Tootfinder

Five Big Questions (and Zero Predictions) for the U.S. Privacy and AI Landscape in 2026
https://fpf.org/blog/five-big-questions-and-zero-predictions-for-the-u-s-privacy-and-ai-landscape-in-2026/

🤑 $54m to walk: getting fired as a college football coach is a booming industry
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/oct/28/brian-kelly-payout-lsu-college-football-coaches

$54m to walk: getting fired as a college football coach is a booming industry
Brian Kelly’s departure from LSU is just the latest in a series of big money firings. It’s also a jarring state of affairs for many struggling fans

US cybersecurity company F5 discloses a cyberattack in August by suspected nation-state hackers that stole undisclosed BIG-IP vulnerabilities and source code (Bill Toulas/BleepingComputer)
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/securi…

Big day for Silent Push, which released today a "magnum opus" on bulletproof hosting providers and announced its purchase of Canadian preemptive cyber defense vendor Hyas.
https://www.silentpush.com/white-papers-and-reports/bph-white-paper-2025/<…

Shining a Light on the Global Bulletproof Hosting Ecosystem
Silent Push developed this white paper on the current state of Bulletproof Hosting and lesser-known technical dynamics we’re observing.

Mapped: Big Food’s Routes to Influence at COP30 - DeSmog https://www.desmog.com/2025/11/10/mapped-big-foods-routes-to-influence-at-cop30/

Mapped: Big Food’s Routes to Influence at COP30
In the city of Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil has kicked off the COP30 climate conference, a summit framed as a pivotal moment to reduce emissions and keep the Paris Agreement alive. More than 50,000 people are expected to attend, from heads of state to civil society groups. But as attention […]

The inside beef on how and why the US (a developing gangster state on this evidence) managed to delay Shipping's Big Plan for Decarbonization, What Now? Tristan Smith
#GreenTransition
Episode webpage: https://cleaning-up-leadership-in-the-age-of-climate-change.simplecast.com/episodes/e229-tristan-smith-1JfVRjj3

This fall, Americans got to see what it’s like to go without a safety net for the hungry.
With the U.S. government shut down for multiple weeks
and Donald Trump refusing to fund SNAP, the federal food stamp program,
a panic set inamong the more than 40 million people who rely on it.
Families skipped meals,
and babies went unfed.
Food banks ran out of food, and some people turned to dumpster diving.
It was just a glimpse of what’s to come.
Start…

Wave of Tax Cuts Has Left Many States Vulnerable to Trump SNAP and Medicaid Crisis
President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act will shift billions in costs for SNAP and Medicaid to states. But with 26 having cut or eliminated state income taxes just since 2021, they may not have the money to continue the programs.

Ranking top 25 prospects in Ohio State-Indiana Big Ten Championship Game https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6861961/2025/12/05/nfl-draft-2026-prospects-ohio-state-indiana-fernando-mendoza/

Can’t say I know enough to have a real opinion beyond the fact that sending a child into harder subject matter when they haven’t mastered their current level seems like a recipe for disaster. As such, this seems to make sense. #oklahoma #oked

'Big part of the conversation': Legislature to consider reimplementing literacy-based retention
State leaders searching for solutions to turn Oklahoma's education outcomes around are eyeing solutions such as literacy-based retention.

"Zohran Mamdani is not a symbol of socialism, or communism as Trump says, those boogeymen which fill the hearts of many Americans with terror. He’s something more powerful than that. His cry is: we don’t have to do things like we used to do. Everything can change. And it’s a message of hope that can resonate everywhere"
https://

Empire State Of Mind
Why Mamdani’s win is bigger than the Big Apple

https://resist.bot/petitions/PLBVXB

DO NOT block state-level AI regulation. Don't pander to big tech
Text SIGN PLBVXB to 50409 to send this to your officials.

Elijah Sarratt's NFL Draft potential, Ty Simpson shines again, more Week 7 reactions https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6709611/2025/10/12/nfl-draft-2026-sarratt-simpson-penn-state/

Gameday Money Will Show for Chiefs; 2-Way Handle on Ohio State-Michigan https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/gameday-money-will-likely-show-chiefs-two-way-handle-ohio-state-michigan

It's also easy to imagine that Trump is sending his military to Portland. People forget that the military is actually really big and pretty complex.
Most people join the military because they want to get out of poverty. Some people join because they believe in it. A lot of people are just too young to have any kind of politics, but some of them do develop politics in the military... and some of those folks become anarchists.
There are Nazis in the military. It's a big problem. But there are also anarchists who signed up before they developed a critique of the state, and now they're kind of stuck for a few years until they can get out.
It's also worth recognizing that a lot of people join after they graduate. Basic training is like 22 weeks. So, assuming a random selection, there really aren't a lot of folks who would be deploying to PDX who would have joined under Trump. That's just assuming a random selection, and there may be other things at play that I'm not aware of, but the majority of the types of folks who would get deployed now would have joined under Biden.
The troops who will deploy (if they do deploy) may very much not want to be there. These are also not monsters wanting to kill (like Trump wishes them to be). They're kids from nearby towns. That's not awesome, most of Oregon has absolute shit politics. But joining the National Guard doesn't necessarily mean that a person has any politics at all. All of this is worth remembering.

#2 Indiana is about to upset #1 Ohio State in the BIG-10 Championship on FOX. With 13 sec left in the 4thQ, it looks over.
Indiana Coach Curt Cignetti, formerly coach of James Madison U, has brought the Hoosiers to this point in just 2 years.
(1/2)

New York just doubled down on clean energy in a big way.
The state's Power Authority approved an ambitious update: 5.5 GW of renewable capacity including solar, wind, and innovative compressed air storage. That's 2.5 GW more than previously planned.
The goal? Help develop 15 GW total to hit climate targets while keeping costs down as demand surges.

NYPA adopts 5.5-GW renewables plan amid concerns over affordability, policy changes
Developers with major solar, wind and storage projects in the New York Power Authority’s updated plan include AES, EDF Renewable Energy, Forward Power and Orenda.

Is Dark Energy Changing? Probing the Universe's Expansion with present and future astronomical probes
Mehdi Rezaei, Supriya Pan, Weiqiang Yang, David F. Mota
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09766

Is Dark Energy Changing? Probing the Universe's Expansion with present and future astronomical probes
This study explores the possibility of a time-varying dark energy (DE) equation of state (EoS) deviating from -1. We employ a comprehensive dataset of usual astronomical probes (Type Ia supernovae, baryon acoustic oscillations, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, Hubble data, and Planck 2018 CMB) alongside future mock gravitational wave (GW) distance measurements from the Einstein Telescope. We utilize the Pad'e approximation, a versatile framework encompassing well-known DE models like constant EoS, Che…

Ukraine’s digital chief pushes for AI-first state amid war and cyber threats https://therecord.media/ukraine-ai-state-digital

An interview with California state Senator Scott Wiener on his new AI safety bill SB 53, the bill's scope, his focus on AI safety bills, AI PACs, and more (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/23/scott-wiener-on-his-fi…

Scott Wiener on his fight to make Big Tech disclose AI's dangers | TechCrunch
The California lawmaker is on his second attempt to pass a first-in-the-nation AI safety bill. This time, it might work.

Big changes to the agency charged with securing elections lead to midterm worries (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/election-security-cisa-2026-secretaries-state-midterms-6d18799c6c5fdd1bc001544b2dca12bf
http://www.memeorandum.com/251123/p21#a251123p21

Believe it or not they were worried about German Battleships approaching the New England coast in WWI so they built a huge earth berm at what is now Odiorne Point State Park with two tunnels under it -- that circle you can see once held a turret with two 16 inch battleship guns
#photo #photography

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.

This is a wonderful illustration of the Irish state's capacity for infrastructure investment: a big fanfare to announce there will be *4 new tram stops* in Dublin in six years' time from now.
https://www.irishtimes.com/irelan…

Extension of Luas line to Finglas granted permission and could be completed by 2031
The new line in Dublin is expected to cost about €600 million

Michešl Martin says house building in Ireland is hampered by 'gold-plating' of EU rules https://share.google/jA5qHPaNWnCACKbQJ
<< utterly bollocks, Ireland is one of the most polluting states in the EU.
Most (maybe even every) other EU state is better at building houses without …

Micheál Martin says house building in Ireland is hampered by 'gold-plating' of EU rules
Taoiseach says 'going beyond what is required' is slowing down delivery of housing and other big projects in Ireland

Santa Barbara’s future vitality depends on making space for younger generations who want to build their lives here
— and a walkable, bike-friendly downtown offers immense value for renters, service workers, parents, and young professionals alike.
We cannot rely on big, national retail chains to anchor State Street
Bringing cars back will just bring back cruising, since parking has always been on nearby streets and in garages.
A walkable downtown supported by efficien…

So... My college has a zine section in the library, which is already amazing, but this week I decided to check some of them out, and there are a few in a section for fictional and/or true stories. The one I grabbed was "Funwater Awesome" by Zach Mandeville, which turned out to be, indeed, awesome. It contains both real and fictional accounts of small-town Washington state, with both the mysteries of death and the happiness of small absurdities being big themes. Seems like there's at least a #2 and a #3 that were published, so I'll think about trying to get my hands on them. Maybe as instructed I'll mail $3 to Zach's address and see if he's still got any copies kicking around (or if he even still lives there since #1 was published in 2006).
#AmReading #ReadingNow

What California and other blue jurisdictions need to do:
Pass a law making it illegal for law enforcement to wear a mask.
Arrest any LE who wear a mask.
Let them go if they prove they're law enforcement -- But require it to be in the form of two notarized pay stubs shipped certified mail from HQ
Then arrest them again the next time they wear a mask.

Western Australia just hit a major milestone: solar and wind powered 100% of demand on its isolated grid.
Battery storage made it possible, keeping the system stable while renewables did all the work. With coal plants set to retire by decade's end, the state is proving large-scale grids can run entirely on clean energy.

Solar and wind reach 100 pct of demand in biggest isolated grid, as batteries allow it to keep its thermals on
Wind and solar meet all of "net demand" in W.A., host of world's biggest isolated grid, as growing fleet of big batteries give market operator room to keep its thermals on.

Amid Tomlin angst, Big Ben floats Penn St. job https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47189142/ben-roethlisberger-james-harrison-call-mike-tomlin-steelers-split

"California has a new law to prevent big grid battery fires"
#US #USA #America #California

California has a new law to prevent big grid battery fires
The state enhanced battery safety rules in response to the Moss Landing fire. The industry is on board, hoping better standards will reassure the public.

What America needs besides #ElectionSecurity : a big ballroom in the ol' #WhiteHouse #RoseGarden !
#DJTshut down the State …

I have been an “end Canada’s connection to the Monarchy”* guy for awhile now. I heard Canadian constitutional expert Phillipe Lagasse say once that it would be a very big lift for Canada to do so because of the requirement to get all provinces to agree on a constitutional amendment, etc etc. In his opinion, the most likely way for it to happen, then, would be for the UK population to end the Royal family’s power themselves.
Seems that is starting to become more likely.
*I avoid using the term Republican because I don’t want to be confused with any notion of advocating for anything like the USA. A Canadian republic can look and function exactly the same as it does today while ending the royal head of state. Bermuda being the most recent example.
#epstein #uk #royalfamily #monarchy #republic #AbolishTheMonarchy
https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGreens/115440697972592005

Crack in the layered rock at Treman State Park
#photo #photography #blackandwhite #monochromemonday

Touch-me-not seen in Shindagin Hollow State Forest
#flowers #photo #photography #bloomscrolling

White Wood Aster in Shindagin Hollow State Forest
#photo #photography #flower #flowers