The dignity of dormancy

Jun 15, 2026 | Dormancy

Before a hibernating mammal's body temperature drops, its metabolism has already begun to suppress itself—actively, deliberately, and often more profoundly than passive cooling alone would allow. This is not a system failing; it is a system choosing. The 2026...

The missing protocol for sleeping on purpose

Jun 14, 2026 | Dormancy, Systems

Every running system must eventually stop, and computer science has built elaborate vocabularies for doing so. But look closely at how we talk about stopping, and a strange gap opens up. VM hypervisors implement ACPI S4 hibernation, serializing guest RAM to disk...

The sleeping corporation and the problem of dormant agency

Jun 12, 2026 | Dormancy

There is a creature in American law that sleeps for years without dying. It owns property, can be sued, and waits in suspension—neither fully alive nor dissolved. The dormant corporation is "not currently operating," its authority perhaps revoked by the...