Tootfinder

[Trying to sound cool at the club] To me, a crazy straw is just a normal straw :neocat_cool_fingerguns:

This sounds great.
Former senior politicians, including Sir Ben Wallace, Jack Straw and Amber Rudd, play a fictional British government pitched against an imagined Kremlin.
The Wargame: New Sky News and Tortoise Media podcast series simulates a Russian attack on UK

The popular meaning of "luddite" is a straw-man. It's a sloppy word with a sloppy meaning now, and it's one we'd do well to watch out for.
The actual reality of who the Luddites were is far more interesting, the center of the hard-fought struggles against owners of factories disrupting entire towns and cities economies with massively terrible results, centralizing power and money and leaving a great number of people without any control of their work, formerly artisans who'd had a hand in their own work, and many automated out of jobs. Luddites destroyed automated looms not because they hated technology. They destroyed automated looms because they were taking the livelihood they depended on, with no recourse, and it was a disaster for a good while, and then millwork has gone from those places probably forever.
The problem now with LLMs and automated research systems is there's very little way for workers and creators to stick their shoes in the machinery. They've tried (https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12281) but mostly failed, since unlike a factory full of textile workers, the equipment is remote, the automation virtual, an intangible software object that few can access in any meaningful way.

This is the last straw! Working with Israel to commit genocide we can forgive but asking us to pay more for their services… now that’s unconscionable. https://mastodon.online/@parismarx/114914379016704186

New Eric Adams 'Donors' Say They Never Gave to His Reelection Campaign (The City)
https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/24/eric-adams-straw-donors-reelection-campaign/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250724/p39#a250724p39

I tried to gentle Bob B last summer but he refused to accept my other cats and escaped the first chance he got. He started showing up at the barn a week ago and we now feed him regularly
#cats #catsofmastodon #photo

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Oum Shatt:
🎵 Gold to straw
#NowPlaying #OumShatt
https://oumshatt.bandcamp.com/track/gold-to-straw
https://open.spotify.com/track/1McTZhC5JeEmEm0AbiAefJ

Bob B glares at me before marching off
#bobb #cats #caturday

Overly academic/distanced ethical discussions
Had a weird interaction with @/brainwane@social.coop just now. I misinterpreted one of their posts quoting someone else and I think the combination of that plus an interaction pattern where I'd assume their stance on something and respond critically to that ended up with me getting blocked. I don't have hard feelings exactly, and this post is only partly about this particular person, but I noticed something interesting by the end of the conversation that had been bothering me. They repeatedly criticized me for assuming what their position was, but never actually stated their position. They didn't say: "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, it's actually Y." They just said "I'm bothered you assumed my position was X, please don't assume my position!" I get that it's annoying to have people respond to a straw man version of your argument, but when I in response asked some direct questions about what their position was, they gave some non-answers and then blocked me. It's entirely possible it's a coincidence, and they just happened to run out of patience on that iteration, but it makes me take their critique of my interactions a bit less seriously. I suspect that they just didn't want to hear what I was saying, while at the same time they wanted to feel as if they were someone who values public critique and open discussion of tricky issues (if anyone reading this post also followed our interaction and has a different opinion of my behavior, I'd be glad to hear it; it's possible In effectively being an asshole here and it would be useful to hear that if so).
In any case, the fact that at the end of the entire discussion, I'm realizing I still don't actually know their position on whether they think the AI use case in question is worthwhile feels odd. They praised the system on several occasions, albeit noting some drawbacks while doing so. They said that the system was possibly changing their anti-AI stance, but then got mad at me for assuming this meant that they thought this use-case was justified. Maybe they just haven't made up their mind yet but didn't want to say that?
Interestingly, in one of their own blog posts that got linked in the discussion, they discuss a different AI system, and despite listing a bunch of concrete harms, conclude that it's okay to use it. That's fine; I don't think *every* use of AI is wrong on balance, but what bothered me was that their post dismissed a number of real ethical issues by saying essentially "I haven't seen calls for a boycott over this issue, so it's not a reason to stop use." That's an extremely socially conformist version of ethics that doesn't sit well with me. The discussion also ended up linking this post: https://chelseatroy.com/2024/08/28/does-ai-benefit-the-world/ which bothered me in a related way. In it, Troy describes classroom teaching techniques for introducing and helping students explore the ethics of AI, and they seem mostly great. They avoid prescribing any particular correct stance, which is important when teaching given the power relationship, and they help students understand the limitations of their perspectives regarding global impacts, which is great. But the overall conclusion of the post is that "nobody is qualified to really judge global impacts, so we should focus on ways to improve outcomes instead of trying to judge them." This bothers me because we actually do have a responsibility to make decisive ethical judgments despite limitations of our perspectives. If we never commit to any ethical judgment against a technology because we think our perspective is too limited to know the true impacts (which I'll concede it invariably is) then we'll have to accept every technology without objection, limiting ourselves to trying to improve their impacts without opposing them. Given who currently controls most of the resources that go into exploration for new technologies, this stance is too permissive. Perhaps if our objection to a technology was absolute and instantly effective, I'd buy the argument that objecting without a deep global view of the long-term risks is dangerous. As things stand, I think that objecting to the development/use of certain technologies in certain contexts is necessary, and although there's a lot of uncertainly, I expect strongly enough that the overall outcomes of objection will be positive that I think it's a good thing to do.
The deeper point here I guess is that this kind of "things are too complicated, let's have a nuanced discussion where we don't come to any conclusions because we see a lot of unknowns along with definite harms" really bothers me.

6/25/85 cuyahoga falls: classic rock to start both sets, only DAY TRIPPER opener (crispest yet) & ever-fun GIMMIE SOME LOVIN’. despite slow tunes & slop (ROW JIMMY locking in by end), big 1st set energy. JACK STRAW burns in unusual late slot. 45-minute PLAYING IN THE BAND > DRUMZ > SPACE > THE WHEEL > PLAYING IN THE BAND > CHINA DOLL. long PLAYING bends minor before synth zonk weirdness & righteous balafon transition into DRUMZ. weir watch: the age of romping aroun…

Blowing in a drinking straw: introducing quantum physics
Lorenzo Galante
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11524 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.…

Blowing in a drinking straw: introducing quantum physics
We present an educational approach aimed at introducing the fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics (QM). By exploiting the formal analogy between sound wave behavior in an acoustic pipe (a drinking straw) and the quantum infinite square potential well, we provide an intuitive framework that explains the origin of energy quantization in bound quantum systems (such as atoms), introduces the concept of wave function (WF), and lays the groundwork for discussing the Heisenberg uncertainty relatio…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.10879 has been replaced.
link: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=a

Primary Ionization and Particle Identification with Straw Tube Detectors
The charged particles are tracked in the high energy physics detectors to provide the information of their properties. One of the tracking detector is straw tube detector that has been used by many experiments. The motivation behind the current work is to study the primary ionization and particle identification using straw tube detectors. Additionally, we report the decay of $^{60}$CO for the study of gamma peaks since these are used in cobalt therapy, that is beneficial for cancer/tumor treatm…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.01753 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_csRO_…

Human-Machine Interfaces for Subsea Telerobotics: From Soda-straw to Natural Language Interactions
This review explores the evolution of human-machine interfaces (HMIs) in subsea telerobotics, charting the progression from traditional first-person "soda-straw" consoles -- characterized by narrow field-of-view camera feeds -- to contemporary interfaces leveraging gesture recognition, virtual reality, and natural language processing. We systematically analyze the state-of-the-art literature through three interrelated perspectives: operator experience (including immersive feedback, cognitive wo…

Welcome to Italian Day on The Drive 2025
#CommercialDrive #vancouver

I noticed this yesterday on the steps going down to the shed. With the amount of large seeds clumped in a dark medium it's done fruit eating animal; perhaps a fox, not a badger as they tend to use scrapes and latrines, marginally a Pine Martin but I've never heard of them here.
I guess it's a fox, we have both foxes and badgers close by and they've been seen in the early hours.
There's muntjac as well but it won't be that.
Other ideas or confirmati…

How I start my day :3
🎨by ayu

The time has come for me to propose that #Gentoo leaves #GitHub.
#Microsoft has been purveying #enshittification of this platform for years now. Pushing #Copilot everywhere was the last straw.
#AI #LLM

Member of Gourdlandia precession wears a placard and holds a gourd with a long stem
#ithaca #photo #photography #portrait