Tootfinder

Wow, this is a first. A site I actually want to see (archive.ph) is using an IP address on the @… DROP list.
(no, I do NOT think that’s a Spamhaus problem. They are doing their job.) https://

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.11292 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepe…

Status of the International Linear Collider
This paper is not a proposal for a CERN future project but provides information on the International Linear Collider (ILC) considered for Japan in order to facilitate the European Strategy discussion in a global context. It describes progress to date, ongoing engineering studies, updated cost estimate for the machine at $\sqrt{s}=250~\rm GeV$ and the situation in Japan. The physics of the ILC is not presented here, but jointly for all Linear Collider projects in a separate document ``A Linear C…

All-Paid Team of Tomorrow: Lamar Jackson, Micah Parsons poised to reset market at respective positions https://www.nfl.com/news/all-paid-team-of-tomorrow-lamar-jackson-micah-parsons-poised-to-reset-market-at-r…

Probably stating the obvious, but for the past 30 years at least, contributing (in any capacity) on opensource projects is an excellent way to network with a global pool of top-tier folks in all the related domains, and to test the limits of your craft, plus all the work you do can be openly shared with any prospective employer. So you aren't 'volunteering' as much as you're building your portfolio in grad school, but with no student fees 😁
#fedihire #lifelonglearning

I may need to get back to doing illustrations again since it's been about a year that I took a break...
Hand drawn stuff (even if digitally) might be the future of human art with all this AI bullshit going on.
➡️ https://rasterweb.net/raster/projects/illustrations/

Illustrations
In March 2024 I started doing sketches on an iPad using Procreate and an Apple Pencil. As of writing this it's May 2024 and I'm still doing it. I'll try to keep this page updated with new illustrations as they are completed. Each illustration links to a page with more info about it, and some [...]

Cowboys Projected to Land ‘Difference Maker’ Compared to $22 Million All-Pro RB https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/dallas-cowboys/notre-dame-jeremiyah-love-first-round/?adt_ei=[email]

Friends in #HigherEd, it’s the season for finals (on the semester system). Be kind. Your students are anxious. You are absorbing their anxiety. You are also stressed by grading & all the projects you thought you had time to do before now. For you and them, have water, healthy snacks, encourage rest.

I find the deluge of information overwhelming and things have only gotten worse with AI. Now I can produce mountains of crap using AI and then I have to sift it to see if there is anything worth saving.
I find myself always behind on working through all the information and projects I have...and if by some Herculean effort I manage to get current (this usually involves hitting the delete button repeatedly while telling myself "you'll never use that or need that again") I find myself building a mountain again with great haste!
Yes, I am fully aware I'm #neurodivergent and #adhd. Sigh.

I am willing to be pleasantly surprised, but... when all I see from these "major projects" is oil and gas and other 20th century backwards nonsense, I can't help but be pessimistic.
Ironically, a real "nation building" project that would be a huge benefit to Canadians would be more akin to something from the 19th century: Standing up a true public railway corporation and rebuilding a high speed electrified rail network from sea to sea to sea that could reduce transportation costs and increase flexibility and convenience for millions of Canadians and businesses including in remote communities.
But our current leadership is too beholden to existing capitalist interests and status quo business to be that bold. And they're positively allergic to anything done purely in the public interest. How dare we not include some profiteering private corporation… /sarc
#CanPoli #CdnPoli #NaitonBuilding #Transportation #rail
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/premiers-meeting-prime-minister-carney-major-projects-1.7549577

The more time goes on, the more conflicted I get about #AI. (or, more specifically, generative AI. I like causal AI a fair bit)
On one hand, I hate so much about it:
the needless environmental and electronic parts waste, the impact on labor, the monopolistic nature of main organizations driving it, the endless conversations about AGI and other absurdly utopian (or dystopian) futures, the widespread theft of IP and human work, the devaluation of labor and craft… so much of it is not okay at all.
On the other hand, I kinda get it?
I like to test software for myself, so I've been dipping my toes into some popular AI tools over the past couple of years. I have a paid subscription to ChatGPT (which I don’t feel great about, I know), and I have found genuine utility in it.
More so, I feel so conflicted when I talk to people I respect and who I think are very smart and creative and they tell me how in love they are with all of these AI tools, about the complex workflows they build, about their experiments with agentic AI and integrations... These people seem so excited, so alive, so joyous about the things that this technology allows them to do. They often wouldn't have had the skills / knowledge / financial capital to do some of those things with human efforts alone. And now I see them coding their own tools, doing complex data analysis, trying creative experiments with graphics / text / video...
And I feel like a total jerk going "BUT ACTUALLY THIS IS UNETHICAL AND INEFFICIENT AND YOU SHOULD STOP IT BECAUSE AI SUCKS".
The technology behind all these gen AI models does have real utility, and it has kicked off a lot of creativity from people who wouldn't have dabbled in those kinds of projects otherwise.
So I don't know how to feel. Because I can't let go of the guilt and the real problems and the awareness of how much empty hype there is.
#technology #artificialintelligence #genAI #ChatGPT

"But there were technologists and open source projects in attendance. Notably, representatives from the Mastodon and Bluesky teams were at the Festival. The Newsmast Foundation was also present, incisively taking part in conversations to help newsrooms onboard themselves onto both of them. I got to hang out with them all, connecting with people I’d spoken with but never interacted with in person. Mastodon has undergone a transformation, has doubled its team, and is working on smoothing out some of its rough edges, while not letting go of its core ethos. It’s also beginning to position itself as a European alternative to American social media platforms, with a community-first values system and new services to directly help organizations join the network.
Bluesky, on the other hand, has done an able job of bringing journalists onto its existing social app, and is now hard at work explaining why its underlying protocol matters. Both want to engage with newsrooms and journalists and do the right thing by them. They each have something different to prove: Mastodon that it can be usable and accessible, and Bluesky that it can provide a return to its investors and truly decentralize while holding onto its values. I’m rooting for both of them.
These platforms’ messages dovetail with my own: news can own the platforms that support them. Lots of people at the Festival were worried about the impact of US big tech on their businesses — particularly in a world where tech moguls seem to be aligning themselves with a Presidential administration that has positioned itself as being adversarial to news, journalists, sources, and, arguably, the truth. The good news is that the technology is out there, the values-aligned technologists are out there, and there’s a strong path forward. The only thing left is to follow it."
#media #Mastodon #BlueSky #Journalism
https://werd.io/2025/notes-from-perugia-journalism-values-and-building-the-web-we