Tootfinder

5 Takeaways from Cowboys presser as concern builds for Diggs' future, Parsons contract https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/07/21/cowboys-press-conference-covers-rbs-par…

Cowboy Roundup: Biggest camp questions, Concerns for Trevon Diggs' future? https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/dallas-cowboys-biggest-training-camp-questions-concerns-trevon-diggs-future

How the US democracy is designed to avoid representation
Right now in the US, a system which proclaims to give each citizen representation, my interests are not represented very well by most of my so-called representatives at any level of government. This is true for a majority of Americans across the political spectrum, and it happens by design. The "founding fathers" were explicit about wanting a system of government that would appear Democratic but which would keep power in the hands of rich white landowners, and they successfully designed exactly that. But how does disenfranchisement work in this system?
First, a two-party system locked in by first-post-the-post winner-takes-all elections immediately destroys representation for everyone who didn't vote for the winner, including those who didn't vote or weren't eligible to vote. Single-day non-holiday elections and prisoner disenfranchisement go a long way towards ensuring working-class people get no say, but much larger is the winner-takes all system. In fact, even people who vote for the winning candidate don't get effective representation if they're really just voting against the opponent as the greater of two evils. In a 51/49 election with 50% turnout, you've immediately ensured that ~75% of eligible voters don't get represented, and with lesser-of-two-evils voting, you create an even wider gap to wedge corporate interests into. Politicians need money to saturate their lesser-of-two-evils message far more than they need to convince any individual voter to support their policies. It's even okay if they get caught lying, cheating, or worse (cough Epstein cough) as long as the other side is also doing those things and you can freeze out new parties.
Second, by design the Senate ensures uneven representation, allowing control of the least-populous half of states to control or at least shut down the legislative process. A rough count suggests 284.6 million live in the 25 most-populous states, while only 54.8 million live in the rest. Currently, counting states with divided representation as two half-states with half as much population, 157.8 million people are represented by 53 Republican sensors, while 180.5 million people get only 45 seats of Democratic representation. This isn't an anti-Democrat bias, it's a bias towards less-populous states, whose residents get more than their share it political power.
I haven't even talked about gerrymandering yet, or family/faith-based "party loyalty," etc. Overall, the effect is that the number of people whose elected representatives meaningfully represent their interests on any given issue is vanishingly small (like, 10% of people tops), unless you happen to be rich enough to purchase lobbying power or direct access.
If we look at polls, we can see how lack of representation lets congress & the president enact many policies that go against what a majority of the population wants. Things like abortion restrictions, the current ICE raids, and Medicare cuts are deeply unpopular, but they benefit the political class and those who can buy access. These are possible because the system ensures at every step of the way that ordinary people do NOT get the one thing the system promises them: representation in the halls of power.
Okay, but is this a feature of all democracies, inherent in the nature of a majority-decides system? Not exactly...
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#uspol #democracy

El Ídolo Billy vuelve a Chile este año
Billy Idol ha agendado fecha el 18 de noviembre en Movistar Arena como parte de la gira «It’s a Nice Day To…Tour Again!». La venta de entradas comienza el 11 de agosto a las 11:00 hrs.
La gira también pasarš por México, Brasil, Argentina, Perú y Colombia en latinoamérica.
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It feels as if the scammers don't even try anymore:
Hello, my dearest
My name is Mrs. Theresa Brown. I am a dying woman, and I have decided to donate what I have to a reliable individual who will act as I was told.
I am 69 years old and was diagnosed with cancer about 4 years ago. God has touched me to donate what I have inherited from my late father to you for the good work of God rather than allow my uncle to use my father's hard-earned funds ungodly.
I will …

Engineered over Emergent Communication in MARL for Scalable and Sample-Efficient Cooperative Task Allocation in a Partially Observable Grid
Brennen A. Hill, Mant Koh En Wei, Thangavel Jishnuanandh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02912

Engineered over Emergent Communication in MARL for Scalable and Sample-Efficient Cooperative Task Allocation in a Partially Observable Grid
We compare the efficacy of learned versus engineered communication strategies in a cooperative multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) environment. For the learned approach, we introduce Learned Direct Communication (LDC), where agents generate messages and actions concurrently via a neural network. Our engineered approach, Intention Communication, employs an Imagined Trajectory Generation Module (ITGM) and a Message Generation Network (MGN) to formulate messages based on predicted future sta…