Tootfinder

African defense tech company Terra Industries, founded in 2024, raised a $52M seed round from 8VC and others, and says it's on track to book $100M in contracts (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/17/terr

Terra Industries closes $52M seed round to build defense infrastructure for the Global South | TechCrunch
African defense tech company Terra Industries announced an additional $18 million in funding, bringing its seed round to $52 million.

"which emojis are used the least often?" - Great question, and we rarely find data on this! But luckily, we studied this at least for two corpora with German users (and admittedly only for face emojis). So: Many object or symbol emojis (from the "tail end" of the emoji list) are very, very rarely used. Overall, faces and hearts are the most frequent. Among the face emojis, we compiled the full list of usages from a huge Twitter corpus (semi-public communication, 2014-2022) and a much small WhatsApp chat corpus (private or group communication). You can find the frequencies in this table linked below (and sort by frequency by clicking on the column). The least frequent face emoji in the large corpus was the "frowning face with open mouth" 😦, which most people have never seen before. Personally, I think it's pretty ambiguous and not very useful, as there are better emojis for anything it might express. #emojis #linguistics #WorldEmojiDay
https://tscheffler.github.io/2024-Face-Emoji-Norming/ratings.html

VC funding in physical AI companies totaled $47.4B across 521 deals in H1, up 80% from H1 2025, and more than the $41.9B invested from 2022 to 2024 (Mary Ann Azevedo/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/physical-ai-funding-startups…

VCs Pour Billions Into Physical AI As The Next Wave Of AI Investing Takes Shape
In the first half of 2026, global venture funding in the physical AI space totaled $47.4 billion across 521 deals, per Crunchbase data. That’s up dramatically — almost 4x — compared to the second half of 2025 when startups in the sector raised $12 billion across 470 deals.

He won't declare actions for an #EmergencyBrake though. Because 'growth'.
Headline: Andy Burnham to chair emergency Cobra meeting amid extreme heat.
https://gettingreal.org.uk/2024/05/02/

The Emergency Brake | Getting Real about the Crises Facing the UK
Imagine that you are in a vehicle, going fast towards an immovable barrier. What do you do? Press the accelerator harder

August 2026 was the hottest on record globally, followed by 2023, 2024, and 2025.
The temperature was well over 1.5°C above pre-industrial.
From Copernicus ECMWF
#globalwarming #ClimateChange

Jährlicher Zubau und Rückbau von #Balkonsolarleistung in Deutschland mit Stand vom 31.07.2026.
Unplausible Inbetriebnahmedaten von 1900 bis 2017 wurden durch das Registrierungsdatum der #Steckersolaranlage ersetzt.
👉 Zusatzlesestoff:

75-year-old John Gannon is a lifelong Republican who voted for President Trump says he now regrets that decision after his fiancée was arrested by ICE in Houston.
Video Source
https://reddit.com/comments/1vhb0ns
John Gannon, a lifelong Republican who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, says he…

ooh, gillian welch & david rawlings have been playing another new song on tour recently (along with "midnight bones"), called "goodnight." looks like it was debuted in 2024. part of the encore on this recent tape: https://archive.org/details/gillianiowa

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings Hancher Auditorium Iowa City IA 8-5-2026
Gillian Welch and David Rawlings live at Hancher Auditorium in Iowa City on August 5th 2026. Taped from front row center of the lower balcony. 

from my link log —
The X window system at 40.
https://blog.dshr.org/2024/07/x-window-system-at-40.html
saved 2024-07-04 https://

X Window System At 40
X11R1 on Sun Techfury90 CC0 I apologize that this post is a little late. On 19 th June the X Window System celebrated its 40th birthday. W...

EU's race for lithium and rare earths sidelined calls to reduce consumption, finds study #EU

EU's race for lithium and rare earths sidelined calls to reduce consumption, finds study
In 2024, the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) came into force. The regulation is intended to secure Europe's supply of critical raw materials, especially minerals and metals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. The EU is therefore focusing on reducing its dependence on third countries such as China, boosting domestic minerals and metals production, and expanding recycling. In a study published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environme…

The US DOJ and TikTok reach a $400M settlement to resolve allegations TikTok violated COPPA; the DOJ filed the lawsuit in 2024 (Ashley Gold/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/21/doj-tiktok-biden-lawsuit-settlement

Scoop: DOJ, TikTok settle for $400 million in children's privacy suit
The settlement ends a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration.

On UK Central Heating Season (2024) - When does the UK home heating season run? #Fediverse #heating #research -

On UK Central Heating Season (2024)
When does the UK home heating season run? #Fediverse #heating #research

Since China offered a truce in the trade war last October following its threat to deprive the United States of rare-earth magnets,
the Trump administration has been happy to stop escalating.
After all, imports from China have been falling, down by 40% in the year to June, compared with the same period in 2024.
Best to declare victory and call it a day.
But the US hasn’t won this battle
– and there’s strong evidence to show it’s afraid to really try.
Last …

Is the US actually too chicken to take on China for trade?
A weak yuan guarantees Beijing massive trade surplus even as the White House tries tamp down on Chinese imports

Started as a "cozy afternoon MTB #cycling loop" and ended with apersonal record over 40km 🤔
Fun fact: the whole loop was exactly 40.01km long. But it was a good ride and I feel so much better now.
#bikteooter

Unfortunately a bit higher than my earlier estimate: the August average atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa was 427.55 ppm, that's around 2.1 ppm higher than last year.
#co2 #emissions #ClimateChange

On the good news & how to front: Shared learning in organizing to #MakePollutersPay - 2 success stories, and #APEN shares their playbook:
https://www.

Campaign Playbook: How Richmond Made Polluters Pay - APEN Action
In 2024, a coalition of residents, community organizations, unions, and workers in the refinery town of Richmond, California, took on the city’s biggest polluter — the Chevron Richmond Refinery — with a historic refinery tax measure. The Polluters Pay measure was led by environmental justice groups Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) Action and Communities for […]

On the good news & how to front: Shared learning in organizing to #MakePollutersPay - 2 success stories, and #APEN shares their playbook:
https://www.

Campaign Playbook: How Richmond Made Polluters Pay - APEN Action
In 2024, a coalition of residents, community organizations, unions, and workers in the refinery town of Richmond, California, took on the city’s biggest polluter — the Chevron Richmond Refinery — with a historic refinery tax measure. The Polluters Pay measure was led by environmental justice groups Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) Action and Communities for […]

Der #AI-Hype kennt offenbar keine Grenzen....

"Ørsted turns on 500 MWh battery project with co-located solar in Texas"
#US #USA #America #Teax

Ørsted turns on 500 MWh battery project with co-located solar in Texas - pv magazine Global
The Old 300 Storage project has reached commercial operations and is now fully integrated with the ERCOT grid, using made-in-America Tesla battery energy storage systems (BESS). It is co-located with a 430 MW solar project that was switched on in 2024.

📅 Mi, 24.6. – 10:00 Uhr bis 12:00
Seminar: Erste Schritte auf dem Weg zur Erarbeitung eines Notfallplans
👉 Weitere Infos: https://nfdi4culture.de/id/E6826
📝 Anmeldung:

new gorgeous solo zither tape by drew gardner, recorded live on the frow show in 2024. https://worriedsongs.bandcamp.com/album/white-clouds-for-thousands-of-miles

POL-LG: Erfolgreicher Schlag gegen international agierende Rauschgifthändler Lüneburg (ots) - Gemeinsame Pressemitteilung der Staatsanwaltschaft Stade und der Zentralen Kriminalinspektion Lüneburg Bei der ZKI Lüneburg wurde unter Sachleitung der Staatsanwaltschaft Stade seit Oktober 2024 ein Ermittlungsverfahren wegen der ... https://www.

Organizational Technology Ladders: Remote Work and Generative AI Adoption
Gregor Schubert
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11626 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.11626 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.11626
arXiv:2608.11626v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This study proposes that firms move along an "organizational technology ladder": adopting one technology transforms hiring and work processes and builds skills and organizational capital that change the cost of adopting subsequent technologies. I study how firms' adoption of remote work technology during the COVID-19 period shaped later uptake of generative AI. Using U.S. job-posting data and an instrumental-variables strategy based on predicted differences in labor-market pressure to offer remote work, I estimate that a 10 percentage point increase in remote hiring in 2021-2022 increases the share of job postings mentioning generative AI in 2023-2024 by 0.4 percentage points across firms and 0.7 percentage points across occupations within firms. I provide evidence on mechanisms consistent with a technology-ladder channel: remote work adoption shifts hiring toward technical and managerial capabilities that predict faster conversion of generative AI exposure into adoption. Firms with return-to-office mandates---interpreted as revealing low remote productivity---exhibit a substantially larger response of generative AI adoption to remote work, consistent with an organizational frictions channel.
toXiv_bot_toot

I was in the Kawartha region this weekend and randomly drove down a road where I saw a bunch of unhinged signs about paying no taxes and MANY confederate flags.
We don't see a lot of those flags in Canada so I got curious.
Turns out the Guardian made an article on it.
https://www.

With the death of the Belgian theoretical physicist François #Englert on 18 June at the age of 93 - https://home.cern/francois-englert-1932-2026/ - all three 'fathers' of the Brout-Englert-Higgs field have passed away: Englert's associate Robert Brout had died in 2011, its independent proposer Peter Higgs in 2024. Particles thus no longer have mass: hold them tight ...

The US DOJ and TikTok reach a $400M settlement to resolve allegations TikTok violated COPPA; the DOJ filed the lawsuit in 2024 (Ashley Gold/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2026/08/21/doj-tiktok-biden-lawsuit-settlement

Scoop: DOJ, TikTok settle for $400 million in children's privacy suit
The settlement ends a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration.

I've 884 pics from Aug. 2024 alone from #India visit. Already reviewed most of them but dropping a third would still leave me 583. At least a half of those are worth publicly sharing, but I doubt I'll ever get around to sharing even 100.
So much beauty will stay unshared. 😥
#photography #dilemma

In 2025, Article 19 documented 69 cases of Mexican officials' use of lawsuits and other legal tools against journalists, more than triple the number in 2024 (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/20…

Mexico’s Laws Have a New Target: Journalists
Politicians and officials in Mexico are using the country’s laws to intimidate critics and the media, forcing them into censorship and blunting scrutiny.

Affordability concerns are even more important to voters than in 2024 (FiftyPlusOne)
https://blog.fiftyplusone.news/p/affordability-concerns-are-even-more
http://www.memeorandum.com/260807/p85#a260807p85

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MiddayShow
The Psychedelic Furs:
🎵 The Ghost in You
#ThePsychedelicFurs
https://glennlimbaga.bandcamp.com/track/the-psychedelic-furs-the-ghost-in-you-glenn-limbaga-2024-rework
https://open.spotify.com/track/04BQXS1HwzNpfZ2Wvw2RIy

Gas prices were a staple of GOP ads in 2024. Now it's Democrats' turn. (Jessica Piper/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/19/gas-prices-midterms-affordability-ads-01041175
http://www.memeorandum.com/260819/p9#a260819p9

W sobotę 27 czerwca na kiermaszu w trakcie Palestine Solidarity Days w Warszawie będą do nabycia 3 egzemplarze mojego DIY-owego albumu pt. “Voices Against”.
Album zawiera 19 zdjęć 13x18 i eksploruje różne formy sprzeciwu wobec ludobójstwa na narodzie palestyńskim, które udokumentowałem od maja 2024 do stycznia 2026 - od protestów i demonstracji, przez sztukę uliczną, po akcje bezpośrednie. Każdy egzemplarz jest opieczętowany, ponumerowany, ręcznie opisany i opakowany w eleganckie pudełko.
Dochód z jego sprzedaży zostanie przekazany na Fundusz Ocalałych ze Strefy Gazy uruchomiony przez Polsko-Palestyńską Organizację Na Rzecz Sprawiedliwości “Kaktus”.
Warszawa, Plac Zabaw nad Wisłą, od godz. 12.
Zapraszam do nabycia 🙂

Straks om 2015 op Das Erste, maar al te zien in de ardmediathek.de:
#Tatort: Roomservice - #ARD #SWR #crimi #krimi #Sonntagskrimi

"Don't you dare come near me." ⚠️ 🐕
#throwback Aug. 19, 2024 #Bangalore #India
#photography #dog #strayDog #tbt #throwbackThursday