Tootfinder

This is how we get rapid scattered systemic collapse. We elect lawless people to positions which a large fraction of them believe to be the only legitimate law enforcement authorities and effectively above the law.
There are counties in #Michigan that I would be unsurprised to see openly reject the authority of state or federal law enforcement.

#GISChat & #QGIS users: Did you like the monthly plugin update blog posts?
e.g. https://blog.qgis.org/2023/…

Plugin Update August 2023
In August 13 new plugins that have been published in the QGIS plugin repository. Here’s the quick overview in reverse chronological order. If any of the names or short descriptions piques you…

Always an informative take from someone who studies disaster response:
https://open.substack.com/pub/disasterology/p/disasterology-august-2023?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Disasterology: August 2023
This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined). There’s a little something for everyone! The State of Emergency Management is… Rapidly Checking Off Bingo Squares.

Always an informative take from someone who studies disaster response:
https://open.substack.com/pub/disasterology/p/disasterology-august-2023?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

Disasterology: August 2023
This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined). There’s a little something for everyone! The State of Emergency Management is… Rapidly Checking Off Bingo Squares.

This is how we get rapid scattered systemic collapse. We elect lawless people to positions which a large fraction of them believe to be the only legitimate law enforcement authorities and effectively above the law.
There are counties in #Michigan that I would be unsurprised to see openly reject the authority of state or federal law enforcement.

Wow 😲 Efficacy of a single low dose of esketamine after childbirth for mothers with symptoms of prenatal depression: randomised clinical trial
https://www.bmj.com/content/385/bmj-2023-078218

Tel Aviv-based Sweet Security, which offers cloud runtime security tools, raised a $33M Series A, after emerging from stealth with a $12M seed in August 2023 (Kevin Townsend/SecurityWeek)
https://www.securityweek.com/cloud-securit

Cloud Security Firm Sweet Security Raises $33 Million, 6 Months After Emerging From Stealth
Cloud security firm Sweet Security announced a $33 million funding round, six months after emerging from stealth with $12 million seed funding

Foreign-owned oil companies in Canada hold key to climate change
:mastodon:
https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2023/foreign-oil-companies/

Foreign-owned oil companies in Canada hold key to climate change
The federal government should use financial regulation to create incentives for oil companies to embrace climate change goals.

Internal Kremlin documents from May 2022 to August 2023 show an ongoing campaign to promote American isolationism via fabricated news articles and social media (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/08/russia-propaganda-us-ukra…

Russian trolls target U.S. support for Ukraine, Kremlin documents show
In a campaign stoking anti-Ukraine sentiment in the U.S., Russia-directed trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles and social media posts.

»Es ist nicht das erste Mal, dass ich vergesse, dass die Mutter Touchscreen-Native ist, nicht so an historische Techniken gewöhnt wie ich.«
Techniktagebuch — August 2023
https://techniktagebuch.tumblr.com/post/725030123398660096/august-2023…

August 2023
#wasfehlt: Die Hardware-Bildschirmtastatur Die Mutter klagt seit Jahren darüber, dass auf der Bildschirmtastatur ihres iPads manche Buchstaben klemmen und andere doppelt auftauchen. Deshalb hat sie...

#UlissesSpiele Mitarbeiter Daniel teilt im Ulisses-Discord mit, dass der Verlag "keine weiteren Produkte zu 5e und auch keine Übersetzung von Tales of the Valiant aktiv geplant" hat.
Bei der RatCon 2023 im August letzten Jahres hatte Ulisses dazu aufgerufen mitzuteilen, welche 5e Bücher gewünscht werden. Inwiefern diese Umfrage berücksichtigt wurde, wurde nicht mitge…

Humboldt Highway II -- computer cluster on renewable energies
Danyer Perez Adan, Luis Ignacio Estevez Banos, Tony Cass, Bjoern Felkers, Fernando Guzman, Thomas Hartmann, Beate Heinemann, Hannes Jung, Yves Kemp, Frank Lehner, J\"urgen Nicklaus, David Gutierrez Menendez, Sandra Consuegra Rodriguez, Cesar Garcia Trapaga, Lidice Vaillant, Rodney Walker

Humboldt Highway II -- computer cluster on renewable energies
In August 2023, IT experts and scientists came together for a workshop to discuss the possibilities of building a computer cluster fully on renewable energies, as a test-case at Havana University in Cuba. The discussion covered the scientific needs for a computer cluster for particle physics at the InSTEC institute at Havana University, the possibilities to use solar energy, new developments in computing technologies, and computer cluster operation as well as operational needs for computing in …

Foreign-owned oil companies in Canada hold key to climate change
by
Truzaar Dordi,
Katya Rhodes,
Madeleine McPherson
August 23, 2023

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2023/foreign-oil-companies/#:~:text=Exxon Mobil retains majority ownership,Canada's largest oil sands producers.

Internal Kremlin documents from May 2022 to August 2023 show an ongoing campaign to promote American isolationism via fabricated news articles and social media (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/08/russia-propaganda-us-ukra…

Russian trolls target U.S. support for Ukraine, Kremlin documents show
In a campaign stoking anti-Ukraine sentiment in the U.S., Russia-directed trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles and social media posts.

„51 Jahre unfallfrei“ - Mistkübel angefahren, Führerschein dauerhaft weg #News #Nachrichten

Chile, 1973: eyewitness testimony.
Voz IX: ‘I watched as bonfires of books and papers were burned’ | Latin America Bureau https://

Voz IX: ‘I watched as bonfires of books and papers were burned’ | Latin America Bureau
In August last year, with the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile fast approaching, Tom Gatehouse interviewed his father Mike Gatehouse about his experiences of being arrested by the military and taken to the National Stadium, and continuing to campaign for human rights.

Infrastructure Ministry: 93% of Ukrainian agricultural exports exit Ukraine by sea, river: https://benborges.xyz/2024/02/23/infrastructure-ministry-of.html

Missed it by, that much
This morning's agenda- submit ESPionage the RPG of Psychics and Spies for Fate to Evil Hat. Upon checking the requirements one last time (it had been awhile) I found this line in the middle of the page: “Update: As of August 17, 2023 our submissions are currently closed. We don’t anticipate re-opening them until late 2025.” Well...crap… Looks like I have ~18 months to kill.

Missed it by, that much • [tone·milazzo]

Remember: when they said that on August 29, 2023, they still had never obtained a warrant to search the laptop, or any of Hunter’s Apple content, for that matter, for evidence to support the gun crime.
They also had not, and still have not, indexed the laptop so they know what is on there and how it got there.
And prosecutors are still saying that everything they need is available on Hunter’s iCloud account.
Sort of. In the passage of the response where Hines raised this Au…

Microsoft plans to unbundle Teams from Office 365 globally starting April 1 amid antitrust scrutiny, after a similar unbundling in EU in August 2023 (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-…

Stellwerk München Ost
Das Stellwerk am Münchner Ostbahnhof ist bei weitem nicht die einzige Quelle für Störungen im Münchner S-Bahn-Netz und darüber hinaus, aber eine der häufigeren Ursachen. 2021 wurde daher begonnen, ein neues Stellwerk zu errichten. Im Sommer 2023 sollte das neue elektronische Stellwerk in Betrieb gehen, aber im Mai letzten Jahres wurde die Inbetriebnahme auf August 2024 verschoben. Jetzt kam die Nachricht, dass es ein weiteres Jahr länger ...

My latest piece is out. A 5,000 word essay on tech, Midjourney, urban planning, eschatology, and Thomas Kinkade.
https://varnelis.net/california-forever-or-the-aesthetics-of-ai-images/

California Forever or, the Aesthetics of AI images
This past August (2023), a new urban project called “California Forever” was announced, promising a walkable city for 400,000 in Solano County, not far from the Bay area. Critics soon pointed out several flaws in the renderings the company distributed. First, even though the venture was backed by billionaire Silicon Valley investors such as Laurene ... Read more

What an astonishing piece of podcasting. Heartbreaking and glorious.
Rumble Strip, "Finn and the Bell" (August 2023)
#podcast

Finn and the Bell — Rumble Strip
Finn Rooney killed himself in Walden, Vermont. This is a story about who he was and what he left.

Cowboys decline $22.4M option on QB Trey Lance https://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/cowboys_decline_224m_option_on_qb_trey_lance/s1_17049_40316098

Cowboys decline $22.4M option on QB Trey Lance
The Dallas Cowboys declined the fifth-year team option that would have paid backup quarterback Trey Lance $22.4 million guaranteed in 2025. Lance is the QB2 behind Dak Prescott, who enters the final season of a four-year contract that disqualifies the Cowboys from using the franchise tag to retain him next spring. The Cowboys, who insist they will bring back Prescott with a new contract stretching beyond the upcoming season, acquired Lance from the San Francisco 49ers in August 2023 for a fourt…

An Optical Gamma-Ray Burst Catalogue with Measured Redshift PART I: Data Release of 535 Gamma-Ray Bursts and Colour Evolution
M. G. Dainotti, B. De Simone, R. F. Mohideen Malik, V. Pasumarti, N. Saha, D. Levine, B. Gendre, D. Kido, A. M. Watson, R. L. Becerra, S. Belkin, S. Desai, A. C. C. do E. S. Pedreira, U. Das, L. Li, S. R. Oates, S. B. Cenko, A. Pozanenko, A. Volnova, Y. -D. Hu, A. J. Castro-Tirado, N. B. Orange, T. J. Moriya, N. Fraija, Y. Niino, E. Rinaldi, N. R. Butler, J. d. …

An Optical Gamma-Ray Burst Catalogue with Measured Redshift PART I: Data Release of 535 Gamma-Ray Bursts and Colour Evolution
We present the largest optical photometry compilation of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) with redshifts ($z$). We include 64813 observations of 535 events (including upper limits) from 28 February 1997 up to 18 August 2023. We also present a user-friendly web tool \textit{grbLC} which allows users the visualization of photometry, coordinates, redshift, host galaxy extinction, and spectral indices for each event in our database. Furthermore, we have added a Gamma Ray Coordinate Network (GCN) scraper tha…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.14191 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCR_…

Noisy Measurements Are Important, the Design of Census Products Is Much More Important
McCartan et al. (2023) call for "making differential privacy work for census data users." This commentary explains why the 2020 Census Noisy Measurement Files (NMFs) are not the best focus for that plea. The August 2021 letter from 62 prominent researchers asking for production of the direct output of the differential privacy system deployed for the 2020 Census signaled the engagement of the scholarly community in the design of decennial census data products. NMFs, the raw statistics produced b…

Teaching Algorithm Design: A Literature Review
Jonathan Liu, Seth Poulsen, Erica Goodwin, Hongxuan Chen, Grace Williams, Yael Gertner, Diana Franklin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00832

Teaching Algorithm Design: A Literature Review
Algorithm design is a vital skill developed in most undergraduate Computer Science (CS) programs, but few research studies focus on pedagogy related to algorithms coursework. To understand the work that has been done in the area, we present a systematic survey and literature review of CS Education studies. We search for research that is both related to algorithm design and evaluated on undergraduate-level students. Across all papers in the ACM Digital Library prior to August 2023, we only find …

Missed it by, that much
This morning's agenda- submit ESPionage the RPG of Psychics and Spies for Fate to Evil Hat. Upon checking the requirements one last time (it had been awhile) I found this line in the middle of the page: “Update: As of August 17, 2023 our submissions are currently closed. We don’t anticipate re-opening them until late 2025.” Well...crap… Looks like I have ~18 months to kill.

Missed it by, that much • [tone·milazzo]

"Im August und September 2023 verbreiteten sich viele falsche oder verkürzte Nachrichten über den Bürgergeldbezug von Geflüchteten, insbesondere aus der Ukraine." #Correctiv

Deneb is a Large Amplitude Polarimetric Variable
Daniel V. Cotton, Jeremy Bailey, Jean Perkins, Derek L. Buzasi, Ievgeniia Boiko
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.17707

Deneb is a Large Amplitude Polarimetric Variable
We write to report the discovery that Deneb is a large amplitude polarization variable. Over a ~400 d time span from August 2022 Deneb's polarization was typically around 3900 parts-per-million (ppm) in the SDSS g'-band. Yet, it varied by several hundred ppm in an irregular way on a timescale of weeks. The largest polarization change, amounting to 2500 ppm, occurred shortly after the last pulsation ``resumption'' event identified by Abt et al. (2023) in TESS photometry. The relationship between…

Mandiant: Yevgeny Prigozhin-linked online influence operations are active months after his death in August 2023, and underwent subtle shifts in their targeting (Dustin Volz/Wall Street Journal)
https:/…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.08202 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

IsamasRed: A Public Dataset Tracking Reddit Discussions on Israel-Hamas Conflict
The conflict between Israel and Palestinians significantly escalated after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, capturing global attention. To understand the public discourse on this conflict, we present a meticulously compiled dataset-IsamasRed-comprising nearly 400,000 conversations and over 8 million comments from Reddit, spanning from August 2023 to November 2023. We introduce an innovative keyword extraction framework leveraging a large language model to effectively identify pertinent keyword…

My latest piece is out. A 5,000 word essay on tech, Midjourney, urban planning, eschatology, and Thomas Kinkade.
https://varnelis.net/california-forever-or-the-aesthetics-of-ai-images/

California Forever or, the Aesthetics of AI images
This past August (2023), a new urban project called “California Forever” was announced, promising a walkable city for 400,000 in Solano County, not far from the Bay area. Critics soon pointed out several flaws in the renderings the company distributed. First, even though the venture was backed by billionaire Silicon Valley investors such as Laurene ... Read more

NELIOTA: New results and updated statistics after 6.5 years of lunar impact flashes monitoring
Alexios Liakos, Alceste Z. Bonanos, Emmanouil M. Xilouris, Detlef Koschny, Ioannis Bellas-Velidis, Panagiotis Boumis, Athanassios Maroussis, Richard Moissl
https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19613

NELIOTA: New results and updated statistics after 6.5 years of lunar impact flashes monitoring
We present results of the NELIOTA campaign for lunar impact flashes observed with the 1.2 m Kryoneri telescope. From August 2019 to August 2023, we report 113 validated and 70 suspected flashes. For the validated flashes, we calculate the physical parameters of the corresponding projectiles, the temperatures developed during the impacts, and the expected crater sizes. For the multiframe flashes we present light curves and thermal evolution plots. Using the whole sample of NELIOTA that encompass…

Here is a sneak preview of my latest—on "California Forever" (the Solano County tech city), AI images, Thomas Kinkade, Christian Eschatology, the Singularity, and more—written only for you and me, not for some scurrilous, paywalled academic publication.
https://varnelis.net/cal…

California Forever or, the Aesthetics of AI images
This past August (2023), a new urban project called “California Forever” was announced, promising a walkable city for 400,000 in Solano County, not far from the Bay area. Critics soon pointed out several flaws in the renderings the company distributed. First, even though the venture was backed by billionaire Silicon Valley investors such as Laurene ... Read more

Lagos-based Moove, which offers car financing to ride-hailing drivers, raised a $100M Series B led by Uber at a $750M valuation, up from $550M in August 2023 (Tage Kene-Okafor/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/19/uber

Uber leads $100M investment in African mobility fintech Moove as valuation hits $750M | TechCrunch
Uber and sovereign wealth fund Mubadala have invested $100 million in Moove, an African startup that offers vehicle financing to drivers.

Reports: Commanders to sign former first-round pick Noah Igbinoghene https://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/reports_commanders_to_sign_former_first_round_pick_noah_igbinoghene/s1_17049_40122575

Reports: Commanders to sign former first-round pick Noah Igbinoghene
The Washington Commanders are signing cornerback Noah Igbinoghene to a free agent deal, according to multiple reports Sunday. A first-round pick by the Dolphins in 2020, Igbinoghene will be playing for his third team. Miami traded him to the Dolphins last August, and he became a free agent at the end of the 2023 season. He becomes the fourth member of the Cowboys' 2023 roster to move to the rival Commanders since Washington hired Dan Quinn as head coach in February. Quinn was the defensive coor…

Reports: Commanders to sign former first-round pick Noah Igbinoghene https://www.yardbarker.com/nfl/articles/reports_commanders_to_sign_former_first_round_pick_noah_igbinoghene/s1_17049_40122575

Reports: Commanders to sign former first-round pick Noah Igbinoghene
The Washington Commanders are signing cornerback Noah Igbinoghene to a free agent deal, according to multiple reports Sunday. A first-round pick by the Dolphins in 2020, Igbinoghene will be playing for his third team. Miami traded him to the Dolphins last August, and he became a free agent at the end of the 2023 season. He becomes the fourth member of the Cowboys' 2023 roster to move to the rival Commanders since Washington hired Dan Quinn as head coach in February. Quinn was the defensive coor…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.06116 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_nli…

A Framework for Synthetic Power System Dynamics
The paper is published in Chaos. Please refer to the Chaos version from now on. Anna Büttner, Anton Plietzsch, Mehrnaz Anvari, Frank Hellmann; A framework for synthetic power system dynamics. Chaos 1 August 2023; 33 (8): 083120. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0155971 Information on power grids is confidential and thus real data is often inaccessible. This necessitates the use of synthetic power grid models in research. So far the models used, for example, in machine learning had to be very simp…