Tootfinder

Trump on Wednesday (January 7, 2026) signed an executive order suspending U.S. support for 66 organisations, agencies and commissions
following his instructions for his administration to review participation in and funding for all international organisations,
including those affiliated with the United Nations.
Most of the targets are UN-related agencies, commissions and advisory panels that focus on climate, labour and other issues that the Trump administration has categori…

U.S. to exit 66 international organisations as Trump further retreats from global cooperation
The U.S. plans to withdraw from 66 international organizations, primarily UN-related, under Trump's administration, emphasizing national interests.

This week’s Gist is about how the U.K. Labour Party unknowingly has been blowing itself up by following Morgan McSweeney’s FG electoral instincts.
They don’t know the patterns, but we do.
https://www.thegist.ie/the-gist-uk-labours-fg-mastermind/

The Gist: UK Labour's FG mastermind
The UK Labour Party is being run into the ground, thanks to adopting FG's election tactics. This is the Gist.

From The Maple
How did labour fare in 2025?
In many respects, last year was a mixed bag for workers and unions in Canada. Though union wage gains were relatively healthy, the overall economy continued to cool with unemployment creeping up and many workers still feeling the cost-of-living crunch.

Here’s How Canadian Workers And Unions Fared In 2025
Union wage gains were relatively healthy, but unemployment crept up and workers felt the cost-of-living crunch.

Went out canvassing with the Green Party in ward next door.
The candidates seem nice and meeting other green members is nice, but the actual process of going around knocking on people's doors isn't really a great deal of fun for me.
Mostly nobody home, or else maybe peering through the spy-hole feeling intimidated by me I guess? Hard to tell.
Spoke to mostly Labour voters who claim not to be sure what they'll do next time. Couple of folks already Green.
Nobody around here is gonna vote Conservative or Liberal or Reform of course. "Your Party" not likely to get it together in time to even stand. It's a race to see how many Green and Independent opposition councilors can be elected to avoid a Labour full house. 47 Lab to 3 Green seats last time. Less than 200 votes in it in that seat. Probably will do better this time, maybe even win the seat. At least make some of the safe Labour seats a bit less safe.
Most exciting part was when the flat over the road went on fire and we had to call the fire brigade and a triplet of fire engines and couple of cop cars turned up to deal with it. Started with smelling smoke and wondering if that flat was on fire, by the time the fire fighters turned up remarkably quickly (someone else already called I imagine) there were flames licking at the windows.
An exploding e-scooter battery someone was saying, but dunno how they knew.
Nice to share a drink in the pub with the green crew after, but dunno that this canvassing lark is for me. I felt like either a spare part, or just backup muscle probably intimidating people into not opening the doors.
Probably I'd enjoy it more if I could get into an argument but apparently that's rare and the advice is to disengage anyway.
#green #london #greenPartyEW

"When you focus on growth in GDP as your primary goal without any concern for whether what creates that growth is of real value rather than simply being capable of being counted, whilst being indifferent to the distribution of the gains, those already vulnerable are bound to suffer as a consequence... The policy failure this chart exposes is not an accident; it will be achieved by #Labour by d…

Labour is failing people by hidden design. Reform would do so explicitly.
As The Guardian notes this morning: The country’s most deprived neighbourhoods will have higher crime rates and worse unemployment by the end of the parliament, according to a report written at the request of No. 10 Downing Street. No. 10 has apparently focused its attention on what are called

"producing the feeling of knowing without the labor of judgement"
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.19466
oh what a great line

Epistemological Fault Lines Between Human and Artificial Intelligence
Large language models (LLMs) are widely described as artificial intelligence, yet their epistemic profile diverges sharply from human cognition. Here we show that the apparent alignment between human and machine outputs conceals a deeper structural mismatch in how judgments are produced. Tracing the historical shift from symbolic AI and information filtering systems to large-scale generative transformers, we argue that LLMs are not epistemic agents but stochastic pattern-completion systems, for…

How NASA's #KennedySpaceCenter is a film lover's dream: the new video #photo and #film buffs alike as the narrative takes unexpected turns every few minutes.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s remaking of childhood vaccination policies
is fueling resistance in labor and delivery wards, where doctors say parents are increasingly hesitant to allow other routine care for new babies.
Half a dozen pediatricians in five states said they are spending more time talking to parents about standard treatments given to newborns,
including vitamin K to prevent dangerous bleeding and a topical antibiotic that protects against …

Even before extremist Republican Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office on January 20,
progressives warned of his fascistic tendencies and plans,
often citing his platform, and highlighting what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls “Trump’s playbook of dictators.”
But too few people, even on the left side of the electorate, listened.
After all, those warnings have been sounded for months if not years.
“Trump is following, point for point, the playbook of …

Top Senators expose Trump’s fascist playbook
WASHINGTON—Even before extremist Republican Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office on January 20, progressives warned of his fascistic tendencies and plans, often citing his platform, and highlighting what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls “Trump’s playbook of dictators.

He has labored in the fields every summer and on weekends during the school year since he was 11 years old to help his mother, who also picks berries.
His siblings, uncles and cousins — four of them minors — work in local strawberry fields.
Jose said that some days he didn’t fill many boxes and earned less than minimum wage for the hours he worked,
Awhich would be a violation of state child labor laws.
He described toiling under the hot sun in fields where employers f…

California’s child farmworkers: Exhausted, underpaid and toiling in toxic fields
State officials are failing to protect the health and safety of thousands of young field laborers, an investigation has found.