Tootfinder

Moody Urbanity - Everyone 👹
情绪化城市 - 每个人 👹
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ Orwo Wolfen P400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite

In an informal survey of 300 Cerebral Valley AI Conference attendees asking which $1B valuation startup to short, most voted Perplexity, followed by OpenAI (Ben Bergman/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/at-an-ai-c

At a top AI conference, 300 attendees were asked which startup they would short.
300 founders and investors in the audience at Cerebral Valley were asked which startup valued at more than a billion dollars they would bet against.

I recently researched the etymology of two interesting German words:
- "nonchalant" (informal, relaxed, casual, carefree, easy-going): I found that interesting because it's obviously a negation and I never read the non-negated form "chalant". Turns out that the non-negated form goes back to latin "calēre" (warm, to be hot, to be alarmed, to be fired up)
- "verschollen" (lost, missing, nothing has been known about the whereabouts of sth. or sb. for a long time). I found it weird because I couldn't make any sense of "schollen". This might be related to "verschallen" (stop making noise) and might go back to old high German "skellan" (which is also related to German "Schelle", a small bell). So, "verschollen" can be seen as a euphemistic expression because stop making noise is used to refer to being lost (and maybe dead).
#etymology #linguistics #German

the Irish word for diarrhea is buinneach so that's at least kinda cute. like im shitting out little bunny poops
there's also sciodar which is marked as "informal" and that's good, im glad I can casually refer to my buinneach with the bros

Functional Reasoning for Distributed Systems with Failures
Haobin Ni, Robbert van Renesse, Greg Morrisett
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12131 https://arxiv.or…

Functional Reasoning for Distributed Systems with Failures
Distributed system theory literature often argues for correctness using an informal, Hoare-like style of reasoning. While these arguments are intuitive, they have not all been foolproof, and whether they directly correspond to formal proofs is in question. We formally ground this kind of reasoning and connect it to standard formal approaches through language design and meta-analysis, which leads to a functional style of compositional formal reasoning for a class of distributed systems, includin…

🚧 Towards Modeling Road Access Deprivation in Sub-Saharan Africa Based on a New Accessibility Metric and Road Quality
#roads

Towards Modeling Road Access Deprivation in Sub-Saharan Africa Based on a New Accessibility Metric and Road Quality
Access to motorable roads is a critical dimension of urban infrastructure, particularly in rapidly urbanizing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, many urban communities, especially those in informal settlements, remain disconnected from road networks. This study presents a road access deprivation model that combines a new accessibility metric, capturing how well buildings are connected to the road network, with road surface type data as a proxy for road quality. These two components togeth…

Therapeutic AI and the Hidden Risks of Over-Disclosure: An Embedded AI-Literacy Framework for Mental Health Privacy
Soraya S. Anvari, Rina R. Wehbe
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10805

Therapeutic AI and the Hidden Risks of Over-Disclosure: An Embedded AI-Literacy Framework for Mental Health Privacy
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in mental health contexts, from structured therapeutic support tools to informal chat-based well-being assistants. While these systems increase accessibility, scalability, and personalization, their integration into mental health care brings privacy and safety challenges that have not been well-examined. Unlike traditional clinical interactions, LLM-mediated therapy often lacks a clear structure for what information is collected, how it is …

Can two Amazons survive? Invisible e-waste is poisoning the world https://news.mongabay.com/2025/12/can-two-amazons-survive-invisible-e-waste-is-poisoning-the-world/

Can two Amazons survive? Invisible e-waste is poisoning the world
“I live in Accra, Ghana,” says Isaac Dinwe, who works for Closing the Loop, a Dutch NGO that’s seeking to increase recycling in the electronics industry. “The e-waste problem in my country is so huge we are unable to manage it. Most of our e-waste ends up in city centres. Informal workers extract what they […]

A mathematical model for pricing perishable goods for quick-commerce applications
Milon Bhattacharya
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11360 https://arxiv.org/pdf…

A mathematical model for pricing perishable goods for quick-commerce applications
Quick commerce (q-commerce) is one of the fastest growing sectors in India. It provides informal employment to approximately 4,50,000 workers, and it is estimated to become a USD 200 Billion industry by 2026. A significant portion of this industry deals with perishable goods. (e.g. milk, dosa batter etc.) These are food items which are consumed relatively fresh by the consumers and therefore their order volume is high and repetitive even when the average basket size is relatively small. The fun…

60 years ago tonight, the merry pranksters' first informal acid test, held at ken babbs's place outside santa cruz, where the grateful dead did not play (& all purported flyers are almost certainly fake). below text from dennis mcnally's bio & i wrote about it for the 50th.

Labor Market Reforms, Flexibility, and Employment Transitions Across Formal and Informal Sectors
Selidji Caroline Tossou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03668 https://

Labor Market Reforms, Flexibility, and Employment Transitions Across Formal and Informal Sectors
In this paper, I investigate the 2017 labor market reform in Benin, which reduced firing costs and allowed firms to renew short-term contracts indefinitely. Using micro-data from the Harmonized Household Living Standards Surveys and a two-way fixed effect approach with nearby countries as the control group, I assess the reform's impact on employment, worker tenure, contract types, and wages. My empirical results reveal a 2.6 percentage point (24.5 percent) increase in formal sector employment a…

A read-only text field is focusable. And confusing to users.
If you add `tabindex="-1"` and/or `pointer-events: none`, admit it’s wrong and make it plain text instead.
If you use it anyway, style it so it’s clear (good luck). Here are my shitty styles: https://adrianroselli.com/…

Under-Engineered Text Boxen
Others in this sorta-series: Under-Engineered Custom Radio Buttons and Checkboxen Under-Engineered Toggles Under-Engineered Toggles Too This is the latest, and not last, in my informal series of posts on under-engineered controls. Generally I am looking at the minimum amount of CSS necessary to style native HTML controls while also retaining…

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/world/asia/china-delivery-shenzhen.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p08._HCm.9q92BAiFhsnn&smid=url-share

What It Takes to Get Lunch Delivered to the 70th Floor
An informal network of last-mile runners close the gap between harried delivery drivers and hungry office workers in a Shenzhen skyscraper.

@… oh wow, you can clearly see that this is a rushed piece. Besides some typos, the language is rather informal, not the kind one would expect from Apple marketing.

A profile of David Bailey, Trump's informal crypto advisor who organizes the Bitcoin Conference, as he seeks to turn a Utah health clinic into a bitcoin bank (Nina Bambysheva/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambyshev

Trump’s Crypto Adviser’s Quixotic Quest To Build A Leading Bitcoin Bank
Bitcoin Magazine publisher David Bailey believes he can turn a tiny Utah healthcare clinic into the Berkshire Hathaway of bitcoin. The stock market isn’t buying it.

Nominal Sets in Rocq
Fabr\'icio Sanches Paranhos (Nethermind - London, UK), Daniel Ventura (INF-UFG)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25883 https://arxiv.org…

Nominal Sets in Rocq
Nominal techniques have been praised for their ability to formalize grammars with binding structures closer to their informal developments. At its core, there lies the definition of nominal sets, which capture the notion of name (in)dependence through a simple, and uniform, metatheory based on name permutations. We present a formal constructive development of nominal sets in Rocq (formerly known as Coq), with its main design and project decisions. Furthermore, we formalize the concepts of fresh…

Johannesburg is showing African cities how climate action gets done.
The city is racing toward net-zero by 2050 with bold moves: diverting 100% of garden waste from landfills by 2040, building micro-grids in informal settlements, and creating jobs while cutting emissions.
Their approach is becoming a model for scalable climate solutions across the continent.

Bringing Pedagogy into Focus: Evaluating Virtual Teaching Assistants' Question-Answering in Asynchronous Learning Environments
Li Siyan, Zhen Xu, Vethavikashini Chithrra Raghuram, Xuanming Zhang, Renzhe Yu, Zhou Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17961

Bringing Pedagogy into Focus: Evaluating Virtual Teaching Assistants' Question-Answering in Asynchronous Learning Environments
Asynchronous learning environments (ALEs) are widely adopted for formal and informal learning, but timely and personalized support is often limited. In this context, Virtual Teaching Assistants (VTAs) can potentially reduce the workload of instructors, but rigorous and pedagogically sound evaluation is essential. Existing assessments often rely on surface-level metrics and lack sufficient grounding in educational theories, making it difficult to meaningfully compare the pedagogical effectivenes…

Bridging Language Models and Formal Methods for Intent-Driven Optical Network Design
Anis Bekri, Amar Abane, Abdella Battou, Saddek Bensalem
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22834 htt…

Bridging Language Models and Formal Methods for Intent-Driven Optical Network Design
Intent-Based Networking (IBN) aims to simplify network management by enabling users to specify high-level goals that drive automated network design and configuration. However, translating informal natural-language intents into formally correct optical network topologies remains challenging due to inherent ambiguity and lack of rigor in Large Language Models (LLMs). To address this, we propose a novel hybrid pipeline that integrates LLM-based intent parsing, formal methods, and Optical Retrieval…

The Role of Informal Care in Cognitive Outcome and Healthcare Utilization Among Older Adults with Dementia
Mohammad Abdullah Al Faisal
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18468 https://

The Role of Informal Care in Cognitive Outcome and Healthcare Utilization Among Older Adults with Dementia
This paper examines the relationship between informal caregiving and both cognitive functioning and healthcare utilization among older adults with dementia. Using data from the RAND version of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative longitudinal panel of U.S. adults over age 50, covering the years 2010 to 2022, I estimate Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Instrumental Variables (IV) models to address potential endogeneity in caregiving decisions. The number of children…

@… @… You can even see that it was a rushed peace. Informal writing, typos... it tells enough.

DIVERS-Bench: Evaluating Language Identification Across Domain Shifts and Code-Switching
Jessica Ojo, Zina Kamel, David Ifeoluwa Adelani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17768 https:/…

DIVERS-Bench: Evaluating Language Identification Across Domain Shifts and Code-Switching
Language Identification (LID) is a core task in multilingual NLP, yet current systems often overfit to clean, monolingual data. This work introduces DIVERS-BENCH, a comprehensive evaluation of state-of-the-art LID models across diverse domains, including speech transcripts, web text, social media texts, children's stories, and code-switched text. Our findings reveal that while models achieve high accuracy on curated datasets, performance degrades sharply on noisy and informal inputs. We also in…

Into the Void: Understanding Online Health Information in Low-Web Data Languages
Hellina Hailu Nigatu, Nuredin Ali Abdelkadir, Fiker Tewelde, Stevie Chancellor, Daricia Wilkinson
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.20245

Into the Void: Understanding Online Health Information in Low-Web Data Languages
Data voids--areas of the internet where reliable information is scarce or absent--pose significant challenges to online health information seeking, particularly for users operating in low-web data languages. These voids are increasingly encountered not on traditional search engines alone, but on social media platforms, which have gradually morphed into informal search engines for millions of people. In this paper, we introduce the phenomenon of data horizons: a critical boundary where algorithm…

If you are trying to figure out the Cowichan Lands court ruling and what it means for private property, this article by the CBC's always-excellent court-reporter Jason Proctor, is, again, excellent.
This tidbit was particularly illuminating and should raise questions as to why we are in this state of 'panic' now:
"Back in 2017, Canada's Attorney General sought an order requiring the Quw'utsun to notify third-party homeowners, but the judge overseeing proceedings at the time rejected the application after the Quw'utsun said they weren't seeking title or possession of any private lands.
"However," Justice Jennifer Power wrote, "my decision does not prevent any of the defendants from providing informal notice to private landowners if they wish to do so.””
ie. Richmond, the Province, and others should have told the landowners not only that this court process was happening, but most importantly that *their property titles* were not being threatened!
#Indigenous #FirstNations #BCPoli #CanPoli #Reconciliation #Property
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cowichan-aboriginal-title-land-ownership-9.6965257

Navigating Equity and Reflexive Practices in Gigwork Design: A Journey Mapping Experience
Alicia E. Boyd, Danielle Cummings, Angie Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16808 https:/…

Navigating Equity and Reflexive Practices in Gigwork Design: A Journey Mapping Experience
How do we create ethical and equitable experiences on global platforms? How might UX designers and developers incorporate reflexive practices--a continuous self-evaluation of one's assumptions and biases--to mitigate assumptions and workers' experience? This tutorial will explore ways to build equitable user experiences using gig work platforms as a target use case. With the rise of gig work platforms, the informal digital economy has altered how algorithmic systems manage occasional workers; i…

myPhysmatics: Connected Mathematical Models in Physics
Sergej Pankratow
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16269 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.16269

myPhysmatics: Connected Mathematical Models in Physics
This book is devoted to an informal discussion of patterns constructed for treating physical problems. Such patterns, when sufficiently formalized, are usually referred as "models", and tents to be applied not only in physics, but conquer the fields traditionally occupied by other disciplines generally considered to be different from physics. The author calls this unification of seemingly disjoint results a "physmatical effect" - pointing to the fact that multitudes of fine - grained physics-ba…