Tootfinder

OMFG. A horror movie... from the dog's point of view.

▶️ Good Boy - Official Trailer | HD | IFC Films
https://youtube.com/watch?v=q4-CRkd_74g&si=9F9raVHyPkCojRAX
✅ Good Boy Trailer: A Supernatural Story From a Dog’s POV

Harnessing the "Reactive Falling Effect" for rehabilitation and performance boosting
Paul-Emmanuel Sornette, Didier Sornette
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13959

Harnessing the "Reactive Falling Effect" for rehabilitation and performance boosting
We present Logic Workout, a novel training method based on radical dynamic instability combining rolling, deformation and spring instability on small fitballs. By exploiting the "reactive falling effect", it re-engages innate balance mechanisms and forces real-time motor corrections, leading to better joint control, coordination, and movement precision. Preliminary results from a cohort of 18 participants show complete resolution of chronic pain, enhanced functional mobility, and surprising imp…

It seems like, again, just following the plain logic of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence (which, again, I do not subscribe to), that every law passed under Trump, every supreme court justice appointment by Trump, every supreme court ruling by Trump appointed justices, all the illegal firing, etc, must all, necessarily, be null and void.
And if not following from the insurrection act, or from the oath of office, then following from the Declaration of Independence itself. The logic here being that a constitution is a contract between the people and their government, which the later upholds in order to maintain its legal status. The violation of said laws by the government violates "consent of the governed" (which, again, I have issues with the concept entirely but we're just going to ignore that) and therefore nullifies the authority of that government, granting " the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."
That seems a lot like the hard reset some folks have been looking for. Given that existing flaws allowed this state to be reached, it would also be necessary for the true authority to correct those mistakes before assuming authority that derives from these principles.
Now, personally, I don't subscribe to any of this logic but it's interesting to explore, as an outsider, where the logic goes.

Long; central Massachusetts colonial history
Today on a whim I visited a site in Massachusetts marked as "Huguenot Fort Ruins" on OpenStreetMaps. I drove out with my 4-year-old through increasingly rural central Massachusetts forests & fields to end up on a narrow street near the top of a hill beside a small field. The neighboring houses had huge lawns, some with tractors.
Appropriately for this day and this moment in history, the history of the site turns out to be a microcosm of America. Across the field beyond a cross-shaped stone memorial stood an info board with a few diagrams and some text. The text of the main sign (including typos/misspellings) read:
"""
Town Is Formed
Early in the 1680's, interest began to generate to develop a town in the area west of Natick in the south central part of the Commonwealth that would be suitable for a settlement. A Mr. Hugh Campbell, a Scotch merchant of Boston petitioned the court for land for a colony. At about the same time, Joseph Dudley and William Stoughton also were desirous of obtaining land for a settlement. A claim was made for all lands west of the Blackstone River to the southern land of Massachusetts to a point northerly of the Springfield Road then running southwesterly until it joined the southern line of Massachusetts.
Associated with Dudley and Stoughton was Robert Thompson of London, England, Dr. Daniel Cox and John Blackwell, both of London and Thomas Freak of Hannington, Wiltshire, as proprietors. A stipulation in the acquisition of this land being that within four years thirty families and an orthodox minister settle in the area. An extension of this stipulation was granted at the end of the four years when no group large enough seemed to be willing to take up the opportunity.
In 1686, Robert Thompson met Gabriel Bernor and learned that he was seeking an area where his countrymen, who had fled their native France because of the Edict of Nantes, were desirous of a place to live. Their main concern was to settle in a place that would allow them freedom of worship. New Oxford, as it was the so-named, at that time included the larger part of Charlton, one-fourth of Auburn, one-fifth of Dudley and several square miles of the northeast portion of Southbridge as well as the easterly ares now known as Webster.
Joseph Dudley's assessment that the area was capable of a good settlement probably was based on the idea of the meadows already established along with the plains, ponds, brooks and rivers. Meadows were a necessity as they provided hay for animal feed and other uses by the settlers. The French River tributary books and streams provided a good source for fishing and hunting. There were open areas on the plains as customarily in November of each year, the Indians burnt over areas to keep them free of underwood and brush. It appeared then that this area was ready for settling.
The first seventy-five years of the settling of the Town of Oxford originally known as Manchaug, embraced three different cultures. The Indians were known to be here about 1656 when the Missionary, John Eliott and his partner Daniel Gookin visited in the praying towns. Thirty years later, in 1686, the Huguenots walked here from Boston under the guidance of their leader Isaac Bertrand DuTuffeau. The Huguenot's that arrived were not peasants, but were acknowledged to be the best Agriculturist, Wine Growers, Merchant's, and Manufacter's in France. There were 30 families consisting of 52 people. At the time of their first departure (10 years), due to Indian insurrection, there were 80 people in the group, and near their Meetinghouse/Church was a Cemetery that held 20 bodies. In 1699, 8 to 10 familie's made a second attempt to re-settle, failing after only four years, with the village being completely abandoned in 1704.
The English colonist made their way here in 1713 and established what has become a permanent settlement.
"""
All that was left of the fort was a crumbling stone wall that would have been the base of a higher wooden wall according to a picture of a model (I didn't think to get a shot of that myself). Only trees and brush remain where the multi-story main wooden building was.
This story has so many echoes in the present:
- The rich colonialists from Boston & London agree to settle the land, buying/taking land "rights" from the colonial British court that claimed jurisdiction without actually having control of the land. Whether the sponsors ever actually visited the land themselves I don't know. They surely profited somehow, whether from selling on the land rights later or collecting taxes/rent or whatever, by they needed poor laborers to actually do the work of developing the land (& driving out the original inhabitants, who had no say in the machinations of the Boston court).
- The land deal was on condition that there capital-holders who stood to profit would find settlers to actually do the work of colonizing. The British crown wanted more territory to be controlled in practice not just in theory, but they weren't going to be the ones to do the hard work.
- The capital-holders actually failed to find enough poor suckers to do their dirty work for 4 years, until the Huguenots, fleeing religious persecution in France, were desperate enough to accept their terms.
- Of course, the land was only so ripe for settlement because of careful tending over centuries by the natives who were eventually driven off, and whose land management practices are abandoned today. Given the mention of praying towns (& dates), this was after King Phillip's war, which resulted in at least some forced resettlement of native tribes around the area, but the descendants of those "Indians" mentioned in this sign are still around. For example, this is the site of one local band of Nipmuck, whose namesake lake is about 5 miles south of the fort site: #LandBack.

B05 - Pressure Point
VILA: Sprinting's one thing, but I think flying's beyond me.
BLAKE: [Jumps up to hang from one of the pipes that form a "horizontal ladder" down the corridor ceiling. He passes from rung to rung down five of them.] Am I safe now?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/205/466

G-Sim: Generative Simulations with Large Language Models and Gradient-Free Calibration
Samuel Holt, Max Ruiz Luyten, Antonin Berthon, Mihaela van der Schaar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09272

G-Sim: Generative Simulations with Large Language Models and Gradient-Free Calibration
Constructing robust simulators is essential for asking "what if?" questions and guiding policy in critical domains like healthcare and logistics. However, existing methods often struggle, either failing to generalize beyond historical data or, when using Large Language Models (LLMs), suffering from inaccuracies and poor empirical alignment. We introduce G-Sim, a hybrid framework that automates simulator construction by synergizing LLM-driven structural design with rigorous empirical calibration…

Finally back from holiday first task (after rescuing houseplants & fussing over pets), is filling the fridge. I was (re)inspired by the #Antigaspi boxes in French supermarkets to try the groceries bags from @… : not bad for less than €4 (29dkk) from my local supermarket

Hot springs and dust reservoirs: JWST reveals the dusty, molecular aftermath of extragalactic stellar mergers
Viraj Karambelkar, Mansi Kasliwal, Ryan M. Lau, Jacob E. Jencson, Nadejda Blagorodnova, Marco A. Gomez-Munoz, Hugo Tranin, Maxime Wavasseur, Melissa Shahbandeh, Kishalay De
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03932

Hot springs and dust reservoirs: JWST reveals the dusty, molecular aftermath of extragalactic stellar mergers
We present James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of four Luminous Red Novae (LRNe): dusty, extragalactic transients from stellar mergers following common-envelope evolution (CEE) in massive binary stars. Our targets - AT2021blu, AT2021biy, AT2018bwo, and M31-LRN-2015 - span a broad range in progenitor primary masses ($\approx$3-24M$_{\odot}$) and post-merger ages ($\approx$1100-3700 days). All four were observed with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) from 5-25$μ$m; AT2021blu and AT20…

In May, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to strip
temporary legal protection
from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans living in the United States.
Overnight, TPS holders , found themselves without status—despite following all the rules.
Trump’s termination of TPS for Venezuelans is part of the largest delegalization campaign in modern US history.
“A single act of stripping immigration status in one fell swoop,”
said Ahilan A…

Trump is making thousands of rule-abiding immigrants undocumented
Inside the largest delegalization campaign in modern US history.

There was once a machine that told you "you want this" and "this is good." It said, "there can be no better system and it's foolish to try to build one." That machine has long since failed to function. Now you choke on fumes as it is consumed by the wild flames of an abandoned cause.
That machine could not possibly work anymore because the evidence of it's falsehood has become too overwhelming.
No, only abject terror now can keep you from plotting your escape, from creating an alternative. No, the illusion has long since broken. All that's left now is triggering fight, flight, freeze as hard as possible. Most will be paralyzed, and those who fight can be used as an excuse to escalate the terror.
These are the final stages of a dying sun, expanding and consuming it's children before the final supernova.
There is no longer a stable system, no longer a system with a future. All that remains is the spectacle that hopes to distract you long enough that you too can be consumed, that it may sustain itself a few moments longer.