University of OMXUS
A research university founded on a single premise: that human institutions — justice, governance, economics, education, health — can be studied with the same rigour a zoologist brings to any other species in any other enclosure. We did. The findings are published. The data is open. The conclusions are yours to verify.
Veritas Libertas Ex Corde ad Mundum
Our Mission
Every university on earth teaches within existing systems. The University of OMXUS studies the systems themselves — their architecture, their incentive structures, their failure modes, and the evidence for what replaces them.
We began with a question that no existing institution was structured to answer: why do the wealthiest, most technologically advanced civilisations in human history produce populations that are chronically stressed, metabolically sick, socially isolated, sleep-deprived, and increasingly unable to distinguish institutional performance from institutional function?
The answer, across 96 papers and 738,000 words of evidence, is consistent: the systems are working exactly as designed. They were not designed for human flourishing. They were designed for extraction, compliance, and the concentration of decision-making power. The evidence for this is not ambiguous. It is quantified, reproduced, and published.
The University exists not to protest these systems, but to document them with sufficient rigour that their replacements can be engineered from evidence rather than ideology.
"We do not ask whether the animal is broken. We ask what is wrong with the enclosure. That is the entire methodology." The Zookeeper, Chapter 1
Academic Faculties
How do systems actually work, who do they serve, and what does the evidence say about alternatives that already exist?
The largest faculty by output. 26,000 words on constructed guilt alone. Documents how conviction rates function as performance metrics, how confession protocols produce false admissions at measurable rates, and how credibility assessment inverts truth signals in courtroom settings.
Switzerland has run direct democracy for 178 years. It works. Quadratic voting solves preference intensity. Dunbar-scale federation solves scale. This faculty documents governance systems that already exist and already outperform representative democracy on every measurable axis.
Australia holds $19.4 trillion in national wealth while 13.6% of its population lives below the poverty line. Between 37% and 40% of workers describe their own jobs as pointless. Keynes predicted a 15-hour work week by 2030. The productivity arrived. The time didn't. This faculty asks where it went.
The Kitava Islanders — 1,200 people eating an ancestral diet — have zero recorded cases of acne, obesity, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease. Your supermarket contains 3,000 additives that have never been tested for long-term human safety. This faculty connects those two facts.
Humans spend 93% of their time indoors. Play — a primary-process emotional system identified in all mammals — has been systematically removed from childhood. By the welfare standards we apply to captive chimpanzees, suburban housing fails. This is the founding faculty of Human Zoology.
The Prussian education model was designed in 1806 to produce obedient soldiers and factory workers. It was adopted globally. It has never been redesigned for learning. Terror management theory explains why. The ideological Rorschach explains how. This faculty documents the gap between education and learning.
Founding Discipline
The application of zoological and ethological frameworks to the study of Homo sapiens within constructed environments.
In 1964, Heini Hediger — the founder of zoo biology — established that captive animals exhibit predictable pathological behaviours when their enclosure conditions violate their species-specific needs. Stereotypic pacing. Self-harm. Social withdrawal. Aggression. Reproductive failure. These are not diagnoses of the animal. They are diagnoses of the enclosure.
In 2020, David Mellor formalised the Five Domains Model for evaluating animal welfare: nutrition, environment, health, behavioural interaction, and mental state. It is now the international standard for assessing whether a captive environment meets the needs of the organism within it.
The University of OMXUS applied the Mellor framework — unchanged — to the living conditions of Homo sapiens in modern industrialised nations. The results are published across 8 papers and a 133,000-word book. The conclusion is not ambiguous:
"By the welfare standards we routinely apply to captive gorillas, the living conditions of the average human in a developed nation fail on nutrition, environment, behavioural expression, and mental state. Four of five domains. The enclosure is not adequate." The Human Enclosure, 2025
Our research spans five domains of human enclosure: spatial (93% indoor confinement, elimination of play infrastructure), temporal (circadian disruption, industrial schedule imposition, the stolen night), social (Dunbar-number violations, hierarchy enforcement, the isolation machine), dietary (3,000 untested additives, regulatory capture, the inverted burden of proof in food safety), and cognitive (information monopoly, autonomy suppression, the obedience factory).
This is not metaphor. It is methodology. The same frameworks. The same metrics. The same species.
Founding Principles
These are not aspirations. They are operational constraints encoded in the University Charter.
When the organism is failing, study the environment before diagnosing the organism. This is standard practice in veterinary science. We apply it to human civilisation.
Every claim that can be quantified has been. Every dataset is downloadable. Every analysis is reproducible. "Trust us" is not a citation. Run it yourself.
Systems are designed. Designed things have architects. Name them. The Prussian model has an author. The war on drugs has an architect. Regulatory capture has beneficiaries. Say who.
Switzerland (178 years of direct democracy). Mondragon (70 years of cooperative capitalism). Hatzolah (sub-3-minute volunteer emergency response). CAHOOTS (mental health response without police). Portugal (decriminalisation with 80% overdose reduction). These are not theories. They are running systems.
Credentials are not evidence. Consensus is not proof. A thousand experts agreeing without data is a thousand people guessing in unison. Show the working or withdraw the claim.
The goal is not to reform systems designed for extraction. It is to build replacements so functional that the old systems become irrelevant. You do not fix a cage. You open it.
No tuition. No shareholders. No corporate board. No revenue-dependent editorial process. The Charter prohibits commercial capture. Knowledge produced for public benefit is published for public use.
All research, data, code, and methodology are published under CC BY 4.0. If you cannot show your working, you have not done the work. We show ours. Every line.
The University's job is to make itself unnecessary. The measure of success is not how many people enrol but how quickly they no longer need us. Distribute capability. Dissolve dependency.
Featured Publications
Two books frame the University's approach. One is rigorous. One is funny. Both ask the same question: what would a competent zookeeper do differently?
Book · Satirical Policy Analysis · 17 Chapters
Senior Enclosure Coordinator Applebee has been assigned to the human division. His assessment: 8 billion members of the most capable species on Earth are suffering unnecessarily, and the enclosure design is the primary cause. Part field report, part policy analysis, part comedy — because sometimes the only honest response to institutional absurdity is laughter.
Giles M. Ross · Read at applebees.omxus.comBook · 133,000 Words · 20 Chapters
If humans were a newly discovered species arriving at a well-designed sanctuary, would we house them in cubicles, feed them industrial food, confine them indoors for 93% of their lives, and remove play from their developmental environment? The Mellor Five Domains framework applied to human systems. 133,000 words. 20 chapters. Four parts: The Animal, The Enclosure, The Scale Problem, The Sanctuary.
A. C. Applebee & L. N. Combe · OMXUS PressThe complete collection: 96 papers across 12 faculties. 738,000 words of original research, fully searchable and readable online. The University's primary publishing platform.
10 reproducible studies proving that institutional credibility assessment inverts truth signals — penalising honesty and rewarding deception at measurable rates. All datasets downloadable.
5 studies demonstrating that Bayesian prediction models in institutional settings pathologise outcomes they cannot predict, producing self-reinforcing diagnostic loops.
The complete catalogue of every paper, book, and study — organised by faculty, with abstracts, word counts, and direct links. Start anywhere.
Selected Findings
These are not opinions. They are findings from published, reproducible analysis. Each one links to its source paper.
Humans in developed nations spend 93% of their time indoors (Klepeis et al., 2001). This figure has likely increased. No captive primate programme would permit this ratio.
Meta-analysis of 206 studies (Bond & DePaulo, 2006): human accuracy at detecting deception is 54%. A coin flip is 50%. Courts, police, and juries perform at chance. The justice system doesn't detect lies. It performs confidence.
YouGov UK (2015): 37% of British workers say their job makes no meaningful contribution to the world. Graeber's "bullshit jobs" thesis, now with survey data across multiple countries.
Australia commands $19.4 trillion in wealth — over 9x its GDP — while 13.6% live below the poverty line. The scarcity is designed. The wealth exists. The distribution doesn't.
Switzerland has operated direct democracy since 1848. It has the highest GDP per capita, highest life satisfaction, and lowest corruption in Europe. The evidence isn't theoretical. It's 178 years deep.
Portugal decriminalised all drugs in 2001. Drug-related deaths fell by over 80%. HIV infections among drug users fell by 95%. The evidence is a quarter-century old. Most countries still criminalise.