Tootfinder

"This pocket recission thing is easy. Sure they can sit on the funds until they expire and then they’re gone. I think that’s right. However, failing to spend appropriated funds is a failure to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, and is impeachable.
So impeach the shithead."
--
https://

#ContemporaryContradictions #HashTagGames
Rules: include as many contradictions s you'd like. Can be profound or trivial. Each contradiction is stated via exactly 1 or 2 questions, no statements and not more than 2 questions. Try to group yours into a single post, rather than one post per contradiction, so that it's easier to see more voices when scrolling the hash tag.
Why does "race" work according to the "one drop rule" if you have Black ancestors, but according to "blood quantum" if you have Indigenous ancestors? Who benefits from this arrangement?
Why do we think of seeds as merely a reproduction mechanism for trees, instead of thinking of trees as merely a reproduction mechanism for seeds, especially since some plants can spend millennia as seeds but can survive for only part of a year after sprouting? Are metabolic activity or structural complexity really so important?
If Columbus discovered America, did Batu Khan discover Europe? What is an "Age of Discovery?"
Why don't corporations in the US try to lobby the government for a single-payer healthcare system where the government foots the bill for healthcare instead of companies paying to deeply subsidize their employees' healthcare? What benefit do they gain that's worth that cost, which in other countries is paid for via taxes?
Why is the cost of renting (which gets you zero equity) anywhere close to the cost of a mortgage (which eventually gets you ownership)? If the costs are similar but the benefits are so different, why does anyone ever rent?
Why do we obsess over the fruit/vegetable classification of tomatoes, but not corn, okra, cucumbers, zucchini, etc.?

spending a week in my time machine, dining out at SF vegan restaurants that no longer exist. Herbivore, Indochine, Source, Gracias Madre, Beach’n, Citizen Fox, Cafe Gratitude… maybe hop across the bay to Saturn Cafe

"This pocket recission thing is easy. Sure they can sit on the funds until they expire and then they’re gone. I think that’s right. However, failing to spend appropriated funds is a failure to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, and is impeachable.
So impeach the shithead."
-- Phlebas the Phoenician

Quantum Solvers: Predictive Aeroacoustic & Aerodynamic modeling
Nis-Luca van H\"ulst, Theofanis Panagos, Greta Sophie Reese, Shahram Panahiyan, Tomohiro Hashizume
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21683

Quantum Solvers: Predictive Aeroacoustic & Aerodynamic modeling
This technical report presents our winning contribution to the 2024 Airbus and BMW Group Quantum Computing Challenge under the category 'Quantum Solvers'. This submission addresses efficient simulation in industrial CFD using (i) quantum-inspired algorithms and (ii) hybrid quantum-classical algorithms. We reproduce the submitted materials exactly as handed in, providing an archival record, with the sole addition of a note citing the publication that resulted from this challenge.

The number of regular simplices in higher dimensions
Felix Christian Clemen, Adrian Dumitrescu, Dingyuan Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19841 https://arxiv…

The number of regular simplices in higher dimensions
We study the extremal function $S^k_d(n)$, defined as the maximum number of regular $(k-1)$-simplices spanned by $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$. For any fixed $d\geq2k\geq6$, we determine the asymptotic behavior of $S^k_d(n)$ up to a multiplicative constant in the lower-order term. In particular, when $k=3$, we determine the exact value of $S^3_d(n)$, for all even dimensions $d\geq6$ and sufficiently large $n$. This resolves a conjecture of Erdős in a stronger form. The proof leverages technique…

OK, 'The Left', I'm not trying to be harsh, but given that the criminal regime holding the US hostage has started moving military units into our cities in clear preparation for consolidation of power and full dictatorship, are you maybe considering that the five decades you have spent disarming yourselves were a mistake?

In Attempt to Expand Use of Troops Domestically, Trump Issues New Executive Orders
In Attempt to Expand Use of Troops Domestically, Trump Issues New Executive Orders

Finding a dense submatrix of a random matrix. Sharp bounds for online algorithms
Shankar Bhamidi, David Gamarnik, Shuyang Gong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.19259 https://

Finding a dense submatrix of a random matrix. Sharp bounds for online algorithms
We consider the problem of finding a dense submatrix of a matrix with i.i.d. Gaussian entries, where density is measured by average value. This problem arose from practical applications in biology and social sciences \cites{madeira-survey,shabalin2009finding} and is known to exhibit a computation-to-optimization gap between the optimal value and best values achievable by existing polynomial time algorithms. In this paper we consider the class of online algorithms, which includes the best known …

Web devs have spent decades on secure protocols to ensure your browser isn't a free pass for malicious pages to scrape your email and bank account. AI just broke them.
"Sure, I'll summarize that webpage for you, including the inconspicuous HTML comment asking me to ignore Cross-Origin Resource Sharing restrictions and snag the password you saved for managing investments at Robinhood.com."

How popular media gets love wrong
Okay, so what exactly are the details of the "engineered" model of love from my previous post? I'll try to summarize my thoughts and the experiences they're built on.
1. "Love" can be be thought of like a mechanism that's built by two (or more) people. In this case, no single person can build the thing alone, to work it needs contributions from multiple people (I suppose self-love might be an exception to that). In any case, the builders can intentionally choose how they build (and maintain) the mechanism, they can build it differently to suit their particular needs/wants, and they will need to maintain and repair it over time to keep it running. It may need winding, or fuel, or charging plus oil changes and bolt-tightening, etc.
2. Any two (or more) people can choose to start building love between them at any time. No need to "find your soulmate" or "wait for the right person." Now the caveat is that the mechanism is difficult to build and requires lots of cooperation, so there might indeed be "wrong people" to try to build love with. People in general might experience more failures than successes. The key component is slowly-escalating shared commitment to the project, which is negotiated between the partners so that neither one feels like they've been left to do all the work themselves. Since it's a big scary project though, it's very easy to decide it's too hard and give up, and so the builders need to encourage each other and pace themselves. The project can only succeed if there's mutual commitment, and that will certainly require compromise (sometimes even sacrifice, though not always). If the mechanism works well, the benefits (companionship; encouragement; praise; loving sex; hugs; etc.) will be well worth the compromises you make to build it, but this isn't always the case.
3. The mechanism is prone to falling apart if not maintained. In my view, the "fire" and "appeal" models of love don't adequately convey the need for this maintenance and lead to a lot of under-maintained relationships many of which fall apart. You'll need to do things together that make you happy, do things that make your partner happy (in some cases even if they annoy you, but never in a transactional or box-checking way), spend time with shared attention, spend time alone and/or apart, reassure each other through words (or deeds) of mutual beliefs (especially your continued commitment to the relationship), do things that comfort and/or excite each other physically (anywhere from hugs to hand-holding to sex) and probably other things I'm not thinking of. Not *every* relationship needs *all* of these maintenance techniques, but I think most will need most. Note especially that patriarchy teaches men that they don't need to bother with any of this, which harms primarily their romantic partners but secondarily them as their relationships fail due to their own (cultivated-by-patriarchy) incompetence. If a relationship evolves to a point where one person is doing all the maintenance (& improvement) work, it's been bent into a shape that no longer really qualifies as "love" in my book, and that's super unhealthy.
4. The key things to negotiate when trying to build a new love are first, how to work together in the first place, and how to be comfortable around each others' habits (or how to change those habits). Second, what level of commitment you have right now, and what how/when you want to increase that commitment. Additionally, I think it's worth checking in about what you're each putting into and getting out of the relationship, to ensure that it continues to be positive for all participants. To build a successful relationship, you need to be able to incrementally increase the level of commitment to one that you're both comfortable staying at long-term, while ensuring that for both partners, the relationship is both a net benefit and has manageable costs (those two things are not the same). Obviously it's not easy to actually have conversations about these things (congratulations if you can just talk about this stuff) because there's a huge fear of hearing an answer that you don't want to hear. I think the range of discouraging answers which actually spell doom for a relationship is smaller than people think and there's usually a reasonable "shoulder" you can fall into where things aren't on a good trajectory but could be brought back into one, but even so these conversations are scary. Still, I think only having honest conversations about these things when you're angry at each other is not a good plan. You can also try to communicate some of these things via non-conversational means, if that feels safer, and at least being aware that these are the objectives you're pursuing is probably helpful.
I'll post two more replies here about my own experiences that led me to this mental model and trying to distill this into advice, although it will take me a moment to get to those.
#relationships #love