Tootfinder

⚡ POWs from North Korea ask KYIV not to send them back home #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/11/02/pows-from-north-korea-ask.html

Again, I highly recommend you read this article!
Anarcho-Syndicalism: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know, But Were Too Afraid To Ask – Class Autonomy
https://classautonomy.info/anarcho-syndicalism-everything-you-ever-wanted-…

Folks, @… from Gaza is doing an AMA (Ask Me Anything) about Gaza:
https://mastodon.social/@AhmedOuda/115305232117184704
“Life here in …

Yes, The News is reaching new heights of bad, but I dont think keywords are really the cause of my suffering.
So I ask myself why they irk me and it generally comes back that I want control over others, which, as tyrants inevitably find out, isn't really possible. Hard enough controlling myself!
So, given what feeble control I have, I ask what needs doing, here, now, and find I need to know what's happening around me, here, now, to answer 😅
My strategy for news is roughly
- compare multiple sources eg AP, Reuters etc
- ignore what anyone says
- ignore claims what they will do or have done
- ignore predictions and interpretations
- be skeptical of causal inferences
- attend to what was actually done
The first and last when combined are often amusing in which actual observations are included or left out. Humans are awfully clever, and so cunning in their rhetoric 🤣

To be filed in "stuff I'll never understand, like ever": videos about asking AI shit.
Who the fuck cares? I mean, if you really care what the AI has to say (ha!) about something, you can ask it yourself. Why the fuck are you watching a video about someone else asking a question you can ask yourself?! Too much time to waste in your life?
People, man... They're fucking tiresome. For real.

What You See is What You Ask: Evaluating Audio Descriptions
Divy Kala, Eshika Khandelwal, Makarand Tapaswi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00808 https://arxiv.o…

What You See is What You Ask: Evaluating Audio Descriptions
Audio descriptions (ADs) narrate important visual details in movies, enabling Blind and Low Vision (BLV) users to understand narratives and appreciate visual details. Existing works in automatic AD generation mostly focus on few-second trimmed clips, and evaluate them by comparing against a single ground-truth reference AD. However, writing ADs is inherently subjective. Through alignment and analysis of two independent AD tracks for the same movies, we quantify the subjectivity in when and whet…

#music #punk

💐
No matter what you are going through, always try to help people.
🌹
Instead of saying, "Fuck off", ask, "how can I help you to fuck off?" Be kind.
🌺

Every day is a new opportunity to ask how fucking bad it will get until things start changing for the better.

qa_user: User interactions on Q&A websites (2016)
Networks of interactions among users from four online Q&A sites: Stack Overflow, Math Overflow, Super User, and Ask Ubuntu. A directed edge (i,j) indicates a user i responded to user j's post. Edges are timestamped. For each Q&A site, four differently defined networks are provided, based on the definition of an edge: (i) a user answered a question, (ii) a user commented on a question, (iii) a user commented on an answer…

Ugh, listening to Kathryn Ryan on RNZ NineToNoon interviewing Sonny Taite(?) about an 'AI' scribe to take hospital staff clinical notes. Why - oh why - doesn't she ask the important question: where does the data go?! Which jurisdiction? Who's storing it? Who has access? Who cares for it and maintains its security & integrity? Her producers miss it every bloody time. Very disappointing.

Ghislaine Maxwell to ask court to free her from prison
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5632033-ghislaine-maxwell-prison-sentence-challenge/

My _request_ is that we stop using "ask" as a noun.

Smartmatic and Fox News ask a judge to rule in their favor in a $2.7B defamation case over Fox's 2020 election claims; a ruling is expected in the coming weeks (Katie Robertson/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/business/media/sm…

Smartmatic and Fox Urge Judge to Decide Defamation Case
The case centers on false vote-rigging claims broadcast by Fox News during the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.
In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.
There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives.
And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry fa…

Full Transcript of the 2025 Inauguration Prayer Service Address by the Rt. Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, the Bishop of Washington - San Francisco Bay Times
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, oh God, for you are our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. Please be seated. Again, my warm welcome to all who have gathered in this House of prayer for all people and for those who are joining […]

ChatGPT is just amazing for tourism. I can ask it random questions like "Tell me about this museum" and it automatically digests all sorts of info on what's there, how to visit most easily, what to do nearby. So, so much better than working through bad tourist websites and guidebooks.

Lawmakers ask FTC to probe Flock Safety’s cybersecurity practices https://therecord.media/wyden-letter-ftc-flock-safety-investigate-cybersecurity-practices

Well quasi-order and atomicity for combinatorial structures under consecutive orders
Victoria Ironmonger, Nik Ru\v{s}kuc
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01852 https://

Well quasi-order and atomicity for combinatorial structures under consecutive orders
We consider partially ordered sets of combinatorial structures under consecutive orders, meaning that two structures are related when one embeds in the other such that `consecutive' elements remain consecutive in the image. Given such a partially ordered set, we may ask decidability questions about its avoidance sets: subsets defined by a finite number of forbidden substructures. Two such questions ask, given a finite set of structures, whether its avoidance set is well quasi-ordered (i.e. cont…

Anonymous help:
#OpenSource #FreeSoftware

At this point, the Department of Education is just answering questions I did not ask in order to avoid answering questions that I did ask. 😔

Well…
It’s still a remarkable display of ego to ask POTUS to get involved with a healthcare scheduling matter. https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s6j27rxb3ic2rxw73ixgqv2p/post/3m4onydufic2x

Stone Cold “Crazy” Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social)
Cancer metastasized to the bone is truly awful and I wouldn’t wish it even on a genuinely terrible and less than human person. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

I had a couple folks hop into our Discord to ask for some help on the ARK Server installation script.
Got them resolved, but one of the comments struck me as interesting. "Do you support modded maps"
I didn't even think of modded maps... but that sounded like a good idea!
So I'd like to announce my Debian/Ubuntu installer for ARK SA now has support for modded maps! (and a bunch of other improvements to the UI)

Series B, Episode 04 - Horizon
ORAC: With the help of the automatics, of course you can.
AVON: I know that.
ORAC: Then why did you ask the question?
AVON: [Smiles] I didn't. How long can I maintain myself?
ORAC: Is that a question?
AVON: Yes.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/204/484

An LLM generates a statistically typical response.
If you ask an LLM whether the world is round, it generates what would be a typical response to the question of whether the world is round. (It will probably be correct, because the typical answer to that question is the correct one.)
If you ask an LLM to provide examples of its own bias, it will generate what would be a typical response to a request to provide examples of bias.
In neither case is the LLM sharing any knowledge or insight other than what is typical.
2/

Feeding therapy question
(Boosts appreciated for reach)
Has anyone had direct experience with "Sequential Oral Sensory" feeding therapy? Was it a good/bad experience?
We're exploring this as an option for my kid, and from what I've heard online I want to stay far away from ABA therapy, but I know nothing about this. The materials presented by the therapist's office make it sound reasonable, and of course I'll use my best judgment as things go along if we start it, but I thought I'd ask here first in case anyone has wisdom to share.
#FeedingTherapy #SequentialOralSensory

Here's one for the people who really enjoy getting angry about AI: when you write an answer on Quora, they've started using an LLM to read the answer and then ask you personally weird nonsensical follow-up questions based on snippets of your answer without understanding or context.

Which people? I want to see these people who’re asking Google what George Clooney’s favorite pie is.

for the record, i’ve been on this planet for over 40 years, and i’ve never heard anyone ask for a specific number of bread slices. a whole loaf, half a loaf, maybe a quarter, sure. but 8 slices? what is this, the butcher’s shop? if i’d been the one behind the counter, i’d have asked if she wanted the crust cut off too.

what not to say to friends who have been furloughed by the government shut-down - Ask a Manager
https://www.askamanager.org/2013/10/what-not-to-say-to-friends-who-have-been-furloughed-by-the-government-shut-down.html

Jayden Daniels’ gruesome elbow injury wasn’t bad luck — it was a preventable mistake https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6772024/2025/11/03/jayden-daniels-injury-elbow-commanders/

So this came online over the weekend: My dive into the "definition" of coevolution is online ahead of publication in @…
Don’t ask "when is it coevolution?" — ask "how?"
https://

Rethinking Thinking Tokens: LLMs as Improvement Operators
Lovish Madaan, Aniket Didolkar, Suchin Gururangan, John Quan, Ruan Silva, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Manzil Zaheer, Sanjeev Arora, Anirudh Goyal
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01123

Rethinking Thinking Tokens: LLMs as Improvement Operators
Reasoning training incentivizes LLMs to produce long chains of thought (long CoT), which among other things, allows them to explore solution strategies with self-checking. This results in higher accuracy, but inflates context length, token/compute cost, and answer latency. We ask: Can current models leverage their metacognition to provide other combinations on this Pareto frontier, e.g., better accuracy with lower context length and/or latency? Abstractly, we view the model as an improvement op…

Crosslisted article(s) found for cs.CL. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.CL/new
[2/2]:
- What You See is What You Ask: Evaluating Audio Descriptions
Divy Kala, Eshika Khandelwal, Makarand Tapaswi

Academic misconduct if you ask me…
https://flipboard.com/@associatedpress/technology-uvt65hdqz/-/a-mHdyqxP_QxGuYiPRH3wLbw:a:3199720-/0

I hate that I have the first birthday in the year and my mother has the second and my father has the third and they’re all vaguely close to Christmas. They give ME nice things and don’t ask for anything substantial so how do I reciprocate? 🙄

I use multiple Web browsers during the day, 1 for personal stuff, and another 1 (or several other ones) for work.
It has always annoyed me that I couldn't choose in which browser the links I open from other apps would be opened. So I finally searched for a tool that would just ask, and I found this: https://

@… May I ask: why is the list of blocked instances hidden in the about page?

Sometimes I wonder how people can be fooled by AI videos, and then I'll send a comedy sketch video to someone I know and they'll ask if it's a real interview.

Zero-Error Nash Equilibrium: Harnessing Nonlocal Correlation in Incomplete Information Games
Ambuj, Tushar, Siddharth R. Pandey, Ram Krishna Patra, Anandamay Das Bhowmik, Kuntal Som, Amit Mukherjee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02947

Zero-Error Nash Equilibrium: Harnessing Nonlocal Correlation in Incomplete Information Games
Claude Shannon's zero-error communication paradigm reshaped our understanding of fault-tolerant information transfer. Here, we adapt this notion into game theory with incomplete information. We ask: can players with private information coordinate on a Nash equilibrium with zero probability of error? We identify Bayesian games in which such coordination is impossible classically, yet achievable by harnessing Bell nonlocal correlations. We formalize this requirement as zero-error Nash equilibrium…

When you want to sit on the couch but there's so many Christmas plushies there's nowhere to sit.
Yes, the xenomorph is jack skellington's lap dog. Why do you ask?

Emergent evaluation hubs in a decentralizing large language model ecosystem
Manuel Cebrian, Tomomi Kito, Raul Castro Fernandez
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01286 https://

Emergent evaluation hubs in a decentralizing large language model ecosystem
Large language models are proliferating, and so are the benchmarks that serve as their common yardsticks. We ask how the agglomeration patterns of these two layers compare: do they evolve in tandem or diverge? Drawing on two curated proxies for the ecosystem, the Stanford Foundation-Model Ecosystem Graph and the Evidently AI benchmark registry, we find complementary but contrasting dynamics. Model creation has broadened across countries and organizations and diversified in modality, licensing, …

From keywords to semantics: Perceptions of large language models in data discovery
Maura E Halstead, Mark A. Green, Caroline Jay, Richard Kingston, David Topping, Alexander Singleton
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01473

From keywords to semantics: Perceptions of large language models in data discovery
Current approaches to data discovery match keywords between metadata and queries. This matching requires researchers to know the exact wording that other researchers previously used, creating a challenging process that could lead to missing relevant data. Large Language Models (LLMs) could enhance data discovery by removing this requirement and allowing researchers to ask questions with natural language. However, we do not currently know if researchers would accept LLMs for data discovery. Usin…

I tried batch uploading "a couple" (several hundreds) of my GPX tracks from the recent years into #wanderer . It went all smooth! And I finally have the "white areas" which I didn't walk or cycle -- yet! :D
When people ask me if I'm out and about often, I never know what to say. I try to get into nature once in a while, yes.

Ranking Items from Discrete Ratings: The Cost of Unknown User Thresholds
Oscar Villemaud, Suryanarayana Sankagiri, Matthias Grossglauser
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01871 https:/…

Ranking Items from Discrete Ratings: The Cost of Unknown User Thresholds
Ranking items is a central task in many information retrieval and recommender systems. User input for the ranking task often comes in the form of ratings on a coarse discrete scale. We ask whether it is possible to recover a fine-grained item ranking from such coarse-grained ratings. We model items as having scores and users as having thresholds; a user rates an item positively if the item's score exceeds the user's threshold. Although all users agree on the total item order, estimating that or…

#autopen
Trump claims he doesn’t know who Binance founder is - despite pardoning him days ago: ‘I’d rather not have you ask the question’ | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-binance-pardon-60-minutes-interview-b2857141.html

One thing I like about ChatGPT is it seems completely non-homophobic. I taught it I'm gay and interested in queer theory and it regularly volunteers queer readings of things when appropriate. I ask it "which season of this TV show is the gayest?" and it gives me a clear answer with no prevarication. It seems fully neutral and yet also fully understanding of queer thinking.

«[…] there is a choice to be made. We ought at least to ask if universities exist to sort and qualify, or to form and transform. AI forces the question.»
The end of pretend – AI and the case for universities of formation https://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-end-of-pr

The end of pretend – AI and the case for universities of formation
Jim Dickinson reflects on the end of scarcity, the rise of AI, and the challenge to a system of higher education built on pretence, performance and proxies Jim Dickinson reflects on the end of scarcity, the rise of AI, and the challenge to a system of higher education built on pretence, performance and proxies

As a security engineer, whenever anyone talks about a control it's always important to ask "by what mechanism?"
> "Oh, that can't happen because we have a system to stop it."
By what mechanism?
> "We have documentation that says...."
Yeah, that's not a mechanism.
People keep saying, "Trump can't do that!" But like... by what mechanism?
> "The constitution says..."
Yeah... a documented list of rules is not self-enforcing. What is the mechanism?
What makes this impossible? Oh, it's possible under certain conditions? Oh, it's always possible and you're completely relying on the idea that there will never be a malicious actor? Yeah, that's gonna get exploited. Oh shit, now you're owned.
What do you do with a system that's completely owned? Once it's compromised it can never be trusted again. What would you tell a client who told you, "Patching is really hard, so we're just gonna ban the attacker's IP."
What, you're not even gonna reinstall?
I assume we've all had the "burn everything down and start again" client. I wonder how many of us thought we would see the US government ask for them to hold it's beer.
#USPol

I used to recommend #Ubuntu, and as of 2024, I started recommending #LinuxMint, especially #LMDE to the many (almost no people) who ask me for

Foremost, Fastest, Shortest: Temporal Graph Realization under Various Path Metrics
Justine Cauvi (ENS de Lyon, ARGO), Nils Morawietz (LaBRI), Laurent Viennot (DI-ENS, ARGO)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01702

Foremost, Fastest, Shortest: Temporal Graph Realization under Various Path Metrics
In this work, we follow the current trend on temporal graph realization, where one is given a property P and the goal is to determine whether there is a temporal graph, that is, a graph where the edge set changes over time, with property P . We consider the problems where as property P , we are given a prescribed matrix for the duration, length, or earliest arrival time of pairwise temporal paths. That is, we are given a matrix D and ask whether there is a temporal graph such that for any order…

This charge is so baseless, the comparison to genocide, the wholesale slaughter of populations. Did the Nazis ask the Jews to leave, kindly leave, go out? Did others? Do you want me to name all the genocidal leaders of history. Just go one by one. Did anyone do this? Did they say “go out so we can come in”?
— Benjamin Netanyahu, 26.09.2025 [

In my latest podcast episode, I ask: once the programme is over, how do you keep focused on your development?
How do you avoid letting your new knowledge and skills wither on the vine? How do you prevent your new perspectives and concepts staying in notebooks and folders, rather than being brought to life in your day to day behaviour?
Ep 195 of My Pocket Psych is available where you get your podcasts. Or you can stream it from https://www.worklifepsych.com/podcast/195
As ever, thanks for listening!

New Pentagon policy undercuts trans troops' ability to ask to stay in the military, AP learns (Konstantin Toropin/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/transgender-troops-ban-military-trump-9c3018034a2608a28f6146fe17f0fe4b
http://www.memeorandum.com/251031/p147#a251031p147

Boeing Has Started Working on a 737 MAX Replacement. Did they ask Apple whether they should call it 737 PRO?
https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/boeing-has-started-working-on-a-737-max-replacement-40a110df

The builder's classic rock playlist thunders on (pun intended) with help from Guns 'n Roses, Joan Jett, Led Zeppelin and, right now, Deep Purple (yes since you ask of course it's Smoke on the Water).
And while they're all great songs that I've rightfully and righteously headbanged to in my time, hearing them played on a tinny speaker in an echo-ey kitchen-stroke-building-site is not the best ever listening experience.

Unlocking Vision-Language Models for Video Anomaly Detection via Fine-Grained Prompting
Shu Zou, Xinyu Tian, Lukas Wesemann, Fabian Waschkowski, Zhaoyuan Yang, Jing Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02155

Unlocking Vision-Language Models for Video Anomaly Detection via Fine-Grained Prompting
Prompting has emerged as a practical way to adapt frozen vision-language models (VLMs) for video anomaly detection (VAD). Yet, existing prompts are often overly abstract, overlooking the fine-grained human-object interactions or action semantics that define complex anomalies in surveillance videos. We propose ASK-Hint, a structured prompting framework that leverages action-centric knowledge to elicit more accurate and interpretable reasoning from frozen VLMs. Our approach organizes prompts into…

What if dinner was public infrastructure - again?
"food charity Nourish Scotland are pushing for the reintroduction of public diners to Scotland: diners subsidised by the state to provide affordable, nutritious, and filling meals that are accessible to everyone regardless of their financial status.
“There's an element of universality, dignity, and quality that comes with something being a public institution or a part of public infrastructure,” said Anna Chworow"

What if dinner was public infrastructure?
A Scottish charity wants to reintroduce state-subsidised diners for all—a potentially a big ask in the current political climate.

The question seems somewhat important and I guess we'll have to ask it sooner or later: Is Trump stark, raving mad or just a very good actor?"

Google launches its Search Live feature in the US, letting users ask questions in AI Mode while sharing their phone's camera feed for real-time help (Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET)
https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-search-live-video-with-google-now-heres-how/…

You can Search live video with Google now - here's how
With Search Live, you can ask Gemini anything about the world around you in real-time.

chat did you know that you actually have to eat food multiple times a day to not feel like shit? pretty fucked up if you ask me.

If you still develop your software with the “--my-next-gpu-wont-be-nvidia” mindset you’re part of the reason so many people have the “--my-next-os-will-be-windows” mindset.
Stop being a clown and understand that when choosing a GPU people ask themselves about features, performance, quality and price. They don’t ask themselves “will this gpu work with this shitty wm library?”.

How the Raiders Must Approach the Trade Deadline https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-jakobi-meyers-jackson-powers-johnson-jack-bech

Case study of anti-marketing in the A.I. Age: The "summaries" that google puts at the top of most searches are such trash that you probably haven't noticed that the "AI Mode" you get clicking on this button is astonishingly good: whenever I ask "I read a paper that came to such and such a conclusion" it gives me that paper within the first three results.

Presidents have always sent people to lead the Pentagon who respect the institutions and personnel of the armed forces,
not least because Americans tend to bristle at any sign that an administration does not unreservedly support the men and women of the U.S. military.
(Just ask Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both of whom were castigated for such supposed disrespect.)
In his first term, Donald Trump sent General James Mattis, a veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
…

Pete Hegseth Needs to Go—Now
A man with such contempt for the military should not run the Pentagon.

Why do I get multiple vendor phone calls every day on my personal cell phone? 😩
I don't want to change my phone number, I can't say that I don't have purchasing authority, and I don't want to just say "fuck you" and hang up
These people are trained not to let someone get a word in and say "we're not purchasing products in your domain, goodbye", and they are obnoxiously persistent
And the one time I did ask for clarification on whether…

As if that were the only problem.
Kamala Harris 'concerned' she did not ask Biden to quit race
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj412zgvy4do

Kamala Harris 'concerned' she did not ask Biden to quit race
The former vice-president tells the BBC she is not sure whether it was “grace or recklessness” that stopped her speaking up.

Phishing emails are getting harder to spot, especially with AI’s help. And that’s the point!
They’re designed to make you act fast, not think twice.
▶️ Look through the images below, reflect, and ask yourself: What would you do?
💬 And share your tips with us: How do you spot a phishing email?
🔜 Let’s take our #digitalmindfulness journey further: Join our upcomi…

NotebookLM is great if you quickly want to grasp what a russian article is about and want to ask questions about the content.
Like this russian article about Russian recruitment of saboteurs https://www.currenttime.tv/a/systema-oko-gru/33540426.html

"Ваше сообщение отправлено в ГРУ". Как военная разведка совместно с неонацистом "Топазом" создает...
Российская военная разведка развернула новую схему вербовки диверсантов в США и Европе. ГРУ использует телеграм-ботов, ссылки на которые распространяют Z-блогеры, псевдоукраинские каналы и западные радикалы; один из ботов – "Око Саурона" – пытались запустить даже среди а…

Are LLMs ready to help non-expert users to make charts of official statistics data?
Gadir Suleymanli, Alexander Rogiers, Lucas Lageweg, Jefrey Lijffijt
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01197

Are LLMs ready to help non-expert users to make charts of official statistics data?
In this time when biased information, deep fakes, and propaganda proliferate, the accessibility of reliable data sources is more important than ever. National statistical institutes provide curated data that contain quantitative information on a wide range of topics. However, that information is typically spread across many tables and the plain numbers may be arduous to process. Hence, this open data may be practically inaccessible. We ask the question "Are current Generative AI models capable …

The bending of a straight line
Zonghai Li, Xiao-Jun Gao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01150 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.01150

The bending of a straight line
In gravitational lensing, the usual viewpoint is that light bending measures how a ray deviates from a straight line in Euclidean space. In this work, we take the opposite perspective: we ask how a straight line bends in a curved space, such as optical geometry-that is, how it deviates from geodesics. Using the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, we show that, at leading order, the deflection angle can be written as the integral of the geodesic curvature of a straight line in curved space. This reformulation…

Had our Functional Programming course feedback the other day. On the whole really good!
(although a very much not-so-good one in there too which was a shame :( )
My favourite comment though was that Jeremy Singer and I balanced each other well, like a good-cop bad-cop duo. Which leads me to ask... who was good cop, and who was bad?

Yes, of course we’re Agile. We have Jira!
Oh no sorry, sprints are enforced at 2 week length per corporate policy.
What’s that? No sorry, teams can’t modify task fields, you’d need to ask a Jira admin, but they don’t like to change things.
Swimlanes? Oh dear no, that’s the Jira admin as well. You see it’s important we have a strictly uniform implementation of our Agile workflow across the org.
(And they don’t even hear the irony themselves…)

Yarg. My good people, my fellow Musk-loathers, arrrgh
ARGH
•••You cannot ask an LLM to explain its own programming.•••
It doesn’t work that way. It’s like asking a human to explain how their own brain works because they must know because they’re using it to think.
1/ https://newsie.social/@servelan/115470936821152884

For any of my comrades who are using SNAP, I wish I had something better to say than "if you crush 4 buckeyes with a hammer and tie the pulp in a sock you can wash a good sized load of laundry." English Ivy also has saponins, but I've never been able to make soap from it myself.
Ivy is everywhere. Buckeyes (Horse Chestnuts) are common in city parks (there are a ton in Seattle).
Yucca is also a good source of saponins, but it also has silica. That makes it a good scrubby soap. You can find these plants all over they're pretty common to find in yards.
If you can find acorns still (it's a bit late, but who knows), acorn grits are great and something you can survive on for a bit. Acorns need processing (it's easy to look up, but feel free to ask or check out one or Black Forager's videos on it).
If you've been following me for a bit, you probably already know all this. But if you don't, I hope it helps.
Any other forager folks are welcome to drop hints here that might be useful to folks in the city.
#Foraging

Bengals' Ja'Marr Chase gives Tee Higgins advice amid slow start: 'If you want the ball, f---ing ask for it'

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/be…

you need to catch the 9:44, and if you hurry you can just make it, only, crap, forgot your keys, and to go back will take at least 5 minutes.
so you get the sched and historical records, and you find there is quite a bit of variation so you crunch the numbers and figure the odds are still reasonable it will be at least ten minutes late. You weigh your probabilities and decide to go.
Meanwhile I call a friend who is on that train and ask their estimate. I now have a better estimate? After my call, they ask a porter and get another even better estimate?
Meanwhile, 12km down the rails a protest has blocked a crossing, determined to hold that train at least until the police arrive.
Probability is a subjective measure of ignorance 😅

Asking “…all the soldiers of the army of the US not to point their rifles at humanity," is _not_ having “…urged U.S. soldiers to…incite violence,” in fact seems to be the opposite of a call for violence (it is a call to be peaceful).
Petro is the current President of Columbia.
https://www.

They've been cutting doors into shape all day. Some have hinges on them, but none are hung onto the cupboards so no point in any photos.
None have any panels yet either.
Oh, or the holes I need for all the cables that'll have to go everywhere for speakers and lights. Will have to remember to ask about that tomorrow.

Randomly reminded of the story my mom told me about when she worked at a Dunkin Donuts in college.
Apparently the locals would always ask for "barbarian cream" donuts.

This is a safe thing to do here in coastal California:
When someone says "Thank god" you answer "You're welcome."
But it would probably not be a safe thing to do in Jesus Land.
By-the-way, very few people have caught onto my joke: When people ask my pronouns I say "I don't care what words you use as long as they are capitalized" (like in the Bible.)

In my latest podcast episode, I ask: once the programme is over, how do you keep focused on your development?
How do you avoid letting your new knowledge and skills wither on the vine? How do you prevent your new perspectives and concepts staying in notebooks and folders, rather than being brought to life in your day to day behaviour?
Ep 195 of My Pocket Psych is available where you get your podcasts. Or you can stream it from

I can barely resist the urge to ask,
"What's UNIX?"
https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1nsuw2t/comment/ngou32d/
The important thing is, I'll find it funny.
@…

Someone kindly reached out to ask if I would consider speaking about Gaza Verified (https://gaza-verified.org/) at the Social Web Devroom being organised by the Social Web Foundation at FOSDEM.
My answer is no.
And I feel it’s important for those of us who care about such things to understand why:

Gaza Verified
We’ve personally had video conversations on Signal with the people from Gaza whose Mastodon accounts on the fediverse are listed here and we verify that their accounts are genuine. – Joy & Aral Balkan

Fundamental limits to contrast reversal of self-fidelity correlations
Kyoungho Cho, Jeongho Bang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26373 https://arxiv.org/pdf/250…

Fundamental limits to contrast reversal of self-fidelity correlations
In measurement design, it is common to engineer anti-contrast readouts -- two measurements that respond as differently as possible to the same inputs so that common-mode contributions are suppressed. To assess the fundamental scope of this strategy in unitary dynamics, we ask whether two evolutions can be made uniformly opposite over a broad input ensemble, or whether quantum mechanics imposes a structural limit on such opposition. We address this by treating self-fidelity (survival probability…

questions from federal workers who are currently under attack - Ask a Manager
https://www.askamanager.org/2025/01/questions-from-federal-workers-who-are-currently-under-attack.html

The Question the Raiders Must Ask Themselves https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-maxx-crosby-brock-bowers-jakobi-meyers

All four reporters at Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit news site, accused their EIC of using generative AI tools without disclosure; one reporter was fired (Andrew Deck/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2025/11/florida-no…

Florida nonprofit news reporters ask board to investigate their editor’s AI use
Suncoast Searchlight’s four reporters told the board their editor-in-chief was using AI editing tools and inserting hallucinations into drafts. The next day, one of the reporters was fired.

We’re at a point where these sorts of simple genetic disorders are going to be falling to CRISPR-Cas9 treatments one after another in an accelerating fashion until we run out of targets.
They raise troubling questions about access to care and cost. Ask why we still have people with active Sickle Cell disease, years after the CURE was demonstrated.
The reason is that no one is stepping up with the megabuck per patient. @…

Pay for Trump and Congress continues in shutdown, unless they ask it be held • Washington State Standard
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2025/10/25/repub/pay-for-trump-and-congress-continues-in-shutdown-unless-they-ask-it-be-held/

Folks, please remember that while our focus this week has been on trying to get the families stuck under Israel’s bombs in the North to relative safety in the South, our families in the South need your continued support for the basic necessities of life.
You’ll remember Aseel as she was our very first Gaza Verified member.
Every week, she tries to raise $500 so she can feed her family of six.
Her fundraiser isn’t doing too well this week.
(She still has a little over …

I was called "one of our SecurityChampions" today because I started to ask questions...
Seems I asked the right questions.
#work

Andrew Bosworth says humanoid robots, internally called "Metabot", are Meta's next "AR size bet" and envisions licensing software to other robot makers (Alex Heath/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/column/786759/humanoid-robots-meta

Humanoid robots are Meta’s next ‘AR-size bet’
During a recent trip to Meta HQ, I took the opportunity to ask CTO Andrew Bosworth about its new robotics effort.

I don't know who needs to hear this but:
[Joe Pesci voice]
Don't you fucken ask a fucken AI if your thanksgiving turkey is done use a motherfucken meat thermometer you fucken fuck

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know, But Were Too Afraid To Ask
https://classautonomy.info/anarcho-syndicalism-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask/

As Susie Madrak noted here,
"Democrats have one ask:
fund healthcare, in the form of extending ACA subsidies and restoring funding to Medicaid that was cut in Trump's Big Beautiful Ugly Bill."
But we're hearing Republicans, who have the House, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court,
say that Democrats are holding the country hostage.
The White House's response to Democrats wanting to secure health coverage for 20 million America…

WH Responds To Dems Wanting Health Care In Funding Bill: 'Go Fuck Yourself'
“We’re going to extract maximum pain."

Florida Growers Ask Trump Administration to Grant Worker Visas Amid Shutdown | Civil Eats
https://civileats.com/2025/10/21/florida-growers-ask-trump-administration-to-grant-worker-visas-amid-shutdown/

Sources: Jackson 3rd Bengal to ask to be moved https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46786376/jackson-third-bengals-player-request-trade

"They have to turn back to God and we are;
We're gonna ask all Americans to pray for an end to political violence, to pray for our president, to pray for a Christian agenda in Washington. It's long overdue.  We need it. And we think it's an important step."
"We need God's help if we're gonna get through what we're going through now,
-- the push toward actually acceptance of communism by a growing number of Americans."

Family Research Council And The House Freedom Caucus Organizing A 'Congress Prays For America' Call
The Family Research Council and the House Freedom Caucus are holding a "Congress Prays For America" call to "pray for a Christian agenda in Washington."

Treating Ebola can require extensive resources,
including protective equipment, medicines, and transportation to reach remote areas.
Health facilities in the area of the outbreak are already overwhelmed and quickly running low on critical resources,
including clean water and protective equipment.
The only treatment center in the epicenter of the outbreak, the Bulape health zone,
is at 119 percent capacity, the AP reported,
citing information from the Int…

Ebola outbreak in DR Congo rages, with 61% death rate and funding running dry
Responders ask for $25 million to contain the disease. They have $2.2 million.