Tootfinder

An inside look at how Netflix's use of data led to generic "algorithm films" intended for broad appeal, with AI set to further entrench the production style (Phil Hoad/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20…

Just finished "Concrete Rose" by Angie Thomas (I haven't yet read "The Hate U Give" but that's now high on my list of things to find). It's excellent, and in particular, an excellent treatise on positive masculinity in fiction form. It's not a super easy book to read emotionally, but is excellently written and deeply immersive. I don't have the perspective to know how it might land among teens like those it portrays, but I have a feeling it's true enough to life, and it held a lot of great wisdom for me.
CW for the book include murder, hard drugs, and parental abandonment.
I caught myself in a racist/classist habit of thought while reading that others night appreciate hearing about: early on I was mentally comparing it to "All my Rage" by Sabaa Tahir and wondering if/when we'd see the human cost of the drug dealing to the junkies, thinking that it would weaken the book not to include that angle. Why is that racist/classist? Because I'm always expecting books with hard drug dealers in them to show the ugly side of their business since it's been drilled into me that they're evil for the harm they cause, yet I never expect the same of characters who are bankers, financial analysts, health insurance claims adjudicators, police officers, etc. (Okay, maybe I do now look for that in police narratives). The point is, our society includes many people who as part of their jobs directly immiserate others, so why and I only concerned about that misery being brought up when it's drug dealers?
#AmReading

Abstract Landscapes
(Bernina range, on the approach to Lago di Fellaria, Sep 2025)
Everything about this place is so special: the road to the trailhead (with 1700m elevation gain), the scale of the majestic ~4000er (meters) mountains with their glaciated peaks. Observing the different levels/layers of this upper valley where the glaciers have already mostly receded, the parts which have been flooded with a reservoir (slowly drying out), the equally spectacular & tragic waterfa…

We've reached the point in the evolution of cyber scamming where military units are blowing up buildings to stop the digital crimes.
Stragglers from Myanmar scam center raided by army cross into Thailand as buildings are blown up
https://apnews.com/artic…

Stragglers from Myanmar scam center raided by army cross into Thailand as buildings are blown up
A Thai regional army commander say that the number of people fleeing from Myanmar to Thailand after Myanmar’s military shut down a major online scam center has slowed to a trickle. The news on Tuesday came after more than 1,500 people had left in the past week. The KK Park site was identified by Thai officials and independent experts as housing a major cybercrime operation. It was raided by Myanmar’s army in mid-October as part of operations starting in early September to suppress cross-bor…

Myanmar shut down a major online scam center on October 21 as part of operations starting in September to curb cross-border online scams and illegal gambling (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-scam-centers-cybercr…

Stragglers from Myanmar scam center raided by army cross into Thailand as buildings are blown up
A Thai regional army commander say that the number of people fleeing from Myanmar to Thailand after Myanmar’s military shut down a major online scam center has slowed to a trickle. The news on Tuesday came after more than 1,500 people had left in the past week. The KK Park site was identified by Thai officials and independent experts as housing a major cybercrime operation. It was raided by Myanmar’s army in mid-October as part of operations starting in early September to suppress cross-bor…

@… with a profile name like that, I just have to follow you!
https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2025-07-02-flying-ou…

Flying out the hayloft
Ever since I built the cattle shed, and added the derrick to the front of it to allow bales to be hoisted up, I've thought that would make a very cool place to do a suspension. Now, at last, I've done it.

Hi, this is EDF Action Votes.
Donald Trump is ordering NASA to shut down its
carbon-monitoring satellites
— the very tools we use to track carbon emissions, plant health, wildfire risk, and extreme weather patterns.
This is not about saving money.
It’s about blinding America to the truth of climate change.
If Trump gets his way, we’ll be flying blind in the face of rising disasters
— and Big Polluters will have a free pass to keep hiding the damag…

I just gave to EDF Action Votes!
EDF Action votes is doing everything they can to elect environmental champions who will take climate action.

Fascism offers them a “strong man” carnival photo cut-out where they get to put their face in the hole and take a selfie. They can tuck that selfie under their pillow at night, admiring their fake muscles in the photo and believing they are strong. It lets weak people play-act a strong person. It gives people with creeping feelings of worthlessness a magical sense of worth they don’t have to earn, just believe in.
2/

Okay, here's the promised follow-up with more authors I respect who didn't make it onto this list. I won't do deep dives but I'll list at least one work per author:
YA novelists:
- Randi Pink ("Girls Like Us")
- Louisa Onomé ("Twice as Perfect")
- Emery Lee ("Meet Cute Diary")
- Robin Benway ("Far from the Tree")
- Angela Velez ("Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity")
Children's book authors:
- Jacqueline Davies ("Bubbles Up")
- Freya Hartas ("Slow Down in the Park")
Novelists:
- Rimma Onoseta ("How You Grow Wings")
Graphic novelists:
- Linda Medley ("Castle Waiting")
- 🖋️Magsalene Visaggio 🖌️Paulina Ganucheau ("Girlmode")
- Ursula Vernon ("Digger")
- SJ Sindu ("Tall Water" w/ Dion MBD)
- Hope Larson ("Be That Way"; "Salt Magic" w/ Rebecca Mock)
- Lily Williams Karen Schneemann ("Go With the Flow")
- Maia Kobabe ("Gender Queer")
- Kay O'Neill ("Tea Dragon Society")
- Marjane Satrapi ("Persepolis")
Mangaka:
- Kaoru Mori ("Young Bride's Stories")
- Ryoko Kui ("Delicious in Dungeon")
- Natsuki Takaya ("Fruits Basket")
Anime writers/directors and/or Japanese light/fantasy/SF novelists:
- Nahoko Uehashi ("Moribito")
- Sayo Yamamoto ("Michiko & Hatchin"; "Yuri!!! On Ice")
- Mari Okada ("Ano Hana: The Flower we Saw That Day"; "Toradora!")
Game designers/programmers:
(Upon review I was pretty remiss in skipping over a few of these people, some of whom I wasn't aware of but most of whom I just didn't remember when writing my short list. Subconscious misogyny in action. Short & Thorson probably would have squeezed out some of the YA authors I included, although I have no real regrets.)
- Junko Kawano ("Suikoden")
- Elizabeth LaPensée ("When Rivers Were Trails")
- Momo Pixel ("Hair Nah")
- Zoë Quinn ("Depression Quest"; narrative designer on "Solar Ash")
- Kellee Santiago ("Cloud"; "Flower")
- Tanya X. Short ("Moon Hunters")
- Kim Swift ("Portal")
- Maddy Thorson ("Celeste")
- Andi McClure @… ("Jumpman")
Note: I haven't included composers or artists here, but there's a deep bench.
Games journalists/steamers:
- Tanya DePass @… (#/INeedDiverseGames; twitch streams)
- Anita Sarkeesian (Feminist Frequency)
Game/play scholars:
- Mary Flanagan ("Critical Play")
- Tracy Fullerton ("Game Design Workshop")
- Brenda Laurel ("Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System")
- Janet Murray ("Hamlet on the Holodeck"l
- Susana Tosca ("A Pragmatics of Links")
- Jichen Zhu ("Agency Play: Dimensions of Agency for Interactive Narrative Design")
- Magy Seif El Nasr ("Design patterns to guide player movement in 3D games")
- Kate Compton ("Causal Creators"; also "Spore")
P.S. upon consideration I've decided not to include any authors who are men in this coda.
There are definitely others who probably deserve to be here that I'm forgetting...
#GsmeDesign #Authors

Filing: StubHub, which is planning a September IPO, says revenue grew 3% to $828M in H1, missing its earlier projection of $885M, with adjusted EBITDA down 7% (Cory Weinberg/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/stubhub-missed-financial-t…

StubHub Missed Financial Targets Ahead of IPO
Even as StubHub makes a renewed push to go public, its business isn’t expanding as quickly as it had hoped. In the first half of this year, the ticketing app fell short of revenue and profit projections it shared with lenders earlier this year, in part due to new U.S. ticket pricing rules. The ...