Tootfinder

The problem with Las Vegas is that visitors are now treated like marks rather than guests.
The $50 gotcha charge at Paris Las Vegas for unplugging a cord in the room to charge a laptop is a perfect example:
https://view…

“$50 Charge Because I Unplugged A Cord”: Paris Las Vegas Hotel’s Tiny Print Fee Sums Up Why Visitors Are Fleeing The City
A reader shares that the were billed "$50 to charge a laptop" at Paris Las Vegas, and they thought this was "an even more outrageous fee" than $26 for a bottle of water at Aria. Las Vegas executives can't seem to figure out why tourist visits are declining in the city.

/me gets an email newsletter containing the text "smash the link if you want to know more".
I'm feeling the urge to smash something my friend, and it isn't the link.

How Europe’s new carbon tax on imported goods will change global trade
#EU #CBAM #CO2

The #IWW #GDC as an antifascist organization was always kind of a hack. It was a beautiful hack and it worked well for what it did.
In 2016, as Trump was rising, I found info from the Twin Cities GDC. They were super organized, building an amazing community defense organization. When we (Seattle) went to set up our chapter, following their lead, they were extremely supportive. When I got shot, Twin Cities folks were at my house keeping my partner safe. They literally flew people out to support us. They very much remain in my mind when I think about what mutual aid looks like.
Unionism is an important strategy of a larger fight. But it's important to realize that it's not the other way around. The GDC was built to defend the union, because there wasn't something larger to do that work. It filled a gap.
When we organized against Trump, we tried to make the GDC the greater thing. We tried to make the GDC into the vehicle for social revolution against the fascist threat... And it sort of worked. We were able to do a lot.
But that was never what it was built to do. It was always built as an appendage of the IWW. This contains its own problem. If Unionism is the revolutionary movement, then it becomes impossible to build a truly revolutionary society. Unionism centers "workers" which implicitly decenters those who can't work in the traditional sense (the young, the elderly, those physically or mentally able to work). It also decenters care labor that hasn't yet been widely commodified. Sure, there are all types of hacks to patch the holes, but the fundamental construction starts from the wrong assumptions.
It felt, for a while, like things could go another way. Like that our ability to bring members in could shift things a bit, maybe set the GDC on more equal footing with the core focus of the IWW. But that was always an illusion, far less important to think about than the crushing terror of the regime we were fighting.
Now, I will absolutely trash talk the IWW on occasion but in the end I do think they're doing good and important work. Any criticism I have should be taken with a grain of salt... And I know I do have a lot of salt. Again, Unionism is an important strategy. It's useful both in improving immediate material conditions and as part of the most powerful weapon we have against the capitalist system: the general strike. It's important, I can't say that enough. But it's not sufficient.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and I wonder if there are any other GDC organizers or former organizers who might be feeling the same. Feel free to DM me. I'd like to get some more perspectives and see if my understanding from several years ago deviates significantly from what other folks are feeling right now.
I'd also like to bounce some ideas around that come from my own organizing experience.

MAGA is melting down across the US, and here I am in Norway just enjoying the show. Keep falling apart.
#MAGA #US #Fascism

Black Holes with Accretion Disks as High-Energy Particle Colliders
Delilah E. A. Gates
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19435 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.19435

Black Holes with Accretion Disks as High-Energy Particle Colliders
In principle, rapidly rotating black holes (BHs) with accretion disks -- either prograde or retrograde -- could naturally act as high-energy particle colliders (HEPCs) because particles falling in from infinity that collide with particles in the disk near the BH horizon can exhibit center-of-mass (CM) energies beyond the capabilities of terrestrial instruments. However, we show that scattering can moderate the CM energy of near-horizon collisions. We find that rapidly rotating BHs with prograde…

Another metadata quest: The #Städel #Museum in #Frankfurt has some very fine digital services (cf.

Check out today's Metacurity for a comprehensive run-down of crucial cybersecurity developments you should know, including
--Yanluowang initial access broker faces up to 53 years in prison following guilty plea,
--CBO breach is considered 'ongoing,'
--Asahi's shipments are at 10% following attack and ahead of holiday season,
--Payments by British insurers for cyber incidents have tripled,
--Chinese national faces UK sentencing this week for money …

Yanluowang initial access broker faces up to 53 years in prison following guilty plea
CBO breach is considered 'ongoing,' Asahi's shipments are at 10% following attack and ahead of holiday season, Payments by British insurers for cyber incidents have tripled, Chinese national faces UK sentencing this week for money laundering, Firefox gets anti-fingerprinting fix, much more

Santa Clara county in California is home to San Jose, and many other SFbay area towns and communities.
They are establishing NO-ICE zones, following Chicago's lead.
https://sanjosespotlight.com/santa-clara-county-will-create-ice-free-zones/

Santa Clara County will create ICE-free zones - San José Spotlight
Santa Clara County leaders will establish ICE-free zones throughout Silicon Valley — raising physical barriers and locking gates to prevent federal immigration agents from using county properties for surveillance and arrests.