to bottlenecks — chokepoints, cables, canals, fabs. The real map of 21st-century power is the narrow places everything must pass through.
uortego.substack.com/p/while-kiss...

#geopolitics #chokepoints #supplychains #China #Greenland #USA #Russia
While Kissinger Slept: A Map He Never Saw
The Great Game Moves from Borders to Bottlenecks
uortego.substack.com
January 4, 2026 at 4:23 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
This world-map hints at a tripolar struggle (substack.com/@uortego/not...
). Competition goes kinetic + resource-driven. Look at Greenland inside the U.S. sphere — suddenly the U.S. “coveting” it makes sense: Arctic lanes, minerals, early-warning. #geopolitics #maps #arctic #US #BRICS #Greenland
U. Ortego (@uortego)
The Map That Tries to Explain the World This post — “The Global Resource War Is Going Kinetic” — is built around one image: Article: https://substack.com/browse/world-politics/post/183141289?utm_sou...
substack.com
January 4, 2026 at 2:47 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
With what’s unfolding in Venezuela today, this feels appropriate to revisit — different context, same patterns of narrative, expansion, and justification. Seeing the operating system matters.

uortego.substack.com/p/destiny-re...

#Venezuela #History #Power #Systems #Mechanisms
Destiny, Rebranded
How Old Expansion Stories Keep Running the System
uortego.substack.com
January 4, 2026 at 12:20 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
We didn’t build safe systems. We built systems that learned to explain away near-disaster.

BROKEN ARROWS: how the world learned to live with “almost.”

uortego.substack.com/p/broken-arr...

#systems #history #risk #resilience
BROKEN ARROWS
How the World Learned to Live with Almost-Disaster
uortego.substack.com
January 3, 2026 at 4:32 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
If breakfast is dangerous, what does that say about the system?

The Panthers showed that community care exposes power by replacing it.

Read the note + more here:
uortego.substack.com
U. Ortego (@uortego)
If breakfast is dangerous, what does that say about the system? I’m writing about the Black Panthers, and I keep circling back to this one truth: It wasn’t the leather jackets or the rifles that ter...
substack.com
January 3, 2026 at 1:59 AM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Power doesn’t always change the system — it changes the words.

Tribute becomes “tax.” Surveillance becomes “data.” Torture becomes “enhanced interrogation.”
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

uortego.substack.com/p/powers-fav...
Power’s Favorite Trick
Keep the system. Change the name.
uortego.substack.com
January 2, 2026 at 4:22 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Japan wasn't insane at first. Japan became insane by following Western logic to its final form.
Fear → purity → unity → optimization → collapse.
New essay mapping collapse mechanisms.
Intro to 10 part series .

uortego.substack.com/p/mechanisms-that-break-civilizations

#History #SystemsThinking
Mechanisms That Break Civilizations
Introduction to 10 part Series
uortego.substack.com
January 1, 2026 at 11:13 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
Monty Python isn't absurdist comedy—it's systems diagnosis.
Dead Parrot = rules vs reality
Silly Walks = metrics vs mission
Spanish Inquisition = performance without capacity
Where have you encountered the dead parrot lately?
uortego.substack.com/p/absurdity-...
#SystemsThinking #MontyPython #Comedy
Absurdity as X-Ray
What Monty Python Shows Us About Broken Systems
uortego.substack.com
January 1, 2026 at 3:41 PM
u-ortego.bsky.social
1912: "Unsinkable ship" hits iceberg. 1,500 dead.
2008: "Unsinkable banks" hit subprime. Millions lose homes.
Same mechanism. Different vessel.
Systems collapse when belief replaces testing.
uortego.substack.com/p/the-unsink...

#Infrastructure #SystemFailure #History #Titanic #FinancialCrisis
THE UNSINKABLE MYTH
How the Titanic Demonstrated Every Collapse Mechanism in 2 Hours and 40 Minutes
uortego.substack.com
January 1, 2026 at 2:25 PM