Tootfinder

Actually, I do want to come back to masculinity under patriarchy and whiteness under white supremacy because I think it's worth talking more about. The "man" under patriarchy (at least "Western" patriarchy) is represented as power and independence. The man needs nothing and thus owes nothing to anyone. The man controls and is not controlled, which is intimately related to independence as dependence can make someone vulnerable to control. The image of "man" projects power and invulnerability. At the same time "man" is a bumbling fool who can't be held accountable for his inability to control his sexual urges. He must be fed and cared for, as though another child. His worst behaviors must be dismissed with phrases such as "boys will be boys" and "locker room talk." The absurdity of the concept of human "independence" is impossible to understate.
Even if you go all Ted Kaczynski, you have still been raised and taught. This is, perhaps, why it is so much more useful to think in terms of obligations than rights. Rights can be claimed and protected with violence alone, but obligations reveal the true interdependence that sustains us. A "man" may assert his rights. Yet, on some level, we all know that the "man" of patriarchy acts as a child who is not mature enough to recognize his obligations.
White violence and white fragility reflect the same dichotomy. "The master race" somehow always needs brown folks to make all their shit and do all the reproductive labor for them. For those who fully embrace whiteness, the "safe space" is a joke. DEI shows weakness. Yet, when presented with an honest history adults become children who are incapable of differentiating between criticism and simple facts. *They* become the ones who must be kept safe. The expectation to be responsible for one's own words and actions, one of the very core definitions of being an adult, is far too much to expect. Their guilt needs room, needs tending, needs caring. White people cannot simply "grow the fuck up" or, as they may say of slavery, "fucking get over it."
And again, interestingly, it is *rights* that they reference: "Mah Freeze PEACH!" I find it hard to distinguish between such and my own child's assertion that anything she doesn't like is "not fair!" No, these assertions fail to recognize the fundamental fabric of adult society: the obligations we hold to each other.
At the intersection of all privilege is the sovereign, the ultimate god-man-baby. Again, referencing the essay (https://hexmhell.writeas.com/observations-on-domination-and-trump)
> This is where it becomes important to consider the ideology behind the sovereign ritual. Participation within the sovereign ritual denotes to the participants elements of the sovereign. That is, all agents of the sovereign are, essentially, micro dictators. By carrying out the will of the sovereign, these micro dictators can, by extension, act outside of the law.
While law enforcement is the ultimate representative of sovereign violence, privileges allow a gradated approximation of the sovereign. Those who are "closer" in privilege to the sovereign may, for example, be permitted to carry out violence against those who are father away. The gradation of privilege turns the whole society, except for the least privileged, into a cult that protects the privilege system on behalf of the most privileged. (And immediately Malcolm X pops to mind as having already talked about part of this relationship in 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf7rsCAfQCo.)

Podcast recommendation: The @… Podcast "How to fix the Internet" talks with @…, founder of the @…

Podcast Episode: Building and Preserving the Library of Everything
All this season, “How to Fix the Internet” has been focusing on the tools and technology of freedom – and one of the most important tools of freedom is a library. Access to knowledge not only creates an informed populace that democracy requires, but also gives people the tools they need to thrive....

It's really hard for me to floss: some of my interdental gaps shred floss. A decade ago I discovered GUM sticks and they've been fantastic for my dental health. Can't recommend them enough. Hope their inventor got rich.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/well/in

Dentists Know You Hate Flossing. Try This Instead.
You still have to clean between your teeth, but other tools might work even better.

my dad tells me all the time grandad desperately wants to hang with me alot more when im here, and im honestly much more interested in that than with dad so im tryna figure out how to do that today

If you are interested in software supply chain security, join us today at #CCS at 14:30 (Taiwan local time) for the talk "Attestable builds: compiling verifiable binaries on untrusted systems using trusted execution environments" given by @… and Daniel Hugenroth.…

Attestable builds: compiling verifiable binaries on untrusted systems using trusted execution environments
In this paper we present attestable builds, a new paradigm to provide strong source-to-binary correspondence in software artifacts. We tackle the challenge of opaque build pipelines that disconnect the trust between source code, which can be understood and audited, and the final binary artifact, which is difficult to inspect. Our system uses modern trusted execution environments (TEEs) and sandboxed build containers to provide strong guarantees that a given artifact was correctly built from a s…

Automated Creation and Enrichment Framework for Improved Invocation of Enterprise APIs as Tools
Prerna Agarwal, Himanshu Gupta, Soujanya Soni, Rohith Vallam, Renuka Sindhgatta, Sameep Mehta
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11626

Automated Creation and Enrichment Framework for Improved Invocation of Enterprise APIs as Tools
Recent advancements in Large Language Models (LLMs) has lead to the development of agents capable of complex reasoning and interaction with external tools. In enterprise contexts, the effective use of such tools that are often enabled by application programming interfaces (APIs), is hindered by poor documentation, complex input or output schema, and large number of operations. These challenges make tool selection difficult and reduce the accuracy of payload formation by up to 25%. We propose AC…

"I thought it was my mistake, but it's really the design'': A Critical Examination of the Accessibility of User-Enacted Moderation Tools on Facebook and X
Sudhamshu Hosamane, Alyvia Walters, Yao Lyu, Shagun Jhaver
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10789

"I thought it was my mistake, but it's really the design'': A Critical Examination of the Accessibility of User-Enacted Moderation Tools on Facebook and X
As social media platforms increasingly promote the use of user-enacted moderation tools (e.g., reporting, blocking, content filters) to address online harms, it becomes crucially important that such controls are usable for everyone. We evaluate the accessibility of these moderation tools on two mainstream platforms -- Facebook and X -- through interviews and task-based walkthroughs with 15 individuals with vision impairments. Adapting the lens of \emph{administrative burden of safety work}, we …

MirGuard: Towards a Robust Provenance-based Intrusion Detection System Against Graph Manipulation Attacks
Anyuan Sang, Lu Zhou, Li Yang, Junbo Jia, Huipeng Yang, Pengbin Feng, Jianfeng Ma
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10639

MirGuard: Towards a Robust Provenance-based Intrusion Detection System Against Graph Manipulation Attacks
Learning-based Provenance-based Intrusion Detection Systems (PIDSes) have become essential tools for anomaly detection in host systems due to their ability to capture rich contextual and structural information, as well as their potential to detect unknown attacks. However, recent studies have shown that these systems are vulnerable to graph manipulation attacks, where attackers manipulate the graph structure to evade detection. While some previous approaches have discussed this type of attack, …

I keep coming back to the mirror dualities of the oppressed and oppressor under authoritarianism.
The oppressed is portrayed as both weak and godlike. The stereotypes are always some variation on sloth and incompetence, but yet somehow also a menace capable of destroying the "pure" society. To use the most relevant current example, Antifa being both little femme soy boys who would always get beat up by "real men" while also being an international terrorist organization on the brink of overthrowing the US government, the unarmed presence of whom makes the heavily armed agents of ICE flee for their lives. Antifa is both having absolutely no impact on ICE, and also having such an impact on ICE that the military needs to come in to protect them. The contradiction is obvious but never seems to occur to those who hold both to be true at the same time.
But few talk about the duality of the oppressor. The sovereign throughout history has always been both a ruler above the law, sometimes even the representative or incarnation of a divine force. Yet, this same superhuman/god-man is also a baby who needs constant care. This is absolutely a through line from the very earliest records of sovereign cults to modern cult leaders, CEOs, and Trump today. Power, for these people, is expressed both as the ability to force others to enact their will and in the ability to compel others to care for them. Can any of these "men" cook? Can they fix anything themselves? They are driven everywhere, cooked for all the time, constantly protected from danger. Kings are still dressed, at least for rituals. I could dissect masculinity here, but that's a whole thing.
It is as though the drive to care for our children, who must be taught to behave within acceptable norms, is hijacked by "leaders" who demand our care and attention... even at the expense of our literal children. And recently we've seen some of those very CEOs, with LLMs and return to office demands, show that their judgment is also little better than children, making decisions while pretending to understand a subject.
The oppressed are portrayed as both god-like and impotent and are, in fact, neither. Meanwhile the rulers portray themselves only as invulnerable and are, in fact, childish in their ability to survive without constant support. Their greatest fear from the collapse of society is figuring out how to make sure people keep taking care of them.
It just keeps rattling around in my head.
#USPol

"Pragmatic Tools or Empowering Friends?" Discovering and Co-Designing Personality-Aligned AI Writing Companions
Mengke Wu, Kexin Quan, Weizi Liu, Mike Yao, Jessie Chin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11115

"Pragmatic Tools or Empowering Friends?" Discovering and Co-Designing Personality-Aligned AI Writing Companions
The growing popularity of AI writing assistants presents exciting opportunities to craft tools that cater to diverse user needs. This study explores how personality shapes preferences for AI writing companions and how personalized designs can enhance human-AI teaming. In an exploratory co-design workshop, we worked with 24 writers with different profiles to surface ideas and map the design space for personality-aligned AI writing companions, focusing on functionality, interaction dynamics, and …