Ben Ford

Organisational Engineering as a service for scaling tech companies | OODA | Former Royal Marine Commando | ADAPT. RESPOND. WIN!

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

Because OODA loops have come up a few times over the last couple of days. I want to say this:

The military is full of excellent ideas and practices that can be used with a tiny amount of tweaking in civilian contexts.

e.g. Mission Command:

https://t.co/41cR7XFf9o

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

Prep done!

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@InspGadgetBlogs BBK - very christmas past with a wessex!

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@jamesonhaslam Hell yeah! Opted to cut into smaller peices and flash on a plancha when I did it. Also - you have got to try it with sous vide egg yolk!

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@SMB_Attorney Although volume of work combined with a shitty plan just gets you in a worse place quicker 😅

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@spikeyspud He's an utter raging bellend. So embarrasing! I bet Bea's glad she didn't go for the RM now :-(

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

In the beginning was the command line...

[Dmitrii Kovanikov @ChShersh]

Software Engineers who made grep, cat, cut, find, ls, less, and sed really cooked here.

50 years later and it’s still bread and butter of data analysis.

And it still works better than most of bloated alternatives.

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@jordannoone

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@StrongpointRich Love the name 🫡

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@StrongpointRich @MatznerJon @hubermanlab This is best measured as dopamine's level of Hunter.

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@EmeryEXP God damn I miss range days 😥

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@NoahEpstein_ Workflow

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@AlexNoonan6 Alternatively- just buy and old thinkpad for a couple of hundred bucks and install https://t.co/fAeBKZR2Rm

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@Liv_Boeree It's a hurricame 🤣

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@BloodNelsons You normally find thise breeding in spring - it's very late in the season now!

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@anduriltech USMC != USAF last I checked 😅

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@SMB_Attorney *voluntary adversity*... if its involuntary it's maybe 50/50

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@MahaultAlbarra1 this reminds of what you said on the no way out podcast - what if we looked at everything through a more collaborative supportive lens like this.

[Thomas Reis @peakaustria]

The trees were talking. And no one had been listening. For decades, foresters believed trees were competitors—silent giants fighting for sunlight, water, and space. Cut down the weak ones, they said, and the strong would thrive. But Dr. Suzanne Simard, a Canadian forest ecologist, suspected something else was happening beneath the soil. So she did an experiment that would change how we understand forests—and life itself.She discovered that trees aren't isolated individuals. They're part of a vast, intelligent, underground network—a "wood wide web" where they share resources, warn each other of danger, and care for their young.The forest, it turns out, isn't a battlefield. It's a community.Suzanne Simard grew up in the forests of British Columbia, Canada. Her family were loggers. She spent her childhood among towering trees, watching them fall and new ones planted in their place.She became a forester herself, working for the logging industry in the 1980s. But she noticed something disturbing: when forests were clear-cut and replanted with a single species—usually Douglas fir—the new trees struggled to survive.Foresters blamed the birch trees growing nearby. "They're competing for resources," they said. "Cut them down so the firs can grow."But Suzanne didn't think that made sense. In natural forests, birch and fir grew side by side, thriving together. Why would they compete in replanted forests but not in natural ones?So she designed an experiment to find out. In the early 1990s, Suzanne planted birch and fir seedlings in a forest plot. She covered some with plastic bags to isolate them from each other. Others, she left uncovered.Then she did something radical: she injected tiny amounts of radioactive carbon into the trees—different isotopes for birch and fir—so she could track where the carbon went.If the trees were truly isolated competitors, the carbon would stay inside each tree.But if they were connected somehow, the carbon would move between them.Suzanne waited. Then she used a Geiger counter to measure where the radioactive carbon had traveled.The results were stunning.The carbon didn't stay in one tree. It moved. From birch to fir. From fir to birch. Through the soil. Through their roots.But not directly. The trees were connected by mycorrhizal fungi—thread-like organisms that attach to tree roots and extend for miles underground.The fungi act as a living network, linking trees together. In exchange for sugars the trees produce through photosynthesis, the fungi provide trees with water and nutrients from deep in the soil.But Suzanne discovered something even more remarkable: the fungi weren't just passively transferring nutrients. The trees were actively sharing resources with each other. In summer, when birch trees had full leaves and were photosynthesizing, they sent carbon to the fir trees, which were shaded and struggling. In fall, when birch leaves fell and they could no longer photosynthesize, the fir trees—still green—sent carbon back to the birch to help them survive the winter.The trees were cooperating. Helping each other. Balancing the ecosystem.Suzanne called these networks "mycorrhizal networks"—and the largest, oldest trees in the forest became known as "mother trees" or "hub trees."These mother trees act as hubs in the network, connecting hundreds of younger trees. They send nutrients to struggling saplings. They share information about drought, disease, and insect attacks through chemical signals.When a mother tree is cut down, the entire network weakens. Younger trees lose their support system.Suzanne's research showed that clear-cutting forests—removing all trees and replanting a single species—destroys these networks. The new trees are isolated, vulnerable, and far less resilient.Her work was revolutionary—and controversial.Logging companies resisted her findings. Some scientists were skeptical. The idea that trees "communicate" and "help each other" sounded too anthropomorphic, too sentimental.

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@pinpulleddrmf Is this about the pork shoulder.... 😬

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@hissgoescobra Probably NBD if you're only training to murder children though I guess.

[Ben Ford @commandodev]

@extropic Gimme