Tootfinder

Just finished "Beasts Made of Night" by Tochi Onyebuchi...
Indirect CW for fantasy police state violence.
So I very much enjoyed Onyebuchi's "Riot Baby," and when I grabbed this at the library, I was certain it would be excellent. But having finished it, I'm not sure I like it that much overall?
The first maybe third is excellent, including the world-building, which is fascinating. I feel like Onyebuchi must have played "Shadow of the Colossus" at some point. Onyebuchi certainly does know how to make me care for his characters.
Some spoilers from here on out...
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I felt like it stumbles towards the middle, with Bo's reactions neither making sense in the immediate context, nor in retrospect by the end when we've learned more. Things are a bit floaty in the middle with an unclear picture of what exactly is going on politics-wise and what the motivations are. Here I think there were some nuances that didn't make it to the page, or perhaps I'm just a bit thick and not getting stuff I should be? More is of course revealed by the end, but I still wasn't satisfied with the explanations of things. For example, (spoilers) I don't feel I understand clearly what kind of power the army of aki was supposed to represent within the city? Perhaps necessary to wield the threat of offensive inisisia use? In that case, a single scene somewhere of Izu's faction deploying that tactic would have been helpful I think.
Then towards the end, for me things really started to jumble, with unclear motivations, revelations that didn't feel well-paced or -structured, and a finale where both the action & collapsing concerns felt stilted and disjointed. Particularly the mechanics/ethics of the most important death that set the finale in motion bothered me, and the unexplained mechanism by which that led to what came next? I can read a couple of possible interesting morals into the whole denouement, but didn't feel that any of them were sufficiently explored. Especially if we're supposed to see some personal failing in the protagonist's actions, I don't think it's made clear enough what that is, since I feel his reasons to reject each faction are pretty solid, and if we're meant to either pity or abjure his indecision, I don't think the message lands clearly enough.
There *is* a sequel, which honestly I wasn't sure of after the last page, and which I now very interested in. Beasts is Onyebuchi's debut, which maybe makes sense of me feeling that Riot Baby didn't have the same plotting issues. It also maybe means that Onyebuchi couldn't be sure a sequel would make it to publication in terms of setting up the ending.
Overall I really enjoyed at least 80% of this, but was expecting even better (especially politically) given Onyebuchi's other work, and I didn't feel like I found it.
#AmReading

Broadcom closes up 9.88% following the announcement of its custom chip deal with OpenAI; its stock is up over 50% in 2025 after more than doubling in 2024 (MacKenzie Sigalos/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/13/openai-partners-with-bro…

Broadcom stock pops 7% on OpenAI custom chip deal, adding to Nvidia and AMD agreements
OpenAI is teaming up with Broadcom to jointly develop and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators starting in 2026.

Work Function Mapping Across a-In2Se3 to {\alpha}-In2Se3 to {\gamma}-InSe in RF-Sputtered Thin Films
Marius O. Eji, Md. Sakauat Hasan Sakib, Joseph P. Corbett
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08767

Work Function Mapping Across a-In2Se3 to α-In2Se3 to γ-InSe in RF-Sputtered Thin Films
Indium selenide is a phase-change chalcogenide whose polymorphism enables a variety of physical properties to be tuned. Here we directly quantify the evolution of the surface work function across the amorphous-to-crystalline transition in RF-sputtered In2Se3 thin films grown on c-plane Al2O3 (001). By varying deposition temperature (100-500 °C) and film thickness, we establish processing windows for a- In2Se3, α-In2Se3, and γ-InSe, and correlate structure with electronic and morphological pr…

The Invincible (Multi, XP'd on PC/Linux)
Based on the classic novel, you play as Yasna, a biologist, who wakes up on an alien planet not quite sure how or why she got there. After reestablishing contact with her orbiting Astrogator, she sets off to find her fellow crew on an eerily quiet and hostile feeling planet.
This is a HardcoreTM Waking Sim. Sprint nets you like a 10% speed boost, lol. However my time to credits is 9hrs, so it's not a long game, but it can be SL…

Where did my fall go? Why is it already feeling like winter in the first half of October?!

A Decoy-like Protocol for Quantum Key Distribution: Enhancing the Performance with Imperfect Single Photon Sources
Chanaprom Cholsuk, Furkan A\u{g}larc{\i}, Daniel K. L. Oi, Serkan Ate\c{s}, Tobias Vogl
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09454

A Decoy-like Protocol for Quantum Key Distribution: Enhancing the Performance with Imperfect Single Photon Sources
Quantum key distribution (QKD) relies on single photon sources (SPSs), e.g. from solid-state systems, as flying qubits, where security strongly requires sub-Poissonian photon statistics with low second-order correlation values (\$g^{(2)}(0)\$). However, achieving such low \$g^{(2)}(0)\$ remains experimentally challenging. We therefore propose a decoy-like QKD protocol that relaxes this constraint while maintaining security. This enables the use of many SPSs with \$g^{(2)}(0) > \$0.1, routinely …

Symmetry of the refined $q,t$-Catalan polynomials for $\vec{k}$-Dyck paths
Menghao Qu, Yingrui Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08196 https://arxiv.org/pdf…

Symmetry of the refined $q,t$-Catalan polynomials for $\vec{k}$-Dyck paths
Pappe, Paul, and Schilling introduced two combinatorial statistics, depth and ddinv, associated with classical Dyck paths, and proved that the distributions of (area, depth) and (dinv, ddinv) are $q,t$-symmetric by constructing an involution on plane trees. They also provided a new formula for the original $q,t$-Catalan polynomials $C_{n}(q,t)$. We observe that depth is a slight modification of bounce, which was defined by the filling algorithm and ranking algorithm of Xin and the second author…

i feel like my general feelings re: Rigol and people swearing by their Tek are best summarized with the old "rifle is fine" copypasta. as in: if you are skilled in the art you will get things done just as well with the rigol as you will with a tek in the same cateogry that's 10 times* the price. and if you aren't, goddess bless you either way also
* referring me to US secondary markets is classist and i will not be elaborating on this observation

RIP
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/movies/tatsuya-nakadai-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0U8.thAO.bom850YiVRtC&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=a…

Tatsuya Nakadai, Japanese Star Known for ‘Ran’ and Other Classics, Dies at 92
He was a fixture of postwar Japanese cinema, appearing in films by Akira Kurosawa and other leading directors of that era.

Series B, Episode 03 - Weapon
[Servalan's office. The intercom chimes]
SERVALAN: [Into intercom] Yes, Travis?
TRAVIS: [Face appears on intercom screen visible next to Servalan] We found his ship - it looks to have crashed and blown up.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/203/328 B7B…