Tootfinder

The Trump administration wants to give white South African “refugees”
an arrival gift bag with an American flag, an Android tablet, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence,
and hagiographic literature from PragerU minimizing the history of slavery and apartheid in the country and falsely accusing the South African government of “favoring the Black population.”
This is the latest effort to woo the Afrikaner population, descended from 17th-century Dutch, German, and…

Trump Is Giving White South African Refugees a Gift Bag for Racists
It includes some questionable literature on apartheid and American slavery.

The Trump administration is taking its war on free speech into the realm of thought crimes.
This is more than politics.
In declaring “Antifa”
—a loose ideology based on opposition to fascism
—as a domestic terrorist organization,
the government has given itself a green light to treat speech, belief, and association as criminal acts.
With this one executive order,
political dissent has been rebranded as terrorism and free thought recast as a crime.

Would Orwell Be Branded a Terrorist? The Government’s War on Thought Crimes
The Trump administration is taking its war on free speech into the realm of thought crimes. This is more than politics. In declaring “Antifa”—a loose

Since it was relevant to a discussion I just had on here and is something most people probably haven't thought about much (unless you've taken one of a handful of philosophy classes), I thought I'd try to lay out a key piece of Descartes' Meditations (#philosophy

❝Criminalizing dissent isn’t a sideshow. It’s central to the plan. They want to stop you from taking to the streets in massive numbers if and when they take illegal actions to keep the Republican Party in power. They are using these bogus indictments to lay the foundation for the solution that Vice President JD Vance proposed for Minneapolis back in January — to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in tanks.❞
EDIT: Updated with gift link
https://share.inquirer.com/dCg3tG

A discrete Boltzmann model with state-dependent power-law relaxation time for nonequilibrium transport in compressible flows
Demei Li, Zhongyi He, Huilin Lai, Yanbiao Gan, Hailong Liu, Pengfei Lin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18216 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.18216 https://arxiv.org/html/2605.18216
arXiv:2605.18216v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Thermodynamic nonequilibrium effects play a central role in momentum and energy transport in compressible flows. In conventional BGK kinetic models, the relaxation time $\tau$ is taken as a constant, which neglects the dependence of the relaxation process on local macroscopic states. To overcome this limitation, we develop a discrete Boltzmann model with a density- and temperature-dependent power-law relaxation time, termed DTRT-DBM, in which $\tau=\tau_0(\rho/\rho_0)^a(T/T_0)^b$. This formulation extends the discrete Boltzmann framework to flows with spatially varying nonequilibrium intensity. The model is validated by the Sod shock tube and by analytical solutions for viscous stress and heat flux, demonstrating accurate recovery of both macroscopic wave structures and nonequilibrium quantities across shock waves, rarefaction waves, and contact discontinuities. On this basis, phase diagrams of viscous stress and heat flux are constructed to examine how these quantities depend on the power-law exponents $a$ and $b$. The extrema of these quantities depend exponentially on the model parameters and exhibit regime-dependent behaviour. The roles of $a$ and $b$ are not symmetric: the nonequilibrium response is more sensitive to $a$ when density gradients dominate, but more sensitive to $b$ when temperature gradients dominate. Within the parameter range and flow configurations examined here, higher-order viscous stress increases the growth rate of the total viscous-stress extremum, whereas higher-order heat flux reduces the growth rate of the total heat-flux extremum. These results show that the proposed model can capture different higher-order nonequilibrium responses in compressible flows and provides a framework for the modelling and analysis of multiscale nonequilibrium processes.
toXiv_bot_toot

Ukraine's energy revolution is being powered by women leaders and local communities. Through initiatives like 100 Solar Schools and 50 Solar Hospitals, the country is building resilience with decentralized renewable systems—solar panels and batteries that keep critical infrastructure running even during conflict. This shift toward energy independence shows how sustainable power can be a security strategy.

Women’s leadership is everywhere in Ukraine
This week Women in Solar+ Europe gives voice to Yuliana Onishchuk, founder and CEO of the Charitable organisation Energy Act for Ukraine Foundation. She explains how Russia’s full-scale invasion transformed solar energy in Ukraine from a green technology into a vital tool for survival, powering hospitals, schools, and communities during blackouts and attacks. Through the Energy Act for Ukraine Foundation, decentralized renewable energy and women-led initiatives are helping build resilience, p…

I try not to talk about politics ( #auspol ), but...
As a middle-aged dude who earns most of his living through investments, I'm in full support of the Chalmers/Labor CGT/negative-gearing changes.
I've definitely taken advantage of them in the past and I will do so for as long as I can, but the 50% discount on taxable income was *WAY* too generous and was contributing to wrecking th…

US supreme court justice
Ketanji Brown Jackson
issued a rare public rebuke of the nation’s highest court,
declaring that it “can and should be better”
in the wake of a string of controversial moves by its conservative supermajority.
Weeks after writing a solo dissent as the supreme court effectively gutteda key section of the Voting Rights Act,
Jackson – its newest member and fiercest liberal voice – delivered a stark warning over the risk of the court bei…

Iran’s missile arsenal is still largely intact, according to U.S. and other intelligence agencies,
contradicting claims made by the Trump administration.
Iran has regained access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz,
as well as to the majority of its mobile launchers and underground facilities, according to a report by The New York Times.

Iran’s Missile Arsenal Still Intact, Sources Say, Contradicting Trump’s Claims
Reports contradict claims made by Trump, who has repeatedly stated that Iran has been “decimated” by the war.

The KIDS Act Will Lead to Mandatory Age Checks 
Many of the bills in the KIDS Act share the same premise:
that children and teenagers should have different experiences online than adults.
In practice, that requires websites and apps to determine who is under 18
—and who isn’t.
That’s where the problems with the KIDS Act start. 
EFF certainly supports giving all users better privacy and safety tools online.
But those protections should not,
and …

The House Passed The KIDS Act—The Senate Should Reject It 
Last week, the House voted on the KIDS Act, a disjointed package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package combines a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), with several other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements,...