Tootfinder

the prototypical C programmer behavior is "I don't want to learn"; most other things are secondary to that
the better ones at least admit to that

freshmen: Zeggelink's freshmen (1999)
Snapshots of friendships among freshmen majoring in Sociology at the University of Groningen, collected five times over the 1998-1999 year. The direction of an edge indicates that student i is friends with student j, and the edge weight gives their friendship level from 1 (best friend) to 5 (troubled relation). Metadata include gender, age, program type, and smoking behavior.
This network has 34 nodes and 1156 edges.
Tags: Social, O…

Trump’s efforts to disband programs that promote democracy abroad
and to downplay allegations of corruption and human rights abuses in other countries
took on an added dimension this week
when he appeared before Israel’s parliament and called for pardoning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The request to dismiss corruption charges was the latest in a long line of actions reversing America’s long-standing posture as an exporter of democratic values.

Trump’s pardon proposals go global despite allies’ corruption charges
Trump has upended American presidents’ tradition of promoting the rule of law and democracy overseas.

A silent scenery in four acts...
(Selenium-toned[1] 4x6 salt print (still in final wash) plus previous work-in-progress stages... see alt text for details)
The picture/motif itself is one of my personal favorites and was taken 4 years ago in the Alpstein massif, when clouds were spontaneously forming around us, creating a wonderful light/scene/drama and a dear memory... now also as print which likely will/can outlast myself
[1] The tones will become more neutral once dry...…

Polar Filaments Capture High Latitude Solar Poloidal Field Interactions and can Foretell the Future Sunspot Cycle Amplitude before Polar Field Precursors
Srinjana Routh, Shaonwita Pal, Dibyendu Nandy, Subhamoy Chatterjee, Dipankar Banerjee, Mohd. Saleem Khan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12142

Polar Filaments Capture High Latitude Solar Poloidal Field Interactions and can Foretell the Future Sunspot Cycle Amplitude before Polar Field Precursors
Polar fields at the minimum of a sunspot cycle -- which are a manifestation of the radial component of the Sun's poloidal field -- are deemed to be the best indicator of the strength of the toroidal component, and hence the amplitude of the future sunspot cycle. However, the Sun's polar magnetic fields are difficult to constrain with ground-based or space-based observations from near the plane-of-ecliptic. In this context, polar filaments -- dark, elongated structures that overlie polarity inve…

Ever wondered about #arithmetics in #JavaScript?
"For the most part, Javascript #numbers are double-precision floating point, so need to be treated the same as you would floating point…

SocioBench: Modeling Human Behavior in Sociological Surveys with Large Language Models
Jia Wang, Ziyu Zhao, Tingjuntao Ni, Zhongyu Wei
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11131 https://

SocioBench: Modeling Human Behavior in Sociological Surveys with Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) show strong potential for simulating human social behaviors and interactions, yet lack large-scale, systematically constructed benchmarks for evaluating their alignment with real-world social attitudes. To bridge this gap, we introduce SocioBench-a comprehensive benchmark derived from the annually collected, standardized survey data of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). The benchmark aggregates over 480,000 real respondent records from more than 30 co…

A Survey on Parallel Reasoning
Ziqi Wang, Boye Niu, Zipeng Gao, Zhi Zheng, Tong Xu, Linghui Meng, Zhongli Li, Jing Liu, Yilong Chen, Chen Zhu, Hua Wu, Haifeng Wang, Enhong Chen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12164

A Survey on Parallel Reasoning
With the increasing capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), parallel reasoning has emerged as a new inference paradigm that enhances reasoning robustness by concurrently exploring multiple lines of thought before converging on a final answer. It has become a significant trend to explore parallel reasoning to overcome the fragility of standard sequential methods and improve practical performance. In this paper, we aim to survey and summarize the progress and challenges of parallel reasonin…

A young woolly mammoth now known as Yuka
was frozen in the Siberian permafrost for about 40,000 years
before it was discovered by local tusk hunters in 2010.
The hunters soon handed it over to scientists,
who were excited to see its exquisite level of preservation,
with skin, muscle tissue, and even reddish hair intact.
Later research showed that,
while full cloning was impossible,
Yuka’s DNA was in such good condition that some cell nuclei co…

World’s oldest RNA extracted from Ice Age woolly mammoth
Sequencing an ancient creature’s RNA opens up a new window into extinct life.

House Republicans unveiled a new health care proposal Friday
as they aim to address concerns about rising health insurance costs just weeks before enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire.

The legislation would codify and expand health plans for small businesses, fund reductions of premiums for low-income people in the individual health insurance market and increase transparency in prescription drug pricing, according to House Republican leadership aides.

The proposal …

House Republicans unveil health care plan, set up vote for next week
House Republicans unveiled a plan to address rising health insurance costs and extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.