Tootfinder

I randomly bought this book in a quirky bookshop in Copenhagen for the sole reason that it said all the wrong things right on the cover.
(Sales: the single most important profession. NLP™: not natural language processing but neuro-linguistic programming. Meta: the Meta Model™ and Meta Publications™.)
I just started reading it and boy oh boy, I was not disappointed. It's outrageously hilarious.
"Persuasion engineering".

Persuasion engineering by Richard Bandler | Open Library
Persuasion engineering by Richard Bandler, unknown edition,

Last-minute attempt by the Trump regime to stop 700 MW of offshore wind power from flowing into the US grid. Denmark's Ørsted in the crosshairs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/climate

Trump Administration Orders Work Halted on Wind Farm That Is Nearly Built
The order to stop construction on Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island is part of a campaign against renewable energy.

Sources: ESPN and the NFL are nearing a landmark deal to add Red Zone, NFL Network, and more to the ESPN's streamer, launching in the fall for $29.99 per month (Andrew Marchand/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6509767/202…

ESPN and NFL closing in on ‘Next Era’-defining media deal
What could be in the deal: Red Zone Channel, NFL Network, seven regular-season games, enhanced betting and fantasy possibilities.

There is a giant mountain in the US carved with the faces of a couple of slavers, and two guys who tried to stop slavery. Now most Americans will stop right there and say, "wait, two? Lincoln did that though..." They'll say that because Americans don't know anything about their own history, including the fact that the practice of slavery remained central to the southern economy well through Roosevelt's administration. If this is not familiar to you (because, maybe, you were taught history in the US) and you'd like to actually learn about that, you might want to read "Slavery by Another Name."
But let's talk about half-slaver mountain for a minute. This mountain is functionally a sacred site for Americans, but it's literally a sacred site for Black Hills Sioux. Speaking of stolen land, did you know that JBLM (a military base in Washington state) is built on land promised the Puyallup in the Treaty of Medicine Creek before being stolen in 1918? I remember being taught that all the land was stolen a long time ago and now there's nothing we can do. Yeah, does anyone remember that DAPL was under Obama? In fact, unused federal lands are supposed to be returned to the tribes from which the land was taken but there's a whole site to auction off federal property... That's a whole section of the government dedicated to violating the Treaty of Fort Laramie.
They could just comply with the treaty, as they are legally obligated to do. These violations are ongoing. Slavery, again, is still legal. Slaves are still used by major corporations today, they just have to be tricked into confessing to a crime first. The sins that this country is built on remain fully active today... Because the system was built to preserve white supremacists patriarchy. How could the founding of the US not lead *directly* to Trump? How could this have been different, from the beginning?
But, please, tell me, how, exactly, are you going to fix that by voting harder in the mid terms. How?

🚯 Postcard from California: Plastics ‘recycling’ – out of sight, out of mind
https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/07/postcard-from-california-plastics-recycling-out-of-sight-out-of-mind/

Postcard from California: Plastics ‘recycling’ – out of sight, out of mind
By Bill Walker Last year California shipped more than 156 million pounds of plastic waste to poor countries, with almost three-fourths sent to Mexico and another 44 million pounds sent to developing nations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. That’s the reality behind the blue recycling bins Californians fill with plastic waste for curbside pickup. We may think we’re recycling, but we’re really sending much of our waste out of sight, out of mind.

Karen Attiah files a grievance via the Washington Post's labor union and submits a four-page letter to HR seeking to recover damages for her firing (Benjamin Mullin/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/business/media/washington-post-karen…

Karen Attiah Says Firing by Washington Post Violated Labor Agreement
The company fired Karen Attiah this month for her social media posts related to Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Overly academic/distanced ethical discussions
Had a weird interaction with @/brainwane@social.coop just now. I misinterpreted one of their posts quoting someone else and I think the combination of that plus an interaction pattern where I'd assume their stance on something and respond critically to that ended up with me getting blocked. I don't have hard feelings exactly, and this post is only partly about this particular person, but I noticed something interesting by the end of the conversation that had been bothering me. They repeatedly criticized me for assuming what their position was, but never actually stated their position. They didn't say: "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, it's actually Y." They just said "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, please don't assume my position!" I get that it's annoying to have people respond to a straw man version of your argument, but when I in response asked some direct questions about what their position was, they gave some non-answers and then blocked me. It's entirely possible it's a coincidence, and they just happened to run out of patience on that iteration, but it makes me take their critique of my interactions a bit less seriously. I suspect that they just didn't want to hear what I was saying, while at the same time they wanted to feel as if they were someone who values public critique and open discussion of tricky issues (if anyone reading this post also followed our interaction and has a different opinion of my behavior, I'd be glad to hear it; it's possible In effectively being an asshole here and it would be useful to hear that if so).
In any case, the fact that at the end of the entire discussion, I'm realizing I still don't actually know their position on whether they think the AI use case in question is worthwhile feels odd. They praised the system on several occasions, albeit noting some drawbacks while doing so. They said that the system was possibly changing their anti-AI stance, but then got mad at me for assuming this meant that they thought this use-case was justified. Maybe they just haven't made up their mind yet but didn't want to say that?
Interestingly, in one of their own blog posts that got linked in the discussion, they discuss a different AI system, and despite listing a bunch of concrete harms, conclude that it's okay to use it. That's fine; I don't think *every* use of AI is wrong on balance, but what bothered me was that their post dismissed a number of real ethical issues by saying essentially "I haven't seen calls for a boycott over this issue, so it's not a reason to stop use." That's an extremely socially conformist version of ethics that doesn't sit well with me. The discussion also ended up linking this post: https://chelseatroy.com/2024/08/28/does-ai-benefit-the-world/ which bothered me in a related way. In it, Troy describes classroom teaching techniques for introducing and helping students explore the ethics of AI, and they seem mostly great. They avoid prescribing any particular correct stance, which is important when teaching given the power relationship, and they help students understand the limitations of their perspectives regarding global impacts, which is great. But the overall conclusion of the post is that "nobody is qualified to really judge global impacts, so we should focus on ways to improve outcomes instead of trying to judge them." This bothers me because we actually do have a responsibility to make decisive ethical judgments despite limitations of our perspectives. If we never commit to any ethical judgment against a technology because we think our perspective is too limited to know the true impacts (which I'll concede it invariably is) then we'll have to accept every technology without objection, limiting ourselves to trying to improve their impacts without opposing them. Given who currently controls most of the resources that go into exploration for new technologies, this stance is too permissive. Perhaps if our objection to a technology was absolute and instantly effective, I'd buy the argument that objecting without a deep global view of the long-term risks is dangerous. As things stand, I think that objecting to the development/use of certain technologies in certain contexts is necessary, and although there's a lot of uncertainly, I expect strongly enough that the overall outcomes of objection will be positive that I think it's a good thing to do.
The deeper point here I guess is that this kind of "things are too complicated, let's have a nuanced discussion where we don't come to any conclusions because we see a lot of unknowns along with definite harms" really bothers me.

Bills' Hairston: Truth will come out in wake of suit https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45806993/bills-maxwell-hairston-hide-wake-lawsuit

Subintegrality and ideal class groups of monoid algebras
Md Abu Raihan, Leslie G. Roberts, Husney Parvez Sarwar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13845 https://…

Subintegrality and ideal class groups of monoid algebras
$(1)$ Let $M\subset N$ be a commutative cancellative torsion-free and subintegral extension of monoids. Then we prove that in the case of ring extension $A[M]\subset A[N]$, the two notions, subintegral and weakly subintegral coincide provided $\mathbb{Z}\subset A$. $(2)$ Let $A \subset B$ be an extension of commutative rings and $M\subset N$ an extension of commutative cancellative torsion-free positive monoids. Let $I$ be a radical ideal in $N$. Then $\frac{A[M]}{(I\cap M)A[M]}$ is subintegral…

As NFL resumes international series, could an overseas Super Bowl be in the future? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6652017/2025/09/22/nfl-international-super-bowl-draft/