Tootfinder

Just finished "Endgames" by Ru Xu, sequel to "Newsprints." I was happy to see the characters from the first book get their endings, but Xu feels incredibly out of her depth writing about the politics of empire and the power/complicity of the press, which completely dampened my enjoyment.
As just one example, there's a ton of interesting nuance to explore behind the idea of a disabled imperial ruler and how disadvantage/persecution (from which you have been effectively shielded) does not justify harming others. This book explores none of that.
I think it does serve as a great example of how severely one limits one's own imagination when one buys into the myth of nationhood as natural/inevitable/good. It's not that Xu's politics are especially authoritarian, I think, but that she's just (been kept?) resoundingly naïve, and so her plot resolution feels childish (or perhaps that's an insult to children).
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Merging Bodies, Dividing Conflict: Body-Swapping in Mixed Reality Increases Closeness Yet Weakens the Joint Simon Effect
Yuan He, Brendan Rooney, Rachel McDonnell
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09815

Merging Bodies, Dividing Conflict: Body-Swapping in Mixed Reality Increases Closeness Yet Weakens the Joint Simon Effect
Mixed Reality (MR) presents novel opportunities to investigate how individuals perceive themselves and others during shared, augmented experiences within a common physical environment. Previous research has demonstrated that users can embody avatars in MR, temporarily extending their sense of self. However, there has been limited exploration of body-swapping, a condition in which two individuals simultaneously inhabit each other's avatars, and its potential effects on social interaction in imme…

One baby Jesus lies in a manger in the snow, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket with his wrists zip-tied.
Mary stands nearby outside the Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois, wearing a plastic gas mask and flanked by Roman soldiers in tactical vests labeled “ICE.”
In another Chicago suburb, not far from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that has drawn protests over detentions, a sign at the manger outside the Urban Village Church says
“Due to ICE activit…

Church nativity displays on immigration draw praise, outrage in Illinois and Massachusetts
Nativity scenes at some churches are sparking fierce debates. At Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois, the baby Jesus lies with zip-tied wrists in the kind of emergency blankets given ICE detainees. At St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, the manger sits empty, beneath a sign reading “ICE was here.” Supporters say Jesus, Mary and Joseph were refugees, comparing them to immigrant communities facing federal raids. Critics call the displays political and sacrilegious. The controver…

No matter how you identify, whether you are transgender, non-binary, intersex, queer, non-monogamous, or beyond any label, be true to yourself and embrace your identity with pride.
:heart_trans: 🏳️‍⚧️ :nonbinary_flag: :bisexual_pride: :genderfluid_flag: 🏳️‍🌈
What truly matters is coming from a place of kindness, respect, and openness. Celebrate your authentic self and extend that same warmth and welcome to others in all their beautiful diversity.

Interactive Learning for LLM Reasoning
Hehai Lin, Shilei Cao, Minzhi Li, Sudong Wang, Haotian Wu, Linyi Yang, Juepeng Zheng, Chengwei Qin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26306 https:…

Interactive Learning for LLM Reasoning
Existing multi-agent learning approaches have developed interactive training environments to explicitly promote collaboration among multiple Large Language Models (LLMs), thereby constructing stronger multi-agent systems (MAS). However, during inference, they require re-executing the MAS to obtain final solutions, which diverges from human cognition that individuals can enhance their reasoning capabilities through interactions with others and resolve questions independently in the future. To in…

In what Arizona’s attorney general slammed as an
“unacceptable and outrageous” act of “unchecked aggression,”
a federal immigration officer fired pepper spray toward recently sworn-in Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva
during a Friday raid on a Tucson restaurant.
Grijalva (D-Ariz.) wrote on social media that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers
“just conducted a raid by Taco Giro in Tucson
— a small mom-and-pop restaurant that has served our c…

ICE Goons Pepper Spray Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva During Tucson Raid | Common Dreams
"If federal agents are brazen enough to fire pellets directly at a member of Congress, imagine how they behave when encountering defenseless members of our community," Grijalva said.

New book on the history of McGill University - written and edited by historians, not the university's comms department. I wrote a chapter on how Indigenous dispossession and colonial politicians saved McGill when it was in danger of going broke. Others cover McGill's ties to chattel slavery, Japanese exclusion, research of various sorts, student lives, queer experiences, and more.
Check it out:

Every friggin' day on here. "hey my company is hiring!"
I look at the job posting and...

With the advent of Blacksky and Northsky, I was seriously considering creating a bsky account and checking things out over there. Turns out I don't need to after all!
https://mastodon.murkworks.net/@moira/115402352112431443

Oral arguments on tariffs are set for Nov 5 and [Trump] plans to show up in person.
I think there’s a good chance he doesn’t lose outright because Roberts et al like empowering him,
but if he thought he was on stronger footing he probably wouldn’t be the first president ever to go to oral arguments
-- Connor Lynch