Tootfinder

So, today, a lot of folk are talking about how a very bad man named Sean Hastings has been violently threatening Adam Shostack for years and years.
 
I know Adam and think of him as a friend and we are connected professionally and personally, and of course I knew about Sean Hastings, but I was unaware that today was the day that Adam was going to finally talk about his nightmare, and he didn't ask me to say anything about my own experiences with Sean or coordinate with me on this.
 
I can't speak to Adam's experience but I do feel the need to tell people what Sean Hastings did to me.
 
The first thing Sean Hastings did to me was give me money in 2015. I didn't know him. You can actually see his name right in the front of the acknowledgements to my book on women in tech - because he contributed $500 to the 2015 Kickstarter I ran to fund it.
 
This is before I'd met Adam Shostack; Adam and I met in early 2016 when we sat on a Federal Trade Commission panel together in Seattle on startup cybersecurity. Adam's a major nerd and we bonded immediately over game design and his incorrect preference of Star Wars over Star Trek.
 
But soon, I would find out that there were strings attached to Sean's contribution. Apparently he thought that by contributing to a Kickstarter, he could turn guilt screws on me about who I could talk to, and demanded my time to help him publish books on girls in tech.
 
He began sending me harassing messages and emails after I'd probably RTed something from Adam, demanding that I pay attention to his claims about Adam Shostack. I did what any normal femme in tech does, which is go do the grey network check on Adam. In 2016, I spoke to several extremely prominent and trusted friends and members of the infosec community. The “Good Guy vs. Creeper” check on Adam came back from my folk with a resounding "Adam's the victim here". And I know some serious operators in the "keeping women in the infosec world safe" space.
 
Sean subsequently began publicly and privately bombarding my social accounts and email with demands and guilt and claiming that he was behind my success and funded me. This looked to me like a man who tries to control women and others with money, and I would wear out the red flag emoji if I tried to properly emphasize that. There's plenty more on Xitter if you want to go searching.
 
I didn't and don't want to think about this, any more than anyone else wants to think about awful things, but violent angry dangerous men like Sean do seem to operate on their own schedule, and I anticipate that Adam's public statement may trigger Sean Hastings making another outburst against me and the many other people I'm now seeing coming forward.
 
One last thing. I've experienced some of the same kinds of horrific stalker behavior that Adam and others in the community have, and while it's not relevant to this here, Adam was a profound support to me when my life was getting torn apart by two very dangerous, angry, violent people making false claims about me several years ago. He knows exactly what it feels like, because I think he's lived it for a couple of decades.
 
So, it occurs to me that I've actually continued to benefit from that $500 that Sean Hastings contributed to that Kickstarter. In my experience, it makes people apoplectic to learn that their money went to something that they hate. So, below, you'll find some screenshots, and the last image is my proof pic for a $500 donation just now to Operation: Safe Escape, which supports victims of cyber stalking and domestic tech abuse like those Sean Hastings has targeted. That makes me feel a lot better and I didn't even realize I was carrying any guilt over it until just now.
 
https://safeescape.org/ I strongly urge you to donate there as well if you were affected by this.

Trump’s hush money trial strategy: Deny, delay and denigrate
The opening of Donald Trump’s first criminal trial on Monday will put to the test a defense strategy his lawyers have been honing for a year
— a confrontational gambit that has angered the judge and could cost the presidential candidate dearly when it comes to a verdict.

Fight for every scrap of evidence. Push for every possible delay.
The approach has succeeded so far in Trump’s three other pending crimina…

Trump’s hush money trial strategy: deny, delay and denigrate
Donald Trump braces to go on trial in New York on Monday, after his legal team tried everything it could think of to delay and criticize the proceedings.

Law360: "Judge Taranto said he's typically 'disappointed' with the [amicus] briefs submitted to the court, and urged the attorneys in the room to do better. 'It's very rare we get amicus briefs that say something beyond what the parties say,' he said. 'Most amicus briefs make broad, unsupported general assertions about things for which we aren't given independent basis to evaluate the truth of the assertions.'"

Keep It Short, And Other Advice From Fed. Circ. Judges - Law360
Six Federal Circuit judges counseled a packed room of attorneys on Tuesday about the most common ways to ruin their own cases, such as talking too much at oral argument, adding additional citations and attacking judges or opposing counsel.

So, today, a lot of folk are talking about how a very bad man named Sean Hastings has been violently threatening Adam Shostack for years and years.
 
I know Adam and think of him as a friend and we are connected professionally and personally, and of course I knew about Sean Hastings, but I was unaware that today was the day that Adam was going to finally talk about his nightmare, and he didn't ask me to say anything about my own experiences with Sean or coordinate with me on this.
 
I can't speak to Adam's experience but I do feel the need to tell people what Sean Hastings did to me.
 
The first thing Sean Hastings did to me was give me money in 2015. I didn't know him. You can actually see his name right in the front of the acknowledgements to my book on women in tech - because he contributed $500 to the 2015 Kickstarter I ran to fund it.
 
This is before I'd met Adam Shostack; Adam and I met in early 2016 when we sat on a Federal Trade Commission panel together in Seattle on startup cybersecurity. Adam's a major nerd and we bonded immediately over game design and his incorrect preference of Star Wars over Star Trek.
 
But soon, I would find out that there were strings attached to Sean's contribution. Apparently he thought that by contributing to a Kickstarter, he could turn guilt screws on me about who I could talk to, and demanded my time to help him publish books on girls in tech.
 
He began sending me harassing messages and emails after I'd probably RTed something from Adam, demanding that I pay attention to his claims about Adam Shostack. I did what any normal femme in tech does, which is go do the grey network check on Adam. In 2016, I spoke to several extremely prominent and trusted friends and members of the infosec community. The “Good Guy vs. Creeper” check on Adam came back from my folk with a resounding "Adam's the victim here". And I know some serious operators in the "keeping women in the infosec world safe" space.
 
Sean subsequently began publicly and privately bombarding my social accounts and email with demands and guilt and claiming that he was behind my success and funded me. This looked to me like a man who tries to control women and others with money, and I would wear out the red flag emoji if I tried to properly emphasize that. There's plenty more on Xitter if you want to go searching.
 
I didn't and don't want to think about this, any more than anyone else wants to think about awful things, but violent angry dangerous men like Sean do seem to operate on their own schedule, and I anticipate that Adam's public statement may trigger Sean Hastings making another outburst against me and the many other people I'm now seeing coming forward.
 
One last thing. I've experienced some of the same kinds of horrific stalker behavior that Adam and others in the community have, and while it's not relevant to this here, Adam was a profound support to me when my life was getting torn apart by two very dangerous, angry, violent people making false claims about me several years ago. He knows exactly what it feels like, because I think he's lived it for a couple of decades.
 
So, it occurs to me that I've actually continued to benefit from that $500 that Sean Hastings contributed to that Kickstarter. In my experience, it makes people apoplectic to learn that their money went to something that they hate. So, below, you'll find some screenshots, and the last image is my proof pic for a $500 donation just now to Operation: Safe Escape, which supports victims of cyber stalking and domestic tech abuse like those Sean Hastings has targeted. That makes me feel a lot better and I didn't even realize I was carrying any guilt over it until just now.
 
https://safeescape.org/ I strongly urge you to donate there as well if you were affected by this.

Vor allem Kind2 gerade 😌
#meme

No amount of alcohol is good for your health. Consuming even a small amount brings some risk to heart health, cancer, cognitive decline, and other causes of death.
Interesting article on the state of the research, and on how to decide what is right for you.
#Health #Alcohol

Is That Drink Worth It to You?
Alcohol is riskier than previously thought, but weighing the trade-offs of health risks can be deeply personal.

"If elected, the 52-year-old Alsobrooks would be only the third Black woman ever elected to the Senate, and the first from Maryland."
https://www.npr.org/2024/05/14/1251470402/maryland-senate-race-hogan-alsobrooks-trone

Maryland Democrats pick Angela Alsobrooks to take on Hogan for open U.S. Senate seat
The former two-term governor's win in Tuesday's primary gives Republicans a chance at a Senate seat in deep blue state. Hogan will face Democrat and Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

An improved spectral lower bound of treewidth
Tatsuya Gima, Tesshu Hanaka, Kohei Noro, Hirotaka Ono, Yota Otachi
https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.08520 https://<…

An improved spectral lower bound of treewidth
We show that for every $n$-vertex graph with at least one edge, its treewidth is greater than or equal to $n λ_{2} / (Δ+ λ_{2}) - 1$, where $Δ$ and $λ_{2}$ are the maximum degree and the second smallest Laplacian eigenvalue of the graph, respectively. This lower bound improves the one by Chandran and Subramanian [Inf. Process. Lett., 2003] and the subsequent one by the authors of the present paper [IEICE Trans. Inf. Syst., 2024]. The new lower bound is almost tight in the sense that there …

Hey, it's Harry Dunn – former Capitol police officer and current Democrat for Congress in Maryland’s third district.
Unfortunately, I'm no stranger to a barrage of attacks.
On January 6, I was attacked physically and verbally by violent insurrectionists. They hit, kicked and punched us. They sprayed us with bear spray, pepper spray, WD-40. They yelled racial slurs at me and my fellow officers of color.
And the attacks from MAGA-extremists have persisted. When I test…

“Delays in U.S. assistance, particularly since Israel’s war with Hamas began to preoccupy top administration officials, triggered deep concerns in Kyiv and Europe. Blinken, for example, has visited the Middle East seven times since the Gaza conflict began in October. His last trip to Kyiv was in September.”
https://

Russia-Ukraine war: Blinken visits Ukraine to affirm US support for Kyiv
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in Kyiv on an unannounced diplomatic mission to reassure Ukraine that it has American support as it struggles to defend against increasingly intense Russian attacks. The two-day visit starting Tuesday comes less than a month after Congress approved a long-delayed foreign assistance package that sets aside $60 billion in aid for Ukraine, much of which will go toward replenishing badly depleted artillery and air defense systems. It's Blinken's fo…