Volume 01 · 38 chapters
Campaign Finance
Follow the money. Then follow what the money does. Who gets to run, who gets heard, and who decides which choices reach the ballot?
Explore this volumeQuestions before conclusions
A better question
changes the
whole story.
“The policy worked.”
What changed? For whom? And what happened next?
Side Angle Works follows the choices, rules, and incentives behind the result. Books by JMAC. Built around real people, including the parts we tend to leave out.
The question that started it
What if we took money
out of political campaigns?
People suck.
Build around the suck.
People make mistakes. People find loopholes. People get tired. A useful system has to account for that.
Don’t design a system that requires exceptional people to overcome its incentives.
Don’t design a system that requires exceptional people to overcome its incentives.
The first four volumes
One habit.
Four hard questions.
Start with the subject that matters to you. Each book stands on its own. All four ask how the outcome was produced—and what would change the answer.
Volume 02 · 42 chapters
Data Centers
A building comes with a bigger arrangement: power, water, contracts, public costs, and promises. Examine the commitments while there is still room to change them.
Explore this volume
Volume 03 · 40 chapters
Foster Care and Child Welfare
Follow the child through decisions, placements, services, and transitions. Ask what became safer, what stayed intact, and what responsibility follows intervention.
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Volume 04 · 38 chapters
Addiction-Related Homelessness
Follow the path across shelter, hospital, treatment, jail, and housing. A completed service matters. So does whether the next step is usable.
Explore this volumeReader editions
Complete reader drafts, free in PDF and EPUB. Publication details are still being finalized. Print editions are planned.
Outcome Anatomy
An answer can sound complete.
Keep looking.
Follow a result back through the decisions and conditions that produced it. Test the connections. Leave room for the evidence to change your mind.
Try a familiar claim
Illustrative examples. Start with the claim, then follow what it leaves out.
The missing questions
What changed? For whom?
Which result are we counting? What else could explain it? Did the improvement survive—or did the cost move somewhere the report stopped looking?
A better number still needs an explanation.
01 / Follow the result
Look past the completed task to what happened to the person.
02 / Test the explanation
Separate what the evidence shows from what we think it means.
03 / Let the answer change
Ask what would prove us wrong before we get attached.
The person behind the questions
JMAC.
Brian Phillips · Writer
Before this work, I spent years in professional kitchens. That experience still shapes the questions: understand the whole operation, find the bottleneck, and account for the people who have to make it work.
Side Angle Works is the home for this work. JMAC is the writing name. Outcome Anatomy is the method.
You don’t need to agree with my conclusion to follow how I got there. The same questions apply to my work.
AI, authorship, and accountability
These manuscripts were built with substantial assistance from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Codex: challenging assumptions, comparing drafts, organizing research, surfacing counterarguments, tracing sources, and sharpening language.
The questions, values, judgments, and final choices are mine. AI can be useful, fast, persuasive, and wrong. Every claim still has to earn its place. I remain accountable for this work and for any errors.
The full authorship note appears in each book.
Keep the conversation going
Found a missing piece?
A correction is useful. Send the volume, chapter, and passage, along with the evidence or question we should examine.