Tootfinder

The January wildfires that ripped through Los Angeles forced the state to spend billions in disaster aid
-- and delay tax filings for LA residents.
The cost of Medi-Cal,
the state-run health insurance program for low-income residents, ballooned to $6 billion more than anticipated.
Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff policies rocked the stock market,
which California heavily relies on for tax revenue.
And the state lodged a flurry of lawsuits again…

Your one-minute guide to California’s budget outlook this year
Spoiler alert: California’s deficit grows, uncertainty looms, and state leaders may have fewer options than before to tackle it.

Sounds easy, looks nice: Crossmodal transfer of auditory processing fluency to visual object preference https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-025-03177-5

Sounds easy, looks nice: Crossmodal transfer of auditory processing fluency to visual object preference - Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics
Fluent (i.e., rapid and efficient) processing of perceptual objects is vital for humans to successfully navigate their environments. The experience of fluent processing per se tends to trigger positive affect; however, this affect is often misattributed by perceivers to the objects themselves, meaning that easy-to-perceive objects are judged more positively. These fluency-based preference effects have been robustly demonstrated unimodally, and specifically in situations in which fluency and pre…

Dangerous Cancel Culture Precedent Following Kirk’s Murder
The Trump administration continues to counter the First Amendment rights that Kirk so often referenced and arguably died defending.
For example, the Pentagon has promised to “address” federal employees who are deemed to mock or celebrate Kirk’s death.
(The Pentagon has also in recent days announced that it will require credentialed journalists to sign a pledge to refrain from reporting information that has not been …

The ‘Right to Offend’ and the Legacy of Charlie Kirk - San Francisco Bay Times
The day before right-wing activist and Turning Point USA Co-Founder Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, he texted the following to civil rights advocate and CNN host Van Jones: “Hey, Van, I mean it, I’d love to have you on my show to have a respectful conversation about crime and race. I would […]

Had my #acting #coaching client do a really brilliant take, vital, grounded, authentic, good flow and riveting. Then: the challenge is to do the next take… the champagne problem of following up great work.
Using that anxiety for the next take can be a solid option, revealed a whole new versio…

Like all the rest of the nerds, I did a bit of tech support on family computers.
They're all popping up windows from scam virus scanners lying that subscriptions need to be renewed or machines are unprotected. People don't know how to remove these things. Luckily they also don't really know how to pay the subscription.
Their phones are updating on them. Changing where buttons used to be. Removing options. Forcing people to register to use they things they have been doing for years.
They don't know how to register.
Things pop up asking for passwords and they have no idea who is asking or which password to use.
I tell them that I don't really understand why they keep using Windows now it is so shitty and awful. They say they don't know how to use anything else. The fact they don't really know how to use windows either doesn't seem to register.
The tech corporations have given up completely on being user friendly. They are all deliberately user hostile and exploitative now.
Corporate tech is terrible. The industry is failing it's users, abusing them. People don't even know there is any other way. They are just giving up on achieving their tasks until someone can fix the pop-ups and subscription boxes and passwords and 2fa for them.
Tech sucks now. Sucks hard.
#tech #christmasTechSupport

A jury has found Edo, a TV ad measurement company, liable for breach of contract and says Edo must pay $18.3M in damages to rival iSpot; Edo plans to appeal (Dade Hayes/Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2026/01/edward-norton-ad-tech-fir…

Edward Norton-Backed Ad Tech Firm EDO Found Liable For Contract Breach; Jury Awards Rival ISpot $18.3M For Improperly Obtained Data
EDO, an ad tech firm co-founded by actor and filmmaker Edward Norton, has been found liable for theft and breach of contract by a federal jury in L.A.

As SBOMs slowly progress at the federal level and in enterprises, the rise of AI coding assistants is fueling optimistic—and, some experts argue, “kind of insane”—claims about a future with vulnerability-free software.
Check out my latest CyberScoop piece.
Many thanks to @…, @…

The slow rise of SBOMs meets the rapid advance of AI
Despite progress from CISA and global regulators, SBOM adoption in the private sector remains slow as experts debate if AI-driven coding will improve or undermine software security and transparency.

In 2014, NASA awarded a Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract to Boeing to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station with its #Starliner spacecraft; as part of its contract, Boeing was awarded up to six crewed flights to the orbital complex - after a thorough evaluation, the definitive order has been adjusted to four missions, with the remaining two available as options: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/11/24/nasa-boeing-modify-commercial-crew-contract/. The next Starliner flight, known as Starliner-1, will be used by NASA to deliver necessary cargo to the orbital laboratory and allow in-flight validation of the system upgrades implemented following the Crew Flight Test mission last year - NASA and Boeing are targeting no earlier than April 2026 to fly the uncrewed Starliner-1 pending completion of rigorous test, certification, and mission readiness activities.

Even before extremist Republican Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office on January 20,
progressives warned of his fascistic tendencies and plans,
often citing his platform, and highlighting what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls “Trump’s playbook of dictators.”
But too few people, even on the left side of the electorate, listened.
After all, those warnings have been sounded for months if not years.
“Trump is following, point for point, the playbook of …

Top Senators expose Trump’s fascist playbook
WASHINGTON—Even before extremist Republican Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office on January 20, progressives warned of his fascistic tendencies and plans, often citing his platform, and highlighting what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls “Trump’s playbook of dictators.

Meta’s 2020 research project, Project Mercury,
measured the effect of ‘deactivating’ Facebook & Instagram
According to Meta docs obtained via discovery…
’people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness & social comparison’
https://