Tootfinder

For those into Debian minutiae there seems to be an interesting question asked today about whether the Community Team and Release Team can overrule a package maintainer in order to remove a package from Debian on non-technical grounds.
This isn't very controversial in something like Ubuntu because there it's accepted that that kind of directive can come from above.
I don't think I will link to it.

Voting in the UK Green party elections is half over. Too late to join the party and vote, and sounds like Zack is very likely to win.
Which is good. I voted for him.
I think the job-share rule is important and that any job should be possible to share between workers. But in the case of the "leader", which is literally the face of the party, having two faces is difficult in the public hive mind. Even with a united front, it's litterally two faced.
But mostly my vote was just for Zack, and would have likely voted for him in a job-share too.
He's very personable and seems to know how to talk to the public and express not just environmental issues but other green issues like inequality and war and how your enemy is not a boat of refugees but the concentration of power in the hands of maniacs both political and corporate.
I confess I gave up trying to read anything about the candidates and cast a vote about half way down all the other jobs being elected. I'm just adding noise. I dunno who any of these people are or even what the job entails most of the time and there's too many all at once. Should stagger them weekly or something.
Anyway here's Zack on Mark Steel's sweary podcast being brilliant on the issues and how to explain them better than I can.
I love Mark Steel too. Miss the sketches things it used to have in the newish revised entirely-an-interview format.
🤞
In two parts
#podcast #green #uk #ZackPolanski #listening

from my link log —
Zig's lovely syntax.
https://matklad.github.io/2025/08/09/zigs-lovely-syntax.html
saved 2025-08-10

So I've found my answer after maybe ~30 minutes of effort. First stop was the first search result on Startpage (https://millennialhawk.com/does-poop-have-calories/), which has some evidence of maybe-AI authorship but which is better than a lot of slop. It actually has real links & cites research, so I'll start by looking at the sources.
It claims near the top that poop contains 4.91 kcal per gram (note: 1 kcal = 1 Calorie = 1000 calories, which fact I could find/do trust despite the slop in that search). Now obviously, without a range or mention of an average, this isn't the whole picture, but maybe it's an average to start from? However, the citation link is to a study (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32235930/) which only included 27 people with impaired glucose tolerance and obesity. Might have the cited stat, but it's definitely not a broadly representative one if this is the source. The public abstract does not include the stat cited, and I don't want to pay for the article. I happen to be affiliated with a university library, so I could see if I have access that way, but it's a pain to do and not worth it for this study that I know is too specific. Also most people wouldn't have access that way.
Side note: this doing-the-research protect has the nice benefit of letting you see lots of cool stuff you wouldn't have otherwise. The abstract of this study is pretty cool and I learned a bit about gut microbiome changes from just reading the abstract.
My next move was to look among citations in this article to see if I could find something about calorie content of poop specifically. Luckily the article page had indicators for which citations were free to access. I ended up reading/skimming 2 more articles (a few more interesting facts about gut microbiomes were learned) before finding this article whose introduction has what I'm looking for: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3127503/
Here's the relevant paragraph:
"""
The alteration of the energy-balance equation, which is defined by the equilibrium of energy intake and energy expenditure (1–5), leads to weight gain. One less-extensively-studied component of the energy-balance equation is energy loss in stools and urine. Previous studies of healthy adults showed that ≈5% of ingested calories were lost in stools and urine (6). Individuals who consume high-fiber diets exhibit a higher fecal energy loss than individuals who consume low-fiber diets with an equivalent energy content (7, 8). Webb and Annis (9) studied stool energy loss in 4 lean and 4 obese individuals and showed a tendency to lower the fecal energy excretion in obese compared with lean study participants.
"""
And there's a good-enough answer if we do some math, along with links to more in-depth reading if we want them. A Mayo clinic calorie calculator suggests about 2250 Calories per day for me to maintain my weight, I think there's probably a lot of variation in that number, but 5% of that would be very roughly 100 Calories lost in poop per day, so maybe an extremely rough estimate for a range of humans might be 50-200 Calories per day. Interestingly, one of the AI slop pages I found asserted (without citation) 100-200 Calories per day, which kinda checks out. I had no way to trust that number though, and as we saw with the provenance of the 4.91 kcal/gram, it might not be good provenance.
To double-check, I visited this link from the paragraph above: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022316622169853?via=ihub
It's only a 6-person study, but just the abstract has numbers: ~250 kcal/day pooped on a low-fiber diet vs. ~400 kcal/day pooped on a high-fiber diet. That's with intakes of ~2100 and ~2350 kcal respectively, which is close to the number from which I estimated 100 kcal above, so maybe the first estimate from just the 5% number was a bit low.
Glad those numbers were in the abstract, since the full text is paywalled... It's possible this study was also done on some atypical patient group...
Just to come full circle, let's look at that 4.91 kcal/gram number again. A search suggests 14-16 ounces of poop per day is typical, with at least two sources around 14 ounces, or ~400 grams. (AI slop was strong here too, with one including a completely made up table of "studies" that was summarized as 100-200 grams/day). If we believe 400 grams/day of poop, then 4.91 kcal/gram would be almost 2000 kcal/day, which is very clearly ludicrous! So that number was likely some unrelated statistic regurgitated by the AI. I found that number in at least 3 of the slop pages I waded through in my initial search.

from my link log —
Apple's sillyballs (1988).
https://devnonsense.com/posts/apple-sillyballs/
saved 2025-04-30 https://

IPv6 woes solved, I now have (I think, still testing) fully working IPv6 again.
The fix was incredibly braindead and stupid: turning on the IPv4 DHCP server on the LAN side of the Comcast CPE (i.e. on the point to point link between the CPE and my border router).
This would be completely unnecessary in a sane world, since I'm never going to DHCPDISCOVER on this subnet (the CPE and border router both have static world routable IPv4 addresses).
But apparently turning on t…

In light of all the Epstein discussions around US politics, I think this is a pretty good onion link: https://theonion.com/this-will-be-the-end-of-trump-s-campaign-says-increa-1819578486/ With Trump's tweet defending himself and his close circle…

"Why the Left lost on Trans Rights" - a conversation between Sarah McBride and Ezra Klein. Below the link to YouTube, but you can also find it as a podcast. It's not about Trans rights, really. It's about the culture war; grace; demanding perfection in action and flawlessness in language instead of accepting allyship in substance and grace when someone is trying; about not having space to think differently.
1.5h, but I recommend listening. So many nuggets of wisdom.…

A few days ago I got very excited when seeing a link for a minimal emacs setup.
Why? My Emacs setup is not minimal. And I always think it is not well enough organized.
I stopped looking at this minimal setup project very early. I have realized that I’d have to use and learn yet another set of settings that this would translate into Emacs options.
I perceive this extra indirection layer as an added complexity and distancing myself from understanding Emacs.

I think he is trying to say he is an Avenger without realising he is the supervillain.
Also, does he know that while he is torrenting the world libraries into his bank account, you could set up for $10 a month your own Mastodon instance which is ten times better federated than his 'federated' Threads?

Limn Issue 12: Climate's Interiors is out now online and in print.
Read anywhere with the link below.
https://limn.press/issue/climates-interiors/

Climate's Interiors - Limn
We tend to think about climate solutions from the exterior. Mitigating emissions, climate-proofing crops, erecting solar panels and windmills. But what happens when we shift our perspective? What if we think of climate change from inside cells, bodies, buildings, and systems? This issue of Limn takes the interior as a counterintuitive starting point for thinking about planetary change. Our proposition: Thinking from the interior fundamentally shifts how we understand our warming world and, cruc…

Was the almost endless protection of "exercise of religion" and the now almost dead "establishment of religion" clauses in our First Amendment a mistake?
I think it is.
We have seen and are seeing the extremes of fundamentalist religion: Al Queda, ISIS, MAGA, etc
Israel has its own fundamentalist problems too. (Link below).
It has been said "never let a good crisis go to waste". Well, we certainly have several good crises going on.

As Other Israelis Die in War, Ultra-Orthodox Resist Call to Fight
Ultra-Orthodox Israelis, exempt for decades from military service, are now being drafted. Their rage is dividing Israel and threatening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

My cousin once removed is in the news again. I think his link to the article subject is a bit tenuous, but it's good to see him in the public eye nonetheless. It's a good cheese shop. You should go there and have one of their toasties!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kW72VGg-d4

Apropos of nothing, you can always reach ProPublica with anonymous tips, files, and information that you think could hold powerful people and institutions accountable via this link: https://www.propublica.org/tips/

How to Contact ProPublica or Send a Tip Securely — ProPublica
Our job is to hold people and institutions accountable. To do that, we need evidence.

I am considering going through my followers and following lists and removing anyone who has a twitter link in their bio.
I don't think this will remove many, and probably mostly just dormant accounts, but if this does impact you, sorry. I hope you will finally consider letting twiiter go.

I'm not sure what Exodus is as it's a Book, a Desktop D&D variant and all marketing a video game with a Founder's deadline of the end of this month,
I've read the novel which was interesting and entertaining but I don't think the characters have that much to do with the video game, though the classes of characters do.
Anyhow I can't recommend the game as it doesn't seem to be released yet but here's a link which gets you the Founder's site.…

from my link log —
UK High Court to lawyers: cut the ChatGPT or else.
https://pivot-to-ai.com/2025/06/07/uk-high-court-to-lawyers-cut-the-chatgpt-or-else/
saved 2025-06-08

UK — High Court to lawyers: cut the ChatGPT or else
US lawyers have spent the past two years filing briefs full of citations to nonexistent cases — because a chatbot made them up. You’d think these intelligent and educated people would know better t…

Toronto Star: “New numbers reveal 10,000-plus Ontario college layoffs, 600 programs cancelled or suspended over past year”
The bloodbath in our higher education system in Canada has gotten NO press even though provincial governments and likely federal KNOW. This is the first in depth article I have seen. ALL governments micro-manage university and college policy/finances, no matter what they might say to the contrary.
Here are some truths you need to know:
Yes, I am biased as a 25 year employee of a University.
Yes, my University has also had completely unprecedented cuts in the past 12-24 months, with more coming.
Yes, it is because of the loss of International Students and their tuition revenue. Without that loss, many domestic enrollment numbers have actually been growing, but the money per student is orders of magnitude less. (ie. International was a cash cow)
Yes, faculty and even many admin, have been warning about the government downloading funding onto International tuitions for decades.
Yes, government will claim they are “investing more than ever”, but this is usually about Capital expenses (buildings, residences, infrastructure) or meeting contractual increases for staff salaries, *not* operating expenses.
Yes, in BC in the 1980s 80-90% of a University or College operating budget was covered by “base funding” from the province. Now, it is often below 50%. (If this makes you ask… is it still a “public University system”, please do!!)
And finally, yes, if we want to consider ourselves a modern country, we cannot possibly think this kind of contraction in educational opportunity (while domestic tuitions continue to increase!) is at all healthy for our society as a whole.
Toronto Star: #canpoli #cdnpoli #education #internationalEd #immigration #postsecondary #educationShouldBeFree

from my link log —
Writing that can change how you think about programming languages.
https://bernsteinbear.com/blog/pl-writing/
saved 2025-05-13

One reason why I think the Web as a whole may be struggling is that Google doesn't link out to the Web as much anymore. Here is one example. And in this case, it doesn't even have to do anything with AI.
I was searching on my phone for "Bundespräsident" (the German word for Federal president, formally the highest role in the German administration). My language setting is English, I was searching on Android, from within Germany.