Tootfinder

1/2 Thanks to @… for this interesting article. It speaks to me. :)
I’ve been weather blogging @… since 2005. It is interesting how it has changed, and how I have changed.
My website used to be just data from the (expensive) station I bought when I moved back to Port Alberni. It was a hobby and a side project to practice web/coding skills I use at work. My focus was on creating useful data for people that was more local/relevant than the official EC station outside of the city.
Then I put up a webcam and learned how to make timelapses. This got the attention of local media… because pictures. :)
Then I added a blog and started to write about the weather almost daily. This was before Facebook. There was a popular local online forum where I would post things. The media would also follow my website and they started to call me when there was extreme weather (usually very hot or very wet/stormy).
Then Facebook started to get big and I made a page that eventually had a few thousand followers. I would blog often. Lots of traffic from Facebook… this was 2010 and on. I blogged about climate and weather pretty equally.
Like anyone in Port Alberni, I was/am obsessed with the Martin Mars and got wrapped up in that issue along with others which combined with the weather following probably gave me just enough exposure to have me elected as a councillor in 2014.
I continued through that 4 years, blogging often in addition to councillor duties and work, heavily on facebook, then it all went sideways on my own poor judgement (go ahead and google it, it’s ok :)) and I was not reelected, but Facebook by 2018 had also changed. Cambridge Analytica, etc.
….Continued…
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-weather-apps-data-wildfires-storms-preparation-obsession-social-media/

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Nacirema people is their insistence that they do not participate in practices of which they clearly do. Equally unusual is the fact that, unlike other sacrificial cultures who raid neighboring tribes for victims, both slaves and victims for human sacrifice are only taken from within the society. In fact, there is a very strong cultural taboo against sacrificing or enslaving those from other tribes.
They are aware of the rituals of human sacrifice in other tribes, but claim such rituals to be inconsistent with their society. Yet their human sacrifice rituals are some of the most elaborate in the world. These rituals are so important that there is a whole part of Nacirema society dedicated specifically to arguing about who should and should not be sacrificed, restraining and feeding the potential victims for the years during which these arguments take place, and ultimately preparing and administering the ritual poison.
This is strangely similar to their approach to slavery. Both human sacrifice and slavery were once a much larger part of Nacirema society. Their human sacrifice rituals now take far longer and happen far less often, but at no point have they ever recognized these ritual sacrifices as such. Meanwhile, the Nacirema do acknowledge that slavery was part of their culture once. During the time when they did recognize their practice of slavery, they did raid other tribes for slaves. Now they follow the same complex ritual for slavery as they do for human sacrifice.
It is strange that, by following this ritual and only choosing victims from within their society, they seem to become incapable of seeing their behavior for what it is.

Following the "Geo-Erlebnis-Tag" during the weekend, preceding the Geo4Göttingen conference, the Geo4Change | Earth, Life, Climate, Resources, Materials | main program will start with plenary sessions for registered conference participants today.
https://geo4goettingen2025.de/
The full pro…

Just to make sure my followers here are aware as well: I am not planning on filing any bills this term, due to a combination of chamber composition, increased complexity in the LSR submission forms, the move of committees to Granite Place while the LOB is being renovated, and general depression/despair/futility. Colleagues are encouraged to steal my ideas from me for their own bills. The filing period closes this Friday, September 19th, at the close of business hours.
#NHPolitics

South Korea's AI textbook program, meant to personalize learning, was rolled back after just four months after complaints about inaccuracies and extra workload (Junhyup Kwon/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/south-korea-ai-textbook/

AI-powered textbooks fail to make the grade in South Korea
South Korea’s AI learning program was rolled back after just four months following a backlash from teachers, students, and parents, underlining the challenges in embedding the technology in education.

Orthogonal polynomials, quantum walks and the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem
Frederico Can\c{c}ado, Gabriel Coutinho, Thom\'as Jung Spier
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09948 http…

Orthogonal polynomials, quantum walks and the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem
This paper is motivated by the following problem. Define a quantum walk on a positively weighted path (linear chain). Can the weights be tuned so that perfect state transfer occurs between the first vertex and any other position? We do not fully answer this question - in fact, we show that a particular case of this problem is equivalent to a solution of a particular case of the well known Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem, deeming our original task certainly harder than anticipated. In our journey, …

As usual we watched the "Stoertebekker" stage play at Ralswiek on Rügen Island. The stage setups and wardrobes were as awesome as always. They really try to improve on that every year and come up with clever mechanisms to transform the building for the various acts of the play. The script this year left room for desire ;) Nevertheless a happing worth attending
htt…

How Many Instructions Can LLMs Follow at Once?
Daniel Jaroslawicz, Brendan Whiting, Parth Shah, Karime Maamari
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11538 https://

How Many Instructions Can LLMs Follow at Once?
Production-grade LLM systems require robust adherence to dozens or even hundreds of instructions simultaneously. However, the instruction-following capabilities of LLMs at high instruction densities have not yet been characterized, as existing benchmarks only evaluate models on tasks with a single or few instructions. We introduce IFScale, a simple benchmark of 500 keyword-inclusion instructions for a business report writing task to measure how instruction-following performance degrades as inst…

Have you ever seen the magnificent movie "The Magnificent Ambersons"? (It is one of the great films of all times even after the studio hacked Wells and Hermann's full work.)
In the film, the kid George, is a self-centered, wealthy, narcissistic sociopath - not at all unlike El Presidente trump.
Everyone wishes that George will "get his comeuppance".
That comeuppance does indeed come - but so late that nobody notices or remembers.
It is pretty…

The rain has topped up the pool pond! 🙏 🌧️
It is overflowing at the overflow and only at the overflow, that I can tell :). I powered the pump up from its 40% (34W) to 75% (120W) to get things moving in the filter while we have the rain.
I might as well use it to allow it to clean the gunk out of the system naturally!
Still feels like I got rushed into filling it, but it is really satisfying nonetheless to see it functioning as designed in my head! lol
#poolpond #diy #backyardproject