Tootfinder

Universal's Wicked: For Good debuted with $150M in North America and $76M overseas in its opening weekend, the biggest global opening for a musical adaptation (Rebecca Rubin/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/film/box-office/wicked-fo…

Wicked 2 Box Office: For Good Sets Record for Broadway Adaptation
"Wicked: For Good" was No. 1 with $150 million and set a record for Broadway adaptations.

Good Morning #Canada
You don't have to like numbers to appreciate Statistics Canada, aka StatsCan. Jean Talon could be considered Canada's first official statistician when he arrived in North America in 1665 on a mission for King Louis XIV to conduct Canada's first census in 1666. In 1918, the Statistics Act created the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, a national statistics office that ultimately would become Statistics Canada. Besides conducting the Census of Population and the Census of Agriculture every five years, StatCan has more than 450 active surveys on virtually all aspects of life in Canada. Results are published twice a month and can be accessed via The Daily web page.
One of my favourite web pages is Canada's Population Clock (real-time model). It's fascinating to watch, and our population increased by 11 while I typed this post.
#CanadaIsAwesome #StatsCan
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2018005-eng.htm

❄️ It’s freezing cold outside here in Germany, and this is an interesting explainer of why that is: a warming event in the polar region is leading to an early collapse of the polar vortex, so Europe and North America are flooded with cold air, while the North Pole is unusually warm. #weather #climate

Stratospheric Warming Watch: Polar Vortex Collapse has begun, with cold air and snowfall impacts expected
A Stratospheric Warming is now collapsing the Polar Vortex, with polar air and snow forecast across the United States, Canada and Europe in December

European VC funding rose 9% YoY to hit $58B in 2025, below North America's 46% YoY rise; AI led with $17.5B, followed by biotech's $13.4B and hardware's $10.8B (Gené Teare/Crunchbase News)
https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/european-funding-nudged…

European Venture Funding Nudged Higher In 2025, While AI Led For The First Time
Venture funding to Europe-based startups last year gained only slightly, around 9% year over year, reaching $58 billion, with AI emerging as the region’s leading sector for startup investment for the first time, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows. 

Just my luck to be visiting Antigua and Dominica on day #Drumpf admin declares the two islands as subject to US Travel Ban?
https://www.imidaily.com/north-america/ant

Antigua and Dominica PMs Respond to US Travel Ban - IMI Daily
Antigua PM calls US travel ban an error, says program presents no risk whatsoever to security. Dominica seeks urgent clarity.

from Reece Martin Transit
The Transit "Experts" That Derail Transit.
My Grand Theory of North America's Transit Expansion Failures.
"saying that if Montreal was building major transit again in the 21st century it wouldn’t build a metro, because no city would is laughable, or painful, depending on ones state of mind when you read that."

The Transit "Experts" That Derail Transit.
My Grand Theory of North America's Transit Expansion Failures.

📈 EIA: North America’s LNG Export Capacity Could More Than Double by 2029
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/EIA-North-Americas-LNG-Export-Capacity-Could-More-Than-Double-by-2029.html

EIA North America's LNG Export Capacity Could More Than Double by 2029
North America's liquefied natural gas export capacity could more than double by 2029 as new terminals across the United States, Canada, and Mexico move toward completion, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration

Anxiety over North America Trade Deal:
The prospect of a U.S. withdrawal from the
U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact
has worried those in industries,
including automobiles, farm goods and textiles,
that depend on the trade agreement and have shaped their businesses around its rules

Groups Express Anixety as Trump Threatens to Derail U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Pact
Hearings that began Wednesday in Washington reflected anxiety over the future of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade pact and whether the president could end up scrapping it.

Crop droughts set to worsen—even as rainfall increases #environment

Crop droughts set to worsen—even as rainfall increases
Europe and western North America will experience more frequent and severe crop droughts as Earth warms, even in places where yearly rainfall increases.

Yesterday I finished "The Other Side of Tomorrow" written by Tina Cho and illustrated by Deb JJ Lee. Lee's "In Limbo" was an excellent graphic memoir, and this similarly has wonderful art, although I didn't make the connection until checking the authors after reading to the end.
This book is a realistic fictional account of two childrens' escape from North Korea via China, Laos, and ultimately Thailand where they could declare themselves refugees at a US embassy and get sponsored to live in America. Along the way they're helped by various members of the Asian Underground Railroad. I'll avoid spoilers but yet definitely encounter difficulties along the way.
The ending definitely hits different now (while also accentuating my disgust with the current US regime). Like "Libertad" that I also finished recently, the "escape to the US at the end" plot line is going to become less prevalent going forward, although Libertad involved a good measure of complexity around that point.
I was a bit disappointed in one of the later plot points where a different and more-real-world-probable turn of events could have served as a better message for society, with the "lucky" outcome as written reinforcing regressive notions of family, and as an ex-Christian the Christian elements of the story made me feel a way. I'm an agnostic, not an atheist though, and can respect the idea that those willing to risk torture and death for their faith have every right to stand by it and take inspiration from it. Most (very valid) critiques of big western Church institutions just don't apply to underground churches in northern China who are helping people escape the horrors of deep fascism.
Overall a really good book.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

Chief Constable rebukes Treasury over PSNI data breach money
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2l7px2y0jo?xtor=AL-72-[partner]-[yahoo.north.america]-[headline]-[news]-[bizd…

PSNI: Chief Constable rebukes Treasury over data breach money
Jon Boutcher has criticised the Treasury for refusing to help cover the cost of compensation for officers affected by a major data breach.

Blueberry species (genus Vaccinium) circled the Northern Hemisphere to travel from North America to Hawai'i— and then closed the loop to hybridize with a North American species
#science

#Juche tell me more about Charles North Korea! ❓ ❤️
@… you probably have oppinions on this guy.
https://www.

Brooklyn is getting one of the largest battery-backed EV charging depots in the U.S.
XCharge NA and Energy Plus are building a massive site in Williamsburg with 88 charging spaces and 9.46 MWh of energy storage. It'll strengthen grid resilience while cutting electricity costs.
Goes live Q2 2026, with plans to expand the model to other major cities.

XCharge North America and Energy Plus Partner to Build One of the Largest Battery-Backed EV Charging Depots in the U.S. - CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. XCharge North America (“XCharge NA”), the North American subsidiary of XCHG Limited (NASDAQ: XCH, “XCharge”) and provider of high-power EV charging and battery-integrated solutions designed to strengthen the North American electrical grid, announced today that it has partnered with Energy Plus, a ... [continued]

"North Carolina training site pairs sheep grazing with solar"
#US #USA #America #NorthCarolina

North Carolina training site pairs sheep grazing with solar
A state university just opened a unique agrivoltaics demo site where sheep farmers and solar developers will learn what it takes to share land.

Chinese hackers targeting ‘high value’ North American critical infrastructure, Cisco says https://therecord.media/china-hackers-apt-cisco-talos

Aurora as seen from Florida

"Biblical Justice, Equal Justice, for All": How North Carolina's Chief Justice Transformed His State and America (Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica)
https://www.propublica.org/article/paul-newby-north-carolina-supreme-court
http://www.memeorandum.com/251030/p47#a251030p47

$0.50 per mile for electricity for a semi truck? wow, lower than I would imagine. (and it can be as low as $0.12 where rates are lower.).
"During testing, the truck averaged 1.72 kWh per mile while hauling a gross combined weight of 75,000 pounds (34 metric tons) over a 390-mile (625 km) long-haul route."
a tesla model 3 is ~0.3 kWh per mile.

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Now #TheAmericanFascist has appointed an 'envoy' to help convince Greenlanders to ditch Denmark and join the USA. Denmark is shocked and angered, as they should be. Greenlanders are wholly opposed.
There is poetic irony of a Louisiana politician being tapped to lead a "Greenland Purchase" by America. I very much doubt the result will be the same. But there are some interesting parallels.
Lousisiana Purchase (1808)
a) Made possible by squabbles and warring in Europe.
b) involved purchase of 2.14 million km2 of North America for $380 Million in 2024 dollars. Greenland is 2.17 million km2.
It's difficult to fathom just how undervalued the Louisana Purchase was...nevermind the whole — selling Indigenous Lands without Treaty — issue. But hey... that would be another parallel with today's Inuit and Greenland Peoples.
Back in the modern context, America's Fascists just want to do Fascist things like take over sovereign countries and oppress nations, not unlike Hitler, the Kaiser's Germany, the Napoleans, Imperial Britain, Conquistador-ist Spain, and Tsarist-Stalinist-Putinist Russia.
This all needs to be kept -- forefully if need be -- in the past. We cannot allow these regressive dictators to come back.
He must be stopped.
United States of America!
Americans!
Stop prancing around with Christmas presents as if nothing is happening and DEPOSE YOUR PRESIDENT ffs! This is ON YOU first and foremost!!
#USAPoli #Denmark #Canada #Imperialism #TheWorld #UN #NATO #Russia #Ukraine #RussiaUkraineWar #Louisiana #LouisianaPurchase #Greenland
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgmd132ge4o

TIL about pasture pigs.
I've known for some time that sheep and solar panels are a great pairing, but America doesn't love wool, mutton, or lamb. America loves pigs.
I've always associated pigs with mud and North Carolina sewage ponds.
There are so many videos. #pasturepigs

We won't even bother to put this into Dataplane's extended weekly Internet Last Week report: A 46 second "major outage" on APNIC's WHOIS serving North America. Sounds like something automatically recovered quickly, perhaps from a software crash or routing anomaly?

We’re proud to support Polar Connect Step 2 (24-EU-DIG-PC2) as an Associated Partner, working alongside the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, NORDUnet, GlobalConnect, CSC, and the Swedish Research Council (the project coordinator).
With the Grant Agreement now signed, PC2 takes a major step toward realising Polar Connect – a resilient Arctic submarine cable system linking Europe, North America, and East Asia for the benefit of the global internet.
🔗 Read more:

Good Morning #Canada
It's a balmy -22°C here in beautiful Belle Ewart Ontario. Apparently, with the wind chill, it would feel like -26°C if I were to stupidly wander outside. Now before you start reporting colder temperatures in your area - it ain't a competition people - let's remember our country's coldest day in history.
Canada's coldest recorded temperature was a staggering -63°C in Snag, Yukon on February 3, 1947. The temperature was so extreme it broke thermometers and made Snag famous for the record for North America's coldest spot, caused by stalled Siberian air. Other extremely cold locations included Fort Vermilion, AB (-60.6°C) and Old Crow, YT (-59.4°C). Nobody was tonguing steel poles that day.
#CanadaIsAwesome #Weather
https://www.readersdigest.ca/travel/canada/coldest-day-in-canadian-history/

The Wikipedia article also includes this sentence in its opening paragraph:
❝However, France only controlled a small fraction of this area, most of which was inhabited by Native Americans; effectively, for the majority of the area, the United States bought the preemptive right to obtain Indian lands by treaty or by conquest, to the exclusion of other colonial powers.❞
Britannica has nothing like that. It discusses the Louisiana Purchase without a single mention that the indigenous people of North America even exist.
3/

Thanks to my wife getting her Canadian passport today, we’ve officially reached two passports per person in this household.
It feels rather odd to have such a stack, but we’re certainly grateful to all have non-American citizenships.
(I know Canada is in North America, don’t start with me)

Venezuela, a thread 🧵:
It is simultaneously true that the US has never cared about international law *and* that the current action is egregiously bad, even for us. The first point is self-obviously true - not only from the general POV (Iraq and Afghanistan are perhaps my generation's most obvious examples) but from LatAm's POV as well (look up the list of coups and covert operations in North and South America over the last 70 years).
1/?

"Specialist" and "generalist" are surprisingly slippery categories— biology abhors a binary— but quantifying the shared evolutionary history of plants eaten by insects introduced to North America let these authors predict their plant-damaging impacts https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.70083

A look at "TSMC Village" in North Phoenix, as TSMC brings an influx of skilled workers from Taiwan who face challenges like adapting to a sprawling suburbia (Peter S. Goodman/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/business/tsmc-phoenix-little…

In Arizona Desert, Taiwanese Families Create Community and Build a Factory
Skilled workers from Taiwan engaged in the chip industry have found ways to ease the transition to America while making an imprint on Greater Phoenix.

Analysis: in 2025, only 17% of North America's top 100 highest-grossing films were directed by non-white filmmakers, down from 27% in 2021 and 24% in 2023 (Richard Rushfield/The Ankler)
https://theankler.com/p/hollywoods-backslide-into-white-male

Hollywood’s Backslide Into White Male Directors Becomes Undeniable
How to chase away our future, one complacent decision at a time

Good Morning #Canada
Our #CanadianCapitals feature today is the oldest European settlement in North America as well as the most eastern city on the continent. Despite a history that goes back to he 1490s, St. John's Newfoundland was incorporated as a city in 1921 and became a provincial capital in 1949 upon joining Canada. The natural harbour served explorers and fishermen for centuries, and the settlement survived pirates, attacks by the French, and several devastating fires. If the Portuguese had more influence, it would have been named Rio de San Johem, which is a missed opportunity.
#CanadaIsAwesome
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/st-johns

The sports equinox is back. Here's how to watch all 4 leagues on Monday https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6744212/2025/10/27/sports-equinox-2025-world-series-nfl-nba-nhl-schedule/

As rising tides eat away at the
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago off Canada,
plans to move the historic village to higher ground have divided residents
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/20

Brooklyn's getting a massive EV charging upgrade.
A new Williamsburg hub is launching with 88 fast charging ports—each delivering up to 300 kW. The game-changer? Battery storage that captures off-peak electricity and deploys it during rush hours, making charging cheaper and greener.
https://

88 New Fast EV Charger Ports Coming To Brooklyn - CleanTechnica
XCharge North America has partnered with Energy Plus on the Williamsburg, Brooklyn EV charging hub which will be backed by 9.6 MWh of batteries.

Customer engagement service MoEngage raised a $100M Series F led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives, bringing its total funding to $250M as it ramps up AI investment (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/04/goldm…

Goldman Sachs doubles down on MoEngage in new round to fuel global expansion | TechCrunch
MoEngage already has customers across 75 countries, with North America being its biggest business driver.

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It’s no joke.
Top 5 in North America in number of fatalities.
It’s deceptive because it’s just 6,288’ and in good conditions it’s a fun day hike.
But it can get seriously awful up there. One fairly well-known and recent death happened in a whiteout at -30F and 80 mph wind.
https://bsk…

Andy Craig (@andycraig.bsky.social)
Mt. Washington in late October? The cog railway only goes halfway up this time of year and even there it looks like this. This is where these people hopped off and thought yeah I'll just keeping strolling up into the freakish Extreme Frozen Hell zone. [contains quote post or other embedded content]

📊 How good are Chinese CPUs? Benchmarking the Loongson 3A6000
https://lemire.me/blog/2025/11/23/how-good-are-chinese-cpus-benchmarking-the-loongson-3a6000/

How good are Chinese CPUs? Benchmarking the Loongson 3A6000
I maintain a few widely used libraries that have optimized code paths based on the specific processor being used. We started supporting Loongson processors in recent years, but I did not have access to a Loongson processor until now. To my knowledge, they are not widely distributed in North America. This made it difficult for … Continue reading How good are Chinese CPUs? Benchmarking the Loongson 3A6000

"Mushroom caskets offer an earth-friendly goodbye in North America’s first burial of its kind"
#US #USA #America #Mushrooms

Mushroom caskets offer an earth-friendly goodbye in North America’s first burial of its kind | The Optimist Daily
North America’s first mushroom casket burial signals a cultural shift toward sustainable funerals and green burial practices.

#hometown #humblebrag #portalberni
the local music venue and gathering spot (ex church) is packed tonight to listen to some homegrown talent who was recently rewarded with a dream gig taking a spot in BTO beside fellow Vancouver Islander Randy Bachman.
He just finished his first tour of North America with the band.
Lance was in my grad class in 1995. Played bass in band. He has his own music releases as well which apparebtly have now found new life too.
He's good people. So happy for him. Wish I could be in there rockin' with him. 🎸 🤘
Support your local school music program people! ❤️
look for campfireLance on Insta if you're there.
news: #bto #music

Eclipse preview for 2026.
Two lunar eclipses are on the way, along with a partial solar eclipse for much of Europe & North America.
And if you really like solar eclipses, you might want to relocate to Spain for the next couple years. 🧪🔭
Read about eclipses and more coming up in 2026 in Universe Today: www.universetoday.com

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Relief carving of a globe on the school at Newark Valley
#photo #photography #buildings #architecture

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Good Morning #Canada
A bit late this morning as we went out for a big family breakfast. I think I'll chip away at my #CanadianCapitals series by sharing some tidbits about one of our older cities. Halifax, because of its large natural harbour, served as an important military base for British ships in North America. Founded in 1749 and incorporated as a city in 1842, it is known for a number of 1sts. Halifax had the 1st public school in Canada as well as the first law school and art college. Canada’s 1st newspaper, the Halifax Gazette, was established in 1752, and the city had the first all electric city lighting grid in North America. The harbour was also the site for the world's largest man-made explosion in #WWI when a munitions transport collided with another ship. Awesome place to visit but try not to jump when they fire the traditional noon cannon.
#CanadaIsAwesome
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/halifax

CFA> MA and PhD program in Chinese Buddhist Studies and Chinese religions
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Good Morning #Canada
While the excitement and disappointment of the #BlueJays season is fading a little, we can still take pride in the fact that we invented the game of baseball. You read that correctly - Canada was the birthplace of North American baseball as we know it today. From Wikipedia:
"... the first official baseball game with a documented score card took place not in the U.S., but in Canada in 1838. While Canada invented the version of baseball we know today, innovations made by New York City clubs became the basis for the modern game, far removed from its English ancestor, but extremely similar to the Canadian version".
It turns out that the earliest, detailed, reputable account of baseball being played in North America came out of a game in Beachville, Ontario on, June 4, 1838. And there are decades of records detailing Ontario teams regularly beating American competitors in league play or matches.
#CanadaIsAwesome ##SportsHistory
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadians-in-baseball-the-lost-tribe-feature

CFA> MA and PhD program in Chinese Buddhist Studies and Chinese religions
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Good Morning #Canada
Today we reach the end of the #CanadianCapitals series and I've left the Keystone Province for last. Manitoba, with IMO the best Premier and worst flag, has Winnipeg as its capital. The city lies at the junction of the Assiniboine River and the Red River, an historic focal point for canoe routes travelled by Aboriginal peoples for thousands of years. The fur trade brought forts, both British and French, and conflict amongst trappers and indigenous people. In 1869, the Hudson's Bay Company formally surrendered its charter rights over the western half of Canada, prompting Louis Riel to attempt a rebellion and become an independent territory before the Canadian government got organized. That ended badly for Louis and in 1870 Manitoba became a province with Winnipeg as its capital. A fun fact: The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is Canada’s oldest dance company and also the longest continuously operating ballet company in North America.
#CanadaIsAwesome #History
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/winnipeg

Good Morning #Canada
#HappyBirthday to Bat Masterson, the famous American gunslinger who was born near Henryville Quebec in 1853. He's our segue to another #CanadianCapitals post, naturally about Quebec City. Explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the French settlement in 1608 and adopted the Algonquin name, which means "where the river narrows." Quebec City is one of the oldest European settlements in North America. The ramparts surrounding Old Quebec (Vieux-Québec) are the only fortified city walls remaining in the Americas north of Mexico. Those walls were put to good use as Québec spent the next 170 years fighting off invaders, mostly by the British but also by Americans. The city was established as the capital of Canada under British rule in 1792 and was named the provincial capital in 1867 when Canada East became Quebec.
#CanadaIsAwesome #History
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quebec-city