Tootfinder

But I owe a duty to Ireland:
I held her honour in my hand,
This lovely land that always sent
Her writers and artists to banishment
And in a spirit of Irish fun
Betrayed her own leaders, one by one.
James Joyce, Gas From a Burner (1912)
http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/authors/classic/Joyce_J/Poetry/Gas_Burn.htm

Regret-Optimal Q-Learning with Low Cost for Single-Agent and Federated Reinforcement Learning
Haochen Zhang, Zhong Zheng, Lingzhou Xue
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.04626

Regret-Optimal Q-Learning with Low Cost for Single-Agent and Federated Reinforcement Learning
Motivated by real-world settings where data collection and policy deployment -- whether for a single agent or across multiple agents -- are costly, we study the problem of on-policy single-agent reinforcement learning (RL) and federated RL (FRL) with a focus on minimizing burn-in costs (the sample sizes needed to reach near-optimal regret) and policy switching or communication costs. In parallel finite-horizon episodic Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) with $S$ states and $A$ actions, existing m…

#ListeningClub Since I’ve been able to ambulate a little better lately, I’ve returned to lugging albums upstairs to slowly burn my CD collection. That was The Cramps performing “Psychotic Reaction” live at the Peppermint Lounge in 1981 from their “Smell of Female” EP which, if you can believe it, I listened to an inordinate amount of times during my high school days.

I started watching Midsommar today (thanks, @…) - I'm like, over halfway done - this movie could've been edited, man. SUPER slow burn. I mean they probably could've cut like, at least 30 minutes of this stuff.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #SHERELLE
George Riley:
🎵 Slow
#GeorgeRiley
#newRelease 🆕 single
https://kingcarter.bandcamp.com/track/slow-burn-feat-george-riley
https://open.spotify.com/track/5cgavvXYEt36Rjzk2ROhbB

Sorry If This Is Antisemitic But I Think It's Wrong To Burn Children Alive
https://soundcloud.com/going_rogue/sorry-if-this-is-antisemitic

@… I think it’s supposed to be the opposite of “conservative”. Conservatives want to conserve the status quo, progressives want to change it (in any direction). It was never a useful label on its own, but now people call themselves “conservative” even if they want to burn down the existing government and replace it with a kitten on a stick, so… totally useless now.

Just read this post by @… on an optimistic AGI future, and while it had some interesting and worthwhile ideas, it's also in my opinion dangerously misguided, and plays into the current AGI hype in a harmful way.
https://social.coop/@eloquence/114940607434005478
My criticisms include:
- Current LLM technology has many layers, but the biggest most capable models are all tied to corporate datacenters and require inordinate amounts of every and water use to run. Trying to use these tools to bring about a post-scarcity economy will burn up the planet. We urgently need more-capable but also vastly more efficient AI technologies if we want to use AI for a post-scarcity economy, and we are *not* nearly on the verge of this despite what the big companies pushing LLMs want us to think.
- I can see that permacommons.org claims a small level of expenses on AI equates to low climate impact. However, given current deep subsidies on place by the big companies to attract users, that isn't a great assumption. The fact that their FAQ dodges the question about which AI systems they use isn't a great look.
- These systems are not free in the same way that Wikipedia or open-source software is. To run your own model you need a data harvesting & cleaning operation that costs millions of dollars minimum, and then you need millions of dollars worth of storage & compute to train & host the models. Right now, big corporations are trying to compete for market share by heavily subsidizing these things, but it you go along with that, you become dependent on them, and you'll be screwed when they jack up the price to a profitable level later. I'd love to see open dataset initiatives SBD the like, and there are some of these things, but not enough yet, and many of the initiatives focus on one problem while ignoring others (fine for research but not the basis for a society yet).
- Between the environmental impacts, the horrible labor conditions and undercompensation of data workers who filter the big datasets, and the impacts of both AI scrapers and AI commons pollution, the developers of the most popular & effective LLMs have a lot of answer for. This project only really mentions environmental impacts, which makes me think that they're not serious about ethics, which in turn makes me distrustful of the whole enterprise.
- Their language also ends up encouraging AI use broadly while totally ignoring several entire classes of harm, so they're effectively contributing to AI hype, especially with such casual talk of AGI and robotics as if embodied AGI were just around the corner. To be clear about this point: we are several breakthroughs away from AGI under the most optimistic assumptions, and giving the impression that those will happen soon plays directly into the hands of the Sam Altmans of the world who are trying to make money off the impression of impending huge advances in AI capabilities. Adding to the AI hype is irresponsible.
- I've got a more philosophical criticism that I'll post about separately.
I do think that the idea of using AI & other software tools, possibly along with robotics and funded by many local cooperatives, in order to make businesses obsolete before they can do the same to all workers, is a good one. Get your local library to buy a knitting machine alongside their 3D printer.
Lately I've felt too busy criticizing AI to really sit down and think about what I do want the future to look like, even though I'm a big proponent of positive visions for the future as a force multiplier for criticism, and this article is inspiring to me in that regard, even if the specific project doesn't seem like a good one.

Thousands of satellites with incredibly short lifetimes are being sent up into low Earth orbit.
When they fall back down they're fireballs of pollution — and what doesn't burn up hits the ground
https…

What goes up must come down: How megaconstellations like SpaceX's Starlink network pose a grave safety threat to us on Earth
Thousands of satellites with incredibly short lifetimes are being sent up into low Earth orbit. When they fall back down they're fireballs of pollution — and what doesn't burn up hits the ground.

As Trump Administration Plans to Burn Contraceptives, Europeans Are Alarmed (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/world/europe/usaid-contraceptives-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.cU8.HTU8.4Yj0xtXgt_HH&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
http://www.memeorandum.com/250807/p129#a250807p129

Here’s a fascinating dive into the dissonance between the Trump admin’s “Back to petrochem! Burn ourselves alive!!” energy policy and the actual reality on the ground, which is a massive shift toward renewable energy.
Reported by @… (my old friend from college!), featured on @…:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31072025/inside-clean-energy-solar-and-batteries-lead-us-power/

Fascists absolutely LOATHE these flags 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 So I’m flooding the feed with them, louder and prouder than ever!
🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈
Crank up “Rise Like a Phoenix” by Conchita Wurst and let these colors burn bright as a middle finger to hate and oppression.

Just a reminder:
You don't owe *anyone* the time and energy it takes you to type a reply.
You are not a free encylopaedia.
You have limited time and energy, don't waste it on sealions, trolls and other associated fuckwits.
Block freely, throw out blocks like confetti at a wedding. Engage with good faith arguments but even then, only if you feel like it.
Don't let social media drain you, burn you out.

Incomprehensible USG self-sabotage. The combination of arrogance, stupidity and ignorance required to burn down hurricane and weather forecasting -- IN THE FIRST WEEKS OF THE HURRICANE SEASON?! -- will, incontrovertibly, kill people. I hope their surviving friends, family, coworkers etc get together and sue those responsible into smoking holes in the ground.
#NHC

Series C, Episode 12 - Death-Watch
SERVALAN: But I don't think of YOU as an enemy, Avon. I think of YOU as a future friend.
AVON: [Puts his arm about Servalan and pulls her against him] Your plan had better be fireproof, Servalan, or I'll see you burn with it. [Kisses her. While continuing to hold Servalan he activates com in bracelet behind her back.] Cally?

Went to see a Hoopla improv show at The Bell, a mix of half a dozen different groups doing different thin
gs. "Shuffle improv" were basing their scenes on a shuffled playlist built by the audience on the way in
and an interesting format from a improv-as-a-second-language group chatting about their experiences in a
foreign land and basing their scenes off it. The group called "twelve people" only had six but were good
chaotic fun.
Lots of stuff about cooking and food.
I found myself pondering optimum size for an improve group. In general the larger groups seemed more fun to me, with the exception of three-person "burn the script" who did excellent work. More than eight wouldn't fit in the tiny stage at that venue. In rehearsal I like to have the group split in half and perform for each other. Hard to do that with fewer than six. Still up in the air if our group will get off the ground or not. More people does mean more calendar clashes even if it makes for a cheaper-per-person room hire.
Everyone has instagram pages, which are no use to me. Won't link or visit there. Interesting that nobody has a Twitter profile any more and of course nobody seems to have just a damned website which still strikes me as madness. Imagine not wanting to own your own space on the web?
#improv #london

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #DriveTime
Goat:
🎵 Let It Burn (edit)
#Goat
https://goat.bandcamp.com/album/let-it-burn
https://open.spotify.com/track/3AGGkrFwa2LyzUkzo9rd2L

Sub-Neptunes Are Drier Than They Seem: Rethinking the Origins of Water-Rich Worlds
Aaron Werlen, Caroline Dorn, Remo Burn, Hilke E. Schlichting, Simon L. Grimm, Edward D. Young
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00765

Sub-Neptunes Are Drier Than They Seem: Rethinking the Origins of Water-Rich Worlds
Recent claims of biosignature gases in sub-Neptune atmospheres have renewed interest in water-rich sub-Neptunes with surface oceans, often referred to as Hycean planets. These planets are hypothesized to form beyond the snow line, accreting large amounts of H$_2$O >10 wt%) before migrating inward. However, current interior models often neglect chemical equilibration between primordial atmospheres and molten interiors. Here, we compute global chemical equilibrium states for a synthetic populatio…

Sonnet 104 - CIV
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I ey'd,
Such seems your beauty still. Three winters cold,
Have from the forests shook three summers' pride,
Three beauteous springs to yellow autumn turn'd,
In process of the seasons have I seen,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh, which yet are green.
Ah! yet doth beauty like a dial-hand,…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.03590 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@a…

Enhancement to Fusion Reactivity in Sheared Flows
Sheared flow increases the reactivity of fusion plasma. In unmagnetized plasma with flow gradients comparable to the mean free path of reacting ions, fusion reactivity can be more than doubled. The effect is of particular relevance to inertial confinement fusion (ICF), where it allows implosion kinetic energy to contribute to the fusion burn even before thermalizing. In fast ignition, this allows remarkable energy savings because colder fuel stops alpha particles more quickly, enabling ignition…

Migrants placed on a deportation flight originally bound for South Sudan
are now being held in a converted shipping container on a U.S. naval base in Djibouti,
where the men and their guards are contending with baking hot temperatures, smoke from nearby burn pits and the looming threat of rocket attacks,
the Trump administration said.

Migrants and ICE officers contend with heat, smog and illness after detoured South Sudan flight
The Trump administration said the converted conference room in the shipping container is the only viable place to house the men on the base in Djibouti.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #CerysMatthews
Anoushka Shankar:
🎵 We Burn So Brightly
#AnoushkaShankar
https://anoushkashankar.bandcamp.com/track/we-burn-so-brightly
https://open.spotify.com/track/18BOCDDdJ12B5sPAefLUBw

Den här posten är en bra illustration av vad krig gör med människor. Jag känner igen den från många israelvänner jag träffat med trauma bakom sig. Jag har själv känt och när jag var yngre uttryckt sådana känslor. Om ni är oförstående för varför så många israelvänner är oförmögna att ta in krigsbrotten som sker under IDF:s härjningar, kom då ihåg att inga sådana argument går fram förrän man bestämt sig för att se att de där bostadshusen på bilden - oavsett om de ligger i Tel Aviv eller i Gaza…

Sources: xAI is burning through $1B/month and expects to burn through ~$13B in 2025; revenues are expected to be just $500M this year, rising to $2B next year (Bloomberg)

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Heaven Shall Burn:
🎵 War Is the Father of All
#NowPlaying #HeavenShallBurn
#newRelease 🆕 single
https://centurymedia.bandcamp.com/track/war-is-the-father-of-all
https://open.spotify.com/track/5BN80vkQuCynmnt6mpaNyd

Cooling Matters: Benchmarking Large Language Models and Vision-Language Models on Liquid-Cooled Versus Air-Cooled H100 GPU Systems
Imran Latif, Muhammad Ali Shafique, Hayat Ullah, Alex C. Newkirk, Xi Yu, Arslan Munir
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16781

Cooling Matters: Benchmarking Large Language Models and Vision-Language Models on Liquid-Cooled Versus Air-Cooled H100 GPU Systems
The unprecedented growth in artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, recently dominated by large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs), has intensified power and cooling demands in data centers. This study benchmarks LLMs and VLMs on two HGX nodes, each with 8x NVIDIA H100 graphics processing units (GPUs), using liquid and air cooling. Leveraging GPU Burn, Weights and Biases, and IPMItool, we collect detailed thermal, power, and computation data. Results show that the liquid-c…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MiddayShow
Rose City Band:
🎵 Slow Burn
#RoseCityBand
https://rosecityband.bandcamp.com/track/slow-burn
https://open.spotify.com/track/6bjIsswmRyroGB9BHJSfmx

How much of my children's future is AI going to burn up? That depends on how much we feed the hype beast. *That* is why "don't use AI at all without mentioning the drawbacks & a very good reason" is my stance (and I'm an AI researcher, technically).
Local models that run on your laptop: acceptable if produced by ethical means (including data sourcing & compensation for data filtering) & training costs are mitigated. Are such models way worse than the huge datacenter-scale models? Yes, for now. Deal with it.
ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, even DeepSeek: get out. You're feeding the beast that is consuming my kids' future. Heck, even talking up these models or about how "everyone is using them so it's okay" or about "they're not going away" I'd feeding the beast even if you don't touch them.
I wish it weren't like this, because the capabilities of the big models are cool even once you cut past the hype.
#AI

Tip of the Day:
Never fry bacon in the nude.
[Correction: always fry bacon in the nude; you'll learn not to burn it]

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MiddayShow
Dining Dead:
🎵 Burn Your Dinner
#DiningDead
https://wearediningdead.bandcamp.com/track/burn-your-dinner
https://open.spotify.com/track/7p7ZWyzSXbsGHvJ7WOQo7q

“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
// Dylan Thomas

Finished Hollow Fires by Samira Ahmed last night. It's gripping, sad, and fierce all at the same time. Explores themes of racism, Islamophobia, white supremacist terrorism, and police malcompetence in an extremely timely manner. It's a good book, which I'm extra happy about since I also liked Ahmed's This Book Won't Burn, so now I have another author whose work I'll be reading through.
Including Sabaa Tahir, Sabina Khan, and Adiba Jaigirdar, I've been reading a ton of great YA books by south Asian muslim authors recently, all discovered via the "grab something off the YA shelf by a probably-not-white author" method that has yet to fail me. Turns out the racism in publishing that puts a higher bar in front of authors of color at least makes it easy to find good books in one way >:(
#AmReading

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Radiohead:
🎵 Burn The Witch
#NowPlaying #Radiohead
#radioeins gespielten Titel als #Spotify Playliste: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3hdH98B6uyXilhcWxCA6nv

Just saw this:
#AI can mean a lot of things these days, but lots of the popular meanings imply a bevy of harms that I definitely wouldn't feel are worth a cute fish game. In fact, these harms are so acute that even "just" playing into the AI hype becomes its own kind of harm (it's similar to blockchain in that way).
@… noticed that the authors claim the code base is 80% AI generated, which is a red flag because people with sound moral compasses wouldn't be using AI to "help" write code in the first place. The authors aren't by some miracle people who couldn't build this app without help, in case that influences your thinking about it: they have the skills to write the code themselves, although it likely would have taken longer (but also been better).
I was more interested in the fish-classification AI, and how much it might be dependent on datacenters. Thankfully, a quick glance at the code confirms they're using ONNX and running a self-trained neural network on your device. While the exponentially-increasing energy & water demands of datacenters to support billion-parameter models are a real concern, this is not that. Even a non-AI game can burn a lot of cycles on someone's phone, and I don't think there's anything to complain about energy-wise if we're just using cycles on the end user's device as long as we're not having them keep it on for hours crunching numbers like blockchain stuff does. Running whatever stuff locally while the user is playing a game is a negligible environmental concern, unlike, say, calling out to ChatGPT where you're directly feeding datacenter demand. Since they claimed to have trained the network themselves, and since it's actually totally reasonable to make your own dataset for this and get good-enough-for-a-silly-game results with just a few hundred examples, I don't have any ethical objections to the data sourcing or training processes either. Hooray! This is finally an example of "ethical use of neutral networks" that I can hold up as an example of what people should be doing instead of the BS they are doing.
But wait... Remember what I said about feeding the AI hype being its own form of harm? Yeah, between using AI tools for coding and calling their classifier "AI" in a way that makes it seem like the same kind of thing as ChatGPT et al., they're leaning into the hype rather than helping restrain it. And that means they're causing harm. Big AI companies can point to them and say "look AI enables cute things you like" when AI didn't actually enable it. So I'm feeling meh about this cute game and won't be sharing it aside from this post. If you love the cute fish, you don't really have to feel bad for playing with it, but I'd feel bad for advertising it without a disclaimer.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6MusicArtistInResidence
ShrapKnel:
🎵 Cold Burn (feat. Curly Castro & PremRock)
#ShrapKnel
https://shrapknel.bandcamp.com/track/cold-burn
https://open.spotify.com/track/6bJDEH1wV0g08YAUPjOuiR

Künstliches Licht bedroht viele #Tierarten, insbesondere nachtaktive wie #Fledermäuse, #Eulen und #Nachtfalter

Zu viel Licht und kaum Schutz: „Beleuchtung kann ganze Popu­la­tionen bedrohen“
Tiere können nicht einfach die Jalousien schließen, mahnt Wissenschaftlerin Sibylle Schroer. Ein Gespräch über Burn-out bei Vögeln und Lösungen.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6MusicArtistInResidence
ShrapKnel:
🎵 Cold Burn (feat. Curly Castro & PremRock)
#ShrapKnel
https://shrapknel.bandcamp.com/track/cold-burn
https://open.spotify.com/track/6bJDEH1wV0g08YAUPjOuiR

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #PositiveVibrations
Mortimer & Paris La Mont:
🎵 Burn It To the Ground
#Mortimer #ParisLaMont
#newRelease 🆕 single
https://mortimerofficial.bandcamp.com/track/burn-it-to-the-ground
https://open.spotify.com/track/5AeNzsPgqpZcAYRTdfLRYj

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6MusicsRaveForever
Violet:
🎵 Burn The Elastic (Boxsaga Mix)
#Violet

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Baby Rose & BADBADNOTGOOD:
🎵 Slow Burn
#BabyRose #BADBADNOTGOOD
https://babyrose.bandcamp.com/track/weekness
https://open.spotify.com/track/41KwQOHxfWnYG3eltkw6P0