Tootfinder

"you have to try to build that strong organizational structure; one that isn’t so fragile that when one or two senior leaders change, things fall apart. But it’s very difficult and many organizations have weak management systems..."
https://

Speculative politics
As an anarchist (okay, maybe not in practice), I'm tired of hearing why we have to suffer X and Y indignity to "preserve the rule of law" or "maintain Democratic norms." So here's an example of what representative democracy (a form of government that I believe is inherently flawed) could look like if its proponents had even an ounce of imagination, and/or weren't actively trying to rig it to favor a rich donor class:
1. Unicameral legislature, where representatives pass laws directly. Each state elects 3 statewide representatives: the three most-popular candidates in a statewide race where each person votes for one candidate (ranked preference voting would be even better but might not be necessary, and is not a solution by itself). Instead of each representative getting one vote in the chamber, they get N votes, where N is the number of people who voted for them. This means that in a close race, instead of the winner getting all the power, the power is split. Having 3 representatives trades off between leisure size and ensuring that two parties can't dominate together.
2. Any individual citizen can contact their local election office to switch or withdraw their vote at any time (maybe with a 3-day delay or something). Voting power of representatives can thus shift even without an election. They are limited to choosing one of the three elected representatives, or "none of the above." If the "none of the above" fraction exceeds 20% of eligible voters, a new election is triggered for that state. If turnout is less than 80%, a second election happens immediately, with results being final even at lower turnout until 6 months later (some better mechanism for turnout management might be needed).
3. All elections allow mail-in ballots, and in-person voting happens Sunday-Tuesday with the Monday being a mandatory holiday. (Yes, election integrity is not better in this system and that's a big weakness.)
4. Separate nationwide elections elect three positions for head-of-state: one with diplomatic/administrative powers, another with military powers, and a third with veto power. For each position, the top three candidates serve together, with only the first-place winner having actual power until vote switches or withdrawals change who that is. Once one of these heads loses their first-place status, they cannot get it again until another election, even if voters switch preferences back (to avoid dithering). An election for one of these positions is triggered when 20% have withdrawn their votes, or if all three people initially elected have been disqualified by losing their lead in the vote count.
5. Laws that involve spending money are packaged with specific taxes to pay for them, and may only be paid for by those specific revenues. Each tax may be opted into or out of by each taxpayer; where possible opting out of the tax also opts you out of the service. (I'm well aware of a lot of the drawbacks of this, but also feel like they'd not necessarily be worse than the drawbacks of our current system.) A small mandatory tax would cover election expenses.
6. I'm running out of attention, but similar multi-winner elections could elect panels of judges from which a subset is chosen randomly to preside in each case.
Now I'll point out once again that this system, in not directly confronting capitalism, racism, patriarchy, etc., is probably doomed to the same failures as our current system. But if you profess to want a "representative democracy" as opposed to something more libratory, I hope you'll at least advocate for something like this that actually includes meaningful representation as opposed to the current US system that's engineered to quash it.
Key questions: "Why should we have winner-take-all elections when winners-take-proportionately-to-votes is right there?" and "Why should elected officials get to ignore their constituents' approval except during elections, when vote-withdrawal or -switching is possible?"
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#Democracy

Dam Management in the Era of Climate Change
Cristina Di Girolami, M'hamed Mrad, Ga\"igi, Vathana Ly Vath, Simone Scotti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.02636 https://

Dam Management in the Era of Climate Change
Climate change has a dramatic impact, particularly by concentrating rainfall into a few short periods, interspersed by long dry spells. In this context, the role of dams is crucial. We consider the optimal control of a dam, where the water level must not exceed a designated safety threshold, nor fall below a minimum level to ensure functionality and sustainability for for the outgoing river. To model dry spells and intense rainfall events, commonly referred to as water bombs, we introduce a Haw…

New paper published! ➡️ Climate change adaptation preferences of small enterprises
Vulnerable entrepreneurs’ preferences for climate risk management: A discrete choice experiment with micro-enterprises in the Philippines
Authors: #AnnKristin_Becker @…

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

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

"David Bowie Had it Right: Challenges and Opportunities in Research Data Management"
#RDM

“Water has long been a tool of warfare,
but in recent years, the world has entered a dark new era of hydroterrorism,”
Abdoulie Ceesay, the deputy majority leader of the National Assembly of Gambia, wrote this month.
As climate change accelerates drought and flooding,
stakeholders tussle over shared water sources,
and fair-weather frameworks for governing resource management lose relevance,
water is increasingly becoming a national security flashpoint aroun…

The Water Wars Are Coming
Hydroterrorism and other water-related crises, from the Sahel to Central Asia.

Argumentation for Explainable Workforce Optimisation (with Appendix)
Jennifer Leigh, Dimitrios Letsios, Alessandro Mella, Lucio Machetti, Francesca Toni
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15118

Argumentation for Explainable Workforce Optimisation (with Appendix)
Workforce management is a complex problem optimising the makespan and travel distance required for a team of operators to complete a set of jobs, using a set of instruments. A crucial challenge in workforce management is accommodating changes at execution time so that explanations are provided to all stakeholders involved. Here, we show that, by understanding workforce management as abstract argumentation in an industrial application, we can accommodate change and obtain faithful explanations. …

Sustainable restoration of intermittent streams: Integrating ecological design and urban resilience
Parinaz Baradaran Anaraki, Shiva Manshour
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.03051 ht…

Sustainable restoration of intermittent streams: Integrating ecological design and urban resilience
The sustainable restoration of intermittent streams has become a critical priority in contemporary urban planning, particularly as cities confront the dual challenges of ecological degradation and climate change. In Tehran, decades of rapid urbanization and poor management practices have confined natural streams into rigid concrete channels, eroding their ecological value and disconnecting them from community life. This paper introduces an ecological and sustainability-oriented framework for th…

Automated Energy-Aware Time-Series Model Deployment on Embedded FPGAs for Resilient Combined Sewer Overflow Management
Tianheng Ling, Vipin Singh, Chao Qian, Felix Biessmann, Gregor Schiele
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13905

Automated Energy-Aware Time-Series Model Deployment on Embedded FPGAs for Resilient Combined Sewer Overflow Management
Extreme weather events, intensified by climate change, increasingly challenge aging combined sewer systems, raising the risk of untreated wastewater overflow. Accurate forecasting of sewer overflow basin filling levels can provide actionable insights for early intervention, helping mitigating uncontrolled discharge. In recent years, AI-based forecasting methods have offered scalable alternatives to traditional physics-based models, but their reliance on cloud computing limits their reliability …

Spanish police arrest student suspected of hacking school system to change grades https://therecord.media/spanish-police-hacker-arrest-grades

Replaced article(s) found for cs.DL. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.DL/new
[1/1]:
- HERITRACE: A User-Friendly Semantic Data Editor with Change Tracking and Provenance Management fo...
Arcangelo Massari, Silvio Peroni

Deep Reinforcement Learning with Local Interpretability for Transparent Microgrid Resilience Energy Management
Mohammad Hossein Nejati Amiri, Fawaz Annaz, Mario De Oliveira, Florimond Gueniat
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08132

Deep Reinforcement Learning with Local Interpretability for Transparent Microgrid Resilience Energy Management
Renewable energy integration into microgrids has become a key approach to addressing global energy issues such as climate change and resource scarcity. However, the variability of renewable sources and the rising occurrence of High Impact Low Probability (HILP) events require innovative strategies for reliable and resilient energy management. This study introduces a practical approach to managing microgrid resilience through Explainable Deep Reinforcement Learning (XDRL). It combines the Proxim…

Snap-Through Thermomechanical Metamaterials for High-Performance Thermal Rectification
Qinyun Ding, Yuhao Wang, Guanqing Xiong, Wei Chen, Ying Chen, Zhaoguang Wang, Arup Neogi, Jaehyung Ju
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.23489

Snap-Through Thermomechanical Metamaterials for High-Performance Thermal Rectification
Thermal diodes that enable directional heat transport are essential for advanced thermal management in microelectronics, energy systems, and thermal logic devices. However, existing designs based on phase-change materials, nanostructures, or interfacial engineering suffer from limited rectification performance, configurational inflexibility, and poor scalability. Here, we present a thermomechanical metamaterial-based thermal diode that combines temperature-responsive actuation with structural b…

Air Quality PM2.5 Index Prediction Model Based on CNN-LSTM
Zicheng Guo, Shuqi Wu, Meixing Zhu, He Guandi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11215 https://arxiv.org…

Air Quality PM2.5 Index Prediction Model Based on CNN-LSTM
With the intensification of global climate change, accurate prediction of air quality indicators, especially PM2.5 concentration, has become increasingly important in fields such as environmental protection, public health, and urban management. To address this, we propose an air quality PM2.5 index prediction model based on a hybrid CNN-LSTM architecture. The model effectively combines Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for local spatial feature extraction and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) net…

Tracking of Intermittent and Moving Speakers : Dataset and Metrics
Taous Iatariene (MULTISPEECH), Alexandre Gu\'erin (MULTISPEECH), Romain Serizel (MULTISPEECH)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11145

Tracking of Intermittent and Moving Speakers : Dataset and Metrics
This paper presents the problem of tracking intermittent and moving sources, i.e, sources that may change position when they are inactive. This issue is seldom explored, and most current tracking methods rely on spatial observations for track identity management. They are either based on a previous localization step, or designed to perform joint localization and tracking by predicting ordered position estimates. This raises concerns about whether such methods can maintain reliable track identit…