Tootfinder

As salty as I am about it, there's also another way to think about this. For anyone who still has connections to folks on the right (which is perhaps unlikely for anyone on this server, I digress), the cult that has consumed them thrives on isolation and grievance.
The words "you were right" have the potential to cut through the programming and open up an opportunity for reconnection. The modern conspiratorial cult of the Right has been built partially around people who were told they were wrong or were crazy. In the vast majority of cases, they were wrong and even when they were right they completely misunderstood why, but we'll skip that for now. Liberals making fun of them (even the times when they definitely earned it) has pushed them further and further into their ideological hole.
The thing about those words, "you were right," in this context is that the way they offer reconnection also requires them to take one little step of betraying their ideology to accept them. So they must choose between maintaining allegiance to a pedophile or finally getting to feel superior after years of living in an illusion of persecution.
Under the ideology of the Right, admitting one is wrong is a weakness. It is admitting defeat. They have to "own the libs" by saying things, things that they know aren't true, in order to feel dominant. But these things are often so absurd that they end up being made fun of, feeling even more weak and pathetic, reinforcing their fear and alienation.
Offering what they're looking for can offer a way out, but only if they're willing to start to recognize the thing they've supported for what it is.
And they were right about some things. They were right that Bill Gates was a terrible person. I've had plenty of liberals defend him based on his philanthropy washing, but he's awful and always has been. The Epstein links make that blatant. They intuitively recognized him and didn't trust him, even if they were wildly off base about *how and why* he shouldn't be trusted... Even if their correct mistrust was leveraged into one of the most destructive conspiracy theories ever (vaccine denial and COVID vaccine avoidance).
They were right about Bill Clinton. He was always shady as fuck. Sure, the people who attacked him at the time turned out to be even more shady but that's not the point right now. He was connected to Epstein and that was always creepy as fuck.
And the Epstein thing was an open secret that liberals ignored for a long time. It was seen as some weird thing that right wing nutjobs believed about the Clintons. But it was true. Not all of it, and there has always been an antisemitic element to the right wing interpretation or Epstein stuff, but his whole pedophile conspiracy was always kind of real.
The whole "Illuminati"/deep state thing is a vast oversimplification, an attempt to make comprehensible an incredibly complex set of interlocking and emergent behaviors. But Epstein did very much want to remake the world, to create a new world order, and he absolutely played a part in it.
The Right wing nutjobs talked about global authoritarianism, Blackhawks flying over American cities, masked men with guns disarming and executing legal gun owners in the streets. That's all happening right now.
The "FEMA concentration camps" are not actually that far off. ICE and FEMA are sister agencies, both under DHS. I'd be more than happy to call that one "close enough" in order to hear some MAGA admit that ICE is, in fact, building concentration camps.
There was always a huge millennialist element to these things. They tended to be connected to "the antichrist." It was absurd, especially for me as someone who no longer identifies as a Christian. But I'll even acquiess that to a degree. The "the number of the Beast" is 666. That's just the sum of the Hebrew spelling of "Nero." Revelations focuses a lot on Nero coming back to life after his death. His death that involved a head wound, thus the line from Revelation 13:3:
> And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast.
The parallels between Trump and Nero are easy to draw, and Trump's ear wound feels pretty on-the-nose for this. I don't believe in "prophecy" in this way. I think that there are patterns, and useful patterns can become encoded in beleif systems. But I will, again, happily call this one "close enough" for anyone on that side willing to also acknowledge it. I'm happy to meet on that common ground, because anyone who accepts it must recognize that their duty is to fight against it.
A lot of these correct nuggets are embedded in a framework of religious extremism and antisemitism. The vast majority of the beliefs holding these together are wildly wrong and incredibly toxic. But by giving some room to feel validated, listened to, understood, can give some room to admit things that were wrong.
Cult de-programming starts with an opening. People have to talk through their own thoughts, hear their own inconsistencies. Guiding questions can help them untangle these things for themselves. And it all starts by having enough room to feel safe, to not feel cornered, to not feel stupid. Admitting mistakes means being vulnerable, and the MAGA cult is built on fear. It's built on exploiting vulnerability and locking it away.
De-programming takes a long time. It's not easy. It takes patience. But every person who comes out does so with a powerful perspective, a deep understanding, that can be turned back against it. The best people at getting people out of cults are former members. Some of the most dedicated antifa are former fascists who understood their mistakes and dedicate their lives to fixing them.

Hi everyone,
I’m very happy to announce that Aya (@…) will be joining our little team of volunteers at Gaza Verified¹ to help us carry out verification calls.
Aya is in Gaza herself with her family (she’s @…’s daugher) and s…

Help Aya go to university & help her family survive genocide in Gaza
my name is kat & i live in scotland. i've started this campaign for my friend, aya rizq, who lives with her mum & siblings in the rubble of a destroyed gaza. 

From Cory Doctorow
"I'm not asking you to credulously accept Carney's conversion at face value. Rather, I'm asking that you celebrate the vision that Carney articulated while threatening to destroy his political life if he breaks his word. Let every politician know that there is glory in standing up for us – and let them know that betrayal will see them tossed overboard, to drown in our wake."

After the whole Adam Something "dating advice for leftist men" thing, I realized I should probably write something about that. I didn't, but I realized I should. Here I am sort of getting around to it.
I had a friend call me an "elder" at one point. I was like 35 at that time, but like... a lot of old leftists are just dead or in prison, so we take what we can get I guess. Being also an elder in the sense that I'm an elder millennial, who is also a parent and married for almost 10 years and all that, I guess I'm technically qualified.
So here it is, dating advice for (straight cis) leftist men:
1. Don't.
That's it, actually. That's the whole thing. Let me explain a bit.
First of all, this is dating advice for neuroatypical folks. We're way overrepresented in both extremes because this system wasn't built for us. And that's who is *the most* confused by all the relationship stuff, and most likely to try to apply all this masculinity/manosphere bullshit. I'm also talking a bit from experience here, as a neruo-spicy trying to "figure out" how to date within a paradigm entirely built around neurotypicals and their relationships. It's garbage. Throw it out. There's nothing worth saving.
His video had some line comparing not having sex to your house being on fire. I'm not gonna bother to quote it because I'm busy with actual life. But like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I recognize that and it's horribly destructive. Men who buy in to patriarchy actually believe this, because those men value themselves based on (hetro) sex. Yeah, if you think you're worthless because you aren't "getting laid" then yeah, you're gonna feel like that's an emergency.
"Dating" as a paradigm turns humans into roles. It dehumanizes us all, and thus makes human connection much harder. It is a game that, like thermonuclear war, can only be won by not playing.
When you abandon "dating" and just act like a human, everything starts to be easier. There's no such thing as being "friend zoned" because you're just friends. Sometimes friendships become other things, sometimes they don't. It doesn't actually matter, because if you're actually there for friendship then you don't *need* anything else.
My grandma, at 98 I think, gave me some advice. My grandparents always got along well, and were married for enough decades that I listened really closely. She told me I should just do things I loved to do and everything else would work itself out.
And it kind of did.
I understand the fear, the idea that you'll die alone. I get that. I get the loneliness. It all hits a lot harder when you have ADHD emotions and past trauma. I get that. But that fear is self-manifesting. When you build your confidence, when you don't *need* to be "in a relationship," you have more room to actually build relationships. For me, dating was dehumanizing. When I abandoned that, I was able to actually be a good partner, and I was able to find my partner.
I would advise against marriage as well, but we did get married for legal reasons. It can still be hard to maintain that, to see each other as people rather than roles. That becomes extra hard as parents. But the times that we cut through that are the times we're closest. Those are the times when it becomes easier to remember that we're both humans and all human relationships need tending.
Roles don't need to be tended because they are classifications. Classifications are static. But relationships between humans are not. Humans are messy and chaotic. Humans have all kinds of complex needs and desires.
So yeah, don't date. Just be a human and see what happens. Maybe google "relationship anarchy" and see where it takes you.
If you have ADHD, it can be especially useful to understand that relationships with neurotypical folks can be especially difficult. Assume you're incompatible with 90% of the population as your baseline, and you'll start to understand why the standard "dating" thing has made you feel so alienated and miserable.
Neurotypical folks generally have no idea that atypicality exists, much less how it impacts relationships. Having to conform to a neurotypical relationship just adds additional mental strain unless you find someone (really special) who can do at least some of the work.
The ADHD thing was especially important for me. There were so many things I was told to do in specific ways by neurotypicals that never worked for me. Their advice always made me feel like a failure. When I was finally diagnosed, I realized they were just giving advice for the wrong type of brain. It was advice I could never use. Basically all dating advice I ever got fell into this same category.
That's my braindump. Maybe I'll develop it more in the future, but I'm busy so maybe not. I hope it helps someone who is struggling like I was.

“So you have TikTok just smashing our young people’s brains all day long with video of carnage in Gaza … And this is why so many of us can’t have a sane conversation with younger Jews because anything that we try to say to them, they are hearing it through this wall of carnage. So I want to give data and information and facts and arguments and they are just seeing in their minds carnage and I sound obscene.”
– Former Obama speechwriter Sarah Hurwitz
“They trust their own eyes and…

Wall of Carnage Gazans, Olive Trees and Mosques
In the small town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, where I live, during Israel’s destruction of the Gaza Strip, a Democratic Party activist hung a flag of the state of Israel across the way from the only grocery store in town -- so that almost every member of the community would see it.

Experimental study of turbulent thermal diffusion of inertial particles in a convective turbulence forced by oscillating grids
E. Elmakies, O. Shildkrot, N. Kleeorin, A. Levy, I. Rogachevskii
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22008 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.22008 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.22008
arXiv:2602.22008v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We investigate the phenomenon of turbulent thermal diffusion of inertial solid particles in laboratory experiments with convective turbulence forced by one or two oscillating grids in the air flow. Turbulent thermal diffusion causes a non-diffusive contribution to turbulent flux of particles described in terms of an effective pumping velocity directed opposite to the gradient of the mean fluid temperature. For inertial particles, this effective pumping velocity depends on the Stokes and Reynolds numbers. In the experiments, fluid velocity and spatial distribution of inertial particles are measured using Particle Image Velocimetry system, and the temperature field is measured in many locations by a temperature probe equipped with 12 thermocouples. Measurements of temperature and particle number density spatial distributions have demonstrated formation of large-scale clusters of inertial particles in the vicinity of the mean temperature minimum due to turbulent thermal diffusion. In the experiments, the effective pumping velocity resulting in formation of large-scale clusters of inertial particles (having the diameter $10 \mu m$) is in 2.5 times larger than that for non-inertial particles (having the diameter $0.7 \mu m$). This is in an agreement with the theoretical predictions.
toXiv_bot_toot

If you think #vibecoding is fine, let me ask you a single question: would you use a medical device whose software was vibecoded? And by "medical device" I mean something where a bug could literally kill you.
If you answered "oh, gawd, no!" then consider that anytime you use an #LLM to contribute to or develop an #OpenSource project, there's a chance that this code will end up powering such a device. And even if it doesn't, you're setting a trend, and it will be even more likely that the software used by these devices will be vibecoded.
I have type 1 #diabetes. I also lead a physically active life. This is both a blessing and a curse. My doctors keep suggesting Constant Glucose Monitoring systems and insulin pumps to me. And I do realize that such hardware would likely improve my blood glucose, and definitely make my life much easier (especially with a closed loop system).
So why do my fingertips look like crap, and I keep using a glucometer and insulin pens? Because I don't want to risk my life to an unnecessarily complex technology.
Admittedly, I occasionally get things wrong and suffer consequences. Or I suspect I got them wrong and worry. Or meet an unexpected situation and need to figure out a way out. Or even accept having elevated glucose levels (as in nearing 200 mg/dl) because there's just no way to safely fit insulin doses on a particular day.
But still, I prefer having control and risking my own mistakes to a device that could suddenly start pumping insulin because of a bug. And that was even before the story of the application that stripped the decimal point and gave people ten times the dose. Or the one about CGMs giving wrong high glucose alerts. Or the whole vibecoding fancy.
Back then, I could have considered such a device. Now, I'm more worried than ever. And honestly, I'm hoping that relatively simple glucometers will remain available. To think that my worst fear used to be of a mechanical fault…
#AI #NoAI #NoLLM

I'm going to talk about my work today... to 4 year old kids at my daughter's school :)))
I hope my wet lab skills are good enough to isolate a DNA from banana!
#science #dissemination

oh no. why does the live action #Moana trailer look so desaturated and dull? Did they render it out in a log colorspace by mistake?
I loved the original Moana so much that I didn't even watch part 2 lest it sullies a perfect movie that needed no sequel in my opinion. I'll happily skip the live-action remake, too (yeah I know, if we hate on the remakes they won't magically do amazi…