Tootfinder

Logistics in the technical sense (part of supply chain management) is a subset of logistics in the vernacular sense ("the handling of the details of an operation"). You can explore this second and more general sense, and thereby build an understanding of the first and more technical sense, by iteratively asking the question, "how does one make that happen" and follow questions from there.
A big part of organizing is figuring out the (vernacular) logistics (and helping others figure it out). You want to organize a seed swap? Ok. How does one make that happen? Well, you need seeds, people, a place, and perhaps a time. How does one make that happen? You can forage seeds or you can buy seeds for a garden and swap extras. How do you get people to come? Well, figure out where you want people to come from and choose an accessible place. What's the easiest thing to do? Get people from your neighborhood. How does one make that happen? Well, maybe put up flyers. How does one make that happen? Well, print them on your printer if you have one, or at a library, then go post them up. Etc.
Keep asking questions until you either find a roadblock that you can't find a way around, or you find things you can do yourself (one of those things you can do yourself is asking friends to help).
If you practice the exercise of thinking about how things happen, you can start to find things that you can do yourself. You can start to understand what exists now, and you can imagine what's possible. By thinking about logistics, you can figure out how to replace things when they collapse or are dismantled. You can also identify things that can't easily be replaced, and try to figure out alternatives.
This practice is good for figuring out how to build, but it can also be a valuable practice for figuring out how to resist. Concentration camps and ethnic cleansing also require logistics. Mass displacement means moving people. How does one do that? People are generally going to be moved in planes or buses. How does one do that? Well, people get loaded on to planes or buses in specific places. Planes and buses need fuel. Planes are fueled at their airports, which may well be the same places where people are loaded on to them. There is a fuel depo and a fuel truck that makes flying people out of a specific place possible. How does the fuel get to that fuel depo? Well, that fuel is probably also delivered by truck. Someone drives those trucks. Someone fuels those planes. Someone clears the planes for takeoff. Someone fuels those busses. Someone drives those busses. And so on.
Logistics networks can be highly complex. The more complex the operation, the more possible points of failure and more possible points where pressure can be applied, where operations can be disrupted. Ethnic cleansing is a complicated operation. The logistics of disrupting complicated things tend to be much less complicated than the logistics of the complicated things themselves.
The Right has exploited this fact for a long time. Centralized social services are logistically complex. Public infrastructure is logistically complex. By destroying these things, they can loot public resources by privatizing the infrastructure and functionality.
But the things that support the Right are even more logistically complex. Oil, cars, AI data centers, internal paramilitary, these are extremely complicated and fragile. There are numerous pressure points, all of which can respond to numerous strategies.
If we want to win, we should reduce the influence of politics over the things we care about. We should focus on building distributed mutual aid networks that don't rely on state funding and aren't subject to the whims of politicians. This is also known as "dual power." That is, creating counter-institutions outside of the dominant political system. The Right already does this in the form of churches and corporations.
As we reduce our complexity, we can then press our complexity advantage against the things for which the Right *needs* the state: the apparatus of violence needed to maintain capital and enforce the dominant order.

Bit into a chocolate truffle from a local candy shop that was a kind of hemispherical shape, perhaps made from a flat chocolate base that had a blob of filling put on it and then encapsulated in more chocolate.
And as I'm looking at the seam between the two segments the first thing that comes to mind is... Wouldn't it be cool to freeze one of these in LN2, cross section, polish, maybe ion mill, then do like SEM/EBSD to look at the cocoa butter grain structure around the weld li…

The Trump administration has decided to start phasing out HIV funding for South Africa following the country’s
“failure to make demonstrable progress on policy requests by the administration,”
a State Department official told POLITICO on Thursday.
The official, who agreed to discuss the decision only if POLITICO did not use their name,
said the decision to “initiate a phased drawdown of PEPFAR programming in South Africa”
is in line with Donald Trump’s February …

And there you have it, the old "Tutor" planes of the Snowbirds will be officially retired after this flying season.
The squadron will be replaced by 2030 according to Minister McGuinty with the CT-157 Siskin II.
It is a turbo-prob plane now moving into place as the RCAF's primary training aircraft.
It is a Swiss-made Pilatus PC-21 aircraft. Last week, the first CT-157 achieved "factory acceptance”, so the timing is no coincidence I'm sure. Looks like these will be the new snowbirds in 2030.
Full CT-157 Siskin II info here:
#CanPoli #CdnPoli #RCAF #Snowbirds

“…most notable change is…shutdown of BET . Paramount Skydance announced…the standalone streaming service will cease operations in June 2026, &…library will be folded directly into Paramount . BET programming, including series, films & specials, will move to a BET section within Paramount .”
Can’t imagine why Ellisons would shut down BET , what could the reason B? Don’t wanna guess, I wanna get this white.

The Future of Paramount+: What Streamer Skydance Is Shutting Down
Paramount Skydance announced the closure of BET+.

Just another place we visited in the Fränkische Schweiz. We just walked along a little stream and suddenly passed through this rock-gate with all the lush green on either side.
Just beautiful.
https://www.franzgraf.de/blog/2026/caves-and-meadows-d…

On my walk this weekend I went past this abandoned mansion, built by a Victorian stockbroker in the 1860s. You can barely see it from the track but the whole place is falling into ruin. But as I walked past, I could hear the calls of peacocks. Presumably now wild, and it made me think post apocalyptic thoughts. #ruins #walking

"""
[…] and I opened the case (politely examined by the guards of the Palace at four stages of my approach to the Red Hall) that held my ansible and some pictures. The pictures—films, photos, paintings, actives, and some cubes—were a little gallery of Man: people of Hain, Chiffewar, and the Cetians, of S and Terra and Alterra, of the Utter-mosts, Kapteyn, Ollul, Four-Taurus, Rokanan, Ensbo, Cime, Gde and Sheashel Haven … The king glanced at a couple without interest. “What’s this?”
“A person from Cime, a female.” I had to use the word that Gethenians would apply only to a person in the culminant phase of kemmer [a cyclical period of heightened sexual activity during which secondary gender characteristics emerge], the alternative being their word for a female animal.
“Permanently?”
“Yes.”
He dropped the cube and stood swinging from foot to foot, staring at me or a little past me, the firelight shifting on his face. “They’re all like that—like you?”
This was the hurdle I could not lower for them. They must, in the end, learn to take it in their stride.
“Yes. Gethenian sexual physiology, so far as we yet know, is unique among human beings.”
“So all of them, out on these other planets, are in permanent kemmer? A society of perverts? So Lord Tibe put it; I thought he was joking. Well, it may be the fact, but it’s a disgusting idea, Mr. Ai, and I don’t see why human beings here on earth should want or tolerate any dealings with creatures so monstrously different. […]”
"""
(Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness)

40 years ago this weekend, jerry garcia falls into a diabetic coma & nearly dies. in the hospital, his heart stops following an allergic reaction when doctors give him valium. the dead will cancel 30 dates through fall. he relearns to play guitar & is performing again by october.

Exterior of the Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota, 2026. The design is remade yearly, using corn cobs of different colors, cut in half and attached to the façade, along with native grasses. 1/2