Tootfinder

“This is not a hoax, and it’s not going away,”
said Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda.
Trump’s struggles reveal the limits of his usual tactics.
His strategy
—harnessing the anger caused by inequality to deflect blame
—has faltered here.
To understand why, we must look beyond Epstein as a predator to examine the system that protected him.
Documents recently released from Epstein’s estate expose the extent of his aristocratic immunity.
In a 2008 plea …

The real reason Donald Trump can’t escape the Epstein scandal
Donald Trump’s usual tactics to deflect blame are failing as victims of Jeffrey Epstein expose the deep inequalities that protected the predator, and now implicate Trump himself.

TL;DR: what if nationalism, not anarchy, is futile?
Since I had the pleasure of seeing the "what would anarchists do against a warlord?" argument again in my timeline, I'll present again my extremely simple proposed solution:
Convince the followers of the warlord that they're better off joining you in freedom, then kill or exile the warlord once they're alone or vastly outnumbered.
Remember that even in our own historical moment where nothing close to large-scale free society has existed in living memory, the warlord's promise of "help me oppress others and you'll be richly rewarded" is a lie that many understand is historically a bad bet. Many, many people currently take that bet, for a variety of reasons, and they're enough to coerce through fear an even larger number of others. But although we imagine, just as the medieval peasants might have imagined of monarchy, that such a structure is both the natural order of things and much too strong to possibly fail, in reality it takes an enormous amount of energy, coordination, and luck for these structures to persist! Nations crumble every day, and none has survived more than a couple *hundred* years, compared to pre-nation societies which persisted for *tends of thousands of years* if not more. I'm this bubbling froth of hierarchies, the notion that hierarchy is inevitable is certainly popular, but since there's clearly a bit of an ulterior motive to make (and teach) that claim, I'm not sure we should trust it.
So what I believe could form the preconditions for future anarchist societies to avoid the "warlord problem" is merely: a widespread common sense belief that letting anyone else have authority over you is morally suspect. Given such a belief, a warlord will have a hard time building any following at all, and their opponents will have an easy time getting their supporters to defect. In fact, we're already partway there, relative to the situation a couple hundred years ago. At that time, someone could claim "you need to obey my orders and fight and die for me because the Queen was my mother" and that was actually a quite successful strategy. Nowadays, this strategy is only still working in a few isolated places, and the idea that one could *start a new monarchy* or even resurrect a defunct one seems absurd. So why can't that same transformation from "this is just how the world works" to "haha, how did anyone ever believe *that*? also happen to nationalism in general? I don't see an obvious reason why not.
Now I think one popular counterargument to this is: if you think non-state societies can win out with these tactics, why didn't they work for American tribes in the face of the European colonizers? (Or insert your favorite example of colonialism here.) I think I can imagine a variety of reasons, from the fact that many of those societies didn't try this tactic (and/or were hierarchical themselves), to the impacts of disease weakening those societies pre-contact, to the fact that with much-greater communication and education possibilities it might work better now, to the fact that most of those tribes are *still* around, and a future in which they persist longer than the colonist ideologies actually seems likely to me, despite the fact that so much cultural destruction has taken place. In fact, if the modern day descendants of the colonized tribes sow the seeds of a future society free of colonialism, that's the ultimate demonstration of the futility of hierarchical domination (I just read "Theory of Water" by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson).
I guess the TL;DR on this is: what if nationalism is actually as futile as monarchy, and we're just unfortunately living in the brief period during which it is ascendant?

I'm dispositionally sceptical of falling sky prophesies and what Mr Schneier calls "movie plot threats".
But.
I can't deny I'm a bit nervous that all this noisy dancing up to the edge of disaster and back might be a deliberate scheme, intended to get European militaries locked up on the Eastern front from Finland to Romania, before China finally have a crack at Taiwan.
"Estonia seeks Nato consultation after Russian jets violate airspace"

Nato intercepts Russian warplanes violating Estonian airspace
Estonia says three Russian MiG-31 fighter jets remained in Estonian airspace for 12 minutes.

US officials provide contradictory statements on security guarantees, fueling uncertainty ahead of Trump-Zelensky meeting: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/17/us-officials-provide-contradictory-statements.html

"""
In melancholy, the spirits are carried away by an agitation, but a weak agitation that lacks power or violence, a sort of impotent upset that follows neither a particular path nor the aperta opercula [open ways], but traverses the cerebral matter constantly creating new pores. Yet the spirits do not wander far on the new paths they create, and their agitation dies down rapidly, as their strength is quickly spent and motion comes to a halt: ‘non longe perveniunt’ [they do not reach far]. A trouble of this nature, common to all delirium, does not have the power to produce on the surface of the body the violent movements or the cries to be observed in mania and frenzy. Melancholy never attains frenzy; it is a madness always at the limits of its own impotence. That paradox is explained by the secret alterations in the spirits. Ordinarily, they travel with the speed and instantaneous transparency of rays of light, but in melancholy they become weighed down with night, becoming ‘obscure, thick and dark’, and the images of things that they bring before consciousness are ‘in a shadow, or covered with darkness’. As a result they move more slowly, and are more like a dark, chemical vapour than pure light. This chemical vapour is acid in nature, rather than sulphurous or alcoholic, for in acid vapours the particles are mobile and incapable of repose, but their activity is weak and without consequence. When they are distilled, all that remains in the still is a kind of insipid phlegm. Acid vapours, therefore, are taken to have the same properties as melancholy, whereas alcoholic vapours, which are always ready to burst into flames, are more related to frenzy, and sulphurous vapours bring on mania, as they are agitated by continuous, violent movement. If the ‘formal reason and causes’ of melancholy were to be sought, it made sense to look for them in the vapours that rose up from the blood to the head, and which had degenerated into ‘an acetous or sharp distillation’. A cursory glance seems to indicate that a melancholy of spirits and a whole chemistry of humours lies behind Willis’ analyses, but in fact his guiding principle mostly reflects the immediate qualities of the melancholic illness: an impotent disorder, and the shadow that comes over the spirit with an acrid acidity that slowly corrodes the heart and the mind. The chemistry of acids is not an explanation of the symptoms, but a qualitative option: a whole phenomenology of melancholic experience.
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)

Measurement of radiant spectrum for excess heat generation in NiCu and Ni thin film during hydrogen gas desorption
J. Kasagi, T. Itoh, Y. Shibasaki, Y. Iwamura
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13847

Measurement of radiant spectrum for excess heat generation in NiCu and Ni thin film during hydrogen gas desorption
Heat production in Ni-based thin films interacting with hydrogen gas was studied using a radiation calorimeter equipped with a composite photon-detector system. Measurements were performed on pure Ni foil and NiCu composite thin films. Electromagnetic radiation emitted from samples heated to approximately 1100 K in vacuum was recorded over the energy range of 0.05 - 2.5 eV. In this study,detailed spectra were obtained, particularly in the low-energy region below 0.5 eV. The peak of the thermal …

Contrary to what the Kremlin tells the world, Russian offensives are stalling out and failing, while Ukraine continues to advance.
You won't hear about this from US media, their billionaire owners are firmly entrenched up Trump's ass, who uses the suffering and genocide of Ukraine to enrich himself.
Thankfully there are still true journalists who dare to venture into warzones and report the truth.
Read his reports and witness the spirit of Ukraine as it fights back …

Russian Offensive Fails, Ukrainians Advance
Live from Ukraine 🇺🇦

Theory of Sondheimer magneto-oscillations beyond semiclassical limit
Alexander Nikolaenko, Pavel A. Nosov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14315 https://arxiv.or…

Theory of Sondheimer magneto-oscillations beyond semiclassical limit
In conducting films subjected to an out-of-plane magnetic field, electron motion along the field direction gives rise to conductance oscillations periodic in field intensity - a phenomenon known as Sondheimer oscillations. Traditionally, these oscillations were understood within the semiclassical framework of kinetic theory. However, their behavior in the quantum regime (i.e. at strong fields and weak disorder) remains unclear, particularly due to potential interference with quantum Shubnikov-d…

TESS Subgiant and Lower Red Giant Asteroseismology in the Continuous Viewing Zones
Sophia Grusnis, Jamie Tayar, Diego Godoy-Rivera
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12513 https://

TESS Subgiant and Lower Red Giant Asteroseismology in the Continuous Viewing Zones
Asteroseismology, the study of stellar oscillations, and stellar modeling both offer profound insights into the fundamental properties and evolution of stars. With pySYD, a new open-source Python package, we were able to constrain the asteroseismic global parameters, $ν_{max}$ and $Δν$, for 82 solar-like oscillating subgiant and lower red giant stars, filling in the region between the Kepler dwarfs and giants. Using asteroseismic scaling relations, we were able to compute seismic masses, rad…

'We need them too' — Trump hesitant on providing Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine following call with Putin, ahead of talks with Zelensky: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/16/we-need-them-too-trump.html