Tootfinder

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.

#TotalEnergies investiert 160 Mio. € in sechs neue #Batteriespeicherprojekte mit 221 MW in #Deutschland.
Die Anlagen, entwickelt von Tochterunternehmen

Germany: TotalEnergies Pursues Growth in Electricity by Launching Six New Battery Storage Projects
Paris, March 26, 2025 – On the occasion of Patrick Pouyanné’s participation in the Europe 2025 conference in Berlin, and in connection with the Company’s integrated development in the country’s electricity sector, TotalEnergies is announcing investment decisions for six battery storage projects.

How oxygen influences the catalytic activity of iron during carbon nanotube nucleation
Ben McLean, Alister J. Page, Feng Ding
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11632

How oxygen influences the catalytic activity of iron during carbon nanotube nucleation
The catalytic activity of metal nanoparticles toward nucleation of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) is fundamental to achieving structure-controlled growth using catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Despite the success of oxidized catalysts in SWCNT growth, there is a lack of understanding regarding how oxygen influences the catalysts and the nucleation process. Quantum chemical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations employing density functional tight binding (DFTB) demonstrate that t…

The Evolution Of Rotating Supermassive Pop III Stars On The Main Sequence
Devesh Nandal, Ga\"el Buldgen, Daniel J. Whalen, John Regan, Tyrone E. Woods, Jonathan C. Tan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08268

The Evolution Of Rotating Supermassive Pop III Stars On The Main Sequence
The detection of billion-solar-mass supermassive black holes (SMBHs) within the first billion years of cosmic history challenges conventional theories of black hole formation and growth. Simultaneously, recent JWST observations revealing exceptionally high nitrogen-to-oxygen abundance ratios in galaxies at high redshifts raise critical questions about rapid chemical enrichment mechanisms operating in the early universe. Supermassive stars (SMSs) with masses of 1000 to 10000 M$_{\odot}$ are prom…

Went to Small World Festival. Mostly dry and occasionally sunny.
Small World has such a nice friendly hippy vibe, lots of deadlocks and goths and pirates and beautiful face paints.
Bands all energetic and talented and mostly have been playing here together for 20 years in one form or another. All of 'em doing it for the love of it. Pony doing a great job of organizing the team to put it together.
One dude seemed pretty new, making up synth songs with his repeats and beeps and rapping from audience suggestions. Failed to photograph him well though. There's another 4 bands mentioned in the photo descriptions here.
Medically necessitated more or less total sobriety at the moment, so different whole thing. Those I knew well there mostly working, so lots of time alone dancing soberly and reading. Wish I was better at talking to strangers.
Still good times.
#smallWorldFestival #music #live

In situ growth of a type-II ZnO/ZnS heterostructure:From stability to band-offset
P. R. A de Oliveira, I. Coelho, G. Felix, P. Venezuela, F. Stavale
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14499

In situ growth of a type-II ZnO/ZnS heterostructure:From stability to band-offset
We have successfully obtained a ZnO/ZnS heterostructure by heating a ZnS(001) single crystal in a controlled impurities-free oxygen atmosphere. Combining X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and atomic force microscopy (AFM), we explore the stability, electronic structure, and morphology of that interface. Our XPS measurements reveal a binding energy shift of the core-level peaks, indicating a band-bending effect due to the formation of a hybrid ZnO/ZnS interface. In addition, AFM measuremen…

Hexagonal boron nitride thin film synthesis with a ns-pulsed MHCD: in-situ plasma diagnostics and post-growth film characterization
Belkacem Menacer (LSPM), Dimitrios Stefas (LSPM), Nikolaos Chazapis (LSPM), Claudia Lazzaroni (LSPM), Kristaq Gazeli (LSPM), Vianney Mille (LSPM)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04759

Hexagonal boron nitride thin film synthesis with a ns-pulsed MHCD: in-situ plasma diagnostics and post-growth film characterization
Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is deposited on Si <100> wafer ($\approx$20 cm2) via Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) using a ns-pulsed N2/Ar Micro Hollow Cathode Discharge (MHCD) as a microplasma source. For the first time, aluminum nitride (AIN) is employed as the dielectric material in the MHCD to mitigate film contamination by atomic oxygen, an issue previously observed with conventional Al 2O3 dielectrics. A comprehensive multi-diagnostic approach is followed to characteriz…

A biophysical approach to the design of networks of communication systems
Rodrigo Almeida, Ana Filipa Valente, Rui Dil\~ao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20572

A biophysical approach to the design of networks of communication systems
Inspired by the growth dynamics of the protist \textit{Physarum polycephalum}, we use a formalism that describes adaptive incompressible Hagen-Poiseuille flows on channel networks to identify graphs connecting different nodes within Euclidean space. These graphs are either suboptimal or optimal in terms of their length. Occasionally, we obtain graph tree configurations that are topologically equivalent to Steiner trees. This approach is employed to design communication systems, such as railway …

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.09715 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@a…

Resistive switching and charge accumulation in Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 nanoparticles
We revealed the resistive switching, negative differential resistance and charge accumulation effects in Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 nanopowders sintered by the auto-combustion sol-gel method and annealed at temperatures from 500°C to 800°C. The fraction of the orthorhombic phase, determined by the X-ray diffraction (XRD), decreases from 91 vol.% to 7 vol.% with an increase in the annealing temperature from 600°C to 800°C. The electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectra reveal the great amount of oxygen…

Topotactic oxidation of Ruddlesden-Popper nickelates reveals new structural family: oxygen-intercalated layered perovskites
Dan Ferenc Segedin, Jinkwon Kim, Harrison LaBollita, Nicole K. Taylor, Kyeong-Yoon Baek, Suk Hyun Sung, Ari B. Turkiewicz, Grace A. Pan, Abigail Y. Jiang, Maria Bambrick-Santoyo, Tobias Schwaigert, Casey K. Kim, Anirudh Tenneti, Alexander J. Grutter, Shin Muramoto, Alpha T. N'Diaye, Ismail El Baggari, Donald A. Walko, Hua Zhou, Charles M. Brooks, Antia S. Bota…

Topotactic oxidation of Ruddlesden-Popper nickelates reveals new structural family: oxygen-intercalated layered perovskites
Layered perovskites such as the Dion-Jacobson, Ruddlesden-Popper, and Aurivillius families host a wide range of correlated electron phenomena, from high-temperature superconductivity to multiferroicity. Here we report a new family of layered perovskites, realized through topotactic oxygen intercalation of La_{n+1}Ni_{n}O_{3n+1} (n=1-4) Ruddlesden-Popper nickelate thin films grown by ozone-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy. Post-growth ozone annealing induces a large c-axis expansion - 17.8% for L…