Tootfinder

My haul from Waterstones this morning. I went specifically looking for Body Work so was delighted to find it. I didn't mean to buy the two other books. I was initially drawn in by the lovely covers, then the 'buy one get one half price' stickers. I've enjoyed many Japanese novels in translation, starting with The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki a few years ago.

"Different sperm whale ‘dialects’ detected on separate sides of the Mediterranean"
#Mediterranean #Whales #Animals

Different sperm whale ‘dialects’ detected on separate sides of the Mediterranean
Matriarchal groups in east and west exhibit distinct click patterns, used to form social structures

FanDuel owner Flutter plans to delist its London shares on August 3, citing low trading and high costs; Flutter moved its primary listing to the US in 2024 (Lauren Almeida/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/…

Paddy Power owner Flutter to scrap listing on London Stock Exchange
Gambling business, which also owns Betfair, to focus on New York in latest high-profile blow to UK stock market

Sonnet 008 - VIII
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to …

Liebe Rennradfahrende: nicht alle, aber leider zu viele.
Wir haben hier Radwege, drei bis vier Meter breit, top gepflegt. Trotzdem fahren manche daneben auf der Straße. Im Auto egal. Aber ich sitze regelmäßig auf dem Traktor samt Anhänger.
Überholabstand? Unmöglich. Also krieche ich zehn Minuten mit 10 km/h hinter einem Carbonrad den Berg hoch, während rechts der Radweg leer daliegt.
Mehr Zeitdruck, mehr Diesel, mehr Gefahr. Bitte nutzt den Radweg. Danke.

I love my cat, but she really has no grasp of academic Marxism. Words like dialectical and conjuncture mean nothing to her.

Kimalaiset ratkaisevat ongelmia kuin kädelliset – uusi tutkimus haastaa käsityksiä eläinten älykkyydestä https://www.verdelehti.fi/2026/06/11/kimalaiset-ratkaisevat-ongelmia-kuin-kadelliset-uusi-tutkimus-h…

Kimalaiset ratkaisevat ongelmia kuin kädelliset – uusi tutkimus haastaa käsityksiä eläinten älykkyydestä
Uusi tutkimus osoittaa, että kimalaiset pystyvät ratkaisemaan ongelmia, joita ne eivät ole aiemmin kohdanneet. Tulos haastaa käsityksen, jonka mukaan spontaani ongelmanratkaisu on vain ihmisten ja muiden suuriaivoisten selkärankaisten ominaisuus.

You might be delighted to learn about German antifascists' love for humorous #antifa slogans. My attempt at translating some:
“Twitter down, but popular: Mastodon for Antifa”
(pronunciation: 'un-tea fuh, stress on 1st syllable)
“High up there, but popular: aircraft pilots' Antifa”
“Masked and vaxxed, but popular: Covid-19 Antifa”
“Long ago, but popular: B…

One last example:
The first LLM code example that really made my eyes pop was early after the release of GPT, when somebody got it to combine Breakout with Conway’s Game of Life (a truly delightful idea). It worked!
Funny thing: the Breakout code and the Life code had a •completely• different style and flavor. Red flag. In about 15 minutes of web searching, I was able to find one of the projects (can’t remember if it was the Breakout or the Life half) which it had copied wholesale, with just a few variable renames. And the other half? It was in Python, but it used dictionaries where it really should have used objects — tons of `thing["prop"]` where it should have said `thing.prop`, and lots of other un-Pythonic stuff besides. It was a machine translate of code from another language, very likely Javascript.
The entire thing was a plagiarized Breakout and a plagiarized Game of Life, one transpiled, and all stuck together in a single run loop. To be fair, figuring out how to (1) run both halves of the logic from a single loop and (2) count the Life cells as Breakout bricks is work I'd cheer on from a second-semester intro CS student! It's not, however, quite what's being sold by these companies.
6/

The Maine Democratic party has landed on hosting a nominating convention,
which will include 500 delegates elected proportionally by county committees
and a preexisting 100-person state committee.
Together, those 600 delegates will decide which of the many potential Platner replacements will face Republican Senator Susan Collins in November.
They have until July 27 to officially nominate Platner’s opponent.
To be eligible for nomination, candidates must garne…

The Race to Replace Graham Platner Is Heating Up
Maine Democrats plan to stage a nominating convention to select their Senate nominee. They’ve already got a lot of options.