Tootfinder

“They stood in a silence so heavy it seemed to bend the light around them.
Their smiles were hesitant — like doors that had forgotten how to open. And in that moment, I realized: freedom itself can be fragile.
We who survived war thought we had endured the worst — the bombs, the hunger, the endless waiting. But their stories shattered that belief.”
– @…

When I heard the prisoners were to be released, a fragile pulse stirred inside...
They stood in a silence so heavy it seemed to bend the light around them. Their smiles were hesitant — like doors that had forgotten how to open. And in that moment, I realized: freedom itself can be fragile. We who survived war thought we had endured the worst — the bombs, the hunger, the endless waiting. But their stories shattered that belief. They spoke of nights drenched in cold water while they slept, of wrists bound until flesh gave way, of blows that d...

«The moment was absurd but revealing; the university wasn’t resisting bullshit education, it was onboarding it. Education at its best sparks curiosity and critical thought. “Bullshit education” does the opposite: it trains people to tolerate meaninglessness, to accept automation of their own thinking, to value credentials over competence.»
An excellent read about how/why uni admin pushes the use of "AI" and the impact
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself

an insult to sand itself

From the article: "He added: “It’s something where it’s moving very quickly and people don’t necessarily have time to absorb it or figure out what to do.”"
That impersonal, natural "it" is moving - Not the people developing the models and selling them (or inflicting them), not the wealthy investors demanding market share, not the sci-fi addled techbros (Muskrats?) imagining that if only we get AGI all problems will be solved tomorrow, - all wanting to be first. Oh…

From the article: "He added: “It’s something where it’s moving very quickly and people don’t necessarily have time to absorb it or figure out what to do.”"
That impersonal, natural "it" is moving - Not the people developing the models and selling them (or inflicting them), not the wealthy investors demanding market share, not the sci-fi addled techbros (Muskrats?) imagining that if only we get AGI all problems will be solved tomorrow, - all wanting to be first. Oh…

London is establishing itself as a center for quantitative finance; filings show trading firms XTX, Qube, and Quadrature each made £1B revenue in the past year (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/8a6502c3-f244-4b61-880b-b20cf03299cc

You see some effort on the part of Congress to assert itself in the realm of war.
But it failed predominantly on party lines
Republicans predominantly were supporting the president and whatever it happens to be that he would like to do.
Moderate Republicans and Republicans who are in less safe districts were and are more likely to at least stand up a little bit to the president,
but there’s a very small number of them.

House rejects resolutions to limit Trump's military campaign
The House has rejected a pair of resolutions that would put a check on President Donald Trump’s power to use military force against drug cartels and the nation of Venezuela. Democrats forced the votes using war powers resolutions as Trump has stepped up his threats against the South American nation. Congress has questioned how the U.S. military is conducting a campaign that has destroyed 25 vessels allegedly carrying drugs and killed at least 95 people. The legislation would have forced the T…

Help requested.
The new MacOS update makes the DVD player (the thing for SuperDrives - surprised they aren't Magic Drives, now that I think about it) janky as hell. This is a well-known issue, according to my perfunctory web searches. Drops to something like 5FPS. Works fine otherwise, but annoying.
Two questions: Does anyone know if this is this likely to be fixed? And if not, and also while we wait, is there a DVD player someone can recommend? VLC needs Rosetta and its UI has always been borderline unusable anyway. Yes, I tried it again, but it switched randomly from German to Spanish and had no navigation menu for the disk itself. I'm looking for something that can read the disk and works like the native DVD player, minus the jank. But maybe the jank is fundamental. That's really what I'm trying to find out.
For now, I'll use a non-updated Mac but I will want to update it at some point. Ironists need not remind me about my recent rant regarding updates.
Thanks all.

Yeah, Jimmy “I’m actually quite in favour of business and capitalism and all that”* Wales, the surveillance capitalist and Fandom-president adtech man who once told me he doesn’t believe in any form of government regulation – not even in food standards or healthcare – can go fuck himself.
Find better heroes. Or even better yet, get over the whole stupid concept itself.
*

An investigation finds rampant caste bias in ChatGPT and Sora; a researcher also finds caste bias in Sarvam AI, which touts itself as a sovereign AI for India (Nilesh Christopher/MIT Technology Review)
https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/01/1124621/openai-in…

OpenAI is huge in India. Its models are steeped in caste bias.
India is OpenAI’s second-largest market, but ChatGPT and Sora reproduce caste stereotypes that harm millions of people.