Tootfinder

Seven people are missing
after multiple explosions
at a warehouse in Northern California that sent bright fireworks across the area
and ignited a brush fire.
The location is owned by an active pyrotechnics license holder, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Emergency crews were searching the property for the missing individuals Wednesday,
and investigators were also surveying the area with drones.
Authorities ha…

Long-term performance of intracortical microelectrode arrays in 14 BrainGate clinical trial participants #BCI

Long-term performance of intracortical microelectrode arrays in 14 BrainGate clinical trial participants
Brain–computer interfaces have enabled people with paralysis to control computer cursors, operate prosthetic limbs, and communicate through handwriting, speech, and typing. Most high-performance demonstrations have used silicon microelectrode "Utah" arrays to record brain activity at single neuron resolution. However, reports so far have typically been limited to one or two individuals, with no systematic assessment of the longevity, decoding accuracy, and day–to–day stability properties …

A while ago the media reported that most of the long-distance "suburban" trains between #Wrocław and #Poznań will be discontinued, and instead one will have to change trains midway. Irrespective of whether it's actually going to happen, let's consider it.
As you can probably tell by now, I'm not a stranger to changing trains. In fact, there are some direct connections that I do criticize. For example:
• Poznań — Szczecin — Świnoujście, where arriving at Szczecin Główny and turning back to leave the city is a waste of time. It's better to change trains at Szczecin Dąbie.
• Poznań — Krzyż — Kostrzyn, where instead of using a single railbus, you can use a larger EMU for the Poznań — Krzyż segment, and a smaller DMU for Krzyż — Kostrzyn (in fact, only recently the "direct" Poznań — Kostrzyn train involved just that, but it was supposed to be temporary).
However, good matches are the key. Say:
1. Max 10 minutes (when there are no delays) from one train to the other.
2. "Door-to-door" transfer — without having to carry all your luggage across platforms.
3. Reliable connection — if one train is delayed, the other train waits for it (or there are so many alternatives that it doesn't have to).
Can such a thing happen on Poznań — Wrocław route? I have my doubts.
I've been using these trains for years, and I can say this: there is no effort to match train from/to Poznań with other trains in Wrocław. Sometimes the trains depart 10 minutes before the first train from Poznań arrives, sometimes I need to transfer in 10 minutes, and sometimes I have to wait over an hour. And the same in the other direction.
Perhaps things would actually improve if the route is split. Perhaps people would actually care. Maybe even the trains would be fitted better to the timetable in Wrocław. But I find it hard to believe.
EDIT: One final thought — since there is no real reason to split these connections (except for profiteering), why make travellers' lives harder?
#rail

Bob Vylan's official statement:
[sorry, had to edit as I mistakenly wrote Kneecap instead of Bob Vylan. <input coffee>]

A controversial new book:
"We are eating the Earth"
says excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a long-term challenge resulting from an otherwise cheerful story,
in which more people live better lives with fuller bellies and bigger dreams.
Lawyer-turned-science-cop Tim Searchinger discovered that the popular carbon solution of 20 years ago,
-- plant-based biofuels,
-- was a disaster in the making.
His insight: Land used to grow fuel w…

There’s new hope that humans will save our planet
‘We Are Eating the Earth,’ argues for producing more food on less land to avert climate crisis.

Fine-Tuning ASR for Stuttered Speech: Personalized vs. Generalized Approaches
Dena Mujtaba, Nihar Mahapatra
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00853 https://

Fine-Tuning ASR for Stuttered Speech: Personalized vs. Generalized Approaches
Stuttering -- characterized by involuntary disfluencies such as blocks, prolongations, and repetitions -- is often misinterpreted by automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, resulting in elevated word error rates and making voice-driven technologies inaccessible to people who stutter. The variability of disfluencies across speakers and contexts further complicates ASR training, compounded by limited annotated stuttered speech data. In this paper, we investigate fine-tuning ASRs for stuttered…

Climate impacts and monetary costs of healthy diets worldwide
Yan Bai, Elena M. Martinez, Mizuki Yamanaka, Marko Rissanen, Anna Herforth, William A. Masters
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.24457

Climate impacts and monetary costs of healthy diets worldwide
About 2.8 billion people worldwide cannot afford the least expensive foods required for a healthy diet. Since 2020, the Cost and Affordability of a Healthy Diet (CoAHD) has been published for all countries by FAO and the World Bank and is widely used to guide social protection, agricultural, and public health and nutrition policies. Here, we measure how healthy diets could be obtained with the lowest possible greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, in ways that could further inform food choice and poli…

Autonomy by Design: Preserving Human Autonomy in AI Decision-Support
Stefan Buijsman, Sarah Carter, Juan Pablo Berm\'udez
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23952

Autonomy by Design: Preserving Human Autonomy in AI Decision-Support
AI systems increasingly support human decision-making across domains of professional, skill-based, and personal activity. While previous work has examined how AI might affect human autonomy globally, the effects of AI on domain-specific autonomy -- the capacity for self-governed action within defined realms of skill or expertise -- remain understudied. We analyze how AI decision-support systems affect two key components of domain-specific autonomy: skilled competence (the ability to make inform…

A #ClimateChange increase in a ticks range creates ever more people allergic to #meat and #dairy, which reduces demand for the products of an industry that aggravates the