Tootfinder

Trump brought in $57 million from crypto venture, millions from sneakers and bibles (Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy/USA Today)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/13/trump-crypto-bible-guitar-sneakers/84197257007/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250614/p4#a250614p4

Cannot even find where i read it but because i first read about an alleged breach of data from the Israeli government held by the Iranian government (on Mossad agents, recordings from secret cameras installed by Netanyahu to get compromising info on potential rivals, and much more, apparently all from a 2024 hack or leak) i have not been able to shake the twisted thought that the war Israel has now started against Iran is the new worst ever fallout for bad information security.

Our pick this week is a melancholic, atmospheric track from Steven Wilson. Epic in scope but perfect to kick off a slow, reflective weekend - this one’s worth sinking into.
Give it a spin, check out our thoughts, and let it set the tone.
And don't forget to follow us for your weekly dose of rock and metal ... handpicked, reviewed, and sent straight to your ears.
Stay mellow, stay awesome! 🤘

Steven Wilson - Drive Home
One awesome, hand picked song from the world of rock and metal, showcased every week. Nothing more, nothing less! 🤘

Deutschland hat die Marke von einer Million Balkonkraftwerken geknackt! 🌞
Zum Artikel: https://heise.de/-1043959?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

fly_hemibrain: Fly hemibrain (2020)
A synaptic map of the hemibrain connectome of fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Nodes are neurons, and edges are synaptic connections, traced individually from brain image sections using EM reconstruction techniques. Neurons are labeled by their type. Edges are annotated by the connection strength between the neurons.
This network has 21739 nodes and 4259624 edges.
Tags: Biological, Connectome, Weighted, Metadata

A unified neural background-error covariance model for midlatitude and tropical atmospheric data assimilation
Bo\v{s}tjan Melinc, Uro\v{s} Perkan, \v{Z}iga Zaplotnik
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11968

A unified neural background-error covariance model for midlatitude and tropical atmospheric data assimilation
Estimating background-error covariances remains a core challenge in variational data assimilation (DA). Operational systems typically approximate these covariances by transformations that separate geostrophically balanced components from unbalanced inertio-gravity modes - an approach well-suited for the midlatitudes but less applicable in the tropics, where different physical balances prevail. This study estimates background-error covariances in a reduced-dimension latent space learned by a neu…

I read "Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It" by Christof Koch.
Interesting book which spends like 8 or 9 chapters detailing all the experiments which prove beyond much doubt that consciousness, and self awareness, is a thing done by a brain.
It describes how perception is a construction of a description, has a chapter called "computational mind"
And then spends the last two chapters describing why he thinks the mind can't be computed, because drugs have made him think experience is some kind of magic associated with highly interconnected causal structures.
Apparently, he thinks, once things become interconnected enough they become able to cause things independently of the physics running those connections.
Which is crazy, obviously. There's nothing causal in direct connections between neurons that isn't equally causal in modeled connections between virtual neurons.
All his evidence in the book from neural MRI scans to the effects of psychedelic drugs and symptoms of strokes and disease point to the brain simulating a virtual reality which is the basis of perception.
That simulated world in which we live is full of colour and shape and sounds and emotions and millions of mental constructs that are built to be correlated by the senses with the outside world, but are not equal to the world itself. We live in a dream constructed to correlate with reality.
But then instead of taking the next step: That consciousness itself is a property of a simulated being inside that mental model of the universe, a property which the brain simulates and applies to the virtual self that's doing the experiencing inside that model, he jumps towards some magic implying pan-psychism or that sufficiently interconnected networks become causally self-complete for some reason nobody can fathom.
Sure, colour and shape and emotions are all made up by the brain but experience can't be! For some reason.
You see in truth dualism is false, in that there is no spirit realm in which ghosts animate the matter of the body somehow.
Yet also, dualism is true, in that there is a simulated mental reality which we live in, computed by the brain in which all perception and experience are created, which is related-to but separate-from the unfolding complicated dance of energy that is the universe our bodies interact with.
People take some DMT trip, and the model of the universe emulated by their brain collapses and breaks. Their virtual simulated self inside their mind has these experiences of being one with the universe or the experience of feeling dead yet conscious or whatever, and these hippies think that the broken down simulated experience is real and reflects how consciousness is more fundamental than the atoms that make up the neurons in their brain.
Instead of realizing it shows them that their experienced universe is a simulacrum, they think they get a more direct experience of reality somehow. A consciousness more pure than any mere base atom.
"Then I am myself the world" is a great title. Everything you ever experience is created and simulated in your brain like a dream, the whole universe is inside your head. Even the fact of experience itself.
But that isn't the conclusion Koch reaches somehow, he just jumps from describing the evidence that this is so straight into ascribing super-causal magic consciousness to particular arrangements of atoms that integrated information theory suggest have high correlation, and thinks therefore conciousness is itself the entire universe.
Ah well, fun book. I like arguing in my head with authors that are wrong.
#reading #books #consciousness #thenIAmMyselfTheWorld

Trump's financial disclosures reveal tens of millions in income from guitars, bibles and watches with his name on them (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trumps-financial-disclosures-reveal-millions-income-guitars-bibles-wat-rcna212981
http://www.memeorandum.com/250613/p155#a250613p155

AI's environmental impact can be extremely localized. A Maine bill would limit the amount of electricity data centers can siphon from local power grids.
(I'm interviewed for the story)
https://www.bangordailynews.com…

Advertisers are shifting millions in ad budgets, particularly in CTV, from The Trade Desk's DSP to Amazon's, driven by lower fees, inventory access, and more (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)
https://www.adweek.com/media/marketers-mov

EXCLUSIVE: Marketers Move Millions in Ad Spend from The Trade Desk to Amazon’s Ad Platform 
Sources say Amazon is gunning for The Trade Desk’s clients to win market share