Tootfinder

Ok, this was hilarious
(Original video is on IG): https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYgeGL_I-WX/
https://

False Creek Ferries on Instagram: "This was meant for May the 4th, but who has time to edit instagram videos? A long time ago, in a harbour not so far away... It is a restless time on FALSE CREEK. For decades, a brave flotilla of LITTLE BLUE FERRIES has carried locals, wanderers, and the occasionally lost tourist through the waters of Vancouver. But now, from the far eastern reaches of the inlet, there rises a strange and gleaming SPHERE, vast, mysterious, and impossible to ignore. Whispers spread from dock to dock. Could this polished orb signal the end for the humble captains of the creek? Undaunted, the little blue boats gather once more, setting course on a daring voyage to defend their waters, their passengers, and their modest but dependable fares.... Please note: No pedal boats, ferries, Science Worlds, or crew members were harmed in the making of this adventure. False Creek Ferries and @goeasyvancouver are pleased to share the creek in peace. 😊. Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion..."
24K likes, 554 comments - falsecreekferry on May 18, 2026: "This was meant for May the 4th, but who has time to edit instagram videos? A long time ago, in a harbour not so far away... It is a restless time on FALSE CREEK. For decades, a brave flotilla of LITTLE BLUE FERRIES has carried locals, wanderers, and the occasionally lost tourist through the waters of Vancouver. But now, from the far eastern reaches of the inlet, there rises a strange and gleaming SPHERE, vast, mysterious, and impos…

📢 WM-Kader bekannt gegeben: Manuel Neuer kehrt in Nationalmannschaft zurück
Deutschlands Rekordtorwart Manuel Neuer kehrt zwei Jahre nach seinem Rücktritt zur WM doch in die Nationalmannschaft zurück. Bundestrainer Julian Nagelsmann berief den 40-Jährigen in seinen 26 Spieler umfassenden Kader für das Turnier in den USA, Mexiko und Kanada.
➡️

WM-Kader bekannt gegeben: Neuer kehrt in Nationalelf zurück
Bundestrainer Nagelsmann hat den Kader für die Fußball-WM vorgestellt - 26 Spieler sind dabei. Und im Tor wird wieder Manuel Neuer stehen. Er kehrt zwei Jahre nach seinem Rücktritt in die Nationalmannschaft zurück.

I find myself trying to blow "toasts" (Android notification popups) away with a brief puff of air. They should really implement that.

Bill Cassidy,
the Republican senator from Louisiana who is being ousted from his position after Donald Trump successfully backed a challenger in May’s primary,
has accused the US president of treating Congress as
“merely an appendage” in his handling of the Iran war.
In an interview on Sunday with CBS News’s Face the Nation,
the out-going Cassidy explained his recent face-to-face row with Trump over the president’s failure to brief Congress on the prosecution of…

Bill Cassidy accuses Trump of treating Congress as ‘merely an appendage’
Out-going Louisiana senator’s rebuke over Iran war is rare instance of a Republican politician standing up to Trump

The "AI Industry" (to the degree that it exists) has burned billions of dollars with no real hope of recuperating that. Models offered by services, charging huge amounts for inference, don't really offer much, if anything, above open source models run locally. Many of the claims made by these companies, and their supporters, have turned out to be lies. It seems as though the whole thing is a huge grift.
Investments will likely never be recovered. We've already seen a bail out in the form of military contracts. We will see much more public money dumped in to these technologies. In fact, threatening workers and suppressing labor strength is so strategically valuable that I expect LLMs to just be publicly funded (by being folded into the military industrial complex).
On these grounds, it can be easy to reject the technology outright. After all, how can anything useful not be profitable?
Even for radicals, capitalism can cloud our lens. The fact is, the dominant technologies of our age tend to not be profitable. Or rather, they are "publicly funded, privately profitable" (/hums in propagandhi/). Just like oil.
Outside of Saudi Arabia, oil is mostly not profitable to get out of the ground. Even there, it had only historically been profitable because of massive global military investments. The oil-centric world we have today is largely built on, and kept in place by, massive government subsidies. Roads, street parking, and direct subsidies to oil companies are all massive investments that tie populations to the resource at the heart of the military industrial complex: oil.
Oil was strategically important, because you can't run a modern military without it. The fossil fuel economy doesn't exist because fossil fuels are so cheap, but because modern militaries are only really possible by militarizing the population.
Unprofitable things *are made profitable* to serve the strategic interests of authoritarian systems. Though we have better alternatives to most oil-based products, it would be hard to argue that oil is not a useful resource. We can acknowledge it's strategic importance while also recognizing that the elimination of oil is essential to the survival of humanity.
Returning to "AI," we're seeing the same type of thing but it's more obvious. After the crypto grift, this seems to just be another way to transfer money into the pockets of the rich.
But crypto wasn't exactly a grift. It had a strategic function to power. It wasn't what we were told it was. It didn't free us from central banks. It wasn't a new way to invest. It wasn't anonymous. But it did create a new way to bribe politicians. It did make it easier to funnel public money into the pockets of the far right.
"AI" can similarly be mostly a grift. It can fail to do most, or all, of the things it claims, and it can still fulfill strategic functions. If we dismiss it as "just another grift," I think we miss a lot. "Just a grift" isn't something sustainable. It is something that will die out. It's something we don't need to resist because it is self limiting. But a strategy is something different. A strategy is more complex. A strategy will be sustained, at any cost. A strategy must be actively resisted.

Wegen Postleitzahl - Anonymer Brief an Politikerin: „Du blöde Sau!“ #News #Nachrichten

"Q&A: How UK’s seventh carbon budget will deliver ‘£865bn’ in economic benefits"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #CarbonDioxide

Q&A: How UK’s seventh carbon budget will deliver '£865bn’ in economic benefits - Carbon Brief
The Labour government wants to cut UK greenhouse gas emissions to 87% below 1990 levels...

Second, just because it •seems• like everyone’s talking about AI all the time, that doesn’t actually mean that AI has taken over your industry / public consciousness / the world. If you feel “blah” about it, you’re not alone.
Don’t let the loudest voices distort your perception of the world.
If nobody’s talking about what you wish everyone were talking about, don’t assume nobody wants to hear it. Be brave. Speak up.
If you think you’re the only one…you’re almost never the only one.
12/

"Many right-leaning figures have tried to push the idea that the UK is an outlier on net-zero."
Examples:Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and GB News owner Paul Marshall.
Both falsely claimed that the UK’s net-zero target is “unilateral” and that this is a reason why the goal should be abandoned.
"These claims ignore that 140 of the world’s 198 countries (71%) have net-zero targets.
Factcheck: US and Iran are world’s only major emitters without net-zer…

Factcheck: US and Iran are world’s only major emitters without net-zero targets - Carbon Brief
Iran and the US are the only two of the world’s top 20 carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters that lack a net-zero target, as shown in the map below.