Tootfinder

Justin Herbert poised for MVP-caliber season; Indianapolis Colts equipped to end playoff drought https://www.nfl.com/news/justin-herbert-poised-for-mvp-caliber-season-indianapolis-colts-equipped-to-end-playoff-drought

Republican senator Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate committee on homeland security and government affairs,
criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings
"Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul wrote on X,
alluding to Harper Lee’s 1960 novel about a wrongly convicted Black man who is killed as he tries to escape prison.
“Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed with…

Aspheric lens design proposal for near-perfect mode-matching of a broadband quantum dot micropillar to a single-mode fibre
Yichen Zhang, David Dlaka, James McDougall, James Y Tai, Petros Androvitsaneas, Edmund Harbord, Ruth Oulton, Andrew B. Young
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.06223

Aspheric lens design proposal for near-perfect mode-matching of a broadband quantum dot micropillar to a single-mode fibre
Quantum dots in micropillars are one of the most promising options for a bright, deterministic single photon source. While highly efficient devices (>95%) have been designed, there remains a significant bottleneck that impacts the overall system efficiency: the large numerical aperture of the output mode. This leads to inefficient coupling of emitted photons into single-mode fibre, thus limiting practical integration into quantum computing and communication architectures. We show that with the …

Railroad tracks on Rt 38 south of Newark Valley -- so far as I know trains still deliver oil to a petroleum depot near Harford
#photo #photography #landscape

Last week, I finished a book that I really liked but the one I followed up with was a letdown so I reckoned I would finally read Elana Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend,” which everyone says is so great and it’s on my shelf anyway, bu then I found this old edition of GB Shaw plays and I’m reading that instead, Pygmalion first. It’s very funny — I laughed out loud in Act V. Also — spoiler alert! — it has a better ending than the 1964 film (which I love anyway!).

Comment on "Discovery and Preliminary Characterization of a Third Interstellar Object: 3I/ATLAS" [arXiv:2507.02757]
Abraham Loeb (Harvard)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05881

Comment on "Discovery and Preliminary Characterization of a Third Interstellar Object: 3I/ATLAS" [arXiv:2507.02757]
The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS shows a weak cometary activity. Its brightness suggests a maximum radius of ~10km (A/0.05)^{-1/2} for an asteroid with an albedo A. I show that interstellar objects with that radius would amount to an interstellar mass density that is well above the expected mass budget of interstellar comets or asteroids. Given this budget, the detection rate of objects like 3I/ATLAS implies that it is a comet with a small core radius <0.6km, or a member of a rare population wi…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #EssentialClassics
Harry Burleigh, Calefax Reed Quintet & Jelte Althuis:
🎵 Southland sketches, No 4 (arr. for wind quintet)
#HarryBurleigh #CalefaxReedQuintet #JelteAlthuis