The record

The commission: work produced within 1871's insurtech program in Chicago, examining how insurance products are shaped, priced, and presented. That sentence exists as the meta description of this page, and renders nowhere.

The canvas is 620 × 560. The card drawn inside it is 340 × 475, a ratio of 0.71579 against the 63:88 of a printed playing card, 0.71591. The source comment states the intent: "the card — 63:88, standing centred".

The comments say what each back is. On the first: "every band's envelope IS price(r) under its own severity assumption." On the third: "price(x) = expected loss + load + margin, ten policy years trended back; the gaps between the station lines ARE the load and margin." Its pricing() returns [el, el + load, el + load + MARGIN] — three stacked lines, expected loss, expected loss plus load, and that plus margin; the white between them is the money.

Its ten policy years are trended backwards from the live market — frequency × (1 + 0.024)^−yr, and mu reduced by 0.060 each year: a 2.4% frequency trend and 6% claims inflation, ten years deep.

All three pricing functions share one 25-second market cycle — the first and the third compute w = ms / 25000 × 2π, the second w = 2π T / 25 on seconds. The book reprices on every frame; each back is drawn from the parameters of that instant.

The card is black and grey throughout: rgba(15,15,15,a) in the first hand, rgba(0,0,0,a) in the other two. One colour appears in the whole piece — rgba(162,53,40), used only for the numerals on the face. The comment names it: "the figure — the only number the buyer ever sees: 1871".

The deal's clock, from the source: "back 12s (first) / 18s -> turn 1.6s -> face 4s -> dealt away face-up 0.7s -> the next iteration lands 0.9s" — FIRST = 12000, BACK_MS = 18000, TURN = 1600, HOLD = 4000, OUT = 700, DEALIN = 900. It does not start until the plate is seen: an IntersectionObserver at threshold 0.35 arms it. Over the last second before each turn, tens ramps 0 to 1 and the second hand's weave tightens — grip = 1 - 0.045 × tens, lift = 1 + 0.12 × tens.

The line under the card ends "· turn it". A click on the back turns it; a second click on the face deals it away and the next iteration lands; the whole cycle can be run by hand.

The plate above is a Gaussian: fitted across all 57 vertices of its path, an e-folding half-width of 130.065 px (sd 0.257) about a peak at x = 330. The band labelled TAIL · CLAIMS is shaded from x = 460 to x = 620 — it begins where the curve has fallen to 1/e of its height, 55.3 px against 150/e = 55.18 — and covers the last 160 px of the 560 px axis, 28.6% of the span. The distribution is symmetric; only the right shoulder is shaded.