Tootfinder

QQ for all the "Restore the #RuleOfLaw" folks out there: When militarized police crushed Occupy for daring to challenge the logic of bailing out the bankers who crashed the economy rather than the people they fleeced, was that "Rule of Law"? When militarized police maimed and brutalized water protectors, was that "Rule of Law"? When oil companies and tech monopolies fund both parties and just happen to get legislation that keeps them in power, is that "Rule of Law"? When your tax dollars go to fund genocide, to pay to drop bombs on children, is that "Rule of Law"? When the NSA was spying on American citizens, was that "Rule of Law"? How about the drone strikes on Americans, was that "Rule of Law"? When cops murder people and then use "qualified immunity" to get away with it, is that "Rule of Law"?
Y'all keep talking about how #NoKings is about "restoring rule of law." It's got a bit of a "Make America Great Again" feel to it: you're invoking a return to a history that never actually existed.

This week’s #ThursdayFiveList is all about #Children, courtesy of @…:
1. Almost Vinyl, “That's a Fucking Ugly Baby”—

Not being even vaguely sarcastic:
At some point, a journalist needs to ask Johnson
“you regularly claim you have no idea what your own government is doing.
If we take you at your word, how are you so poorly informed,
and do you this level of ignorance should disqualify you as speaker?”
-- John Pfaff
https://

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)
Q: What's your message to the 170 US citizens who have been detained by ICE? About 20 of them are children MIKE JOHNSON: I don't know what you're talking about with the children. I haven't seen that so I'm not going to comment on it.

Did you see the disgraceful press conference with felon Trump and cardboard Starmer?
On #Gaza, both used hyperbole about the 7/9/23 incursion but no mention of famine, bombing, destruction of hospitals, schools and homes, nor the targeting of children by snipers.
Not surprising since both are enablers of #genocide

RE: https://mindly.social/@NotRappaport/115568243899839267
I’ve said it 50k times, but I’ll say it again: IT’S NOT ABOUT FETUSES/BABIES/CHILDREN. IT’S. ABOUT. CONTROLLING. OPPRESSING. AND. PUNISHING. WOMEN.

@… I don’t know John personally, but I’ve listened to him talk about tech for long enough that I’m really confident in saying: I bet he *tried* to teach his children all the proper computer etiquette (Proper in his opinion, which is often controversial, hence the whole podcast thing).
But teaching a child something they don’t *want* to learn is… e…

I just woke up from a dream. For every parent there is a time when, with shame, we have to explain how the world actually works... when they become a little too old to keep saying, "I'll explain it when you're older."
Amsterdam is full of reminders of the occupation, of the Holocaust. It's impossible to pretend there hasn't been a great evil here... One that's not in the past, but still very alive in the present.
At some point things will have to change because fascism can't last forever. It is a thing which necessarily contains its own downfall. We will, at that point, have an opportunity to make the world one that we can be proud to tell our children we created. We can stop short and reestablish the status quo that got us here, or we can build a world that we will no longer have to explain to each new generation in shame.
What would it look like?
(Shout out to the comrade who prompted me to be thinking about this.)
There was also a sign in my dream that said, "we created the bike, therefore we can do anything." This may or may not be related.

📉 Why the Left Should Care About Population Decline
#population

Why the Left Should Care About Population Decline
Population decline is not just about human extinction. Before it ends, human civilization will grow increasingly unpleasant — and communal ideals associated with left-wing politics will become increasingly difficult to sustain.

Are there any admins on social.tchncs.de.? Is anonymously spreading lies about over 30 families in Gaza allowed on this instance?
This anonymous coward has been chased off of every server he’s been on and yet he’s still here, still attacking people suffering from genocide and famine.
(And yes, some folks copy posts from others. We’ve asked them not to. But they’re trying to survive genocide, not win social media awards.)
Also (see his second post) we’re not attempting to r…

Linux Is Best (@Linux@social.tchncs.de)
Attached: 2 images 1 of 2 First, let me say: what’s happening in Gaza is absolutely awful. But what’s also awful is that there are dishonest people taking advantage of others during a crisis. In one photo, from Facebook (my job, where I work), we had a woman claiming to be a 36-year-old mother of two children, ages 4 and 7. She spaced out the URL in her post, hoping it wouldn’t get flagged by spam filters (it did). The very next day, someone on the Fediverse posted the exact same messa…

A recent study found nearly four in five children aged under 12 in the UK experience ecoanxiety,
fear of the state of the climate in the future
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/greenpeace-children-homes-b2690913.h…

Eco-anxiety rife among children as 78% found to be worried about climate change
As Children’s Mental Health Week kicks off, Greenpeace has released guidance on having conversations with young people about the climate crisis.

If America doesn't want its children to grow up confused about gender-appropriate clothing, they should replace all depictions of Jesus, or indeed any biblical male, with versions in which they are wearing long-trousers.
Should be doable with AI, I'm assured.

hah, can't fire me if i don't have a job, suckers! https://mastodon.social/@PatrickoftheG/115199991716282130

So I grew up next to #Chernobyl and this is, well, TERRIFYING.
A story for y’all: I’m from a city called Zhytomyr, 2 hours west of Kyiv in the North of #Ukraine. We were downwind of the Chernobyl #nuclear power plant when the 1986 disaster happened.
I wasn’t born for another 12 years, but my childhood was filled with stories and the aftermath of it all. Things like:
- My grandmother worked as a head doctor in a hospital and rehabilitation facility exclusively for children of Chernobyl victims to treat the extremely high prevalence of Tuberculosis and other severe health complications. (To specify: these were SECOND GENERATION of exposure).
- A lot of the kids in that facility were orphans, because their parents died young from health problems.
- My uncle’s wife was born in Pripyat. She was 1 year old when the disaster happened. Her parents were told to evacuate while given no information about what happened. They had to pack up their things and rush out to an unfamiliar city with their baby, never to see the rest of their belongings, apartment, or hometown again.
- When I was a kid, it became so common to see weirdly mutated animals and insects that even 2-3 year olds would make jokes about “Chernobyl mosquitos” and I wouldn’t even flinch seeing occasional giant bugs, dark frogs, weird-looking dogs.
- We’d frequently hear of nearby farms having issues with their animals being born too mutated to survive or random outbreaks from contaminated water / food. Crops would randomly fail. People would get poisoned on a regular basis. This all got less common as I grew up.
- My mother still remembers being a little girl, 10 years old, and looking outside from their balcony at the clouds blowing over from Chernobyl that day. People were told to not go outside and to shut all the windows, but not given an explanation as to why. My mother swears that the rain looked different. They weren’t able to go and buy more food for the kitchen for multiple days.
Anyway - nuclear safety isn’t a joke. I don’t understand how this level of carelessness can happen after Chernobyl and Fukushima.

https://www.404media.co/power-companies-are-using-ai-to-build-nuclear-power-plants/

So I've been posting about these new cars and their "secure" door handles, and how they're killing people. Everyone has pooh-poohed me. They *had* to save the world by buying Teslas. Well:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/09/t

Tesla Model Y door handles now under federal safety scrutiny
Cars have lost 12 V power, trapping children and dogs in hot cars.

Reading about Baldur von Schirach. Sounds familiar.
“In February 1928 he became a university group leader of the National Socialist German Students' League.”
“He worked to broaden the Nazi Party's appeal to the bourgeoisie. Schirach was supported by Hitler in internal elections, who also wanted the Nazi Party to have a broad social base.”
“Schirach was skilled at bureaucratic power struggles. He founded the School Children's Leagues (Schülerbünde) to create competition to the Hitler Youth. He made an ally of Joseph Goebbels.”
“Schirach was named national youth leader of the party in 1931.”
“With Heinrich Hoffmann, Schirach produced several propaganda books of Hoffmann's photographs, including "Hitler As No One Knows Him", "Youth Around Hitler", and "Hitler in His Mountains". Schirach wrote the captions. The books sold hundreds of thousands of copies, earning Schirach and Hoffmann substantial royalties.”
“On 16 June 1932, he was made Reichsführer of the Party's Hitler Youth organization, and resigned from the Student League. Under Schirach, the Hitler Youth stewarded NSDAP events, and 21 members died in 1932. Schirach described these deaths as "blood sacrifice" for propaganda purposes. One example was Herbert Norkus, a fifteen-year-old boy who was stabbed to death by Communists. In a 31 May 1932 speech, Schirach recounted Norkus's death and called for a "National Socialist dictatorship". Schirach gave a memorial speech on the third anniversary of Norkus's death in January 1935.”
#hitleryouth #fascism #theAmericanFascist

⚖️ Underweight children cost NHS as much per child as children with obesity, study finds
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-underweight-children-nhs-child-obesity.html

Underweight children cost NHS as much per child as children with obesity, study finds
The NHS incurs an estimated £340 million in additional health care costs annually due to weight-related health problems in children—but it is not just obesity driving the costs. New research from the University of Oxford reveals that underweight children need comparable medical support as those who are severely obese, challenging assumptions about childhood health priorities.

Just finished "Once For Yes" by Allie Millington. A phenomenal book dealing with tragedy, gentrification, grief, and community, it's preposterously poetic, but unfortunately has a twisted neoliberal politics lurking behind the scenes that makes me hesitate to recommend it. I enjoyed it greatly, especially the tightly choreographed prose, and the plot was both very well-paced and touching. It's fun for adults but also written for kids, which makes it all the more frustrating that despite touching on gentrification, it valorizes someone who is objectively a pretty scummy landlord, and fails to interrogate land ownership or rent in the slightest. It wouldn't be nearly the same story without the way things wrap up, but that doesn't make me comfortable with the larger messages it's sending, even if I think its messaging about grief is good, including for children.
#AmReading

I'm getting myself so annoyed by something that really shouldn't get to me. Lost story short: a neighbour passed away a few months ago - a really lovely guy.
Whenever we spoke, he didn't really talk about his family, although we knew he was divorced and had children, one of which very occasionally visited. He talked about his hobbies, his previous work, and his dog, who had also passed a few months before him.
So, what's grating me? His children are now sorting out his house and possessions and they've parked their massive 4x4s on the front lawn he took so much pride in. Like, not just clipping it at the edge with their wheels, but properly parked over the grass. He didn't have much of a garden, but it was always taken care of. I've also noticed how his Mercedes was the first thing that got the most attention. It just feels so disrespectful it's kinda upsetting.

Melania Trump says she hopes to become the First Lady of Technology as she leads the Presidential AI Challenge to inspire children and teachers to embrace AI (Miranda Devine/New York Post)
https://nypost.com/2025/08/25/opinion/

Exclusive | First lady Melania Trump will head effort to teach next generation about AI
First lady Melania Trump will lead the Presidential Artificial Intelligence Challenge to inspire children and teachers to embrace AI technology and help accelerate innovation in the field.

"Donald cares more about the ballroom and increasing his wealth than he cares about starving children in America."
https://www.marytrump.org/p/le-me-eat-cake
via @…

"Le Me Eat Cake"
Morning Dispatch

I'm tired of hearing about the bodies of those Israeli hostages who died and haven't been returned. It is a devastated war zone and no doubt many died in the bombing. Hardly surprising if they can't all be found now. I'd like to see the same concern for the remains of all those Palestinian children, women and men who were killed by Israel and who lie under tons of rubble. Their families won't be able to retrieve their remains.
It's a tragedy for all but let's…

I keep coming back to the mirror dualities of the oppressed and oppressor under authoritarianism.
The oppressed is portrayed as both weak and godlike. The stereotypes are always some variation on sloth and incompetence, but yet somehow also a menace capable of destroying the "pure" society. To use the most relevant current example, Antifa being both little femme soy boys who would always get beat up by "real men" while also being an international terrorist organization on the brink of overthrowing the US government, the unarmed presence of whom makes the heavily armed agents of ICE flee for their lives. Antifa is both having absolutely no impact on ICE, and also having such an impact on ICE that the military needs to come in to protect them. The contradiction is obvious but never seems to occur to those who hold both to be true at the same time.
But few talk about the duality of the oppressor. The sovereign throughout history has always been both a ruler above the law, sometimes even the representative or incarnation of a divine force. Yet, this same superhuman/god-man is also a baby who needs constant care. This is absolutely a through line from the very earliest records of sovereign cults to modern cult leaders, CEOs, and Trump today. Power, for these people, is expressed both as the ability to force others to enact their will and in the ability to compel others to care for them. Can any of these "men" cook? Can they fix anything themselves? They are driven everywhere, cooked for all the time, constantly protected from danger. Kings are still dressed, at least for rituals. I could dissect masculinity here, but that's a whole thing.
It is as though the drive to care for our children, who must be taught to behave within acceptable norms, is hijacked by "leaders" who demand our care and attention... even at the expense of our literal children. And recently we've seen some of those very CEOs, with LLMs and return to office demands, show that their judgment is also little better than children, making decisions while pretending to understand a subject.
The oppressed are portrayed as both god-like and impotent and are, in fact, neither. Meanwhile the rulers portray themselves only as invulnerable and are, in fact, childish in their ability to survive without constant support. Their greatest fear from the collapse of society is figuring out how to make sure people keep taking care of them.
It just keeps rattling around in my head.
#USPol

New rule: Next time a republican mouthpiece starts yammering about how trans/queer/drag queen harm youth - just go ahead and order a forensic image of their devices.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/09/gop-lawmaker-said-…

Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)

Next week, on the 14th of October, the EU will attempt to push through a new law called "Chat Control." They claim this law is necessary to protect children from harmful individuals—and let’s be clear, protecting children is crucial. But here’s what’s really happening: the EU wants to scan every phone, tablet, and computer. This includes your photos, files, and every message you’ve sent or will send. 448 million people will be under 24/7 surveillance.
You might say, "I ha…

C04 - Dawn of the Gods
THAARN: [V.O.] Do you remember stories they told you about me? When you were a little girl on Auron? Do you remember the children's rhymes? The songs you sang about the Thaarn? [Tarrant and Dayna talk behind this]
CALLY: I remember.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/304/127…

U.S. citizen shot from behind as he warned ICE agents about children gathering at bus stop, lawyers say - Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-11-02/lawyers-say-ice-shot-us-citizen-from-behind-as-he-stopped-to-warn-them-of-childre

Guatemala is ready and willing to receive about 150 unaccompanied children of all ages each week from the United States, the country’s president has said,
a day after a US federal judge halted the deportation of 10 Guatemalan children.
Those children had already boarded a plane when a court responded to an emergency appeal on Sunday.
They were later returned to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
On Monday, Guatemala’s president, Bernardo Arévalo, told j…

@… @… It took me over 3 years from my partner asking about children to me deciding I was up for having one. If she’d never asked, I would never have even considered it.
I think it’s totally fine (and again…

Security measures for Gen #AI seem to increase all around, which is overall good.
It's just sad to think about WHY statements like "Gemini 2.5 Flash Image does not currently support editing images of children" are necessary in the first place.
#nanobanana

I read this article about inattention while eating my breakfast at work and dropped sardine paté down my top and trousers in the process, the very definition of irony. I usually get quite grubby at work so I got away with it but really.
‘We’re exhausted – but not from doing too much’: can this woman help us survive the age of distraction? | Health & wellbeing | The Guardian

Some leftists have criticized #NoKingsDay2 as useless. Though it was the largest protest in US history, it didn't change anything. I would go further to say that protests like these generally won't change anything. Dictators aren't forced to step down by 2% of the population coming out for one day. If they're forced to step down by protests, those protests are sustained. They are every single day. They are accompanied by general strikes.
We've been watching that happen all over the world. Portland in 2020 gave us a taste of that in the US. The George Floyd Rebellion was the type of resistance that actually brings down dictators like Trump. Occasional protests, no matter how large, can simply be ignored. That is precisely the reason the US developed a militarized police force in the first place. You need more, more than the largest protests in US history, more than Occupy, more than the resistance of the 60's and 70's, more than, and different from, anything we've seen in our lives.
And yet... Each protest has grown, and grown bolder. Some have grown more persistent. If you think of protest as the path to achieve change, you will lose. It is not. But it is a path to escalate. Some people, some otherwise comfortable white folks, came out for their first time. Some people got pepper sprayed for the first time. Some people questioned authority, stood up for the first time, and have had an experience that will radicalize them for the rest of their lives.
Protest is not useful in and of itself. It is training. It's making connections. Authoritarian regimes rely on the illusion of compliance, so visual resistance does actually undermine their power.
Liberals like to teach that non-violence is all about staying peaceful no matter what, that there's some way that morality simply overwhelms an enemy. I remember reading Langston Hughes' A Dream Deferred in high school. I said it was a threat. My teacher said, "you're wrong, he was a pacifist." Pacifism is a threat. If you can spit at me, beat me, shoot me, and I will not move, if I have the strength to absorb violence without flinching, without even rising to violence, what will happen when you push me too far?
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
For peaceful resistance to work, there must be ambiguity. It must not be clear if or when the resistance will stop being peaceful. Peaceful resistance with no possibility of escalation is just cowardice.
My critique then is not so harsh as some other anarchists. If you think that protest alone will work, you're probably going to lose. If you are prepared to escalate, if you are prepared to absorb violence without flinching, then it could be possible for protest alone to topple the dictator. The cracks are already beginning to show.
And then what?
The problems that lead to the George Floyd uprising were never resolved. The problems that lead to Occupy where never resolve. The DAPL was built, protesters were maimed, it leaked multiple times (exactly as predicted). Segregation never went away, it only changed forms. The fact that immigrants have different courts and different rights means that anyone can be arbitrarily kidnaped and renditioned to an arbitrary country. We never did anything about the torture black site. FFS, people can still be stripped of their voting rights and slavery is still legal in the US. The people who control both parties in the US are killing our children and grand children with oil wars and climate change.
Toppling the dictator does nothing to resolve all of the problems that existed before him.
No, #NoKingsDay was absolutely not useless. #NoKings and related protests are extremely useful but they aren't sufficient. But, I think we still need to challenge the movement on two points:
How do you escalate after you're ignored or brutalized?
What do you demand after you win?
#USPol

Cyber Security Educational Games for Children: A Systematic Literature Review
Temesgen Kitaw Damenu, \.Inci Zaim G\"okbay, Alexandra Covaci, Shujun Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17414

Cyber Security Educational Games for Children: A Systematic Literature Review
Educational games have been widely used to teach children about cyber security. This systematic literature review reveals evidence of positive learning outcomes, after analysing 91 such games reported in 68 papers published between 2010 and 2024. However, critical gaps have also been identified regarding the design processes and the methodological rigour, including lack of systematic design, misalignment between proposed and achieved learning outcomes, rare use of control groups, limited discus…

"On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which the federal government created to honour 'the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities,' members of the Active History editorial collective offer suggestions on scholarship and resources they have found helpful in their own work and learning journeys."

On the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation
Ten years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued its final report on the history of residential schools in Canada. Mandated to “inform all Canadians about what happened in reside…

I know that sentencing kids to tooth decay is small potatoes compared to lots of the rest of what this administration is doing, but this still makes me angry.
(Yes, I know, if we removed all processed sugars from our diet, that would also address tooth decay in a substantial way, but also let's be honest about whether that's going to happen.)

The U.S. Department of Education has pulled funding for programs in eight states
aimed at supporting students who have both hearing and vision loss,
a move that could affect some of the country’s most vulnerable students.
The programs are considered vital in those states but represent only a little over $1 million a year in federal money.
Nonetheless, they got caught in the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion,
with an Education Dep…

Programs for Students With Hearing and Vision Loss Harmed by Trump’s Anti-Diversity Push
Citing concerns about DEI, the U.S. Department of Education has halted funding for programs that support students with combined hearing and vision loss in eight states. “How low can you go?” one advocate asked. “How can you do this to children?”

Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part of
this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be
watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a commercial for
a children's compressed breakfast compound such as "Froot Loops" or "Lucky
Charms", and they always show it sitting on a table next to some actual food
such as eggs, and the announcer always says: "Part of …

Ok, yeah, I'm not done processing my anger over liberals doing shit like this. So this historian sees a rise in right wing violence, sees the US government carrying out ethnic cleansing, sees a rise in white supremacist terrorism, and then says, "oh yeah... this reminds me of a time right around the 1920s. Hum... yeah, ANARCHISTS fighting the government! Yeah, that's the same thing."
FFS, IT'S THE RED SUMMER! If you want a parallel between today and some horrible time in US history, TALK ABOUT THE RED SUMMER. The point of the language of dehumanization that the right uses, the point of all the anti-black and anti-emigrant rhetoric, is that it leads to genocide. Trump already carried out an act of genocide (#USPol

Day 17 (oops; a bit early): Angie Thomas
Can hardly believe it's taken me this long to get to Thomas, and I haven't even read "The Hate You Give" which is probably her most popular book. I did read "Concrete Rose" and was duly blown away by her craft: the use of vernacular, the love she has for the community she writes about, the honesty with which she grapples with the bleak details of the setting, and her stubborn and inescapable portrayal of a human being where our society has taught us to see only perpetrators and victims. CW for family member death and gun violence that I can think of; it's not light reading.
As the parent of two children, Thomas' descriptions of baby care ring true, and drew me into the book more than any other factor, and her vision of a positive masculinity among so much pain is breathtaking. "Concrete Rose" is a brilliant novel, and Thomas richly deserves a spot on this list.
#20AuthorsNoMen

Having a studio near a piano teacher's studio makes me realise how most kids don't practice this instrument at all, just come and struggle through the same boring tunes every week.
Please don't make your children learn an instrument they don't actual enjoy playing, it's a counter-productive waste of time.
All that stuff about classical music making kids more intelligent is pure nonsense, either experimental results don't replicate or replicate just as we…

Think in Games: Learning to Reason in Games via Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Models
Yi Liao, Yu Gu, Yuan Sui, Zining Zhu, Yifan Lu, Guohua Tang, Zhongqian Sun, Wei Yang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21365

Think in Games: Learning to Reason in Games via Reinforcement Learning with Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) excel at complex reasoning tasks such as mathematics and coding, yet they frequently struggle with simple interactive tasks that young children perform effortlessly. This discrepancy highlights a critical gap between declarative knowledge (knowing about something) and procedural knowledge (knowing how to do something). Although traditional reinforcement learning (RL) agents can acquire procedural knowledge through environmental interaction, they often operate as bla…

Oh man, so I'm looking to relax and put on some #StarTrek. Next up in the queue is #STNG S7E18, "Eye of the Beholder", and WHAM deep talk about #suicide . Listening to Data relate his exp…

If the US government *actually* cared about children they'd refer to abuse suspects as "paedo-terrorists" and livestream their extra-judicial executions.

Brave New Chill
#Sims4 #TheSims4 #Comicstrip

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs.
She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.
She calls it “the final mission.”
But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down.
Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education,
she’s operated in what she calls
“a parallel universe”
to radically shift how children will learn for years to come.…

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.
Under Trump, the Department of Education has been bringing in activists hostile to public schools. It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars — and the end of public schools as we know them.

🧲 Coffee fortified with iron—new microparticles can be added to food and beverages to fight malnutrition
... who'd a thought metal organic frameworks could be edible?
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-coffee-fortified-iron-microparticles-added.html

Coffee fortified with iron—new microparticles can be added to food and beverages to fight malnutrition
Around the world, about 2 billion people suffer from iron deficiency, which can lead to anemia, impaired brain development in children, and increased infant mortality.

I Come To Bury, Not to Praise
James Dobson’s teachings left deep scars—fractured families, rejected children, and faith distorted by cruelty. His legacy raises hard questions about love, justice, and how Christians should treat “the least of these.”
https://www.bobmuellerwriter.com/i-come-to

I Come To Bury, Not to Praise – Bob Mueller
A look back at James Dobson’s legacy, his influence on families, and the lasting impact of his teachings on faith and human rights.

Amid the moral panic about unofficial #migration, the vulnerability of desperate people is never mentioned. Here's a dereliction of the duty of care.
"More than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared soon after arriving in the UK and while in the care of the authorities are still missing...
"Many of the missing children arrived in small boats or hidden in the backs o…

Series C, Episode 07 - Children of Auron
TARRANT: Listen, Orac, what about the disease epidemic Cally's talking about.
ORAC: It's a high probability that because Auron has had a policy of neutrality and isolation, the planet has now been kept completely free of all disease for more than three decades.
https://blake.tor…

@xankarn
Approximately 18% of SNAP recipients are over 60.
That’s over 7 million people.
A lot of those people have few options to generate more income.
Graphic from the USDA web page:
Also featuring a flagrant Hatch Act violation
http://www.ers.usda.gov/d…

The Education Department has cut off funding for campus-based child care at over a dozen colleges,
accusing the schools of conflicting with the Trump administration’s polices by teaching young children about gender and race or prioritizing diversity in hiring.

Grants from the Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) program are a critical source of money for public colleges that educate large populations of students with limited financial means.
The $80 million …

Trump administration cuts grants for child care on college campuses
The Education Department has cut off funding for campus-based child care at over a dozen colleges, objecting to child care providers teaching young children about gender and race.

RFKJr and one of his ACIP picks, Robert Malone,
appear to be getting ready to restrict the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) immunizations
(nirsevimab and clesrovimab)
saying there is a vast cover up of vaccine safety data.
"You talk a lot about how unsafe it is to vaccinate children.
Do you know how unsafe it is to not vaccinate them?"

Day 3: Octavia Butler.
Incredibly dark, graphic, and disturbing near-future science fiction, which has proved absolutely prophetic. In the 1990's she was writing about a charismatic Conservative Christian and white nationalist president elected in 2024, and the horrors his paramilitary followers would unleash, including forced labor & indoctrination camps. Did I mention those books include ebikes & pseudo-cellphones too? Characters fleeing north from a disastrous social collapse in Loss Angeles? This is "The Parable of the Sower" and "The Parable of the Talents" and the later was tragically rushed to an end because of Butler's declining health.
Her work deals unflinchingly with racism and the darker parts of society, and to those who might say "her depiction of social collapse is overblown," I'd say that while it's not literally the world we live in, it's *effectively* the world that the poorest of us live in. If you're a homeless undocumented latinx person in LA right now, I'm not sure how meaningfully different your world is from the one she depicts.
Her work comes with a strong content warning for lots of things, including racial violence, sexual abuse and slavery, including of children, animal harm, etc., so it's not for everyone. Reading it in 2023 was certainly an incredible trip. Her politics are really cool though; with explicit pro-LGBTQ themes and tinges of what might today be considered #SolarPunk.
#20WomenAuthors

Zach Bryan, one of the biggest stars in US country music, has been criticised by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over a new song in which he sings about immigration raids by Ice.
The DHS’s assistant secretary of public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, told Bryan to “stick to Pink Skies, dude,” referring to one of his previous hits, in comments reported by the Independent.
The DHS also made a provocative post on X, laying another Bryan song, Revival, over footage of Ice office…

Good Morning #Canada
Happy #Halloween to all those Canadians who enjoy dressing up, and today it's totally normal. But remember, don't go into the old shed with all the sharp farm tools.
Today, I am sharing one of my favourite radio episodes narrated by the late Stuart McLean. For 20 years, #TheVinylCafe radio show aired weekly on CBC Radio and was written and hosted by the late McLean. The radio show featured stories are about Dave, owner of a secondhand record store called "The Vinyl Cafe", and also starred Dave's wife, Morley, their two children, Sam and Stephanie, and assorted other characters. If you fondly remember The Vinyl Cafe, then this episode may spark a memory. If this is your first exposure, I warn you that you may crave more.
I first heard this episode in the lead up to Halloween over a decade ago. It's about a man who is terrorized by his sister's doll, in his youth, and into manhood.
#CanadaIsAwesome #CBCRadio
https://youtu.be/vi6KKSWO5oU?si=7Tw3a7sfKuyP-M3u

Increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensionsin the nation’s third-largest city.
“They are the ones that are making it a war zone,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said Sunday on CNN.
“They fire tear gas and smoke grenades, and they make it look like it’s a war zone.”
U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status and children have been among those detained
in increasingly brazen and aggressive encounter…

Immigration agents use increasingly aggressive tactics in Chicago, alarming activists and residents
Activists, residents and elected leaders say increasingly combative tactics used by federal immigration agents are sparking violence and fueling neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest city. That includes storming an apartment complex by helicopter as families slept and deploying chemical agents near a public school. About 1,000 immigrants have been arrested since an immigration crackdown started last month in the Chicago area. But U.S. citizens, immigrants with legal status and c…

I think the hardest thing to accept about this current reality is that our rulers are not terrifying Machiavellians who've built this monstrous dystopia, but scared little children who are also captured within the emergent chains of this terrible system.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #SundayMorning
Johnny Douglas, Johnny Douglas Orchestra & Johnny Douglas:
🎵 Perks Must be About It (The Railway Children)
#JohnnyDouglas #JohnnyDouglasOrchestra