Tootfinder

Ask yourself: How many water bottles thrown at cops are worth keeping one innocent American* teen out of inhumane #ICE detention?
For anyone criticizing the #LA protests or suggesting they should stop for any reason, let's be clear about the stakes. Read this article (or my summary):
https://abcnews.go.com/US/massachusetts-teen-detained-ice-family-video-ice/story?id=122511685
This 18-year-old was snatched without a warrant, because he was in his dad's car and allegedly (possibly a lie or mistake) his dad drove recklessly. He's been in the US since he was 5, originally on a student visa that's since expired. He is an innocent American, by any reasonable definition of those two words*. Thankfully, he's since been released on bail, but he may yet be held indefinitely in ICE detention (in inhumane conditions that have been repeatedly documented) and/or separated from his family & friends and shipped off to Brazil where he last lived when he was 5 (ICE does not care whether he speaks Portuguese, has any family there, etc), all potentially without due process (though he seems to be getting that in this case). Even if this doesn't happen to Marcelo due to the media attention & protests, it is certainly happening to other innocent Americans throughout the country who aren't as lucky to have people standing up for them.
Here's Marcelo speaking about detention conditions and those he was detained with:
https://youtube.com/shorts/ZpZMUb9aEys?si=bpK-022CU7Acb5RY
Do you know how many kids like Marcelo were detained in LA yesterday? Probably zero, because of the protests, including their confrontational tactics. The most "violence" I've seen (from the protestors) is throwing a water bottle at a line of heavily-armored riot police. So the protests are working to protect the community. If you're suggesting a change in tactics, consider whether your suggested tactics (like pre-scheduled non-confrontational protests that have been happening for weeks) will protect the Marcelos of LA.
*Whether he's innocent or American should not in fact matter, but sadly it might to some reading this. If that's you, you've still got some growing up to do.

I’m back to trying the #PuzzlePraise hashtag when I reply to the puzzle results of a fellow puzzler.
In my mind, this is kind of a reverse discovery tool. I, like many mutual follows, prefer to comment on the puzzles of others. No matter how unoriginal or rote it may seem, it just feels like more of a connection to me.
So, if you’re annoyed by all the back and forth that you see by v…

"""
"[…] Wanting a man got me into awful troubles more than once. But wanting to get married, never! No, no. None of that for me."
"Why not?" Tenar demanded.
Taken aback, Moss said simply, "Why, what man'd marry a witch?" And then, with a sidelong chewing motion of her jaw, like a sheep shifting its cud, “And what witch’d marry a man?"
They split rushes.
"What's wrong with men?" Tenar inquired cautiously.
As cautiously, lowering her voice, Moss replied, "I don't know, my dearie. I’ve thought on it. Often I’ve thought on it. The best I can say it is like this. A man’s in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell." She held up her long, bent, wet fingers as if holding a walnut. “It’s hard and strong, that shell, and it’s all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that’s all. That’s all there is. It’s all him and nothing else, inside."
Tenar pondered awhile and finally asked, "But if he's a wizard—"
"Then it's all his power, inside. His power’s himself, see. That’s how it is with him. And that’s all. When his power goes, he’s gone. Empty." She cracked the unseen walnut and tossed the shells away. “Nothing."
"And a woman, then?"
"Oh, well, dearie, a woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen, mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark." Moss’s eyes shone with a weird brightness in their red rims and her voice sang like an instrument. “I go back into the dark! Before the moon I was. No one knows, no one knows, no one can say what I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman’s power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who’ll ask the dark its name?"
"""
(Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu)

"Bill Gates has never received a résumé from anyone who read all of TAOCP. There’s an urban legend (now sadly debunked) that Steve Jobs told Knuth he had “read all of his books”, to which Knuth replied “you are full of crap”.
While that tale is not true, nobody including Steve Jobs can say that they have read all of TAOCP. The reason is simple: it isn’t finished yet."

The Art Of "The Art Of Computer Programming"
A quote from the cover of Volume One of Professor Donald Knuth's Magnum Opus, "The Art of Computer Programming (3rd edition)": "If you think you're a really good programmer… read (Knuth's) Art of Computer Programming… You should definitely send me a résumé if you can read the whole thing." "Me" here refers to the author of the quote, Bill Gates.

Interesting piece on the #Arctic #SeaIce and it's (improving) representation in global climate models by Gavin Schmidt over on @realclimate, I'm not entirely sure all of the improvement is for the right reasons, there are probably compensating biases, it would be interesting to see if the models get the regional signal correct in different parts of the Arctic, but overall I agree with this piece, there have been some big steps forward in global models, the regional level is often not very well represented though.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2025/05/predicted-arctic-sea-ice-trends-over-time/

The Python library "YFinance" decided to force an upgrade. They did this by making the old version report a rate-limit error on every request.
Confusing.
Would have been better if they reported a "old version not supported" error or something instead. So that wasted some time.
That upgrade had dependencies which have dependencies upon a newer version of Python, so needed a whole OS upgrade really.
Which failed. Bricking the Rasp PI it was running on.
Oh well, complete rebuild of the whole machine and software it runs from scratch then.
That took all day yesterday. At the end I notice that the touch-screen doesn't touch. Needs drivers.
The drivers haven't been upgraded in six years. They brick the machine again when trying to install them on Debian Trixie.
Luckily, I kept good notes and could rebuild it all again much faster with no mistakes and knowing what to do and all the required custom software changes already made and saved.
So now I spent a whole day on annoying upgrade work because a single Python library decided to break the old version, and my Rasp Pi has no touch-screen. Which isn't ideal for a machine mostly operating as a fancy light switch for all the LED strips in the house.
This happens all the time in software. Millions of man hours wasted, so much hardware dumped because the drivers get abandoned.

In other news: Microsoft abandons Windows 10 any day now. Good luck to everyone faced with doing that lap on the upgrade treadmill.
I still have more work to do to bring up this RaspPi's software to where it was, but it'll have to wait, other things to do. At least it's back to sending me the nightly finance report and controlling the LED strips. If without a touch screen now.
#software #upgradeTredmil #python #microsoft

Series B, Episode 05 - Pressure Point
AVON: If I can fire at ground level, the beam radiation should be great enough to cut a narrow channel through the sensor mesh. That would give you eight seconds to get from here to the blockhouse. The mesh would start its repair cycle instantly. Take one step off the channel and you're dead. I know it's a slim chance, but it's the best I can come up with.
BLAKE: Let's try it.

Blakes7Bot | Search
Companion site to the Blakes7Bot Twitter, Mastodon, and Bluesky accounts. Automated lines of Blakes 7 dialog. Includes a script search facility.

My neighbor's yard.

"Journalism screwed itself over by betting
on Meta and its profit-over-society peers.
Now, nobody trusts “the media” and
everyone is going bankrupt. The next bet
is on generative AI, with its inability to
distinguish truth from “hallucinations” –
fabrications that on the page become lies.
The Continent is an attempt to prove
journalism can be done differently.
Expect more of this in what our team
has decided to call our “serious era”.
We’re no longer a start-up. We’re going
to empower more people with quality
journalism. We’re going to help others
launch newspapers. We’re going to
stay sane. And we’re going to prove
that African excellence can set global
standards."
@… reaches 5 years and 200 issues. If you're not already receiving their copy via @… (or email, telegram or WhatsApp if you must) then it's really worth signing up to remind yourself just how big and diverse the world ist.
This weeks highlights are an extraordinary story about how Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe directly interfered with Mozambique's election. Plus a frankly beautiful photo piece on Addis Ababa