Tootfinder

China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months.
The rapid adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) saw CO2 emissions from transport fuel drop by 5% year-on-year, while there were also declines from cement and steel production.
While emissions from the power sector were flat year-on-year, a big rise in the chemical industry’s CO2 output offset reductions elsewhere.

Analysis: China’s CO2 emissions have now been flat or falling for 18 months - Carbon Brief
China’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were unchanged from a year earlier in the third quarter of 2025, extending a flat or falling trend that started in March 2024.

Gut Feeling: Cowboys-Panthers staff predictions https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/gut-feeling-cowboys-panthers-staff-predictions

Machine Learning-Based Prediction of Speech Arrest During Direct Cortical Stimulation Mapping
Nikasadat Emami, Amirhossein Khalilian-Gourtani, Jianghao Qian, Antoine Ratouchniak, Xupeng Chen, Yao Wang, Adeen Flinker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08703

Machine Learning-Based Prediction of Speech Arrest During Direct Cortical Stimulation Mapping
Identifying cortical regions critical for speech is essential for safe brain surgery in or near language areas. While Electrical Stimulation Mapping (ESM) remains the clinical gold standard, it is invasive and time-consuming. To address this, we analyzed intracranial electrocorticographic (ECoG) data from 16 participants performing speech tasks and developed machine learning models to directly predict if the brain region underneath each ECoG electrode is critical. Ground truth labels indicating…

Indonesia's film industry is embracing AI tools to produce Hollywood-style movies at a significantly lower cost; the average local film budget is about $602,500 (Linda Yulisman/Rest of World)
https://restofworld.org/2025/indonesia-ai-movies/

Indonesia’s film industry embraces AI to make Hollywood-style movies for cheap
Generative AI video and text tools are transforming some of the labor-intensive parts of filmmaking, and are largely welcomed in Indonesia’s homegrown industry.

The tensor product of p-adic Hilbert spaces
Paolo Aniello, Lorenzo Guglielmi, Stefano Mancini, Vincenzo Parisi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07504 https://arx…

The tensor product of p-adic Hilbert spaces
In the framework of quantum mechanics over a quadratic extension of the ultrametric field of p-adic numbers, we introduce a notion of tensor product of p-adic Hilbert spaces. To this end, following a standard approach, we first consider the algebraic tensor product of p-adic Hilbert spaces. We next define a suitable norm on this linear space. It turns out that, in the p-adic framework, this norm is the analogue of the projective norm associated with the tensor product of real or complex normed …

Gut Feeling: Cowboys-Panthers staff predictions https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/gut-feeling-cowboys-panthers-staff-predictions

So this is percolating and the results so far are not surprising.
I'd vote NO, for the following reasons:
- oil demand continues to decline and risk is high we'll end up with an expensive underutilized pipeline. Therefore high risk we'll end up subsidizing any private entity that builds this thing.
- why would we invest public dollars to support infrastructure for a product where 75% of the profit leaves Canada? There has to be a net benefit, beyond steel sales and jobs, for this project to be considered.
- Indigenous land rights must be respected. They will be left with the rusting pipeline decades in the future, and it's impact on the land.
- the B.C. government must also have a final vote as they have to give up land and provide support.
- we don't need additional oil tankers on our west coast.
- and most importantly, with this MOU, Canada pretty much declared we aren't serious about protecting the environment or fighting climate change. We're oil whores. Harsh but....
#CanPoli #ClimateAction

Austria's privacy regulator finds that Microsoft violated EU law by illegally tracking students through its Microsoft 365 Education software (Suzanne Smalley/The Record)
https://therecord.media/microsoft-violated-eu-law-austria

Microsoft violated EU law in handling of kids’ data, Austrian privacy regulator finds
Austria's data protection authority ruled that Microsoft illegally tracked students using its education software by failing to give them access to their data and using cookies without consent.

The Senate on Thursday night approved its $925 billion version of the
National Defense Authorization Act,
the annual must-pass Pentagon policy blueprint,
setting up what is expected to be a lengthy negotiation with the House to finalize the bill.

The legislation, deadlocked for weeks over various partisan disagreements,
advanced by a margin of 77 to 20 following amendment votes earlier in the evening.

Senate and House staff will next reconcile their bills…

Senate passes $925 billion defense bill, setting up House talks
Staff from both chambers must now negotiate final, compromise legislation ahead of a vote expected later this fall.

Big news for the energy transition!
And a nice little 'told you so' moment for yours truly :)
In the first half of this year, renewables produced more electricity globally than coal, for the first time.
And 2025 is the date I predicted for this to happen, back in 2016, in a blog post for Ecofys! The score was 23%-40% at the time, with most of the renewables share still coming from hydro, and the prediction was less than obvious.