Tootfinder

Historic #LickObservatory closes to public following significant wind damage: https://news.ucsc.edu/2025/12/historic-lick-observatory-closes-to-public-following-significant-wind-damage/ - early on Thursday, Dec. 25, severe winds gusting up to 183 km/h tore loose half of the shutter on the 140-year old 36-inch Great Refractor dome; no one was injured.

Good Morning #Canada
Today is a twofer of #CanadaRivers as we countdown the longest rivers in Canada.
#23 is the Red River which flows for 890 km, originating at the confluence of the Bois de Sioux and Otter Tail rivers between the U.S. states of Minnesota and North Dakota, flowing northward through the Red River Valley and continuing into Manitoba. It empties into Lake Winnipeg, whose waters join the Nelson River and ultimately flow into Hudson Bay. The river only falls 70 metres over it's length, so there are no hydroelectric opportunities, but because it drains a large watershed of 287,500 km2 it experiences significant spring volumes. This has led to calamitous (love that word) floods plaguing southern Manitoba for centuries. Flood canals and ice cutting (physical removal of large blocks every spring) have mitigated the risks but not eliminated them.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Hydrology
https://www.gov.mb.ca/mti/wms/floodcontrol/redriverbasin/historic.html

Grr and argh.
The people who make government websites generally tend to do a halfway decent job of meeting the spec, but they really really need to learn to push back when the spec is FUCKING STUPID.
Having just completed my "Annual Filing" with Companies House - and why is that even a thing, we're not posting fucking vellum to Victorian clerks who scurry up ladders to deposit the sacred paperwork in the appropriate filing cabinet any more - I got a new scary emai…

The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation plans to gradually cut 900 jobs to help it save $334M by 2029 as it faces a lower license fee and falling commercial revenues (SWI swissinfo.ch)
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/swiss-broadcasting-corpo…

Swiss Broadcasting Corporation confirms plan to cut 900 jobs by 2029
Under the ongoing restructuring process, 900 full-time equivalent job cuts are planned, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) confirmed.

Sources say President Trump's efforts to block state-level AI regulations through a preemption proposal are facing significant opposition on Capitol Hill (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/12/02/ai-preemption-push-stalls-trump-pressure

Trump's push to overrule state AI regulations stalls
His calls to block state-level AI regulation are falling short on Capitol Hill.

This was written by an old friend and I found it pretty packed with good info. It’s also an example of using NotebookLM for research and content development. I found this inspiring enough to give it a try. I’ve found that it is a “Centaur" enabling tech that helps one to create on their own the overall content and leaving details to the NotebookLM tooling.
——
SLOs Can’t Catch a Black Swan: A Classification Framework for Thinking About Incidents -Geoff White
"Your SLOs can be green, and your systems can still be falling over. That doesn’t mean SLOs are broken. It means they were never designed to describe every class of risk we encounter in complex systems.
I’ve released version 1.0 of SLOs Can’t Catch a Black Swan as an open, living framework hosted on GitHub.
This is not a book you read once, and it’s not something you consult in the middle of an outage. It’s a way to think more clearly about incidents—across the incident lifecycle.”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/slos-cant-catch-black-swan-classification-framework-thinking-white-ybc0c/?trackingId=ShCzMMVCQTChcTi8xT19tg==

The leading vaccine regulator at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a far stricter course for federal vaccine approvals,
following claims from his team that Covid vaccines were linked to the deaths of at least 10 children.
Experts suggest the announcement will make the vaccine approval process significantly more difficult.
Dr Vinay Prasad, whose vaccine policy direction has been supported by the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, told FDA staff that…

Moody Urbanity - Old & New VI 🔆
情绪化城市 - 新与旧 VI 🔆
📷 Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 533/16
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus 400, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

The Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC)
names Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino directly in a statement:
"In the hours following the shooting, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino held a press conference
asserting that the operation was targeting an individual named Jose Huerta-Chuma
and characterized him as having a significant criminal history.
Because federal statements have repeatedly included inaccurate information about Minnesota custody an…

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Google advises some employees on visas, including H-1B visas, not to travel outside the US due to processing delays, following new social media screening rules (Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-tells-visa-holders-stamp-le…

Google warns some visa employees not to leave the US due to 'significant' return delays of up to a year
The US State Department said it was "prioritizing thoroughly vetting" each visa case, which could cause delays.