Tootfinder

Here’s a mind-blowing experiment that you can try at home:
Gather some children’s blocks and place them on a table.
Take one block and slowly push it over the table’s edge, inch by inch, until it’s on the brink of falling.
If you possess patience and a steady hand, you should be able to balance it so that exactly half of it hangs off the edge.
Nudge it any farther, and gravity wins.
Now take two blocks and start over.
Stacking one on top of the other, how…

This Block-Stacking Math Problem Has a Preposterous Solution You Need to See to Believe — Scientific American
In principle, this impossible math allows for a glue-free bridge of stacked blocks that can stretch across the Grand Canyon—and into infinity Amanda Montañez Math Here’s a mind-blowing experiment that you can try at home: Gather some children’s blocks and place them on a table. Take one block and slowly push it over the table’s edge, inch by inch, until it’s on the brink of falling. If you possess patience and a steady hand, you should be able to balance it so that exactly half of it…

Watching Control Freak with Kelly Marie Tran. Creepy and good. Lynchian almost.
#film #films

Control Freak (2025)
A motivational speaker, plagued by an uncontrollable itch on her head, becomes infected with a parasitic demon from her homeland.

In case anyone here has connections with the Python team: can you please tell them to update their docs on XML security? The way it is is quite misleading, and it's been annoying me for a while. I raised this a while ago in their issue tracker, but it got no reaction whatsoever. https://github.com/python/cpython/issu…

Reconsider XML Security warnings / obsolete vulnerabilities · Issue #127502 · python/cpython
Documentation The documentation for the xml.etree.ElementTree API contains the following stark warning: Warning: The xml.etree.ElementTree module is not secure against maliciously constructed data....

Even if “AI” worked (it doesn’t), there’s many reasons why you shouldn’t use it:
1. It’s destroying Internet sites that you love as you use chat bots instead of actually going to sources of information—this will cause them to be less active and eventually shut down.
2. Pollution and water use from server farms cause immediate harm; often—just like other heavy industry—these are built in underprivileged communities and harming poor people. Without any benefits as the big tech companies get tax breaks and don’t pay for power, while workers aren’t from the community but commute in.
3. The basic underlying models of any LLM rely on stolen data, even when specific extra data is obtained legally. Chatbots can’t learn to speak English just by reading open source code.
4. You’re fueling a speculation bubble that is costing many people their jobs—because the illusion of “efficiency” is kept up by firing people and counting that as profit.
5. Whenever you use the great cheat machine in the cloud you’re robbing yourself from doing real research, writing or coding—literally atrophying your brain and making you stupider.
It’s a grift, through and through.

Your feelings are valid.
Just because your feelings are valid, it doesn’t mean your thinkings are valid.
I would very much like people to learn the difference.

"a major problem with the indictment, namely that it hurts the Trump administration's cause and gives it a "black eye." That's because the indictment alleges the time frame García conducted these acts overlaps with Trump's first term."
'OK, Pam': Ex-prosecutor says AG Bondi gave 'black eye' to Trump with new filing - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/pam-bondi-glenn-black-eye/

A good news story about the great gender preference divide.
After years of declining sex ratios that saw increases in female infanticide and missing girls, it seems there's a change.
'Globally, among babies born in 2000, a staggering 1.6m girls were missing from the number you would expect, given the natural sex ratio at birth. This year that number is likely to be 200,000—and it is still falling.'
Beautiful hope.

The stunning decline of the preference for having boys
Millions of girls were aborted for being girls. Now parents often lean towards them

In which I argue that arguments about whether #genAI is useful or not are the wrong arguments. The important issues are what it’s for and what it costs.
Having very unkind feelings about the people pushing it.
https://www.

The Real GenAI Issue

Veteran WR Conley retires to attend film school https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45470011/veteran-wr-chris-conley-retires-nfl-attend-film-school

"The Seven Mountain Mandate calls on Christians to gain influence, or “take dominion,” over seven key areas of culture: religion, family, education, government, media, business and the arts."
**The Christian mandate that's fueling American political extremism** - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/what-is-the-seven-mountains-mandate-and-how-is-it-linked-to-political-extremis/