Tootfinder

Interest in a gasoline tax holiday is growing on Capitol Hill following President Donald Trump’s endorsement earlier Monday
— but the proposal is also facing pushback from some key Republicans balking at cutting a major source of federal funding.
High energy prices stemming from the ongoing conflict in the Middle East prompted Trump to suggest pausing fuel tax collections
“till it’s appropriate.”
He said, “It’s a small percentage, but it’s still money.”
Sen. Jos…

DC-area weather site Capital Weather, formerly the Capital Weather Gang, relaunches as an independent operation, after a partnership with WaPo from 2008 to 2026 (Liam Scott/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/06/09/cap…

The Capital Weather Gang is entering a new season
In the Washington region, the local weather crew has developed a cult following. Now, it will be going by Capital Weather again as an independent organization.

To help myself counteract feelings of inevitability and permanence around capitalism, I've just confirmed the following observation:
The period of time during which dance manias were known to occur is far longer than the period of time in which modern industrial capitalism has existed. I wonder of historians will one day compare these two brief interludes of contagious self-destructive madness.
#anarchism #DDR

Filing: Polymarket is seeking CFTC approval to offer margin trading in the US, a move that would let users bet on events with less capital upfront (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-09/polymarket-seeks…

fuck man, kane parsons is actually 20 years old? the director of a franchise i've loved watching for years, now creator of a24's top grossing movie of all time, is actually two years younger than me? my understanding of growth and self worth is limited to a faulty capitalist logic of so-called meritocracy, ignoring all privileges, advantages, or even luck, fueling an inferiority complex in which i can only justify me being less successful than him by thinking of myself as lesser, despite tha…

Lebanese start fleeing south Beirut after Israel says it will target the area. The Israeli government says it has given the army orders to attack the southern suburbs of the capital.
https://aje.news/rc6x6q

Lebanese start fleeing south Beirut after Israel says will target the area
The Israeli government says it has given the army orders to attack the southern suburbs of the capital.

I have some sketches of an essay that I need to write, but I think it's worth brain-dumping a bit more in the mean time.
#LLMs are an attempt to make tech grow forever. But like, how many "your mom/a friend, but done by a precarious worker instead" apps do we really need? Everything right now is in the AI grift hole, but there's almost nothing of interest (even if you ignore the ethical concerns). Like, no, I don't fucking want a robot to lie to me about my groceries. That doesn't sound like a useful feature. There's a lot of useless shit being pumped out to prop up the bottom line, and a lot of people just want to be able to use their old phone for more than a couple of years.
No one is happy with this. No one wants this. Except the billionaires who are forcing us all to drink the capitalism koolaid, because they'd rather exterminate life on earth than live in a world where they experience consequences.
Nothing grows forever. That's not how literally anything in reality works, or has ever worked, at all in history. Some people think that the universe itself may work like that, but that's only an educated guess. Finite things don't grow forever. Every organism, every society, every technology, every dynamic and adaptive system we have ever known goes through a growth phase and then goes in to a stabilization phase. Or, following a Malthusian pattern, grows until it reaches a catastrophic point and collapses. Like lemmings. Or reindeer. Or cancer.

Sources: Meta is exploring a stock offering to raise tens of billions of dollars to fund AI capital expenditures, following Google's record $85B share deal (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/e6df645d-1709-4a77-b15d-aa43a0209efd

Donald Trump’s legal team has rejected a request by the BBC to hand over financial information as part of his $10bn defamation case against the broadcaster.
The US president’s lawyers accused the BBC of a “fishing expedition”, according to court filings, after the broadcaster’s representatives asked for details to get evidence on Trump’s claims he suffered reputational and financial damage because of a Panorama documentary centred on the US Capitol riots.
Trump’s lawyers have pre…

UK-based StirlingX, which develops secure data intelligence systems for defense and critical infrastructure, raised a $20M Series A, following a $11M seed (Cate Lawrence/Tech.eu)
https://tech.eu/2026/07/02/stirlingx-secures-20m-series-a-to…

StirlingX secures $20M Series A to expand sovereign intelligence platform
British data intelligence company StirlingX has raised a $20 million Series A round from Ventura Capital and RCM Private Markets Master Fund managed by Rokos Capital Management US (LP). The funding comes just months after its $11 million Seed round in response to significant commercial traction. StirlingX is a data intelligence provider, disguised as a drone company, building a sovereign intelligence and autonomy platform to help customers capture, secure, fuse, analyse and act on data from c…