Tootfinder

The Roman Space Telescope Will Find Ancient Black Holes By Watching How They Eat Stars - Universe Today https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-roman-space-telescope-will-find-ancient-black-holes-by-watching-how-they-…

<WildCode> Mercury, isn't debugging X a little like finding perfectly
bugfree code in windows ??
<Mercury> WildCode: Debugging X is like trying to run a straight line
through a maze.
<Mercury> You just need to bend space-time so that the corners move around
you and you won't have any problems. (=:]

Brutal heat wave forecast for western US this weekend #UnitedStates

Brutal heat wave forecast for western US this weekend
A "widespread and significant" heat wave is predicted to bring oppressive temperatures to drought-hit western U.S. states over the weekend, with all-time records at risk of falling, the National Weather Service said Friday.

Immortal life, it turns out, is utterly devoid of meaning.
And, besides: isn’t it a bit arrogant to presume that your particular life, your individual identity, is worth extending forever? Shouldn’t we make space, when our time comes, for those who come after?
https://plus.flux.community/p/the-myth

The myth of mind uploading
Minds are what bodies do

A lot of people are writing lots of things about A.I here already, all of which are more important than my complaint...but man, trying to buy a new NVMe drive at this juncture is utter insanity.
Really wish I'd gone for a bit more RAM and especially storage back when you could actually afford them.
Time to delete some of my praying mantis video collection to make space for less essential things, like work files.

The US has deployed weapons in space, the US military has confirmed,
in an extraordinary public announcement that analysts warn will accelerate a high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth’s orbit.
The US secretary of the air force, Troy Meink, said Washington had active “on-orbit” weapons, meaning they had been deployed and were circling the globe.
It has been an open secret that the US, Russia and China are working on space weapons,
which could include signa…

US confirms for first time it has deployed weapons in space
Analysts warn of an acceleration in high-risk arms race with Russia and China in Earth’s orbit

From Sputnik to Starship - estimating the experience curve of #SpaceLaunch technology: https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/5/7/pgag217/8732400?login=false -> For more than 60 years, the cost of transporting payload into space has been falling: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Transport-of-payload-into-space-SpaceX-as-the-East-India-Company-of-our-time-11365594.html - according to an analysis, there is no comparable development in history.

Heavy rain soaks eastern Japan, prompting highest-level warning #Japan

Heavy rain soaks eastern Japan, prompting highest-level warning
Torrential rain pummeled eastern Japan on Thursday, triggering landslides and power outages and prompting the weather authority to issue its highest-level heavy rain warning for the region for the first time.

American troops need to prepare for combat not only in Earth’s orbit but
around the moon,
Donald Trump’s top military adviser said on Wednesday,
looking ahead to a new frontier in warfare
after the US revealed for the first time that it has deployed weapons in space.
Gen Dan Caine, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told service members and industry figures at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington that
the US military should adapt now …

Top Trump military adviser says US must prepare to fight around moon
Gen Dan Caine comments at Washington summit come after US revealed it has deployed weapons in space

Crosslisted article(s) found for physics.ins-det. https://arxiv.org/list/physics.ins-det/new
[1/1]:
- Radiation damage to the Hubble Space Telescope has been several years out of phase with the Solar...
Gavin Leroy, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18214 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_astrophIM_bot/117126723538465290
- Beam-Tracing-Based Quantitative Reconstruction of Density Fluctuations in QUEST Using Doppler Bac...
Kinoshita, Tokuzawa, Hall-Chen, Tan, Ido, Idei, Ikezoe, Hanada, Hasegawa, Onchi, Peng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18444 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_physicsplasmph_bot/117126778820753320
- Exact time-correlated coincidence modeling with reset boundaries
Jinjing Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18728 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepex_bot/117126770332511706
- Technical Proposal for the Atom Interferometer CERN Experiment (AICE) Facility
Gianluigi Arduini, et al.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.18743 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepex_bot/117126797695022116
- Exploring the limits of high-energy proton-pion separation in granular calorimeters
Andrea De Vita, Abhishek, Tommaso Dorigo, Pietro Vischia
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.19064 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_hepex_bot/117126803167045763
toXiv_bot_toot

motebook – houseboat (on a river of time)
https://mirlo.space/motebook/release/houseboat-on-a-river-of-time

I've been having some problems with the disk storage for my Plex server (Mac Mini M2). I was using 4 external drives (no space for internal) and running MacOS RAID 1 in two arrays. The RAID rebuild trigger and rebuild time was becoming problematic. If one drive connected after another, it triggered a rebuild.
I'll solve this!
Bought a USB-C enclosure that has hardware RAID. No more issues with RAID rebuilds for no reason!
But...
MacOS apparently no longer …

A nice campus press release about the lab's new #NSFfunded project, modeling plants' reproductive activity in response to environmental variation across space and time
#science #ecology

Microplastics fall across rural Switzerland, adding over 200 tons yearly to land and water https://phys.org/news/2026-09-microplastics-fall-rural-switzerland-adding.html

Microplastics fall across rural Switzerland, adding over 200 tons yearly to land and water
Loose fibers from functional clothing, discarded PET bottles or abandoned packaging: When such plastic materials enter the environment, they often persist there for a long time. UV radiation, precipitation and ozone cause them to become brittle—and over time, mechanical forces break them down into increasingly smaller particles. Swirled up by the wind, they are carried farther through the atmosphere. Until now, it was unclear how much microplastic ends up back in Swiss soil and water bodies t…

While testing around with SteamOS off the Live Installer (on a decade old standard size SD card and similarly "ancient" USB adapter) was fun and all, and quite snappy despite the media used.. You can definitely tell it's not ready for Prime Time in the "Gaming PC" space, yet. Very much built for bespoke devices like handhelds and the new Machine/micro PCs like that.
Hence, I fresh installed a clean image of Garuda, my OS of choice the last 3 years. (I also run M…

Sharp proper estimation of fixed-component Gaussian location mixtures in polynomial time
Hengzhi He, Guang Cheng
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.12701 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.12701 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.12701
arXiv:2608.12701v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We consider a mixture of at most $k$ unit-covariance Gaussians in $\mathbb{R}^d$ whose means belong to a fixed-radius ball, with no separation or minimum-weight condition. Doss, Wu, Yang and Zhou (2023) proved that the minimax Hellinger risk is of order $\sqrt{d/n}\wedge 1$ and constructed a proper polynomial-time estimator with the slower general bound $(d/n)^{1/4}$; obtaining the sharp rate in polynomial time for fixed $k\geq 3$ was left open. We resolve this question. The key device is a moment-fiber range finder. A second-moment subspace controls the energy missed by projection. We then estimate finitely many one-free-index Hermite contractions. These vector-valued contractions recover every tensor component containing exactly one missed direction at the sharp $\sqrt{d/n}$ scale. Every remaining term contains at least two missed factors and is therefore controlled by the residual second-moment energy. The resulting subspace has dimension depending only on $k$. Exhaustive moment fitting in this constant-dimensional space produces a proper mixture and, together with the dimension-free moment characterization of Gaussian mixtures, achieves the optimal Hellinger rate in polynomial arithmetic time for every fixed $k$.
toXiv_bot_toot

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Early
The Verve:
🎵 Space and Time
#TheVerve
https://7songsandtherepeater.bandcamp.com/track/the-verve-space-time
https://open.spotify.com/track/6xzj2trD8sIjnwuyqzZOUX

Cowboys $19M moves reek of Maxximizing cap space as trade precursor https://cowboyswire.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/cowboys/2026/09/03/timing-of-cowboys-19m-cap-space-creation-reeks-of-trade-precu…

After far more than a decade of using CloudFormation as my primary infrastructure automation tool, I’ve been working with Terraform/OpenTofu, lately.
I'm having a really hard time with the horizontal alignment of `=` everywhere. I consider any indenting after the first non-space character of a line of code to be an amateur move. It messes with your diffs and requires a lot of “I changed one line and now I need to change a lot of lines to get them to look pretty" maintenance.…

I'm offering my oscilloscope probing class in Europe for the first time! If you're in or near the Netherlands, consider signing up. Space is limited to 10 students to ensure everyone has enough lab time; two spaces are already taken.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/o…

Oscilloscope Probing Training
Are you really getting the most out of your oscilloscope? Learn the theory and practice of probing in small group lecture + hands-on labs.

Now, I don't especially like the term "church" so I may use something else... like "coven." You can do what you want. But I happen to have already mapped out an example. (It is exactly that, just an example, so take if it's useful, change if you need, and don't stick to anything too closely.) Oh, this mapping also means that you would, for religious reasons, only be allowed to work under capitalism 4 days a week instead of 5.
Given the increases in productivity over the last 100 years, a 4 day work week is a completely reasonable expectation. If we have to annex Monday for the weekend by force of religion, so be it. It is rightfully ours anyway. If enough people try it, this will probably work. If it doesn't work, it just needs more people.
The Practice of Worship:
It is recommended to break down worship in to three sections: the functional, the communal, and the spiritual. It is also recommended to break these across multiple days. A common structure for some Christian churches is to take 10-15 minutes for announcements (Functional), an hour or two for services (Spiritual), followed by (Communal) coffee, tea, and cookies for an unspecified time up to two hours after. When starting or working with limited time a single compressed model like this may work, but it's not optimal.
- The Functional
The purpose of this section is to address the functional needs of the coven. Block out time (less than 90 minute blocks is recommended) to go through reports and updates from those involved in the Dispensary, Library, Works Committee (infrastructure), and Services Committee (providing services internally and, potentially, externally). Talk through any additional announcements, including those from other covens you may be federated with.
It is helpful to include unstructured communal time, such as shared meals, during or after functional meetings. As the federation grows, more time will be needed. It is recommended to break functional meetings, work parties, and such across multiple days. When a federation becomes sufficiently large, it is recommended to take every Monday, on top of Saturday and Sunday, as a third day of community and worship.
The scope of the functional spans 3 realms (which may be more-or-less fluid): the personal or family, the coven and federation, and humanity itself. It is up to each coven and individual to negotiate how to allocate the three days of the weekend once we have liberated Monday from the work week, but it is important to reserve it for one of these three. However, some people must work on weekends. Medical personnel, for example, cannot conform to a standard work week. While the work week should be universally restricted, which specific days are used will be up to the specific coven and their members.
A functional meeting can start with an agenda like the following:
Functional Invocation
Announcements
Report Backs
Dispensary
Inventory Check
What is low
What is empty
What is expiring
What is needed
Funds status
Library
Inventory Check and Items needing return
Library acquisition requests
Funds status and budget check
Works Committee
Upcoming projects
Subcommittee updates (Following the Works Committee agenda)
New committee formations
Funds status
Services Committee
New capabilities announcements
New needs requests
Subcommittee updates (Following the Works Committee agenda)
New committee formations
Funds status
Task Check
Breaking the Circle
This agenda is a suggestion for those who don't know where to start. It can be adapted or ignored as appropriate.
- The Spiritual
Spirituality is necessarily an undefined space. It is deeply personal. Each individual taking time to share their own personal spiritual experiences can help each connect with each other. This experience of connection can itself be a spiritual experience. It may also be useful to read esoteric, mystical, or philosophical texts together as type of "book club" and share thoughts. Others may draw from their own knowledge or traditions. This is something that must be defined together within a group.
- The Communal
The communal aspect of the practice of worship bind the coven and federation together. Within the community we find joy and release, connection and comfort. The coven is where we turn in times of need, and where we share our hopes and dreams.

Vienna Reading Party
https://www.instagram.com/p/Db3oZehjOK1/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

vienna.readingparty on Instagram: "We are heading back to the Erdstall @bookiniste.1150, a cool haven within this hot summer. No registration is necessary, so feel free to just come by and read with us. Since this event takes place at a self-organized space, there won’t be a bar service. Please bring your own drinks. You are also very welcome to bring snacks and something to share, but it is completely optional. . Doors open at 7:30 pm . Bring your favorite book . Pick your reading spot and make yourself comfortable . Reading time starts at 8:00 pm(ish) . We read together for about 60 minutes . After reading, share your thoughts, read quotes, exchange recommendations, discover new books, or just enjoy the company. Looking forward to meeting you all at this special location. Lots of 🤍 VRP"
109 likes, 1 comments - vienna.readingparty on August 10, 2026: "We are heading back to the Erdstall @bookiniste.1150, a cool haven within this hot summer. No registration is necessary, so feel free to just come by and read with us. Since this event takes place at a self-organized space, there won’t be a bar service. Please bring your own drinks. You are also very welcome to bring snacks and something to share, but it is completely optional. . Doors open at 7:30 pm . Bring your favorite boo…

"A new review says the body can adjust over time. It can change how it absorbs and uses some nutrients."
What happens to your body after months on a plant-based diet https://www.earth.com/plants/what-happens-to-your-body-after-months-on-a-…

What happens to your body after months on a plant-based diet
Plant-based diets can trigger body changes that help people absorb and use some nutrients more efficiently over time.

Not even remotely funny. And pretty sad that my first reading of this was from an video gaming web site.
✅ US Officially Confirms It Has Deployed a Space Weapon in Earth's Orbit
#trump #war #space

Non-invasive mapping of the temporal processing hierarchy in the human visual cortex https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014434 by @…

Non-invasive mapping of the temporal processing hierarchy in the human visual cortex
Author summary Vision doesn’t happen instantaneously, but unfolds over time. While we understand a lot about how the brain processes visual space, understanding how the brain processes information over both space and time is much more challenging. Vision happens incredibly fast, space and time are tightly linked, but current technology is limited in capturing these spatiotemporal dynamics. Here, we developed a method that combines two non-invasive human brain imaging techniques using computat…

Some #LeftWordle enhancements:
these are currently in https://staging.left-wordle.com. They will make it to production hopefully by week’s end. I’ll announce here the intended cutover date / time for prod.

Space-Time Modulated vs 2-Bit Reflect-Arrays: A Comparison of Main Beam Gain and Sidelobe Level Performance
Muhammad Rizwan Akram, Douglas H. Werner
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.12342

This new installation centers early-20th-century artists’ relationships to their environments and highlights the role of agriculture and urbanization in shifting cultural perceptions of time. In one corner of the gallery, three objects visualize this period in American history. Constructed from recycled materials, a clock made locally by Athens doctor William B. Conway in 1897 shares space with a cast-iron weathervane created around the same time.
6/

actual NORAD vs movie NORAD
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NORADSystCtrlDivision1.jpg
https://en.…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #DreamTime
Boards of Canada:
🎵 You Retreat In Time And Space
#BoardsofCanada
https://boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com/track/you-retreat-in-time-and-space
https://open.spotify.com/track/5m3Uzjuiyj8656EGM1bwhk

Replaced article(s) found for math.DG. https://arxiv.org/list/math.DG/new
[2/3]:
- Parabolic Bogomolov--Gieseker Inequality and Pluriharmonic Metrics on Regular Parabolic Higgs She...
Tianshu Jiang, Jiayu Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23787 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/117160767810848599
- Reduction of symmetric time-dependent Hamiltonian systems I: presymplectic principal $\mathbb{R}$...
C. Ben\'itez, D. Iglesias Ponte, J. C. Marrero, E. Padr\'on
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.28278 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/117189027246895257
- Under Ricci flow, a 3-torus goes flat
John Lott
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.30027 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/117194823420486908
- Hypersurfaces of constant higher order mean curvature in hyperbolic space with prescribed asympto...
Bin Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01565 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/117200534171643350
- The Weyl Law Meets Large-Scale Regularity on Ricci Shrinkers
Junrong Yan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.08206 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathDG_bot/117240420437174751
- On the Ohsawa-Takegoshi $L^2$ extension theorem and removable singularities of plurisubharmonic f...
Xieping Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.11007 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathCV_bot/110252413374260126
- Upper semicontinuity of algebraic dimension
Sheng Rao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.02022
- On functoriality of Baum-Bott residues
Maur\'icio Corr\^ea, Tatsuo Suwa
https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.15133 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathCV_bot/113904709987174443
- Lindblad Quantum Dynamics as Euler-Poincar\'e Reduction on Adjoint-Coupled Semidirect Products
Leonardo Colombo
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.21967 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathph_bot/115643261956162076
- Edgewise Envelopes Between Balanced Forman and Ollivier-Ricci Curvature
Giorgio Micaletto, Tebe Nigrelli
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.13535 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_statCO_bot/116243444434809142
- Capillary John ellipsoid theorem with applications to capillary curvature problems
Jinrong Hu, Yingxiang Hu, Bo Yang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.27252 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathAP_bot/116322830418360820
- Busemann G-spaces with convex balls
Tadashi Fujioka, Shijie Gu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.20800 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathMG_bot/117149407794925161
- Monotonicity formulas in positively curved settings with applications to two-phase free boundary ...
Johannes Hosle
https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.05107 https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mathAP_bot/117228712585560297
toXiv_bot_toot

En esta web https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now/dsn.html de la NASA se puede hacer seguimiento de la actividad de las tres estaciones de espacio profundo, una de ellas la de Robledo de Chavela afectada por el incendio. Ahora mismo no estš transmitiendo y me da una sensación como cuando colap…

Amazon fires were almost nonexistent before humans arrived #Amazon

Amazon fires were almost nonexistent before humans arrived
The Amazon rainforest rarely burned before humans arrived. A 10,000-year record reveals how human-set fires transformed the forest over time.

Dialling back the weirdness a wee bit compared to the previous book, but looses nothing of the magnificent world building:
I'm halfway through the fourth part of the Children of Time Series that has, as usual, a new planet, a new species and also covers many topics skimmed over by the previous books, like the other sentient species on Kerns World. Eerie and wonderful it sits right at the centre between space horror, hard sci-fi and space opera
Also I really can recommend the…

Distance Matrices of Ordered Point Clouds and Their Persistent Homology
David Hien
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.12620 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.12620 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.12620
arXiv:2608.12620v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The distance matrix of a finite point cloud can be visualized as a heatmap. When the data arise from a time series, the sublevel sets of this image are known as recurrence plots and are widely used in time series analysis. Motivated by this perspective, we establish a relationship between the distance-matrix filtration of the time series and the \v{C}ech (or Vietoris--Rips) filtration of its state-space embedding in the form of a degree-one chain map. We study the induced maps in homology, showing that the map from $H_0$ into $H_1$ is essentially surjective and providing an example where the map from $H_1$ into $H_2$ is nontrivial. These chain maps can be applied to simplify image persistence computations arising in the computation of cycling signatures, a topological tool for time series analysis. Moreover, these computations yield finer information that allows the analysis of transitions between different types of cycling motion.
toXiv_bot_toot

Since 2017, ESA’s #SpaceDebris Office has published an annual Space Environment Report to provide a transparent overview of global space activities and determine how well international debris-reduction measures are improving the long-term sustainability of spaceflight: https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/ESA_Space_Environment_Report_2026 -> "The number and scale of commercial satellite constellations continue to increase each year. Not enough satellites leave heavily congested orbits at the end of their lives, creating a growing collision risk. More than three intact satellites or rocket bodies are reentering the Earth’s atmosphere every day on average. At the same time, ten new payloads are launched daily. A new trend has constellations change altitude significantly year-on-year. New report metric added in 2026: on-ground casualty risk of reentries. Even though the numbers are low compared to everyday risks in life, the chance of a casualty increased in recent years due to increased traffic."

Scottish gannet chick hunt blocked for first time in 400 years https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/03/scottish-seabird-hunt-cancelled-for-first-time-in-400-years

my #geometryOnDrugs postings continue after a bit of a hiatus.
Today's entry: The first installment of my intro to hyperbolic geometry. This is basically going to parallel (pun intended) what I did with spherical geometry some years back, except this will inevitably be more weird (surprise).

Time lapse of the partial lunar #eclipse of August 27, 2026. Native video upload to Mastodon. Let’s see if this works. #lunareclipse #Astronomy

Just finished "A Deepness in the Sky" by Vernor Vinge. A fascinating and epic science fiction novel with fascinating ideas about technology and also future societies. As I'm delving into a lot of sci fi looking for social imagination it's a good find in some ways but disappointing in others. The Qeng Ho culture is interesting, but their society is uninspiring; Vinge's rosy view of "trade" is not one I completely share, and their hierarchies and wealth accumulation are less compatible with their freedoms in my imagination than in Vinge's. That said, his perspective on the possibilities of galactic-scale civilization and the idea of the "age of failed dreams" are fascinating, especially right now, and his detailed ideas about programming, AI, automaton, and "Focus" are extremely relevant right now. Ultimately I didn't love some parts of the dénouement, and there's a lot of "great man theory of history" going on, including (only somewhat ameliorated) a focus on men over women. Vinge's damsels in distress have a lot more agency than usual for the role, but with the exception of Victory Sr. and Jr., the damsels are very much in distress, and Victory Sr. gets overshadowed a lot by Underhill.
It definitely helps one expand their imagination of what long-term and large-scale human existence could look like, which is great and no easy feat, and both the technologies that are written in and those written out are extremely convincing. The only thing I didn't find compelling was the transposition of capitalism onto such space and time scales. It's a very standard feature of sci fi from the last few decades, and I'm sure most readers don't question it, but I've become someone who can no longer imagine "capitalism across the stars" without questioning how realistic it is that its self-destructive tendencies could possibly last even a few more centuries, let alone succeed at interstellar travel.
One last extremely fascinating thing: how closely the strengths and weaknesses of Focus track with the strengths and weaknesses of modern generative AI. That, and the way that the "age of failed dreams" idea can help people imagine beyond generative AI in a positive way.
#AmReading #ReadingNow #Bookstodon

For Linux users on servers/personal computers, do you use full disk encryption (FDE), if so did you know about these performance tweaks? #luks #linux
I found out after using full disk encryption on my Linux devices for a long time that there are these tweaks that make it soo much more effici…

I always struggle to attend this festival. I've gone a few times, starting back when it was the Burger Boogaloo. It's expensive, and the stage areas get crammed so quickly now. You lose the intimate feel. Add in the likely heat and long lines and huge line up, and it can be a real drag unless you go with a group and find time to just chill in an open space.
#music

Blurry Figures II 🪬
模糊的形象 II🪬
📷 Yashica 635
🎞️ Ilford FP4 Plus 125 (FF), expired 1994
If you like my work, Support by buying me a coffee or a roll of film from
PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ydcdingsite
Wise

AI-based single-shot structured-light depth reconstruction for real-time laparoscopic surgical guidance
Wayne Wonseok Rodgers, Xiangyi Le, Seonghoon Jang, Shuwen Wei, Justin Opfermann, Michael Kam, Axel Krieger, Jin U. Kang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.05109 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.05109 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.05109
arXiv:2608.05109v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Significance. Accurate intraoperative depth perception is important for autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic laparoscopic surgery. Conventional fringe projection profilometry can achieve millimeter-scale accuracy but often requires multi-shot acquisition, digital-micromirror-device projection, and projector-camera synchronization, complicating integration into compact laparoscopic systems.
Aim. To develop a synchronization-free, single-shot depth-sensing platform using a passive LED-illuminated binary mask and a VQ-VAE prior with a custom U-Net depth head.
Approach. A compact projection module was coupled to one channel of a dual-channel laparoscope, while the second channel imaged the fringe-illuminated target. A Zivid 3D camera acquired reference depth for 722 paired phantom images. Zivid depth maps were reprojected into the SSLE image frame for supervised training and evaluation. The VQ-VAE encoded each input into a discrete latent representation, and a latent-space U-Net predicted depth without a separate mask-prediction branch.
Results. Using a fixed train/validation/test split, the proposed model achieved an MAE of 3.70 mm, AbsRel of 0.0326, delta=1.1 accuracy of 0.962, and delta=1.1^2 accuracy of 0.970. It achieved lower MAE than the dual U-Net MaskNet DepthNet baseline and outperformed off-the-shelf monocular depth models in MAE, AbsRel, and threshold accuracy. The pipeline operated at 26.0 Hz over 301 consecutive frames on an NVIDIA A100 GPU.
Conclusions. The LED-illuminated binary-pattern platform with latent-space depth reconstruction enables synchronization-free, video-rate endoscopic depth estimation. Results demonstrate Zivid-referenced phantom reconstruction without an explicit segmentation stage, while emphasizing the importance of dataset size and SSLE-Zivid calibration accuracy.
toXiv_bot_toot

Fisher Forecasting for the DESC with $\texttt{Augur}$
Paul Rogozenski, Sankarshana Srinivasan, Javier S\'anchez, Nora Elisa Chisari, Arthur Loureiro, Marc Paterno, Rebekah Polen, Heather Prince, Biancamaria Sersante, An\v{z}e Slosar, Sandro Vitenti, Carlos Garc\'ia-Garc\'ia, Eric Gawiser, Christos Georgiou, C. Danielle Leonard, Ayan Mitra, Jeremy Neveu, The LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.03876 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.03876 https://arxiv.org/html/2608.03876
arXiv:2608.03876v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) has begun its ten-year survey of the entire visible southern hemisphere. To ensure robust cosmological measurements, computationally inexpensive investigations of modeling choices must be made to gauge the performance of proposed cosmological analyses. In this paper, we introduce the $\texttt{Augur}$ tool of the Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC), which provides Fisher forecasts for cosmological inference for the LSST using software frameworks designed for DESC science. We test the pipeline by comparing it to forecasts produced by external code and direct sampling of the posterior via nested sampling methods, finding good agreement between all methods. We additionally investigate a range of modeling and hyperparameter choices for a 3$\times$2pt investigation in harmonic space, providing users with diagnostics to obtain reliable forecasts. $\texttt{Augur}$ will be continually updated to be compatible with the other tools in the DESC software ecosystem as additional probes and functionality become available.
toXiv_bot_toot

The low temperature this morning: 80 degrees (Fahrenheit -- about 27 Celsius).
That's the *low* temperature. Dew point was 81F!
Earlier this year, on January 23, the *high* temperature was -9F (about -23C).
A difference of 89 degrees (or 50)!
On that January day, I did go out for a couple errands, and every time I felt like an astronaut suiting up for a space walk and wanted to get back inside as fast as possible.
This morning it was faster to go outside --…

Nature's benefits don’t require an exotic vacation getaway or weekend adventure.
Even brief, routine interactions with green space can reduce stress, improve mood and promote overall well-being.
I spent the spring of 2026 teaching and studying urban landscapes in Denmark,
a country consistently ranked among the happiest in the world.
I expected to find thoughtfully designed parks, courtyards and bicycle paths.
I did see those things.
But what surpris…

Getting outside despite your 9-to-5 job can improve your mental health – here’s how to spend time in nature during and around working hours
Sometimes the best escape isn’t a weekend away. It’s the park just down the road.

This is the time of year when my vinyl listening decreases, just because the turntable is connected to an 845 tube amp that doubles as a space heater (and it's hot!). I'm listening to more digital sounds for now, on the summer system.. and apparently I'm becoming a reggae fan. @@…

Palm oil expansion reignites decade-old Indigenous land conflict in Indonesia https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/palm-oil-expansion-reignites-decade-old-indigenous-land-conflict-in-indonesia/

Palm oil expansion reignites decade-old Indigenous land conflict in Indonesia
JAKARTA — Two palm oil companies embroiled in a long-running land dispute with an Indigenous community in Indonesian Borneo have resumed the clearing of rainforest and other land to expand their plantations for the first time in more than a decade. In June 2025, the Indigenous Dayak Benuaq community of Muara Tae reported that the […]

Wait, this happened already one month ago? High time to share these pictures then:
Please enjoy these views taken during the Gänseliesel ceremony in Göttingen on July 24, when IMPRS graduates Prithwitosh Dey, Ilse de Langen, Neelanchal Joshi and Sanghita Chandra went to kiss the goose girl statue atop the fountain on Göttingen's central market square.
A Gänseliesel ceremony afternoon begins with a highly official part in the university's classical Aula building. Upon ex…

Goodness me I'm no use to anyone today. I think it is the 'tism putting its foot down. Last week's main work days, M-W, were the hardest I'd had in ages. Guests arrived Weds night, on Fri night I was awake the whole time sitting in Fit to Sit with a relative and guests were still with us til Mon morning. Another hard M-W at work. Apart from having to find some quiet space at times I've coped but last night slept 10hrs and today am a wet lettuce. I think today and mebbes t…

The Station (Multi, XP'd on PC) Something has gone wrong on the Espial, a cloaked space station overlooking an inhabited planet. It's your job to figure out what the problem is and where the crew went before it's too late.
Recently acquired this 8 year old game for $1.50 in the summer Steam sale. This is a very short (2.5 hours to roll credits) walking sim puzzle game. Despite that short play time, it's got all the things you'd expect: locked doors, ID cards (bra…

Rubin LSST DP2 unveils almost-dark galaxies in the Virgo Cluster: #galaxies identified in Data Preview 2 of the #Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time. We present a population of seven almost-dark galaxies identified in Data Preview 2 of the Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time. They surround M49 in the vicinity of the #VirgoCluster [...]. Their characteristics are analogous to those of the faintest and low-mass galaxies identified among satellite galaxies And XXI, And XXIII, and And XXV in the Local Group. This discovery demonstrates the power of the forthcoming Rubin LSST 10-year survey to uncover extremely faint galaxies at scale, promising the large statistical samples needed to constrain the faint-end luminosity function and the nature of dark matter."

Tanzania’s first official wildlife corridor links savanna elephants to rainforest https://news.mongabay.com/2026/09/tanzanias-first-official-wildlife-corridor-links-savanna-elephants-to-rainforest/

Tanzania’s first official wildlife corridor links savanna elephants to rainforest
African savanna elephants in southern Tanzania have an unusual habit: They climb mountains. Up to 1,000 of the pachyderms spend part of their time in the Udzungwa Mountains, clambering up and down steep slopes that are clad in lush, closed-canopy rainforest. “They go everywhere,” said Trevor Jones, director of strategy and development at the Southern […]

moving dirt this morning before the sun gets too hot.
It's supposed to be 34°C with a humidex of 36 this afternoon. 🥵
It is only 20°C in the shade right now so time to get a good dent in the pile before I melt.
Current interim goal is to level a space equal to a little bigger than the current grey shed so I can put an identical one beside it either back-to-back or face to face.
The shovel mark in the top of the dirt pile to the left is the width mark that I have to clear to. 😂 We'll see if I get all the way there today! Watch says I have put 73min in so far.
I also need to convince the boy to help move the rocks from around the pond into a central pile. Pile location is TBD tho. 🤔
But it needs to be done so I can shore up a couple of low spots on the edge of the poolpond and in general start landscaping the edge of it.
#poolpond #backyardProject #diy #gardening #landscaping

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Model 500:
🎵 Night Drive (Time, Space, Transmat)
#Model500
https://model500.bandcamp.com/track/night-drive-thru-babylon

I've finally got a formal solicitation for the postdoc position on my new NSF-funded project—come help build a new method to study plant populations' responses to environmental variation in space and over time, and figure out interesting ways to use it! Apply by 23 August to ensure consideration.
Details here:

#LARES-2 satellite measures #FrameDragging effect around the Earth: #GeneralRelativity result ever taken *that* long?)

Leaky Language Models: Stealing Architecture and Inference Optimizations via Per-Token Timing
Sadegh Majidi, Niloofar Mireshghallah, Kazem Taram
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20723 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.20723 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.20723
arXiv:2607.20723v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This work presents LeakyLMs, a set of attacks that leak proprietary model, architecture, and deployment information from production language models. LeakyLMs is the first to demonstrate that key model and deployment details can be inferred using only token generation timing, even when interacting through remote APIs. LeakyLMs introduces two core attacks. The first attack targets inference optimizations and deployment strategies. For example, our attack detects whether a provider uses speculative decoding, a widely deployed inference-time optimization, and further identifies the context length of the draft model used in the pipeline. Our measurements show that Google Gemini Flash 2.5 uses speculative decoding with a draft context window of approximately 128K tokens. The second attack recovers key architectural properties, including the number of transformer layers, hidden dimension size, and number of attention heads. To achieve this, LeakyLMs builds a detailed and accurate model of token-generation timing on modern NVIDIA GPUs, characterizing how latency scales with model configuration and hardware parameters. The attack then performs a search over the architecture space using this timing model. In experiments with Llama models, the near-correct architectural configuration appears in the top-10 guesses more than 90% of the time.
toXiv_bot_toot

Her inclusion of Kristin Leachman’s “Longleaf 2” invites us to look at minute details of our surroundings, while a woven Gullah basket made from sweetgrass invokes discussion about how we take from the land. One piece that McCaskill is excited about is an untitled work by Radcliffe Bailey because of the artist’s ability to construct polyvocal stories that cross time, generations and space.
8/

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink made the first public declaration Monday that the United States has placed “space control weapons” in orbit, an announcement that will surely reverberate in the power centers of Beijing and Moscow: #SpaceWar

Dan Dan Noodles #plantbased

Dan Dan Noodles
These plant-based dan dan noodles or dan dan 'mian' make a quick and spicy lunch you can whip up in no time

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is many different things to many different people
— but one thing that it definitely isn’t is a get-rich-quick scheme.
Since its debut on the public tickers back in early June,
SpaceX shares have sunk from a high of over $225 to a dismal $110 today, as compounding failures and overvaluation fears take their toll.
Overall, SpaceX is down nearly 30 percent compared to its opening stock price of $150
— and all those day-one rubes are now seeing re…

SpaceX Investors in Meltdown Over All the Money They've Lost
Elon Musk's most loyal acolytes are licking their wounds as SpaceX stock continues to hit new all-time lows.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #StuartMaconiesFreakZone
Boards of Canada:
🎵 You Retreat In Time And Space
#BoardsofCanada
https://boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com/track/you-retreat-in-time-and-space
https://open.spotify.com/track/5m3Uzjuiyj8656EGM1bwhk

It’s time to prosecute climate crimes – with laws that already exist | Aaron Regunberg https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/28/prosecute-climate-crimes-big-oil

Is GitHub now vibe-coded? "2028" is "soon"? Or! Maybe! GitHub servers are already running on space-based data centers, which are at GPS altitudes — and hence experiencing gravitational time dilation… (The broken image is fine, I have image loading off in my mailer.)

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #Expansions
Addy Weitzman:
🎵 No Man's Land (The Time & Space Machine Riddim Mix)
#AddyWeitzman
https://addyweitzman.bandcamp.com/track/no-mans-land-the-time-space-machine-remix-edit

A longer, hotter reality surrounds marine heat waves, research reveals #marine

A longer, hotter reality surrounds marine heat waves, research reveals
Anyone who has boiled a pot of water understands that it takes both time and energy to raise the temperature, so it may come as a surprise to learn that scientists have long treated marine heat waves (MHWs) as isolated events. New research led by William & Mary's VIMS & Batten School is challenging that narrative by providing a framework to characterize an ecosystem's cumulative heat exposure from MHWs and the extended periods of warm water that precede and follow them.

#Jellyfin cruft-clearance update: I found space to backup "short films" ~70 GB to then test, and doing Dashboard / Libraries / Libraries and on the Hamburger on Short Film clicking Remove did NOT delete any content! 🥳
Testing again, after backing up Television, which is an order of magnitude larger and full of bad or ambiguous filenames, but still backupable … given time.
I clearly will have metadata to fix for a while. The program I wrote for Cage's mesostics, seeking previously unused syllables from biblical names when Hebrew rules are different and OCCASSIONALLY, less and less, requiring human assistance, was also numbingly tedious.
John called it, "knitting with my computer" 😊

Split Radiance Cascades: Real-Time Global Illumination via Sparse Radiance Probes
Rouli Freeman, Alexander Sannikov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.20384 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.20384 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.20384
arXiv:2607.20384v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Radiance probe methods are a popular and well-tested approach for approximating diffuse global illumination for real-time graphics, but they commonly suffer from a lack of detail due to the large spacing between probes. Radiance Cascade (RC) fixes this by increasing spatial resolution and reducing angular resolution for light and occlusion from closer objects, which allows it to provide details at all scales without noise or aliasing. However, leading implementations of RC either run in 2D or screenspace, due to the prohibitive costs of storing high-detail volumetric radiance information.
In this work, we adapt Radiance Cascades for accurate real-time 3D diffuse global illumination using a sparse hashmap to store world-space probes. We introduce ray splitting, a method for calculating radiance intervals used in RC by tracing rays from visible surfaces and calculating their contribution to cascades based on their hit distance. We evaluate our algorithm, Split Radiance Cascades, on a variety of scenes, and demonstrate that it can provide high-quality indirect illumination in both single-frame and temporally accumulated contexts.
toXiv_bot_toot

From a mountaintop in Chile the Vera C. #Rubin Observatory has finally begun the revolutionary Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST): https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2616/ - the ten-year survey is Rubin’s signature campaign to create the most comprehensive, cinematic record of the Universe in history.

In Michoacšn, Mexico, drying soil threatens water supplies and avocados, says study https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/in-michoacan-mexico-drying-soil-threatens-water-supplies-and-avocados-says-study/

In Michoacán, Mexico, drying soil threatens water supplies and avocados, says study
MEXICO CITY — In the heart of Mexico’s southwestern state of Michoacán, Juan Madrigal spends his free time organizing to protect the city of Uruapan’s urban ecological park, a 50-hectare (124-acre) plot of land at the edge of the Río Santa Bárbara. A state-protected area since 1995, the park’s marshlands help to purify the surrounding […]

Rubin Observatory generates about 10 terabytes of data every 24 hours
—it would take you almost two years of watching Netflix, or over 25 years of listening to Spotify, to use that amount of data.
It takes just a couple of minutes to transfer an image from Chile to California in the US, compare the new image to older images to identify changes, and generate alerts based on those changes.
At the end of the ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, Rubin Observatory will …

Data | Rubin Observatory
Rubin Observatory will generate more data in ten years than everything humans have ever written. Learn how scientists will manage the deluge of data.

Human activity is pushing lakes beyond their natural carbon limits #lakes

Human activity is pushing lakes beyond their natural carbon limits
Lakes play an important role in capturing and storing carbon, which accumulates in their sediments. But the amounts they can absorb have varied considerably over time. Jean-François Lapierre, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Université de Montréal, is part of a research team sorting out natural variations from human-influenced changes.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mike_bowler/116856446192240775
The high concentration of CO2 problem is yet another reason you always want air conditioning available.
It allows you to still get fresh air into buildings regularly (through occasional opening of windows), even when it's hot outside.
"Central air" systems especially are also designed to gently circulate air throughout a space, keeping the time you need to open windows relatively short and overall energy loss low.

At 15:24 CEST on 15 June 2026, a faint blue glow in space was switched off for the last time: #BepiColombo across the inner Solar System, the spacecraft's solar electric propulsion (SEP) system completed its final thrust arc, marking the end of BepiColombo’s long cruise phase and the beginning of its arrival at Mercury.

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

The spectral picture of self-similar collapse in the Constantin-Lax-Majda equation
Jie Xu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.19762 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.19762 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.19762
arXiv:2607.19762v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We give a spectral description of the self-similar collapse profile of the Constantin-Lax-Majda (CLM) equation, the $a=0$ anchor of the generalized family $w_t a\,u\,w_x = u_x\,w$, $u_x = Hw$. Linearizing about the exact profile $\Omega(y) = -y/(y^2 1/4)$ and realizing $L_0$ as a closed operator on the origin-$H^2$ space, we prove three things at $a=0$. Its essential spectrum meets the closed half-plane $\{\mathrm{Re}\,\lambda \ge -1/2\}$ in the single vertical line $\{\mathrm{Re}\,\lambda = -1/2\}$: the line is placed by a log-widening Weyl sequence, and an explicit Hardy-Mellin resolvent bound constructively empties the rest of the half-plane apart from $0$ and $1$. Its full point spectrum over $\mathbb{C}$, on the odd realization, is exactly $\{0,1\}$, the scaling and time-shift symmetry modes, with no embedded eigenvalues; removing these by the standard modulation leaves a spectral gap of $1/2$ on $X$. The linear semigroup and its exact decay rate $e^{-\tau/2}$ are computed in closed form, but on a weighted space of the conjugated variable reached from $X$ by a bounded transfer map; we keep the two separate, since $L_0$ is non-normal and a spectral gap does not by itself give a decay rate in the $X$ norm. A realization dichotomy identifies the in-strip smear of generic discretizations as the faithful spectrum of the maximal $L^2$ realization, which origin-$H^2$ removes. For $a>0$ we prove a conditional two-line inclusion for each admissible smooth focusing profile, recompute the branch $c_l(a)$ of Lushnikov, Silantyev, and Siegel as a cross-check, and record the formal scaling-relevance exponent $s^*(a) = 1/c_l(a)$, below which fractional dissipation is asymptotically subdominant in self-similar variables for fixed sufficiently regular data. The contribution is the realization-dependent spectral picture of the collapse profile itself.
toXiv_bot_toot

As wildfires rage, the world is backsliding on climate action. This can’t go on | Bill McGuire https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/29/wildfires-rage-world-climate-action-scientists-fossil-fuels

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#MusicMap
- A journey to Mozart's Clarinet Quintet
Sara Mohr-Pietsch maps a musical landscape around Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, listening in deeply to find sonic connections across time and space.
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0021bsq

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #TheBBCIntroducingMixtape
Post Common:
🎵 Space/Time
#PostCommon
https://postcommon.bandcamp.com/track/space-time

Quasi-stationary and quasi-ergodic distributions in the Pelikan random map
Samuel Brevitt, Rainer Klages
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.19084 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.19084 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.19084
arXiv:2607.19084v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In this paper we present a concrete example of a substochastic discrete-time Markov chain on a countable state space producing a spectrum of infinitely many quasi-stationary distributions (QSDs) for generic parameter values, with each QSD supporting a distinct escape rate. Our system is motivated by an open variant of the Pelikan dynamical system, a random map introduced in the 1980s. These QSDs, and their stability to perturbative random noise, are tested in numerical simulations. The existence of unique QEDs is also established for some parameter values.
toXiv_bot_toot

In memory of her mom who died at her same age, Megan Wotherspoon ran nearly the full length of Saskatchewan.
"Wotherspoon said her mother was a forestry technician who felt deeply connected to the land. She died in 1995, when her daughter was six years old.
"I've just been reflecting on the time I haven't spent with her because of what happened," she said. "So, this was just a time to … see the places that she loved and hold space for her.""
#love
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/megan-wotherspoon-finishes-run-leukemia-9.7249659

Common plastic chemical linked to lifelong anxiety in new study #environment

Common plastic chemical linked to lifelong anxiety in new study
Exposure to a common plastic chemical before and shortly after birth may have lasting effects on behavior. Researchers found that male rats exposed early in life to DEHP—a plasticizer used in products ranging from medical devices to toys—showed significantly higher anxiety as adults, even long after exposure had ended. The animals were more hesitant to explore open spaces and spent more time frozen in place, classic signs of anxiety in rodents.

Review maps long-term health risks from historical metal mining in England and Wales #England

Review maps long-term health risks from historical metal mining in England and Wales
Unlike many other pollutants, toxic metals do not break down in the environment. Although they may become diluted over time, they can remain in landscapes for centuries, posing potential risks to wildlife, livestock, ecosystems and people.

Optimal Market Making in Prediction Markets
Dominik Feil, Max Nendel
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.17991 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.17991 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.17991
arXiv:2607.17991v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Prediction markets are attracting growing attention as trading volumes rise and their practical relevance increases. To ensure efficient price discovery, liquidity provision becomes ever more important. Due to the binary settlement structure in prediction markets, optimal market making leads to an optimization problem that is fundamentally different from the ones studied in classical settings. In this paper, we develop a stochastic control framework for prediction markets in which the market price is modeled as a conditional probability of the outcome that is generated by a transformed latent belief diffusion. A market maker selects bid and ask quotes to maximize expected terminal wealth while controlling both mark-to-market inventory risk and the settlement risk of remaining positions at resolution. We derive the associated Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman equation and characterize the unique optimal bid and ask quotes. By transforming the equation to the latent belief space and using a fixed-point argument, we prove existence and uniqueness of a classical solution and verify the resulting optimal quoting strategy. In addition, we provide a numerical analysis, which reveals how optimal liquidity provision in prediction markets depends on inventory, market beliefs, time to resolution, and risk aversion. Further, we demonstrate that the optimal quoting strategy substantially improves downside protection while preserving most of its expected profit relative to a myopic benchmark that maximizes the instantaneous expected mark-to-market profit.
toXiv_bot_toot

Exploring Brain Networks Using Noninvasive Electrophysiological Measurements: Methods and Applications
Richard Leahy, Takfarinas Medani
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.17602 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.17602 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.17602
arXiv:2607.17602v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) provide noninvasive measurements of brain activity with millisecond temporal resolution, enabling the investigation of functional and effective interactions within large-scale brain networks. This chapter presents a comprehensive overview of the methodological foundations and practical workflows for EEG/MEG-based brain network analysis. We first review the physical principles underlying EEG and MEG, emphasizing their complementary strengths and limitations. We then describe the forward and inverse problems, including subject-specific head modeling, source reconstruction techniques, and the importance of accurate anatomical modeling for reliable source localization. Strategies for mitigating volume conduction and signal leakage are discussed, together with best practices for source-space connectivity analysis. The chapter reviews widely used functional and effective connectivity measures, including coherence, phase synchronization metrics, amplitude envelope correlation, Granger causality, dynamic causal modeling, and transfer entropy, highlighting their assumptions, advantages, and limitations. Modern end-to-end analysis pipelines are presented, with particular emphasis on Brainstorm and complementary open-source software for reproducible EEG/MEG research. Finally, we discuss emerging approaches, including time-varying connectivity, cross-frequency interactions, and network-based analyses, illustrating how noninvasive electrophysiology contributes to understanding brain organization in health and disease. The chapter provides both conceptual foundations and practical guidance for researchers and advanced students seeking to map and interpret human brain networks using EEG and MEG.
toXiv_bot_toot

So... I've started reading Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey, and 110 pages in I'm finding a lot to dislike, even though I've mostly heard nothing but good stuff about the series (and also the TV show). The fact that it became a popular TV show should probably have been a warning, but so far it's got standard-issue patriarchal & misogynist background radiation plus copaganda, with no real signs that there's going to be any reversal or repudiation of that stuff. There's also no indication I'll get any interesting thoughts about society or humanity out of this beyond bog standard space opera fare, in stark contrast to, say, A Deepness in the Sky which I also read recently and which has a similar heft. Does anyone who has read deeper into the series have opinions on whether it's worth my time?
#Bookstodon #AmReading #ReadingNow
It's got some good stuff in there; keep going!
Your instincts aren't wrong; read something else.
Other

EVOLVE: Efficient Learned Volume Compression with Variable-Rate Encoding on a Cross-Domain Database
Kaiyuan Tang, Maizhe Yang, Chaoli Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.18187 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.18187 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.18187
arXiv:2607.18187v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large-scale scientific simulations generate volumetric data at rates that far outpace advances in storage and network bandwidth, making effective lossy compression increasingly critical. However, conventional compressors often struggle to preserve fine structural details at high compression ratios (CRs), and implicit neural representations (INRs) require costly per-volume optimization and produce models with fixed CRs. To respond, we present EVOLVE, an autoencoder (AE)-based volume-compression framework that targets high CRs for offline compression, with three key contributions. First, we construct a large-scale cross-domain database of 6,376 volumes from 21 scientific simulations, curated via perceptual hashing to ensure diversity, enabling the optimized model to extract features that generalize across volumes within the covered scientific simulation domains. Second, we reexamine the design space of AE-based compressors and incorporate several macro- and micro-designs into a vanilla AE to develop EVOLVE, which substantially improves the expressive power and compression capability. Third, we develop a learnable gain mechanism with a three-stage training strategy to enable variable-rate encoding, allowing a single model to support continuous CR adjustment at inference time. Experiments on multiple unseen scientific simulation datasets demonstrate that EVOLVE achieves substantially higher CRs than conventional compressors at comparable reconstruction quality, while delivering compression speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than INR-based methods, highlighting its promise as a strong alternative for compressing scientific data. The code, model weights, and results are available on our project page at https://evolve-vis.github.io.
toXiv_bot_toot

The German conquest of space has to wait a bit longer ... "After a successful week of testing RFA ONE on the pad for the first time, we encountered an issue with the vehicle that requires further investigation," write #RFA (Rocket Factory Augsburg) in https://x.com/rfa_space/status/2082125463565078614: "We have made the decision to de-stack the vehicle in order to investigate. We will provide further updates as soon as confirmed information is available." (No word on the next launch attempt by Isar Aerospace either: silence since the launch scrub in June.)

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #CraigCharles
Post Common:
🎵 Space/Time
#PostCommon
https://postcommon.bandcamp.com/track/space-time

RE: #ChangE7 is "scheduled for launch at an appropriate time" - a good idea indeed ...

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #RileyAndCoe
Boards of Canada:
🎵 You Retreat In Time And Space
#BoardsofCanada
https://boardsofcanada.bandcamp.com/track/you-retreat-in-time-and-space
https://open.spotify.com/track/5m3Uzjuiyj8656EGM1bwhk

Some really interesting electric power math here for #BCFerries upcoming large transitional hybrid-to-full electric ferries. They will be known as the “Summit” class. 2100 passengers and crew, almost 400 cars. These are big ships.
Equivalent to the biggest Spirit Class between Victoria and Tsawwassen. So would be replacing the last of the 1970s Queens and possibly one of the Spirit or Coastal ships? We’ll see.
Anyway: They will initially have 10Megawatt Hours (MWh) of battery capacity as hybrid diesel/electric which is interesting, not natural gas like some of the other recent hybrids. (Which always felt like a stupid political decision to show off LNG, not a sound engineering decision)
They will then, once docks are upgraded for electric charging, be refit with 60MWh of batteries (total 70MWh) to “enable 2 hours of emissions free sailing”. In distance terms, that’s the one-way sailing time between Duke Point Terminal in Nanaimo and Tsawwassen in Vancouver, about 40 nautical miles (74km).
For comparison, my Kona EV car has a 65kilowatt hour battery… 1000x less capacity!.. giving a range of 450km.
That’s a very heavy ship!!🛳️
It’s a pretty tight capacity window considering the major routes are all between 1.5hrs and 2hrs. But they could be being conservative in the press release, indicating they would comfortably fit those timelines, or they will be still using hybrid power and shore docking ports to augment and ensure they have adequate power. They will always need lots of reserve and backup for safety.
I also imagine in the 30-60 year lifetime of the ships, we could see the energy density of batteries in general increase, so a refit in 2040 or 2050 could replace 70MWh with 100 or 140MWh in the same physical space.
What seems sure though is that B.C. Ferries is going to have some, if not the, largest fully electric capable ferries in the world. That’s a good thing.
First ship of 4 will arrive from China in 2029. Last of the class arrives in 2031. So hopefully we get our first ride in 2030! Looking forward to it!
#bcferries #ev #electric #transportation #bcpoli #ferry #boats #ships #battery

Had a decent sleep last night after a long day. Got up before 6AM so that I could start the sprinklers on time.
(We are allowed 6-9AM/PM alternating days but I only water in the mornings because watering when it is still 32°C at 8PM is dumb)
While they were going I got going on another dirt-moving session. Over 3 hours! The sun was blocked by clouds for much of it so that helped a lot. Managed to get the space cleared for the 2nd shed. The whole back part of the yard is nearly level. It’s amazing just how much lower one side of the yard was from the other!
Another couple days of moving dirt and leveling and the dirt mountain should be spent!
Lunch and naptime. 2000 calories burned 😝 💪
Started to feel some pains in hands, thumb, back. Body knows… so I stopped :)
#poolpond #backyardProject #diy #gardening #dirt #portalberni #clay