Tootfinder

Hmmmm… here is a problem I did not anticipate.
Every time I empty the main pond hole of water, (the actual hole under the liner) water returns within an hour or two. I’ve done it 4 times now, and it keeps filling back up with water.
Obviously there is water underground infiltrating into the pond hole, and/or the water table itself is above the bottom of the hole. It is not coming from either of the other holes because they both have the same amount of water in them as they did this morning.
I have “watered” the blueberry patch and hazelnut tree a lot with the water that I have been cleaning the filter with… and we also had lots of water flying around outside the liners yesterday as I tested the pump. So it is quite possible that the ground around the pond is simply well saturated.
I think I am going to have to just keep removing the water (and putting it into the sewer) until it does not refill. We have a week of hot weather coming. Surely that will be enough time for everything to dry out completely.
Otherwise I might run into some issues if the rains return before I can anchor down the pond liner with gravel and get the plumbing in!
How is time already running short!?
Never underestimate the ability of water to find a place where it is not wanted. 😆
#poolpond #backyardProject #diy

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) immunizations chief
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis said Sunday that
he’s concerned with the direction the agency is going and worried about public health going forward.
Daskalakis, who served as director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases,
submitted his resignation from the CDC on Wednesday in protest following the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) removing CDC Director Susan Mona…

Former CDC immunizations chief: ‘I only see harm coming’ with RFK Jr. leading HHS
Daskalakis is concerned with HHS's direction and the effect on public health.

Light-IF: Endowing LLMs with Generalizable Reasoning via Preview and Self-Checking for Complex Instruction Following
Chenyang Wang, Liang Wen, Shousheng Jia, Xiangzheng Zhang, Liang Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03178

Light-IF: Endowing LLMs with Generalizable Reasoning via Preview and Self-Checking for Complex Instruction Following
While advancements in the reasoning abilities of LLMs have significantly enhanced their performance in solving mathematical problems, coding tasks, and general puzzles, their effectiveness in accurately adhering to instructions remains inconsistent, particularly with more complex directives. Our investigation identifies lazy reasoning during the thinking stage as the primary factor contributing to poor instruction adherence. To mitigate this issue, we propose a comprehensive framework designed …

Geno Smith on Raiders' doubters: 'Let them sleep. I don't want them to see us coming' https://www.nfl.com/news/geno-smith-on-raiders-doubters-let-them-sleep-i-don-t-want-them-to-see-us-coming

Uspol
"We're not redrawing the districts to discriminate based on race, we're drawing them to favor our own party," is such an interesting thing to say out loud. On the one hand, pretense of democratic norms is completely gone; says a lot about where the country is headed. On the other hand, the need to maintain a pretense of non-racism persists? That's probably better than them feeling comfortable to go full mask-off about white supremacy. They're already flaunting breaking a lot of laws, so I wonder whether the legal or social-norms aspects of coming out as explicitly racist matter more to them here.
#USPol

🔥 Grand Canyon’s Dragon Bravo megafire shows the growing wildfire threat to water systems
https://theconversation.com/grand-canyons-dragon-bravo-megafire-shows-the-growing-wildfire-threat-to-water-systems-263104…

Grand Canyon’s Dragon Bravo megafire shows the growing wildfire threat to water systems
Water systems are vulnerable to melting plastic components, toxic contamination and failures that can leave firefighters without flowing water.

Nepal says it is blocking most major social media platforms, including Facebook, X, and YouTube, after the companies failed to register with the government (Binaj Gurubacharya/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/nepal-ban-social-media-plat…

Nepal blocks Facebook, X, YouTube and others for failing to register with the government
Nepal's government says it is blocking most social media platforms, including Facebook, X and YouTube, because they failed to register with the government. Nepal's Minister for Communication and Information said about two dozen platforms were repeatedly notified to register. TikTok, Viber, and three other platforms are allowed to operate because they have registered. The government has introduced a bill in parliament to ensure social platforms are managed responsibly. Rights groups criticize th…

Mind the Gap: Linguistic Divergence and Adaptation Strategies in Human-LLM Assistant vs. Human-Human Interactions
Fulei Zhang, Zhou Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02645 https://

Mind the Gap: Linguistic Divergence and Adaptation Strategies in Human-LLM Assistant vs. Human-Human Interactions
As Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in customer-facing applications, a critical yet underexplored question is how users communicate differently with LLM chatbots compared to human agent. In this study, we present empirical evidence that users adopt distinct communication styles when users interact with chatbots versus human agents. Our analysis reveals significant differences in grammatical fluency, politeness, and lexical diversity in user language between the two setting…

Quantum repeaters based on stationary and flying Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill qudits
Stefan H\"aussler, Peter van Loock
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00530 https://

Quantum repeaters based on stationary and flying Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill qudits
There are various approaches to long-range quantum communication based on conceptually different forms of quantum repeaters. Here we explore a quantum repeater scheme that employs quantum error correction (QEC) both on the flying (light) qubits and on the stationary (matter) qubits. The idea is to combine the benefits of encoded one-way and two-way schemes where effective channel transmission and loss scaling are enhanced by means of photon loss codes and encoded quantum memories, respectively,…

The Trump administration may have just axed the IRS Direct File program.
During a summit earlier this week, IRS Commissioner Billy Long said the free tax filing service is “gone,”
adding that “big beautiful Billy wiped that out
https://news.bloombe…

IRS Chief Says Direct File Is ‘Gone,’ Other Audit Tech Is Coming
The Biden-era IRS free filing tool, Direct File, is “gone,” IRS Commissioner Billy Long said.