Tootfinder

Preston Damsky is a law student at the University of Florida.
He is also a white nationalist and antisemite.
Last fall, he took a seminar taught by a federal judge on “originalism,”
the legal theory favored by many conservatives that seeks to interpret the Constitution based on its meaning when it was adopted.
In his capstone paper for the class, Mr. Damsky argued that the framers had intended for the phrase “We the People,” in the Constitution’s preamble, to refer exc…

A White Nationalist at University of Florida Wrote a Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.
The University of Florida student won an academic honor after he argued in a paper that the Constitution applies only to white people. From there, the situation spiraled.

Time For 9 o'clock #HashTagGames hosted by @…
People is trying to get rid of their winter body for summer. Let's play!
#GymEquipmentASongOrPoem

W H O A ! CONGRATS, @…

The Anarchist Cookbook, 2025 Edition:
Recent US political violence aided by DIY murder tradecraft available on internet;
People locators, 3D weapon blueprints, tactical planning – all accessible on the web for potential attackers or terrorists
https://www.theguardian…

Urban Living II 🌝
都市生活 II 🌝
📷 Nikon FE
🎞️Lucky SHD 400
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.

Polls show the so-called “big, beautiful” budget bill championed by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress
is becoming deeply unpopular
as more people learn about the deadly consequences of proposals to slash the health care safety net.
However, the legislation’s massive investment in Trump’s mass deportation campaign -- including billions of dollars to deploy 10,000 additional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents nationwide
has received far less attent…

Trump’s ICE Agents Are Arresting US Citizens. GOP Budget Would Hire 10,000 More.
Billions of dollars for ICE and border patrol in Trump’s budget bill would supercharge the chaotic crackdown.

Now personally, I'm not invested in the law and I reject the logical underpinnings of the whole thing. The US is founded on land that already had people on it, that already had multiple systems of authority, so there can be no claim that it has any legal authority to exist at all.
But it's hard to ignore the inconsistency here. Accepting the logic from the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, there is no way in which the current state can be legitimate and which Trump has the authority to do anything. The last legal president, again, following the logic that assumes such a thing even possible, was Barak Obama. Since the transfer of power, the country has failed to enforce the law.
If the executive cannot complete their oath, then they are considered vacant under the 25th amendment. If the cabinet fails to invoke article 4, then they too are involved in the insurrection (again, simply following the logic outlined pretty clearly here) as are any who would fail to support the invocation.
Since a full takeover of the federal government by insurrectionists wasn't really planned for, I'm guessing that it would necessarily go to the states, being the only remaining legal authority.

Get up right this damn minute and go see Sinners. If you ever loved Call of Cthulhu, John Wick, Django Unchained, From Dusk til Dawn, or any of the movies that are so clearly made by people who *love* making movies - go. now. See it in Dolby or IMAX if you can for the best sound; you won't regret it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch…

I decided to share some of my observations that would benefit you if you are building applications: a deep dive session into the archetypes of attackers.
This session is for people who are developing software of any kind. It could be an API endpoint, a blog, or a complex application used by millions.
Join in or share with smart people.
Let me help you!

Trade Unionists Against the Benefit Cuts (UKPol)
Good letter, including both the principle of the thing and the likely outcomes in practice. Starmer & co should take note.
"We the undersigned are trade unionists opposed to the Universal Credit and Personal Independence bill, designed to restrict access to PIP and to reduce the sickness element (LCWRA) of UC. We believe this is shameful anti-worker and anti-working class legislation. ...
"Not only will these cuts cause increased financial hardship for some of those made vulnerable by a disabling society, but will also add considerable expenses and a much increased workload to workers in several sectors. This is because more people will be plunged into debt. More people will be served with eviction notices... Cutting incomes will push people further from work...
"The Disability Policy thinktank forecast that the cuts will lead to £1.2bn in extra costs for the NHS and local care services provided by councils, raising the alarm for both councillors and MPs whether the cuts will backfire even on their own economic terms."
Still accepting signatures:
#disability #benefits #unions #NHS #debt #UK #UKPol

Contra Karp: the way you keep people safe is by making EVERYONE feel safe.
Scared people make themselves enemies. If you make people scared, they will be your enemy FOR THAT. If you make them feel safe, they will cease to be your enemy, or at least cease to pursue the enmity.
If you spend your life trying to make your adversaries afraid of you, you’ll never be safe.

I had to take a hot shower to combat the shrinkage from just *reading* this. Brrr. 🥶 https://rssfeed.media/@abcfeeds/114718172929923391

This type of reasoning is always baffling to me. When climate change is discussed these people always say that there is some magical technological solution that will pop up to save us (usually handed to us by the AI gods).
Why then, in the the several decades that it takes to scale up nuclear, can we not account for the possibility that AI could become more energy efficient?
That sounds like something you could solve for the cost of a few power plants...

UK needs more nuclear to power AI, says Amazon Web Services boss
The world's largest cloud computing company plans to spend £8bn on new data centres in the UK over the next four years.

Back from a #cycling loop around the #ammersee !
Unfortunately I forgot to turn on my cycling computer for the first half hour 🥴 Yeah well, the red frame around the statistics page was quite clear but .. well.
Anyways! It was a nice ~50km loop with excellent weather (prepared with a lo…

Filings: Bengaluru-based fintech Cred, which offers rewards for paying credit card bills and more, raised ~$72M at a $3.5B valuation, down from $6.4B in 2022 (The Economic Times)
https://ec…

Cred raises fresh funds from GIC, others; valuation cut by 45% to $3.5 billion
The fintech major was valued at $6.4 billion in 2022 during its last major fund infusion. The current fund infusion is in the form of primary capital, which means that existing investors have not sold any shares in this round. The drop in valuation was in line with the company's plans to list in India over the next two years, people in the know said.

IT'S PRIDE MONTH, SSR!! We will be riding slow as usual, meeting new people, and enjoying an educational tour of some historical queer sites between the Castro, Mission, and SOMA.
Start Location: Dolores Park, 19th Street
Meetup: 10:30am Saturday, June 28th
Rollout: 11:00am

Did you know that the #UniversityOfGeorgia has TWO sets of Jean Charlot murals on its campus? Charlot hung out on the UGA campus for three years in the early 1940s, teaching and working with students. His murals that were inside what was once UGA's journalism building recently underwent some restoration thanks to our museum and the help of a lot of people from across campus.

I have my share of issues with Parkrose Permaculture, but she has a lot of things I do strongly agree with. I can't stress enough that you never dehumanize your enemies. You can respond appropriately to violence. You can defend yourself from them by any means necessary. But you do not dehumanize them. You always limit your response to the minimum necessary to defend yourself.
There are a number of former Nazi skins who became antifascists after realizing they were wrong. Those folks tend to be some of the most dedicated because they feel a debt, and some of the most knowledgeable because they were there. Coming out of these types of cults, police included, is hard and takes time. A lot of us don't have the ability to work with them. But some do.
By repeatedly humanizing your opponent, you can break some of them. The #Seattle Police Department was not defunded but saw a massive reduction in numbers because their morale was destroyed. Some people will never change. Some people are broken and feel like they need the power. But if you change one person's mind, even give them something to think about, it's a crack. If even one cop quits, that's one less trained gun pointed at you in the future.
The 18 year old marines and federalized national guard troops out there are literally kids. A lot of them came from poor communities. They are being used in a way they haven't been trained to do, doing things they (should) have been told are not legal. They joined to get out of poverty, to go to college, or to "defend the American people" (regardless of how misguided that is). Few, if any, of them joined to abuse people. They will be especially open to persuasion.
Remind those troops that they are carrying out illegal orders, that they are being called on to violate their oath to protect the constitution, that they are suppressing the free speech of the fellow Americans they swore to defend. Remind them that the people they could be illegally arresting now are just like their parents, their neighbors, their families, the friends who didn't join. Remind them that this is the first step. They will be called on to kill Americans if they let this keep going.
Remind them ICE sleeps in hotels while they sleep on the ground. Remind them that their drunk and incompetent leadership thinks of them as disposable tools. Remind them that some of these people are out protesting *for them* against cuts to the VA and other services. Remind them that the people they're defending refuse to make college free so they can recruit from poor schools. Remind them that they will always be welcome when they're ready to join the side of freedom and justice.
When you dehumanize your enemies, you unify them. When you humanize your enemies, you can divide them. There is no weapon available to us right now so powerful as compassion.
https://youtu.be/YtWOYUDMsBw

Delaying by 2 weeks is Fat Nixon's response for everything for the past 10 years.
▶️ Trump Gives Iran “Ultimate Ultimatum,” White People Explain Juneteenth & Jimmy Announces Guest Hosts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oIgr-fCWlg

There was a news item a few weeks ago about a Norwegian library book that had been returned after many decades.
For some reason the writer felt the need to point out that the book wasn't worth much money because it had obviously been handled (read) by a lot of people.
So a book acquires value by not being read. I find that quite sad. At least stamp collectors want their stamps to have been posted (I would say stamped there are already too many stamps in the sentence).
I…

Questions about the meaning of #artificialintelligence and its implications for human dignity and well-being highlighted a major conference at YDS last month, titled, “A.I. and the Ends of Humanity: Thinking Theologically After ChatGPT.” Full story by Timothy Cahill '16 M.A.R.

Towards Perception-based Collision Avoidance for UAVs when Guiding the Visually Impaired
Suman Raj, Swapnil Padhi, Ruchi Bhoot, Prince Modi, Yogesh Simmhan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14857

Towards Perception-based Collision Avoidance for UAVs when Guiding the Visually Impaired
Autonomous navigation by drones using onboard sensors combined with machine learning and computer vision algorithms is impacting a number of domains, including agriculture, logistics, and disaster management. In this paper, we examine the use of drones for assisting visually impaired people (VIPs) in navigating through outdoor urban environments. Specifically, we present a perception-based path planning system for local planning around the neighborhood of the VIP, integrated with a global plann…

This👇needs to be remembered. https://substack.com/@johncleese/note/c-125827219?r=e7vv

John Cleese on Substack
Steve Bannon illustrates the key point we made in ‘The Life of Brian’ - that people makes what they like of religious teaching Matthew 26,52 And then Jesus said unto him ‘Put your sword back into its place, for those who take the sword will perish by the sword” Steve Bannon has rewritten this as “Live by the sword, die by the sword” as though it was a command. I prefer Jesus’s warning of the consequences of violence Only a MAGA Christian could believe that Christ was inciti…

This👇needs to be remembered. https://substack.com/@johncleese/note/c-125827219?r=e7vv

John Cleese on Substack
Steve Bannon illustrates the key point we made in ‘The Life of Brian’ - that people makes what they like of religious teaching Matthew 26,52 And then Jesus said unto him ‘Put your sword back into its place, for those who take the sword will perish by the sword” Steve Bannon has rewritten this as “Live by the sword, die by the sword” as though it was a command. I prefer Jesus’s warning of the consequences of violence Only a MAGA Christian could believe that Christ was inciti…

"White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller says President Donald Trump is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, he says the administration is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, . ."

Trump team mulls suspending habeas corpus to speed deportations. Can it?
Top White House aide Stephen Miller says the Trump administration is looking for ways to expand its legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, he says President Donald Trump’s team is “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional right for people to legally challenge their detention by the government. Such a move would be aimed at migrants as part of the Republican president’s broader crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border. …

Your values are euros and cents. https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/@EUCommission/114699001106153315

What, my family actually expects me to act "normal"? What kind of backwards sorcery is that? I’m an anarchist at heart and a syndicalist by choice, no apologies, no compromises.
https://nsf-iaa.org

Someone's gonna commit First Degree Glitter with Intent to Sparkle.
#USpol #ice #glitter

My largest remaining NSF grant, which was awarded by a competitive process on the recommendation of national experts, was terminated yesterday. The money would have paid for PhD students to invent better AI systems for everyday people who need programs written for them but can't or won't write them themselves. I'm sad that the rate of progress we make will slow down significantly, because all our progress is made public for everyone to benefit from. That's what

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow by G Zevin
Was captivated by the people, the changing narrative style and a new world for me, gaming.
New York Times "100 Best Books of the 21st Century"
#bookstodon

It seems like, again, just following the plain logic of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence (which, again, I do not subscribe to), that every law passed under Trump, every supreme court justice appointment by Trump, every supreme court ruling by Trump appointed justices, all the illegal firing, etc, must all, necessarily, be null and void.
And if not following from the insurrection act, or from the oath of office, then following from the Declaration of Independence itself. The logic here being that a constitution is a contract between the people and their government, which the later upholds in order to maintain its legal status. The violation of said laws by the government violates "consent of the governed" (which, again, I have issues with the concept entirely but we're just going to ignore that) and therefore nullifies the authority of that government, granting " the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."
That seems a lot like the hard reset some folks have been looking for. Given that existing flaws allowed this state to be reached, it would also be necessary for the true authority to correct those mistakes before assuming authority that derives from these principles.
Now, personally, I don't subscribe to any of this logic but it's interesting to explore, as an outsider, where the logic goes.

Fahrradhelme sind ein Zeichen für unzureichende Verkehrspolitik.
Siehe @… in https://social.ainmosni.eu/@ainmosni/status…

Post by Daniël Franke , @ainmosni@ainmosni.eu
For all the people living in cities where cars are the most dominant form of urban transport: there is 0 need to wear a helmet in a city like Amsterdam. And as cycling is the main mode of transport for people ages 6 and up, for occasions ranging from commuting to school, to starting your honeymoon, ...

Signs we made for #NoKings protest in #Pasadena. Lots of people showed up and the signs turned out pretty good! Photos by @…

For Father's Day I march with my child in solidarity, love, and grief for all the fathers left in Palestine and for all who've been slaughtered and for all who've had their children massacred or maimed by Israel.
#Galway #Ireland

Language learning has been part of me since high school. I'm solid in 2 non-English languages, crappy but survivable in 2 others. I've played with & started learning others many times.
I'm real busy rn, but language learning could be a fun thing to do for myself & make me feel like I'm still me.
But I'm stumped about my language picks. I learnt the obvious European languages in school; later tried key Asian languages. What do I want to do now?
African languages? I won't be getting a chance to use them much in Aus, & I'm unlikely to get to a stage where I can read literature.
I tried Slovenian/Slovene on a whim & really love it, but I'll never go there. Is the practical but unfun answer grind out more kanji/hanzi? Or is whimsically learning a language spoken by only 2.5 million people reasonable? I will continue struggling through with Ukrainian, 'cause I think it's important.
#LanguageLearning

Just received a friend request on Facebook by someone named Peter Waldmeier.
https://www.facebook.com/peter.waldmeier.865
He seemed such a nice person, I think he is a model in a Scandinavian country.
When I asked him why he was sending me a friend request he go…

(Bicycle) Speed and safety
For years I've heard people talking about how motor-assisted bicycles "are safer" because they can "match traffic speed", but I think this is mistaken.  Here's three reasons why. For me the most compelling reason comes from a 2007 paper by Laurie F. Beck, Ann M. Dellinger, and Mary E. O’Neil in the American Journal of Epidemiology, "Motor Vehicle Crash Injury Rates by Mode of Travel, United States: Using Exposure-Based Methods…

(Bicycle) Speed and safety
For years I’ve heard people talking about how motor-assisted bicycles “are safer” because they can “match traffic speed”, but I think this is mistaken.  Here’s t…

Remember, Trump’s DoE is trying to roll back accessibility requirements for buildings (Section 504).
@… wrote about this and her 9 June update links to a newer comment template:
…

New Attempt to Roll Back Accessibility Requirements - Comments Needed
For over forty years the United States has had regulations that say new buildings must be accessible to people with disabilities if the building is built by an organization that receives federal funds. Now the trump administration is taking the first steps to undo this long history of access in the

“Apocalypse forces us to radically change. But by facing the future with optimism instead of doom, we can transform ourselves into the kinds of people-the kinds of communities—who can survive.”
https://slate.com/technology/2025/05/h

Wix acquires Base44, which lets users build apps from text prompts, for $80M; Base44 was founded by a solo entrepreneur six months ago and employs six people (Sophie Shulman/CTech)
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1iflnlelx

Vibe coding fever: Solo entrepreneur’s Base44 acquired by Wix for $80 million
31-year-old Maor Shlomo built the viral AI app-maker as a side project that began last year during a post-reserve trip. Base44 only employs six people and hasn't raised any external funding.

Dear Computer History people: I'm searching for books covering the history of the MIT Media Lab.The only one I found so far is "The Media Lab" by Stewart Brand, released in 1988. So a bit dated. Are you aware of other titles, which also cover the time AFTER 1988? It might be titles on other subjects but with a significant amount on the MIT Media Lab.
Edit: There is some material on their website as well:

History – MIT Media Lab
A brief history of the Media LabWhen the MIT Media Lab first opened its doors in 1985, it combined a vision of a digital future with a new style of creative in…

We need people like Matthew Cassel and Kyri Evangelou that are able to stand with a straight face when being in the middle of this. But what face can the rest of us afford to have?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/…

Many people are detained at U.S. airports for reasons they find arbitrary and mysterious.
I got lucky—when I was stopped by Customs and Border Protection last week, after flying to Los Angeles from Melbourne, a border agent told me, explicitly and proudly, why I’d been pulled out of the customs line.
“Look, we both know why you are here,” the agent told me.
He identified himself to me as Adam, though his colleagues referred to him as Officer Martinez.
When I said that…

How My Reporting on the Columbia Protests Led to My Deportation
Alistair Kitchen on being detained at Los Angeles International Airport and sent back to Australia because of his reporting on the protests at Columbia University criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Gemini, especially with "research" mode has this vibe of 2000 Internet where knowledge was right there, about nearly anything, without SEO bullshit and ads.
This time it's much faster and better, for the most part.
Unpopular: I think this will cause a renaissance of world wide web. All that bullshit SEO driven websites will die, those made by passionate people and specialists will prevail (because we don't care) and we will get even more traffic than now due t…

I... got scammed.
By https://firstpressgames.com .
I wanted to buy a birthday present, and I didn't expect this company to be so problematic.
One month later without getting anything from them, nor responses to my messages... and it crosses my mind that I should have checked online reviews for that e-commerce business before buying anything... and there you go: 1.4 stars out of 5 (no one gave more than 2 stars).
The few reviews that gave 2 stars are something like this, YEARS of delay: https://gamepad.club/@vny/110691909210001220
All of the public reviews use the word scam in one or another language, no exceptions.
Then I checked their social accounts, and... of course, they blocked comments everywhere, to avoid the possibility of angry people popping up and pointing to their shady behavior.

Ich hab schon für die #Peertube-App von @… gespendet, hier nochmal der Link – die tolle Aktion ist im letzten Abschnitt vor Ende.

Support PeerTube
Let's popularize videos shared by the people, for the people!

"My vision of a world with computers is a world in which people have a lot more time to do what they like. Playing tennis, jogging… they’ll have plenty of time to go to the shore. I’d go to the library. I could do my work at home. I could have a computer at home and talk to my office. I could live up on top of a nice mountain in New Hampshire and smell pine trees and it would be the same as if I were here in the sub-sub-subbasement of the Pentagon."
– Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper & David Letterman
Among the many documents available at the Computer History Museum website there is an interesting artifact: a commercial brochure published in 1957 by the Remington Rand UNIVAC, "a division of Sperry Rand Corporation", titled "introducing a new language for automatic programming". In it, we learn about the advantages of the new (at the time) FLOW-MATIC programming language, the brainchild of United States Navy Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper.

For Father's Day I march with my child in solidarity, love, and grief for all the fathers left in Palestine and for all who've been slaughtered and for all who've had their children massacred or maimed by Israel.
#Galway #Ireland

The only jury I've ever been on faced a question about resisting arrest. The defendant was tackled by an officer and initially fought back (or so the officer claimed). The officer was wearing a police uniform, but we acquitted on the charge, because the defendant was tackled from behind and there was reasonable doubt as to whether the officer actually identified themselves verbally in a way that made it clear to the defendant they weren't being tackled by some random dude.
This ain't legal advice, but in situations where a kidnapper refuses to identify themselves, show a warrant, or even a badge number, I suspect a sufficiently white bystander might not be convicted on interference charges if they did something like a citizen's arrest of a suspicious out-of-town paramilitary type who was in the process of an extrajudicial kidnapping. If there are multiple kidnappers, to be effective you might need multiple people willing to face jail time for such interventions to be successful...
#resist #ICE #kidnapping
Just thinking about this in light of the recent kidnapping in the next town over where some fools called the city police thinking they might actually protect the community from an unlawful assault. Can't blame the fools too much because of how deep positive portrayals of cops are embedded in our media diet though...

From Points to Places: Towards Human Mobility-Driven Spatiotemporal Foundation Models via Understanding Places
Mohammad Hashemi, Andreas Zufle
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14570

From Points to Places: Towards Human Mobility-Driven Spatiotemporal Foundation Models via Understanding Places
Capturing human mobility is essential for modeling how people interact with and move through physical spaces, reflecting social behavior, access to resources, and dynamic spatial patterns. To support scalable and transferable analysis across diverse geographies and contexts, there is a need for a generalizable foundation model for spatiotemporal data. While foundation models have transformed language and vision, they remain limited in handling the unique challenges posed by the spatial, tempora…

Europe is exporting military dogs—used as weapons by Israel's elite forces. These dogs have been linked to civilian injuries and deaths, including children and people with disabilities. Doors forced open in the middle of the night, piercing cries for help, fangs sunk mercilessly into the flesh of victims. Children are torn from their mothers' arms, women scream for help, men collapse in agony, while apathetic soldiers just laugh as dogs tear bodies apart indiscriminately.

Played the demo for The Alters today. I was already interested, but now it is on my wishlist and I am very much looking forward to its release. Resource gathering, crafting, base building, check. Time pressure mechanic "the sunrise will kill you, must move base", check.
I am especially intrigued by the story and the "need to recruit people to help you run the base and survive, so you just clone them" idea. I'm liking how they've built that mechanic and how …

One Man in Southwest India Taught 10,000 People to Swim for Free in a River to End Drownings https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/one-man-in-southwest-india-taught-10000-people-to-swim-for-free-in-a-river-to-end-dro…

One Man in Southwest India Taught 10,000 People to Swim for Free in a River to End Drownings
In the water of the Periyar, swimming lanes are formed by strikes of floaties or tires which are separated based on difficulty level.

The number of people in Gaza that Israel is killing every day - by bombing, shooting, and starving them - must be growing rapidly now. And the world hardly tries to stop it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cvg5vyp33j1t

Gaza worse than hell on Earth, Red Cross chief tells BBC as aid centres close for day - live updates
The president of the ICRC tells the BBC's international editor Jeremy Bowen Palestinians have been stripped of human dignity.

Public Service Announcement: If you've worked in the UK, and you've changed the UK number that you use for accessing Gov.UK services, it is impossible to restore access because the default recovery workflow requires UK-issued photo ids: either a UK passport, or a UK driving license, are mandatory, even if you never had one or provided one in the first place.
Happily enough, as long as you keep your National Insurance Number, you can create a new Gateway ID, but this time follow…

the3million | Proving identity on Government websites with a non-UK passport | Giving a voice to EU citizens in the UK
HMRC, DWP and other government services have changed the way in which people sign in to access these services. This is a step-by-step guide for EU citizens and other non-UK passport holders to be able to access the Government Gateway, to see your tax records, pension records and other finance information, even if you do not have a British passport.

I read "Then I Am Myself the World: What Consciousness Is and How to Expand It" by Christof Koch.
Interesting book which spends like 8 or 9 chapters detailing all the experiments which prove beyond much doubt that consciousness, and self awareness, is a thing done by a brain.
It describes how perception is a construction of a description, has a chapter called "computational mind"
And then spends the last two chapters describing why he thinks the mind can't be computed, because drugs have made him think experience is some kind of magic associated with highly interconnected causal structures.
Apparently, he thinks, once things become interconnected enough they become able to cause things independently of the physics running those connections.
Which is crazy, obviously. There's nothing causal in direct connections between neurons that isn't equally causal in modeled connections between virtual neurons.
All his evidence in the book from neural MRI scans to the effects of psychedelic drugs and symptoms of strokes and disease point to the brain simulating a virtual reality which is the basis of perception.
That simulated world in which we live is full of colour and shape and sounds and emotions and millions of mental constructs that are built to be correlated by the senses with the outside world, but are not equal to the world itself. We live in a dream constructed to correlate with reality.
But then instead of taking the next step: That consciousness itself is a property of a simulated being inside that mental model of the universe, a property which the brain simulates and applies to the virtual self that's doing the experiencing inside that model, he jumps towards some magic implying pan-psychism or that sufficiently interconnected networks become causally self-complete for some reason nobody can fathom.
Sure, colour and shape and emotions are all made up by the brain but experience can't be! For some reason.
You see in truth dualism is false, in that there is no spirit realm in which ghosts animate the matter of the body somehow.
Yet also, dualism is true, in that there is a simulated mental reality which we live in, computed by the brain in which all perception and experience are created, which is related-to but separate-from the unfolding complicated dance of energy that is the universe our bodies interact with.
People take some DMT trip, and the model of the universe emulated by their brain collapses and breaks. Their virtual simulated self inside their mind has these experiences of being one with the universe or the experience of feeling dead yet conscious or whatever, and these hippies think that the broken down simulated experience is real and reflects how consciousness is more fundamental than the atoms that make up the neurons in their brain.
Instead of realizing it shows them that their experienced universe is a simulacrum, they think they get a more direct experience of reality somehow. A consciousness more pure than any mere base atom.
"Then I am myself the world" is a great title. Everything you ever experience is created and simulated in your brain like a dream, the whole universe is inside your head. Even the fact of experience itself.
But that isn't the conclusion Koch reaches somehow, he just jumps from describing the evidence that this is so straight into ascribing super-causal magic consciousness to particular arrangements of atoms that integrated information theory suggest have high correlation, and thinks therefore conciousness is itself the entire universe.
Ah well, fun book. I like arguing in my head with authors that are wrong.
#reading #books #consciousness #thenIAmMyselfTheWorld

After a full day of sessions, come relax and connect with fellow attendees at our Get-Together on 16 June, generously sponsored by our partner Search Guard. Enjoy tasty food, drinks, and live music – a fantastic opportunity to meet new people and catch up with familiar faces.
Learn more: https://2025.berlinbuzzwo…

small ridiculousness: the owsley stanley foundation seems to have found a few tapes of sparky & the assbites from hell, the grateful dead's roadies' band. maybe what the shaggs sound like to people who don't like the shaggs? sorry for the fb link.

3.5K views · 157 reactions | Sparky et al? | Sparky & the Assbites from Hell (Jack-In-The-Box?), Oklahoma City, November 14, 1972: If this is what we think it is, this one really caught us... | By Owsley Stanley Foundation | Facebook
Sparky & the Assbites from Hell (Jack-In-The-Box?), Oklahoma City, November 14, 1972: If this is what we think it is, this one really caught us...

Less than 500€ and less than a day for #peertube fund raising to goal 3 of 4
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When I say that the protesters were angry but not violent, I guess I should also say this:
In the sick imagination of white supremacy, for a Black or brown person to be angry •is• for them to be violent, by definition.
So when you hear people saying “they were violent,” those people are flat wrong — but they may also be describing something that is in fact completely real and completely consistent in their mind.

Is this a parody?
I don’t do #InfoSec or other cons so I don’t have a strong sense of whether the “Open Space” concept is brilliant or uproariously absurd. I lean towards the latter because it just seems to me like a recipe for people standing around.

Life cycle assessment tools for road design: analysing linearity assumptions
Nikolaos Kalyviotis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.13896 https://

Life cycle assessment tools for road design: analysing linearity assumptions
Road infrastructure significantly impacts how people move and live and the emissions associated with travel behaviour. The design of roads is crucial in mitigating emissions. This paper reviews existing transport life cycle assessment tools that have been developed by various entities and can be used for roads. The review focuses on data sources used in the analysis, methods of estimating carbon dioxide emissions, the underlying software that is used to make the estimates, and any limitations o…

The daily extermination of Palestinians continue: Israeli forces kill dozens of Palestinian aid seekers in central Gaza.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/6/11/live-israel-kills-dozens-of-palestinian-aid-seekers…

Oh, absolutely, I live in Norway, because apparently, people need proof before they believe anything these days. Next time you see me, I’ll be casually dropping the phrase “Norsk Syndikalistisk Forbund” in perfect Norwegian, just to remind you that I’m not a figment of your imagination but a real, live, radicalized-by-proxy Norwegian who reads obscure early 20th-century syndicalist newspapers in my spare time.
Don’t worry, I’ll also make sure to quote both Emma Goldman and Rudolf Rocke…

Fuming! That's exactly the reason why we need to have our own media, run for #queer people BY queer people, the corporate overlords who run Meta and Xitter will happily be complici in our erasure if it only means that their quarterly report will get half a percent better or that they'll get some favour in the government

Trans Pride Week's Instagram account shut down
Meta has shut down Istanbul Trans Pride Week's Instagram account three days before the start. Events will be announced on the new account.

What's the angle here? California belongs to Mexico? In Communism, we will drive our own taxis? Baiting the people who love Evola with the defeat of martial order by the unwashed and unchecked proletariat? Kali Yuga fashion show? Just there for the violence? Strange times we live in.

Gee, that statement by senator (no capitalization deserved) Joni Ernst and "the white house" about how good it is for Medicare to let people die is applicable to the abortion issue:
As the white house (and Ernst) argue, fewer people receiving medical assistance means (does it really mean?) more for everyone else.
Gee, then if that argument holds they ought to be in favor of abortion - because that means fewer people who will need government services, meaning more for th…

#nokings #usa #usapol
"Thousands of people have begun demonstrating across the US as part of the “No Kings” protests. Millions are expected to turn up for events against the Trump administration at ro…

China issues warrants for alleged Taiwanese hackers and bans a business for pro-independence links
https://apnews.com/article/chian-taiwan-hacking-wanted-kuma-f937096e3163470b21597b4ec809d799

China issues warrants for alleged Taiwanese hackers and bans a business for pro-independence links
China has issued warrants Thursday for 20 Taiwanese people it said carried out hacking missions in the Chinese mainland on behalf of Taiwan’s ruling party, while separately banning dealings with a Taiwanese company whose owners mainland authorities called “hardcore Taiwan independence supporters.” Police in the southern manufacturing hub of Guangzhou said they were led by a man named Ning Enwei on behalf of Taiwan’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party but did not identify …

It's wild to think people actually get their main news from Fox News. The stock market collapsed again today and you'd never know it from all the news stories about DEI, trans stuff, Dems supposedly being boo'd, etc. Incredibly, it is owned by the same company as the WSJ. Fox is news for morons.

"What is different, is that before what were largely fringe anti-Semitic and white supremacist theories floating around the far corners of the Alt-Right, have now become the backbone of the Republican party. 'The Great Replacement,' once a conspiracy pushed by only hardline neo-Nazis and white supremacists, is now being touted by everyone from pharma billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, Swason frozen foods heir and Twitter troll Tucker Carlson, to the billionaire backed Turning Point US…

"But there were technologists and open source projects in attendance. Notably, representatives from the Mastodon and Bluesky teams were at the Festival. The Newsmast Foundation was also present, incisively taking part in conversations to help newsrooms onboard themselves onto both of them. I got to hang out with them all, connecting with people I’d spoken with but never interacted with in person. Mastodon has undergone a transformation, has doubled its team, and is working on smoothing out some of its rough edges, while not letting go of its core ethos. It’s also beginning to position itself as a European alternative to American social media platforms, with a community-first values system and new services to directly help organizations join the network.
Bluesky, on the other hand, has done an able job of bringing journalists onto its existing social app, and is now hard at work explaining why its underlying protocol matters. Both want to engage with newsrooms and journalists and do the right thing by them. They each have something different to prove: Mastodon that it can be usable and accessible, and Bluesky that it can provide a return to its investors and truly decentralize while holding onto its values. I’m rooting for both of them.
These platforms’ messages dovetail with my own: news can own the platforms that support them. Lots of people at the Festival were worried about the impact of US big tech on their businesses — particularly in a world where tech moguls seem to be aligning themselves with a Presidential administration that has positioned itself as being adversarial to news, journalists, sources, and, arguably, the truth. The good news is that the technology is out there, the values-aligned technologists are out there, and there’s a strong path forward. The only thing left is to follow it."
#media #Mastodon #BlueSky #Journalism
https://werd.io/2025/notes-from-perugia-journalism-values-and-building-the-web-we

Signs we made for #NoKings protest in #Pasadena. Lots of people showed up and the signs turned out pretty good! Photos by @…

Happy Pride! Everyone deserves dignity and respect at every stage of their life - including end of life. Help your loved ones and community celebrate you properly and appropriately by doing all your advance planning now -just think of how hard you'll party when it's done 🎉🌈
Got questions? I'm here to help and I am an ally and safe space for everyone in the LGBTIQA community and the kink community.

“THE BIKE FRAME IS A BRIDGE ON WHEELS, BUILT TO CARRY PEOPLE OVER THE GROUND.”
The Modern Bicycle and its Accessories, 1898
Bridge Bike Works made In 🇨🇦
#cycling

BRIDGE Bike Works - North American Made Carbon Bikes
BRIDGE was founded with a vision to create a better carbon bike. One that is designed, precision-engineered and built locally. One that is handcrafted in North America by a team with an unparalleled passion for attention to detail, from product to experience. One that celebrates the relationship between rider and bike.

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

For extremely generous definitions of “pretty soon.”
Evolution is bound by the mutation rate and the length of generational cycles. Humans are essentially unchanged genetically by the past hundred centuries, despite substantial climate change and social evolution from omnivore hunter-gatherers thru nomadic herders and farmers to city-dwellers.

I'm not saying any new shit:
"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail, MLK

A succession of opposition politicians, including Alex Padilla, a US senator, are handcuffed and arrested by heavy-handed law enforcement for little more than questioning authority or voicing dissent.
A judge is arrested in her own courthouse and charged with helping a defendant evade arrest.
Masked snatch squads arrest and spirit people away in public in what seem to be consciously intimidating scenes.
The president deploys the military on a dubious legal premise to confro…

I think it’s pretty notable that Greta Thunberg has openly blamed capitalism for the climate crisis we’re in.
She argues that the current system, driven by fossil fuel interests, colonialism, imperialism, and exploitation, is fundamentally responsible for environmental destruction and social injustice.
While she has been a prominent figure for several years, her media presence has fluctuated. Recently, she has received renewed attention, particularly after high-profile events lik…

Dear God... Kristi Noem is a certified PoS.
Republican dog lovers: Look yourself in the mirror & say outloud that you won't stand by this level of cruelty.
☑️ Kristi Noem Dog-Killing Story Is Actually Worse in Context
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/articl…

Kristi Noem Dog-Killing Story Is Actually Worse in Context
The Kristi Noem dog-killing story is actually worse in context. The governor is encouraging people to read her new book, ‘No Going Back,’ and judge the anecdote about fatally shooting her dog, Cricket, for themselves. She probably shouldn’t.

"My experiences of connection with God and others in the church have kept me coming back. I am hoping against hope that the 21st century church can be an experiential community for the future, a place that more and more people can turn to for a mysterious experience of eternal resonance."
—S. Slade Hogan ’22 S.T.M. writing in the new issue of Reflections, which asks whether Christianity is losing its religion.

uspolitics, trump
I keep seeing smart people writing stuff like
> [the US] kept peace through strength balanced with restraint, and wielded influence through culture, values, and diplomacy
I understand that #Trump is terrible and some people feel tempted to idealize what they had before him, but we should be more discerning, or otherwise it becomes impossible to understand how this happened in the first place.
Let's start with some questions:
- peace where? and for who? was it true peace, or "Pax Romana"?
- are we going to take seriously that statement on "restraint"? after all the lies, internal witch hunting, sanctions, coups, wars, invasions, genocides, and last but not least, 2 unnecessary nuclear strikes on Japan?
Now, on "culture, values, and diplomacy". Sure. Why not. Not everything was going to be bad, right?
But the thing is, abusive husbands aren't bad all the time either. From time to time they know how to be sweet and seem to care: one present here, flowers the next day, a little bit of gaslighting, and fake apologies after that "accidental" slap.
Given enough time (if the wife is still alive), at some point the victim decides to leave, and then all hell breaks loose. Trump is the manifestation of that moment. He does not represent a change in #USA's nature, but a hidden side that was "always" there, just waiting to play its role.
Others believe this is because #US citizens have been intentionally dumbed down by a combination of propaganda and a disfunctional education system, and I'm sure it's partly true... But let's see what many of their most brilliant and educated citizens are choosing to do with their lives today: https://sfstandard.com/2025/03/12/stanford-students-want-in-on-the-military-tech-gold-rush/
So, all I'm asking is: please drop the act. It was always a clusterfuck.

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I love communism because of its vision of a society based on equality, solidarity, and the abolition of class and state oppression. The idea of real communism, as envisioned by thinkers like Peter Kropotkin and Karl Marx, inspires me deeply. It’s a world where people freely associate, manage their own workplaces, and share resources according to need. This ideal has never truly been realized in history, which makes it all the more important to keep striving for it.
At the same time, I …

It is not AI that is driving tech layoffs. It’s the massive change in R&D writeoff rules that kicked in for TY2022, from the 2017 Trump tax bill.
The ability to “expense” R&D costs was in place for decades and arguably drove US innovation by making it cheap. Now R&D is amortized over 5 years for US work, 15 years for non-US work. The current reconciliation bill would bring back expensing of domestic R&D costs.

What is the purpose of news?
Air pollution kills 10 million people each year and causes untold additional illness and suffering.
It kills at least 100,000 people in the United States alone annually
— about five times the number of police-reported homicides.
But it rarely features in daily news stories.
Police and prosecutors ignore pollution, much of which is criminal,
and so do most journalists.
For example, federal prosecutors charged 23 people…

Media Panics About “Crime Waves” — But Downplays Crime Committed by Corporations
The news emphasizes low-level theft instead of corporate crime, pollution, and other predatory behavior.

The sort of people who support Trump will be absolutely thrilled about violence against Angelinos and Californians, whether immigrants or not
https://skywriter.blue/pages/did:plc:s6j27rxb3ic2rxw73ixgqv2p/post/3lr2itqgits2n

The liberal obsession with optics serves the right and persuades no one. There is literally an active ethnic cleansing happening in the US right now, and the only thing that matters is making that as hard as possible to carry out.
Anarchists destroying intelligence assets saves lives. Every escooter thrown at a cop car is one less escort for a goon too afraid to kidnap random brown people without being flanked by a branch full of bad apples. Spray paint is not violence. Vandalism is not violence. Community self defense in all forms is legitimate.
Make no mistake, these raids are about changing demographics. Demographic trends have been shifting blue for a long time, and the right has, for a long time, been blaming "white replacement." Conspiracy theory aside, Democrats have also been relying on the growth of black and brown voters as a block. The nuances of whiteness as an identity are lost on the current administration and their supporters. They see that "white people will be a minority by 2050" and equate that with the "end of Western Civilization."
The only way to "save Western Civilization" is to change those demographics. Forced birth and forced removal are two sides of the same white nationalist objective. Of course they can't have due process, because they need to be able to kidnap anyone who they see as a threat to their demographic future.
They don't care about optics. The plan is to murder away any threat and flood everyone else with propaganda. There is no mythical middle. There's no one unconvinced. They know this, but they win when democrats buy that myth and save the police the work of policing the protests.
If your protest is 90% "peaceful," they'll take pictures of the 10% that isn't. If it's 99% peaceful, they'll shoot rubber bullets and teargas until someone throws a brick and take 100 pictures from a dozen angles. If its 100% "peaceful" and no one can be provoked, they'll generate pictures with AI or photoshop like they did during the George Floyd uprising and the pictures from the CHOP/CHAZ. Do you have literally no memory?
#USPol #FiftyFiftyOne #50501movenent #resistance #NoKingsDay #NoKingsDayOfAction