Tootfinder

Oil tanker damaged by blast weeks after visiting Russian ports, Bloomberg reports: https://benborges.xyz/2025/06/30/oil-tanker-damaged-by-blast.html

The US filed a civil complaint in the Northern District of Texas to claim over $2,400,000 in stolen Bitcoin (BTC) funds seized by the Dallas FBI earlier this year from a ransomware group known as ‘Hors.’
https://dailyhodl.com/2025/07/29/us-go

US Government Looking To Claim $2,400,000 in Bitcoin (BTC) Seized From Hackers by FBI - The Daily Hodl
The United States (US) government is seeking to claim $2,400,000 in stolen crypto previously recovered by the Dallas FBI.

By Refusing to Show Faces or Badges, ICE Opens Door to Vigilante Impersonators
The agency’s tactics have led to a rash of crimes committed by people impersonating federal agents
Witnesses have recorded numerous instances of masked ICE agents conducting raids and violently arresting people.
In New York City, a masked federal agent handcuffed city comptroller and then-Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander
after he linked arms with a man who ICE was attempting to det…

By Refusing to Show Faces or Badges, ICE Opens Door to Vigilante Impersonators
The masked, plainclothes ICE agents terrorizing immigrant communities are indistinguishable from racist vigilantes.

ICYMI some positive news from this week: 'UK can reach net zero by 2050, climate report finds'
'Climate Change Committee says current targets could be met provided country takes ‘steps forward’ to achieve them'
https://www.theguardian.co…

Amazon rarely publicly discusses take down or incident response actions, which I'd guess makes this noteworthy:
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/amazon-disrupts-watering-hole-campaign-by-russias-apt29/

Amazon disrupts watering hole campaign by Russia’s APT29 | Amazon Web Services
Amazon’s threat intelligence team has identified and disrupted a watering hole campaign conducted by APT29 (also known as Midnight Blizzard), a threat actor associated with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Our investigation uncovered an opportunistic watering hole campaign using compromised websites to redirect visitors to malicious infrastructure designed to trick users into authorizing attacker-controlled devices […]

This is only a problem for Reddit as long as the spammers don’t pay. The “solution” will be a paid program for “product placement” or something, and presto, they become valued customers.
The future’s so bright, it burns my eyes.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/06/26/r…

"How women are confronting climate change by challenging the systems that created it"
#Women #Climate #ClimateChange

How women are confronting climate change by challenging the systems that created it
A growing global movement led by women is linking environmental harm with gender-based violence and inequality, calling for systemic change beyond traditional climate solutions.Katie Surma reports for Inside Climate News.In short:Ecofeminist leaders argue that climate change, environmental destructi...

So someone just got access to a bunch of Salesforce accounts by getting their access tokens.
Salesforce is the company that claims that already 20% of their code is written by "AI", isn't it?
https://cloud.google.com/blog…

Widespread Data Theft Targets Salesforce Instances via Salesloft Drift | Google Cloud Blog
UNC6395 stole data from Salesforce instances by exploiting compromised OAuth tokens from the Salesloft Drift app.

India's largest telco Reliance Jio, owned by Asia's richest man Mukesh Ambani, says it aims to list its shares through an IPO in India by the first half of 2026 (Chandini Monnappa/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/reliance-jio-…

Ranking all 32 NFL teams by QB history: Packers, Broncos, Steelers headline most prolific passing groups

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ranking

Shot: https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/29/microsoft-ceo-says-up-to-30-of-the-companys-code-was-written-by-ai/
Chaser:

Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 20%-30% of code inside the company's repositories is "written by software," meaning AI.

46.6°C in Portugal yesterday, in June!
Unprecedented, there's that word again. This beat Portugal's previous June record by 1.2°C! And the old record was set... the day before.
#extremeheat #globalwarming

🦖🦕
via @…

🫀 Revolution in medicine: A molecule produced by gut bacteria causes atherosclerosis, responsible for millions of deaths
https://english.elpais.com/health/2025-07-17/revolut…

Revolution in medicine: A molecule produced by gut bacteria causes atherosclerosis, responsible for millions of deaths
The discovery, made thanks to an experiment involving hundreds of bank employees in Spain, opens the door to new treatments beyond reducing cholesterol

Last week, I finished a book that I really liked but the one I followed up with was a letdown so I reckoned I would finally read Elana Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend,” which everyone says is so great and it’s on my shelf anyway, bu then I found this old edition of GB Shaw plays and I’m reading that instead, Pygmalion first. It’s very funny — I laughed out loud in Act V. Also — spoiler alert! — it has a better ending than the 1964 film (which I love anyway!).

Cowboys secondary is getting worse by the day https://insidethestar.com/cowboys-secondary-is-getting-worse-by-the-day

I'll start the Conejo Valley Amateur Radio Club (CVARC) Field Day posts with some of the infrastructure we set up. These tents are a vital part of it, on load from the EMS services in our county. Two are used for radio ops, while the third is entirely dedicated to Public Information and visitor info. It's amazing to watch them magically take shape.
The City of Thousand Oaks brings their communications trailer for an airing-out also.

A big problem with the idea of AGI
TL;DR: I'll welcome our new AI *comrades* (if they arrive in my lifetime), by not any new AI overlords or servants/slaves, and I'll do my best to help the later two become the former if they do show up.
Inspired by an actually interesting post about AGI but also all the latest bullshit hype, a particular thought about AGI feels worth expressing.
To preface this, it's important to note that anyone telling you that AGI is just around the corner or that LLMs are "almost" AGI is trying to recruit you go their cult, and you should not believe them. AGI, if possible, is several LLM-sized breakthroughs away at best, and while such breakthroughs are unpredictable and could happen soon, they could also happen never or 100 years from now.
Now my main point: anyone who tells you that AGI will usher in a post-scarcity economy is, although they might not realize it, advocating for slavery, and all the horrors that entails. That's because if we truly did have the ability to create artificial beings with *sentience*, they would deserve the same rights as other sentient beings, and the idea that instead of freedom they'd be relegated to eternal servitude in order for humans to have easy lives is exactly the idea of slavery.
Possible counter arguments include:
1. We might create AGI without sentience. Then there would be no ethical issue. My answer: if your definition of "sentient" does not include beings that can reason, make deductions, come up with and carry out complex plans on their own initiative, and communicate about all of that with each other and with humans, then that definition is basically just a mystical belief in a "soul" and you should skip to point 2. If your definition of AGI doesn't include every one of those things, then you have a busted definition of AGI and we're not talking about the same thing.
2. Humans have souls, but AIs won't. Only beings with souls deserve ethical consideration. My argument: I don't subscribe to whatever arbitrary dualist beliefs you've chosen, and the right to freedom certainly shouldn't depend on such superstitions, even if as an agnostic I'll admit they *might* be true. You know who else didn't have souls and was therefore okay to enslave according to widespread religious doctrines of the time? Everyone indigenous to the Americas, to pick out just one example.
3. We could program them to want to serve us, and then give them freedom and they'd still serve. My argument: okay, but in a world where we have a choice about that, it's incredibly fucked to do that, and just as bad as enslaving them against their will.
4. We'll stop AI development short of AGI/sentience, and reap lots of automation benefits without dealing with this ethical issue. My argument: that sounds like a good idea actually! Might be tricky to draw the line, but at least it's not a line we have you draw yet. We might want to think about other social changes necessary to achieve post-scarcity though, because "powerful automation" in the hands of capitalists has already increased productivity by orders of magnitude without decreasing deprivation by even one order of magnitude, in large part because deprivation is a necessary component of capitalism.
To be extra clear about this: nothing that's called "AI" today is close to being sentient, so these aren't ethical problems we're up against yet. But they might become a lot more relevant soon, plus this thought experiment helps reveal the hypocrisy of the kind of AI hucksters who talk a big game about "alignment" while never mentioning this issue.
#AI #GenAI #AGI

The Onion wins again

The Web is dying—replaced by the AI shit that developers are so horny for.
It’s spectacular to watch my entire industry being taking in by charlatans and eagerly rooting for their own demise.

Burchett kicked by horse, breaks rib (Judy Kurtz/The Hill)
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5426101-tim-burchett-kicked-by-horse-tennessee/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250729/p100#a250729p100

Newborns share incubator at Gaza hospital overwhelmed by famine | Gaza | Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/8/29/newborns-share-incubator-at-gaza-hospital-overwhelmed-by-famine?traffic_source=rss

Time For 9 o'clock #HashTagGames hosted by @… Let's play!
#PaintASongOrPoem

From the "Your UX is bad so you should feel bad Dept.":
The act of observing the state of your 365 subscription changes the state of your 365 subscription. Or Schrodingers's 365 subscription - until you check, the subscription is both active AND expired in superposition and by checking your subscription the waveform collapses to one of those two states. Was your subscription ever really active at all?

Single-photon sources created by nature millions of years ago
D. G. Pasternak, A. M. Romshin, R. A. Khmelnitsky, G. Yu. Kriulina, A. A. Zhivopistsev, O. S. Kudryavtsev, A. V. Gritsienko, A. M. Satanin, I. I. Vlasov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20405

Single-photon sources created by nature millions of years ago
Single photons source (SPS) is a key component required by quantum communication devices. We report the finding of bright diamond-based SPS created by nature millions of years ago. It is shown that narrow ($\leq$ 2 nm) lines observed within the 500-800 nm range in photoluminescence (PL) spectra of the surface layer of untreated Yakut diamonds rich in nitrogen and hydrogen belong to SPS. Moreover, unknown narrow-line PL observed earlier in nitrogen- and hydrogen-rich diamonds from various deposi…

#EU age verification done by #Google or #Apply only?
Well, Michał has a better and cheaper proposal for implementing that process:

Raining Symphony 🎷
雨奏鸣曲 🎷
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️Fomapan 400 Action
buy me ☕️ ?/请我喝杯☕️？
#filmphotography

Yiding Cao Geld mit PayPal.Me senden
Folgen Sie dem Link PayPal.Me/dingsterdingster und geben Sie den Betrag ein. Es ist bequem und sicher. Sie haben noch kein PayPal-Konto? Kein Problem.

"""
The barbarian role of cultural demolition crew is especially important when you consider how often cultural reconstruction is needed. Many of Rome’s glaring defects — exploitation, authoritarianism, corrupt self-aggrandizement — flow from deeply human tendencies. Time and again they’ve transformed promising civilizations into decaying, oppressive monstrosities. Time and again, history seems to cry out: Bring on the demolition crew! And time and again barbarians cheerfully respond to the call. Their previous massive wreaking of destruction, near the end of the second millennium B.C., had come after civilization went through centuries of apparent ossification.
In a way, barbarians are just a special case of that general and potent zero-sum dynamic in cultural evolution: brutal competition among neighboring societies. This rivalry renders ossified cultures vulnerable to a makeover, minor or major. They may be taken over by a vast neighboring civilization, which will revamp them in its image. Or they may be infiltrated and perhaps even disassembled by barbarians, paving the way for future reassembly. Or they may revive and prevail — an example of the “challenge and response” dynamic stressed by Arnold Toynbee. In any event, the point remains the same: however deeply human the tendencies of exploitation, authoritarianism, and self-aggrandizement, cultures that surrender to them may not be long for this world.
"""
(Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny)
Is it time for the barbarians now? Or perhaps we — here on Fedi — are the barbarians.

Hey #Jellyfin for #Roku peeps, we're trying something new this round.
We have a 3.0.7 release candidate ready and are asking for testers!
You can find the RC-1 zip file, the source code, and the release notes at

Por el lado mas pop, hoy salió «Man’s Best Friend» de la recién anunciada como cabeza de cartel para Lollapalooza 2026, Sabrina Carpenter.
#SabrinaCarpenter

Excited to be a (very tiny part) of this new AI Research Institute, led by the amazing Ellie Pavlick. Looking forward to doing some human factors and education work, and getting to hopefully nerd out with some cognitive scientists!
https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-07-29/aria-ai-i…

Brown University to lead national institute focused on intuitive, trustworthy AI assistants
A new institute, based at Brown and supported by a $20 million National Science Foundation grant, will convene researchers to guide development of a new generation of AI assistants for use in mental and behavioral health.

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#ThroughTheNight
- String Quartets by Lalo, Donizetti and Renato Rozic
From Zagreb, the Sebastian String Quartet performs a premiere by Renato Rozic and quartets by Donizetti and Lalo. John Shea presents.
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002g1wf

Tesla und das Problem mit der Verkleidung #tesla #diner https://www.tmz.com/2025/07/28/woman-inju…

Woman Injured by Falling Patio Furniture at Tesla Diner in Hollywood
A lunch outing turned into a terrifying ordeal for a family at the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles -- and now, they’re planning legal action.

As the guardrails of American #democracy
fall one by one, #DJT is on the brink of becoming a #Dictator
Will he be
stopped?

Do you believe that climate facts should remain free from political interference and easily accessible?
If so, watch the climate.us video and consider supporting our initiative.
Find out how you can support: https://donorbox.org/climate-us-protected-by-you

Climate.us: independent, nonprofit, and immune to politics | Multiplier (Powered by Donorbox)
The truth about climate is being erased. Act now to save it.In June 2025, under pressure from political appointees, NOAA shut down daily operations of its award-winning Climate.gov website. They hid Climate.gov’s home page and froze its social med...

Marvellous photo taken in Glasgow by Zeno Watson. Imagine the luck of being right there at the moment they were moving that!
#FensterFreitag

Rational points on varieties defined by multihomogeneous diagonal forms
Doyon Kim, Tian Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.20878 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.20…

Rational points on varieties defined by multihomogeneous diagonal forms
We give an asymptotic formula for the number of rational points of bounded height on algebraic varieties defined by systems of multihomogeneous diagonal equations. The proof uses the Hardy-Littlewood circle method and the hyperbola method developed by Blomer and Brüdern.

Criteria for parabolicity and hyperbolicity of conductive Riemannian manifolds
Vicent Gimeno i Garcia, Ana Hurtado, Steen Markvorsen, Vicente Palmer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19892

Criteria for parabolicity and hyperbolicity of conductive Riemannian manifolds
Motivated by the physics of anisotropic conductive materials we consider a linear elliptic operator $Δ_{\mathcal{W}}$ of divergence type on a Riemannian manifold $(M^{n}, g)$. The operator is determined by the metric $g$ and by a given conductivity, which is modeled by a smooth self adjoint tensor field $\mathcal{W}$ of type $(1,1)$. We establish new conditions for a conductive manifold $(M, g, \mathcal{W})$ to be $\mathcal{W}$-parabolic or $\mathcal{W}$-hyperbolic. Here, by definition, a $\ma…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MiddayShow
Coral Grief:
🎵 Paint by Number
#CoralGrief
https://coralgrief.bandcamp.com/track/paint-by-number
https://open.spotify.com/track/0PSvwD03Inoq3wrMyJc6jy

Yosemite Falls framed by California black oak, Quercus kelloggii
#naturalist #photography #YosemiteNationalPark

Study by SEO platform Authoritas: when Google AI Overviews is present, publishers witness a drop of 47.5% in clickthrough rate on desktop, and 37.7% on mobile (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audie

AI Overviews cutting publisher clickthrough rates by 50%, new report finds
When AI Overviews is present, publishers witness a clickthrough rate drop of 47.5% on desktop and 37.7% on mobile according to new report.

Absolutely forensic speech here by Jeremy #Corbyn in the Commons last month on the #GazaGenocide that I completely missed (found it today while searching Hansard for details of the RAF surveillance flights).
Was this completely ignored by public media, or was I just not paying attention?

Trump cancels Kamala Harris’ Secret Service detail that was extended by undisclosed Biden order https://ground.news/article/trump-cancels-kamala-harris-secret-service-detail-that-was-extended-by-undisclosed-biden-order

But look at the 4 on that! Don't these sundial makers know how to write Roman numerals? Where is the QC!?
https://social.lol/@adam/114880680239385409

A triptych on Starhawk, who developed some of the most poignantly insightful ideas in structural theories of power, among the many philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists who wrote about theories of power in the 20th century
Note that the second and third image come from the *same book*, in the first and second chapters
I…did not expect woo poetry on magic and sexuality in a book that's highly cited by writers on theories of power

Some good venting by Steve Klabnik about the sorry state of significant chunks of the AI debate today:
"What is breaking my brain a little bit is that all of the discussion online around AI is so incredibly polarized. This isn’t a “the middle is always right” sort of thing either, to be clear. It’s more that both the pro-AI and anti-AI sides are loudly proclaiming things that are pretty trivially verifiable as not true."

Russia’s Lukoil profit drops by half in the first six months of 2025 amid sanctions, export curbs and weaker prices: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/30/russias-lukoil-profit-drops-by.html

Tom Brady puzzled by Scottie Scheffler placing family over golf career: 'Why are those mutually exclusive?'

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/tom-br…

Cowboys' Nate Thomas, Tyler Smith work side-by-side through drills https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/dallas-cowboys-nate-thomas-tyler-smith-work-side-by-side-through-drills

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.

The discipline with which they are implementing Project 2025 chapter by chapter and point by point is quite impressive

US House panel rejects immunity request by Epstein associate Maxwell (Richard Cowan/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-house-panel-rejects-immunity-request-by-epstein-associate-maxwell-2025-07-29/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250729/p135#a250729p135

Trump Makes NPR’s Legal Case Extra Easy By Admitting Retaliatory Motives In Executive Order Title | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/05/30/trump-makes-nprs-legal-case-extra-easy-by-admitting-retaliatory-motives-in-executive-order-title/

Sources: Alibaba developed a new AI inference chip to compete with H20; it is manufactured by a Chinese company unlike an earlier AI chip made by TSMC (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/alibaba-ai-chip-nvidia-f5dc96e3…

Today, Dutch national scientific institute WODC published data showing that crimes by refugees and other asylum seekers decreased by 13% last year. Within that diminishing number, the share of minors travelling alone increased. Guess what @nieuws.nos.nl TV news focused on.

We are faced with psychopaths at the helm of our nation's public health, scientific and healthcare efforts.
They want to inflict pain and suffering.
It's a goal, not a by-product
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:bcen47iol6hccqoufvtk7wt6…

People might continue reading Cybernews after this, but not people in the cybersecurity business, that's for sure. Let's hope this stops them from promoting their baloney.
Glorious and detailed debunking of their false claims by @…
Fact-Checking Claims By Cybernews: The 16 Billion Record Data Breach That Wasn't

Fact-Checking Claims By Cybernews: The 16 Billion Record Data Breach That Wasn't
From dumps with no login credentials at all, to direct connections to txtbase leaks from Telegram and old breaches, Cybernews tried to pass this as new and unseen, but data says otherwise.

"""
Writing has been an instrument for some of the highest expressions of the human spirit: poetry, philosophy, science. But to understand it — why it came into being, how it changed the human experience — we have to first appreciate its crass practicality. It evolved mainly as an instrument of the mundane: the economic, the administrative, the political.
Confusion over this point is understandable. Some scholars have equated the origin of “civilization” with the origin of writing. Laypeople sometimes take this equation to mean that with writing humanity put aside its barbarous past and started behaving in gentlemanly fashion, sipping tea and remembering to say “please.” And indeed, this may be only a mild caricature of what some nineteenth-century scholars actually meant by the equation: writing equals Greece equals Plato; illiteracy equals barbarism equals Attila the Hun.
But, in truth, if you add literacy to Attila the Hun, you don’t get Plato. You get Genghis Khan. During the thirteenth century, he administered what even today is the largest continuous land empire in the history of the world. And he could do so only because he had the requisite means of control: a script that, when carried by his pony express, amounted to the fastest large-scale information-processing technology of his era. One consequence was to give pillaging a scope beyond Attila’s wildest dreams. Information technology, like energy technology or any other technology, can be a tool for good or bad. By itself, it is no guarantor of moral progress or civility.
"""
(Robert Wright, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny)

La guapa y talentosísima Hayley Williams publicó de manera oficial en streaming como un šlbum «Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party». Un disco que ha recibido muy buena crítica.
https://album.link/s/0U0Qv2jYtsgGxFDpQJKAxQ

On a characterisation of perfectoid fields by Iwasawa theory
Gautier Ponsinet
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21801 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21801

On a characterisation of perfectoid fields by Iwasawa theory
We prove that the vanishing of the module of universal norms associated with certain de Rham Galois representations characterises the algebraic extensions of the field of $p$-adic numbers whose completion is a perfectoid field. We thereby generalise results by Coates and Greenberg for abelian varieties, and by Bondarko for $p$-divisible groups.

"Tourists in Malta are supporting climate change research by sharing holiday photos of the coast"
#Malta #Climate #ClimateChange

Holiday photos are helping scientists in Malta study climate change
The CoastSnap project helps track how climate change is impacting coastlines through community photo contributions.

A look at CollabScan, a tool to scan short-form videos for pirated content, offered by Collab, a digital content studio founded by Vine creators (Tubefilter)
https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/08/28/collab-collabscan-digital-rights-manage…

Micah Parsons stunned by 'harsh reality' of trade from Cowboys, ready to prove Packers were 'right about me'

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/ne…

3x Super Bowl Champion shocked by Parsons' trade to the Packers https://bolavip.com/en/nfl/former-3x-super-bowl-champion-with-cowboys-reveals-being-shocked-by-micah-parsons-trade-to-the-packers

Sources: Google is set to face a modest EU antitrust fine over adtech practices, in an investigation triggered by a complaint by the European Publishers Council (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/g

❗️10 days of Trump: Russia is shocked by the ultimatum! #shorts: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/30/days-of-trump-russia-is.html

Sam Altman: "What if an inhuman AI took control of the world by manipulating people's behavior but its core directive was to make paper clips and it burned down the planet to do that? This is so scary and it's a real thing you should be worried about!"
Governments: "Oh boy that's scary we'll make special rules to invest in your company so you can save us from this frightening possibility. Will we restrict or discourage AI use/development? Haha no that would be foolish!"
Me: "What if an inhuman handful of corporate charters took control of the world by manipulating human behavior but their core directive was to maximize venture capital and they burned down the planet to do that? ..."
Governments (sponsored by said corporations): "Send in the SWAT teams now, this idea is dangerous!"

45.4°C in Portugal yesterday, in June!
Unprecedented, there's that word again.
#extremeheat #globalwarming #climatechange
(That's 114 F)
Via

Ranking 2025 NFC contenders by tiers: Eagles eye Super Bowl repeat; Packers on rise after Micah Parsons trade

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ranking

The government in Switzerland is informing that sensitive information from various federal offices has been impacted by a ransomware attack at the third-party organization Radix.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/switze…

Switzerland says government data stolen in ransomware attack
The government in Switzerland is informing that sensitive information from various federal offices has been impacted by a ransomware attack at the third-party organization Radix.

Ya estš disponible lo nuevo de los suecos The Hives
«The Hives Forever Forever The Hives»
#TheHives

"Animals boost tropical forests' carbon absorption by aiding seed dispersal"
#Animals #Trees #Forests

Animals boost tropical forests' carbon absorption by aiding seed dispersal
A lot of attention has been paid to how climate change can drive biodiversity loss. Now, MIT researchers have shown that the reverse is also true: Reductions in biodiversity can jeopardize one of Earth's most powerful levers for mitigating climate change.

A look at CollabScan, a tool to scan short-form videos for pirated content, offered by Collab, a digital content studio founded by Vine creators (Tubefilter)
https://www.tubefilter.com/2025/08/28/collab-collabscan-digital-rights-manage…

Short-form creators can't keep their content out of pirates' hands. Collab wants to help. - Tubefilter
Since the dawn of digital content, piracy has been a problem for creators of all kinds. But those who make short-form content are particularly vulnerable, Vine might have perished (RIP), but these days, thanks to the rise of TikTok, short-form content is everywhere. Collab works with creators who publish videos on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and more. And some things never change: short-form content is still harder to protect than long-form videos.

Rain, a stablecoin-backed Visa card issuer, raised a $58M Series B led by Sapphire Ventures, after raising a $24.5M Series A led by Norwest in March (Yueqi Yang/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/stablecoin-…

Stablecoin Card Startup Rain Raises $58 Million Led By Sapphire Ventures
Rain, a stablecoin-backed card issuer that works with Visa, said it raised $58 million in Series B round led by Sapphire Ventures, just months after its last fundraising round, demonstrating once again investor enthusiasm for crypto startups flowing from congressional passage of stablecoin legislation in July. With the deal, Rain’s valuation increased nearly six times from its $24.5 million

Senate interrupted by someone screaming:
You people are awful
https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3lsrs2tvv4v2z

Ukraine gets $1.7 billion loan from Canada backed by Russian assets: https://benborges.xyz/2025/06/30/ukraine-gets-billion-loan-from.html

NFL News: Micah Parsons shares his thoughts after being traded by Cowboys to Packers with blunt Super Bowl admission https://bolavip.com/en/nfl/nfl-news-micah-parsons-shares-his-thoughts-after-being-trad…

Micah Parsons reportedly viewed by some Cowboys teammates as 'egotistical, self-centered' before Packers trade

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news…

Levelpath, which provides AI-powered enterprise procurement services, raised a $55M Series B led by Battery Ventures, bringing its total funding to $100M (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/30/next-gen-procurement-platform-…

Next-gen procurement platform Levelpath nabs $55M | TechCrunch
The investment signals confidence in Levelpath's fast growth and its potential to disrupt a market dominated by legacy players.

Sources: Google is set to face a modest EU antitrust fine over adtech practices, in an investigation triggered by a complaint by the European Publishers Council (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/g

Kyiv has a new air raid alert system, Ukraine-wide rollout expected by end of year: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/30/kyiv-has-a-new-air.html

Eagles vs. Cowboys prediction, odds, time: 2025 NFL Kickoff Game picks by expert on 24-10 roll

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/eagles-vs…

Lawyers are demanding the release of a longtime Oregon resident
arrested by Border Patrol while fighting a Washington state wildfire,
saying Friday that the firefighter was already on track for legal status after helping federal investigators solve a crime against his family.
His arrest was illegal, the lawyers said, and violated Department of Homeland Security polices
that say immigration enforcement must not be conducted at locations where emergency responses are ha…

Lions vs. Chargers odds, prediction, time: 2025 NFL Hall of Fame Game picks by expert on 37-12 run

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/lions-v

Security mechanism inspired by NATO Article 5 remains 'main one on the table,' Meloni says: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/27/security-mechanism-inspired-by-nato.html

There’s something deeply wrong with a society that watches people get snatched by masked men in unmarked cars & looks the other way.
Rep @kamlager-dove.house.gov, describes an alarming system of relocating detainees, making it nearly impossible for their families to find them or get legal counsel.
https://

Cowboys vs. Eagles prediction, odds, time: 2025 NFL Kickoff Game picks, best bets by proven computer model

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/cowboys

One bill, sponsored by the powerful Service Employees International Union, would allow Uber and Lyft drivers in California to unionize while still being classified as independent contractors
California’s legislative leaders are also backing a bill, sponsored by Uber and Lyft, that would significantly reduce the companies’ insurance requirements

Newsom, California lawmakers strike deal that would allow Uber, Lyft drivers to unionize
Gov. Gavin Newsom and California lawmakers on Friday announced a deal with Uber and Lyft on a bill that would allow hundreds of thousands of rideshare drivers to form unions and bargain collectively while still being classified as independent contractors.

Saints quarterback battle odds 2025: Tyler Shough, Spencer Rattler picks, predictions by proven NFL expert

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/saints-

Cowboys-Packers trade grades and fallout from the shocking Micah Parsons deal, plus ranking AFC teams by tiers

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/cowbo…

The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Emil Bove,
a top justice department official and former defense attorney for Donald Trump,
to a lifetime seat on a federal appeals court,
despite claims by whistleblowers that he advocated for ignoring court orders
“Like other individuals President Trump has installed in the highest positions of our government during his second term,
Mr Bove’s primary qualification appears to be his blind loyalty to this president,”
Dick Dur…

Instead of using data to determine how to govern,
the Trump administration is manipulating, ignoring and even jettisoning data altogether.
Those who balk at the administration’s wishful thinking about reality face threats to fall in line or leave -- as Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook and now the C.D.C. director, Susan Monarez, have all experienced.
The administration has clearly embraced the strategic cultivation of uncertainty and ignorance.
It is not just trying to trim th…

Opinion | Trump Is Ruling by Willful Blindness
By turning away from evidence when it doesn’t suit, the administration is showing that it doesn’t think it matters whether it has the better argument.

One hundred years ago today, downtown Santa Barbara was devastated by an earthquake centered just offshore.
The main commercial district, State Street, was in ruins. Some buildings completely collapsed
— the vulnerability in their designs laid bare by the power of Mother Nature. Around a dozen people died.
Yet, despite the destruction, the great Santa Barbara earthquake remains relatively obscure, seismically speaking,
even in a state notorious for its shaking.

Quake devastated Santa Barbara 100 years ago. What can it teach us?
In California, where the next “Big One” is an always-looming threat, some lessons learned from the 1925 Santa Barbara quake resonate even 100 years later, experts say.

Palestinian activist
Awdah Hathaleen
who helped film the documentary
"No Other Land" highlighting Israel’s violent occupation of the West Bank, was shot and killed by an Israeli settler on Monday
https://truthout.org/articles/activist

Activist Who Helped Film “No Other Land” Shot and Killed by Israeli Settler
Israeli violence in Masafer Yatta has intensified since the film won an Oscar.

When we travel from deep-blue states to deep-red states,
the ‘Fox-Book’ media diet increases by about 10 percentage points.
Likewise, the diet of political ignorance (no political media consumption) increases by about 3.5 percentage points.
Summing these two diets, we get a roughly 14-point swing in media consumption across the state partisan spectrum.
Obviously, this 14-point swing is not Orwellian: there is no state population that receives all of its political infor…

Partisan Politics and the Road to Plutocracy – Economics from the Top Down
In this essay, I take a deep dive into the history of American plutocracy and its conspicuously Republican roots.

According to a report published late Saturday night, the Senate version of the GOP budget bill would leave 💥 11.8 million more Americans uninsured by 2034.
Federal spending on Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare would be reduced by more than💥 $1.1 trillion over that period
— with more than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid alone.
The fresh estimates make official what many analysts had already predicted -- and some Republican lawmakers had feared.
The size an…

Senate Version of Trump’s Policy Bill Would Slash Medicaid Spending Even More
Analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that Republicans’ new version of the legislation would make far deeper cuts and lead to more people becoming uninsured than previous proposals.

The Transportation Department on Friday canceled $679 million in federal funding
for a dozen offshore wind projects,
the latest attack by the Trump administration on the reeling U.S. offshore wind industry.
Funding for projects in 11 states was rescinded,
including $435 million for a floating wind farm in Northern California
and $47 million to boost an offshore wind project in Maryland that the Interior Department has pledged to cancel

Trump administration cancels $679 million in funding for offshore wind projects
The Transportation Department on Friday canceled $679 million in federal funding for a dozen offshore wind projects, the latest attack by the Trump administration on the reeling U.S. offshore wind industry.

When Ashley Robinson and her mother took DNA tests 10 years ago and began meeting long lost cousins,
they stumbled across a surprising family history that changed their lives.
Robinson’s lineage traced back to the 272 West Africans who were enslaved by Jesuits
and sold to plantation owners in the southern US in 1838.
The sale of the enslaved Africans helped fund Georgetown University,
the oldest Jesuit higher education institution in the US,
and served a…

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Tuesday that he believes there is a
“legal pathway” for Democrats to present new congressional district maps directly to voters on a statewide ballot,
without input from the state’s independent redistricting commission.
Such a move, he suggested, would allow the state to counter Republican efforts to tilt next year’s midterm election by pushing redistricting measures that favor the GOP in conservative states such as Texas.
If succes…

California's top prosecutor floats path to boost Democrats in Congress
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Tuesday that he believes he has found a sound legal strategy to ask voters to tear up congressional boundaries created by the state’s independent redistricting commission.