Tootfinder

'They delayed, they denied’:
How health #insurance industry endemically endangers many critical #California patients
https://…

‘They delayed, they denied’: How insurance errors endanger California patients
California lawmakers require insurers to keep more accurate provider directories, but state rules aren’t complete, and "ghost networks" fail patients without much penalty.

Commanders QB Jayden Daniel (hamstring) questionable to return vs. Cowboys https://www.nfl.com/news/commanders-qb-jayden-daniel-hamstring-questionable-to-return-vs-cowboys

Performance rights organization BMI and a group representing radio broadcasters settle a dispute over royalty rates paid to artists and songwriters on US radio (Daniel Tencer/Music Business Worldwide)
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/bmi

BMI secures ‘largest rate increase ever’ for radio royalties in US
BMI has reached a settlement for the 2022-2026 radio licensing period, calling it a ‘historic’ deal.

Trump nominee says he has a 'Nazi streak,' bashes MLK Jr. Day, according to texts (Daniel Lippman/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/20/paul-ingrassia-racist-text-messages-nazi-00613608
http://www.memeorandum.com/251020/p95#a251020p95

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?

Understanding Physical Therapy Challenges for Older Adults through Mixed Reality
Jade Kandel, Sriya Kasumarthi, Danielle Szafir
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14514 https://

Understanding Physical Therapy Challenges for Older Adults through Mixed Reality
Physical therapy (PT) is crucial in helping older adults manage chronic conditions and weakening muscles, but older adults face increasing challenges that can impact their PT experience, including increased fatigue, memory loss, and mobility and travel constraints. While current technology attempts to facilitate remote care, they have limitations and are used in-practice infrequently. Mixed reality (MR) technology shows promise for addressing these challenges by creating immersive, context-awar…

Guided sampling ans\"atzes for variational quantum computing
Daniel Gunlycke, John P. T. Stenger, Andrii Maksymov, Ananth Kaushik, Martin Roetteler, C. Stephen Hellberg
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13926

Guided sampling ansätzes for variational quantum computing
Quantum computing is a promising technology because of the ability of quantum computers to process vector spaces with dimensions that increase exponentially with the simulated system size. Extracting the solution, however, is challenging as the number of quantum gate operations and quantum circuit executions must still scale at most polynomially. Consequently, choosing a good ansatz--a polynomial subset of the exponentially many possible solutions--will be critical to maintain accuracy for larg…

Virtual Trading in Multi-Settlement Electricity Markets
Agostino Capponi, Garud Iyengar, Bo Yang, Daniel Bienstock
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11979 https://

Virtual Trading in Multi-Settlement Electricity Markets
In the Day-Ahead (DA) market, suppliers sell and load-serving entities (LSEs) purchase energy commitments, with both sides adjusting for imbalances between contracted and actual deliveries in the Real-Time (RT) market. We develop a supply function equilibrium model to study how virtual trading-speculating on DA-RT price spreads without physical delivery-affects market efficiency. Without virtual trading, LSEs underbid relative to actual demand in the DA market, pushing DA prices below expected …

Digital Post-Distortion Architectures for Nonlinear Power Amplifiers: Volterra and Kernel Methods
Daniel Sch\"aufele, Jochen Fink, Renato L. G. Cavalcante, S{\l}awomir Sta\'nczak
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11792

Digital Post-Distortion Architectures for Nonlinear Power Amplifiers: Volterra and Kernel Methods
In modern 5G user equipments (UEs), the power amplifier (PA) contributes significantly to power consumption during uplink transmissions, especially in cell-edge scenarios. While reducing power backoff can enhance PA efficiency, it introduces nonlinear distortions that degrade signal quality. Existing solutions, such as digital pre-distortion, require complex feedback mechanisms for optimal performance, leading to increased UE complexity and power consumption. Instead, in this study we explore d…

Do the rich pay their fair share? Enumerating the price of flying (and abolishing) premium air travel
Megan Yeo, Sebastian Nosenzo, Daniel S. Palmer, Alexei K. Varah, Lucas Woodley, Ashley Nunes
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.12507

Do the rich pay their fair share? Enumerating the price of flying (and abolishing) premium air travel
Premium air travel is often associated with a disproportionately large carbon emissions footprint. This association reflects the increased space and amenities typically found in premium cabins that existing discourse suggests makes their carriage more fuel, and consequently carbon, intensive. One increasingly popular solution is disincentivizing the use of premium cabins in favor of all-economy cabins. How effective might such a policy be. To what extent. And how may the revenue impact affect t…