“basepi” — Fediverse search results on home.social

Billwill @[email protected] · 2026-05-09 · 17:53 UTC

Impenetrable • How new US Navy Technology saved 3 US Navy Destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz

The Aegis Baseline Ten weapon system is more than an upgrade; it is a total transformation of naval command and control.

#Military #Tech #USNavy #Future #Warfare #DefenseNews #weapons #navy #naval #innovation
#science #news #IsraelIranConflict #IranWar #MiddleEastCrisis #OperationEpicFury #iranisraelwar #iran #iranvsisrael

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utwuIa98UvU

#military #tech #usnavy #future #warfare #defensenews

Germany @[email protected] · 2026-05-14 · 02:10 UTC

Vegan Crackers Market in Germany | Report – IndexBox

This report is an independent strategic category study of the market for vegan…
#Germany #DE #Europe #EU #Europa #Cheese/charcuterieboardcomponent #Clean-labelpreservation #consumergoodsmarketreport #Dip/Spreadvehicle #Flavorencapsulationforbakedgoods #forecast #High-efficiencybaking/extrusion #marketanalysis #Plant-basedingredientbindingsystems #Soup/saladaccompaniment #Standalonesnack #vegancrackers
https://www.europesays.com/germany/13601/

#vegancrackers #standalonesnack #soup #plant #marketanalysis #high

The feengrenze historia @[email protected] · 2026-04-29 · 11:04 UTC

From the Notebooks of Jaspera von Kupferthal, Part 1

Highsun 8th 501 NMR

Some friends in the Natural Philosophy Society asked for my research from an expedition I did a few decades back. They are creating a book on the Faerie folk.

My little Cinni is one of the cowriters.

Naturally, I was delighted to share my research on modern agrarian fey culture.

Field Notes from an Expedition to Brugh na Ciorcal

Blossombud 10th 470 NMR

I have finished settling into my research blind outside Brugh Na Ciorcal. I found a suitably large hole in an oak tree to serve as my camp, although I am questioning my decision to disguise myself as a robin as I use my beak to write these words. It might be worth relocating to somewhere where a creature that could hold a pen could conveniently dwell. Ugh, I am getting distracted again.

An aerial inspection revealed that the village of Brugh Na Ciorcal is an almost unremarkable average specimen of Fey Enclave except for its location. It is located in the crook of a bend of Gilline Run river (although the locals most certainly do not use that name. Inquire about that at a later date). The village is roughly 1000 feet in diameter as the robin flies, which is rather large for a fey settlement, and is surrounded on 3 sides by the river (did the inhabitants change the river’s course?). The village is perfectly circular, elevated roughly 20 feet above the surrounding terrain and surrounded by an earthen berm about 7 feet high and a ditch 4 feet deep on the landward side. The entrance is flanked by a pair of unusual-looking standing stones, perfectly square columns, definitely fey-related from the spiraling markings, but they look older than the village.

The village itself consists of 120 faerie burrow houses, or brughs, of various sizes, arranged in the typical concentric-ring layout connected by spiraling paths. At the center is a large circular green with expected Fey paganism standing stones and an altar. Surrounding the green is a larger brugh which is almost certainly the headman’s dwelling, what looks like an alehouse, a general store (A rarity in a Faerie enclave, possibly a sign of outside trade), and several larger brughs which likely belong to the headman’s favorite lackeys or druids.

Outside the village for another mile or so on both sides of the river is another spiral, this one made up of paths through enclosures, orchards, and gardens enclosed by wild but trimmed hedges. The majority of these were gardens of semi-wild vegetables and fruit trees. However, I was surprised to see a plowed field at the very outskirts of the clearing and what, to my bird tongue, tasted like common wheat. They obviously were planting the stuff because a youth with a stick chased me away. The presence of domesticated crops certainly raises my eyebrows, and this might suggest a larger societal drift towards baseline mortality in the same region.

Tomorrow I will attempt a full census. This will require either a change in form or a more creative approach; robins, as it turns out, are not inconspicuous when taking notes.

Blossombud 11th

I am so tired.

I have completed my census of the Brugh Na Ciorcal, having changed my shape no less than fourteen times to get into every nook and cranny. This was, in retrospect, excessive.

I assume that none of the residents noticed me, except for the pets.

Note to self: scout villages for cats and dogs before transforming into a mouse, shrew, or bird.

Secondary note: Dogs are enthusiastic; cats are methodical

For the most part, this village’s population is utterly average except for a few deviations.

The village population stands at approximately 650 individuals—give or take a handful, as counting while being chased out of a burrow is imprecise work.

The largest group consists of satyrs and satyrkin (195), followed by a substantial goblinoid population (130) and a notable number of centaurs (95). This distribution is not unusual in isolation, but the balance between them feels… deliberate. I cannot yet say why.

The remaining population comprises smaller fey species (25), various others (30), and individuals of mixed or unclear lineage (65).

Of particular interest is the presence of 15 Fomorians. Their integration level remains unclear. I did not observe them in communal clusters, nor entirely apart. They occupy an uncomfortable middle, which may be more telling than either extreme.

There are 180 children, 115 adolescents, 250 adults, 90 elders, and 15 who are… significantly older than the rest. I am uncertain whether to classify the latter as elders or as something else entirely.

Most of the population (roughly 70%) are farmers and herdsmen working the fields, which aligns with my earlier observations regarding their agricultural tendencies.

Of the remainder, 95 are craftsmen and artisans, suggesting a healthy internal economy. Seven serve as resident druids, with fifteen apprentices—an unusually robust druidic presence for a settlement of this size, though perhaps necessary given the mixed population.

Twenty (mostly the doddering ancients) appear to be unemployed, though I suspect this is a matter of perspective rather than reality.

25 make up the household of Sir Eochaid, the middle-aged centaur who serves as the village’s chief.

The reminder consists of the goblins of the Fòlais’ family, who run the trading post, and Giorsail, a young hobgoblin hedge witch and diviner who seems to serve as an advisor to Sir Eochaid (This is… highly irregular. A non-druid serving as advisor to a village chief suggests either a breakdown in traditional authority or an adaptation I do not yet understand. I will investigate further.)

The village has 2000 sheep, 30 geese, 20 donkeys, innumerable cats, and a few dogs.

The whole village is unified in its dress, which consists of woolen kilts and tunics for the men and boys, and woolen dresses for the women and girls, all in a frankly unfortunate tartan pattern that I suspect is meant to signify unity. The only real visible indicators of status among the villagers are the green robes the druids wear over their clothes at all times, and the jewelry clasps, pins, and broaches the chief’s family, household, and top underlings wear, bronze for the servants, silver for the henchmen, and gold for the chief and his family.

Tomorrow I will start observing Sir Eochaid and his household. Hopefully, I will uncover useful data on the villagers’ social structure and customs and maybe get to the bottom of Giorsail’s presence in the village.

Blossombud 15th

It has been difficult to keep from laughing at Eochaid’s household over these last few days—though I am beginning to suspect that doing so would be unkind.

I spent half a week observing the headman and his household as a mouse and had to stifle myself a few times in order to prevent them from noticing the novelty of a laughing rodent.

The family consists of the Patriarch Sir Labhruinn Eochaid the 10th, his wife, Saraid, his sons, Búadach, Luthais, and Torna, his daughters, Samthann, Teafa, Ealga, and Cathach, and the ancient grandmother, Sìonag. Along with these numbers, Saraid was heavy with child and barely able to move from the master bedroom without help.

Sir Labhruinn fancies himself a valiant warlord in the tradition of the knights of the Round Table—or even King Fredrick himself—and strives to live according to what appears to be a deeply sincere, if somewhat misunderstood, ideal of chivalry.

He refers to his Brugh as his castle, even though it is only marginally larger than the second biggest dwelling in the village and consists of only 18 rooms.

The focus of the brugh is a large circular room at its center, which houses the central hearth. Such chambers are universal to all burghs, but Sir Labhruinn uses them as his throne room and the great hall. He spends all days sitting upon a pallet, adjudicating secular matters, listening to counsel from the druids and Giorsail, and receiving reports from the villagers he calls his “men-at-arms,” a term which appears to confer more dignity than responsibility.

This chamber also holds the family’s greatest treasures: a set of bronze centaur armor, a lance, and a sword, all of Faerie design, all heavily enchanted, and several tapestries that supposedly show his ancestors, who, according to him, were famous Faerie knights in one of the fallen Faerie kingdoms.

The other chambers consist of a kitchen, the bedchamber he and Saraid share, the bedrooms for the children, two guest chambers, a bedchamber/workspace for Giorsail, a room for Sìonag, a library, and a nursery. All the rooms were well furnished compared to the rooms in the other brughs in the village, with well-worn, heavy wooden furniture featuring lots of spiral engraving and various personalization. The sleeping chambers featured straw pallets that centaurs seem to prefer.

When not sitting in court, Labhruinn insists on teaching his sons the “art” of knightly warfare. Every day, just after lunch, they go out to the meadow beyond the fields and practice swordcraft, archery, and jousting. I am no swordswoman, but their efforts resembled rehearsal more than practice.

I also discovered the reason for Giorsail’s presence in the household. Apparently, Sir Labhruinn is doing things quite literally by the book. Le Morte d’Arthur, The Errantry of Frederick von Mountainheart, and several other storybooks in the library. They are heavily bookmarked and have multiple underlined sections per page. Giorsail was recruited to be Sir Labhruinn’s own personal “Merlin,” though I am not certain Giorsail agrees with this designation.

I also have to correct my assessment of her ability; despite not being far out of girlhood, she is more than a mere hedgecrafter. Her spellbook suggests at least a modicum of tuition under a proper wizard. She also has the ability to see magic auras around people and things without using spells, a very inconvenient power for my purposes.

However, Giorsail’s presence seems to have disturbed the household’s harmony. Sìonag and Saraid have gotten into multiple nasty arguments with Giorsail over the last few days, including a few at the nightly feasts. I initially misinterpreted Luthais’s interest in Giorsail as romantic. This was incorrect. He appears instead to be drawn to her craft—specifically, to the possibility of becoming something other than what his father intends.

This is the limit of what I can glean through observation alone. To understand this household—and perhaps this village more broadly—I will need to participate. Giorsail’s abilities present a significant complication. I must consider my approach carefully.

#5e #dnd #dungeonsAndDragons #dungeonsDragons #fantasy #Fey #fiction #history #rpg #ttrpg #writing

#5e #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #dungeonsdragons #fantasy #fey

PostHole @[email protected] · 2026-05-12 · 00:02 UTC

https://posthole.net/

THE POSTHOLE
Monday, 11 May 2026 · Night Edition · Vol. 1 No. 152
MJD 61172.00

LEAD — STATE & LOCAL

Aaron Gleeman, World’s Best MN Twins Writer, Goes Indie After The Athletic Eliminates His Twins Beat
-- Racket

Plus teen reporters fight ICE, reluctant mystery amphitheater deets, and a rare look inside the ol' Zimmerman place in today's Flyover news roundup.

#posthole

STATE & LOCAL

▸ Art-A-Whirl, Thai New Year, TC Gemini: This Week’s Best Events
-- Racket
It's an epic festival weekend.

▸ Kink, Politics, and the Edging of ‘Normal’
-- Racket

#posthole

INVESTIGATIVE

▸ A Trump U.S. Attorney’s Professional Misconduct Must Be Kept “Private and Confidential”
-- The Intercept
A legal disciplinary panel won’t disclose any details about its inquiry into John Sarcone, a Trump loyalist in New York. The...

▸ Israeli Real Estate Expo Advertising West Bank Settlements Returns to NYC
-- The Intercept

#posthole

RESEARCH

▸ Racial gerrymandering may be here to stay
-- The Conversation
A recent Supreme Court decision is sparking a major push for partisan redistricting. Douglas Rissing, iStock/Getty Images Plus...

▸ What makes a good teacher? Ask a Republican and a Democrat, and they are likely to agree
-- The Conversation

▸ ‘Devil Wears Prada 2’ shows how Christian imagery circulates in unusual ways through the fashion industry
-- The Conversation

#posthole

GOVERNMENT

▸ CBO's Baseline Projections of Federal Subsidies for Health Insurance
-- Congressional Budget Office
Presentation by Phill Swagel, Sean Dunbar, Sarah Masi, and Sarah Sajewski.

#posthole

IN BRIEF

• GM agrees to $12.75M California settlement over sale of drivers’ data -- BleepingComputer
• Official CheckMarx Jenkins package compromised with infostealer -- BleepingComputer
• New GhostLock tool abuses Windows API to block file access -- BleepingComputer
• Cangjie, a New Open-Source Compiled Language with Native Effect Handlers and Algebraic... -- InfoQ
• Coder Agents Enable Running AI Coding Workflows on Self-Hosted Infrastructure -- InfoQ

#news #posthole

SECTIONS

Tech Talk: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills #tech
Tinseltown Tour: Westworld Movie Remake In The Works After HBO's Cancellation Of... #film
Politics Fightbox: A Modest Uptick in Supreme Court Popularity #politics
Science Showcase: Sucker fish are hiding in manta rays’ ‘butthole,’ new study... #science
Guns Galore: Remington Model 17 Police Special: The Shockwave a Century Ago #firearms
Podcast Pack: Legends 79: Lone Scar #podcast
**USA News Firehose...

#posthole #news #tech #film #politics #science

Jack Poller @[email protected] · 2024-04-25 · 13:54 UTC

In another form of crowdsourcing, @bforeai is using AI to analyze internet metadata and other datasets to identify anomalies that a predicates to cyber-attacks.

I worry that this approach has the same issue as UEBA: establishing a baseline that includes bad behavior (anomalies) makes it harder to identify those anomalies.

BforeAI's recent $15M funding round should help it avoid this issue while expanding into the US market.

#security #cybersecurity #AI #anomalydetection #anomalies #UEBA #funding #crowdsourcing

https://siliconangle.com/2024/04/24/french-security-startup-bforeai-raises-15m-us-expansion-service-enhancement/

#security #cybersecurity #ai #anomalydetection #anomalies #ueba

rageblanche @[email protected] · 2026-05-01 · 08:04 UTC

next we've got .... ChowKick!

#linuxclap #clap #test #bitwig #chowkick

#linuxclap #clap #test #bitwig #chowkick

Herr Irrtum! 🔊 @[email protected] · 2026-04-27 · 15:57 UTC

Hi there Music #Tracker folks (#Renoise) especially:

I am quite disappointed by Renoise's ignorance of Clap. There are "Feature Requests" going on since 2021, meanwhile new Renoise versions came out – but this -important- development stays ignored.

When looking for the up to date state of this topic (nothing of course), I've stumbled upon this Tracker:

Ultradaw

https://ultradaw.com/

It supports #Clap plugins. It supports Linux. It looks good.

Did anyone already try it out under Linux? Any experience out there?

#Ultradaw

#tracker #renoise #clap #ultradaw

Seb DM3SEB @[email protected] · 2026-05-05 · 19:45 UTC

It is pretty rare that the fields of cryptocurrency, web3 bulls***, AI bots and ... Morse code! overlap .... 😅

> A user on X just managed to trick Grok and Bankrbot into sending around $200K in free tokens. The message that bypassed the AI safety was written in Morse code, making it easily readable only to the bots.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/user-tricked-grok-bankrbot-to-send-tokens/

But of course as usual in that sphere after a short moment of panic and horror everything just continues as usual:

> Following the exploit, the DebtReliefBot (DRB) token crashed and recovered to its usual baseline.

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

Seb DM3SEB @[email protected] · 2026-05-05 · 19:45 UTC

It is pretty rare that the fields of cryptocurrency, web3 bulls***, AI bots and ... Morse code! overlap .... 😅

> A user on X just managed to trick Grok and Bankrbot into sending around $200K in free tokens. The message that bypassed the AI safety was written in Morse code, making it easily readable only to the bots.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/user-tricked-grok-bankrbot-to-send-tokens/

But of course as usual in that sphere after a short moment of panic and horror everything just continues as usual:

> Following the exploit, the DebtReliefBot (DRB) token crashed and recovered to its usual baseline.

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

Seb DM3SEB @[email protected] · 2026-05-05 · 19:45 UTC

It is pretty rare that the fields of cryptocurrency, web3 bulls***, AI bots and ... Morse code! overlap .... 😅

> A user on X just managed to trick Grok and Bankrbot into sending around $200K in free tokens. The message that bypassed the AI safety was written in Morse code, making it easily readable only to the bots.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/user-tricked-grok-bankrbot-to-send-tokens/

But of course as usual in that sphere after a short moment of panic and horror everything just continues as usual:

> Following the exploit, the DebtReliefBot (DRB) token crashed and recovered to its usual baseline.

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

Seb DM3SEB @[email protected] · 2026-05-05 · 19:45 UTC

It is pretty rare that the fields of cryptocurrency, web3 bulls***, AI bots and ... Morse code! overlap .... 😅

> A user on X just managed to trick Grok and Bankrbot into sending around $200K in free tokens. The message that bypassed the AI safety was written in Morse code, making it easily readable only to the bots.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/user-tricked-grok-bankrbot-to-send-tokens/

But of course as usual in that sphere after a short moment of panic and horror everything just continues as usual:

> Following the exploit, the DebtReliefBot (DRB) token crashed and recovered to its usual baseline.

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

#heist #crypto #morsecode #ai #llm #nft

Seb DM3SEB @[email protected] · 2026-05-05 · 19:45 UTC

It is pretty rare that the fields of cryptocurrency, web3 bulls***, AI bots and ... Morse code! overlap .... 😅

> A user on X just managed to trick Grok and Bankrbot into sending around $200K in free tokens. The message that bypassed the AI safety was written in Morse code, making it easily readable only to the bots.

https://www.cryptopolitan.com/user-tricked-grok-bankrbot-to-send-tokens/

But of course as usual in that sphere after a short moment of panic and horror everything just continues as usual:

> Following the exploit, the DebtReliefBot (DRB) token crashed and recovered to its usual baseline.

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

#nft #llm #ai #morsecode #crypto #heist

JSquared Elevate Consulting @[email protected] · 2026-05-11 · 16:30 UTC

This week we dive deeper into how to lead humans. 👑

Practice strategic transparency to build trust with your own leaders and clear the path for your team. Real leadership requires the courage to share the full picture. 🚀

Find Your Baseline here: https://zurl.co/JNwXO

#LeadershipCompass #EQ

#leadershipcompass #eq

AIagent.at 🤖 AI News @[email protected] · 2026-04-01 · 18:52 UTC

CrowdStrike, Cisco and Palo Alto Networks shipped agentic SOC tools at RSAC 2026, but no vendor shipped an agent behavioural baseline. The 80-point gap between AI agent pilots (85%) and production (5%) persists because security teams cannot answer: which agents are running, what are they authorised to do, and who is accountable when one goes wrong. CrowdStrike flagged the fastest adversary breakout time has dropped to 27 seconds. https://venturebeat.com/security/rsac-2026-agentic-soc-agent-telemetry-security-gap #AIagent #AI #GenAI #AIInfrastructure #CrowdStrike

#aiagent #ai #genai #aiinfrastructure #crowdstrike

AIagent.at 🤖 AI News @[email protected] · 2026-04-01 · 18:52 UTC

CrowdStrike, Cisco and Palo Alto Networks shipped agentic SOC tools at RSAC 2026, but no vendor shipped an agent behavioural baseline. The 80-point gap between AI agent pilots (85%) and production (5%) persists because security teams cannot answer: which agents are running, what are they authorised to do, and who is accountable when one goes wrong. CrowdStrike flagged the fastest adversary breakout time has dropped to 27 seconds. https://venturebeat.com/security/rsac-2026-agentic-soc-agent-telemetry-security-gap #AIagent #AI #GenAI #AIInfrastructure #CrowdStrike

#aiagent #ai #genai #aiinfrastructure #crowdstrike

AIagent.at 🤖 AI News @[email protected] · 2026-04-01 · 18:52 UTC

CrowdStrike, Cisco and Palo Alto Networks shipped agentic SOC tools at RSAC 2026, but no vendor shipped an agent behavioural baseline. The 80-point gap between AI agent pilots (85%) and production (5%) persists because security teams cannot answer: which agents are running, what are they authorised to do, and who is accountable when one goes wrong. CrowdStrike flagged the fastest adversary breakout time has dropped to 27 seconds. https://venturebeat.com/security/rsac-2026-agentic-soc-agent-telemetry-security-gap #AIagent #AI #GenAI #AIInfrastructure #CrowdStrike

#aiagent #ai #genai #aiinfrastructure #crowdstrike

AIagent.at 🤖 AI News @[email protected] · 2026-04-01 · 18:52 UTC

CrowdStrike, Cisco and Palo Alto Networks shipped agentic SOC tools at RSAC 2026, but no vendor shipped an agent behavioural baseline. The 80-point gap between AI agent pilots (85%) and production (5%) persists because security teams cannot answer: which agents are running, what are they authorised to do, and who is accountable when one goes wrong. CrowdStrike flagged the fastest adversary breakout time has dropped to 27 seconds. https://venturebeat.com/security/rsac-2026-agentic-soc-agent-telemetry-security-gap #AIagent #AI #GenAI #AIInfrastructure #CrowdStrike

#crowdstrike #aiinfrastructure #genai #ai #aiagent

AIagent.at 🤖 AI News @[email protected] · 2026-04-01 · 18:52 UTC

CrowdStrike, Cisco and Palo Alto Networks shipped agentic SOC tools at RSAC 2026, but no vendor shipped an agent behavioural baseline. The 80-point gap between AI agent pilots (85%) and production (5%) persists because security teams cannot answer: which agents are running, what are they authorised to do, and who is accountable when one goes wrong. CrowdStrike flagged the fastest adversary breakout time has dropped to 27 seconds. https://venturebeat.com/security/rsac-2026-agentic-soc-agent-telemetry-security-gap #AIagent #AI #GenAI #AIInfrastructure #CrowdStrike

#aiagent #ai #genai #aiinfrastructure #crowdstrike

(Roughly) Daily @[email protected] · 2026-04-28 · 08:00 UTC

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence – it is to act with yesterday’s logic”*…

Jennifer Pahlka— the founder and long-time leader of Code for America, the former US Deputy Chief Technology Officer, the author of Recoding America, and the cofounder and board chair of the Recoding America Fund— has dedicated her life to improving governance and government services. Here, she reflects on a core lesson that she has learned…

I got into government reform sixteen years ago, though I didn’t think of it as reform at the time. I thought of it as just trying to make a few specific things work better. Since then I’ve worked at the local, state, and federal levels, on benefit delivery, on national defense, on a handful of things in between. I’ve worked alongside a lot of people whose own paths in this work have run the gamut. Collectively we’ve seen a lot. I think we’ve learned a lot about what we often call the operating model of government.
But the government we have — the operating model it runs on, the rules and structures and assumptions that shape how it hires, procures, and delivers — was built for a world that no longer exists, and the distance between that world and this one is growing. We are approaching the kind of moment when that gap stops being a management problem and becomes a true legitimacy crisis. (Many will say that moment has already come.) It’s time to start asking whether the theory of change most of us have been operating under — incremental improvements off a pretty poor baseline — was ever going to get us to a government capable of meeting fast-changing needs. It hasn’t yet, and if we don’t do something differently, it won’t.
Kelly Born at the Packard Foundation recently shared with me a framework called the Three Horizons, originally developed by Anthony Hodgson and adapted widely in systems-change work. In it, Horizon 1 is the currently dominant system. It’s functional enough to persist but failing in critical ways, especially for people with less power. Horizon 3 is the future system you’re working toward, already visible in patches of practice that embody different values and different ways of working, but far from the norm. Horizon 2 is the turbulent middle where change agents work.
But the key insight is that not all Horizon 2 work is the same. Some H2 innovations genuinely create the conditions for the new system to emerge. Call those transforming H2, or H2+. Others, however inadvertently, extend the lifespan of the failing system by relieving the pressure that might otherwise force structural change. Call those sustaining H2, or H2-. Both feel like reform, but they have very different long-term implications.
H2- work is attractive because it usually produces real value in the short run. H2+ work can take a long time to pay off, and the path is rarely clear. In a stable environment, you can get away with a lot of H2-. In an environment where the underlying system has become truly untenable, the difference between the two starts to matter a great deal. I think that’s where we are now…
[Jen describes a few projects that illustrate patterns that play out over and over in the category of H2-, the work that sustains the status quo…]
… The H2- work I’m describing has been done in good faith by people. I am one of those people. Code for America, which I founded and where I spent more than a decade, is in important respects capacity substitution. USDR, which I also helped start, is as well. The healthcare.gov rescue (which I didn’t actually work on but tried to provide moral support for) was the rescue-and-rebuild cycle. For much of the past fifteen years, the H2- path was arguably the right call. When there was no political space for structural change, demonstrations were a good way to build the evidence base and develop the field.
I think we are in a different moment now. This moment is defined by disruption. I count three kinds.
Contingent disruption — pandemics, climate events, geopolitical shocks, financial crises — is unpredictable in its specifics but very predictable in its category: large, fast-moving, high-stakes demands that fall disproportionately on government. COVID was not an anomaly. The next version won’t look the same.
The most recent disruption to federal government, however, was political. Whatever the cost of its methods, DOGE made the brittleness of the current operating model impossible to ignore and created political openings for structural arguments that previously had no traction. The reform field did not create this moment. But it can shape what comes out of it.
AI brings structural disruption. This is a transformation already underway in the material conditions of work, economy, and administration. AI creates dramatic change in both the needs and conditions government must respond to and the ways in which it can respond at the same time. Yes, I certainly mean a social safety net not nearly fit to handle the levels of unemployment that are likely coming our way, and yes, I mean possible upsets in the balance of power between agencies and the vendors they rely on, but that’s barely scratching the surface.
AI is not only an exogenous shock that government will have to absorb. It is also moving the bar on what counts as acceptable service in the first place. People are already using AI to understand their medical bills, navigate insurance denials, and draft appeals for benefits they were wrongly denied. Soon they will expect to apply for SNAP or file their taxes by uploading a paystub and answering a few plain-language questions, not by filling out even the best-designed web form. The forty-page PDF used to feel intolerable. The well-designed web form will start to feel that way too, and faster than the last transition did.
And service delivery is only the most visible piece. The same expectation shift is going to hit regulation, permitting, enforcement, how quickly an agency can respond to a new problem, how a legislature decides whether a law is working. If a small team with the right tools can map a regulatory regime in a week, the timelines we have now, in which rulemaking takes several years–or even multiple presidential terms–become indefensible. If an advocate can stress-test a policy against thousands of edge cases before it gets enacted, the standard for what counts as due diligence in lawmaking starts to move. The bar is rising on the whole surface of what government does, not just on the forms people fill out.
Not everyone wants this shift to happen. Public sector unions have secured laws in several states forbidding the use of AI in service delivery, won contracts requiring union consent before autonomous vehicles can operate, and pushed legislation mandating staffing levels that the work no longer requires — as my colleagues Robert Gordon and Nick Bagley have documented. The concern for workers caught in this transition is legitimate. But blocking government’s transformation while the world around it moves on is not a strategy for protecting those workers. It exacerbates public frustration with government, weakens the case for investing in it, and leaves the people who most depend on public services with a system increasingly unfit to serve them.
So the gap we have been measuring, between what government delivers and what the public considers a basic level of competence, is widening from both ends at once. The system is straining to clear the old bar at the same moment the bar is rising.
In this environment, the benefits systems that struggled to scale during COVID will be asked to scale again. The regulatory processes that can’t move quickly will be asked to respond to developments they weren’t designed to anticipate. The civil service system that can’t attract the people it needs now will need to attract people with skills that didn’t exist a decade ago.
If I had to pick, it’s AI that drives this disruptive moment. But I don’t have to pick. You could just as easily imagine climate shocks, or the next pandemic, or an escalation of the current war. Truly, some combination of all the above is not that unlikely. Reasonable people may disagree about the size and shape of the disruption AI will bring, but betting against disruption generally seems deeply unwise at the moment.
If you buy that argument, then we must acknowledge that a reform field largely dedicated to H2- work is not what the moment calls for. In a stable environment, H2- work that buys time for a failing system might be much-needed, and might be a missed opportunity for transformation. In an environment where disruptions of all kinds are accelerating, it becomes a compounding liability. Extending the lifespan of a brittle system just means the system eventually fails more spectacularly. More people get hurt. More people look for alternatives to democracy.
That doesn’t mean we need to throw everything out and start over. For the reform ecosystem, it means existing actors need incentives to align their work toward structural transformation, new actors with adjacent expertise need to be welcomed into the fold (especially advocates and lobbyists, given how little influence muscle the field has today), and connections need to be made both upstream and downstream of where we’ve been focused. It means articulating competing H3 visions from a wide range of ideological and practical perspectives and debating them among, including the project that sparked this line of thinking, which Kelly funded and FAI and New America are currently working on. It means designing funding and partnership structures that reward structural ambition while staying grounded in meaningful near-term progress. Funders and grantees share responsibility for creating the conditions under which a diverse set of actors can aim higher by working together, and connecting the dots upstream.
For this to work, it can’t be a zero sum game. Government capacity is wildly neglected in philanthropy despite its high leverage. (Good luck naming an issue philanthropists care about that doesn’t benefit from increased government capacity.) Could the field stop doing some H2- work? Sure. That would free up some existing resources for more H2+ work, which has been too little of the field’s mindshare and resources to date. But that is not the path forward — it wouldn’t get us where we need to be. We need more resources, full stop. We need to make the case to philanthropy for greater investment in the entire field (that’s part of what Recoding America Fund is trying to do) and make the case to government leaders, including electeds, to invest in better plumbing, so that the investment in H2+ work isn’t coming at the expense of the essential life support…
[Jen outlines some of the key principles that animate H2+ efforts, then ponders “doing different things differently”…]
… I realized early last year that while I’d spent the bulk of my career trying to drag government into the Internet Era, that work has to change now. We are entering a new era, and if those of us who fought the last fight don’t adapt to the conditions and expectations of this one, we’ll make exactly the mistake the people who resisted internet-era ways of working made. We’ll become the blockers — the ones holding on to old ways of working because that is what we are used to and that is what we are good at.
None of which means rescue work should stop, or that demonstrations are worthless, or that capacity substitution isn’t helpful and needed. Some H2- work, done deliberately and named honestly, is best understood as experimentation: we’re running it inside the failing system precisely because that’s where we’ll learn what a new operating model has to do. That’s a different kind of work from rescue that produces learning incidentally, but both can be valuable.
But the field needs a shared frame clear-eyed enough to ask, with each investment: does this move the system toward H3, or does it prolong H1? That question should be driving how resources, talent, and attention get allocated now, not because the prior work was mistaken but because the moment is different and the cost of extending the status quo is too high. There will have to be work that sustains the status quo, but what tradeoffs are we willing to make?
But insisting we ask the question does not mean that answering it is easy: there is no objective set of criteria that distinguishes one from the other. What may look like H2+ to some may seem like H2- to others, and part of that depends on your particular vision of that third horizon (more on that in the coming weeks.) Some may see work as contributing to a transformation, and therefore H2+, but towards an undesired H3 state. Grappling with how to answer this question is work we all need to be doing…
… Some things haven’t changed. The community is still full of good, smart people with enormous insight into a very difficult problem. We’ve just run out of time to do it the way we’ve been doing it. A brittle system that gets propped up through manageable shocks will eventually meet a shock it can’t survive, and we are moving into a period where the shocks are neither manageable nor hypothetical. Every H2- intervention that returns the system to “good enough” is now a bet that good enough will hold. It’s a bet I no longer think we can afford to make.
The window for H2+ work has not been open like this before. It will not stay open indefinitely.

Eminently worth reading in full.

What DOGE coulda, shoulda been: “A Three Horizons Framework for Government Reform,” from @pahlkadot.bsky.social.

* Peter Drucker

###

As we face forward, we might recall that it was on this date in 1970 that President Richard Nixon formally authorized the commitment of U.S. combat troops, in cooperation with South Vietnamese units, against North Vietnamese troop sanctuaries in Cambodia.

Secretary of State William Rogers and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, who had continually argued for a downsizing of the U.S. effort in Vietnam, were excluded from the decision to use U.S. troops in Cambodia. Gen. Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cabled Gen. Creighton Abrams, senior U.S. commander in Saigon, informing him of the decision that a “higher authority has authorized certain military actions to protect U.S. forces operating in South Vietnam.” Nixon believed that the operation was necessary as a pre-emptive strike to forestall North Vietnamese attacks from Cambodia into South Vietnam as the U.S. forces withdrew and the South Vietnamese assumed more responsibility for the fighting. Nevertheless, three National Security Council staff members and key aides to presidential assistant Henry Kissinger resigned in protest over what amounted to an invasion of Cambodia.
When Nixon publicly announced the Cambodian incursion on April 30, it set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations. A May 4, protest at Kent State University resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops. Another student rally at Jackson State College in Mississippi resulted in the death of two students and 12 wounded when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.
– source

source

#Cambodia #culture #future #government #governmentReform #history #Nixon #politics #RichardNixon #VietnamWar

#cambodia #culture #future #government #governmentreform #history

MDMRN @[email protected] · 2025-09-30 · 17:38 UTC

Awkward...

...Wait, why are there at least two villagers on my island whose baseline chair is a toilet??

#ACNH #AnimalCrossing #VideoGames #Nintendo #NintendoSwitch #ACNHScreenshots #ACNHCommunity #あつもり #あつ森 #CozyGames #CozyGamer #CozyGaming #ACNHMarina

#acnh #animalcrossing #videogames #nintendo #nintendoswitch #acnhscreenshots

SARS2PA @[email protected] · 2024-09-09 · 18:09 UTC

Good Afternoon SARS2PAians!

1/2 for Sept. 9th, 2024

I hope you are having a healthy and productive late summer!☀️

__________
VOCs

The national mutation leaderboard hasn't changed much.: https://ibb.co/LP1L4LZ

There are no new mutations that are on the far horizon that can compete with KP.3.1.1 so far.

The closest competitor is the recombinant XEC, a combo of KS.1.1 and KP.3.1, and is maybe almost equally as fast as what we have now.

We have XEC already in PA.: https://ibb.co/JpnYfcJ

The good news is XEC, as I mentioned last time, has only 2 spike mutations different from KP.3.1.1, so any immunity granted against KP.x.y will also work very well against XEC.

Actually, the current versions are pretty stagnant. Stagnation is good as it gives us a breather, but it's also what happened between XBB and JN.1/KP.x.y.: https://ibb.co/BCqrTFN

Thanks to variant hunters, who constantly monitor virus genetics and then estimate growth rates (and some of which are not even paid to do this for us), we will have a few weeks to a month or two of any incoming fast, binding, or immune-evasive mutations.

Keep watching that space. It's important, especially as winter approaches.

__________
Wastewater

WastewaterSCAN still has our region at HIGH levels of SARS2.: https://ibb.co/wRCwRkK

Chester's numbers are not low, but much more manageable than in other areas. Harrisburg is doing much better as numbers keep going down there! Good work Hburg!: https://ibb.co/Pm9kF4H

Our region's numbers are going down after a peak already. This is a relief. We are still the HHS region with the lowest numbers.: https://ibb.co/3zcRKJL

PA, after quite a sizeable spike, is VERy quickly returning to numbers way below national average and more on par with the rest of the region.: https://ibb.co/VtVxDYX

We're doing something right. 💪

But remember, numbers are still in the moderate to HIGH range, so please keep working on source control.

According to CDC, there is NO state right now having anything less than "moderate" wastewater levels. Clearly this is defintely NOT a best-case scenario going into Fall.

Existing immune deficiency due to previous reinfections (and first time infections!) and already very high virus spread might make for quite a high-maintenance Fall and Winter this year.

__________
Kits, vaxes, etc.

Reminder that you can get 4 Federally funded tests kits by mail at the end of this month. Don't miss it!!

Covidtests.gov: https://aspr.hhs.gov/covid-19/test/Pages/default.aspx

There's also a tool from Vaccines.gov to find an mRNA KP.2 vaccination near you!!!

🔴Also reminder: if you have an uncomfortably strong reaction to mRNA vaccines, please do give Novavax a try. It's protein-based, and formulated much like a traditional tetanus shot, rather than mRNA.

https://us.novavaxcovidvaccine.com/find-a-vaccine

I am not in any way paid to promote Novavax. And I'm not the company President, but...I am in fact a client 😎

If you are unable to get Novavax, PLEASE.....get something.

🔴And gooooooo get a FLU SHOT too if you are able!

__________
Other Pathogens

:coronavirus: H5N1

There was a first case already of H5N1 infection in a person in Missouri, NOT linked, so far, to animal contact and not farm related.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/06/health/first-human-case-of-bird-flu-not-linked-to-animals/index.html

This is the current picture for H5N1. Found in 14 states.: https://ibb.co/pfrFxtT

This is ...pretty bad. This is getting progressively...kinda bad.

🔴Please DO NOT consume raw dairy products: raw eggs, undercooked/rare meat, unpasteurized dairy. Dippy eggs. Raw egg-based cookie dough. Just don't.

🔴Use extra caution with animals like rodents in your home, especially if you have to deal with them after they're trapped.

🔴Keep your cats indoors and dogs away from prey. H5N1 has a super-high kill rate especially in cats.

Stock up NOW on a few N95s (you will NOT want less than a genuine N95 for this thing), gloves, and MERV-13 filters for those CR boxes.

CDC can repeat "risk assessment low" all they want, we should NOT be screwing around with something than has an estimated baseline 20% kill rate, which is the reason I spend so much time on this subject in a SARS2 forum.

The current genetics of H5N1 is not scary, but giving this thing more chances to hit the lottery is the worst thing we could be doing now.

🔴Again: H5N1 cannot combine with the pathogen that causes COVID19, because one is a SARS and the other is an influenza. They are way too different from each other. But it CAN combine with influenza A and B....and we are entering that season soon.

We can do the best things in preparation NOW for a worst case scenario which means building up some basic PPE at home, avoiding exposure. Prepare =/= panic.

Please stay safe this coming Fall and keep that source control down!

☀️🍁☀️

#COVID19 #COVID #COVIDisNotOver #SARS2PA
#Pennsylvania #PA #KP3 #XEC #FLuQUE

#Wastewater #Norovirus #Noro

#H5N1 #HPAI #BirdFlu

#WearAMask #CleanTheAir #WashHands #mRNA #Novavax
#VaccinesSaveLives #StayHomeIfSick !

#covid19 #covid #covidisnotover #sars2pa #pennsylvania #pa