Tootfinder

"...solar panels and wind turbines were being installed across the peninsula. These were presented as ecological alternatives and came with this narrative that if we accepted them we were saving the planet.
... on the one hand there was this environmental discourse, and on the other hand they were dispossessing us of our territory and deforesting it. How can a project be environmentally friendly if it’s clearing a huge area of land?"
Resisting the so-called 'Maya'…

Resisting the so-called 'Maya' Train | Latin America Bureau
Indigenous activist Haizel explains to LAB contributor Isàlia McIntyre how strengthening Maya identity supports resistance to megaprojects harming communities across the Yucután. Since 2018, the Maya Train – an intercity railway line designed for tourism and cargo transport – has expanded to over 1.500 kilometers of tracks across Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, including the states of Campeche, Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, and Chiapas. The train, a flagship project of the previous admin…

SOM-VQ: Topology-Aware Tokenization for Interactive Generative Models
Alessandro Londei, Denise Lanzieri, Matteo Benati
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.21133 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.21133 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.21133
arXiv:2602.21133v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Vector-quantized representations enable powerful discrete generative models but lack semantic structure in token space, limiting interpretable human control. We introduce SOM-VQ, a tokenization method that combines vector quantization with Self-Organizing Maps to learn discrete codebooks with explicit low-dimensional topology. Unlike standard VQ-VAE, SOM-VQ uses topology-aware updates that preserve neighborhood structure: nearby tokens on a learned grid correspond to semantically similar states, enabling direct geometric manipulation of the latent space. We demonstrate that SOM-VQ produces more learnable token sequences in the evaluated domains while providing an explicit navigable geometry in code space. Critically, the topological organization enables intuitive human-in-the-loop control: users can steer generation by manipulating distances in token space, achieving semantic alignment without frame-level constraints. We focus on human motion generation - a domain where kinematic structure, smooth temporal continuity, and interactive use cases (choreography, rehabilitation, HCI) make topology-aware control especially natural - demonstrating controlled divergence and convergence from reference sequences through simple grid-based sampling. SOM-VQ provides a general framework for interpretable discrete representations applicable to music, gesture, and other interactive generative domains.
toXiv_bot_toot

Application of the aperiodic defect model to a negatively charged monovacancy in phosphorene
Charlotte Rickert, Lily Barta, Ernst-Christian Flach, Daniel Kats, Denis Usvyat
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23761 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.23761 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.23761
arXiv:2603.23761v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We apply the recently introduced aperiodic defect model (ADM) to a negatively charged monovacancy in a phosphorene monolayer. In contrast to conventional supercell approaches, the ADM treats a single defect embedded in the true non-defective crystalline mean field thereby avoiding spurious defect-defect interactions and the need for charge corrections. At the same time, it effectively reduces the calculation to a fragment, enabling the use of high-level molecular electronic-structure methods. Converging the Hartree-Fock and correlation contributions to the thermodynamic limit yields a benchmark CCSD(T)/POB-TZVP-rev2 formation energy of 0.91 eV for the negatively charged monovacancy in the (5|9) configuration. The excitation energy to the lowest singlet excited state of this defect at the EOM-CCSD/POB-TZVP-rev2 level is found to be 1.95 eV. Overall, the ADM provides a highly promising route towards quantitatively accurate and systematically improvable descriptions of defects in solids and on surfaces, bridging the gap between solid-state physics and molecular quantum chemistry.
toXiv_bot_toot

The BBC running damage control on its own broadcast is wild to witness. The most egregious part of the affair to me is that no one from BAFTA or the BBC even bothered to apologize to Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo when they got off the stage, let alone tell *them* what was going to be done about it. There was no effort to bring the three people involved together for resolution at the time of the incident, nothing.
But the other part of this that just grates on me with every article is the BBC trying to defend itself by saying “that another racial slur had been edited out of the broadcast.”
#BBC #BAFTA #Racism #FreePalestine #Israel #Gaza #Palestine #misinformation #disinformation #complicity
https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165835