Tootfinder

Btw. I know there hasn't been much new work on #ThingUmbrella over the past month. That's because I've been spending _a lot_ more time on my multi-faceted toolchain for note taking, asset management (images/videos, incl. auto-creation of different versions) and also aimed as generator for blogs/websites, feeds, visualizations (e.g. incl. those on the current

Open source building blocks for computational design. Est. 2006
thi.ng is a set of ~350 complementing code libraries & projects, a long-term effort devoted to Computational Design and Art in its many forms.

Two years ago voters in Colorado legalized therapeutic use of #psilocybin. The state took its time setting up protocols for licensing practitioners and therapists. A clinic opened up this past week here in town. They’ve got a 200 person waiting list for clients. You have to prove to them you’re not just looking for recreational use, mores the pity.

This renowned climate scientist says this is the most difficult time for climate science he’s ever seen
https://www.fastcompany.com/91347103/this-

This renowned climate scientist says this is the most difficult time for climate science he’s ever seen
Benjamin Santer has faced pushback on climate research in the past. But this environment feels different ‘because it's so targeted.’

It's 90 Degrees in Atlanta (32C). My dog barked when the UPS truck stopped in front of my house. I went to the fridge and got an ice cold bottle of water. When the driver rang my doorbell, I gave him the bottle and he gave me my package. I looked out a minute later as I was walking past a front window and saw him seated, about ready to drive away, chugging the water. This wasn’t my first time, but I don’t do it enough. I need to do this more often.

A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart's Time
Paul Merriam
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.15863 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.15863

A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart's Time
There are long standing questions about the Big Bang What were its properties? Was there nothing before it? Was the universe always here? Many conceptual issues revolve around time. This paper gives a novel model based on McTaggarts temporal distinction between the A-series future-present-past and B-series earlier-times to later times. These series are useful while situated in a Presentist and Fragmentalist account of quantum mechanics, one in which the consistency with the Special Relativity i…

A Minimalistic Approach to Predict and Understand the Relation of App Usage with Students' Academic Performances
Md Sabbir Ahmed, Rahat Jahangir Rony, Mohammad Abdul Hadi, Ekram Hossain, Nova Ahmed
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16779

A Minimalistic Approach to Predict and Understand the Relation of App Usage with Students' Academic Performances
Due to usage of self-reported data which may contain biasness, the existing studies may not unveil the exact relation between academic grades and app categories such as Video. Additionally, the existing systems' requirement for data of prolonged period to predict grades may not facilitate early intervention to improve it. Thus, we presented an app that retrieves past 7 days' actual app usage data within a second (Mean=0.31s, SD=1.1s). Our analysis on 124 Bangladeshi students' real-time data dem…

“I think it’s long past time I start discussing “artificial intelligence” (“AI”) as a failed technology.”
https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/against-stocking-frames/

NL NCTV
25 SEP 2025
2025 Threat Assessment on State Actors (DBSA)
site: https://english.nctv.nl/documents/publications/2025/09/25/threat-assessment-of-state-actors-2025
pdf:

Our #personalscience wiki got a lot of LLM-generated spam posts in the past days, so it's once again time to rotate the captcha questions.
How has some fun ideas for questions "AI" struggles with? I've already added questions about the number of "R" in blueberry & strawberry 😂
#citizenscience

So @… reminded me of something I kind of love. The Japanese "30-hour system". Used in nightlife, broadcasting, and transport, the time extends the day past midnight to keep late-night events grouped with the same calendar day. So a club open from 11PM to 1AM might list its hours as 23:00–25:00.
We should all adopt this!
Sadly Wikipedia does n…

I don't know about you but I am rather tired of judges who respond to fed or trump lawyers with mere "warnings" or "scoldings".
It is long past time since judges ought to have realized that dithering and lying and besmirching defendants is the maga play-book. And in response judges should haul up any lawyer who uses those tactics onto a judicial yardarm (metaphorical yardarm) and impose contempt (both civil and criminal) sanctions (involving jail and fines), di…

Judge warns Justice Department officials over comments in Mangione case
A New York judge warns Justice Department officials they could face sanctions for public comments about Luigi Mangione's prosecution. Mangione is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Judge Margaret M. Garnett on Wednesday said at least two senior Justice Department officials likely broke court rules governing the conduct of lawyers by reposting comments President Donald Trump made about Mangione. Defense lawyers say these comments have prejudiced the case. Mangione has pleade…

DiffusionGS: Generative Search with Query Conditioned Diffusion in Kuaishou
Qinyao Li, Xiaoyang Zheng, Qihang Zhao, Ke Xu, Zhongbo Sun, Chao Wang, Chenyi Lei, Han Li, Wenwu Ou
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17754

DiffusionGS: Generative Search with Query Conditioned Diffusion in Kuaishou
Personalized search ranking systems are critical for driving engagement and revenue in modern e-commerce and short-video platforms. While existing methods excel at estimating users' broad interests based on the filtered historical behaviors, they typically under-exploit explicit alignment between a user's real-time intent (represented by the user query) and their past actions. In this paper, we propose DiffusionGS, a novel and scalable approach powered by generative models. Our key insight is t…

Aaron Rodgers moves past former teammate Brett Favre with 509th career touchdown pass https://www.nfl.com/news/aaron-rodgers-moves-past-brett-favre-509-career-touchdown-pass

Initiator of the #NixOS documentation team is stepping down:
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/the-next-chapter-in-nix-documentation/68425

GPT-OSS-20B: A Comprehensive Deployment-Centric Analysis of OpenAI's Open-Weight Mixture of Experts Model
Deepak Kumar, Divakar Yadav, Yash Patel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16700

GPT-OSS-20B: A Comprehensive Deployment-Centric Analysis of OpenAI's Open-Weight Mixture of Experts Model
We present a single-GPU (H100, bf16) evaluation of GPT-OSS-20B (Mixture-of-Experts; 20.9B total, approx. 3.61B active) against dense baselines Qwen3-32B and Yi-34B across multiple dimensions. We measure true time-to-first-token (TTFT), full-decode throughput (TPOT), end-to-end latency percentiles, peak VRAM with past key values (PKV) held, and energy via a consistent nvidia-smi-based sampler. At a 2048-token context with 64-token decode, GPT-OSS-20B delivers higher decode throughput and tokens …

Social homophily predicts evacuation destination choice and long-term displacement decisions after the Marshall Fire
Vaidehi Raipat, Takahiro Yabe
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18270

Social homophily predicts evacuation destination choice and long-term displacement decisions after the Marshall Fire
Rapid urbanization and climate change have contributed to a significant rise in the frequency and intensity of disasters, which have resulted in three million adults being displaced from their homes in the United States during the past year. Using large-scale mobility data, it is now possible to observe and analyze post-disaster mobility dynamics across a longer time period, compared to household surveys which are often limited in scale. However, much of the mobility data-driven research on eva…

When it comes to international conflict, Donald Trump learns everything the hard way.
On issue after issue
—North Korea, Venezuela, Ukraine, Gaza, and more
—Trump begins by bucking conventional wisdom and insisting that a bold new approach will yield breakthroughs.
Implied, and often said outright, is that past officials who worked on the matter were feeble, inept, and craven.
Trump insists that his determination and powers of persuasion will force seismic change—…

Ahead of His U.N. Speech, Remember That Trump Is Learning Geopolitics in Real Time
A guide to pushing the U.S. president more quickly up his learning curve.

I don't think I posted any running photos from the Thom B Trail Runs this May 17th in Hammond Hill State Forest; here's one of the faster runners -- this time I didn't get hypothermia or sunburn or anything
#photo #photography

Physics-Informed Diffusion Models for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection in Multivariate Time Series
Juhi Soni, Markus Lange-Hegermann, Stefan Windmann
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11528

Physics-Informed Diffusion Models for Unsupervised Anomaly Detection in Multivariate Time Series
We propose an unsupervised anomaly detection approach based on a physics-informed diffusion model for multivariate time series data. Over the past years, diffusion model has demonstrated its effectiveness in forecasting, imputation, generation, and anomaly detection in the time series domain. In this paper, we present a new approach for learning the physics-dependent temporal distribution of multivariate time series data using a weighted physics-informed loss during diffusion model training. A …

Learning the Influence Graph of a Markov Process that Randomly Resets to Past
Sudharsan Senthil, Avhishek Chatterjee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16129 https://

Learning the Influence Graph of a Markov Process that Randomly Resets to Past
Learning the influence graph G of a high-dimensional Markov process is a challenging problem. Prior work has addressed this task when the process has finite memory. However, the more general regime in which the system probabilistically "jumps back in time" - so that the state at t+1 depends on a sample from a distant past t-d - remains unexplored. The process with probabilistic resets can be modeled as a Markov process with memory, but estimations become computationally expensive. To tackle thi…

Temporal Drift in Privacy Recall: Users Misremember From Verbatim Loss to Gist-Based Overexposure Over Time
Haoze Guo, Ziqi Wei
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16962 https://

Temporal Drift in Privacy Recall: Users Misremember From Verbatim Loss to Gist-Based Overexposure Over Time
With social media content traversing the different platforms, occasionally resurfacing after periods of time, users are increasingly prone to unintended disclosure resulting from a misremembered acceptance of privacy. Context collapse and interface cues are two factors considered by prior researchers, yet we know less about how time-lapse basically alters recall of past audiences destined for exposure. Likewise, the design space for mitigating this temporal exposure risk remains underexplored. …

Elephant random walks with multiple extractions and general reinforcement functions
Moumanti Podder, Archi Roy
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14626 https://

Elephant random walks with multiple extractions and general reinforcement functions
We consider a generalized model of elephant random walks wherein the walker, during the $(n+1)$-st time-stamp, draws from the past (i.e. the set $\{1,2,\ldots,n\}$) a sample of $k$ time-stamps, either with replacement or without, where $k$ may either remain fixed as $n$ grows, or $k=k(n)$ may grow with $n$. Letting $\{U_{n,1}, U_{n,2}, \ldots, U_{n,k}\}$ denote the time-stamps sampled, the step taken by the walker during the $(n+1)$-st time-stamp, denoted $X_{n+1}$, is a $\pm 1$-valued random v…

RightTyper: Effective and Efficient Type Annotation for Python
Juan Altmayer Pizzorno, Emery D. Berger
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16051 https://

RightTyper: Effective and Efficient Type Annotation for Python
Python type annotations bring the benefits of static type checking to the language. However, manually writing annotations can be time-consuming and tedious. The result is that most real-world Python code remains largely untyped. Past approaches to annotating types in Python code fall short in a number of ways. Static approaches struggle with dynamic features and infer overly broad types. AI-based methods are inherently unsound and can miss rare or user-defined types. Dynamic methods can impose …

Total crypto market value surpassed $4T for the first time, driven by altcoin rallies and US legislative momentum; Ether jumped 22% over the past five days (Sidhartha Shukla/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

CoPAD : Multi-source Trajectory Fusion and Cooperative Trajectory Prediction with Anchor-oriented Decoder in V2X Scenarios
Kangyu Wu, Jiaqi Qiao, Ya Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15984

CoPAD : Multi-source Trajectory Fusion and Cooperative Trajectory Prediction with Anchor-oriented Decoder in V2X Scenarios
Recently, data-driven trajectory prediction methods have achieved remarkable results, significantly advancing the development of autonomous driving. However, the instability of single-vehicle perception introduces certain limitations to trajectory prediction. In this paper, a novel lightweight framework for cooperative trajectory prediction, CoPAD, is proposed. This framework incorporates a fusion module based on the Hungarian algorithm and Kalman filtering, along with the Past Time Attention (…

Cosmological constraints on Galileon dark energy with broken shift symmetry
William J. Wolf, Pedro G. Ferreira, Carlos Garc\'ia-Garc\'ia
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17586

Cosmological constraints on Galileon dark energy with broken shift symmetry
Current cosmological data seem to show that dark energy is evolving in time and that it possibly crossed the phantom divide in the past. So far the only theories that lead to such a behavior involve a non-trivial coupling between dark energy, in the form of a scalar field, and the gravitational or matter sector. We show that there is another possibility involving both a non-trivial kinetic sector in a cubic Galileon theory and a scalar field potential that breaks the Galileon shift symmetry, wh…

The Nobel Peace Prize’s long tradition of tarnished choices
https://archive.ph/CrVdj
While this op-ed was obviously prompted by discussion that Trump wants one, it could have been written any time in the past few decades.
One could draft a list of things that Very Serious People Take Very Seriously …

Bridging MOOCs, Smart Teaching, and AI: A Decade of Evolution Toward a Unified Pedagogy
Bo Yuan, Jiazi Hu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14266 https://

Bridging MOOCs, Smart Teaching, and AI: A Decade of Evolution Toward a Unified Pedagogy
Over the past decade, higher education has evolved through three distinct paradigms: the emergence of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the integration of Smart Teaching technologies into classrooms, and the rise of AI-enhanced learning. Each paradigm is intended to address specific challenges in traditional education: MOOCs enable ubiquitous access to learning resources; Smart Teaching supports real-time interaction with data-driven insights; and generative AI offers personalized feedback a…

Learning in Memristive Neural Networks
H. M. Heidema, H. J. van Waarde, B. Besselink
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15324 https://arxiv.o…

Learning in Memristive Neural Networks
Memristors are nonlinear two-terminal circuit elements whose resistance at a given time depends on past electrical stimuli. Recently, networks of memristors have received attention in neuromorphic computing since they can be used to implement Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) in hardware. For this, one can use a class of memristive circuits called crossbar arrays. In this paper, we describe a circuit implementation of an ANN and resolve three questions concerning such an implementation. In part…

@… This is exactly why I’ve laughed every time I’ve heard “But Mac’s are expensive!” For the past ~15 years.
A decent computer is expensive, regardless of which OS it runs.
It’s just that in the world of Windows, plenty of people are willing to sell you terrible hardware for a low cost.

Bridging Past and Future: Distribution-Aware Alignment for Time Series Forecasting
Yifan Hu, Jie Yang, Tian Zhou, Peiyuan Liu, Yujin Tang, Rong Jin, Liang Sun
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14181

Bridging Past and Future: Distribution-Aware Alignment for Time Series Forecasting
Representation learning techniques like contrastive learning have long been explored in time series forecasting, mirroring their success in computer vision and natural language processing. Yet recent state-of-the-art (SOTA) forecasters seldom adopt these representation approaches because they have shown little performance advantage. We challenge this view and demonstrate that explicit representation alignment can supply critical information that bridges the distributional gap between input hist…

Reinforcement learning entangling operations on spin qubits
Mohammad Abedi, Markus Schmitt
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.14761 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.1476…

Reinforcement learning entangling operations on spin qubits
High-fidelity control of one- and two-qubit gates past the error correction threshold is an essential ingredient for scalable quantum computing. We present a reinforcement learning (RL) approach to find entangling protocols for semiconductor-based singlet-triplet qubits in a double quantum dot. Despite the presence of realistically modelled experimental constraints, such as various noise contributions and finite rise-time effects, we demonstrate that an RL agent can yield performative protocols…

Prediction of linear fractional stable motions using codifference
Matthieu Garcin, Karl Sawaya, Thomas Valade
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15437 https://

Prediction of linear fractional stable motions using codifference
The linear fractional stable motion (LFSM) extends the fractional Brownian motion (fBm) by considering $α$-stable increments. We propose a method to forecast future increments of the LFSM from past discrete-time observations, using the conditional expectation when $α>1$ or a semimetric projection otherwise. It relies on the codifference, which describes the serial dependence of the process, instead of the covariance. Indeed, covariance is commonly used for predicting an fBm but it is infinite…

Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems
Samson Abramsky, Wolfgang Banzhaf, Leo S. D. Caves, Michael Levin, Penousal Machado, Charles Ofria, Susan Stepney, Roger White
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.11423

Open Questions about Time and Self-reference in Living Systems
Living systems exhibit a range of fundamental characteristics: they are active, self-referential, self-modifying systems. This paper explores how these characteristics create challenges for conventional scientific approaches and why they require new theoretical and formal frameworks. We introduce a distinction between 'natural time', the continuing present of physical processes, and 'representational time', with its framework of past, present and future that emerges with life itself. Representa…

Strange week…
For the past 2y, I’ve done automated log scanning to block miscreant IPs. For almost all of that time, I’ve mostly seen what I call “scanners” who connect to unassigned IPs which have listeners but no domains assigned to them. However, there’s also a set of “probers” who manage to offend the MTA enough to make it clear that they are not legit, e.g. credstuffers. Usually there are about 10 new scanners for every new prober. This week it reversed.

"Analysis: India’s power-sector CO2 falls for only second time in half a century"
#India #Energy #Emissions #Climate

Analysis: India’s power-sector CO2 falls for only second time in half a century - Carbon Brief
India’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its power sector fell by 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025 and by 2% over the past 12 months

Next up in our time-based media gallery: an installation of Inuk artist asinnajaq's film "Three Thousand," which combines archival footage from the National Film Board of Canada with new footage, sound and animation to focus on resilience and community in Inuit life. Read more: https:/…

Going with the Flow: Solving for Symmetry-Driven PDE dynamics with Physics-informed Neural Networks
Michail Kavousanakis, Gianluca Fabiani, Anastasia Georgiou, Constantinos Siettos, Panagiotis Kevrekidis, Ioannis Kevrekidis
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15963

Going with the Flow: Solving for Symmetry-Driven PDE dynamics with Physics-informed Neural Networks
In the past, we have presented a systematic computational framework for analyzing self-similar and traveling wave dynamics in nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) by dynamically factoring out continuous symmetries such as translation and scaling. This is achieved through the use of time-dependent transformations -- what can be viewed as dynamic pinning conditions -- that render the symmetry-invariant solution stationary or slowly varying in rescaled coordinates. The transformation pr…

Higher-order, generically complete, continuous, and polynomial-time isometry invariants of periodic sets
Daniel E Widdowson, Vitaliy A Kurlin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15088 ht…

Higher-order, generically complete, continuous, and polynomial-time isometry invariants of periodic sets
Periodic point sets model all solid crystalline materials (crystals) whose atoms can be considered zero-sized points with or without atomic types. This paper addresses the fundamental problem of checking whether claimed crystals are novel, not noisy perturbations of known materials obtained by unrealistic atomic replacements. Such near-duplicates have already skewed ground truth because past comparisons relied on discontinuous cells and symmetries. The proposed Lipschitz continuity under noise …

For the past three weeks, I’ve been attending protests at the Broadview ICE facility.
There’s been a vigil there for almost two decades at this point, but they started ramping up after three protesters were arrested four weeks ago.
Three weeks ago, we went, and it was very peaceful.
We ended up actually getting a car to turn around.
Last week, when we went, ICE assaulted a lot of us.
We went early because they changed their deportation time to around 6 a.m.

I’m a Congressional Candidate. I Was Assaulted by ICE.
An interview with Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Democratic House candidate in Illinois, who was violently thrown to the ground twice at a peaceful protest in Illinois on Friday morning.

Great way to learn history.
#History #Education

Past Loves - A History Of The Greatest Love Stories
Podcast · Holly · Join our host Holly, with a range of guests from the world of heritage and academia, as we take a trip into the most gut-wrenching and heart-warming depths of history to explore affection, infatuation and attachment across time. As we ask, what is the best love story of all time?

literally every time i walk past this CD by zzzz in the @… library (the very last CD, alphabetically), i briefly think it's "the strange remain" by the other ones.

"It is past time for both Jeffries and Schumer to step down and step aside. This fascist moment, this age of Trump, demands outspoken, unrelenting and fearless opposition. Whether you are a Democrat, or simply a democrat, we all deserve better."
https://www.theguardia…

Quantile-based Fractional Generalized Cumulative Past Entropy
Poulami Paul, Chanchal Kundu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.09182 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.0918…

Quantile-based Fractional Generalized Cumulative Past Entropy
Uncertainty in past lifetime distributions and the timing of inactivity in systems and their components can be effectively measured using the fractional generalized cumulative past entropy (FGCPE) and its dynamic extension (DFGCPE), introduced by Di Crescenzo et al. (2021). Building on this framework, we propose a quantile-based variant, the quantile fractional generalized cumulative past entropy (QFGCPE), along with its dynamic time-dependent counterpart (DQFGCPE). Closed-form expressions of t…

Time series analysis of coupled slow-fast neuron models: From Hurst exponent to Granger causality
Indranil Ghosh, Hammed O. Fatoyinbo, Sishu S. Muni
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13570

Time series analysis of coupled slow-fast neuron models: From Hurst exponent to Granger causality
We perform time series analysis of small networks where every node is the slow-fast version of the denatured Morris--Lecar neuron proposed by Schaeffer and Cain. We choose popular coupling strategies from the literature and provide a detailed account of how varying their strength drives the dynamics of the small networks. Algorithms for time series analysis range from measuring their persistence (ability to remember past values), irregularity, chaos and quasiperiodicity, to synchronization betw…

Probabilistic Model Checking: Applications and Trends
Marta Kwiatkowska, Gethin Norman, David Parker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12968 https://arxiv.org/pdf…

Probabilistic Model Checking: Applications and Trends
Probabilistic model checking is an approach to the formal modelling and analysis of stochastic systems. Over the past twenty five years, the number of different formalisms and techniques developed in this field has grown considerably, as has the range of problems to which it has been applied. In this paper, we identify the main application domains in which probabilistic model checking has proved valuable and discuss how these have evolved over time. We summarise the key strands of the underlyin…

I woke up at 3am, and while trying to get back to sleep thought about how there will be literally thousands of men loose in society who have done unspeakable things during the brutal and disgraceful conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.
Some will be caught and tried for war crimes, but most won't. They'll walk past you on the street, have jobs.
It feels like a ticking time bomb.

Pondering the Dolphins' 'good loss,' plus Clayton Kershaw's exit https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6643194/2025/09/19/bills-dolphins-mike-mcdaniel-the-pulse/

A Screw Approach to the Approximation of the Local Geometry of the Configuration Space and of the set of Configurations of Certain Rank of Lower Pair Linkages
Andreas Mueller
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13802

A Screw Approach to the Approximation of the Local Geometry of the Configuration Space and of the set of Configurations of Certain Rank of Lower Pair Linkages
A motion of a mechanism is a curve in its configuration space (c-space). Singularities of the c-space are kinematic singularities of the mechanism. Any mobility analysis of a particular mechanism amounts to investigating the c-space geometry at a given configuration. A higher-order analysis is necessary to determine the finite mobility. To this end, past research lead to approaches using higher-order time derivatives of loop closure constraints assuming (implicitly) that all possible motions ar…

Memory Effects and Entanglement Dynamics of Finite time Acceleration
Nitesh K. Dubey, Sanved Kolekar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07830 https://arxiv.org/pdf…

Memory Effects and Entanglement Dynamics of Finite time Acceleration
We construct a smooth trajectory in Minkowski spacetime that is inertial in the asymptotic past and future but undergoes approximately uniform acceleration for a finite duration. In a suitable limit, this trajectory reduces to the standard Rindler trajectory, reproducing the expected Bogoliubov transformations and results consistent with the thermal time hypothesis. We analyze the behavior of an Unruh-DeWitt (UDW) detector following such a trajectory and explore the dependence of complete posit…

Anyone having issues with Tor for the past few days?
It seems one of the Snowflake bridge is down (but should not impact obfs4):
https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/anti-censorship/pluggable-transports/snowflake/-/issues/40475…

After 15 full days in the new house, I think it's time to close off this year-long thread. Some closure on past commentary:
- for the 1st in our lives, we are debt free. Took us nearly 70 years, but we know how incredibly fortunate we are.
- we've dumped our net proceeds from #Downsizing into investments to make sure we aren't tempted to spend it foolishly.
- we kept some funds to fix some issues, including furnace & A/C, water filtration, electrical, eavestroughs, etc.
- my daughter and I are once again fighting galactic aliens online so you can rest easy.
- we've only been to the beach twice, for very short visits, as things have been hectic. Hopefully, we can enjoy that part of our neighborhood as we get into August.
Here is a short video of our 1st walk through just a few minutes before the movers arrived.
#Moving

Mario Kart 7: back online
With the help of the Pretendo network, I've managed to have a few games of this online over the past week or so, as well as doing some more time trials. The lobbies aren't full, but any stretch, but even when there's only three people in a race the catch up algorithms mean that it's fun to compete. On a couple of occasions there was one player who knew glitches on levels which meant they won easily, but they never stayed online for long.
…

Four Chinese carmakers enter Australian top 10 for first time, while Tesla sales slump https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/03/chinese-car-makers-byd-gwm-chery-mg-australian-top-10-sales-tesla-…

It's Dream Cruise time again 🏁
Same detours as in years past. Downtown Pontiac service will be temporarily moved from the Phoenix Center up to Huron & Perry starting Friday at 6pm. 710 and 740 have local event reroutes. Woodward service will be on bypass all day Saturday.

I’m in a strange mood today, Kind of down, but also relaxed at the same time. I’ve got really tired of all the social media noise these past few days, and I am consuming more than usual as I am off work, and working on my home computer, so I have more opportunity to see all the bullshit out there.

NFL Preseason Week 2 Game Recap: San Francisco 49ers 22, Las Vegas Raiders 19 https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-preseason-week-2-game-recap-san-francisco-49ers-22-las-vegas-raiders-19-2025

Hyperfixiation Joy, Stay if You Love It, Scroll if You Don’t!
Next year marks a decade since I first heard Loin d’ici by Zoë Straub. Ten years of the same song looping in my mind, ten years of clinging to every word, every note, as if it’s the only thing keeping me afloat. I remember May 14, 2016, like it’s a scar, the day my hyperfixation began. Time keeps slipping past me, but the song stays, haunting and comforting at once, as if Zoë herself is quietly following me through the endle…

one time i was in this retirement community's pool, and i swam right past a visiting five year old girl who was just starting to learn. yet another transgender woman dominating biological females at sports 😔

Extension of generalized KYP lemma: from LTI systems to LPV systems
Jingjing Zhang, Jan Heiland, Peter Benner, Xin Du
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.08579 https://

Extension of generalized KYP lemma: from LTI systems to LPV systems
The generalized Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov (gKYP) lemma, established by Iwasaki and Hara (2005 IEEE TAC), has served as a fundamental tool for finite-frequency analysis and synthesis of linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. Over the past two decades, efforts to extend the gKYP lemma from LTI systems to linear parameter varying (LPV) systems have been hindered by the intricate time-frequency inter-modulation effect between the input signal and the time-varying scheduling parameter. A key element in …

Whelp, just spent the last few hours reviewing candidates for our boys' school board, and voting, and then did the same to prepare for the upcoming local elections... which, of course, shows how little one can really glean about a candiate's character from 2 minute videos... will have to investigate further: they mostly talk a good game, but it's hard to know how consequential they have been in past roles and are likely to be now. I fear few folks will make the time to do their d…

So sad. The first #glacier I saw in 2018, during our honeymoon.
Indeed at a time they were telling us the glacier wasn’t really impacted by climate change, I had not truly understood why.
Such a majestic and unique place to visit.

Forecasting Smog Events Using ConvLSTM: A Spatio-Temporal Approach for Aerosol Index Prediction in South Asia
Taimur Khan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13891 https://

Forecasting Smog Events Using ConvLSTM: A Spatio-Temporal Approach for Aerosol Index Prediction in South Asia
The South Asian Smog refers to the recurring annual air pollution events marked by high contaminant levels, reduced visibility, and significant socio-economic impacts, primarily affecting the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) from November to February. Over the past decade, increased air pollution sources such as crop residue burning, motor vehicles, and changing weather patterns have intensified these smog events. However, real-time forecasting systems for increased particulate matter concentrations …

I finally overseeded my lawn after a 7 year gap.
Letting things slip past you is cumulative and time accelerates.

Our brains 🧠 are funny sometimes.. now that we own a black car for the first time (as of three weeks ago)… and now that I have driven it for 24 hours over the past week (up to Nova Scotia and back)….
… I am suddenly noticing how many black cars there are on the roads of New England and Atlantic Canada! 😃😮🤯
I had never really paid attention… but now I am seeing them everywhere!

false alarm, folx

Gauge symmetry and the arrow of time: How to count what counts
Sean Gryb
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.14720 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.14720

Gauge symmetry and the arrow of time: How to count what counts
This thesis addresses two major problems in the philosophy of physics. The first is how to identify the minimal physical content of a theory; that is, what features of a theory are truly needed to make predictions, and what can be removed without changing its empirical consequences. The second is the problem of time's arrow: why time seems to have a direction, even though the fundamental laws of physics treat the past and future symmetrically. I show that answering the first question leads to…

A paper recently published in a behavioral sciences journal describes a high school student’s hyperthymesia,
an extraordinary ability to retrieve autobiographical memories.
Teenager With Hyperthymesia Exhibits Extraordinary Mental Time Travel Abilities:
https://www.

Teenager with hyperthymesia exhibits extraordinary mental time travel abilities
Scientists in France have documented the case of a teenager with extraordinary autobiographical memory. She can vividly reexperience past events and imagine future ones in detail, highlighting a rare form of mental time travel and emotional memory organization.

Before and after of my latest bit of mending! An old towel rejuvenated at a smaller size!
I _could_ have just retired this one and used it as scraps to patch another one. But on the other hand, past-me put in some time and effort to add that loop for hanging it up, and I was thinking that if I could turn it back into a good towel, that'd eke out some more use of _that_ bit of work. So that's what I decided to do.
#sewing #mending

The Gist: The Presidential Selection
A run past some of the people trying to get on the ballot for next month's presidential election.
Sample: "Billy Kelleher is what you would receive if you ordered the delivery of approximately two meters of extruded Fianna Fšil."
https://www.thegis…

The Gist: The Presidential Selection
The time is ticking down to pick the candidates to replace Michael D. This is the Gist.

@… Way past time for her to go.

TFMAdapter: Lightweight Instance-Level Adaptation of Foundation Models for Forecasting with Covariates
Afrin Dange, Sunita Sarawagi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13906 https://

TFMAdapter: Lightweight Instance-Level Adaptation of Foundation Models for Forecasting with Covariates
Time Series Foundation Models (TSFMs) have recently achieved state-of-the-art performance in univariate forecasting on new time series simply by conditioned on a brief history of past values. Their success demonstrates that large-scale pretraining across diverse domains can acquire the inductive bias to generalize from temporal patterns in a brief history. However, most TSFMs are unable to leverage covariates -- future-available exogenous variables critical for accurate forecasting in many appl…

You may think that our train didn't depart yet, even though it's past departure time and the it disappeared from the displays on the station. However, it just means you're using the wrong frame of reference. If you used the frame of the train departing next platform, you'd realize that our train is moving indeed.

A geometric model of synthetic filtrations via context-dependent time
Takanori Adachi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12919 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.12919

A geometric model of synthetic filtrations via context-dependent time
Classical filtrations in probability theory formalize the accumulation of information along a linear time axis: the past is unique and the present evolves into an uncertain future. In many contexts, however, information is neither linear nor uniquely determined by a single history. In this paper we propose a geometric model of synthetic filtrations, where the present may be formed by synthesizing multiple possible pasts. To achieve this, we introduce a new category Σ, an extension of the simpl…

Knowledge Distillation for Sensing-Assisted Long-Term Beam Tracking in mmWave Communications
Mengyuan Ma, Nhan Thanh Nguyen, Nir Shlezinger, Yonina C. Eldar, A. Lee Swindlehurst, Markku Juntti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.11419

Knowledge Distillation for Sensing-Assisted Long-Term Beam Tracking in mmWave Communications
Infrastructure-mounted sensors can capture rich environmental information to enhance communications and facilitate beamforming in millimeter-wave systems. This work presents an efficient sensing-assisted long-term beam tracking framework that selects optimal beams from a codebook for current and multiple future time slots. We first design a large attention-enhanced neural network (NN) to fully exploit past visual observations for beam tracking. A convolutional NN extracts compact image features…

Lucky enough to see some sunsets on the beach this past week. Every time we found plastic trash. One easy way to use less plastic? Foaming hand soap tablets. Just put in a tablet and refill your foaming hand soap dispenser with water. It's also cheaper. :) #lessplasticplease

"If I had a time machine to go back to the past, what would I want to tell my PhD self?" Four IMPRS alumns treated us to valuable insights into their individual career paths and life choices after the PhD. Thank you Jean, Argyrios, Nina and Krzysztof for joining us at the retreat and sharing your personal experiences with us! The current doctoral researchers in the school much appreciated the opportunity to connect with you.

Tim Cook:
“At Apple, design has always been fundamental to who we are and what we do…
…but it’s now time to leave the past behind us and try a fresh and new approach.”
/s

Beyond Linearity and Time-homogeneity: Relational Hyper Event Models with Time-Varying Non-Linear Effects
Martina Boschi, J\"urgen Lerner, Ernst C. Wit
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.05289

Beyond Linearity and Time-homogeneity: Relational Hyper Event Models with Time-Varying Non-Linear Effects
Recent technological advances have made it easier to collect large and complex networks of time-stamped relational events connecting two or more entities. Relational hyper-event models (RHEMs) aim to explain the dynamics of these events by modeling the event rate as a function of statistics based on past history and external information. However, despite the complexity of the data, most current RHEM approaches still rely on a linearity assumption to model this relationship. In this work, we a…

3D forest semantic segmentation using multispectral LiDAR and 3D deep learning
Narges Takhtkeshha, Lauris Bocaux, Lassi Ruoppa, Fabio Remondino, Gottfried Mandlburger, Antero Kukko, Juha Hyypp\"a
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08025

3D forest semantic segmentation using multispectral LiDAR and 3D deep learning
Conservation and decision-making regarding forest resources necessitate regular forest inventory. Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) in laser scanning systems has gained significant attention over the past two decades as a remote and non-destructive solution to streamline the labor-intensive and time-consuming procedure of forest inventory. Advanced multispectral (MS) LiDAR systems simultaneously acquire three-dimensional (3D) spatial and spectral information across multiple wavelengths of the…

Accelerating LLM Inference via Dynamic KV Cache Placement in Heterogeneous Memory System
Yunhua Fang, Rui Xie, Asad Ul Haq, Linsen Ma, Kaoutar El Maghraoui, Naigang Wang, Meng Wang, Liu Liu, Tong Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13231

Accelerating LLM Inference via Dynamic KV Cache Placement in Heterogeneous Memory System
Large Language Model (LLM) inference is increasingly constrained by memory bandwidth, with frequent access to the key-value (KV) cache dominating data movement. While attention sparsity reduces some memory traffic, the relevance of past tokens varies over time, requiring the full KV cache to remain accessible and sustaining pressure on both bandwidth and capacity. With advances in interconnects such as NVLink and LPDDR5X, modern AI hardware now integrates high-bandwidth memory (HBM) with high-s…

For the first time in U.S. history, there are more Americans over 62 than under 18.
With the national workforce getting older every year, many economists argue that having people keep working longer than they used to would help maintain a robust labor market.
But it can be hard for many older adults to stay employed past the age of 62, the year they typically become eligible for early Social Security retirement benefits, even when their health is good.
In part, that’s becaus…

Trump administration ends a federal program helping older people get jobs since the 1960s
The White House left the program out of its proposed 2026 budget due to what it said was a failure at moving older workers into unsubsidized employment.

Over the past year, long-time Bitcoin whales have been selling off their holdings, leading to a reshaping of the market as institutions increase their buying (Olga Kharif/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20

Winds Through Time: Interactive Data Visualization and Physicalization for Paleoclimate Communication
David Hunter, Pablo Botin, Emily Snode-Brenneman, Amy Stevermer, Becca Hatheway, Dillon Amaya, Eddie Goldstein, Wayne A Seltzer, Mark D Gross, Kris Karnauskas, Daniel Leithinger, Ellen Yi-Luen Do
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13039

Winds Through Time: Interactive Data Visualization and Physicalization for Paleoclimate Communication
We describe a multidisciplinary collaboration to iteratively design an interactive exhibit for a public science center on paleoclimate, the study of past climates. We created a data physicalisation of mountains and ice sheets that can be tangibly manipulated by visitors to interact with a wind simulation visualisation that demonstrates how the climate of North America differed dramatically between now and the peak of the last ice age. We detail the system for interaction and visualisation plus …

Ravens RB Derrick Henry breaks tie with Hall of Famer Jim Brown, sits at No. 6 all time with 107 rushing TDs https://www.nfl.com/news/ravens-rb-derrick-henry-breaks-tie-with-hall-of-famer-jim-brown-sits-at-no-6-all…

The only way in which I’ve wished Siri was “smarter” the past few years has nothing to do with LLMs:
I store my shopping list in Reminders, and my tasks in @….
Routinely I’ll say something like “Add milk to my shopping list” or “In OmniFocus, remind me to mow the lawn”and *most* of the time, it works flawlessly.
10% of the time, I try…

Approximation of time-periodic flow past a translating body by flows in bounded domains
Thomas Eiter, Ana Leonor Silvestre
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.23697 https://

Approximation of time-periodic flow past a translating body by flows in bounded domains
We consider a time-periodic incompressible three-dimensional Navier-Stokes flow past a translating rigid body. In the first part of the paper, we establish the existence and uniqueness of strong solutions in the exterior domain $Ω\subset {\mathbb R}^3$ that satisfy pointwise estimates for both the velocity and pressure. The fundamental solution of the time-periodic Oseen equations plays a central role in obtaining these estimates. The second part focuses on approximating this exterior flow wit…

😣 Effortful pastimes are perceived as more meaningful than those requiring minimal effort, study finds
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-effortful-pastimes-meaningful-requiring-minimal.html

Effortful pastimes are perceived as more meaningful than those requiring minimal effort, study finds
Past studies suggest that how people spend their time outside of work or academic endeavors can contribute to their overall well-being and life satisfaction. Yet how humans perceive different leisure activities that they engage in and the extent to which they feel that these activities contribute to their life's purpose has not yet been extensively investigated.

"We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." — T.S. Eliot
(No better way to summarize my own research of the past four months...)
#QuoteOfTheDay

Every time I listen to this, I’m dragged back into the shadows of every terrible choice I’ve made, haunted by the weight of my past mistakes, and yet, somehow, I’m still standing, scarred but alive, far from where I once was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GaJS2MiXWU

Retrocausal capacity of a quantum channel
Kaiyuan Ji, Seth Lloyd, Mark M. Wilde
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08965 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08965

Retrocausal capacity of a quantum channel
We study the capacity of a quantum channel for retrocausal communication, where messages are transmitted backward in time, from a sender in the future to a receiver in the past, through a noisy postselected closed timelike curve (P-CTC) represented by the channel. We completely characterize the one-shot retrocausal quantum and classical capacities of a quantum channel, and we show that the corresponding asymptotic capacities are equal to the average and sum, respectively, of the channel's max-i…

This Raiders Defender Will Take the Next Step This Season https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/las-vegas-chris-smith-maxx-crosby-devin-white-pete-carroll

Learning non-Markovian Dynamical Systems with Signature-based Encoders
Eliott Pradeleix, R\'emy Hosseinkhan-Boucher, Alena Shilova, Onofrio Semeraro, Lionel Mathelin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.12022

Learning non-Markovian Dynamical Systems with Signature-based Encoders
Neural ordinary differential equations offer an effective framework for modeling dynamical systems by learning a continuous-time vector field. However, they rely on the Markovian assumption - that future states depend only on the current state - which is often untrue in real-world scenarios where the dynamics may depend on the history of past states. This limitation becomes especially evident in settings involving the continuous control of complex systems with delays and memory effects. To capt…

Disentangling Boltzmann brains, the time-asymmetry of memory, the H theorem, and the second law
David Wolpert, Carlo Rovelli, Jordan Scharnhorst
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10959

Disentangling Boltzmann brains, the time-asymmetry of memory, the H theorem, and the second law
Are you, with your perceptions, memories and observational data, a Boltzmann brain, i.e., a statistical fluctuation out of the thermal equilibrium of the universe? Arguments are given in the literature for and against taking this hypothesis seriously. Complicating these analyses have been the many subtle - and very often implicit - entanglements between related arguments that have been given for the past hypothesis, the second law, and even Bayesian inference of the reliability of experimental …

Raiders report: Former 1st-round pick hopes to add depth at safety https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/raiders/raiders-report-former-1st-round-pick-hopes-to-add-depth-at-safety-3420885/

Bayesian Models for Joint Selection of Features and Auto-Regressive Lags: Theory and Applications in Environmental and Financial Forecasting
Alokesh Manna, Sujit K. Ghosh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10055

Bayesian Models for Joint Selection of Features and Auto-Regressive Lags: Theory and Applications in Environmental and Financial Forecasting
We develop a Bayesian framework for variable selection in linear regression with autocorrelated errors, accommodating lagged covariates and autoregressive structures. This setting occurs in time series applications where responses depend on contemporaneous or past explanatory variables and persistent stochastic shocks, including financial modeling, hydrological forecasting, and meteorological applications requiring temporal dependency capture. Our methodology uses hierarchical Bayesian models w…

Something clearly is up with the
79-year-old president,
and the official explanations don’t make sense.
That’s not surprising given that Trump is a world historical liar surrounded by toadies who surrendered their shame long ago.
But it’s past time for reporters to ask some questions.
The mainstream press is still in self-flagellation mode over how they purportedly “ignored” former President Joe Biden’s decline.
(In reality, they never stopped talking ab…

Alert the media: The White House is lying about Trump's health
Their explanations are absurd and it's time to start asking questions.

Tom Brady roasts Jets fans during Patriots statue ceremony https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6543432/2025/08/09/tom-brady-patriots-statue-jets-roast/