Tootfinder

Indonesia's film industry is embracing AI tools to produce Hollywood-style movies at a significantly lower cost; the average local film budget is about $602,500 (Linda Yulisman/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/indonesia-ai-movies/

Indonesia’s film industry embraces AI to make Hollywood-style movies for cheap
Generative AI video and text tools are transforming some of the labor-intensive parts of filmmaking, and are largely welcomed in Indonesia’s homegrown industry.

After almost two centuries,
Baker & Taylor,
a nationwide library book distributor,
will reportedly shut down operations in January.
Baker & Taylor CEO Aman Kochar told employees Monday that following a recent failed acquisition deal with ReaderLink, the Charlotte-based company has no viable path forward, though he had hoped to find another solution

Baker & Taylor Prepares Plan to Shut Down
At a town hall yesterday, B&T owner and CEO Aman Kochar announced that following the termination of the ReaderLink acquisition deal, he does not see a path to keep the library wholesaler in business.

China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months.
The rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) saw CO2 emissions from transport fuel drop by 5% year-on-year, while there were also declines from cement and steel production.
While emissions from the power sector were flat year-on-year, a big rise in the chemical industry’s CO2 output offset reductions elsewhere.

Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months - Carbon Brief
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024.

I used to work at McDonald's in my youth. Can confirm
#ShamelesslyStolenFromSomewhereElseOnTheInternetHonestlyICantKeepTrackOfThisStuffAnymore #Shitpost

twitter: Twitter followers (2010)
A directed network of following relationships from Twitter, from a snowball sample crawl across "quality" users in 2009. A directed edge (i, j) indicates that user i follows user j.
This network has 465017 nodes and 834797 edges.
Tags: Social, Online, Unweighted
https://network…

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

Incarcerated Welsh rock singer Ian Watkins #Lostprophets killed in another UK prison attack behind bars, in 2023 he'd been stabbed and held hostage by inmates. He was 48 and had spent over a decade in prison thus far after a 2013 drug bust found pedophiliac materials on his electronic devices, and after police investigation, he admitted to a string of sex offences – including the attempted rape of…

Indonesia's film industry is embracing AI tools to produce Hollywood-style movies at a significantly lower cost; the average local film budget is about $602,500 (Linda Yulisman/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/indonesia-ai-movies/

Indonesia’s film industry embraces AI to make Hollywood-style movies for cheap
Generative AI video and text tools are transforming some of the labor-intensive parts of filmmaking, and are largely welcomed in Indonesia’s homegrown industry.

🍆 A Hermetic, Transparent Soft Growing Vine Robot System for Pipe Inspection
#robots #machine

A Hermetic, Transparent Soft Growing Vine Robot System for Pipe Inspection
Rehabilitation of aging pipes requires accurate condition assessment and mapping far into the pipe interiors. Soft growing vine robot systems are particularly promising for navigating confined, sinuous paths such as in pipes, but are currently limited by complex subsystems and a lack of validation in real-world industrial settings. In this paper, we introduce the concept and implementation of a hermetic and transparent vine robot system for visual condition assessment and mapping within non-bra…

Amid US public media funding cuts, a look at how the model of private donations can lead to an audience that's older, whiter, and richer than average Americans (Sarah Scire/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/11/funding-c…

Funding cuts may make public radio more reliant on old, rich, white donors
After years of interviews, research, and writing, Laura Garbes submitted the final draft of her book on public radio in December 2024. By the time Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry published last month, a lot had changed. Following Trump’s election and fede…