Tootfinder

“A returns deal with France that makes access to safety in the UK — even for those with close family or connections here — dependent on someone else risking their life to cross the Channel only cements the role of smugglers in how people fleeing war and persecution must seek asylum in the UK."
'A grubby trade in human lives' | Morning Star
…

Here’s the key point: Trump’s corruption of justice isn’t just individual; it’s categorical. We have grown accustomed to him rewarding his loyalists and punishing his critics. That he fired the prosecutors who worked on his federal criminal cases while pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters represents a textbook case of individual favoritism.
The Trump administration’s abuse of the civil rights division is something else entirely. It had already initiated a “litigation freeze” on filing new civil rights cases, and it had indicated that it was even going to reconsider previous settlements and consent decrees intended to address police misconduct.
...
Civil rights laws are designed in part to protect innocent citizens — including, of course, innocent citizens from minority communities — from unjust government officials. Here, the legal world is turned upside down. The Justice Department is using its civil rights division to protect an unjust government official who violated the civil rights of an innocent individual.
#USPolitics
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/dillon-taylor-justice-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.X08.0DWy.hF58YNdciy3A&smid=url-share

Fresh from intimidating ABC and CBS with meritless lawsuits,
Donald Trumpis suing Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal reporters who broke the story of a lewd birthday message for Jeffrey Epstein.
But, unlike with the frivolous allegations against the big broadcasters,
there’s clearly a fact of the matter here:
an authentic letter either exists or it does not;
-- and there is plenty to be revealed in the process of finding out.
Trump’s time-proven …

Calamus 43 O you whom I often
A short and sweet love poem, Whitman at his most writerly. The spare and simple words have a light musicality that's often missing from his more didactic blank verse.
The literal meaning is Whitman telling someone how his very presence inspires feelings of love. It's so short and precise I'm just going to quote the whole poem.
O you whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you,
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.
I love the lack of action. Whitman simply wants to sit in the same room as his beloved, a quiet devotion I appreciate. And that phrase "subtle electric fire". Electric had a different meaning in pre-Edison America but it works both ways.
Mostly this poem is just a lovely mood.
(The linked video and commentary are more than usually good.)

Just received a friend request on Facebook by someone named Peter Waldmeier.
https://www.facebook.com/peter.waldmeier.865
He seemed such a nice person, I think he is a model in a Scandinavian country.
When I asked him why he was sending me a friend request he go…

"the operations at the two new Laguna Street sites will be contracted out which means they will no longer be eligible to work with their clients."
Somehow, I get the feeling that the great minds behind this project fail to understand the importance of community and trust.

S.F. plans to move mentally ill adults draws protest
If the city has its way, all 83 residents will be moved to two facilities on Laguna Street in Hayes Valley.

"the operations at the two new Laguna Street sites will be contracted out which means they will no longer be eligible to work with their clients."
Somehow, I get the feeling that the great minds behind this project fail to understand the importance of community and trust.

S.F. plans to move mentally ill adults draws protest
If the city has its way, all 83 residents will be moved to two facilities on Laguna Street in Hayes Valley.

LensCraft: Your Professional Virtual Cinematographer
Zahra Dehghanian, Morteza Abolghasemi, Hossein Azizinaghsh, Amir Vahedi, Hamid Beigy, Hamid R. Rabiee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.00988

LensCraft: Your Professional Virtual Cinematographer
Digital creators, from indie filmmakers to animation studios, face a persistent bottleneck: translating their creative vision into precise camera movements. Despite significant progress in computer vision and artificial intelligence, current automated filming systems struggle with a fundamental trade-off between mechanical execution and creative intent. Crucially, almost all previous works simplify the subject to a single point-ignoring its orientation and true volume-severely limiting spatial …

me and who

Iran vowed swift retaliation Saturday following the U.S. military’s strikes on the Iranian nuclear program.
“Every American citizen or military personnel in the region is now a target,” a commentator on Iranian state media said.
Al-Asad Air Base, an Iraqi installation 150 miles west of Baghdad that is operated jointly by the Iraqi and U.S. air forces, houses thousands of American troops,
the largest U.S. deployment in the country.
Iran and its proxies have in recent…

U.S. bases that could attack Iran — and become targets
A number of U.S. military sites in the Middle East could face reprisals if Trump strikes Iran.