Tootfinder

The TikTok deal is the worst of all possible outcomes, shifting ownership of TikTok to Trump's allies, while maintaining the supposed problematic links to China (Karl Bode/Techdirt)
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/19/tiktok

TikTok Deal Done And It’s Somehow The Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse
There were rumblings about this for a while, but it looks like the Trump TikTok deal is done, and it’s somehow the worst of all possible outcomes, amazingly making all of the biggest criticis…

chess: Kaggle chess players (2010)
A network among chess players (nodes) giving the chess match outcomes (edges), for game-by-game results among the world’s top chess players. The direction of edge (i,j) denotes white player (i) and black player (j). Each edge is timestamped (approximate). Edge sign is 1 for a win by white, 0 for draw, and -1 for a win by black.
This network has 7301 nodes and 65053 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Signed, Timestamps

Influencing Outcomes
The podcast that gets real about what drives success in influencer marketing...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/influencing-outcomes/

Vladimir Putin has been attempting to influence Donald Trump to seize both Venezuela and Greenland since at least 2017. The effort, rooted in Putin's ambitions in Ukraine, hinged on American embrace of the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 policy framework that focused American influence within the Western Hemisphere.
Putin's reasoning, according to witnesses familiar with the proposals, is simple: if Trump would agree to disengage in Ukraine, Putin would agree to give Trump control in …

The Russian Roots of Trump's Venezuela and Greenland Operations
We find that Trump's current moves against Venezuela and Greenland have roots in a long-running Russian influence campaign intended to provoke these outcomes.

The TikTok deal is the worst of all possible outcomes, shifting ownership of TikTok to Trump's allies, while maintaining the supposed problematic links to China (Karl Bode/Techdirt)
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/19/tiktok

TikTok Deal Done And It’s Somehow The Shittiest Possible Outcome, Making Everything Worse
There were rumblings about this for a while, but it looks like the Trump TikTok deal is done, and it’s somehow the worst of all possible outcomes, amazingly making all of the biggest criticis…

Contrasting success in neurotechnology: Sensory substitution, brain–computer interfaces, and the limits of dimensional reduction https://www.researchgate.net/publication/3

This is a subtweet...
People who are not anti-capitalist sometimes wonder: "Why is there a monopoly on X life-critical thing?" (E.g., epipens, insulin, web search).
This one is really simple actually: because monopolies are more profitable than competition, and the foundation of capitalism is that capital = power.
Various societies have recognized the necropolitical outcomes of monopolies and have tried to erect barriers to monopoly; we all know that monopolies are bad, death-and-suffering-causing things. But since these societies mostly remain capitalist, they allow these barriers to be eroded by the power of capital (to do otherwise would be to repudiate capitalism because it puts a limit on the power of money). The barriers are ineffective, and the capital = power equation holds, and monopolies result and get to do their killing & maiming thing (remember: even things like social media monopolies that you wouldn't expect to pay for political assassinations like a mining company still profit from inciting genocides). *Sometimes* there are oligopolies instead of monopolies, but instances of really competitive markets are pretty rare for things that are widely sought-after.
The "government will manage the markets to prevent bad outcomes like monopolies" strategy has failed repeatedly, spectacularly, and almost universally. To actually prevent monopolies you need a population that no longer believes that money should equal power, it's that simple. Sadly, it's actually not that simple, since all of the alternatives which equate something else to power, like "the king" or "party loyalty as judged by the supreme leader" have the same problems or worse. The attitude you need to cultivate is "nobody should have power," which is hard because *all* of the power-systems we have constantly propagandize against this attitude in myriad ways. Still, in the future once we've broken free of this age where hierarchy is accepted, people will look back and wonder whether the historical records are even credible given how much needless death and suffering were endured with little resistance.
#anarchy #capitalism

The Unsuccessful Stories
Where people share the real story behind the success story...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/influencing-outcomes/

Video-call glitches trigger uncanniness and harm consequential life outcomes
Nature (2025)
#teamresopal

Video-call glitches trigger uncanniness and harm consequential life outcomes - Nature
Glitches in video calls can have a negative effect on the judgement of the people involved and correspond to worse outcomes in major areas of life such as job interviews and parole hearings.

Oh goody, a LinkedIn connection request with a message!
Let’s break this down:
> …vc backed…
Focused on quarterly profits / RoI instead of outcomes.
> …invite-only…
NDAs and other gag agreements.
> …openAI browser…
Chromium that begs authors for ARIA to parse content.
> …seeing promising results…
Which aren’t genuine results.
> …goal is 100% WCAG testing…
Ah, snake oil.
> …with high capture rates.
Sales…

Just finished "Match Point!" by Maddie Gallegos, an excellent graphic novel about racquetball, dumpster diving, best friends, and pressure from Dad. The characters and their fromance are super cute, and while I'm sure some might find the ending too happy, I'm usually fine with seeing the aspirational version of relationships because it can serve as a good role model, while other narratives can help explain how to handle worse outcomes.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

"COP30: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Belém"
#UN #UnitedNations #Climate

COP30: Key outcomes for food, forests, land and nature at the UN climate talks in Belém - Carbon Brief
Carbon Brief breaks down the main COP30 outcomes on food, forests, land and nature.

RE: https://c.im/@cdarwin/115914632838313229
“Let’s all dream together to make more unthinkable outcomes reality,”
-- Jared Kushner,
who has long floated an idea of promoting waterfront real estate in Gaza,
wrote Friday on X.

Guardian: Face transplants promised hope. Patients were put through the unthinkable https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/27/face-transplant-patients-results-outcomes "negative data is often buried, driven by funding battles and inst…

There's really no point doing trade negotiations with the USA. The negotiations will last longer than any possible agreement.
I imagine the world will see negotiating with China as producing more reliable outcomes.

chess: Kaggle chess players (2010)
A network among chess players (nodes) giving the chess match outcomes (edges), for game-by-game results among the world’s top chess players. The direction of edge (i,j) denotes white player (i) and black player (j). Each edge is timestamped (approximate). Edge sign is 1 for a win by white, 0 for draw, and -1 for a win by black.
This network has 7301 nodes and 65053 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Signed, Timestamps

For those who aren’t local / don’t have an encyclopedic memory of 2020:
Keith Ellison and the MN AG office are the folks who successfully prosecuted Derek Chauvin. They are a crack legal team who know how to win. I’m making no bets about the short or long term outcomes of this lawsuit — especially not with a radical right-wing SCOTUS completely off the rails — but I’m confident these are some of the very best people to be leading it.

Video Call Glitches Evoke Uncanniness, Damage Consequential Life Outcomes - Slashdot
https://slashdot.org/story/25/12/27/0142219/video-call-glitches-evoke-uncanniness-damage-consequential-life-outcomes

"We are hurtling toward climate chaos. The planet's vital signs are flashing red. The consequences of human-driven alterations of the climate are no longer future threats but are here now. This unfolding emergency stems from failed foresight, political inaction, unsustainable economic systems, and misinformation. Almost every corner of the biosphere is reeling from intensifying heat, storms, floods, droughts, or fires. The window to prevent the worst outcomes is rapidly closing.&quo…

Mike Tomlin leaving Steelers? All the possible 2026 outcomes for Pittsburgh and its embattled coach

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/mike-tomlin-leaving-steelers-2026-pittsburgh…

Beyond Revenue and Welfare: Counterfactual Analysis of Spectrum Auctions with Application to Canada's 3800MHz Allocation
Sara Jalili Shani, Kris Joseph, Michael B. McNally, James R. Wright
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.08106 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.08106
arXiv:2512.08106v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Spectrum auctions are the primary mechanism through which governments allocate scarce radio frequencies, with outcomes that shape competition, coverage, and innovation in telecommunications markets. While traditional models of spectrum auctions often rely on strong equilibrium assumptions, we take a more parsimonious approach by modeling bidders as myopic and straightforward: in each round, firms simply demand the bundle that maximizes their utility given current prices. Despite its simplicity, this model proves effective in predicting the outcomes of Canada's 2023 auction of 3800 MHz spectrum licenses. Using detailed round-by-round bidding data, we estimate bidders' valuations through a linear programming framework and validate that our model reproduces key features of the observed allocation and price evolution. We then use these estimated valuations to simulate a counterfactual auction under an alternative mechanism that incentivizes deployment in rural and remote regions, aligning with one of the key objectives set out in the Canadian Telecommunications Act. The results show that the proposed mechanism substantially improves population coverage in underserved areas. These findings demonstrate that a behavioral model with minimal assumptions is sufficient to generate reliable counterfactual predictions, making it a practical tool for policymakers to evaluate how alternative auction designs may influence future outcomes. In particular, our study demonstrates a method for counterfactual mechanism design, providing a framework to evaluate how alternative auction rules could advance policy goals such as equitable deployment across Canada.
toXiv_bot_toot

'This is the dark side and true meaning of "business optimization." The optimal business pays its suppliers and workers nothing, and charges its customers everything it can. Obviously, businesses need to settle for suboptimal outcomes, because workers won't show up if they don't get paid, and customers won't buy things that cost everything they have⹋.
⹋ Unless, of course, you are an academic publisher, in which case this is just how you do business.'
…

Outcomes-over-outputs is one thing — but even outcomes aren't always impactful.
Investing in any outcome carries opportunity cost. Any effort you expend means not spending that effort elsewhere.
And when there's a bottleneck in the system, effort upstream of the bottleneck has diminishing returns. Typically, that bottleneck is your process.
Since the process is made up of people, technical solutions won't help.

All your problems are people problems (Don't Just Do Things, Part 2)
If you want to do strategy, you must be willing to do process transformation first.

Can’t say I know enough to have a real opinion beyond the fact that sending a child into harder subject matter when they haven’t mastered their current level seems like a recipe for disaster. As such, this seems to make sense. #oklahoma #oked

Coinbase plans to move its incorporation from Delaware to Texas, saying Delaware "once provided companies with consistency" but now has "unpredictable outcomes" (Ari Levy/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/12/coinbase-m

Coinbase moves incorporation to Texas from Delaware, following Musk's lead
Coinbase's legal chief wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the crypto platform is moving its state of incorporation to Texas.

😁 Disrupting bacterial 'chatter' could tip the balance for better oral health
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-disrupting-bacterial-chatter-oral-health.html

Disrupting bacterial 'chatter' could tip the balance for better oral health
Like all living things, bacteria adapt to survive. Over time, bacteria have been developing resistance to common antibiotics and disinfectants, which poses a growing problem for health care and sanitation. However, many species of bacteria are beneficial and even essential for human health. What if there was a way to change the behavior of bacteria in the body to prevent illness and poor health outcomes?

"SNAP benefits reduced the depth and severity of poverty experienced by recipient households, especially among children, who experience higher poverty rates than the population at large."
But the gop would rather have kids in poverty.
https://www.

"COP30: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Belém"
#COP30 #Climate #ClimateSummit

COP30: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Belém - Carbon Brief
A voluntary plan to curb fossil fuels, a goal to triple adaptation finance and new...

Just finished "I'm Awful, Thanks" by Lara Pickle. A good story that serves as a guide to managing emotions, although it's actually a cute story too, not just framing for the mental health discussion.
That said, I feel like it doesn't get far enough into the details of accepting self-control as our only form of real control vs. understanding that some events outside our control aren't fair or are others' attacks, and trying to manage our own emotions as our only response is a disservice to ourselves and others. Even further, I suspect that the HR resolution depicted here, while not impossible, is less frequent than much worse outcomes, which is part of a larger pattern of systemic assaults on our mental health that aren't totally solvable with individual emotional regulation.
Sure, leveling up one's control of ones own emotions and learning to accept and manage a range of emotions is super useful and it's a good thing overall, but the systemic problems of late stage capitalism are real, and making it seem like everyone is responsible for managing their own mental health in the face of these problems helps avoid confronting them.
Still, it's a good book overall, with vibrant art and a well-structured plot.
#AmReading #ReadingNow

At what point do business executives become liable for gross negligence? The near absolute protection of executives from liability for the actions their comapnies take is leading to very bad outcomes.
A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT's drug advice. He died from an overdose.
https://www.

At what point do business executives become liable for gross negligence? The near absolute protection of executives from liability for the actions their comapnies take is leading to very bad outcomes.
A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT's drug advice. He died from an overdose.
https://www.

Ecological myopia: The blind spot holding back climate action #climate

Ecological myopia: The blind spot holding back climate action
Global debate about how to navigate the climate crisis often centers on high-level pledges and whether national targets are being met. Yet focusing on these technical outcomes obscures a deeper problem that keeps climate action falling short.

Kathi asks ChatGPT "how to test a graph algo".
Repeats the query 6 months later…now it mentions PBT.
Huh! We ask it why it mentioned PBT. It cites back…
Our own papers and blog, and specifically mentions our own education research work on why graph algos are a great eg.
Moving the needle!

Bears vs. Packers and five more Week 14 games that have biggest impact on playoff races https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6855590/2025/12/04/nfl-week-14-playoffs-races-bears-packers-cowboys-lions/

It's utterly brainwormed the way people have projected political identities onto software projects. The level of ideological capture that politics exerts on the average person is wildly out of proportion with their ability to influence it, and has led to terrible outcomes for society in general.
Anyway, on a more serious note, I'm concerned that my 13mm box end wrench has become fash. Looking for a good option for a woke wrench. Recommendations welcome.

chess: Kaggle chess players (2010)
A network among chess players (nodes) giving the chess match outcomes (edges), for game-by-game results among the world’s top chess players. The direction of edge (i,j) denotes white player (i) and black player (j). Each edge is timestamped (approximate). Edge sign is 1 for a win by white, 0 for draw, and -1 for a win by black.
This network has 7301 nodes and 65053 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Signed, Timestamps

Strategic Experimentation with Private Payoffs
J\'er\^ome Renault, Eilon Solan, Nicolas Vieille
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06180 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.06180 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.06180
arXiv:2512.06180v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study a strategic experimentation game with exponential bandits, in which experiment outcomes are private. The equilibrium amount of experimentation is always higher than in the benchmark case where experiment outcomes are publicly observed. In addition, for pure equilibria, the equilibrium amount of experimentation is at least socially optimal, and possibly higher. We provide a tight bound on the degree of over-experimentation. The analysis rests on a new form of encouragement effect, according to which a player may hide the absence of a success to encourage future experimentation by the other player, which incentivizes current experimentation.
toXiv_bot_toot

🎲 TextBandit: Evaluating Probabilistic Reasoning in LLMs Through Language-Only Decision Tasks
#llm

TextBandit: Evaluating Probabilistic Reasoning in LLMs Through Language-Only Decision Tasks
Large language models (LLMs) have shown to be increasingly capable of performing reasoning tasks, but their ability to make sequential decisions under uncertainty only using natural language remains underexplored. We introduce a novel benchmark in which LLMs interact with multi-armed bandit environments using purely textual feedback, "you earned a token", without access to numerical cues or explicit probabilities, resulting in the model to infer latent reward structures purely off linguistic cu…

At what point do business executives become liable for gross negligence? The near absolute protection of executives from liability for the actions their comapnies take is leading to very bad outcomes.
A Calif. teen trusted ChatGPT's drug advice. He died from an overdose.
https://www.

Is it talent?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DQM0-w2jEOd/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Duaa Izzidien - Visual Storyteller & Artist on Instagram: "I had far too much fun creating this reel and couldn’t bring myself to delete any of it to make it shorter and more algorithm friendly 🙈 If you watched it all the way to the end - well done! You’ve just demonstrated the very thing the reel is about - showing up is the only talent that matters. My arrows don’t always hit the target. My paintings don’t always turn out how I planned. And honestly? Life rarely goes the way I intend. But really that isn’t what matters. In Islam we say that actions are by intentions and that sometimes means letting go of controlling our outcomes. We can control our intentions, our effort, showing up - but we have to remember that the result doesn’t actually come from those actions. Sometimes the arrow misses because there’s a better lesson waiting or perhaps it’s to remind you to stay humble and remember that ‘you’ are not the architect of your success. Sometimes the painting goes “wrong” because it’s becoming something more beautiful than you imagined. Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you planned because there’s something different, better, round the corner for you. A huge thank you to @thabitoon_archers and @mamluk.academy for teaching me. You’ve taught me far more than just archery - you’ve taught me a rich history and life lessons that bring peace. (any mistakes in my form are entirely mine!). Want to learn how to use art as a tool for trusting and letting go of control? DM me ‘CREATE’ and I’ll show you these techniques. #showingisenough #trusttheprocess #archery #archerygirl #traditionalarchery #archerylife #overwhelm #personalgrowth #innerstrength #growthmindset #breakthrough #findingmyself #resilience #transformation #letgoofcontrol"
24K likes, 763 comments - duaaizzidien on October 24, 2025: "I had far too much fun creating this reel and couldn’t bring myself to delete any of it to make it shorter and more algorithm friendly 🙈 If you watched it all the way to the end - well done! You’ve just demonstrated the very thing the reel is about - showing up is the only talent that matters. My arrows don’t always hit the target. My paintings don’t always turn out how I planned. And honestly? Life rarely goes the way I …

Arthur Blank addresses regime change, aims for 'leadership' that gets Falcons to 'next level' https://www.nfl.com/news/arthur-blank-addresses-regime-change-aims-for-leadership-that-gets-falcons-to-next-level

Artificial vibrotactile feedback elicits neural correlates of sense of agency https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12984-025-01850-2

Artificial vibrotactile feedback elicits neural correlates of sense of agency - Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation
The Sense of Agency (SoA) refers to the subjective experience of having control over our own actions and their outcomes. SoA is experienced when there is a

Last season’s updated vaccine provides significant protection against covid-19,
particularly against severe illness and death.
The results reaffirm the benefit of staying current with covid vaccination.

Researchers analyzed data from approximately 1.8 million Americans between August 2024 and April 2025,
of whom only about 13 percent received the 2024–2025 coronavirus shot.
They evaluated three clinical outcomes related to the disease: infections, emergency departm…

How long does covid booster protection last? A new study offers answers.
More evidence highlighting the benefit, and limitations, of covid-19 vaccines

"The study’s authors emphasized that, as an observational study, the findings do not prove that covid-19 causes the conditions diagnosed in children, but rather signal an association between maternal infection and these outcomes. "
Covid in pregnancy tied to autism, developmental issues, study says - The Washington Post
https://archive.ph/eSFKO

chess: Kaggle chess players (2010)
A network among chess players (nodes) giving the chess match outcomes (edges), for game-by-game results among the world’s top chess players. The direction of edge (i,j) denotes white player (i) and black player (j). Each edge is timestamped (approximate). Edge sign is 1 for a win by white, 0 for draw, and -1 for a win by black.
This network has 7301 nodes and 65053 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Signed, Timestamps

Revised January 8, 2026: Simulation of prosthetic vision with the PRIMA system and enhancement of face representation https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.11677 retinal implant

Simulation of prosthetic vision with PRIMA system and enhancement of face representation
Objective. Patients implanted with the PRIMA photovoltaic subretinal prosthesis in geographic atrophy report form vision with the average acuity matching the 100um pixel size. Although this remarkable outcome enables them to read and write, they report difficulty with perceiving faces. Despite the pixelated stimulation, patients see smooth patterns rather than dots. We present a novel, non-pixelated algorithm for simulating prosthetic vision, compare its predictions to clinical outcomes, and de…

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Global average farm size may triple by 2100 amid rural population decline
#farming …

Global average farm size may triple by 2100 amid rural population decline
Farm size plays a crucial role in shaping food production systems and environmental outcomes. However, its long-term global trends have remained poorly understood.

"What was achieved for Indigenous peoples at COP30?"
#COP30 #Climate #ClimateSummit

What was achieved for Indigenous peoples at COP30?
After two weeks of negotiations in Belém, Brazil, the COP30 U.N. climate summit delivered mixed outcomes, Indigenous delegates say. The event saw the largest Indigenous participation in COP history and landmark pledges made, but also heated protests and last-minute disappointments. “The summit was historic for Indigenous peoples, and this is the result of the Indigenous […]

Meta cuts roles in its Risk unit citing a shift from manual reviews to a "consistent and automated process" that is delivering "reliable compliance outcomes" (Jyoti Mann/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-job-cut…

Meta told some employees their jobs are being replaced by tech
An internal memo explaining the cuts said "many routine decisions can now be handled efficiently by technology."

Ventura County Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster ( #VCVOAD )
is a collaborative of nearly 50 local non-profit agencies,
faith-based organizations,
volunteer groups,
public institutions,
and private entities
dedicated to improving outcomes for people affected by disasters.
VC-VOAD helps communities respond to and recover from major disasters guided by our f…

About | Ventura County VOAD

Bears vs. Packers and five more Week 14 games that have biggest impact on playoff races https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6855590/2025/12/04/nfl-week-14-playoffs-races-bears-packers-cowboys-lions/

Scattering in Time-Varying Drude-Lorentz Models
Bryce Dixon, Calvin M. Hooper, Ian R. Hooper, Simon A. R. Horsley
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.19322 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19322 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.19322
arXiv:2511.19322v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Motivated by recent experiments, the theoretical study of wave propagation in time varying materials is of current interest. Although significant in nearly all such experiments, material dispersion is commonly neglected in theoretical studies. Yet, as we show here, understanding the precise microscopic model for the material dispersion is crucial for predicting experimental outcomes. Here we study the temporal scattering coefficients of four different time-varying Drude-Lorentz models, exploring how an incident continuous wave splits into forward and backward waves due to an abrupt change in plasma frequency. The differences in the predicted scattering are unique to time-varying media, and arise from the exact way in which the time variation appears in the various model parameters. We verify our results using a custom finite difference time domain algorithm, concluding with a discussion of the limitations that arise from using these models with an abrupt change in plasma frequency.
toXiv_bot_toot

Cowboys Week 17 Rooting Guide: 4 teams can help Dallas' draft slot https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2025/12/27/cowboys-week-17-rooting-guide-draft-pick-slots/87926684007/

chess: Kaggle chess players (2010)
A network among chess players (nodes) giving the chess match outcomes (edges), for game-by-game results among the world’s top chess players. The direction of edge (i,j) denotes white player (i) and black player (j). Each edge is timestamped (approximate). Edge sign is 1 for a win by white, 0 for draw, and -1 for a win by black.
This network has 7301 nodes and 65053 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Signed, Timestamps

Learning Paths to Multi-Sector Equilibrium: Belief Dynamics Under Uncertain Returns to Scale
Stefano Nasini, Rabia Nessah, Bertrand Wigniolle
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07013 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.07013 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.07013
arXiv:2512.07013v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This paper explores the dynamics of learning in a multi-sector general equilibrium model where firms operate under incomplete information about their production returns to scale. Firms iteratively update their beliefs using maximum a-posteriori estimation, derived from observed production outcomes, to refine their knowledge of their returns to scale. The implications of these learning dynamics for market equilibrium and the conditions under which firms can effectively learn their true returns to scale are the key objects of this study. Our results shed light on how idiosyncratic shocks influence the learning process and demonstrate that input decisions encode all pertinent information for belief updates. Additionally, we show that a long-memory (path-dependent) learning which keeps track of all past estimations ends up having a worse performance than a short-memory (path-independent) approach.
toXiv_bot_toot

chess: Kaggle chess players (2010)
A network among chess players (nodes) giving the chess match outcomes (edges), for game-by-game results among the world’s top chess players. The direction of edge (i,j) denotes white player (i) and black player (j). Each edge is timestamped (approximate). Edge sign is 1 for a win by white, 0 for draw, and -1 for a win by black.
This network has 7301 nodes and 65053 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Signed, Timestamps

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

Invariant Price of Anarchy: a Metric for Welfarist Traffic Control
Ilia Shilov, Mingjia He, Heinrich H. Nax, Emilio Frazzoli, Gioele Zardini, Saverio Bolognani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05843 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.05843 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.05843
arXiv:2512.05843v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The Price of Anarchy (PoA) is a standard metric for quantifying inefficiency in socio-technical systems, widely used to guide policies like traffic tolling. Conventional PoA analysis relies on exact numerical costs. However, in many settings, costs represent agents' preferences and may be defined only up to possibly arbitrary scaling and shifting, representing informational and modeling ambiguities. We observe that while such transformations preserve equilibrium and optimal outcomes, they change the PoA value. To resolve this issue, we rely on results from Social Choice Theory and define the Invariant PoA. By connecting admissible transformations to degrees of comparability of agents' costs, we derive the specific social welfare functions which ensure that efficiency evaluations do not depend on arbitrary rescalings or translations of individual costs. Case studies on a toy example and the Zurich network demonstrate that identical tolling strategies can lead to substantially different efficiency estimates depending on the assumed comparability. Our framework thus demonstrates that explicit axiomatic foundations are necessary in order to define efficiency metrics and to appropriately guide policy in large-scale infrastructure design robustly and effectively.
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chess: Kaggle chess players (2010)
A network among chess players (nodes) giving the chess match outcomes (edges), for game-by-game results among the world’s top chess players. The direction of edge (i,j) denotes white player (i) and black player (j). Each edge is timestamped (approximate). Edge sign is 1 for a win by white, 0 for draw, and -1 for a win by black.
This network has 7301 nodes and 65053 edges.
Tags: Social, Offline, Signed, Timestamps