Tootfinder

Brazil Supreme Court opens path to mining in Indigenous land for first time https://news.mongabay.com/2026/03/brazil-supreme-court-opens-path-to-mining-in-indigenous-land-for-first-time/

Brazil Supreme Court opens path to mining in Indigenous land for first time
On Feb. 3, at the request of an association of the Indigenous Cinta Larga people in the Amazon, the Brazilian Supreme Court authorized the possibility of mining exploration and exploitation inside an Indigenous territory for the first time. While the decision does not automatically authorize mining in the Cinta Larga Indigenous territory, it has set […]

Guided by her conviction that science is for everybody,
Prescod-Weinstein renders accessible some of the most abstract concepts of theoretical physics
and draws on poetry and popular culture
—from Queen Latifah to Lewis Carroll to Big K.R.I.T. to Sun Ra and Star Trek
— to tell fascinating stories about the fundamental quantum nature of space-time and everything inside of it.

The Edge of Space-Time // Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie

I have written another essay for my blog. This one is about where I'm up to with my mad #Lisp system, and is *really* obscure!
https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-outpu

Vector space, Pages, Mark-but-don't-sweep, and the world's slowest ever rapid prototype
...it was intended, largely, to be a giant thought experiment. But now enough of it *does* work that I can see fundamental design mistakes, and I'm thinking about whether it's time to treat it as a rapid prototype...

After spending the last few weeks watching the #Artemis live stream, I brought the family to Huntsville, AL and the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. I went to Space Camp and Space Academy when I was a kid, so this whole place is a core memory for me. Time to geek out!
#usspaceandrocketcenter

First JWST thermal phase curves of temperate terrestrial exoplanets reveal no thick atmosphere around TRAPPIST-1 b and c: #exoplanets for the first time using the James Webb space telescope.

New Mexico Oil Group Makes Third Bid to Discharge Toxic Fracking Wastewater into Rivers, Crops https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/new-mexico-oil-group-makes-third-bid-…

New Mexico Oil Group Makes Third Bid to Discharge Toxic Fracking Wastewater into Rivers, Crops
Center for Biological Diversity: SANTA FE, N.M.— A fossil fuel industry trade group is pressing New Mexico regulators for the third time to allow the release of toxic oil and gas wastewater into the state’s rivers and onto pastures and irrigated crops.

@… Happy for you that you’re finding potential ways to fill that space in your life.
I can relate somewhat, having moved to the U.S. in late 2019 and working from home exclusively this whole time, finding community is definitely a challenge I’m familiar with.

Turns out the #ArtemisII reentry was visible from the #ISS . Amazing!
https://www.sen.com/video/e1cbd8ed-1363-4a

An asteroid that NASA used for target practice a few years ago
was nudged into a slightly different route around the sun,
findings that could help divert a future incoming killer space rock, scientists reported Friday.
It’s the first time that a celestial body’s orbit around the sun was deliberately changed.
The asteroid that NASA’s #Dart spacecraft slammed into was never a threat to Ea…

Spacecraft's impact changed asteroid's orbit around the sun in a save-the-Earth test, study finds
A new study has found that an asteroid NASA used for target practice a few years ago was nudged into a slightly different route around the sun. It's the first time that a celestial body's solar orbit was deliberately changed. Scientists reported Friday that the 2022 impact by the Dart spacecraft not only trimmed the asteroid's orbit around its bigger space rock companion, but also around the sun. Researchers say their findings could help divert an incoming killer space rock given enough advance…

"So the next time that you see a spectacular image of the #nightsky from the #ISS, remember that, although it is a better view (maybe a lot better, if you live in NYC or another light polluted area), the show that the #astronauts

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
With the safe return of NASA's Artemis II, it is time to talk about plankton space #science 🛰. PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) is the latest advanced observing satellite launched Feb 2024 which carries the OCI Ocean Colour Instrument measuring hyp…

Rams GM Les Snead to give Matthew Stafford 'space,' wants 'win-win' on Puka Nacua extension https://www.nfl.com/news/rams-gm-les-snead-give-matthew-stafford-space-win-win-puka-nacua

Why is everyone so into people staring out into space in a little capsule?
It's because we're human beings. We thrive on positive emotions. We crave real human connection.
Especially in a time when our “leaders” push the most dehumanizing technology ever invented and commit endless atrocities to distract from their crimes.

Data reveal a significant acceleration of global warming since 2015 #climate

Data reveal a significant acceleration of global warming since 2015
Global warming has accelerated since 2015, according to a new study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). After accounting for known natural influences on global temperature, the research team detected a statistically significant acceleration of the warming trend for the first time.

Ugh. Good individual effort, at least, and a very well weighted pass into the half space. Some pretty suspect defending, despite having 5 to cope.
Time for the wilting (or maybe that goal was the start of it)
#LFC

Sam Altman says currently "the idea of putting data centers in space is ridiculous" and that it is "not something that's going to matter at scale this decade" (Lauren Edmonds/Business Insider)
https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman

Sam Altman says Elon Musk's idea of putting data centers in space is 'ridiculous'
While in New Delhi on Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said "there will come a time" for orbital data centers, but it won't be anytime soon.

Well, some of you know that this instance also offers a matrix server.
However, sone users have decided to join every room possible - on every server they can find.
And that causes our server to run out of space and being constantly overloaded all the time.
This is why we cant have nice things

A ballsy move, post-DOGE, I must say. https://flipboard.com/@livescience/space-5ipi8o62z/-/a-TOJf62F_R-ePBD39WWeufQ:a:1692617722-/0

Artemis II blasts off: Humans are on their way back to the moon
NASA's Artemis II rocket has taken off in a historic launch on Florida's Space Coast, sending humans back to the moon for the first time in more than …

the wind in a tree playing with the sunlight on a Begonia
#photography #bloomScrolling #begonia #orange

#Artemistracker #space
https://artemistracker.com/

Artemis II Mission Tracker
🚀 2 days until Artemis II launch window opens! Track NASA's mission to the Moon in real-time 3D. Launch: Apr 1, 2026.

🗺️ New 'Mars GPS' lets Perseverance pinpoint its location within 25 centimeters
#space

New 'Mars GPS' lets Perseverance pinpoint its location within 25 centimeters
Imagine you're all alone, driving along in a rocky, unforgiving desert with no roads, no map, no GPS, and no more than one phone call a day for someone to inform you exactly where you are. That's what NASA's Perseverance rover has been experiencing since landing on Mars five years ago. Though it carries time-tested tools for determining its general location, the rover has needed operators on Earth to tell it precisely where it is—until now.

Hey, remember when the regime was justifying everything they were doing because the “Dow was over 50,000”‽
Man, one month ago was a simpler time, huhn?

Just when you thought you’d seen it all… Space-time? No, space-crime!
https://www.kwch.com/2026/02/15/kansas-woman-sentenced-federal-prison-lying-law-enforcement-about-space-crime/

Kansas woman sentenced to federal prison for lying to law enforcement about space crime
The 51-year-old woman falsely claimed that her estranged spouse, a NASA astronaut, had illegally accessed her bank account while in space.

I'm trying to type the word `part.revision` in our wiki because this is a database field I'm trying to document.
It keeps #autocorrect ing this to `part. Revision` because it thinks I'm actually starting a new sentence and am too stupid to add the space and capitalize the first word.

This is Baker Street, a so-called bike route, as the little green sign says. It’s super wide, and would have plenty of room for protected bike lanes to help riders safely take their time climbing the hill. And what does SF use the space for instead?

A polynomial-time algorithm for recognizing high-bandwidth graphs
Luis M. B. Varona
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01755 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.01755 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.01755
arXiv:2602.01755v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: An unweighted, undirected graph $G$ on $n$ nodes is said to have \emph{bandwidth} at most $k$ if its nodes can be labelled from $0$ to $n - 1$ such that no two adjacent nodes have labels that differ by more than $k$. It is known that one can decide whether the bandwidth of $G$ is at most $k$ in $O(n^k)$ time and $O(n^k)$ space using dynamic programming techniques. For small $k$ close to $0$, this approach is effectively polynomial, but as $k$ scales with $n$, it becomes superexponential, requiring up to $O(n^{n - 1})$ time (where $n - 1$ is the maximum possible bandwidth). In this paper, we reformulate the problem in terms of bipartite matching for sufficiently large $k \ge \lfloor (n - 1)/2 \rfloor$, allowing us to use Hall's marriage theorem to develop an algorithm that runs in $O(n^{n - k 1})$ time and $O(n)$ auxiliary space (beyond storage of the input graph). This yields polynomial complexity for large $k$ close to $n - 1$, demonstrating that the bandwidth recognition problem is solvable in polynomial time whenever either $k$ or $n - k$ remains small.
toXiv_bot_toot

Drinking water at risk long after wildfires, study warns #environment

Drinking water at risk long after wildfires, study warns
Canada's drinking water can remain at risk long after wildfires burn out, according to a UBC-led global review that found water-quality impacts often emerge months or years later—not just immediately after a fire. Researchers analyzed 23 studies across 28 watersheds worldwide, comparing pre- and post-fire levels of sediment, nutrients, metals, organic carbon, ions and wildfire-fighting chemicals. Across climates, contamination often intensified over time, particularly when storms or snowmelt …

Has somebody else encountered the following TTRPG paradox?
You are in 2 to 4 games. Because of life, stuff and session cancellation, you will play max two sessions a week, most of the time only one, and sometimes you'll have several weeks without any session.
You add one game.
Why? Because of all that white space in your schedule!
Suddenly, you have up to 5–7 sessions a week as the stars align and all your GMs and fellow players manage to get their schedules in ord…

i feel like they should have forcibly emptied all the garbage chutes into space one last time *before* abandoning the space station
#Monsterdon

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116171339797022986
I don’t care if someone calls stuff “spaceflight” (though that usually includes portions of actual flight through air).
But if it’s for a scientific or technology discussion it’s hugely inaccurate and misleading.
In space, things always move in orbits, which is essentially more or less perpetually falling.
To make things go places (e.g. make a thing go to Mars), you change how it’s falling.
Play some Kerbal Space Program some time!

"They discovered that land surface temperatures increased by an average of 2°C (3.6°F) in the months after an AI data centre started operations. In the most extreme cases, the increase in temperature was 9.1°C (16.4°F). The effect wasn’t limited to the immediate surroundings of the data centres: the team found increased temperatures up to 10 kilometres away. Seven kilometres away, there was only a 30 per cent reduction in the intensity."

I read a README file I wrote a few weeks ago and decided it didn't have enough information, so it's now twice as long with a lot more detail.
I'm the only one who will ever read or use the file, but I have learned I cannot rely on my own memory a few months or years from now when I need to revisit the project or do something similar.
Make notes! Make more notes. It's a text file, it won't take up much space but it might save you a bunch of time in the future.

#LittleRedDot variability over a century reveals black hole envelope via a giant Einstein cross: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05180 -> One image tracks the same cosmic object across space and time. It's all down to a strange quirk of physics: https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/rxc-j2211-0350-little-red-dots

OFERA: Blendshape-driven 3D Gaussian Control for Occluded Facial Expression to Realistic Avatars in VR
Seokhwan Yang, Boram Yoon, Seoyoung Kang, Hail Song, Woontack Woo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01748 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.01748 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.01748
arXiv:2602.01748v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We propose OFERA, a novel framework for real-time expression control of photorealistic Gaussian head avatars for VR headset users. Existing approaches attempt to recover occluded facial expressions using additional sensors or internal cameras, but sensor-based methods increase device weight and discomfort, while camera-based methods raise privacy concerns and suffer from limited access to raw data. To overcome these limitations, we leverage the blendshape signals provided by commercial VR headsets as expression inputs. Our framework consists of three key components: (1) Blendshape Distribution Alignment (BDA), which applies linear regression to align the headset-provided blendshape distribution to a canonical input space; (2) an Expression Parameter Mapper (EPM) that maps the aligned blendshape signals into an expression parameter space for controlling Gaussian head avatars; and (3) a Mapper-integrated Avatar (MiA) that incorporates EPM into the avatar learning process to ensure distributional consistency. Furthermore, OFERA establishes an end-to-end pipeline that senses and maps expressions, updates Gaussian avatars, and renders them in real-time within VR environments. We show that EPM outperforms existing mapping methods on quantitative metrics, and we demonstrate through a user study that the full OFERA framework enhances expression fidelity while preserving avatar realism. By enabling real-time and photorealistic avatar expression control, OFERA significantly improves telepresence in VR communication. A project page is available at https://ysshwan147.github.io/projects/ofera/.
toXiv_bot_toot

My evolving relationship with coding.

Sickly Red III ⭕️
病态的红 III ⭕️
📷 Pentax MX
🎞️ CineStill 800T
If you like my work, buy me a coffee from PayPal #filmphotography

Ooh. Garek's audiobook is available to listen for free on Spotify. 😁
▶️ Star Trek Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time - Andrew J. Robinson
https://open.spotify.com/show/3zhBgozZX055rPAP4Q5j2Y?si=dJ2yrIyyQkiE1vBwrDEUiw

Video: Multifaith Mondays: Moral Witness for Democracy (March 23, 2026)
I was honored to be able to offer a small reflection at this event. Since March 3, 2025, Multifaith Monday vigils have served as a sacred space for collective lament, prophetic resistance, and multifaith community-building in a time of deep division and threat to America’s democratic values. Every Monday, New Yorkers come together — rain or shine, hot or cold — to draw strength from each other, and…

RE: https://mastodon.social/@kottke/116323988457621690
Women's sports are not immune to this but a way better space. I know telling people to like something different isn't a strategy, but if you are looking for something new what a great time to ge…

Chiefs part ways with two-time Super Bowl champion pass rusher Michael Danna ahead of free agency

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/chiefs-part-ways-with-two-time-sup…

The dark side of the balloon boom – is it time they were banned? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/02/the-dark-side-of-the-balloon-boom-is-it-time-they-were-banned

…it’s not even that. It’s just ugly. Bad layouts. Bad margins. Bad proportions. Awkward animations. Flickers and flashes. Content peeking through all the negative space so that the screen is filled with visual noise. It feels designed by committee. It feels pasted together.
The feel of Apple products has covered a lot of ground over the decades. They’ve felt elegant. They’ve felt basic. They’ve felt bauble-y and cute. They’ve felt futuristic. They’ve felt practical. But this is the first time I can recall an Apple product feeling •cheap•.

I assumed that if you use MacOS's Time Machine and the backup drive runs out of space, it would just prune the backup. Apparently, it does not?

Replaced article(s) found for cs.DS. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.DS/new
[1/1]:
- Fully Dynamic Adversarially Robust Correlation Clustering in Polylogarithmic Update Time
Vladimir Braverman, Prathamesh Dharangutte, Shreyas Pai, Vihan Shah, Chen Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09979 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/113502653187863544
- A Simple and Combinatorial Approach to Proving Chernoff Bounds and Their Generalizations
William Kuszmaul
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03488 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/113791396712128907
- The Structural Complexity of Matrix-Vector Multiplication
Emile Anand, Jan van den Brand, Rose McCarty
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.21240 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/114097340825270885
- Clustering under Constraints: Efficient Parameterized Approximation Schemes
Sujoy Bhore, Ameet Gadekar, Tanmay Inamdar
https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.06980 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/114312444050875805
- Minimizing Envy and Maximizing Happiness in Graphical House Allocation
Anubhav Dhar, Ashlesha Hota, Palash Dey, Sudeshna Kolay
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.00296 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/114437013364446063
- Fast and Simple Densest Subgraph with Predictions
Thai Bui, Luan Nguyen, Hoa T. Vu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.12600 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/114538936921930134
- Compressing Suffix Trees by Path Decompositions
Becker, Cenzato, Gagie, Kim, Koerkamp, Manzini, Prezza
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14734 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/114703384646892523
- Improved sampling algorithms and functional inequalities for non-log-concave distributions
Yuchen He, Zhehan Lei, Jianan Shao, Chihao Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11236 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/114862112197588124
- Deterministic Lower Bounds for $k$-Edge Connectivity in the Distributed Sketching Model
Peter Robinson, Ming Ming Tan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.11257 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/114862223634372292
- Optimally detecting uniformly-distributed $\ell_2$ heavy hitters in data streams
Santhoshini Velusamy, Huacheng Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.07286 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/115178875220889588
- Uncrossed Multiflows and Applications to Disjoint Paths
Chandra Chekuri, Guyslain Naves, Joseph Poremba, F. Bruce Shepherd
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.00254 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/115490402963680492
- Dynamic Matroids: Base Packing and Covering
Tijn de Vos, Mara Grilnberger
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15460 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/115580946319285096
- Branch-width of connectivity functions is fixed-parameter tractable
Tuukka Korhonen, Sang-il Oum
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04756 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDS_bot/115864074799755995
- CoinPress: Practical Private Mean and Covariance Estimation
Sourav Biswas, Yihe Dong, Gautam Kamath, Jonathan Ullman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.06618
- The Ideal Membership Problem and Abelian Groups
Andrei A. Bulatov, Akbar Rafiey
https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.05218
- Bridging Classical and Quantum: Group-Theoretic Approach to Quantum Circuit Simulation
Daksh Shami
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19575 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_quantph_bot/112874282709517475
- Young domination on Hamming rectangles
Janko Gravner, Matja\v{z} Krnc, Martin Milani\v{c}, Jean-Florent Raymond
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03788 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathCO_bot/113791421814248215
- On the Space Complexity of Online Convolution
Joel Daniel Andersson, Amir Yehudayoff
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.00181 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCC_bot/114437005955255553
- Universal Solvability for Robot Motion Planning on Graphs
Anubhav Dhar, Pranav Nyati, Tanishq Prasad, Ashlesha Hota, Sudeshna Kolay
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18755 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCC_bot/114737342714568702
- Colorful Minors
Evangelos Protopapas, Dimitrios M. Thilikos, Sebastian Wiederrecht
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10467
- Learning fermionic linear optics with Heisenberg scaling and physical operations
Aria Christensen, Andrew Zhao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05058
toXiv_bot_toot

How does your work space look?
This is mine, before I have had time to make a mess. I like order and seem to be unable to uphold it for long. It just happens to be one of those things I never seem to be able to master.
I'm the chaos collector! And every now and then I have to throw out my collection and begin a new one. That's my excuse, and I am sticking with it!
What is yours? #writer

Transit system isn't reliable. Work space is limited and not enough parking...
Home office is better equipped.
https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/public-servants-offices-opinion

Climate change is messing with tropical plants’ flowering times, study shows https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/climate-change-is-messing-with-tropical-plants-flowering-times-study-shows/

Climate change is messing with tropical plants’ flowering times, study shows
The flowering time for tropical plants is shifting with climate change, a new study finds.

The first time I ever really felt at home, comfortable and safe, was in an anarchist space in Seattle called "The Wildcat." It only existed for a few months, maybe a year, after I found it. Since then I've found similar places here in Amsterdam, and other places.
I want these places to be as comfortable, as much of a refuge, for everyone as they have been for me. Part of that is acknowledging and addressing the things they make physical and organizing spaces hostile.

GWTC-4.0 - an Introduction to Version 4.0 of the #GravitationalWave Transient Catalog: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ae0c06 -> The latest crop of space-time wobbles includes a variety of heavy, fast-spinning, and lopsided colliding black holes: https://physics.mit.edu/news/new-catalog-more-than-doubles-the-number-of-gravitational-wave-detections-made-by-ligo-virgo-and-kagra-observatories/ / New catalog of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observations published: https://www.aei.mpg.de/1415736/new-catalog-of-ligo-virgo-kagra-observations-published - the latest catalog, GWTC-4, includes 128 new candidates from the fourth observing run, more than doubling the previous total.

@… Biggest falsehood is non-breaking space. Any time I use it, something breaks.

Lately I have spent more time bookmarking /podcasts episodes I don’t want to miss than actually listening to them !
https://rmendes.net/podroll/
https://

Podroll
Podroll My podcast subscriptions - recent episodes from podcasts Last synced: Loading episodes... Try again 0" class="mb-6"> All Podcasts 0" class="space-y-4"> Your browser does not support the audio...

Rats suck.
I have a largish older (’48) brick house on a crawl space. I have a large brushy yard. I live in the Midwest. So of course I am a rat magnet.
This is the 2nd pack we’ve had in 25 years, so I guess that means we’ve been lucky. For an unknown period of time prior to last Winter the crawl had standing water deep enough that no self-respecting rat would have stayed. Last week we had a bag of snacks ripped open.
The guys from Critter Control have snap-trapped 3 so…

Amazon MGM's Project Hail Mary, a $200M space movie fronted by Ryan Gosling, is primed to be its first original blockbuster, targeting a $63M to $65M opening (Rebecca Rubin/Variety)
https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/project-hail-mary-amazon-…

Can Project Hail Mary Deliver? Amazon Needs a Hit After String of Flops
Ryan Gosling’s $200 million sci-fi epic "Project Hail Mary" lands in theaters at a time when Amazon MGM could use a hit.

Antarctica just saw the fastest glacier collapse ever recorded #Antarctica

Antarctica just saw the fastest glacier collapse ever recorded
Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier stunned scientists by retreating eight kilometers in just two months, with nearly half of it collapsing in record time. The rapid breakup was driven by a flat, underwater bedrock surface that allowed the glacier to suddenly float and fracture from below. Satellite and seismic data captured the dramatic chain reaction in near real time. The findings raise concerns that much larger glaciers could one day collapse just as quickly.

Time for renewed #presentation
Hi, I'm Matteo. I'm Italian 🇮🇹, living abroad 🇪🇺. I'm a big space Nerd. Computer scientist with a PhD in Evolutionary Robotics.
I work in AAA #gamedev as a UI/UX engineer.

#Blakes7 Series C, Episode 05 - The Harvest of Kairos
JARVIK: And so are you. But when was the last time you felt the warmth of the Earth's sun on your naked back? Or lifted your face to the heavens, and laughed with the joy of being alive? How long since you wept at the death of a friend? [Pause.] Doesn't mean a thing to you, does it, Madam President? You've surrounded your…

Restoring missing low scattering angle data in two-dimensional diffraction patterns of isolated molecules
Yanwei Xiong, Martin Centurion
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.24334 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.24334 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.24334
arXiv:2603.24334v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Anisotropic two-dimensional diffraction signals contain more information than the conventional isotropic signals for both gas phase ultrafast electron and X-ray diffraction experiments and are common in typical time-resolved diffraction experiments due to the use of linearly polarized lasers to excite the sample that imprints spatial anisotropy on the molecules. We report an iterative algorithm to restore the missing data at low scattering angles in a two-dimensional diffraction signal, which is essential to obtain real-space representation. The iterative algorithm transforms two-dimensional signals back and forth between the momentum transfer domain and the real space domain through Fourier and Abel transforms and apply real space constraints to retrieve missing signal at low scattering angles. The algorithm only requires an approximate a-priori knowledge of the shortest and longest internuclear distances in the molecule. We demonstrated successful retrieval of the missing signal in simulated patterns and in experimentally measured diffraction patterns from laser-induced alignment of trifluoroiodomethane molecules.
toXiv_bot_toot

Okay, a 64 GB /var/cache folder is too much. It's time to purge.
sudo paccache -rk 1
(disk space saved: 58.55 GiB)
Wow.
#ArchLinux

Oh no. Wishing for a speedy recovery for Jackie, and the time and space to make an informed decision on whether she can continue to serve. ❤️‍🩹 I've been proud to be represented by her on the SF BoS.
https://missionlocal.org/2026/03/sf-jackie-fielder-resignation…

S.F. supervisor Jackie Fielder, in the hospital, says she will resign
San Francisco Supervisor Jackie Fielder is in a hospital and said she is “planning to resign” her post 14 months into the job.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Pantha du Prince:
🎵 Supernova Space Time Drift
#PanthaduPrince
https://open.spotify.com/track/7AHAhgQaJSp7HvlN1YnD69

There’s definitely a hopeful feeling in having room to worry about Space Camp fundraising right now, instead of, say, ICE staging at the local Target parking lot yet again (with Target’s tacit blessing, damn them). It’s been quiet in the city these last few days. Fingers crossed.
Hopeful, but also melancholy: even if ICE does in fact draw down to pre-Dec levels, our “after” is not really going to come for a long time — and when it does, it will feel more like a scar than a sunrise.
/end

Replaced article(s) found for cs.LG. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.LG/new
[2/6]:
- Performance Asymmetry in Model-Based Reinforcement Learning
Jing Yu Lim, Rushi Shah, Zarif Ikram, Samson Yu, Haozhe Ma, Tze-Yun Leong, Dianbo Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.19698 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114578810521008766
- Towards Robust Real-World Multivariate Time Series Forecasting: A Unified Framework for Dependenc...
Jinkwan Jang, Hyungjin Park, Jinmyeong Choi, Taesup Kim
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08660 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114664238967892509
- Wasserstein Barycenter Soft Actor-Critic
Zahra Shahrooei, Ali Baheri
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10167 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114675175949432731
- Foundation Models for Causal Inference via Prior-Data Fitted Networks
Yuchen Ma, Dennis Frauen, Emil Javurek, Stefan Feuerriegel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10914 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114675529854402158
- FREQuency ATTribution: benchmarking frequency-based occlusion for time series data
Dominique Mercier, Andreas Dengel, Sheraz Ahmed
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.18481 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114738421450807709
- Complexity-aware fine-tuning
Andrey Goncharov, Daniil Vyazhev, Petr Sychev, Edvard Khalafyan, Alexey Zaytsev
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21220 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114754764750730849
- Transfer Learning in Infinite Width Feature Learning Networks
Clarissa Lauditi, Blake Bordelon, Cengiz Pehlevan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04448 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114818005803079705
- A hierarchy tree data structure for behavior-based user segment representation
Liu, Kang, Iyer, Malik, Li, Wang, Lu, Zhao, Wang, Liu, Liu, Liang, Yu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01115 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/114975999992144374
- One-Step Flow Q-Learning: Addressing the Diffusion Policy Bottleneck in Offline Reinforcement Lea...
Thanh Nguyen, Chang D. Yoo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.13904 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115060568241390847
- Uncertainty Propagation Networks for Neural Ordinary Differential Equations
Hadi Jahanshahi, Zheng H. Zhu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.16815 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115094785677272005
- Learning Unified Representations from Heterogeneous Data for Robust Heart Rate Modeling
Zhengdong Huang, Zicheng Xie, Wentao Tian, Jingyu Liu, Lunhong Dong, Peng Yang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21785 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115128450608548173
- Monte Carlo Tree Diffusion with Multiple Experts for Protein Design
Liu, Cao, Jiang, Luo, Duan, Wang, Sosnick, Xu, Stevens
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.15796 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115247429156900905
- From Samples to Scenarios: A New Paradigm for Probabilistic Forecasting
Xilin Dai, Zhijian Xu, Wanxu Cai, Qiang Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19975 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115264498084813952
- Why High-rank Neural Networks Generalize?: An Algebraic Framework with RKHSs
Yuka Hashimoto, Sho Sonoda, Isao Ishikawa, Masahiro Ikeda
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.21895 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115287261047939306
- From Parameters to Behaviors: Unsupervised Compression of the Policy Space
Davide Tenedini, Riccardo Zamboni, Mirco Mutti, Marcello Restelli
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22566 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115287379672141023
- RHYTHM: Reasoning with Hierarchical Temporal Tokenization for Human Mobility
Haoyu He, Haozheng Luo, Yan Chen, Qi R. Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.23115 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115293273559547106
- Polychromic Objectives for Reinforcement Learning
Jubayer Ibn Hamid, Ifdita Hasan Orney, Ellen Xu, Chelsea Finn, Dorsa Sadigh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.25424 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115298579764580635
- Recursive Self-Aggregation Unlocks Deep Thinking in Large Language Models
Siddarth Venkatraman, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26626 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115298789487177431
- Cautious Weight Decay
Chen, Li, Liang, Su, Xie, Pierse, Liang, Lao, Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12402 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115377759317818093
- TeamFormer: Shallow Parallel Transformers with Progressive Approximation
Wei Wang, Xiao-Yong Wei, Qing Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15425 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115405933861293858
- Latent-Augmented Discrete Diffusion Models
Dario Shariatian, Alain Durmus, Umut Simsekli, Stefano Peluchetti
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.18114 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115417332500265972
- Predicting Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease using Machine Learning Method...
Mary E. An, Paul Griffin, Jonathan G. Stine, Ramakrishna Balakrishnan, Soundar Kumara
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.22293 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/115451746201804373
toXiv_bot_toot

Amazing piece of #VFX lore. Today artists are complaining that you can‘t have 3 Nuke windows open on 128 GB RAM because they have 10 browser windows and 2 electron apps running at the same time. https://mastodon.social/@Drwave/116242…

Increasing amounts of metal, such as lithium, as a byproduct of the modern-day space race, are beginning to alter the chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere. 
Robin Wing, and his colleagues at the Leibniz Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Rostock in Germany, measured a 10-fold concentration of lithium atoms in the upper atmosphere around 20 hours after the uncontrolled re-entry of a Falcon 9 rocket.
The findings are detailed in a new studypublished Thursda…

Study Confirms: Reentering SpaceX Rockets Are Peppering the Upper Atmosphere With Metal Pollution
For the first time, scientists were able to directly detect upper-atmospheric pollution from space debris.

Replaced article(s) found for physics.ins-det. https://arxiv.org/list/physics.ins-det/new
[1/1]:
- Frequency domain laser ultrasound for inertial confinement fusion target wall thickness measurements
Martin Ryzy, Guqi Yan, Clemens Gr\"unsteidl, Georg Watzl, Kevin Sequoia, Pavel Lapa, Haibo Huang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.15997 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_physicsinsdet_bot/115411462164784635
- Performance study of 4-MU-loaded water for Cherenkov light detection
Pendo B. Nyanda, Gowoon Kim, Youngduk Kim, Kyungmin Seo, Jaison Lee, Olga Gileva, Eungseok Yi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03989 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_physicsinsdet_bot/115507625334754650
- Design and Performance of a 96-channel Resistive PICOSEC Micromegas Detector for ENUBET
A. Kallitsopoulou, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05589 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_physicsinsdet_bot/115683123547651781
- Quantitative mobile gamma-ray spectrometry through Bayesian inference
David Breitenmoser, Alberto Stabilini, Malgorzata Magdalena Kasprzak, Sabine Mayer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.18769 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_physicsinsdet_bot/115768012810833326
- Neutron multiplicity measurement in muon capture on oxygen nuclei in the Gd-loaded Super-Kamiokan...
Kamiokande Collaboration, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.17002 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepex_bot/114063427901532394
- Monte Carlo simulation of the ISOLPHARM gamma camera for Ag-111 imaging
D. Serafini, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.20112 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_physicsmedph_bot/114080420857311942
- Performance and radiation damage mitigation strategy for silicon photomultipliers on LEO space mi...
L. Burmistrov, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00532 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepex_bot/114103061208888723
- Predicting the single-site and multi-site event discrimination power of dual-phase time projectio...
Sazzad, Hardy, Dai, Xu, Lenardo, Sutanto, Antipa, Koertzen, John, Akinin, Pershing
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.02258 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepex_bot/115309574340832888
toXiv_bot_toot

Bridging Distant Ideas: the Impact of AI on R&D and Recombinant Innovation
Emanuele Bazzichi, Massimo Riccaboni, Fulvio Castellacci
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.02189 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2604.02189 https://arxiv.org/html/2604.02189
arXiv:2604.02189v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study how artificial intelligence (AI) affects firms' incentives to pursue incremental versus radical knowledge recombinations. We develop a model of recombinant innovation embedded in a Schumpeterian quality-ladder framework, in which innovation arises from recombining ideas across varying distances in a knowledge space. R&D consists of multiple tasks, a fraction of which can be performed by AI. AI facilitates access to distant knowledge domains, but at the same time it also increases the aggregate rate of creative destruction, shortening the monopoly duration that rewards radical innovations. Moreover, excessive reliance on AI may reduce the originality of research and lead to duplication of research efforts. We obtain three main results. First, higher AI productivity encourages more distant recombinations, if the direct facilitation effect is stronger than the indirect effect due to intensified competition from rivals. Second, the effect of increasing the share of AI-automated R&D tasks is non-monotonic: firms initially target more radical innovations, but beyond a threshold of human-AI complementarity, they shift the focus toward incremental innovations. Third, in the limiting case of full automation, the model predicts that optimal recombination distance collapses to zero, suggesting that fully AI-driven research would undermine the very knowledge creation that it seeks to accelerate.
toXiv_bot_toot

The first detection of cosmic-ray excited H2 in #interstellar space: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20168 -> Cosmic Radiation Brought to Light: https://www.uni-due.de/2026-02-03-first-time-measurement-of-ionisation-in-dark-cloud

Speak up for our oceans! #Canada #ocean

Our ocean needs you to speak up!
Our ocean is under severe threat from climate change and biodiversity loss. It's time to act!

I've mentioned it before, and I'm sure I will again, but, as much as there's a reason why I reject Christianity, there were also a lot of good things. Churches have governing bodies (with varying degrees of democratic representation) that guide the ministry (preaching and actions) as well as managing logistics (building maintenance, accounting, etc). This provides opportunities for self-governed collective action.
Quakers are the most radical in terms of this, and are basically anarchists. Quaker circles often meet at people's houses and can be as small as 3 people. There is often no leadership. A Quaker service could easily just be everyone sitting in a circle and someone talking at one point.
I grew up in a Presbyterian church, and one of my first jobs (at 11 or 12) was landscaping there. Within the church there were a lot of different trades, which meant that you could volunteer time and learn basically any kind of maintenance. Basically everything that needed to be done was done in-house. This also meant that if you needed a plumber, an electrician, etc, that you could pick one from within the church.
I remember painting the church, learning how to paint, with a bunch of other members of the congregation at a work party. I also remember being volunteered for child care during choir. There were a few rooms around that were used for different things, such as music practice. But these rooms could be made available for any type of community activity. This can actually include community organizing. In fact, Seattle GDC was offered an occasional space for organizing in a church (we didn't take it, but appreciated the offer), and that same church hosted a lot of other community events. I actually went to a queer relationships skills class once hosted in a church, which was great.
What I'm saying is that churches often act as a kind of parallel society up-to-and-including acting as dual power structures....

News about Friday’s march / rally / general strike in Minneapolis is coming at me from every direction. Temperature right now is -18F / -28C and this thing is still going to be massive. People here are ready to punch a hole through the fabric of the space-time continuum if they have to. Going to be bed. Tomorrow’s going to be a hell of a day.

Does anyone know of a platform like Clubhouse which is still active?
For a brief amount of time there used to be Bluesky Spaces (a community-made project) which was awesome, but I'm really missing a space outside of the mainstream social sites where people can just hop in a voice space and hang out.

Due to weather, NASA now is targeting early Wednesday, Feb. 25, to roll the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket and Orion spacecraft for #ArtemisII off the launch pad and back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida: https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/missions/2026/02/23/nasa-targets-artemis-ii-rollback-on-wednesday/ - cold temperatures and high winds are expected Tuesday, and rolling on Feb. 25, gives teams enough time to complete preparations at the launch pad that were limited today by high winds in the area.

Caribbean heat waves intensify over five decades, study finds #Caribbea

Caribbean heat waves intensify over five decades, study finds
A new study led by climatologists at the University at Albany has found that extreme heat waves across the Caribbean are becoming significantly more frequent, longer and severe. This study examined extreme summer heat waves in the Caribbean over the last five decades, focusing on their causes and how they have changed over time.

RE: #redshift measured spectroscopically hailed in this press release as well as in https://esawebb.org/news/weic2603/ and https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_gazes_further_back_in_time has been published in May 2025 as https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.11263 (appearing on ArXiv counts as a publication in today's academic landscape) and made some headlines then, including by yours truly: https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2025/05/18/resiliences-mond-punch-fur-alle-pslv-versagt/ ("Neuer spektroskopischer Rotverschiebungs-Rekord: z=14.44").

Weather tracker: Cyclone Fytia in Madagascar kills several people and floods homes https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/02/weather-tracker-cyclone-fytia-madagascar-floods

Minnesota's brief asserts that federal agents left the scene several hrs after the shooting,
“allowing the perimeter to collapse and potentially spoiling evidence,”
a “sharp departure from normal best practices” that may’ve “directly led to the destruction of evidence.”
https://

How do you keep people from looking at their phone or staring into space?
As a public speaking expert, I use one phrase that gets audiences to instantly perk up and pay attention.
It works every time:
“Imagine this scenario…”

'Highly engaging' people use this 3-word phrase to get people to listen, says public speaking expert
Given people's short attention spans, it's never been harder to get people engaged in what we have to say. Public speaking expert John Bowe shares the 3-word phrase that will instantly make people listen.

Crosslisted article(s) found for cs.DS. https://arxiv.org/list/cs.DS/new
[1/1]:
- A Fault-Tolerant Version of Safra's Termination Detection Algorithm
Wan Fokkink, Georgios Karlos, Andy Tatman
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00272 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csDC_bot/116005743114928343
- Non-Clashing Teaching in Graphs: Algorithms, Complexity, and Bounds
Sujoy Bhore, Liana Khazaliya, Fionn Mc Inerney
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00657 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCC_bot/116005533092908045
- Sublinear Time Quantum Algorithm for Attention Approximation
Zhao Song, Jianfei Xue, Jiahao Zhang, Lichen Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00874 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_quantph_bot/116006587128552159
- Hallucination is a Consequence of Space-Optimality: A Rate-Distortion Theorem for Membership Testing
Anxin Guo, Jingwei Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.00906 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/116006973804501595
- Counting Unit Circular Arc Intersections
Haitao Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01074 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csCG_bot/116005535191670040
- Profit Maximization in Closed Social Networks
Poonam Sharma, Suman Banerjee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01232 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csSI_bot/116005691056225955
- Totally $\Delta$-Modular Tree Decompositions of Graphic Matrices for Integer Programming
Caleb McFarland
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01499 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathCO_bot/116006381339684193
- Finite and Corruption-Robust Regret Bounds in Online Inverse Linear Optimization under M-Convex A...
Taihei Oki, Shinsaku Sakaue
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01682 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csLG_bot/116007186801693076
- Stable Matching with Predictions: Robustness and Efficiency under Pruned Preferences
Samuel McCauley, Benjamin Moseley, Helia Niaparast, Shikha Singh
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02254 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csGT_bot/116005915605630934
- Deciding Reachability and the Covering Problem with Diagnostics for Sound Acyclic Free-Choice Wor...
Thomas M. Prinz, Christopher T. Schwanen, Wil M. P. van der Aalst
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02447 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csFL_bot/116005733006023408
toXiv_bot_toot

Why the 'planetary parade' social media meme is utter nonsense - and 28 February a particularly bad day to try to see as many #planets as possible at the same time: https://www.facebook.com/dan.fischer.393/posts/pfbid02smbGM7QrfG7KQLojCxEyVyy3mTVQ94pzydHBNnNwb5139GN7fSj1zWAyShyX34tel goes into the details and shows that 19 February would have been a far better choice. While the question remains: which moron came up with the 28th as 'the' date in the first place ... and why did practically nobody (looking at you, news sites ... and space agencies) bother to check the basic facts?

Ocean species are disappearing before scientists can even find them #ocean

Ocean species are disappearing before scientists can even find them
Species are vanishing faster than ever, and many are disappearing before scientists even know they exist. Now, an international team is racing against time to uncover hidden life beneath the waves by building a massive open-access genomic database of European marine worms. These tiny but vital creatures help keep ocean ecosystems running—recycling nutrients, mixing sediments, and signaling pollution.

So I wanted to write a longer #NoAI piece but apparently my blog is down (and this time, miraculously, it might not be #AI scrapers), so I'll give you a sneak peek of what I wanted to say in the more hyperbolic part on how the #LLM discourse has all the common features of libertarian discourse.
"According to Google, LLM-backed searches don't consume much more energy than regular searches" [ignoring model training, surely.]
− According to carbrains, cars are actually cheaper than public transport, provided that you compare gasoline cost with ticket prices, and ignore the cost of buying and owning a car. Not to mention all the indirect costs of space waste (roads, parking lots, garages), environment pollution, accidents…
"AI is just a tool, people decide if it's used for good or bad."
− Ah, yes, and "guns don't kill people."
"AI has its uses."
− So does asbestos.
"Let's not judge contributions by whether they were created using AI, but on their actual quality."
− "Let's not judge contributions by whether they were created using slave work…"
"I do not use AI myself, but I don't want to block others."
− "I do not keep slaves myself…"
#NoLLM #hyperbole

News about Friday’s march / rally / general strike
in Minneapolis
is coming from every direction.
Temperature right now is
-18F / -28C
and this thing is still going to be massive.
People here are ready to punch a hole through the fabric of the space-time continuum if they have to.
Going to be bed.
Tomorrow’s going to be a hell of a day.

US forests store record carbon as natural and human factors combine #UnitedStates …

US forests store record carbon as natural and human factors combine
U.S. forests have stored more carbon in the past two decades than at any time in the last century, an increase attributable to a mix of natural factors and human activity, finds a new study.

These are the 287 target stars for the first year of operations of the unusual commercial space telescope #Mauve from which astronomers buy (!) observing time: at least 5000 hours are available. This map was shown in a webinar by the company behind the mission today while the paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.16675 discusses the science themes identified for the first year of operations.

Happy Blockage Day for those who celebrate! Time to get cracking on that obstacle you created, taking comfort in knowing the rest of the world isn't watching your mistake from space. You have until Friday 😊
#EverGivenWeek 🚢

Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, -- since crystals require intense heat to form and these “dirty snowballs” spend most of their time in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.
Now, looking outside our solar system, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has returned the first conclusive evidence that links how those conditions are possible.
The telescope clearly showed for the first ti…

NASA Webb Finds Young Sun-Like Star Forging, Spewing Common Crystals
Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, since crystals require

Poland: New Regulation Guarantees Access to Plant-Based Canteen Food https://vegconomist.com/politics-law/poland-new-regulation-guarantees-access-to-plant-based-canteen-food/

Poland: New Regulation Guarantees Access to Plant-Based Canteen Food - vegconomist - the vegan business magazine
The Minister of Health has signed a regulation which, for the first time in the history of Polish law, guarantees children in schools access to fully

‘The normal should be darkness’: why one Belgian national park is turning off ‘pointless’ streetlights https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/lights-belgian-park-lamps-light-polluted-night-time-environment-wi…

A scary milestone was reached on Tuesday when for the first time more than 10,000 #Starlink satellites were in LEO simultaneously: https://spaceflightnow.com/2026/03/16/live-coverage-spacex-to-launch-25-starlink-satellites-on-falcon-9-rocket-from-california/ - see https://www.planet4589.org/space/con/star/stats.html for the hard numbers, namely 10,049 satelltes in orbit (with 10,039 of them working of which 7903 are in operational orbits) out of 11,558 launched in total since 2018.

FEDERAL: It's Time to End Animal Testing for Cosmetics! #AnimalRights

Advocacy | National Anti-Vivisection Society
NAVS is a leading voice for Anti-Vivisection Advocacy

Half way through the Hoopla Improv Story narrative course and we actually attempt a couple of 20 minute stories.
One pretty confused one about a voyage to find unicorns which ended up about time-travellers due to mixups.
And one about the child of a missing astronaut seeking his father by joining a space mission.
Edits are what made the main difference here. Shouting "Cut to the jail" left half the players thinking they were in a flashback and the other half thinking they were in the consequences of the previous scene. Thus one ending up being a time-traveler.
A more coherent edit might have been "Flashback to jail", and these more coherent edits are key to what made the second story less chaotic and more whole. "Cut to the training test" or "Flashback to school where a teacher is impressed with the protagonist"
I like a game with a narrator. The narrator can give the story structure and theme and act as a director of the action. But we can do that without a narrator if the edits are well thought out and shouted clearly enough to keep the actors on the same track.
Mind you, the chaos is the funny bit usually.
#improv #hooplaImpro #london

H5N1 bird flu kills more than 50 skuas in first Antarctica wildlife die off #Antarctica

H5N1 bird flu kills more than 50 skuas in first Antarctica wildlife die off
For the first time, deadly H5N1 bird flu has been confirmed as the cause of a wildlife die-off in Antarctica, killing more than 50 skuas during the 2023–2024 summers. Researchers on an Antarctic expedition found the virus ravaging these powerful seabirds, with some suffering severe neurological symptoms—twisted necks, circling behavior, and even falling from the sky. While penguins and fur seals were examined, skuas emerged as the primary victims, especially on Beak Island, where a mass die…

It's Time To End Animal Cruelty #AnimalRights

Ocean impacts nearly double economic cost of climate change, study finds #ocean

Ocean impacts nearly double economic cost of climate change, study finds
For the first time, a study by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego integrates climate-related damages to the ocean into the social cost of carbon—a measure of economic harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Seabirds ingest large quantities of pollutants—some of which have been banned for decades—liver analyses reveal https://phys.org/news/2026-02-seabirds-ingest-large-quantities-pollutants.html

Seabirds ingest large quantities of pollutants—some of which have been banned for decades—liver analyses reveal
In her 1962 book, "Silent Spring," American biologist Rachel Carson revealed that DDT, a widely used pesticide at the time, was responsible for the mass death of birds, including the iconic bald eagle. One reason was that the pesticide made eggshells thinner, causing mothers to break them when sitting on them to incubate. Silent Spring is considered the founding work of the modern environmental movement.

Half of the world's coral reefs suffered major bleaching during the 2014–2017 global heat wave, estimates suggest https://phys.org/news/2026-02-world-coral-reefs-major-global.html

Half of the world's coral reefs suffered major bleaching during the 2014–2017 global heat wave, estimates suggest
Benefits to society from coral reefs, including fisheries, tourism, coastal protection, pharmaceutical discovery and more, are estimated at about $9.8 trillion per year. For the first time, an international team led by Smithsonian researchers estimated the extent of coral bleaching worldwide during a global marine heat wave, finding that half of the world's reefs experienced significant damage. Another heat wave began in 2023 and is ongoing.