Tootfinder

RUSSIA DECEIVES THE WORLD: Ukrainian army controls the situation on the front line #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/07/russia-deceives-the-world-ukrainian.html

I was re-watching Captain America and the Winter Soldier and was struck by the statement that HYDRA had created a world of such chaos that people would accept the iron boot of a dictator in exchange for peace.
Life imitating art?

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#PrivatePassions
- Richard Stokes
Michael Berkeley's guest is Richard Stokes, one of the world's leading authorities on German art songs or lieder. He has also translated many songs and operas.
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qqnw

How Venezuela crisis will impact Russia’s influence in the world: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/07/how-venezuela-crisis-will-impact.html

"Pigments of the Imagination: Art & Archaeology from Across the Colour Spectrum" Bodleian Libraries blog: https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/sackler/2026/01/23/pigments-of-the-imagination-art-archaeology-fro…

"Like World War I and II combined": US Senator Tom Brewer shocked by Ukraine war: https://benborges.xyz/2026/03/04/ampquotlike-world-war-i-and.html

Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman meet in a cartoon to talk about Israel-Gaza and the ceasefire
https://www.theguardian.com/world/picture/2025/feb/14/joe-sacco-art-spiegelman-israel-gaza-war-ceasefire-cartoon

🎨 How art reveals the values that sustain lasting peace
#art …

How art reveals the values that sustain lasting peace
Peace emerges from everyday cooperation, shared values and harmony with nature, not just decisions made by rulers.

LIVE | This THREATENS THE WORLD: General Hodges on when the Kremlin won't withstand the pressure: https://benborges.xyz/2026/03/03/live-this-threatens-the-world.html

How did we exchange information before photography,
before print,
even before writing?
How was truth represented in a world of stories, myths and oral traditions?
For most of human history,
truth wasn’t a fixed point;
it was negotiated within a tribe,
verified by proximity,
and sustained by trust.
In that sense,
we may be returning to an ancient condition:
truth as local, not universal.
This isn’t necessarily the apoc…

AI photo art raises question: What comes after ‘seeing is believing’? 
In the age of AI, photographs no longer express truth. That doesn’t make them any less meaningful.

IEEE Spectrum writer Dina Genkina compiles this list of top computing stories from 2025. The list includes subjects ranging from the year's top programming languages, to data centers on the Moon.
"The Top 8 Computing Stories of 2025"
https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-computin

Mein Firefox hat gerade alle Tabs geschlossen und die Chronik NICHT gespeichert. Merkwürdig.
Jetzt bin ich auf der Suche nach einer Seite, wo man ein Foto seines Laptops mit Stickern hochladen konnte. Einfach so, weil es geht und weil es witzig ist, sich andere Stickersammlungen anzuschauen.
Ich finde es nicht 😭
EDIT: Habs gefunden https://st…

Trans people are incredible, strong, beautiful, and absolutely bring so much love and strength to our world.
:bisexual_pride: 🏳️‍⚧️ :genderfluid_flag: :nonbinary_flag: :heart_trans: 🏳️‍🌈
I wholeheartedly, unapologetically, and forever believe that #TransRightsAreHumanRights.
Always, forever, endlessly, trans people are real, valuable, and human in every way…

Custom self-leveling, poured polyurethane art floors. Cool video.
I found others, e.g., on youtube:
"epoxy flooring 3d"
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=epoxy flooring 3d

#neulatein|ische Neuerscheinung: Simonetta, Nicolini, Anselmi Gian Mario, Ferrilli Sara, Giovanardi Alessandro, Lollini Fabrizio, Pesaresi Jacopo, Schaffenrath Florian, u. a. L’amore, le armi, le stelle. Lysa Publishers. doi:10.54179/2501,

I submitted a proposal for a lightning talk for #FOSDEM . It's about .... from street-level hack to open cultural production.
https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026

Love Nathan Pyle's work. Find his stuff here: https://www.nathanwpyle.art/

Want a Masterclass in How Not to Work With Artists? Ask Google
https://

Want a Masterclass in How Not to Work With Artists? Ask Google | Artnet News
Renown artist Judy Chicago shares her misadventures with an ambitious public art commission for the tech giant.

Why is the world silent? 47% of U.S. businesses in Ukraine were attacked by RF – economic terrorism!: https://benborges.xyz/2026/02/28/why-is-the-world-silent.html

The Art of Pivoting - Techniques for Intelligence Analysts to Discover New Relationships in a Complex World
This open source book explores how intelligence and cyber-security analysts can uncover hidden links between threat actor infrastructure and ongoing investigations by pivoting on both classic and unconventional indicators — many of which are often overlooked. The material is grounded in empirical, field-tested strategies used in cyber-security, digital forensics, cyber threat int…

„This morning, like millions of people across the world, I heard the unconscionable statements made by members of the jury of the Berlin film festival when they were asked to comment about the genocide in Gaza. To hear them say that art should not be political is jaw-dropping.“
Author #ArundhatiRoy, 'Shocked and Disgusted' by Jury's

my dad hanging out with his anti-fascist krewe on a sunny day

One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

Disappointing to see that even Electric Sheep has a slop angle now https://electricsheep.org/

For those of you in or adjacent to the software development world, this is a pretty interesting article on both the state of the art and the social issues its generating.
#AIandSociety #AI
https://steve-yegge.medium.com/the-ai-vampire-eda6e4f07163

Yesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Minsk and Moscow PREPARE STRIKE? New drills near NATO borders push world to disaster's edge: https://benborges.xyz/2026/03/03/minsk-and-moscow-prepare-strike.html

Book nook ideas.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUtedQVCY1Y/?igsh=MTU0NWhuYzljdmNscQ==

Creativ-Unique on Instagram: "Turning a Blank Corner into a 3D Masterpiece 🖌️ I decided to turn this empty corner into an infinite hallway of books! 📚 It started with a complex grid of blue tape to map out the forced perspective. Then came layers of dark green paint to create the illusion of deep shadows and depth. The trickiest part was painting the hundreds of colorful books to make them look realistic from a distance. The final result is the ultimate cozy reading nook that looks like it goes on forever! Let me know in the comments: Did the perspective trick your eyes? Yes or No? 👇 Subscribe for more 3D art and room transformations! #opticalillusion #3dart #muralpainting #librarylife #readingnook #trompeloeil #satisfyingasmr #artistatwork #diydecor #reelsinstagram😍"
169K likes, 1,488 comments - creativunique on February 13, 2026: "Turning a Blank Corner into a 3D Masterpiece 🖌️ I decided to turn this empty corner into an infinite hallway of books! 📚 It started with a complex grid of blue tape to map out the forced perspective. Then came layers of dark green paint to create the illusion of deep shadows and depth. The trickiest part was painting the hundreds of colorful books to make them look realistic from a distance. The final result is the ultima…

CEO and founder of Petabridge Aaron Stannard reviews ways to avoid deep inheritance hierarchies in your software projects. The article goes beyond preferring composition over inheritance and explains what Stannard calls the two deadly sins of deep inheritance, configuration toggle hell, a real world horror story, and shows what can be done instead.
"Why Your Software Sucks: Inheritance"

Bikelution: Federated Gradient-Boosting for Scalable Shared Micro-Mobility Demand Forecasting
Antonios Tziorvas, Andreas Tritsarolis, Yannis Theodoridis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.20671 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.20671 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.20671
arXiv:2602.20671v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The rapid growth of dockless bike-sharing systems has generated massive spatio-temporal datasets useful for fleet allocation, congestion reduction, and sustainable mobility. Bike demand, however, depends on several external factors, making traditional time-series models insufficient. Centralized Machine Learning (CML) yields high-accuracy forecasts but raises privacy and bandwidth issues when data are distributed across edge devices. To overcome these limitations, we propose Bikelution, an efficient Federated Learning (FL) solution based on gradient-boosted trees that preserves privacy while delivering accurate mid-term demand forecasts up to six hours ahead. Experiments on three real-world BSS datasets show that Bikelution is comparable to its CML-based variant and outperforms the current state-of-the-art. The results highlight the feasibility of privacy-aware demand forecasting and outline the trade-offs between FL and CML approaches.
toXiv_bot_toot

⚡️ "ENERGY RAMSTEIN": World allocates HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS to save Ukrainian power: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/24/quotenergy-ramsteinquot-world-allocates-hundreds.html

Fact Check: Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Did NOT Address The World After Reports Of His Death: https://benborges.xyz/2026/03/01/fact-check-iranian-supreme-leader.html

The world was shocked by RF's anti-record. Zelenskyy named the conditions for REAL PEACE in Munich: https://benborges.xyz/2026/02/14/the-world-was-shocked-by.html

😱 Shocking Russian TV broadcasts: how the Kremlin is preparing the world for a nuclear apocalypse: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/28/shocking-russian-tv-broadcasts-how.html

Russia has suffered 'more losses than any major power' since World War II, report says: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/28/russia-has-suffered-more-losses.html

Spatially-informed transformers: Injecting geostatistical covariance biases into self-attention for spatio-temporal forecasting
Yuri Calleo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17696 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.17696 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.17696
arXiv:2512.17696v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The modeling of high-dimensional spatio-temporal processes presents a fundamental dichotomy between the probabilistic rigor of classical geostatistics and the flexible, high-capacity representations of deep learning. While Gaussian processes offer theoretical consistency and exact uncertainty quantification, their prohibitive computational scaling renders them impractical for massive sensor networks. Conversely, modern transformer architectures excel at sequence modeling but inherently lack a geometric inductive bias, treating spatial sensors as permutation-invariant tokens without a native understanding of distance. In this work, we propose a spatially-informed transformer, a hybrid architecture that injects a geostatistical inductive bias directly into the self-attention mechanism via a learnable covariance kernel. By formally decomposing the attention structure into a stationary physical prior and a non-stationary data-driven residual, we impose a soft topological constraint that favors spatially proximal interactions while retaining the capacity to model complex dynamics. We demonstrate the phenomenon of ``Deep Variography'', where the network successfully recovers the true spatial decay parameters of the underlying process end-to-end via backpropagation. Extensive experiments on synthetic Gaussian random fields and real-world traffic benchmarks confirm that our method outperforms state-of-the-art graph neural networks. Furthermore, rigorous statistical validation confirms that the proposed method delivers not only superior predictive accuracy but also well-calibrated probabilistic forecasts, effectively bridging the gap between physics-aware modeling and data-driven learning.
toXiv_bot_toot

ZELENSKYY: The more difficult it is for Russia, the closer the world is #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/27/zelenskyy-the-more-difficult-it.html

Zelensky says Putin has 'already started World War III,' calls for stronger pressure on Russia: https://benborges.xyz/2026/02/23/zelensky-says-putin-has-already.html

LIVE 24/7: Key News from Ukraine & World Updates: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/24/live-key-news-from-ukraine.html

"WE CANNOT DELAY AIR DEFENSE": Zelenskyy ADDRESSES THE WORLD after MASSIVE SHELLING of Kyiv: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/24/quotwe-cannot-delay-air-defensequot.html

No peace? Putin lies to the world while preparing new war!: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/23/no-peace-putin-lies-to.html

Carol of the Bells: the song that made the world speak about Ukraine: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/23/carol-of-the-bells-the.html

EUROPE’S defense strategy – Security challenges in the new WORLD ORDER | Explainer: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/22/europes-defense-strategy-security-challenges.html

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY! Ukraine united the ENTIRE WORLD around itself, – Zelenskyy #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/22/for-the-first-time-in.html

Kremlin doesn't want peace — it's official! The world prepares to act without Russia: https://benborges.xyz/2025/12/22/kremlin-doesnt-want-peace-its.html

LIVE 24/7: Key News from Ukraine & World Updates: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/21/live-key-news-from-ukraine.html

🔴URGENT! Donald Trump's special address at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos!: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/21/urgent-donald-trumps-special-address.html

Russia continues GENOCIDE against civilians in Ukraine, – a call to the world #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/21/russia-continues-genocide-against-civilians.html

LIVE 24/7: Key News from Ukraine & World Updates: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/20/live-key-news-from-ukraine.html

Russia's $4B air defense in flames! Davos convenes World Economic Forum: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/19/russias-b-air-defense-in.html

🔥SHOCK🔥 Putin needs eternal war: why does the world still believe in "peace talks"?: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/19/shock-putin-needs-eternal-war.html

🤦‍♂️ CNN took apart the "ORESHNIK": inside details of GAGARIN'S TIME. A disgrace to the WHOLE WORLD!: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/13/cnn-took-apart-the-quotoreshnikquot.html

'I'd take Putin,' UK Defense Sec says when asked which world leader he'd most like to kidnap: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/09/id-take-putin-uk-defense.html