Tootfinder

“The U.S. military used a laser Thursday to shoot down a ‘seemingly threatening’ drone flying near the U.S.-Mexico border. It turned out the drone belonged to Customs and Border Protection, lawmakers said.”
https://apnews.com/article/military-la

US military uses laser to down drone and FAA closes more El Paso airspace, officials say
Members of Congress say the U.S. military used a laser to shoot down a Customs and Border Protection drone. The Federal Aviation Administration responded Thursday by closing more airspace near El Paso, Texas. No commercial flights were affected this time. The FAA shut down the El Paso airport and the surrounding area just over two weeks ago after another use of an anti-drone laser. The Defense Department and Transportation Department referred questions to the FAA. The FAA, CBP and the Pentagon …

Channeling Revenant Feelings (Eagle Creek, Oregon, 2017)
(Hoping my friends in the US are doing everything in their power to help protect these sacred wilderness places from the onslaught of out of control greed...)
#FootpathFriday #ForestFriday

Followerpower: I want a commandline tool that can do the following: take an SVG file input and produce a square-sized SVG output with the input centered and filled with transparency? I.e., let's say input is 50x100, output would be 100x100 with the input's content shifted 25px to the right.

MEETING WITH TRUMP IN JUST DAYS! Russia in rage strikes Odesa and Mykolaiv: ports in flames!: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/26/meeting-with-trump-in-just.html

Photojournalist Dave Decker was arrested in November while documenting a protest in Miami, Florida.
A coalition of 23 press organizations spoke out against the charges
— and this week the prosecutor agreed❗️
The following statement can be attributed to Adam Rose, deputy director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF):
“I hope law enforcement officers take this to heart: Swearing an oath to protect the community means protecting everyone — including pre…

Florida prosecutor agrees: Photography is not a crime
A coalition of 23 press organizations spoke out against the charges — the prosecutor agreed

Just got an email from one of my Senators, Jon Ossoff, GA with some welcomed news:
Good afternoon,
On Sunday, U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff demanded civil liberties protections before further funds are appropriated to ICE and announced he will oppose the measure scheduled for a vote this week.
(Full text of letter in the image alt-text)
#UsPol

📣📣📣 LLM-powered coding mass-produces technical debt. 📣📣📣
The expectations around them are sky-high, but many organizations are falling behind because of them. 📉
WHY IT MATTERS? CTOs lament slowdowns and production issues traced to company-wide rollouts of LLM-powered coding assistants. The AI promise clashes with the reality of technical debt and security issues. 🐛
Read more:

How To Use LLM-Powered Coding Assistants Safely: Risks & Best Practices
Learn how to gain the productivity benefits of LLM-powered coding assistants without introducing technical debt or security risks. Discover real-world pitfalls, expert insights, and governance best practices from Xebia.

Large eddy simulation of turbulent swirl-stabilized flames using the front propagation formulation: impact of the resolved flame thickness
Ruochen Guo, Yunde Su, Yuewen Jiang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21940 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21940 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21940
arXiv:2602.21940v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This work extends the front propagation formulation (FPF) combustion model to large eddy simulation (LES) of swirl-stabilized turbulent premixed flames and investigates the effects of resolved flame thickness on the predicted flame dynamics. The FPF method is designed to mitigate the spurious propagation of under-resolved flames while preserving the reaction characteristics of filtered flame fronts. In this study, the model is extended to account for non-adiabatic effects and is coupled with an improved sub-filter flame speed estimation that resolves the inconsistency arising from heat-release effects on local sub-filter turbulence. The performance of the extended FPF method is validated by LES of the TECFLAM swirl-stabilized burner, where the results agree well with experimental measurements. The simulations reveal that the stretching of vortical structures in the outer shear layer leads to the formation of trapped flame pockets, which are identified as the physical mechanism responsible for the secondary temperature peaks observed in the experiment. The prediction of this phenomenon is shown to be strongly dependent on the resolved flame thickness, when the filter size is used for modeling sub-filter flame wrinklings. Without proper modeling of the chemical steepening effects, the thickness of the resolved flame brush is over-predicted, causing the flame consumption rate to be under-estimated. Consequently, the flame brush detaches from the outer shear layer, resulting in a failure to capture the flame pockets and the associated secondary temperature peaks.
toXiv_bot_toot

FYI
* Tornado Warning for...
Central Santa Cruz County in northern California...
* Until 100 PM PST.
* At 1219 PM PST, a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a
tornado was located 7 miles south of Santa Cruz, moving north at 35
mph.
HAZARD...Tornado.
SOURCE...Radar indicated rotation.
IMPACT...Flying debris will be dangerous to those caught without
shelter. Mobile homes will be damaged or destroyed. Damage
to roofs, windows and…

Chornobyl protective structure could collapse following Russian strikes, plant director warns: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/24/chornobyl-protective-structure-could-collapse.html