Tootfinder

“9to5Mac’s Take: Data brokers are a form of business which quite simply shouldn’t be allowed to exist.”
https://9to5mac.com/2026/05/20/ai-companies-and-data-brokers-even-resort-to-fake-forms-to-keep-selling-our-data/…

Rebuild Local News and Syracuse University are launching the Local News Research Hub, a curated, searchable database for data-driven research on local news (Sophie Culpepper/Nieman Lab)
https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/heres-a-

Here’s a new database for local news research, from Syracuse University and Rebuild Local News
The Local News Research Hub aims to make academic research more accessible to audiences including policymakers, funders, and journalists.

"Rainforests pushed to breaking point by new demands for resources, report says"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/20/rainforests-pushed-to-breaking-point-by-new-demands-for-resources-re…

"Rainforests pushed to breaking point by new demands for resources, report says"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/20/rainforests-pushed-to-breaking-point-by-new-demands-for-resources-re…

Why is improvement hard?
Part of the issue is everyone wants to improve, but nobody wants to destroy. Change often requires destruction. Or, at least, unlearning.
Let's call it gentle elimination. You may have to leave little habits, update current beliefs, eliminate comfortable patterns. When you want better outcomes, your daily norms may need to change. The process of improvement is not just about adding things you like. (...)

Satellite launch pollution is rapidly accumulating in the upper atmosphere #environment

Satellite launch pollution is rapidly accumulating in the upper atmosphere
The potent pollution from so-called megaconstellation satellite systems launched en masse into space since 2019 will account for nearly half (42%) of the total climate impact of space sector pollution by the end of the decade, finds a new study led by UCL researchers.

NASA has selected a mission concept to research how space weather and dynamics within Earth’s atmosphere influence the space environment and help improve prediction capabilities for impacts on crucial technology, such as GPS and low Earth orbit satellites, as well as astronauts in space: #DAPHNE (Dynamic Atmosphere-Ionosphere Explorer) mission will enter Phase B of development, which includes planning and design for flight and mission operations

50 years ago tonight, the #JerryGarcia band in #berkeley, a nice stereo audience tape, with keith godchaux’s piano on the left & garcia’s guitar on the right:

Anthropic researchers detail natural language autoencoders, which convert LLM activations, the numbers encoding a model's thoughts, into natural language text (Anthropic)
https://www.anthropic.com/research/natural-language-autoencoders

Natural Language Autoencoders
Turning Claude's thoughts into text

A Planetary-Scale Hydraulic Jump Driving #Venus' Cloud Front: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2026JE009672 -> Venus’ atmosphere jumps and waves: https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00453.html - vast atmospheric waves on Venus are caused by largest known “hydraulic jump” -> A Gigantic Atmospheric Anomaly Keeps Showing Up on Venus. Astronomers Finally Know Why: https://gizmodo.com/a-gigantic-atmospheric-anomaly-keeps-showing-up-on-venus-astronomers-finally-know-why-2000757051 - the answer is a gigantic “hydraulic jump,” and researchers believe similar phenomena may occur on planets like Mars.