Tootfinder

‘Last year, the online magazine 972 revealed the existence of a specialised military intelligence unit known as the “legitimisation cell”. Its mandate is narrative management. “Whenever criticism of Israel in the media intensified on a particular issue,” the report said, the cell combed through intercepted calls and fragments of intelligence from Gaza to identify material that could be deployed to defend Israel on the international stage.
“If the global media is talking about Israel ki…

Gaza and the Problem of Moral Stupidity • EQUATOR
Forty years after Edward Said demanded ‘permission to narrate’, the truth from Palestine has never been more widely known. And yet the annihilation continues.

"President #Trump lost. The war he waged against Iran promises to conclude in a humbling whimper with the signing of a cease-fire agreement later this week. The United States is left weaker—diminished militarily, strategically, economically, and perhaps morally." THE ATLANTIC

Trump in Defeat
The president went to war triumphant and will likely leave greatly weakened.

"Church of England votes against plan to rewild 30% of its land by 2030" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/14/church-of-england-votes-against-rewild-land-2030

Church of England votes against plan to rewild 30% of its land by 2030
Campaigners criticise C of E for failing to show moral leadership as one of country’s biggest landowners

Pläne zur Altersverifikation: „Problem ist das Plattformdesign, nicht das Alter“
Die EU plant schärfere Regeln für den Jugendschutz online. Marielle Findorff vom vzbv erklärt, warum Alterskontrollen nicht die Lösung sind.

Pläne zur Altersverifikation: „Problem ist das Plattformdesign, nicht das Alter“
Die EU plant schärfere Regeln für den Jugendschutz online. Marielle Findorff vom vzbv erklärt, warum Alterskontrollen nicht die Lösung sind.

Wyoming Primary:
One of the most conservative states has a legislature divided between a hard-right House and a merely right Senate.
Ultraconservatives want a complete takeover in the Aug. 18 primaries
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/13/us/elec…

In This State, an Intense Fight in the G.O.P. for Control of the Right
Wyoming, one of the most conservative states, has a legislature divided between a hard-right House and a merely right Senate. Ultraconservatives want a complete takeover in the Aug. 18 primaries.

On Bridging Mixture Distributions
Pierre Del Moral, Ajay Jasra, Ke Zhao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.13383 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.13383 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.13383
arXiv:2608.13383v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In this article we consider bridging between two mixture probability measures. In particular, given access to a Markov kernel between two component distributions, we provide a general mechanism to generate samples from one mixture to the other. Associated to a given reference and extended state space, we prove entropic optimality of this approach. In order to use this idea one needs to know the underlying mixtures and the Markov kernel, which is seldom available, and so we consider the case of Gaussian mixtures and Schr\"odinger Bridges. We prove a general $2-$Wasserstein continuity bound between the exact bridge and one that is approximated, based on $\epsilon-$covariance inflation, and these rely on a novel continuity analysis of perturbed Riccati maps. We apply our results in the context of bridging mixtures of Gaussians, single Gaussians and empirical estimators of the Gaussian parameters and the Monge map. For mixtures of Gaussians, when the parameters are estimated using the Expectation-Maxmization algorithm, the upper-bound on the $2-$Wasserstein distance between the true and approximated bridges is, under assumptions and with probability at least $1-10N^{-1}$, $\mathcal{O}\big(\big[\big(\tfrac{d\log N}{N}\big)^{1/2}\left\{1 \big(\tfrac{d\log N}{N}\right)^{1/2}(\epsilon^{-2} 1)\big\} \epsilon^2\big]\big) $
and for the other two cases, in expectation, $\mathcal{O}\left(d\left\{\tfrac{1 \epsilon^{-2}}{1 N} \epsilon^2\right\}\right)$, where $d,N\in\mathbb{N}$ is the dimension of the Gaussian and the number of empirical samples respectively. We also investigate our bounds numerically.
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On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US military was preparing to replace the USS Lincoln with the USS George Washington,
as concerns mount over the conditions aboard the Lincoln.
Reports by the Navy Times and Stars and Stripes this week described shortages of supplies and water as well as plumbing problems,
low morale and deteriorating mental health among the Lincoln’s roughly 5,000 sailors,
and further reported that there had been multiple attempts…

US navy veterans and military health experts express concern over USS Abraham Lincoln sailors
Prolonged deployment is coupled with reports of water shortages, plumbing issues and attempts to jump overboard

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, is making his dreams come true:
accelerating the arrest and removal of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant kids.
The man behind family separation in the first Trump term
who once boasted that policy would “prove to be a migration deterrent”
has now teamed up with another deadly threat,
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
to attack the most vulnerable kids in our country:
-- those here on their own.
By law…

Stephen Miller's secret campaign against helpless kids
That it's happening in the shadows doesn't make it less of a moral blight.