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    <title>What's Up With That? Blog</title>
    <link>http://whatsupwiththat.app</link>
    <description>News and updates from What's Up With That? — an AI tool kit for strategists, innovators, and researchers.</description>
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    <lastBuildDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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      <title>Three Details That Explain Any Complex News Story</title>
      <link>http://whatsupwiththat.app/blog/distill-post-office-crisis.html</link>
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      <pubDate>Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <author>marshall@marshallk.com (Marshall Kirkpatrick)</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Almost every complex story can be boiled down to three things: a detail that describes what's happening, one that explains why, and one that predicts what comes next.

I learned that framework from Kirk Borne — the astrophysicist and data scientist who, among other things, introduced Donald Rumsfeld to the concept of "unknown unknowns." Borne's approach to making sense of massive, multi-dimensional datasets is simple: ask which details are most descriptive, most explanatory, and most predictive.

It's a question designed for data in fields like astrophysics with hundreds of variables — for example, sky surveys like SDSS catalog objects with 400+ measured attributes. But it works just as well on a development in current events. I used it to understand the U.S. Postal Service's looming budget crisis in about five minutes.

Is it really serious this time?

Today I read Fiona Bork's article on The Hill about the US Postal Service running out of money and clearly, it's complicated. Borrowing caps, pension obligations, regulatory reform, stamp prices, mail volume decline. Congressional politics. A new Postmaster General sounding an alarm after years of controversy around the role.

Is the mail carrier going to stop coming to my house?

I've been hearing about this crisis for years, of course. But when you're reading broadly, it's hard to know what's different this time, what the root cause really is, or what's likely to happen next.

So I used it as a test case for thinking more clearly.

Cutting to the chase

I ran the article through What's Up With That?, the AI reading tool I made to think through complicated articles, reports, and topics. It doesn't just summarize — it contextualizes. In this case it put this story in context of the current state of US federal agencies in general and then separated the signal from noise, identifying what's actually new in this story versus familiar background. Three things jumped out:

1. Postmaster General Steiner framed the revenue collapse as a concrete $86 billion loss, comparing USPS to FedEx and UPS to make a structural problem tangible.

2. He named a specific fix: raise stamps from 78 to 95 cents and change one regulatory body's pricing model. That's it. Most USPS crisis discussions stay at the policy level. Naming a precise price point and a single institutional decision as a complete solution is quite specific.

3. He only discovered the severity of the crisis after taking the job in July 2025 — a signal of governance breakdown, suggesting that even USPS leadership didn't fully grasp the scale of the problem.

Meanwhile, the standard elements — borrowing cap reform, pension restructuring, legislative appeals — were flagged as background. Not new. Not where the story is.

Then I went deeper by letting What's Up With That generate and run a five-step research plan: systems analysis, red-teaming Steiner's framing, historical precedent, power dynamics mapping, and finally, Distill — to capture the key details from both the original story and all the extended automated research.

The three key details (in anything)

After analyzing the original article and all that research, Distill applies Borne's framework and selects three details — not from the article alone, but from everything it's now seen.

That's it. Three details. I went from foggy to sharp on an issue I've been hearing about for years. Not because I read less, but because I found the right frame and shined a light on the most important details.

Seeing it as a system

Once you have those three details, you can see how they connect. A systems analysis step in the research produced a causal loop diagram that makes the structural trap visible.

It might feel counterintuitive to see those plus signs, but they don't just mean "this adds to that" — they mean "this moves in the same direction, good or bad, as that."

Service degradation drives customer loss, which shrinks revenue, which depletes cash, which threatens worker and vendor payment, which guarantees further degradation.

The only brake is congressional action — and it only kicks in when things get bad enough to force political will. That's why Steiner's push for unilateral pricing authority isn't just about stamp prices. It's about breaking the loop without waiting for a system that only reacts to crisis.

A mental model as leverage

The most common response to complexity is either to read more — or throw up your hands and not even try to understand it. Neither of those really help.

Strategic readers do the opposite. They find the right frame. Kirk Borne's question — which details are most descriptive, explanatory, and predictive? — works whether you're analyzing astrophysics data or a news article about the Post Office. The tool I built, What's Up With That?, helps me practice it every day. But the framework works with a notebook too.

One article. Five minutes. Three details and one system diagram. Not a summary — a framework for thinking clearly about a complex situation.]]></description>
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    <item>
      <title>Introducing WUWT Community Calls</title>
      <link>http://whatsupwiththat.app/blog/community-calls.html</link>
      <guid>http://whatsupwiththat.app/blog/community-calls.html</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <author>marshall@marshallk.com (Marshall Kirkpatrick)</author>
      <description><![CDATA[Friday Community Calls are here. Meet a fellow WUWT user, hear how they're using the toolkit, get product updates, and ask questions — all in 30 minutes. Three upcoming calls at different times so people around the world can join.

Have you tried, started using, or just felt curious about What's Up With That? Come and join us for a Friday Community Call where we'll meet someone using this toolkit, hear how they're using it, and be inspired.

I'll also provide updates on how the product is evolving, answer your questions, share best practices, and just have a real good time.

Our first guest

Our first guest will be WUWT user Betsy Hindman, a consultant who uses it to research what her clients' target customers are interested in.

Short calls, rotating times

These are short calls (30 minutes) that we'll do regularly, but at different times of day so people in various locations around the world can join.

Upcoming calls

Friday, March 6 — 10:00 AM PST — First call, featuring Betsy Hindman
Friday, March 13 — 8:00 AM PST — A couple hours earlier for our friends further east
Friday, March 20 — 12:00 PM PST

Register for any of the calls above to get the Zoom link. I hope you'll join us for one or more — let's learn together and boost our analytical powers.]]></description>
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      <title>Introducing What's Up With That</title>
      <link>http://whatsupwiththat.app/launch-announcement.html</link>
      <guid>http://whatsupwiththat.app/launch-announcement.html</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
      <author>marshall@marshallk.com (Marshall Kirkpatrick)</author>
      <description><![CDATA[How often does this happen to you? You come across an article that might matter, but you can't tell how it matters — and you don't have time to find out.

What if one click could cut through that?

If you work in strategy, innovation, sales/competitive intelligence, research, or change management, you probably read things every day that you wish you understood better. This is for you.

Today I'm launching What's Up With That? — a powerful tool kit I've built to help anyone read more like an expert, quickly, in order to make better decisions. It's available today for Chrome and Firefox. There's a brief demo video below.

I've been building tools like this for organizations ranging from TechCrunch to Walmart, Microsoft to the United Nations, for almost 20 years. But this is the most powerful set of tools I've ever made publicly available.

Now is the time for this

The quantity of newsletters, press releases, videos and more is exploding. Some people even say things online that aren't true! It makes quality thinking all the harder. I offer these tools to help.

Another sign the time for this is right? The $6B research firm Gartner says that the #1 most-read Magic Quadrant research report on its site is on Decision Intelligence Platforms. For the past 4 weeks in a row! That's the #1 thing business people want to read reviews of from Gartner right now.

Those are big, enterprise software platforms though. I believe many of us can benefit from leaner, faster, more affordable tools.

The famed investor Ray Dalio once said, "the two biggest barriers to good decision making are ego and blind spots."

Let's go cut through some blind spots.

There's nothing like trying it for yourself or seeing it in action. Here's a demo in under 6 minutes. There's no sign up required for a free trial and then you can analyze all the pages you want for an introductory price of just $15 per month. Give it a try, I think you'll really like it.]]></description>
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