Tootfinder

In short, we just watched the US put a gun to its head and commit the equivalent of hegemonic suicide on the world stage.
Nothing will be the same ever again.
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen"
https://bsky.app/profile/esqueer.net/p

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AstralPlane
Jonathan Rado:
🎵 Easier
#JonathanRado
https://jonathanrado.bandcamp.com/track/easier
https://open.spotify.com/track/4yUwiObKaP3v3bmCDAQKLB

"New window-mounted heat pumps make ditching fossil fuels easier"
#HeatPumps #Energy
h…

New window-mounted heat pumps make ditching fossil fuels easier
They plug into a standard outlet, hang on the sill, and slash climate-warming pollution.

So in another dream I just woke up from, I was talking to someone about "the idea problem" (that it's becoming harder to monitize ideas, from a vox article written by an AI cooked reporter).
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-it-could-happen-here-30717896/episode/executive-disorder-white-house-weekly-46-313675864/
Basically, I was arguing that the majority of inventions target men because patriarchy puts economic control in men's hands. As men have started to help more with childcare, there have been more inventions related to childcare. (I don't have any idea if this is true. Seems legit, but I'm just relating my dream. I think I was also oversimplifying a bit to "men" and "women" because of my audience, but anyway it was a dream.) There's actually more low-hanging fruit, I pointed out, related to making care work easier.
So I argued that the real problem was a failure to invest in research into solving that problem. Today there are all these boondoggles built around killing people. What if, instead of all this government research into killing people, we dumped a ton of money into making it easier to support a household? That would be great for the economy. (Being asleep, I seem to have forgotten that working people need money.)
In the blur of being just awake I started thinking about how you could kickstart the US economy by taking the money from the AI boondoggle and other autonomous murder bots and create something like a program to build robots for housekeepers. You'd still be funding tech with government money, so the same horrible people get paid, but you're now actually solving real problems. It wouldn't even matter if it was a boondoggle, honestly. Just dumping money into something other than murdering people is good enough.
I imagined first if there was a program to fund a robot housecleaner, like robot dog with AI some laundry pickup, that would be provided, free of charge, to help people with children. It would work the same as the military boondoggle where a private company makes the government buy a piece of hardware from them and then also pay them to service it for some number of years. But instead of that hardware sitting around waiting to kill someone, it would be getting brought to people's houses to help them.
Then I thought, hey, you could even boost the economy more if you just had government funding for doulas and housecleaners and paid them a living wage. Hey, you could really kickstart the economy by nationalizing healthcare and including doula support as part of all births. Oh, and you could also just include the optional household help for families with children until the kids turn 18.
None of this is perfect (I don't actually think most of this is possible from any state), but the point is that it's actually wildly easy to figure out all kinds of ways to invest in the economy and monitize ideas as long as you aren't entirely focused on the same old "make money from spying on people and killing them." Funny that. Like they said in the podcast, maybe "finding ideas" isn't the problem.
Hope you enjoyed the weird semi-awake brain dump/rant.

Ezra Klein is moving from an opinion writer to a powerbroker, as sources say his partisan influence is raising concerns in the Democratic Party and the NYT (Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/16/ezra-klein-power-play-democrats

How Ezra Klein's power play is guiding Democrats
The New York Times columnist, podcaster and author has helped shape the party's strategies and policies in President Trump's second term.

The vibe shift in the EU and Canada over the weekend is unlike anything I've ever seen.
US hegemony in military and economic alliances is effectively dead.
History will look back and wonder how the elites in power not only did nothing to stop it but cheered it on willingly!
https://bsky.app/profi…

https://www.instagram.com/p/DSbtXuCCe9Y/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Japan Daily on Instagram: "Marty Friedman, an American musician based in Japan, visited a junior high school in Chiba at an event organized by local police to promote coexistence with foreigners. Speaking to first-year students, he said that 99.9% of foreigners who come to Japan are not dangerous and are often eager to communicate with Japanese people. He encouraged students to learn foreign languages and approach others without fear. Friedman also shared a personal story about forgetting his wallet in Japan, highlighting the country’s honesty. The event aimed to help young people understand cultural differences as foreign visitors and workers increase. Learning with empathy can reduce tension and improve everyday interactions. Source:TOKYO NP"
2,062 likes, 113 comments - japandaily_jp on December 18, 2025: "Marty Friedman, an American musician based in Japan, visited a junior high school in Chiba at an event organized by local police to promote coexistence with foreigners. Speaking to first-year students, he said that 99.9% of foreigners who come to Japan are not dangerous and are often eager to communicate with Japanese people. He encouraged students to learn foreign languages and approach others without fear. Friedman also shar…

Google updates Quick Share to work with Apple's AirDrop to make file transfers between iPhones and Android devices easier, starting with the Pixel 10 family (The Keyword)
https://blog.google/products/android/quick-share-airdrop/

Android and iPhone users can now share files, starting with the Pixel 10 family.
Today, we’re introducing a way for Quick Share to work with AirDrop.

At the HHS announcement yesterday announcing proposed rules to ban Gender Affirming Care,
they said trans people are
"at the root of the evils we face"
and are
"a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived.”
Just in case you thought it was about concerns for proper healthcare.
-- Alejendro Caraballo

Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net)
At the HHS announcement yesterday announcing proposed rules to ban GAC, they said trans people are "at the root of the evils we face" and are "a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived.” Just in case you thought it was about concerns for proper healthcare.

OpenAI rolls out an update to let users adjust ChatGPT's characteristics, including how warm or enthusiastic it is, and its use of headers, lists, and emojis (Emma Roth/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/848435/openai-chatgpt-characteris…

ChatGPT will now let you pick how nice it is
OpenAI is making it easier to edit emails with ChatGPT, too.