Tootfinder

BNPL lenders like Flex, Zip, and Affirm are now pitching loans for basic household needs; Americans spent $160B through pay-later loans in 2025, up 2x from 2023 (Stacy Cowley/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/17/business/buy-now-pay-later.html

‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Lenders Pitch Loans for Needs Like Electricity and Rent
The rapid growth of pay-later loans raises questions about whether their popularity is driven by consumer preference or desperation.

Chambers has said that he has known since 2015 that he was on the US federal government’s radar,
due to activism against police in Atlanta.
A self-described communist and anti-imperialist, he is heir to one of the richest families in the US,
the owners of Atlanta-based Cox Communications.
He sold stock back to his family worth about $250m in mid-2023 and since then has been funding an estimated 100 projects in 20 countries, Schnabel said.
She said that includes,…

Wife of US heir and activist donor on fighting his extradition to US: ‘It’s incredible that this can happen’
Stella Schnabel says Trump administration is falsely accusing James ‘Fergie’ Chambers of contributing to Hamas

Yvonne Bloor habe ich kürzlich eher zufällig beim Notenstöbern entdeckt: Ihre Musik gefällt mir sehr gut. Studiere gerade "Wedding Song" ein (aus: Heartstrings. Collected Guitar Works, vol. 3). Das Stück gefällt mir sehr gut; hier spielt die Komponistin es selbst, großartige Artikulation und Phrasierung:

In the summer of 2023, gearing up for his bid for a second term, President Joe Biden gathered with a cadre of wealthy donors at a $7.5 million mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut.
As the $25,000-a-seat fundraising dinner began, the president turned to thank his host:
Stephen Mandel,
a billionaire hedge fund manager and devoted Democratic donor.
“I wouldn’t be here, standing here as president of the United States, without a lot of you in this room,”
Biden told the…

How A Hedge Fund Billionaire Became The Democrats’ New Kingmaker
Stephen Mandel is bankrolling a new political apparatus built to “redefine” the Democratic Party — but what does he actually want?

Kumulativer Zubau der #Windenergieleistung in #Deutschland mit Stand vom 31.07.2026.
Summen der Inbetriebnahmen minus Stilllegungen.
Der Datenbestand enthält ggf. unplausible Datensätze.
👉 Zusatzlesestoff: Wie Solarparks Biodiversität fördern können

I wish #mypy would slow down with adding new features to mypyc, and instead focused on fixing the train wreck that mypyc is right now (since 2023 at least). Like, if your code crashes hard with assertions enabled, then it's broken, period. Ignoring proper testing and shoving the issue under the carpet doesn't make it right.
#Python

Titans sign 2023 first-round pick Peter Skoronski to contract extension https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7366580/2026/08/07/titans-peter-skoronski-contract-extension/

Prozess in NÖ - Terroralarm auf Wiener Pride: Zwei Schuldsprüche #News #Nachrichten

An Alabama jury finds the NYT defamed a college basketball player in a 2023 article that wrongly placed him at a deadly shooting and awards $9.25M in damages (Katie Robertson/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/20/bu…

The New York Times Loses Defamation Lawsuit in Alabama
A 2023 article incorrectly reported that a University of Alabama basketball player was at the scene of a deadly shooting. A jury awarded $9.25 million in damages.

Baker Mayfield, Buccaneers agree to 3-year contract extension: Source https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7366483/2026/09/08/baker-mayfield-bucs-contract-extension/

from my link log —
Rust for Morello ARM CHERI: always-on memory safety, even in unsafe code.
https://drops.dagstuhl.de/storage/00lipics/lipics-vol263-ecoop2023/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.39/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.39.pdf

https://www.kalushstalbud.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/horodok-11-of-15-scaled.jpg
Ось так, поступово перебираючи (і маплячи) об'єкти КалушСтальБуд, дійшов до TBF Group. Яка в місті Городок (sic) Львівської області.
Якщо назва …

https://mastodon.social/@PsychedelicInstitute/117133701166362712

#ThursDeath this week is one man project GATEWAY from Bruges. This is some heavy, crushing shit from Belgium. What an LP this is. This is 'Galgendood' from 2023.
https://gatewayband.bandcamp.com/album

ChatGPT is a bullshit generator.
To understand AI, we should think harder about bullshit
-- Submitted by Alan Blackwell on Thu, 09/11/2023
https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/blog/afb21/oops-we-automated-bullshit

#Nordstadtblogger Netzwerk gegen #Antisemitismus #Dortmund organisiert Reihe zum 7. Oktober - Drei Jahre nach dem Terrorangriff der

Drei Jahre nach dem Terrorangriff der Hamas: Erinnerung, Information und Solidarität - Nordstadtblogger
Aus Anlass des dritten Jahrestages des Terrorangriffs in Israel am 7. Oktober 2023 organisiert das Netzwerk zur Bekämpfung von Antisemitismus in Dortmund unter dem Motto „Gemeinsam gegen Antisemitismus“ im Oktober und November 2026 erstmals ein …

Climate alarm!
This is NOT within normal bounds for the Netherlands: the second half of June is now forecasted to become the warmest in 126 years, beating June 2023 by a margin of over 3°C!
24-hour average of 23.4°C, in this forecast.

FIling: Lone Palm Labs, the startup behind friend-focused photo sharing app Retro, raised a $21M Series A from Thrive Capital and others (Sydney Bradley/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/alternative-social-media-ap…

Instagram alternative Retro raises $21M for close friends sharing
In 2023, ex-Instagram employees launched a new app called Retro. It's one of many new social media apps taking on Big Tech platforms.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #MidsummerDreaming
Midsummer Dreaming:
🎵 Sight-Reading (2023)
#MidsummerDreaming

Guardrails enable you to defend against prompt injection or jailbreak attacks by your coding agents. In our tutorial on agentic software engineering, we provide an overview of the options available to you for this purpose: https://agentic-software-engineering.r

The EU antitrust watchdog hits Vivendi with additional charges for its 2023 Lagardere purchase, saying Vivendi made the deal before getting approval (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/viven…

UPLOAD-ANYON: Progress Towards an Optimised Twisted Anyon Cavity with High-Sensitivity AM-Noise Detection for an Ultralight Axion Dark Matter Search
Robert Crew, Emma Paterson, Maxim Goryachev, Eugene Ivanov, Pashupati Dhakal, Tugrul Talha Ersoz, Michael Tobar, Jeremy Bourhill
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19225 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.19225 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.19225
arXiv:2608.19225v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We propose a superconducting single-mode microwave haloscope based on helical cavity resonators for the detection of ultralight dark matter axions over the mass range $10^{-18}$ to $10^{-13}\,\mathrm{eV}$. Building on the single-mode helical-cavity concept introduced by Bourhill et al. [Phys. Rev. D 108, 052014 (2023); arXiv:2208.01640], we use an inverse-design framework to develop practical resonator geometries compatible with superconducting niobium fabrication. The optimisation employs a figure of merit derived to minimise the measurement time required to achieve a fixed experimental sensitivity. Relative to the heuristic M\"obius-geometry benchmark, the best subtractively manufacturable bulk-niobium design achieves a figure of merit more than three orders of magnitude larger. An experimentally informed microwave interferometric readout model, incorporating measured electronics noise and active suppression of pump amplitude noise, is used to project the sensitivity of the proposed experiment. For an acquisition time of three months, the haloscope is projected to reach $g_{a\gamma\gamma}<10^{-11}\,\mathrm{GeV}^{-1}$ across more than four orders of magnitude in axion mass. The projected sensitivity extends approximately one order of magnitude below the current exclusion limits set by CAST, providing a practical pathway towards a high-sensitivity direct search for ultralight dark matter axions.
toXiv_bot_toot

Titans waive QB Will Levis, ending 3-year tenure with franchise: Source https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7550710/2026/08/30/will-levis-titans-waive-nfl/

Informal initiatives have been launched in recent years to address broader military uses of AI and autonomy,
such as for target generation and decision support.
One such effort is the Netherlands and South Korea-led REAIM
(Responsible AI in the Military Domain).
REAIM has held three international summits since 2023 to promote awareness and international engagement,
each generating important outcome documents.
The U.N. General Assembly has also entered thi…

Expert Backgrounder: What to Watch for at This Week’s Pivotal International Meeting on Autonomous Weapons
A United Nations gathering this week could prove pivotal for the international governance of lethal autonomous weapon systems.

from my link log —
Speeding up the JavaScript ecosystem: polyfills gone rogue.
https://marvinh.dev/blog/speeding-up-javascript-ecosystem-part-6/
saved 2023-09-21

Speeding up the JavaScript ecosystem - Polyfills gone rogue
Many popular npm packages depend on 6-8x more packages than they need to. Most of these are unnecessary polyfills and it's one of the key reasons node_modules folders are so large. The eslint ecosystem seems to be most affected by this.

"Rhossi, a rare sea turtle, recovers after 5,000-mile trek from Wales to Texas"
#US #USA #America #Turtles

Rhossi, a rare sea turtle, recovers after 5,000-mile trek from Wales to Texas
Kemp’s ridley sea turtle, near death on Welsh beach in 2023, is thriving in Houston despite lingering pneumonia

"PublicSquare, the MAGA-branded marketplace that launched with Donald Trump Jr. chanting "USA, USA" on the New York Stock Exchange floor in 2023, has all but collapsed, and the president's eldest son cashed fat checks the entire way down. [I]ts stock has cratered a jaw-dropping 99%. The New York Stock Exchange has also warned it may delist the company because of its poor performance."
Trump Jr. quietly banked $42k a month as MAGA Amazon bled dry: report - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-jr-2677741627/

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6MusicArtistCollection
Suede & BBC Concert Orchestra:
🎵 She's In Fashion (Radio 2 Piano Room, 21 Feb 2023)
#Suede #BBCConcertOrchestra

An older video that I haven't yet posted. For #FootpathFriday.
Let's see if the video support on Mastodon is better now.
Latrabjarg, 2023. One of my all-time favourite hikes. A bit sentimental, because my last solo trip before moving back to Germany.
#Iceland #Mistodon #CloudInversion

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #ChrisHawkins
Beck:
🎵 Loser
#Beck
https://wickit.bandcamp.com/track/eazy-e-vs-beck-loser-in-the-hood-wick-it-blend-2023
https://open.spotify.com/track/5NTZM8YYeKM2YsGSffVIge