{"id":20977,"date":"2026-04-29T10:36:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T17:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20977"},"modified":"2026-04-29T09:01:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T16:01:40","slug":"systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/?p=20977","title":{"rendered":"Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cEvery successful system accumulates parasites.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Ray<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I found today’s quote in an article about the gutting of USAID in the early Trump administration. Thousands of well paid consultants, NGO employees and their staff’s lost their jobs, and the taxpayers saved billions of dollars. The maxim has lots of other applications. Fungi growing on trees, barnacles on whales and Social workers for the homeless<\/a>. Are a few examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The photo is of a Matilija Poppy taken at the Huntington Gardens over the weekend. Pasadena is having a glorious spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEvery successful system accumulates parasites.\u201d Thomas Ray<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[41,214,61,102],"class_list":["post-20977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weekly-maxim","tag-flowers","tag-huntington-library","tag-maxim","tag-pasadena"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/simonburrow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/IMG_5781-scaled.jpeg?fit=2560%2C2463&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s99jGb-systems","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20984,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20977\/revisions\/20984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simonburrow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}