Tootfinder

Was speaking to some journalists recently who didn't realise how long a history the use of radar has in measuring ice thickness over glaciers.
The technique was discovered by pilots, who must have had the frankly terrifying experience of landing on the ice sheet with their radars telling them they still had a few thousand metres of descent to reach the surface...
It's not mentioned in this obituary but I wonder if this guy would have seen it? Perhaps he didn't even have radar to assist in landing?
https://flipboard.com/@newyorktimes/obituaries-bq1u22g8z/-/a-gd4LiLY4RbOMXavSDWOBQQ:a:3195393-/0
newyorktimes@flipboard.com - Conrad Shinn, First Pilot to Land at the South Pole, Dies at 102
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/obituaries/conrad-shinn-dead.html?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Obituaries @obituaries-newyorktimes

All this brings me back to some text I was writing yesterday for my students, on which I’d appreciate any thoughtful feedback:
❝You can let the computer do the typing for you, but never let it do the thinking for you.
This is doubly true in the current era of AI hype. If the AI optimists are correct (the credible ones, anyway), software development will consist of humans critically evaluating, shaping, and correcting the output of LLMs. If the AI skeptics are correct, then the future will bring mountains of AI slop to decode, disentangle, fix, and/or rewrite. Either way, it is •understanding• and •critically evaluating• code — not merely •generating• it — that will be the truly essential ability. Always has been; will be even more so. •That• is what you are learning here.❞
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Combinatorics of descent algebras and graph coverings
Philippe Biane
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.05528 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.0552…

Combinatorics of descent algebras and graph coverings
We give a direct combinatorial proof that the product of two descent classes in a symmetric group is a sum of descent classes. The proof is based on the fact that the group product gives a covering map when descent classes are endowed with the graph structure coming from the weak order. The main geometric argument is valid for any Coxeter group, even infinite ones for which the descent algebra does not exist.

Clifford Cash: "Someone once said to me, 'you were born for this moment,' and I said 'bullshit' because no one was born for this moment—no human being was born to claw their dignity out of the clenched fists of wannabe kings."

Supernuttig, dus ik heb me gelijk voor de nieuwsbrief ingeschreven.
https://mastodon.social/@Felienne/114647271618038360

Felienne Hermans (@Felienne@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image Hoeveel studenten kan een docent aan? Waar blijft het Turing Recht? Bestaat AI geletterdheid wel? En wat is er gebeurd met de Quantified Self? Dat en meer in mijn nieuwsbrief van deze week! https://www.felienne.nl/het-nieuws-van-week-23/

Trump walked out to a thunderous standing ovation as Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass” boomed from the sound system.
He watched martial artists slug it out behind a chain-link fence.
A female champion let the US president try on her gold belt.
It was a night of machismo, spectacle and violence.
Shortly before he joined an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event in Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday night,
Trump had signed an order deploying 2,000 national guard troop…

"You are a software worker. And you are able to do your job in more or less good conditions only because you are standing on the shoulders of countless others. We are talking about the fact that if you have 20 days of holidays, if you only work 5 days a week, if you are able to take some days or weeks off after the birth of your child, it is because some others before you have sacrificed their lives so you can work in decent conditions."

Dissenter Headlines For June 9, 2025 https://thedissenter.org/dissenter-headlines-for-june-9-2025/

Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska,
has publicly accused President Trump of treating Russia with “velvet gloves,”
criticized him for gutting AmeriCorps
and questioned his power to impose tariffs without congressional approval.
He has described Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of Signal to share sensitive military operations as “unacceptable.”
And he was the sole House Republican to vote “no” on a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of…

Breaking With Trump, Bacon Says He Won’t Follow His Party ‘Off the Cliff’
The Nebraska Republican’s dissent makes him one of a disappearing breed in the G.O.P. — and suggests he may head for the exit.

On Monday, scores of scientists at the National Institutes of Health sent their Trump-appointed leader a letter titled the "Bethesda Declaration"
challenging “policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.”
It says: “We dissent.”
In a capital where insiders often insist on anonymity to say such things publicly,
92 NIH researchers, program directors, branch chiefs and scientific r…

NIH scientists go public with criticism over Trump cuts
President Donald Trump’s National Institutes of Health director says some employees’ critical letter to him has “fundamental misconceptions about the policy directions the NIH has taken.” Monday’s letter from NIH researchers and staffers says the Republican Trump administration’s policies waste public resources and harm people’s health. NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in his confirmation hearings pledged openness to views that might conflict with his, saying dissent is the “essenc…