Tootfinder

Rethinking Reference Trajectories in Agile Drone Racing: A Unified Reference-Free Model-Based Controller via MPPI
Fangguo Zhao, Xin Guan, Shuo Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14726

Rethinking Reference Trajectories in Agile Drone Racing: A Unified Reference-Free Model-Based Controller via MPPI
While model-based controllers have demonstrated remarkable performance in autonomous drone racing, their performance is often constrained by the reliance on pre-computed reference trajectories. Conventional approaches, such as trajectory tracking, demand a dynamically feasible, full-state reference, whereas contouring control relaxes this requirement to a geometric path but still necessitates a reference. Recent advancements in reinforcement learning (RL) have revealed that many model-based con…

John Spytek-Pete Carroll Pairing Was Doomed From the Start Based on New Details https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/john-spytek-contract-rumors-pete-carroll/

And a 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝘂𝘀 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲 of that 𝐻𝑒𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑝𝑠𝑖𝑠 because I had so much fun on Monday, don't worry because people on Bluesky are pestering me to post for #ForestFriday and I'll have more from #MonkeyRun as well as forest runners

Spatial-CLAP: Learning Spatially-Aware audio--text Embeddings for Multi-Source Conditions
Kentaro Seki, Yuki Okamoto, Kouei Yamaoka, Yuki Saito, Shinnosuke Takamichi, Hiroshi Saruwatari
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14785

Spatial-CLAP: Learning Spatially-Aware audio--text Embeddings for Multi-Source Conditions
Contrastive language--audio pretraining (CLAP) has achieved remarkable success as an audio--text embedding framework, but existing approaches are limited to monaural or single-source conditions and cannot fully capture spatial information. The central challenge in modeling spatial information lies in multi-source conditions, where the correct correspondence between each sound source and its location is required. To tackle this problem, we propose Spatial-CLAP, which introduces a content-aware s…

As a Canadian in 2025, I sometimes wonder if like Belgians in 1935 ever remarked to their countryfolk “Remember when we used to take *recreational* trips to Germany?!”

Raiders’ Top Free Agent Sends Clear Message to Team About Possible Return https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/eric-stokes-contract-free-agent-rumors/

Reading Paul Krugman talking with Adam Tooze . Re. € crisis in 2012: "Paul DeGraue, Belgian economist said, “this is a panic, the numbers don’t really justify this.” Mario Draghi actually agreed and said three words, “whatever it takes,” that the ECB will stand behind that and will make sure the countries don’t run out of cash. The crisis just evaporated like nothing. *Most effective central bank statement in the history of humanity*, I’m sure." Here is Dhragi's speech:

The extraordinary courage of Germany’s wartime ‘traitors’
With Nazi informers everywhere, any dissident risked betrayal
– and the prospect of being hanged ‘like slaughtered cattle’ for ‘defeatism’
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-ex

The extraordinary courage of Germany’s wartime ‘traitors’
I once interviewed the late Enoch Powell for this magazine (the article never appeared, for reasons I forget). One thing he said on that occasion stuck with me. He remarked that loyalty to one’s country should be unconditional. I asked him what he thought people should do if their country were taken over by a

Hybrid Cavity from Tunable Coupling between Anapole and Fabry-Perot Resonance or Anti-resonance
Aoning Luo, Haitao Li, Ken Qin, Jingwen Ma, Shijie Kang, Jiayu Fan, Yiyi Yao, Xiexuan Zhang, Jiusi Yu, Boyang Qu, Xiaoxiao Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15007

Hybrid Cavity from Tunable Coupling between Anapole and Fabry-Perot Resonance or Anti-resonance
Enhancing light-matter interactions depends critically on the ability to tailor photonic modes at subwavelength scales, and combining distinct resonant modes has shown remarkable potential unattainable by individual resonances alone. Despite recent advances in anapole metasurfaces for energy confinement and Fabry-Perot (FP) cavities for spectral control, their synergistic coupling and resulting opportunities remain largely unexplored due to challenges such as precise nanoscale assembly. Here, w…

🦎 City lizards turn out to be surprisingly social
#lizards

City lizards turn out to be surprisingly social
Streets, walls, concrete—cities may seem like a harsh environment. Yet some animals adapt remarkably well. A new study published in Biology Letters from Bielefeld University shows that common wall lizards (Podarcis muralis) behave far more socially in urban areas than in the countryside.