Tootfinder

In the field of dynamical glaciology, this would be DeConto and Pollard, 2016.
I think it's dead wrong, but it's certainly led to some very interesting studies.and some real advanced in the otherwise moribund calving dynamics sub-field.
Would love to hear other suggestions from #climate (or adjacent) fields..
#science

RE Mike Lee’s execrable proposal for "Pirates of the Caribbean "
a few days ago
—it’s bad, but
sadly in line with the right-wing movement to expand private actors’ privilege to use violence.
Darrell Miller wrote about this in what we called
“the new outlawry”
https://www.

THE NEW OUTLAWRY - Columbia Law Review
Introduction From subtle shifts in the procedural mechanics of self-defense doctrine to substantive expansions of justified lethal force, many red-state legislatures across the country are delegating larger amounts of “violence work” to the private sphere. In the wake of antiracism protests in summer 2020, Republican-dominated legislatures proposed a slew of such measures. The measures provide […]

On Discovering Algorithms for Adversarial Imitation Learning
Shashank Reddy Chirra, Jayden Teoh, Praveen Paruchuri, Pradeep Varakantham
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00922 https://…

On Discovering Algorithms for Adversarial Imitation Learning
Adversarial Imitation Learning (AIL) methods, while effective in settings with limited expert demonstrations, are often considered unstable. These approaches typically decompose into two components: Density Ratio (DR) estimation $\frac{ρ_E}{ρ_π}$, where a discriminator estimates the relative occupancy of state-action pairs under the policy versus the expert; and Reward Assignment (RA), where this ratio is transformed into a reward signal used to train the policy. While significant research h…

In #Memphis, Trump's "safe" goon squad raided the wrong house and forced the occupant out into the cold wearing nothing but her panties. They were after a guy who doesn't live there — and who had already been arrested in Arkansas.

The warm outer layer of a Little Red Dot as the source of [Fe II] and collisional Balmer lines with scattering wings
Alberto Torralba, Jorryt Matthee, Gabriele Pezzulli, Rohan P. Naidu, Yuzo Ishikawa, Gabriel B. Brammer, Seok-Jun Chang, John Chisholm, Anna de Graaff, Francesco D'Eugenio, Claudia Di Cesare, Anna-Christina Eilers, Jenny E. Greene, Max Gronke, Edoardo Iani, Vasily Kokorev, Gauri Kotiwale, Ivan Kramarenko, Yilun Ma, Sara Mascia, Benjam\'in Navarrete, Erica Nelson, …

The warm outer layer of a Little Red Dot as the source of [Fe II] and collisional Balmer lines with scattering wings
The population of the Little Red Dots (LRDs) may represent a key phase of supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth. A cocoon of dense excited gas is emerging as key component to explain the most striking properties of LRDs, such as strong Balmer breaks and Balmer absorption, as well as the weak IR emission. To dissect the structure of LRDs, we analyze new deep JWST/NIRSpec PRISM and G395H spectra of FRESCO-GN-9771, one of the most luminous known LRDs at $z=5.5$. These reveal a strong Balmer break,…

Spot the difference from yesterday? More framSpot the difference from yesterday? More framework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.ework over the top by the ceiling and around the windows ready for the mirrored door blinds.
Bought more wood struts. Had quite a comedy farce trying to get the things into the house now the build cupboards prevent them entering the room. Had to carry them around into the garden then in through the back door and up into the kitchen to get the angle to enter the bedroom.
The company sending the new paint had emailed saying that they don't do varnish in the colours they had allowed us to order, so asked for whatever blues they do have. That did not arrive today. Nor did the extra wood that was set for "early" this week.
Making all these doors is going to take ages and I suggested that seems like something that could be done working from home. He's probably got a proper workshop there even. Carpenter suggests his boss won't allow such things though. 🙄 Bosses eh? They do like their staff to be monitored even if only by the client.

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

From subtle shifts in the procedural mechanics of
self-defense doctrine
to substantive expansions of justified lethal force,
legislatures are delegating larger amounts of
“violence work”
to the private sphere.
These regulatory innovations layer on top of existing rules that broadly authorize private violence
—both defensive and offensive
—for self-protection and the ostensible maintenance of law and order.
Yet such significant authority…

THE NEW OUTLAWRY - Columbia Law Review
Introduction From subtle shifts in the procedural mechanics of self-defense doctrine to substantive expansions of justified lethal force, many red-state legislatures across the country are delegating larger amounts of “violence work” to the private sphere. In the wake of antiracism protests in summer 2020, Republican-dominated legislatures proposed a slew of such measures. The measures provide […]