Tootfinder

Spot the difference from yesterday? More framSpot the difference from yesterday? More framework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.ework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.

Now this was a gorgeous cycling loop. Temperature was around freezing but luckily just few wind. As you see, the weather was ace. Clouds and fog stayed in the north 🌞
Also tried Knee warmers, which was just right! A very good buy!
I just need a solution against freezing toes. @… ,I bought neoprene toe warmer! The shoes are just a bit tight then, …

After #Trump finally crashes and burns (I'm still saying I don't think he makes it to the mid terms, and I think it's more than possible he won't make it to the end of the year) we'll hear a lot of people say, "the system worked!" Today people are already talking about "saving democracy" by fighting back. This will become a big rally cry to vote (for Democrats, specifically), and the complete failure of the system will be held up as the best evidence for even greater investment in it.
I just want to point out that American democracy gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile, who, before being elected was already a well known sexual predator, and who made the campaign promise to commit genocide. He then preceded to commit genocide. And like, I don't care that he's "only" kidnaped and disappeared a few thousand brown people. That's still genocide. Even if you don't kill every member of a targeted group, any attempt to do so is still "committing genocide." Trump said he would commit genocide, then he hired all the "let's go do a race war" guys he could find and *paid* them to go do a race war. And, even now as this deranged monster is crashing out, he is still authorized to use the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
He committed genocide during his first term when his administration separated migrant parents and children, then adopted those children out to other parents. That's technically genocide. The point was to destroy the very people been sending right wing terror squads after.
There was a peaceful hand over of power to a known Russian asset *twice*, and the second time he'd already committed *at least one* act of genocide *and* destroyed cultural heritage sites (oh yeah, he also destroyed indigenous grave sites, in case you forgot, during his first term).
All of this was allowed because the system is set up to protect exactly these types of people, because *exactly* these types of people are *the entire power structure*.
Going back to that system means going back to exactly the system that gave nuclear weapons to a pedophile *TWICE*.
I'm already seeing the attempts to pull people back, the congratulations as we enter the final phase, the belief that getting Trump out will let us all get back to normal. Normal. The normal that lead here in the first place. I can already see the brunch reservations being made. When Trump is over, we will be told we won. We will be told that it's time to go back to sleep.
When they tell you everything worked, everything is better, that we can stop because we won, tell them "fuck you! Never again means never again." Destroy every system that ever gave these people power, that ever protected them from consequences, that ever let them hide what they were doing.
These democrats funded a genocide abroad and laid the groundwork for genocide at home. They protected these predators, for years. The whole power structure is guilty. As these files implicate so many powerful people, they're trying to shove everything back in the box. After all the suffering, after we've finally made it clear that we are the once with the power, only now they're willing to sacrifice Trump to calm us all down.
No, that's a good start but it can't be the end.
Winning can't be enough to quench that rage. Keep it burning. When this is over, let victory fan that anger until every institution that made this possible lies in ashes. Burn it all down and salt the earth. Taking down Trump is a great start, but it's not time to give up until this isn't possible again.
#USPol

The White House on Monday started tearing down part of the East Wing, the traditional base of operations for the first lady, to build Donald Trump’s $250 million ballroom
despite lacking approval for construction from the federal agencies that oversee such projects.
Dramatic photos of the demolition work showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground.

White House starts East Wing demolition for Trump's ballroom
The White House has started tearing down part of the East Wing to build the ballroom President Donald Trump wants added to the building. Demolition started Monday. Dramatic photos showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a nearby park. The Republican president has said he's adding a 90,000-square-foot ballroom because the East Room, the largest room in the White House with an appro…

We watched the Joker ironically and then went on YouTube to watch whatever people made about the movie there back in the day, landed in the worst slop bubble, and dug so deep until we hit “JOKER QUOTES ABOUT WOMEN” and these videos could be classified as performance art, they're pure gold

City Random Manners ✴️
城市随机行为 ✴️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford Pan 100
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Fat Putin's ego is literally tearing down the government, spending an unauthorized $250M to destroy the East wing of the White House.
☑️ The White House starts demolishing part of the East Wing to build Trump's ballroom
https://apnews.com/article/trum…

White House starts East Wing demolition for Trump's ballroom
The White House has started tearing down part of the East Wing to build the ballroom President Donald Trump wants added to the building. Demolition started Monday. Dramatic photos showed construction equipment tearing into the East Wing façade and windows and other building parts in tatters on the ground. Some reporters watched from a nearby park. The Republican president has said he's adding a 90,000-square-foot ballroom because the East Room, the largest room in the White House with an appro…

#Theia, the giant impactor that created the Moon, and Earth were neighbors! Read more about Theia's likely "birthplace" in the inner Solar System here: https://www.mps.mpg.de/theia-and-earth-wer

Q&A with iRobot co-founder Colin Angle on the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy, regulatory pressure that killed Amazon's deal, his new robotics startup, and more (Connie Loizos/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/12/20/it-f

'It felt so wrong': Colin Angle on iRobot, the FTC, and the Amazon deal that never was | TechCrunch
The iRobot founder opens up about the 18-month regulatory process that he says doomed the Roomba maker -- and what it means for American innovation.

Which version best conveys the message "ISO 8601. Every over date/time format is inferior"?
Based on different versions of the original logo I made multiple attempts. One of them will become a sticker. White on red, Blue on White or White on Blue?
#iso8601 #iso8601ultras

"In Phrack Magazine, this author learned at the end of the 1990s the subtle art of smashing the stack, an exploit that would become the starting point of many a computer security book afterward.
There is one magazine that has been around for a decade: the “International Journal of Proof-of-Concept or Get The Fuck Out”, or “PoC||GTFO”.
(I should have probably warned readers about the profanity in the title, but nah, I assume them to be adults at this point.)"

Pastor Manul Laphroaig, T.G. S.B.
Paraphrasing a well-known software mogul who shall remain nameless in the pages of this magazine, insecure software is eating the world. The reasons of such sad state of things are varied and range from social to economic; the technological aspect is usually the one that concerns me the least. In this sea of unusable things and insecure networks, there is a “subculture” (a horrible word, but bear with me) of highly skilled individuals who teach each other how broken those things are. And ye…

Hey all, there are some photos from a hike in the #schwarzwald
Actually we thought that it would just take us less than an hour - but it wasn't simply a straight walk :-D
It was raining from time to time - which was indeed pretty cool. A) there was noone around except us and B) the colors were often just insane. Fully saturated green, the brown from the wood - and sometimes…

As UK politics turns both right and left, how do we get degrowth onto the agenda?
By Mark H Burton In the series, Prospects for Degrowth The last few weeks have seen two opposing developments in British politics, both in the context of the Starmer Labour government and its failure to address the real issues facing people and planet. On the one hand we have seen the continuing rise of the far right Reform UK party…

As UK politics turns both right and left, how do we get degrowth onto the agenda?
By Mark H Burton In the series, Prospects for Degrowth The last few weeks have seen two opposing developments in British politics, both in the context of the Starmer Labour government and its failu…

Today’s plan: buttress a sagging shelf in my daughter’s closet. Bought some new brackets & thought it’d be pretty straightforward.
However, the vertical foundational wood piece might be overlapping the edge of a stud, but is more edge proximate.
Then the wood rail that the shelf sat upon, is not mounted to the wall, but instead to the foundational piece, leaving a gap between it and the wall and, crucially, meaning that any bracket would not be level with the wall, sagging in…

Puget Sound marine layer with an extremely well defined edge. Maybe a hundred feet high, and in about the same horizontal distance you go from pea soup to a bright sunny day with clear blue skies

Good Morning #Canada
In July 1871, the City of Victoria officially became the capital of British Columbia, when the province joined the rest of Canada. At the time, the city was larger than Vancouver and had served as the most important settlement in the area for decades. The Colony of Vancouver Island also stamped their little feet and demanded that Victoria be designated as the capital in return for the island to join with the mainland to become part of Canada. Captain James Cook was the first British person to set foot on Vancouver Island in 1778, and in 1843, Fort Victoria was established by the Hudson's Bay Company. There is a long history of Vancouver Island serving as a naval base, and today, Victoria is the home of Canada’s Pacific Coast naval and military headquarters in nearby Esquimalt. Victoria is a top tourist destination and is regularly rated top 5 worldwide as an awesome place to live.
#CanadaIsAwesome #CanadianCapitals
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/victoria-bc

Well, a little success, a little failure.
The box with a NeoPixel matrix on the back and a USB battery inside (and a microcontroller) works great!
But I did not bungee it to the bike rack so it flew off, hit the road, the lid broke off, and the MIK adapter also broke.
I bungee corded it into place and it's good now... but the box is busted so I'll have to come up with another solution.

The design and reconstructible history of the Mayan eclipse table of the Dresden Codex: #Maya eclipse tables: #eclipse tables in the #DresdenCodex were based on lunar tables and adjusted for slippage over time.

Here We Goooo: Three keys to the game for the Cowboys against the Eagles https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/here-we-goooo-three-keys-to-the-game-for-the-cowboys-against-the-eagles

"If any other group arrived into a neighborhood carrying long guns, deploying chemical weapons, violently engaging and then taking people away with no warrants nor apparent legal reason, we would dispatch SWAT, as SWAT has the training to defuse and deescalate such situations."
https://

Local Law Enforcement's Challenge: Uphold the Law, Even Against the Feds
in the absence of action, civilians will fill the void I do want to write something not so serious, maybe even funny, here soon. But today, I think the police have to do a very hard and necessary thing: defend Americans against their federal government. If any other group arrived

A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in
the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the
rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between
the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be
penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such
uncontrollable physical phenomena.
-- Donald A. Metz

The birth of the Web — The World Wide Web was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 while working at CERN
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989, while working at CERN. The web was originally conceived and developed to meet the demand for automated information-sharing between scientists in universities and institutes around the world.
🌐

Chart of the week: Will Ukraine’s central bank weaken the hryvnia?: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/chart-of-the-week-will.html

minimizing the literal nazi talk from a potential key Trump person… again.
I don't think the American media will ever learn. The day they 'resist' as they are taken off the air by the fully authoritarian regime they'll probably say something like:
"today, in a controversial act, the administration declared that this news channel broadcast license has been changed. The new license will only allow reruns of the Presidents past speeches to play 24/7. After an immediate stay was requested by this station, the Supreme Court has ruled the change to be lawful. Goodnight America.”
#trump #TheAmericanFascist
https://flipboard.com/@npr/politics-v8m4p3ukz/-/a-L0fqOCw2R9S7wUBllP74TQ:a:3195441-/0

It's been a week since I watched this episode, and I still giggle at this scene about once per day.
[I read a lot of Mad Magazine in my youth.]

A look at the system for distribution of direct media subsidies developed for the government of Denmark, which spends ~0.2% of its GDP on direct media subsidies (Rasmus Kleis Nielsen/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2…

As the U.S. starves its public media, Denmark wants to figure out a better way to subsidize private news publishers
"A foundation can pick winners on the basis of its own values and priorities and support them from private sources. But if the state does the same with public funds, we risk the appearance (or even worse, the reality) of politicians picking winners on the basis of their own ad hoc, pa…

Series C, Episode 06 - City at the Edge of the World
AVON: Seems we're not the only strangers on this planet.
CALLY: That could explain a lot.
AVON: The woman is still with us. Is she trying to bluff her way out?
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/306/284 B7B3

EA schaltet "The Sims Mobile" ab
Ein Mobilableger der Spielereihe "Die Sims" ist bald nicht mehr spielbar: "The Sims Mobile" wird komplett abgeschaltet. Gekaufte Inhalte gehen verloren.
https://www.

I'm so looking forward to this:
50th Anniversary of The Dismissal. This will be a fascinating symposium -
registration is free or by donation
Event Overview
On 11 November 1975, the dismissal of the Whitlam Government plunged the nation into a political crisis.
Fifty years on, the events of November 1975 remain the most contested and consequential in Australian political history.
This one-day symposium, presented by the Whitlam Institute within Western…

The Whitlam Dismissal and the Crisis of November 1975
A one-day symposium on the most infamous Constitutional crisis in Australian political history: the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam.

Some years back my wife made the front page of the Wall St. Journal. They did a piece about how she made up fake data (names, locations, dates, CV, etc) to feed to social media in order to disrupt data linking.
We are one of the few places that has a paper copy of the highly prescient HEW report from 1973 that warned of the dangers of the now ubiquitous practice of data linking.
"Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens: Report of the HEW Advisory Committee on Automate…

#TIL: von der reihe "Mistress of the Art of Death" von Ariana Franklin ist 2020 noch ein fünfter band erschienen!
https://www.goodreads.com/series/44043-mistress-of-th…

"The victims of war-time atrocities on all sides also have something in common. They are cut out of the top-down deal. Civilians were bombed, children were starved, and prisoners were tortured, yet the perpetrators escape punishment. War criminals continue ruling and enjoying the perks of power. Survivors and their families are denied justice" -- @…

Justice vs Peace
As the world watches the shaky ceasefire in Gaza, the issues of peace and justice intermingle, strain, and collide. For those who work on conflicts, these are familiar tensions, but the underlying debates rarely get wider attention. The basic issue is this: to get any kind of peace deal in

A new open letter urging the EU to stick to hard climate targets was signed by nearly 2200 international scientists: https://zenodo.org/records/17399532
Please spread the word widely and send towards your representatives for the upcoming decision.

Their father, who they thought was human, revealed himself to be a man of the soil once drunk. Crackling browns darkened by wine dribbling down his chin, writhing with small insects and budding flora. They couldn't bear laying eyes on his breath any longer, the flood was all of God's open might they could handle.

Microsoft Open-Source Programs Office Director Stacy Haffner, and Developer Community VP Scott Hanselman announced today in the wake of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision, that they have just released the source code for the games Zork 1-3 under a MIT open-source license.
"Preserving code that shaped generations: Zork I, II, and III go Open Source"

It’s fitting RFK is maliciously conforming to a promise he made to a Republican senator / doctor in order to get his confirmation vote.
https://archive.is/aEILc#selection-589.0-595.236:~:text=The updated,website,-.
Liar’s gonna lie and t…

Okay, initial thoughts on the Thinkpad P14s Gen 6:
- The laptop is better behaved thermally and noise-wise than the X1C with the Intel Core 155U.
- The CPU and GPU seem to be sipping power (3W/3W) which is nice. I haven't punched the CPU yet with something like a vicious `ffmpeg` AV1 encode.
- Replacing RAM/NVMe isn't too painful, the screws in the bottom case of the laptop are captive. Still have to deal with some plastic clips.
- The screen is fine, nothing to…

Ah yeah! @…’s horror advent calendar has arrived 🙌
Here’s a little taste from last year..

My new piece.
'As UK politics turns both right and left, how do we get degrowth onto the agenda?'
The problem is that neither of the two main British left alternatives (#GreenParty and nascent #YourParty) appears to be sufficiently facing up to the fundamental issue of

As UK politics turns both right and left, how do we get degrowth onto the agenda?
By Mark H Burton In the series, Prospects for Degrowth The last few weeks have seen two opposing developments in British politics, both in the context of the Starmer Labour government and its failu…

The Bills might be in trouble, plus drama in Laker-land https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6824633/2025/11/21/bills-texans-josh-allen-the-pulse/

Who would have guessed.
Big Tech is paying millions to train teachers on AI, in a push to bring chatbots into classrooms
https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-teacher-union-microsoft-f7554b6550fb90519dd8129acac8e2…

Exhibition to explore the making of America to feature rare Declaration of Independence https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/about/news/exhibition-to-explore-the-making-of-america-to-feature-rare-declaration-of-…

Exhibition to explore the making of America to feature rare Declaration of Independence - The National Archives
The National Archives can today announce a major exhibition exploring the birth of the United States of America to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 2026. 

So in another dream I just woke up from, I was talking to someone about "the idea problem" (that it's becoming harder to monitize ideas, from a vox article written by an AI cooked reporter).
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/executive-disorder-white-house-weekly-46-313675864/
Basically, I was arguing that the majority of inventions target men because patriarchy puts economic control in men's hands. As men have started to help more with childcare, there have been more inventions related to childcare. (I don't have any idea if this is true. Seems legit, but I'm just relating my dream. I think I was also oversimplifying a bit to "men" and "women" because of my audience, but anyway it was a dream.) There's actually more low-hanging fruit, I pointed out, related to making care work easier.
So I argued that the real problem was a failure to invest in research into solving that problem. Today there are all these boondoggles built around killing people. What if, instead of all this government research into killing people, we dumped a ton of money into making it easier to support a household? That would be great for the economy. (Being asleep, I seem to have forgotten that working people need money.)
In the blur of being just awake I started thinking about how you could kickstart the US economy by taking the money from the AI boondoggle and other autonomous murder bots and create something like a program to build robots for housekeepers. You'd still be funding tech with government money, so the same horrible people get paid, but you're now actually solving real problems. It wouldn't even matter if it was a boondoggle, honestly. Just dumping money into something other than murdering people is good enough.
I imagined first if there was a program to fund a robot housecleaner, like robot dog with AI some laundry pickup, that would be provided, free of charge, to help people with children. It would work the same as the military boondoggle where a private company makes the government buy a piece of hardware from them and then also pay them to service it for some number of years. But instead of that hardware sitting around waiting to kill someone, it would be getting brought to people's houses to help them.
Then I thought, hey, you could even boost the economy more if you just had government funding for doulas and housecleaners and paid them a living wage. Hey, you could really kickstart the economy by nationalizing healthcare and including doula support as part of all births. Oh, and you could also just include the optional household help for families with children until the kids turn 18.
None of this is perfect (I don't actually think most of this is possible from any state), but the point is that it's actually wildly easy to figure out all kinds of ways to invest in the economy and monitize ideas as long as you aren't entirely focused on the same old "make money from spying on people and killing them." Funny that. Like they said in the podcast, maybe "finding ideas" isn't the problem.
Hope you enjoyed the weird semi-awake brain dump/rant.

Urban Domicile 🏠
城市聚落 🏠
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Ilford Pan 100
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

The Trump administration has ordered federal employees not to share photos of the East Wing of the White House being demolished to make way for the president’s $250 million vanity project.
“As construction proceeds on the White House grounds, employees should refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs,” a Treasury official wrote.
Crews began tearing down the East Wing’s covered ent…

Federal Workers Given Secret Order as Trump Tears Down Part of the White House
The administration doesn’t want federal employees documenting the demolition.

468 nets unrouted. Still have to do the FPGA flash, the power supply, bulk caps for the FPGA, and a few other odds and ends but the entire SoC subsystem is basically routed.
So at this point I can already say definitively that routing the STM32MP2 in TFBGA436 on an OSHPark 4-layer board is extremely doable as long as you aren't trying to max the IOs. Using the DDR may or may not be possible (I'm not trying here) but the internal RAM and HyperRAM are enough for a lot of applicat…

The US v. Google ad tech trial, in which a judge ruled that the company illegally monopolized the digital ad market, begins its remedies phase (Digiday)
https://digiday.com/media-buying/everything-you-need-to-know-abou…

Everything you need to know about the closing stages of Google’s ad tech antitrust trial
The arguments, witnesses and timelines involved in the Google antirust trial that could see the biggest company in advertising broken up.

There is a giant mountain in the US carved with the faces of a couple of slavers, and two guys who tried to stop slavery. Now most Americans will stop right there and say, "wait, two? Lincoln did that though..." They'll say that because Americans don't know anything about their own history, including the fact that the practice of slavery remained central to the southern economy well through Roosevelt's administration. If this is not familiar to you (because, maybe, you were taught history in the US) and you'd like to actually learn about that, you might want to read "Slavery by Another Name."
But let's talk about half-slaver mountain for a minute. This mountain is functionally a sacred site for Americans, but it's literally a sacred site for Black Hills Sioux. Speaking of stolen land, did you know that JBLM (a military base in Washington state) is built on land promised the Puyallup in the Treaty of Medicine Creek before being stolen in 1918? I remember being taught that all the land was stolen a long time ago and now there's nothing we can do. Yeah, does anyone remember that DAPL was under Obama? In fact, unused federal lands are supposed to be returned to the tribes from which the land was taken but there's a whole site to auction off federal property... That's a whole section of the government dedicated to violating the Treaty of Fort Laramie.
They could just comply with the treaty, as they are legally obligated to do. These violations are ongoing. Slavery, again, is still legal. Slaves are still used by major corporations today, they just have to be tricked into confessing to a crime first. The sins that this country is built on remain fully active today... Because the system was built to preserve white supremacists patriarchy. How could the founding of the US not lead *directly* to Trump? How could this have been different, from the beginning?
But, please, tell me, how, exactly, are you going to fix that by voting harder in the mid terms. How?

The Kremlin's pressure on the EU: why Belgium is hesitating #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/22/the-kremlins-pressure-on-the.html

Moody Urbanity - Urban Geometry 📐
情绪化城市 - 都市几何 📐
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Kentmere Pan 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

Chicago Bears 31, Dallas Cowboys 14: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly https://www.si.com/nfl/bears/chicago-bears-31-dallas-cowboys-14-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly

El Cheeto is tearing down the East Wing of the White House.
He says, of course, that he isn't. But he is.
And he promises to preserve historical elements and artifacts.
But he won't - does anyone remember when he was trying to get New York to allow him to build the horrid "trump tower" on the site of the then existing Bonwitt Teller building (a building full of and covered by art deco works)?
Well back then El Cheat-o promised to preserve those Bonw…

The US v. Google ad tech trial, in which a judge ruled that the company illegally monopolized the digital ad market, begins its remedies phase (Digiday)
https://digiday.com/media-buying/everything-you-need-to-know-abou…

Everything you need to know about the closing stages of Google’s ad tech antitrust trial
The arguments, witnesses and timelines involved in the Google antirust trial that could see the biggest company in advertising broken up.

The Justice Department sued California in federal court on Thursday,
claiming that providing in-state college tuition to unauthorized students is illegal
and discriminates against Americans from out of state who pay higher rates.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California,
is the latest action by the Trump administration against California.
It is the third lawsuit filed by the Justice Department against the state in a…

Justice Dept. Sues California Over College Benefits for Undocumented Students
The lawsuit is the third filed by the Justice Department against the state in a week.

Two new #degrowth articles:
Neither of the two main British left alternatives (Greens and the proto- Your Party) appears to be sufficiently facing up to the fundamental issue of ecological overshoot.

As UK politics turns both right and left, how do we get degrowth onto the agenda?
By Mark H Burton In the series, Prospects for Degrowth The last few weeks have seen two opposing developments in British politics, both in the context of the Starmer Labour government and its failu…

Testing, with the help of a funnel, the theory that cats are actually a liquid. Still having trouble getting his butt through the hole. #CatsOfMastodon

That's how our hike at the #mummelsee started ... and how it was when we were up there. - But the walk was quite okay.
We checked the rain radar and decided to go back down rather quickly. We leveraged our rain gear and it did not disappoint us! 🙂
So we didn't see the area atop - the so called

Three women become choked up as they deliver news in a video posted to social media.
“We did it, everybody,”
says Leslie Manookian,
the woman in the middle.
She is a driving force in a campaign that has chipped away at the foundations of modern public health in Idaho.
Her group had just gotten lawmakers to pass what she called the first true “medical freedom” bill in the nation.
With Manookian in the video are
two of her allies, the leaders of H…

Idaho Banned Vaccine Mandates. Activists Want to Make It a Model for the Country.
The Idaho Medical Freedom Act makes it illegal to require anyone to take a vaccine or receive “medical intervention.” Leslie Manookian, the activist behind the law, hopes to make it a “societal norm” for the rest of the country.

The energy market in Europe must get rid of its dependence on Russian resources – says Zelenskyy: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/20/the-energy-market-in-europe.html

On The Road - To Xi’An/ Beings II 👁️‍🗨️
在路上 - 去西安/ 灵 II 👁️‍🗨️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️Kodak Double-X 5222
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

On the H-1B fee, Jensen Huang says he's "glad" to see "Trump making the moves he's making"; Sam Altman says "outlining financial incentives seems good to me" (Jennifer Elias/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/22/nvidia-ope

'We need the smartest people': Nvidia, OpenAI CEOs react to Trump's H-1B visa fee
"We want all the brightest minds to come to the U.S. and remember immigration is the foundation of the American Dream," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Monday.

Any sufficiently advanced disaster preparedness is indistinguishable from revolutionary dual power. This essay is a bit of a transition between the theory I've written earlier, and more concrete plans.
Even though I only touched on my life on the commune, it was hard not to write more. These are such weird spaces, with so much invisible opportunity. But they're also just so unique and special. For all the stress and uncertainty of making sure you stayed on Lorean's (the head priestess), there were also those long summer nights with the whole community (except the old lady) gathered around a fire, talking and drinking. There was almost a child-like play to the whole time.
There were so Fridays I'd come home with a couple of gallons of beer from the real world, folks would bring things from the garden, someone would grill a steak, everyone who didn't cook would clean up, and we'd just hang out and have fun. So many evenings I'd go over to Miles place with a guitar, or with his guitar, and we'd pass it around over a few beers, talking about philosophy, Star Wars, or some book or other. It's hard not to write about the strange magic of that space.
My partner and I bonded over similar experiences, mine on a weird little religious commune in California and theirs as a temporary worker at Omega Institute. Both had exploitation, people on weird power trips, frustrating dynamics, but also a strange magic and freedom. Both were sort of fantasy worlds, but places that let us see through this one, let us imagine something that something else is possible behind the veil.
There are many such veils.
Perhaps it's fitting that this is more meandering, as a good wander can help the transition between lots of hard thinking and lots of hard working.
https://anarchoccultism.org/building-zion/evaluating-options
Editing feedback (especially typos, spelling, grammar) is always welcome, as are questions and even wider structural advice. I've been adding the handles of folks who provide feedback to the intro in a "thank you" section. If you do help and wouldn't like to be added, please let me know.

Eli Lilly, the maker of hugely popular weight loss drugs, has reached $1 trillion in value, becoming the first publicly traded company in health care to hit the milestone.
The second-most valuable health care company, Johnson & Johnson, is worth about half a trillion dollars.
Lilly’s stock has surged in large part because of the company’s success in seizing the biggest potential market in the history of the drug industry:
the class of weight loss medicines known as GLP-1…

Eli Lilly, Drug Maker of Zepbound and Mounjaro, Reaches $1 Trillion in Value
The 150-year-old drugmaker is the first company in health care to hit the milestone.

The battle for Donetsk Oblast – Why is Putin not backing down from his ambitions? | Explainer: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/the-battle-for-donetsk-oblast.html

Moody Urbanity - Manmade Confinements 🏗️
情绪化城市 - 人造禁锢 🏗️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Kentmere Pan 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

The Kremlin's new plan: to resettle Russians to occupied territories #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/the-kremlins-new-plan-to.html

Global climate negotiations ended on Saturday in Brazil
with a watered-down resolution that makes no mention of fossil fuels, the main driver of global warming.
The final statement included plenty of warnings on the cost of inaction
but few provisions for how the world might address dangerously rising global temperatures head-on.
A marathon series of frenetic Friday night meetings ultimately salvaged the talks in Belém, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.
The …

COP30 Climate Summit Ends With Dire Warnings and Scant Plans for Action
The final agreement, with no direct mention of the fossil fuels that are dangerously heating the planet, was a victory for oil-producing countries.

Moody Urbanity - Manmade Confinements ⛑️
情绪化城市 - 人造禁锢 ⛑️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Kentmere Pan 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

The Kremlin is disrupting negotiations, while Ukrainian drones are destroying Russian factories!: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/the-kremlin-is-disrupting-negotiations.html

The first elements of the Russian Orbital Station, or ROS, were to launch in 2027
so it would be ready for human habitation in 2028.
Upon completion in the mid-2030s, the station would encompass seven shiny new modules,
potentially including a private habitat for space tourists.
It would be so sophisticated that the station could fly autonomously for months if needed.
Importantly, the Russian station was also to fly in a polar orbit at about 400 km.
Thi…

Russia is about to do the most Russia thing ever with its next space station
“Russia, meanwhile, will be left to carry on the legacy of the ISS, with all its problems.”…

Russia is in shock! The United Kingdom may send troops to Ukraine: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/russia-is-in-shock-the.html

In 1967, physicist Andrei Sakharov proposed a set of conditions that must be satisfied to explain the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe,
including violation of the combined charge conjugation and parity (CP) symmetry.
CP symmetry was once thought to be universally conserved,
until this view was overturned in 1964 with the discovery of CP violation in the decay of neutral kaons.
This landmark result later earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1…

Nobel Prize in Physics 1980
The Nobel Prize in Physics 1980 was awarded jointly to James Watson Cronin and Val Logsdon Fitch "for the discovery of violations of fundamental symmetry principles in the decay of neutral K-mesons"

🔥The war continues: EU demands decisive action against the Kremlin #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/the-war-continues-eu-demands.html

Despite some polls showing the public would blame the party in power for a shutdown this fall, Trump is betting that he can frame the public debate around Democrats’ demands — and their readiness to risk the type of shutdown that many of them have opposed in the past.
A senior White House official told Semafor that in the administration’s view, “the aggressor ultimately is blamed by the American public for a shutdown.”
“And what you’re seeing here with the Democrats is, they have…

Why Trump welcomes this government shutdown fight
The president has already gotten everything he wants from the Republican Congress.

❗️Russians are waging the world’s largest energy terror campaign — Zelenskyy: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/21/russians-are-waging-the-worlds.html

A new Trump administration program is sidestepping the regulatory system that's overseen the nuclear industry for half a century.
The program will fast-track construction of new and untested reactor designs built by private firms,
with an explicit goal of having at least three nuclear test reactors up and running by the United States' 250th birthday, July 4, 2026.
If that goal is met, it will be without the direct oversight of America's primary nuclear regulat…

Trump's rush to build nuclear reactors across the U.S. raises safety worries
A new program at the Department of Energy is pushing the development of nearly a dozen new reactor designs at breakneck speed.

Analysis: Pokrovsk on the brink as Russian troops, drones infiltrate deeper into Ukraine’s fortress city: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/22/analysis-pokrovsk-on-the-brink.html

According to sociologist
Tressie McMillan Cottom,
the AI future is for the rich.
Cottom’s contention is a bleak one — the idea that the most powerful billionaires in the world are using AI to seize total control of humanity
But she isn’t short on hope.
“I think refusing is actually the more hopeful, expansion vision of the future...
That’s my daring idea."

Professor Warns That the Wealthy Are Trying to Use AI to Seize Control of Everything
Renowned sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom says that AI is a tool for the rich to cement control over society.

In the black of the winter of nineteen-nine
When we froze & bled on the picket line,
We showed the world that women could fight
& we rose & won with women's might.
https://kolektiva.social/@MikeDunnAuthor/115594417199677371

MikeDunnAuthor (@MikeDunnAuthor@kolektiva.social)
Attached: 1 image Today in Labor History November 22, 1909: The “Uprising of the 20,000” occurred in New York, as female, mostly Jewish, garment workers went on strike for better pay and an end to sweatshop working conditions. It was also known as the Shirtwaist Strike. 19-year-old Clara Lemlich, who led the strike, said she had no patience for talk and called for her coworkers to join in a General Strike. She made this speech not long after leaving the hospital after thugs had beat her up…

Elected leaders can tackle some of the biggest problems facing the nation
— energy supply in the age of artificial intelligence and affordable health care amid surging prices
— despite the partisan dysfunction stalling governance at the federal level.
As chairman of the Western Governors' Association, Utah governor Spencer Cox and governors from Arizona, Idaho, Hawaii and Montana explored solutions to these challenges during discussions withq Donald Trump's top advi…

Why Cox, Burgum and RFK Jr. think governors will save America
Three Republican and two Democratic governors gathered on Thursday under the leadership of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to send what he said was a vital message to the rest of the country.

Expect deep cuts in PhD admissions throughout the US, including biomedical programs.
The current model of PhD training and the current financial climate are simply not compatible.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/21/fas-phd-admissions-cuts/…

Harvard FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half Across Next Two Admissions Cycles | News | The Harvard Crimson
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for the next two years.

The offices at John Quackenbush’s lab at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
were once full of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and interns.
Young scientists here worked on some of the most cutting-edge computational biology research in the world,
driving new discoveries and the creation of widely used big data tools, including one the National Cancer Institute named among the most important advances of 2024.
Today, the offices are rows of empty comp…

His lab was humming with discovery. After one year under Trump, it’s almost silent
John Quackenbush built a lab that is at the forefront of human genetics research and bioinformatics. Trump administration cuts have put it in danger of collapse.

Iran on Thursday said it was ending the agreement it signed in September
allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency to resume inspections there,
after a resolution passed earlier in the day by the agency’s board
demanding “precise information” about Tehran’s enriched uranium and nuclear sites “without delay.”

A statement by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that countries that voted for the resolution
— backed by France, Britain, Germany and the …

Iran cancels new nuclear inspections it agreed to after bombing campaign
The termination of the agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency follows U.S.- and European-led charges that access has been denied.

On Thursday, 11 of the UK's leading oncologists, economists and medical ethicists will meet at the Department of Health’s headquarters in London
to make a decision that will have consequences for millions of men.
The National Screening Committee (NSC) will issue a recommendation on whether to launch the first NHS screening programme for prostate cancer.
Celebrities, sports stars and politicians, including Sir Chris Hoy and David Lammy, have campaigned for the greater us…

NHS could start prostate cancer screening — which men are eligible?
The National Screening Committee is expected to recommend the first-ever screening programme for the disease next week, but only for those at the highest risk

Proponents of a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve in December gained a powerful backer on Friday,
when a top official said the central bank had scope to lower borrowing costs “in the near term.”
John C. Williams is president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a close ally of Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair.
He emphasized in a speech that he was more concerned about the labor market weakening
than that rising inflation because of Trump’s tariffs wou…

Top Fed Official Boosts Odds of a December Rate Cut
John C. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said the central bank had scope to lower borrowing costs “in the near term.”

Trump Dismisses Another Inspector General,
Fueling Oversight Concerns
With the firing of Parisa Salehi,
the Export-Import Bank’s inspector general,
the president has sidelined around two dozen of the watchdogs who seek out fraud and mismanagement in federal agencies.
Even among Republicans on Capitol Hill, Ms. Salehi’s firing is prompting some backlash.
Senator Charles E. Grassley,
Republican of Iowa, raised concerns that the termination was illegal, …

Trump Dismisses Another Inspector General, Fueling Oversight Concerns
With the firing of the Export-Import Bank’s inspector general, the president has sidelined around two dozen of the watchdogs who seek out fraud and mismanagement in federal agencies.

Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries,
the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior
that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects.
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, The Associated Press has found.
The …

Border Patrol monitors US drivers and detains Americans for ‘suspicious’ travel
The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious. The Associated Press has found that the predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched, and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going, …

The majority of Americans object to Donald Trump’s politicization of justice,
his militarization of ICE,
and his usurpation of congressional power.
Eventually some of those presidential supporters and enablers might,
like Jäger, the East-German border guard, be persuaded to side with the majority
and help bring this assault on the rule of law to an end.
The people in the White House know this too,
and they reacted accordingly.
Trump, the suc…

Why Trump Turned to the Sewer
The president’s disturbing, excremental propaganda campaign

Momentum is building to tap more of Russia’s central bank reserves
— immobilized after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine
— to help fund Kyiv's war effort.
As the U.S. moved to wash its hands of Ukraine’s fate,
the gradual realization Russia’s war would not end any time soon
and that Kyiv would continue to need large amounts of external funding
has spurred European initiative to unlock the cash tied up in Russia’s frozen assets.

The EU's ambitious plan for frozen Russian assets, explained
Momentum is building to tap more of Russia’s central bank reserves — immobilized after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine — to help fund Kyiv's war effort. As the U.S. moved to wash its hands of Ukraine’s fate, the gradual realization Russia’s war would not end any time soon and that Kyiv would continue to need large amounts of external funding has spurred European initiative to unlock the cash tied up in Russia’s frozen assets. And Kyiv will need all the money it can get. Recent …

The Parenti text challenges students, perhaps for the first time,
to critically assess the dominant pluralist paradigm;
that it invites students to consider the ubiquity of politics in their lives;
that they confront the struggle and inevitable conflict between democracy and capitalism, which is usually ignored.
—Christopher A. Leu, 
California State University, Northridge

Book: Democracy for the Few — The Michael Parenti Political Archive

Six of nine universities that were asked to sign an agreement in exchange for funding advantages have rejected the offer ahead of Today’s deadline for response
Within a day of the call,
University of Virginia and Dartmouth College rejected the compact,
joining ranks with MIT,
Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania and the
University of Southern California.
The University of Texas at Austin was invited to sign on and the chair of the University o…

White House hits road block in effort to get top colleges to sign deal
Six of nine universities that were asked to sign an agreement in exchange for funding advantages have rejected the offer ahead of Monday’s deadline for responses

What the movement sorely needs is a bipartisan imprimatur.
There must be Republicans who still believe in the democratic values that Bush voiced in his second Inaugural, 20 years ago.
“Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?”
Their continued silence puts sand in the movement’s gears

Trump started the verbal war with Canada shortly after the 2024 election.
He invited Prime Minister Trudeau to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago on November 29.
Trump said then that Canada should be the fifty-first state and that Trudeau should be its governor. (Later, Trump switched to Gretzky.)
“I look forward to seeing the governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on tariffs and trade,” Trump posted on social media.
To this, Trudeau responded:
…

The New Detroit-Windsor Bridge Can’t Repair the Damage Trump Has Done
The opening of the Gordie Howe bridge has been delayed. It’s an apt metaphor for where U.S.-Canada relations have gone under Trump 2.0.

Our collective intellectual culture seems to have calcified around a cohort of thinkers who achieved prominence roughly ten years ago and have been coasting ever since. 
This isn't about Malcolm Gladwell specifically, though he'll appear as a recurring character. 
The Gladwell formula, if you haven't encountered it, goes something like this:
take a subject that seems simple,
complicate it with research that seems to undermine common sense,
then re…

Comfort Food for the Thinking Class: The Great Intellectual Stagnation
Wander into any bookstore (I dare you.)  The non-fiction table will be all but dominated by the usual suspects: Malcolm Gladwell's latest exploration of how some counterintuitive thing is actually the opposite of what you'd expect, a David Brooks meditation on character and virtue, something by Michael Lewis about how