Tootfinder

Mit der Studie ergibt vieles wieder Sinn, wenn davon gesprochen wird, dass »die Politik«™ Sorgen ernst nehmen müsse – die Sorgen sind nämlich rassistischer Natur und weniger Abstiegsängste. Passt auch zum Sachsen-Anhalt-Monitor 2025, demzufolge 90 Prozent mit ihrem Leben zufrieden sind. Nur die Ausländer, Schmarozer und Queers stört den Deutschen.

Just finished reading "The Beast Player" by Nahoko Uehashi. I had already watched the anime, but it had been so king I didn't remember all the details. While the anime was great, the book is even better, and it's going to be high on my list of things to recommend to my children when they're old enough to read for fun.
The neurodivergent representation is cool, as is the deep central question of interspecies bonds and the political possibilities and dangers they entail. Uehashi handles the exploration of that question well in my judgment, including appropriate ambiguity without muddying moral clarity. Elin is a truly fantastic protagonist, not without flaws but nevertheless a excellent role model and a very sympathetic figure without being pitiful.
One thing I really love about Uehashi's writing is that she's not shy about using interior narration to tell the reader directly what a variety of characters are feeling, but when she does this she focuses on human contradictions, quirks, and weaknesses that make those characters feel much richer, and that remind the reader of all the ways our weird and sometimes contradictory or inexplicable quirks guide our actions just as much as both logical thought and predictable/expected feelings. None of the characters is an unerring source of wisdom, with every grand principle presented shown to have its weaknesses and biases, and even the wisest characters making mistakes and learning from them.
Overall, a wonderful book, and having also seen the "Seirei no Moribito" anime but not read the books, I'm excited to dig into more of Uehashi's extensive catalog.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

Chatbots fueled by artificial intelligence bear disclaimers saying they cannot dispense medical advice or diagnose conditions,
-- but they still field millions of queries from users who are sick, trying to decipher medical records or understand their treatment options.

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans have turned to the bots for health information, according to a recent survey by KFF,
a nonpartisan health policy and education organization.

AI companies are rushing to meet thi…

1 in 3 Americans use chatbots for health advice. These 6 patients explain why.
They say cost, speed and other considerations drove them to AI. They are also learning what to believe and what to take with caution.

Points as Tori: Fast Pointwise Signed Distance for Point Clouds
Nicole Feng, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Keenan Crane
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.16946 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.16946 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.16946
arXiv:2607.16946v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We describe a method for computing signed distance to point clouds that allows fast pointwise evaluation at arbitrary spatial resolution. As input, our method takes a point cloud with normals; as output, it provides an analytical parameterization that allows queries of signed distance to the approximate underlying surface at arbitrary points - simultaneously providing reconstruction and distance. Our key idea is to reconstruct shapes by locally fitting point clouds with tori, which have closed-form signed distance functions. Tori are fitted in a feed-forward manner, using a pre-trained network to output per-point curvature and shift parameters. Importantly, our method does not require costly global optimization or spatial discretization, and is easily parallelizable. Underlying our method is a new theory that unifies signed distance with the classic reconstruction methods of winding numbers and Poisson surface reconstruction. We use our method to compute signed distance to point clouds arising from photogrammetry, meshes, 3D Gaussians, and neural implicits. Our method allows point clouds to be used directly in applications, without explicit surface reconstruction: as examples, we take offsets of point clouds, apply morphological and Boolean operations, and directly visualize offset surfaces using sphere tracing.
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