Tootfinder

How Safe Will I Be Given What I Saw? Calibrated Prediction of Safety Chances for Image-Controlled Autonomy
Zhenjiang Mao, Mrinall Eashaan Umasudhan, Ivan Ruchkin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09346

How Safe Will I Be Given What I Saw? Calibrated Prediction of Safety Chances for Image-Controlled Autonomy
Autonomous robots that rely on deep neural network controllers pose critical challenges for safety prediction, especially under partial observability and distribution shift. Traditional model-based verification techniques are limited in scalability and require access to low-dimensional state models, while model-free methods often lack reliability guarantees. This paper addresses these limitations by introducing a framework for calibrated safety prediction in end-to-end vision-controlled systems…

Turpin's legal issues hurt his chances at WR3 https://insidethestar.com/turpins-legal-issues-hurt-his-chances-at-wr3

Is Brock Bowers playing this week? Latest injury update on Raiders star for Week 2 https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/news/brock-bowers-playing-latest-injury-update-raiders-star-wee…

Free 2025 NFL picks, predictions, futures, props, odds, chances: Avoid New York Giants in NFC East bets

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/free-20

Efficient Statistical Estimation for Sequential Adaptive Experiments with Implications for Adaptive Designs
Wenxin Zhang, Mark van der Laan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.09135 http…

Efficient Statistical Estimation for Sequential Adaptive Experiments with Implications for Adaptive Designs
Adaptive experimental designs have gained popularity in clinical trials and online experiments. Unlike traditional, fixed experimental designs, adaptive designs can dynamically adjust treatment randomization probabilities and other design features in response to data accumulated sequentially during the experiment. These adaptations are useful to achieve diverse objectives, including reducing uncertainty in the estimation of causal estimands or increasing participants' chances of receiving bette…

A look at Changpeng Zhao's efforts to get a pardon from Trump for his money-laundering charges, including via lobbying and a business deal with the Trump family (New York Times)
https://www.

Flattery, Lobbyists and a Business Deal: Crypto’s Richest Man Campaigns for a Pardon
A sophisticated operation is pushing President Trump to forgive Changpeng Zhao, which would boost the chances for his company, Binance, to break into the U.S. market.

The unreasonable likelihood of being - #OriginOfLife, terraforming, and AI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18545 -> What Were the Chances of Abiogenesis? https://www.universetoday.com/articles/what-were-the-chances-of-abiogenesis

Would like to see more involvement from Salah. As Palace are forced to extend in pursuit of an equalizer, we should see more chances for a rapid counter. So far the right side has been too quiet.
#LFC

Toward Valid Measurement Of (Un)fairness For Generative AI: A Proposal For Systematization Through The Lens Of Fair Equality of Chances
Kimberly Le Truong, Annette Zimmermann, Hoda Heidari
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04641

Toward Valid Measurement Of (Un)fairness For Generative AI: A Proposal For Systematization Through The Lens Of Fair Equality of Chances
Disparities in the societal harms and impacts of Generative AI (GenAI) systems highlight the critical need for effective unfairness measurement approaches. While numerous benchmarks exist, designing valid measurements requires proper systematization of the unfairness construct. Yet this process is often neglected, resulting in metrics that may mischaracterize unfairness by overlooking contextual nuances, thereby compromising the validity of the resulting measurements. Building on established (u…

⭐️Honey bees vs. native pollinators
The damage does not stop with bees. The study highlights that honey bee pollination leads to poorer plant offspring quality compared to native bee pollination.
This happens because honey bees often visit many flowers on the same plant before moving to another.
This behavior increases the chances of self-pollination, which can lead to inbreeding depression in plants.
Such effects could ripple through ecosystems. Plants that rely on nat…

Honey bee invasion: A growing threat to native pollinators
Honey bees outcompete native bees, removing most pollen and threatening wild ecosystems in Southern California.

Trevon Diggs reveals his chances of playing for Cowboys vs Eagles in 2025 NFL season opener https://bolavip.com/en/nfl/trevon-diggs-reveals-his-chances-of-playing-for-cowboys-vs-eagles-in-2025-nfl-season-opener

Brock Bowers gets 'terrific' injury update from Raiders head coach Pete Carroll https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/news/brock-bowers-terrific-injury-update-raiders-hea…

Flamingos are changing the war. Energy crisis in Russia. New chances for the Armed Forces of Ukraine: https://benborges.xyz/2025/09/05/flamingos-are-changing-the-war.html

So many people are scared of underwater sea creatures. Only place with good chances to house alien life in our solar system is the moon Europa, under countless of layers of ice in an entirely underwater world awaits.
We are absolutely not ready.

Barnwell predicts the NFL playoff field: 14 teams that will make the postseason, plus a Super Bowl pick https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45934298/2025-nfl-season-14-playoff-teams-chances-return-super-bowl

"tough on crime" ruins lives and doesn't make us safe.
https://missionlocal.org/2025/07/sf-teen-defendant-substance-treatment-alternative-prison-sentence/

A 19-year-old in S.F. treatment program passed some notes. Now, he faces years in prison.
SF aims to both get tougher on crime and put recovery first. How many second chances should a teenage defendant with addiction issues get?

CMAT relasing Euro-Country "was the end of Bertie's chances. By making the financial crash a culturally live issue again, she channelled 1.21Gws of raw artistic power directly into Bertie's campaign and sent it like a DeLorean, back into all those futures lost. "
https://www.thegist.ie/the-gi…

The Gist: The Presidential Selection
The time is ticking down to pick the candidates to replace Michael D. This is the Gist.

Raiders’ Brock Bowers Gets Blunt Message From Derwin James https://heavy.com/sports/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/brock-bowers-derwin-james-chargers/?adt_ei=[email]

Trevon Diggs on Micah Parsons trade, chances to play in Week 1 vs. Eagles https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/trevon-diggs-on-micah-parsons-trade-chances-to-play-in-week-1-vs-eagles

Shopping for a new cat flap and am sorely tempted by this:
https://www.onlycat.com/examples/
> Contraband Detected!
A machine vision model detects rodents, etc and prevents entry if your beloved tries to return with any extra "guests"

Examples
Examples You won't believe some of the weird and wonderful sights you'll see. Here are just a few highlights from our customers..https://www.onlycat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/OC-8C1F64481046_826-.mp4This rodent fancied his chances against the might of the OnlyCat AI. Try again next time!h

It's Hakeem Jeffries. I cannot overstate the urgency of this situation.
Here’s the deal:
– Democrats are targeting 35 seats in Republican-held districts.
– We only need to win THREE to reclaim the House majority.
– Republicans have already raised $36 MILLION to crush our chances.
Now, MAGA extremists are going after ActBlue to disrupt our fundraising and seal our fate.
We cannot let them silence us.
Will you help me turn his attempt to silence us…

CHIP IN BEFORE MIDNIGHT >>
Help Hakeem defeat MAGA extremism and FLIP the House blue

You are strong. You can handle this.

I’ve had occasion to remind some folks of this lately, both here and elsewhere. I thought I’d just mention it again at large, because chances are someone needs to hear it.

100% certain
Time is long. https://flipboard.com/@cbcnews/edmonton-5aq1688az/-/a-NcdF2JhdRlC_YX7EJbMzIg:a:107108217-/0

What are the chances of Earth being hit by a big asteroid?
A week ago, the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first images. It also included a video of all the asteroids it discovered. In just 10 …

I am wondering what signals does Apple need to hear to stop pretending like Safari is still a great browser.
It is a great browser iif you haven’t used any others.
Safari has the smallest number of extensions.
Safari has the biggest chances to not work on a website.
Safari is not the fastest browser.

Something to always be aware of: Many wheelchair users can stand and move around for brief periods of time. Not all wheelchair users are paralysed. Reasons for wheelchair use are numerous and varied.

Some wheelchair users choose not to stand in public because chances are they will be chastised and harassed if they do. With more awareness and understanding this risk can hopefully diminish over time.

For example, if a wheelchair user is able to retrieve their own wheelchair from…

How Did Chargers Week 1 Win Help Their 2025 Playoff Chances? https://www.chargers.com/news/playoff-odds-raiders-2025

Free 2025 NFL picks, predictions, futures, props, odds, chances: Fade New York Giants in NFC East bets

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/free-20

Trevon Diggs on Micah Parsons trade, chances to play in Week 1 vs. Eagles https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/trevon-diggs-on-micah-parsons-trade-chances-to-play-in-week-1-vs-eagles

A Better Multi-Objective GP-GOMEA -- But do we Need it?
Joe Harrison, Tanja Alderliesten. Peter A. N. Bosman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.03777 https://

A Better Multi-Objective GP-GOMEA -- But do we Need it?
In Symbolic Regression (SR), achieving a proper balance between accuracy and interpretability remains a key challenge. The Genetic Programming variant of the Gene-pool Optimal Mixing Evolutionary Algorithm (GP-GOMEA) is of particular interest as it achieves state-of-the-art performance using a template that limits the size of expressions. A recently introduced expansion, modular GP-GOMEA, is capable of decomposing expressions using multiple subexpressions, further increasing chances of interpre…

How to tell a vibe coder of lying when they say they check their code.
People who will admit to using LLMs to write code will usually claim that they "carefully check" the output since we all know that LLM code has a lot of errors in it. This is insufficient to address several problems that LLMs cause, including labor issues, digital commons stress/pollution, license violation, and environmental issues, but at least it's they are checking their code carefully we shouldn't assume that it's any worse quality-wise than human-authored code, right?
Well, from principles alone we can expect it to be worse, since checking code the AI wrote is a much more boring task than writing code yourself, so anyone who has ever studied human-computer interaction even a little bit can predict people will quickly slack off, stating to trust the AI way too much, because it's less work. I'm a different domain, the journalist who published an entire "summer reading list" full of nonexistent titles is a great example of this. I'm sure he also intended to carefully check the AI output, but then got lazy. Clearly he did not have a good grasp of the likely failure modes of the tool he was using.
But for vibe coders, there's one easy tell we can look for, at least in some cases: coding in Python without type hints. To be clear, this doesn't apply to novice coders, who might not be aware that type hints are an option. But any serious Python software engineer, whether they used type hints before or not, would know that they're an option. And if you know they're an option, you also know they're an excellent tool for catching code defects, with a very low effort:reward ratio, especially if we assume an LLM generates them. Of the cases where adding types requires any thought at all, 95% of them offer chances to improve your code design and make it more robust. Knowing about but not using type hints in Python is a great sign that you don't care very much about code quality. That's totally fine in many cases: I've got a few demos or jam games in Python with no type hints, and it's okay that they're buggy. I was never going to debug them to a polished level anyways. But if we're talking about a vibe coder who claims that they're taking extra care to check for the (frequent) LLM-induced errors, that's not the situation.
Note that this shouldn't be read as an endorsement of vibe coding for demos or other rough-is-acceptable code: the other ethical issues I skipped past at the start still make it unethical to use in all but a few cases (for example, I have my students use it for a single assignment so they can see for themselves how it's not all it's cracked up to be, and even then they have an option to observe a pre-recorded prompt session instead).

From Code to Career: Assessing Competitive Programmers for Industry Placement
Md Imranur Rahman Akib, Fathima Binthe Muhammed, Umit Saha, Md Fazlul Karim Patwary, Mehrin Anannya, Md Alomgeer Hussein, Md Biplob Hosen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.00772

From Code to Career: Assessing Competitive Programmers for Industry Placement
In today's fast-paced tech industry, there is a growing need for tools that evaluate a programmer's job readiness based on their coding performance. This study focuses on predicting the potential of Codeforces users to secure various levels of software engineering jobs. The primary objective is to analyze how a user's competitive programming activity correlates with their chances of obtaining positions, ranging from entry-level roles to jobs at major tech companies. We collect user data using t…

@… Also lowers the chances that any of us will get to be on a trial jury to hear this case, which would fun (in a weird sort of way).

🩻 Bioimaging device with nonmechanical design could improve eye and heart condition detection
https://phys.org/news/2025-08-bioimaging-device-nonmechanical-eye-heart.html

Bioimaging device with nonmechanical design could improve eye and heart condition detection
If you've been to a routine eye exam at the optometrist's office, chances are you've had to place your chin and forehead up close to a bioimaging device.

Hot, dry summers bring new 'firewave' risk to UK cities, scientists warn #UnitedKingdom

Hot, dry summers bring new 'firewave' risk to UK cities
Rising temperatures are increasing the chances of multiple wildfires at the same time, researchers say.

Chances for more war and conflict in the world have increased with Trump showing himself weak, easy to manipulate and not being able to do anything against aggression. Putin, Xi and others will draw their conclusions about the Alaska summit.
#geopolitics #russia

Well, that sucks.
Oh well, he still has to face a leadership convention. His chances are better having won the by-election, but there's still a chance he loses.
https://mastodon.hongkongers.net/@glcalgary_mirror/115064682942073821

Global News Calgary (@glcalgary_mirror@mastodon.hongkongers.net)
Attached: 1 image Poilievre wins Alberta byelection, securing return to House of Commons Battle River—Crowfoot was left vacant when Conservative Damien Kurek stepped down to make way for his party's leader, Pierre Poilievre, to run for a seat. #politics #election #Alberta #BattleRiverCrowfoot #Canada #canadaelection https://globalnews.ca/news/11339007/battle-river-crowfood-byelection-voting-day-pierre-poilievre/

Doué gets Neuer leaning the wrong way and uses that anticipation and intuition against him to tuck it in near side. Beautifully done.
Bayern unfortunate to be behind. They’ve had their chances. And Anthony Taylor has been calling a favorable game for them. 🙃
#ClubWorldCup #PSGBAY

Kenny Pickett injury: How does this affect Browns QB competition, Shedeur Sanders' chances of making team?

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/kenny-p

O que leva o YouTube a achar que eu tenho qualquer interesse em luta livre?! Que algoritmo burro!
Mesmo que seja conteúdo impulsionado, é burrice. O cara paga para esse conteúdo chegar a quem tem boas chances de consumí-lo, não pra alguém cujo perfil de uso deixa bem claro que não se interessarš por isso.
@…

Brave New Chill
#Sims4 #TheSims4 #Comicstrip

Today's quest: I need one tiny bolt, about two millimeters width, maybe a half centimeter long and thread pitch unknown, to fasten a gear to a tuning peg shaft. I live downtown Toronto. What are my chances?

Does the Eagles Super Bowl win crush Cowboys chances in 2025? https://insidethestar.com/does-the-eagles-super-bowl-win-crush-cowboys-chances-in-2025

Got the fan grills in which significantly lowers the chances of me putting a finger or cable into one of the rear ventilation fans which totally hasn't happened.
#homelab #minirack #fans

Relativistic accretion and burdened primordial black holes
Suvashis Maity
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02821 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507…

Relativistic accretion and burdened primordial black holes
We examine the joint effects of relativistic accretion and memory burdened evaporation on the evolution of primordial black holes (PBHs). The memory burden effect, which delays the evaporation by inducing a backreaction and making the evaporation rate scale as an inverse power law of the PBH entropy, opens up a new window that allows PBHs with $M \lesssim 10^{15}~\mathrm{g}$ to survive until the present epoch. Meanwhile, accretion increases the mass of PBHs, thereby enhancing their chances of s…

"une consommation modérée de café contenant de la caféine Š un âge moyen est associée Š une probabilité plus élevée de vieillir en bonne santé trente ans plus tard"
#santé #café

Long post! #immigration #TFW #BC #CanPoli #CdnPoli #BCPoli #University #ForeignWorkers
I’ve been looking for hard numbers on foreign workers/international student workers. This story on cuts at Coast Mountain College in Prince Rupert surprisingly included examples!
As of March 28, 2025 (presumably in Prince Rupert):
McDonald's: 50 of 80 employees on temporary visas
Safeway: 50% of its 78 staff
Save On Foods: 35%
Tim Hortons: 30%
Skeena Taxi: 60%
Chances Casino: 55%
Crest Hotel: 35%
Three other local restaurants were 100% per cent reliant on temporary foreign workers.
— I want to make clear — I am not 'anti-immigrant’ — I am anti-business using cheap, exploitative, labour.
I am also against public universities/colleges (and thus government) relying on exorbitant tuitions to fund domestic programs, also admitted by a former President of CMC here!
"“Pursuing international students was a strategy developed when I chaired the board at Coast Mountain College," Prince Rupert Mayor Herb Pond said. "It wasn't a money grab, but rather a tactic to build out a broader offering of courses for the sake of local students. Pond added that he suspects the restrictions on foreign students will limit what the college is able to offer to Prince Rupert students.””
Governments and public institutions thave gotten drunk on international tuition to pad education budgets just like businesses have got drunk on high profit margins from hiring low-cost TFWs and raising consumer prices!
It's a money grab on both ends and in the middle are exploited immigrants and young Canadians looking for work.
"Many businesses struggle to recruit residents or convince Canadians from other regions…resulting in heavy reliance on international students and temporary foreign workers to pick up the slack."
This is a Business-Industry lie! Try applying for a minimum wage job! It's damn near impossible.
Con/Lib Government did this!
https://www.albernivalleynews.com/news/college-struggles-worker-supply-fades-as-immigration-changes-hammer-bcs-northwest-8247783

I just received a shocking phone call that made my heart sink.
Just days after Susan Collins voted to confirm RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard,
the MAGA Republican establishment rushed Susan Collins $842K
to rescue her chances for re-election.
𝐈'𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭:
𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐒𝐮𝐬𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐯𝐮𝐥𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫
- 𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩'𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐭
- 𝐬𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐚 𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐡 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐞.

Chip in now to elect Jordan Wood >>
Help Jordan defeat Susan Collins

Drake Maye says Patriots are 'tired of losing;' examining New England's chances of rebounding in 2025

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/drake-m…

Next attempt for the tenth flight test of #Starship, now planned for 23:59 UTC (with weather chances of only 30%): webcasts on at https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1vAxRQZzOLNJl from SpaceX and independently e.g. on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwC9sr6GEUk and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZJ0RWsL6ws and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6hvgcWH5_4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js0hBEKsXIE

How popular media gets love wrong
Now a bit of background about why I have this "engineered" model of love:
First, I'm a white straight cis man. I've got a few traits that might work against my relationship chances (e.g., neurodivergence; I generally fit pretty well into the "weird geek" stereotype), but as I was recently reminded, it's possible my experience derives more from luck than other factors, and since things are tilted more in my favor than most people on the planet, my advice could be worse than useless if it leads people towards strategies that would only have worked for someone like me. I don't *think* that's the case, but it's worth mentioning explicitly.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
When I first started dating my now-wife, we were both in graduate school. I was 26, and had exactly zero dating/romantic experience though that point in my life. In other words, a pretty stereotypical "incel" although I definitely didn't subscribe to incel ideology at all. I felt lonely, and vaguely wanted a romantic relationship (I'm neither aromantic nor asexual), but had never felt socially comfortable enough to pursue one before. I don't drink and dislike most social gatherings like parties or bars; I mostly hung around the fringes of the few college parties I attended, and although I had a reasonable college social life in terms of friends, I didn't really do anything to pursue romance, feeling too awkward to know where to start. I had the beginnings of crushes in both high school and college, but never developed a really strong crush, probably correlated with not putting myself in many social situations outside of close all-male friend gatherings. I never felt remotely comfortable enough to act on any of the proto-crushes I did have. I did watch porn and masturbate, so one motivation for pursuing a relationship was physical intimacy, but loneliness was as much of a motivating factor, and of course the social pressure to date was a factor too, even though I'm quite contrarian.
I'm lucky in that I had some mixed-gender social circles already like intramural soccer and a graduate-student housing potluck. Graduate school makes a *lot* more of these social spaces accessible, so I recognize that those not in school of some sort have a harder time of things, especially if like me they don't feel like they fit in in typical adult social spaces like bars.
However, at one point I just decided that my desire for a relationship would need action on my part and so I'd try to build a relationship and see what happened. I worked up my courage and asked one of the people in my potluck if she'd like to go for a hike (pretty much clearly a date but not explicitly one; in retrospect not the best first-date modality in a lot of ways, but it made a little more sense in our setting where we could go for a hike from our front door). To emphasize this point: I was not in love with (or even infatuated with) my now-wife at that point. I made a decision to be open to building a relationship, but didn't follow the typical romance story formula beyond that. Now of course, in real life as opposed to popular media, this isn't anything special. People ask each other out all the time just because they're lonely, and some of those relationships turn out fine (although many do not).
I was lucky in that some aspects of who I am and what I do happened to be naturally comforting to my wife (natural advantage in the "appeal" model of love) but of course there are some aspects of me that annoy my wife, and we negotiate that. In the other direction, there's some things I instantly liked about my wife, and other things that still annoy me. We've figured out how to accept a little, change a little, and overall be happy with each other (though we do still have arguments; it's not like the operation/construction/maintenance of the "love mechanism" is always perfectly smooth). In particular though, I approached the relationship with the attitude of "I want to try to build a relationship with this person," at first just because of my own desires for *any* relationship, and then gradually more and more through my desire to build *this specific* relationship as I enjoyed the rewards of companionship.
So for example, while I think my wife is objectively beautiful, she's also *subjectively* very beautiful *to me* because having decided to build a relationship with her, I actively tried to see her as beautiful, rather than trying to judge whether I wanted a relationship with her based on her beauty. In other words, our relationship is more causative of her beauty-to-me than her beauty-to-me is causative of our relationship. This is the biggest way I think the "engineered" model of love differs from the "fire" and "appeal" models: you can just decide to build love independent of factors we typically think of as engendering love (NOT independent of your partner's willingness to participate, of course), and then all of those things like "thinking your partner is beautiful" can be a result of the relationship you're building. For sure those factors might affect who is willing to try building a relationship with you in the first place, but if more people were willing to jump into relationship building (not necessarily with full commitment from the start) without worrying about those other factors, they might find that those factors can come out of the relationship instead of being prerequisites for it. I think this is the biggest failure of the "appeal" model in particular: yes you *do* need to do things that appeal to your partner, but it's not just "make myself lovable" it's also: is your partner putting in the effort to see the ways that you are beautiful/lovable/etc., or are they just expecting you to become exactly some perfect person they've imagined (and/or been told to desire by society)? The former is perfectly possible, and no less satisfying than the latter.
To cut off my rambling a bit here, I'll just add that in our progress from dating through marriage through staying-married, my wife and I have both talked at times explicitly about commitment, and especially when deciding to get married, I told her that I knew I couldn't live up to the perfect model of a husband that I'd want to be, but that if she wanted to deepen our commitment, I was happy to do that, and so we did. I also rearranged my priorities at that point, deciding that I knew I wanted to prioritize this relationship above things like my career or my research interests, and while I've not always been perfect at that in my little decisions, I've been good at holding to that in my big decisions at least. In the end, *once we had built a somewhat-committed relationship*, we had something that we both recognized was worth more than most other things in life, and that let us commit even more, thus getting even more out of it in the long term. Obviously you can't start the first date with an expectation of life-long commitment, and you need to synchronize your increasing commitment to a relationship so that it doesn't become lopsided, which is hard. But if you take the commitment as an active decision and as the *precursor* to things like infatuation, attraction, etc., you can build up to something that's incredibly strong and rewarding.
I'll follow this up with one more post trying to distill some advice from my ramblings.
#relationships #love

Under constant attack, Ukraine’s arms makers take shelter in European factories: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/21/under-constant-attack-ukraines-arms.html

The White House announced an attempt to claw back $4.9 billion in foreign aid funds without congressional approval,
drawing the ire of Democrats and appropriators and increasing the chances of a shutdown. 
Such a move had not been made in nearly a half-century,
and it is expected to face legal challenges.
It also comes two months after GOP lawmakers approved the first rescissions package worth $9 billion
that targeted global aid programs and the Corporation for…

Patrick Graham’s Defense Has to be Ready From the Start https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/patrick-graham-las-vegas-pete-carroll-christian-wilkins

Who will be the No. 1 pick in the 2026 NFL draft? We predicted chances for 14 top prospects https://www.espn.com/nfl/draft2026/story/_/id/45719770/2026-nfl-draft-top-pick-predictions-early-chances-tj-parker-garret…

SWE-Exp: Experience-Driven Software Issue Resolution
Silin Chen, Shaoxin Lin, Xiaodong Gu, Yuling Shi, Heng Lian, Longfei Yun, Dong Chen, Weiguo Sun, Lin Cao, Qianxiang Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23361

SWE-Exp: Experience-Driven Software Issue Resolution
Recent advances in large language model (LLM) agents have shown remarkable progress in software issue resolution, leveraging advanced techniques such as multi-agent collaboration and Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). However, current agents act as memoryless explorers - treating each problem separately without retaining or reusing knowledge from previous repair experiences. This leads to redundant exploration of failed trajectories and missed chances to adapt successful issue resolution methods t…

It’s easy to think the #USMNT has been the better side because they’ve had 71% possession and #CRC have had so few chances (1 shot on target).
But the truth is the US hasn’t done much either. Having the ball is not the same as doing something with it. Open play hasn’t created much.

Because of bad weather - specifically the anvil rule - the #Starship test number 10 has been scrubbed yet again: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1960130754714935426 (but chances are deemed high for another attempt 24 hours later, they said in the webcast).

Titans can't 'capitalize' on chances in Ward debut https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46193067/tennessee-titans-fall-denver-broncos-cam-ward-debut

How popular media gets love wrong
Had some thoughts in response to a post about loneliness on here. As the author emphasized, reassurances from people who got lucky are not terribly comforting to those who didn't, especially when the person who was lucky had structural factors in their favor that made their chances of success much higher than those is their audience. So: these are just my thoughts, and may not have any bearing on your life. I share them because my experience challenged a lot of the things I was taught to believe about love, and I think my current beliefs are both truer and would benefit others seeing companionship.
We're taught in many modern societies from an absurdly young age that love is not something under our control, and that dating should be a process of trying to kindle love with different people until we meet "the one" with whom it takes off. In the slightly-less-fairytale corners of modern popular media, we might fund an admission that it's possible to influence love, feeding & tending the fire in better or worse ways. But it's still modeled as an uncontrollable force of nature, to be occasionally influenced but never tamed. I'll call this the "fire" model of love.
We're also taught (and non-boys are taught more stringently) a second contradictory model of love: that in a relationship, we need to both do things and be things in order to make our partner love us, and that if we don't, our partner's love for us will wither, and (especially if you're not a boy) it will be our fault. I'll call this the "appeal" model of love.
Now obviously both of these cannot be totally true at once, and plenty of popular media centers this contradiction, but there are really very few competing models on offer.
In my experience, however, it's possible to have "pre-meditated" love. In other words, to decide you want to love someone (or at least, try loving them), commit to that idea, and then actually wind up in love with them (and them with you, although obviously this second part is not directly under your control). I'll call this the "engineered" model of love.
Now, I don't think that the "fire" and "appeal" models of love are totally wrong, but I do feel their shortcomings often suggest poor & self-destructive relationship strategies. I do think the "fire" model is a decent model for *infatuation*, which is something a lot of popular media blur into love, and which drives many (but not all) of the feelings we normally associate with love (even as those feelings have other possible drivers too). I definitely experienced strong infatuation early on in my engineered relationship (ugh that sounds terrible but I'll stick with it; I promise no deception was involved). I continue to experience mild infatuation years later that waxes and wanes. It's not a stable foundation for a relationship but it can be a useful component of one (this at least popular media depicts often).
I'll continue these thoughts in a reply, by it might take a bit to get to it.
#relationships

Patrick Graham's Defense Has to be Ready From the Start https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/patrick-graham-las-vegas-pete-carroll-christian-wilkins

Optimal Strategies to Catch Randomly Walking Cat
R\"udiger Jehn
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18276 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.18276

Optimal Strategies to Catch Randomly Walking Cat
The optimal strategies to catch a randomly walking cat in various environments are presented. All games have a player that opens a box at step $i$. If the cat is in this box the player wins, if not, the cat moves randomly to an adjacent box, or in case the box is open to the outside, the cat may escape. If the cat is not escaping, the next step of the game is played. In case the cat has doors to escape, the optimal strategy is determined that minimizes the escape chances of the cat. If there ar…

Cowboys given Bottom-10 chances of making playoffs, proving divide between fans, markets https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/06/30/longshot-playoff-odds-cowboys-fans-nfl/84408664007/

Johnny Manziel weighs in on Browns rookie QB Shedeur Sanders' chances of winning starting job

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

NFL power rankings 2025: Model says Packers in top tier, Chiefs not among top five contenders

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

Donald Trump fired the federal government official in charge of labor statistics, hours after data revealed jobs growth stalled this summer. The US president claimed that Erika McEntarfer, had “faked” employment figures in the run-up to last year’s election, in an effort to boost Kamala Harris’s chances of victory.
Trump later claimed: “Today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad.“
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/01/trump-fires-erika-mcentarfer-labor-statistics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Subjective Experience in AI Systems: What Do AI Researchers and the Public Believe?
Noemi Dreksler, Lucius Caviola, David Chalmers, Carter Allen, Alex Rand, Joshua Lewis, Philip Waggoner, Kate Mays, Jeff Sebo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11945

Subjective Experience in AI Systems: What Do AI Researchers and the Public Believe?
We surveyed 582 AI researchers who have published in leading AI venues and 838 nationally representative US participants about their views on the potential development of AI systems with subjective experience and how such systems should be treated and governed. When asked to estimate the chances that such systems will exist on specific dates, the median responses were 1% (AI researchers) and 5% (public) by 2024, 25% and 30% by 2034, and 70% and 60% by 2100, respectively. The median member of th…

Geno Smith: 'Let 'Em Sleep on the Raiders. We're Working in the Shadows' https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/geno-smith-let-em-sleep-raiders-were-working-shadows

Game on! Bronze with a fine header on a great cross from Kelly.
England's best chances have been in the air. Agyemang gets the tying goal as I type this! Holy cow! Another cross in that falls right o her feet.
2-2 and Sweden are staggered!
#SWEENG #EURO2025

NFL power rankings 2025: Model says Packers in top tier, Chiefs not among top five contenders

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

3rd-year bubble player suffers concussion at most inopportune time for roster chances https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/08/21/cowboys-te-luke-schoonmaker-preseason-finale…

The subs... Kelly's cross for the first and Agyemang getting in the box for the second (and a few half chances before).
You have to wonder where they'd be if they didn't sleepwalk for the first 25 minutes.
#SWEENG #EURO2025

Analyzing the Raiders' Chances at Winning the AFC West https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/news/kansas-city-chiefs-patrick-mahomes-pete-carroll-andy-reid-sean-payton

Marvin Mims Jr. 'took that next step' -- but can he take on more offensive snaps? https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45634232/denver-broncos-receiver-marvin-mims-jr-breakout-2025-season

Raiders journeyman who hoped to find long-term home in Vegas dealt devastating injury news https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/las-vegas-raiders/news/raiders-journeyman-long-term-home-vegas-devastat…

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…

Cam Newton doesn't feel Micah Parsons has any leverage in contract talks with Cowboys https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/micah-parsons-no-leverage-dallas-cowboys-contract-saga-former-nfl-mvp-says

Track star to Panthers RB to Canadian Olympic flag football? Chuba Hubbard keeps dream alive https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45498715/nfl-carolina-panthers-chuba-hubbard-olympics-flag-football-track

Ewers makes most of chances in Dolphins' win https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45996033/quinn-ewers-rebounds-second-preseason-game-dolphins