Tootfinder

“Are we the baddies?” is not a question anyone in the West has to ask themselves. There’s no question about it. You were. You are. Will you continue to be? That’s the only question that matters and the answer is entirely up to you.
Silence is complicity.
Inaction is complicity.
Apologism is complicity.
Do something!
#israel

End Israeli Apartheid (@EndIsraeliApartheid@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image More RAF jets are being sent to the Middle East, Keir Starmer has said after Iran threatened to target UK, French and US bases if the countries help stop strikes on Israel. Additional refuelling aircraft have been deployed from UK bases and more fast jets will be sent over, it is understood. The UK already has RAF jets in the Middle East as part of Operation Shader. https://www.thenational.scot/news/25239897.uk-jets-sent-middle-east-despite-calls-de-escalation/ 🕎 �…

Approaching 39 years old, Calais Campbell would be 'very surprised' if 2025 wasn't his last season https://www.nfl.com/news/cardinals-de-calais-campbell-would-be-very-surprised-if-2025-wasn-t-his-last-season

Hyperbolic spaces not quasi-isometric to curve complexes
Javier Aramayona, Hugo Parlier, Richard Webb
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08086 https://

Hyperbolic spaces not quasi-isometric to curve complexes
We identify a condition that prevents a hyperbolic space from being quasi-isometric to the curve complex of any non-sporadic surface. Our result applies to several hyperbolic complexes, including arc complexes, disk complexes, non-separating curve complexes, (hyperbolic) pants complexes, and to free splitting complexes of free groups.

Reddit says it has started verifying UK users' ages before letting them "view certain mature content", in order to comply with the country's Online Safety Act (Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20

Reddit’s UK users must now prove they’re 18 to view adult content
Reddit hires company to verify user age with selfie or photo of government ID.

Where that understanding goes wrong is that humans have perception and experience and common sense. And yes, people are foolish and fallible — but ultimately humans are the adaptable element of complex systems[1], and when we design processes involving humans, we always, always lean on that adaptability.
If we say “walk out the door,” humans generally will not just walk face first into the wall just because the door is behind it.
Code will — unless you tell it not to.
[1] https://how.complexsystems.fail/#12
3/

from my link log —
Can You Block It ? a simple ad block tester.
https://canyoublockit.com/
saved 2025-08-05 https://dotat.at/:/Q4GFT.ht…

Can You Block It | A Simple Ad Block Tester
Test your Adblock with a Simple Adblocker Test. A webpage with various ad formats, test adblockers like AdBlock, AdBlock Plus, AdBlocker Ultimate, AdGuard, Ghostery, uBlock Origin, Pi-Hole, NoScript and more.

U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly votes for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict - CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/un-general-assembly-votes-two-state-solution-israel-palestinian-conflict-resolution/

TL;DR: what if instead of denying the harms of fascism, we denied its suppressive threats of punishment
Many of us have really sharpened our denial skills since the advent of the ongoing pandemic (perhaps you even hesitated at the word "ongoing" there and thought "maybe I won't read this one, it seems like it'll be tiresome"). I don't say this as a preface to a fiery condemnation or a plea to "sanity" or a bunch of evidence of how bad things are, because I too have honed my denial skills in these recent years, and I feel like talking about that development.
Denial comes in many forms, including strategic information avoidance ("I don't have time to look that up right now", "I keep forgetting to look into that", "well this author made a tiny mistake, so I'll click away and read something else", "I'm so tired of hearing about this, let me scroll farther", etc.) strategic dismissal ("look, there's a bit of uncertainty here, I should ignore this", "this doesn't line up perfectly with my anecdotal experience, it must be completely wrong", etc.) and strategic forgetting ("I don't remember what that one study said exactly; it was painful to think about", "I forgot exactly what my friend was saying when we got into that argument", etc.). It's in fact a kind of skill that you can get better at, along with the complementary skill of compartmentalization. It can of course be incredibly harmful, and a huge genre of fables exists precisely to highlight its harms, but it also has some short-term psychological benefits, chiefly in the form of muting anxiety. This is not an endorsement of denial (the harms can be catastrophic), but I want to acknowledge that there *are* short-term benefits. Via compartmentalization, it's even possible to be honest with ourselves about some of our own denials without giving them up immediately.
But as I said earlier, I'm not here to talk you out of your denials. Instead, given that we are so good at denial now, I'm here to ask you to be strategic about it. In particular, we live in a world awash with propaganda/advertising that serves both political and commercial ends. Why not use some of our denial skills to counteract that?
For example, I know quite a few people in complete denial of our current political situation, but those who aren't (including myself) often express consternation about just how many people in the country are supporting literal fascism. Of course, logically that appearance of widespread support is going to be partly a lie, given how much our public media is beholden to the fascists or outright in their side. Finding better facts on the true level of support is hard, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about the "fact" that Trump has widespread popular support?
To give another example: advertisers constantly barrage us with messages about our bodies and weight, trying to keep us insecure (and thus in the mood to spend money to "fix" the problem). For sure cutting through that bullshit by reading about body positivity etc. is a better solution, but in the meantime, why not be in denial about there being anything wrong with your body?
This kind of intentional denial certainly has its own risks (our bodies do actually need regular maintenance, for example, so complete denial on that front is risky) but there's definitely a whole lot of misinformation out there that it would be better to ignore. To the extent such denial expands to a more general denial of underlying problems, this idea of intentional denial is probably just bad. But I sure wish that in a world where people (including myself) routinely deny significant widespread dangers like COVID-19's long-term risks or the ongoing harms of escalating fascism, they'd at least also deny some of the propaganda keeping them unhappy and passive. Instead of being in denial about US-run concentration camps, why not be in denial that the state will be able to punish you for resisting them?

Complexity of mixed Schatten norms of quantum maps
Jan Kochanowski, Omar Fawzi, Cambyse Rouz\'e
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08358 https://

Complexity of mixed Schatten norms of quantum maps
We study the complexity of computing the mixed Schatten $\|Φ\|_{q\to p}$ norms of linear maps $Φ$ between matrix spaces. When $Φ$ is completely positive, we show that $\| Φ\|_{q \to p}$ can be computed efficiently when $q \geq p$. The regime $q \geq p$ is known as the non-hypercontractive regime and is also known to be easy for the mixed vector norms $\ell_{q} \to \ell_{p}$ [Boyd, 1974]. However, even for entanglement-breaking completely-positive trace-preserving maps $�…

Cardinals DT Calais Campbell hints at looming retirement: 'I'm giving everything I got to this season'

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