Tootfinder

Alex Vindman is not a man to hold a grudge.
Ask him about the bullying, intimidation and retribution meted out by Donald Trump and Maga acolytes following his appearance as a key witness in the first of the president’s two first-term impeachments, and he almost shrugs it off.
“I’m an optimist by nature. I’m more focused on the future than the past, and this idea of vindictiveness or grievance is completely opposite of my personality.
-- Now, accountability is essential …”

Just email someone. I always like it when people email me about some weird blog post or project I’ve done.
https://goodinternetmagazine.com/why-i-email-complete-strangers/

Why I email complete strangers
The first time I emailed a stranger, I swear my cursor hovered over Send for a full five minutes. I had plenty of justifiable reasons to remain hesitant. Not wanting to take up their time, feeling bothersome, worried my question was a silly one... A hundred disparate excuses leading back

Weekly Climate Solutions Digest #25!! 💖🌊✨
https://www.forpeopleandpla.net/weekly-climate-solutions-digest-25/?utm_source=bri-mastodon&utm_medium=social&src=mstdn

Weekly Climate Solutions Digest
Welcome Day and night meet as equals this week. The light feels freshly washed. In low marshes, spring peepers try out their first chorus, small notes that somehow fill the cold air. So much of our selection shares that feeling of beginnings that are also completions. Two East Coast wind

"The vast majority, about 90%, of the more than 260,000 DHS employees are continuing to work without pay throughout the funding lapse, which began Feb. 14. Employees earlier this month received partial paychecks, compensated only for work hours they completed prior to the start of the shutdown."

Many DHS employees miss first full paychecks as shutdown continues
As the DHS shutdown drags on, federal employees who are continuing to work across the department, without pay, are feeling the financial strain firsthand.

Day Five in the Improv Narrative house, and we're in the format I like most really. A few instructive games in the first half and a couple of longer narrative stories in the second half.
The island game was supposed to teach something about not deliberately getting obstructive.
A scene where your players are told they are on one island and must end up at some point all on the other one the other side of the stage.
Set a scene, make some characters, but nobody said it was supposed to be difficult to get from one island to the other.
Yet barriers are deliberately thrown up, actually imaginary barriers since the whole thing is imaginary after all. Why should there be sharks or a quest for a boat or the sea deep and cold.
You can just wade across. You can just have a boat. You can just levitate yourself over with your hive mind psychic abilities.
Unsure about this.
There must be conflict and peril and challenges which are mastered in a story, you can't set up a hero's quest only to have the hero just happen to have a holy grail in the stationary cupboard. Already got one you see. Use it for storing pens.
Still. Finding the crowbar doesn't have to be a quest. There can just be one in the boot. Don't let things get bogged down in difficulty.
Watched a story about a lazy fellow falling into a life of crime and villainy because of his tardiness and fulfilling his teacher's prophecy that he would indeed end up as a criminal if he didn't buck up his ideas. Good repeated themes of characters making lists of his failures and nice stage-focus work when everyone was on stage at once.
Played a preacher organizing a wedding in a story about friends running a hotel.
Fun to have Reverend Priest finding sin everywhere again. Easy wipe-off sin in this case. We may have come to an end too early. Perhaps not enough obstructions put in the way. 😆
#improv #london #hooplaImpro

End Cover for Initial Value Problem: Complete Validated Algorithms with Complexity Analysis
Bingwei Zhang, Chee Yap
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00162 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.00162 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.00162
arXiv:2602.00162v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We consider the first-order autonomous ordinary differential equation \[ \mathbf{x}' = \mathbf{f}(\mathbf{x}), \] where $\mathbf{f} : \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^n$ is locally Lipschitz. For a box $B_0 \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$ and $h > 0$, we denote by $\mathrm{IVP}_{\mathbf{f}}(B_0,h)$ the set of solutions $\mathbf{x} : [0,h] \to \mathbb{R}^n$ satisfying \[ \mathbf{x}'(t) = \mathbf{f}(\mathbf{x}(t)), \qquad \mathbf{x}(0) \in B_0 . \]
We present a complete validated algorithm for the following \emph{End Cover Problem}: given $(\mathbf{f}, B_0, \varepsilon, h)$, compute a finite set $\mathcal{C}$ of boxes such that \[ \mathrm{End}_{\mathbf{f}}(B_0,h) \;\subseteq\; \bigcup_{B \in \mathcal{C}} B \;\subseteq\; \mathrm{End}_{\mathbf{f}}(B_0,h) \oplus [-\varepsilon,\varepsilon]^n , \] where \[ \mathrm{End}_{\mathbf{f}}(B_0,h) = \left\{ \mathbf{x}(h) : \mathbf{x} \in \mathrm{IVP}_{\mathbf{f}}(B_0,h) \right\}. \]
Moreover, we provide a complexity analysis of our algorithm and introduce a novel technique for computing the end cover $\mathcal{C}$ based on covering the boundary of $\mathrm{End}_{\mathbf{f}}(B_0,h)$. Finally, we present experimental results demonstrating the practicality of our approach.
toXiv_bot_toot

Good Morning #Canada
#20 on our countdown of #CanadaRivers is the Back River, which flows for 974km across NWT and Nunavut. It drains an area of 106,500 km2, flowing from Contwoyto Lake north of Great Slave Lake, NWT, northeast across the Barren Lands of Nunavut to Chantrey Inlet in the Arctic. The river is named for Sir George Back, who first explored it in 1834. The original name was Thlew-ee-choh, likely Dogrib for "great fish river." It has a vertical drop of just over 380m over it's length with 83 rapids challenging serious canoists and kayakers. The British film, Beacon Six, was televised by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, showing the rugged landscape during a 1962 canoe expedition.
From 1963–1965, anthropologist Jean Briggs did field research with the Utkusiksalinmiut Inuit living at the opening of Back River and Chantrey Inlet, resulting in her work Never in Anger, as well as helping to compile an Utkuhiksalik dictionary.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Adventure
https://community.nrs.com/duct-tape/2014/10/17/35-days-arctic-canoeing-back-river/

News articles complaining about the state of the navy, during a time of conflict, are like news articles that wait until heavy snow to complain about the lack of investment in snow plows.
The UK's previous government took a bet that they wouldn't actually need a full navy before the 2030s - hence the "frigate gap".

The Royal Navy’s frigate gap – how deep and how long will it last? - Navy Lookout
The RN is now in a position where ageing frigates are being decommissioned well before the replacements are available. There is little that can be done in the short term, but here we attempt to analyse if and when the situation might be recovered. Type 23s holding on Following our analysis of this issue last

The calls to 911 poured in from staff at "Camp East Montana" in Texas,
the nation’s largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility,
at a rate of nearly one a day for five months,
-- each its own tale of pain and despair.
A man sobs after being assaulted by another detainee.
Another bangs his head against the wall after expressing suicidal thoughts.
A pregnant woman complained of severe back pain and also had coronavirus.

911 calls reveal pain, despair at ICE'S largest detention camp
The calls to 911 poured in from staff at Camp East Montana, the nation's largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, in its first months of operation in El Paso, Texas. The emergencies included repeated suicide attempts by detainees, seizures, injuries from fights and a pregnant woman in pain. Data from more than a hundred 911 calls obtained by The Associated Press, interviews with detainees and court filings offer a portrait of overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutriti…