Tootfinder

A Synthetic-to-Real Dehazing Method based on Domain Unification
Zhiqiang Yuan, Jinchao Zhang, Jie Zhou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05374 https://arxiv.org/p…

A Synthetic-to-Real Dehazing Method based on Domain Unification
Due to distribution shift, the performance of deep learning-based method for image dehazing is adversely affected when applied to real-world hazy images. In this paper, we find that such deviation in dehazing task between real and synthetic domains may come from the imperfect collection of clean data. Owing to the complexity of the scene and the effect of depth, the collected clean data cannot strictly meet the ideal conditions, which makes the atmospheric physics model in the real domain incon…

Toxic #PFAS have slowly come under control. But petrochemical companies find new industries to attach to, now #semiconductors.
🫣

Computer chips, with a side of forever chemicals
Companies that make forever chemicals smell an opportunity.

TL;DR: spending money to find the cause of autism is a eugenics project, and those resources could have been spent improving accommodations for Autistic people instead.
To preface this, I'm not Autistic but I'm neurodivergent with some overlap.
We need to be absolutely clear right now: the main purpose is *all* research into the causes of autism is eugenics: a cause is sought because non-autistic people want to *eliminate* autistic people via some kind of "cure." It should be obvious, but a "cured autistic person" who did not get a say in the decision to administer that "cure" has been subjected to non-consensual medical intervention at an extremely unethical level. Many autistic people have been exceptionally clear that they don't want to be "cured," including some people with "severe autism" such as people who are nonverbal.
When we think things like "but autism makes life so hard for some people," we're saying that the difficulties in their life are a result of their neurotype, rather than blaming the society that punished & devalues the behaviors that result from that neurotype at every turn. To the extent that an individual autistic person wants to modify their neurotype and/or otherwise use aids to modify themselves to reduce difficulties in their life, they should be free to pursue that. But we should always ask the question: "what if we changed their social or physical environment instead, so that they didn't have to change themselves?" The point is that difficulties are always the product of person x environment, and many of the difficulties we attribute to autism should instead be attributed to anti-autistic social & physical spaces, and resources spent trying to "find the cause of autism" would be *much* better spent trying to develop & promote better accommodations for autism. Or at least, that's the case if you care about the quality of life of autistic people and/or recognize their enormous contributions to society (e.g., Wikipedia could not exist in anything near its current form without autistic input). If instead you think of Autistic people as gross burdens that you'd rather be rid of, then it makes sense to investigate the causes of autism so that you can eventually find a "cure."
All of that to say: the best response to lies about the causes of autism is to ask "What is the end goal of identifying the cause?" instead of saying "That's not true, here's better info about the causes."
#autism #trump
P.S. yes, I do think about the plight of parents of autistic kids, particularly those that have huge struggles fitting into the expectations of our society. They've been put in a position where society constantly bullies and devalues their kid, and makes it mostly impossible for their kid to exist without constant parental support, which is a lot of work and which is unfair when your peers get the school system to do a massive amount of childcare. But in that situation, your kid is in an even worse position than you as the direct victim of all of that, and you have a choice: are you going to be their ally against the unfair world, or are you going to blame them and try to get them to confirm enough that you can let the school system take care of them, despite the immense pain that that will provoke? Please don't come crying for sympathy if you choose the later option (and yes, helping them be able to independently navigate society is a good thing for them, but there's a difference between helping them as their ally, at their pace, and trying to force them to conform to reduce the burden society has placed on you).

Wow. So much implicit trickle down economics. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/afternoons/audio/2019002510/how-excited-should-we-be-about-the-amazon-announcement Come on, Paul, AWS and Microsoft having…

Day 1 - The Start
Woke up with massive neck pain!
I never understood why airports want us to be there two hours before takeoff. I even received an email one day suggesting I come three hours earlier, which I didn’t do, of course, but I timed the security check. It took seven minutes and twenty-four seconds.
Maybe it’s because they want us to spend all our money on very expensive coffee and bad pastries. Then, when you find out that your flight is delayed, you have to stay l…

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

We were toyed with by the gods of chaos today. My ADHD son thrives on the in-the-momentness of it but I find it draining. An unexpected dead brake light threw this morning's plans which changed four times along with my clothes as we were/were differently/weren't/were going climbing as various attempts were made to find a bulb in town. Find bulb, hubs fits it, son & I go to Hereford, some tosser sets up a sharp under our tyre so it goes flat as we leave the car park to come home. …

So you teach your kids to respect revealed truths and not question authority and then wonder how sociopaths and malignant narcissists come to power and why you find yourself living under the yoke of fascism?
#microNonfiction

I’ve come to accept that raising a #baby is really time and energy consuming and that many of those things that I’d like to get done simply won’t. I find that acceptance quite liberating. There is tension though as C is not in the same place and is constantly fretting that things are not getting done.
#parenting

US progressives are embracing debate shows long used by conservatives, seeing the format as a more authentic alternative to "spoon-fed" political talking points (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/bus…

Debate Shows Are Having a Moment. Here Come the Democrats.
As millions tune in to hyperpartisan face-offs on YouTube or TikTok, can the left find its own Charlie Kirk?

Another nerd snipe, but this one was out of spite. Every now and again I come across a YouTube video that shows a simple algebra problem with a tagline that implies it's impossible. Today's was just a simple equation, just had to solve for 'x'.
```
4^x * 4^x * 4^x = 40
```
So, broke out a bit of paper and Ye Olde Fountain Pen, solved for 'x', then couldn't find the video that made it seem like the solution was special or extremely difficult…

It costs you energy to read this toot, but where did your energy come from? Let's find out ⁦…
https://caw.guillaumeslizewicz.com/

Memory lane.
Many of my generation remember that feeling. When you had to go to school all day, only to come home, open MSN to talk to your friends, use a buzzer to get their attention, open your mailbox to find out there was no email, and share that computer with your whole family. Or when you got your first mobile phone—most likely a Nokia 3310—which you might still have after 20 years, with one block of battery remaining. Remember when you had to ask for directions to a street you’d…

I have a lot of devices (~15) on my home wifi network. Around me are also 10-15 neighboring wifi networks as well as nearly 30 bluetooth devices of various origins.
I find it incredibly funny that using wireless bluetooth headphones throws me back to the vinyl record days where you hear constant popping, cracking and skipping.
All this fancy technology just to come full circle. 😄
Luckily, my particular pair came with an optional wire. 🎧

#Blakes7 Series B, Episode 09 - Countdown
BLAKE: We'll do it. [Starts to call the ship]
AVON: Wait. Disarming a device is not your field. You finish what we came here for: find Provine.
GRANT: [To Avon] I'll come with you.
AVON: No.

If you still share Klein's work I will judge you for it.
"The Nazi did politics right: By being a demagogue who attacked any marginalized group he could find - even if I, a liberal laserbrain am uncomfortable with what he said (mostly in style)" is a take that is impossible to come back from.
https://

Evolution of quasiparticle edge states with Hubbard interaction in Rice-Mele chain
Jyoti Bisht, Brijesh Kumar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21008 https://arxi…

Evolution of quasiparticle edge states with Hubbard interaction in Rice-Mele chain
We study the behaviour of edge states in Rice-Mele model with Hubbard interaction, U , at half-filling using density matrix renormalization group, exact diagonalization and effective charge dynamics in Kumar representation. For a fixed dimerization, $δ$, and staggered potential, V , we find by increasing U the quasiparticle edge states in the charge gap to come down in energy from V in the absence of Hubbard interaction to zero energy for U $\approx$ 2V . This presents an uncommon case where r…

man, we are so lucky to have "--parallel" 😊
i always hated writing tests. i always see this as a terrible time-killer.
now: "hey, check the whole f*** code and find everything that has no test, write one. i'll come back later and dare you if there are not 100 more tests" 😂
#php #ai

Gutierrez: Jameis, DTR, Rypien? Raiders’ backup QB role is open season after O'Connell injury https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-backup-qb-role-jameis-winston-dorian-thompson-robinson-tyler-huntley

So, been wondering why my mic audio has been absolutely wretched over the last few videos and such. Come to find out, if you accidentally wreck almost all of the settings on the compressor/gate then things are going to go very, very poorly. Did a quick test run in OBS and everything sounded so much better.
Current setup for the microphone: Earthworks Audio Ethos -> Universal Audio SOLO/610 -> dbx 286s -> [insert generic audio interface] -> Linux rig

Gutierrez: With a lack of true first-team battles, Raiders and Niners still find quality work https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-49ers-quality-work-joint-practice-nfl-2025-preseason-081425

Gutierrez: With a lack of true first-team battles, Raiders and Niners still find quality work https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-49ers-quality-work-joint-practice-nfl-2025-preseason-081425