Tootfinder

Widow of airman killed in Mideast is upset she was told Iran wasn’t a war while sorting out benefits
The widow of an airman killed on a combat mission in the Middle East said
it took a viral social media post to get resolution from the Pentagon on issues related to her husband’s benefits and basic pay months after his death.
Maj. Alex Klinner, 33, was one of six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq in March
while supporting operati…

Widow of airman killed in Mideast is upset she was told Iran wasn't a war while sorting out benefits
Maj. Alex Klinner, 33, was one of six crew members of a KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq in March while supporting operations against Iran. He's one of 18 U.S. service members killed, along with 790 wounded, since the war began more than six months ago.

Claude Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 5 seem worse at tool calls than older models, likely due to post-training that assumes Claude Code-like harnesses as targets (Armin Ronacher/Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings)
https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/7/4/better-models-worse-tools/…

Better Models: Worse Tools
About an aggravating tool-calling regression in newer Claude models.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #ThroughTheNight
Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, Combattimento & Jan Willem de Vriend:
🎵 Concerto armonico No 6 in E flat major (from Sei Concerti Armonici, 1740)
#UnicoWilhelmvanWassenaer
https://open.spotify.com/track/5O7QyV8tAoxMtewlVJmaWr

Stumm grüßte ich den Nachbarn, der am Dach eines der Zwillingsbabies in seinen Armen in den Schlaf schaukelte.

Wenn es so weiter geht (ganz große Koalitionen mit antisozialer, arbeiter- und armenhasserischer Politik): Was glaubt ihr, wie lange es noch dauert, bis die Bundestagswahl so ähnlich aussieht, wie heute in Sachsen-Anhalt. (Nicht genau so, die Grünen werden stärker, weil sie das Klimathema glaubwürdig vertreten, und das wird wieder ein starkes Thema. Die SPD hingegen wird eher schwächer. Die kann kein eigenes Thema mehr vertreten.)

Sources: US negotiators used the promise of access to Nvidia's chips for an Armenian data center to broker a preliminary Armenia-Azerbaijan peace deal last year (Robbie Whelan/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/world/u-s-used-promise

Singapore-based Multiplier, which acquires accounting firms to boost their growth with AI tools, raised a $35M Series B led by TheGP at a $300M valuation (Maria Armental/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

Is Dark Matter Really Matter?
Jun-Qian Jiang, Arman Shafieloo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.04763 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.04763 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.04763
arXiv:2608.04763v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In the standard model of cosmology, it is assumed that dark matter is pressureless with equation of state $w=0$ and dark energy has $w=-1$. We test these assumptions jointly using DESI DR2 distance measurements, including the recent Lyman-$\alpha$ full-shape Alcock-Paczynski (AP) information, DES supernovae, and two complementary CMB treatment. When constant $w_{dm}$ and $w_{de}$ are varied together, we find $w_{dm}=0.000968^{ 0.000501}_{-0.000496}$ and $w_{de}=-0.9380^{ 0.0259}_{-0.0262}$ (68%). With an alternative CMB treatment that marginalizes over the lensing spectrum, the corresponding constraints are $w_{dm}=0.000870^{ 0.000408}_{-0.000410}$ and $w_{de}=-0.9353^{ 0.0258}_{-0.0254}$. Both standard $\Lambda$CDM values are disfavored at approximately $2\sigma$ in the joint extension. Neither parameter departs significantly from its standard value when only that parameter is varied. This behavior arises because late-time distances favor $w_{de}>-1$, while maintaining the early-Universe physical matter density requires a compensating positive $w_{dm}$, which changes the mapping to the matter density today. Allowing dynamical dark energy clarify further on complexity of the situation: phantom crossing for dark energy makes $w_{dm}=0$ consistent with the data, whereas a positive $w_{dm}$ preference persists when crossing is forbidden. Interestingly, the Pad'e-$w$ parameterization that provides a flexible description of a class of quintessence models (with no phantom crossing), along with $w_{dm}$ free, is even mildly favored over the phantom-crossing $w_0w_a$ model according to both the best-fit $\chi^2$ and the DIC under both CMB treatments. One can conclude that the apparent preference for phantom crossing may instead reflect deviations in the dark-matter sector rather than dark-energy dynamics alone. [abridged]
toXiv_bot_toot

#GoodNews #GuteNachrichten
Ballett ist ein riesiger Teil von meinem Leben. Das hört auch nicht auf. - Armin, 63, aus Albstadt
#Alter

Several members of Armenia's opposition were arrested Friday
while a major pro-Russia party asked the top court to annul this month's election win by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's ruling party,
alleging electoral violations and suppression of the opposition.
The opposition "Strong Armenia" party appealed to the Constitutional Court
to invalidate election results or call a second round of voting,
and denounced the arrests of opposition po…

Armenian opposition members arrested after contesting election
The opposition Strong Armenia party appealed to the Constitutional Court on Friday to invalidate election results or call a second round of voting, citing widespread electoral violations.