Tootfinder

Hey folx! You probably see a lot of stuff from other social networks mirrored to Mastodon, how about we do it the other way around?
Recently, I've starred to mirror my posts to Instagram, Reddit, and other platforms, and I've had quite the success. My biggest post on Instagram, which is just one screenshot of a Mastodon post, has 44.5k likes and 256k views. My

Erik Uden on Instagram: "Babe, wake up. New man-made horrors beyond comprehension dropped!! In the end of the day, these companies probably realized that, just like with AI, they can somehow use scare tactics to attract venture capital. It's still a horrifying thing to think of, but possibly overblown to get money. The headline of the Science article reads: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing By restoring some functions to intact brains from deceased donors, the startup Bexorg hopes to create a better drug development test bed for neurodegenerative diseases, written by Sara Reardon, published on the 20th of May 2026. Though, reading this Science article made me think: aren't we the brain? Am I missing something here? Now, of course the devil lies in the detail and the article makes it clear that this startup only restores “some functions”, which is certainly more complex in action than it is in theory written here, but certain language of the article makes me question the author's understanding of what is a human. The article writes: “Just a day ago, the brain was in a living person. Now, hours after its owner died, it sits on a cart draped in tubes [...]” What do you mean “it's owner” — isn't the brain it's owner? Isn't that where it's owner is? I mean, certainly the brain had no more activity, the person must've been declared brain dead by all standards before being sent to this startup, still it's odd hearing someone donated their brain instead of saying they've donated... themselves? Also “using a set of proprietary brain-sustaining machines” is a terrible sentence I always thought the people who don't donate their full body to hospitals are religious lunatics, but this is the first time I wrote something on my organ donor card. They can take my brain, but not as one piece."
45K likes, 971 comments - erik.uden on May 21, 2026: "Babe, wake up. New man-made horrors beyond comprehension dropped!! In the end of the day, these companies probably realized that, just like with AI, they can somehow use scare tactics to attract venture capital. It's still a horrifying thing to think of, but possibly overblown to get money. The headline of the Science article reads: Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing By restoring some functions to inta…

Added Power Grips (pedal straps) to my wife's #Brompton. Not going to say it's my nicest work, but I'm hopeful that it'll hold. I only drilled holes through the plastic reflectors; the metal is all intact. I can change that later if needed. #BikeTooter

The idea of a suspension of the constitution had been introduced,
by the Constitution of 22 Frimaire Year 8.
Article 14 of the Charte of 1814 granted the sovereign the power to
"make the regulations and ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the security of the State"
Because of the vagueness of the formula, Chateaubriand observed
"that it is possible that one fine morning the whole Charte will be forfeited for the benefit of Art…

One Eighth of an Inch: Julian Jaynes, the Bicameral Mind, and the Bandwidth of God
Start with a measurement, because the measurement is where the famous theory hides its best secret. In…...
https://bolesblogs.com/2026/06/17/one-

One Eighth of an Inch: Julian Jaynes, the Bicameral Mind, and the Bandwidth of God | David Boles, Blogs
Start with a measurement, because the measurement is where the famous theory hides its best secret. In The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, published in 1976, the Pri…

One more photo from the trail that I posted about recently. The blooming heather always make sme smile. Especially when there aren't too many flowers around.
In such spost I'm always traying a bit what looks more interesting: a great vista, a plain trail shot, the heather in the foreground or a blurred foreground.
The advantage is: I always have little rests along the way :)
#hiking

I’ve now written two essays this year on the U.K. Labour Party’s errors of strategy, which is not a lot, but is still more than I’d have expected.
The one from yesterday is about why their policies lost them stacks of votes.
The other one was about why they picked those policies in the first place
https://www.

The Gist: Britain, the Ungoverned Country
The Labour Party's problem since Kier Starmer was elected was that it fed itself disinformation and pooped disaffection. This is the Gist.

I live close to nature. I regularly go for a run in the countryside. Over several years, during my runs, I’ve taken pictures from the same position, always roughly the same angle. I had a vague idea in the back of my mind, as an 'artistic' project. One day, I’d turn those photos into a time-lapse video, one that would show the passage of seasons across a single place.
…

Finding assets in Xogot’s filesystem browser was a pain, we baked in a always-on Asset Browser:
https://blog.xogot.com/introducing-the-asset-browser-finding-your-stuff-faster/

Introducing the Asset Browser: Finding Your Stuff, Faster
One of the things that was cumbersome when using Xogot on the iPad was finding and placing your assets on the screen. The way that this works in Godot is that you find your image, 3D model and you drag and drop it into the editor. Or you can drop

Surfing Ability Summit page at 200% with my keyboard (as one does) and came across this weird control.
Turns out it’s a roled-up button that launches Microsoft Immersive reader. Which is crap at 200%, it turns out.
Anyway, use native HTML buttons and let users rely on their browser’s reader mode.

Just got confirmation that I will be documenting and helping with some maintenance works at Breslauer Hütte, before the main season starts. This hut, built in 1882, is one of the oldest high-alpine mountain huts in the eastern Alps, and located just below Wildspitze (3768m), Tyrol's highest mountain.
The hut belongs to the Breslau section of the Alpenverein (now based in Stuttgart) and it's their upcoming 150th anniversary next year. Aside from the repair work, for me it's a long await…

At this year's Open Source #Firmware #Conference, I will be presenting on "Boot Chains and Build Systems"! 🥳🥳
(spoiler: it's complicated 🫠)

Boot Chains and Build Systems Open Source Firmware Conference 2026
It is clear that booting a system based on an application processor requires multiple binaries and possibly multiple hardware components - at the very least, one to initialize the DRAM and one to run in it. This implies that the various components of the chain, however many, need to be aware of the respective next and previous one somehow: Any component has to know the source, the protocol, and the destination for loading the next one, and the build system needs to create an overall image for t…

Apple raises the price of Apple Music, with the individual plan up by $1 to $11.99, and some Apple One bundles, the first price hike for Apple Music since 2022 (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)
https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/17/apple-raises-prices-for-apple…

Apple raises prices for Apple Music and Apple One subscriptions - 9to5Mac
Apple has raised the price of Apple Music today in the United States and other countries. Starting today, Apple Music’s...

I'm looking for a hat I can wear (e.g. in car) here with the Arizona sun and I'm finding stories instead.
Like this one, the backslash in the prompt is missing and it's likely that it was due to whatever software was used was swallowing up the character—perhaps when sanitizing strings.
The default system prompt in DOS was just "C>" (letter of current drive plus a ">" character, though basically everyone changed it to include the current directory, so it would have been "C:\>" after boot.
(The reason why it was defaulting to just the drive letter is that early versions of MS-DOS didn't have support for directories.)

RE: https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/116596292735099594
There will surely be — must already be! — many other such efforts sneaking under the radar, exploiting the marginalized, or cake-walking past the indifferent.
The thing about having trillions of investment dollars behind your industry is that you don’t really even need a marketing •strategy• per se; you just need to flood the zone, flood the containers of society and see where the leaks are. Efforts like the one in the linked @… article only need to succeed 1 time in 100 to pay off, because once you’ve got the data you can milk it forever.

Earth's largest particle accelerator opens new window into the early universe just after the Big Bang: 'A culmination of a decades-long quest' | Space https://www.space.com/scienc…

"The Uniform Code Council requires that there be a period after each letter in U.P.C. because the letters UPC (without periods) is the trademark of the Universal* Plumbing Code." ☝️
[Nelson, Benjamin (1997): Punched Cards to Bar Codes. A 200 Year Journey with descriptions fo over 260 codes. Helmers. Page 85.]
* Uniform, not Universal. 🧐
https://

Say hello to The Hamster, one of The Mansion's smallest and cutes residents. In 'Management Apologises For The Inconvenience', the hamster has a lot to do, confetti to gather, cookies to nibble, and pockets to sleep in. Even the management acknowledges his important work in The Mansion. And soon, you'll be able to follow the chubby little rodent on new adventures and mishaps! #thementalmansion

The “best university in continental Europe” opens two related, but different professorships (say “history of X” and “philosophy of X”).
However, the committee members hate each other so much that the rectorate takes away one of the positions, and the remaining one then becomes “history and philosophy of X,” which conveniently disqualifies all the junior applicants for the separate positions, leaving just the one senior guy on which they can agree 🥳
(No, I’m not involved.)

The “best university in continental Europe” opens two related, but different professorships (say “history of X” and “philosophy of X”).
However, the committee members hate each other so much that the rectorate takes away one of the positions, and the remaining one then becomes “history and philosophy of X,” which conveniently disqualifies all the junior applicants for the separate positions, leaving just the one senior guy on which they can agree 🥳
(No, I’m not involved.)

"Plastic food packaging blankets the world’s coastlines, study finds"
#Plastic #Plastics #Pollution

Plastic food packaging blankets the world’s coastlines, study finds
Food packaging ranks among the top plastic pollutants littering the world’s coastlines, a new study confirms. The study, published May 20 in the journal One Earth, analyzed data from 112 nations, including 5,300 shoreline litter surveys, to produce the first global index of macroplastic pollution by usage type. Based on 355 peer-reviewed studies, it found […]

The office last night. Rialto Square Theater, #Joliet, IL.
Built in 1926; surely one of the most beautiful buildings in America.
#chicago #LiveMusic

Apple raises the price of Apple Music, with the individual plan up by $1 to $11.99, and some Apple One bundles, the first price hike for Apple Music since 2022 (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)
https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/17/apple-raises-prices-for-apple…

Apple raises prices for Apple Music and Apple One subscriptions - 9to5Mac
Apple has raised the price of Apple Music today in the United States and other countries. Starting today, Apple Music’s...

MTG: "One By One" Trump Has Attacked Every GOP Rep Who Signed House Petition To Release The Epstein Files - Joe.My.God.
https://www.joemygod.com/2026/05/mtg-one-by-one-trump-has-attacked-every-gop-rep-who-signed-petition-to-release-the-epstein-files/

So, there is a slight issue with the SuperStation One when compared to the Sega Saturn: the audio pinout on the DIN connector is reversed on the SuperStation One which means the audio is also reversed.
This is annoying, but at least I can fix it going through OBS. I've got the GStreamer OBS plugin installed, and I managed to get it swapped over with a GStreamer Audio Filter on the audio source:
```
audioconvert mix-matrix="<<(float)0, (float)1>, <(float…

I hesitate to share anything from the SWP but this is a fair assessment.
One correction: Greater Manchester buses aren't in public ownership. Like London, private operators have franchises within the regulated system managed by Transport fro Greater Manchester.
Public ownership wasn't an available option but it is one to campaign for, so surpluses come back into the network rather than exiting as shareholder profits.
The many faces of Andy

The many faces of Andy Burnham - Socialist Worker
Today, he is part of the “soft left” of Labour—but what does that mean?

Three little kids from our neighbourhood were selling bracelets (two girls, one boy, just to break any stereotypes) and now I have the coolest wrist (well, I think so anyway) ✨
#bracelets #bray #ireland

The Box You Cannot Check
The clinic intake form on the clipboard at the front desk has two boxes next to the word "sex." A patient who is neither of the two options has been given three choices: pick one box and lie, write something in the margin, or refuse the form. The receptionist will not read the margin. Data entry clerks will not transcribe it.

The Box You Cannot Check | David Boles, Blogs
The clinic intake form on the clipboard at the front desk has two boxes next to the word “sex.” A patient who is neither of the two options has been given three choices: pick one box an…

The Substance V 🧪
某种物质 V 🧪
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ Harman Switch Azure (FF)
If you like my work, Support by buying me a coffee or a roll of film from PayPal https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/ydcdingsite

#ThursDeath this week is one of my favorite bands- I'm so psyched they have a new EP. This is 'Rotting Antefix' by Winnipeg's DEFENESTRATION, and the riffs on this thing will melt your face off. From the first the guitar snakes and screams from out of the churning, this one is really special. The pummeling of the drums, those crazy guttural growls- this fucker SMOKES.
Bandcamp:

Evidence of the pain I felt of not being able to vote Green on the constituency ballot (the new boundaries moved me from Glasgow Kelvin to Glasgow Central).
"One thing really worth pointing out is that Glasgow Central constituency vote figure....What happened there? Well, by regional list vote result, that was the third best Green constituency in the country. In other words, it’s the best constituency they didn’t stand a local candidate in."

SP26: Patterns of Party Popularity
It’s all well and good looking at the headline figures, but you’ve got to get right down into the thick of support and swings – in both votes – across constituencies to rea…

Almost everyone involved in the federal and Kentucky governments and press has a device, in their hand or in their pocket, capable of video chatting from wherever they are to almost anyone else in government and press.
And not one can make a video call and point the device at the “living” Senator?
How the f*ck gullible do people think everyone is?!
I mean, the gop should at _least_ fake a video call. Come on now. I demand better fraud from the gop.

I hesitate to post this. The voice of the presenter is obviously generated artificially, but if you can watch and tune out the voice, and read the subtitles, then you can listen to the chickens. In other clips he speaks with an accent similar to what’s on this one, but this one just sounds weird. Never mind, just watch, and be amused. https://

My Pip-Boy 3000 Classic arrived from the Wand Company.
Is it better than my Pip-Boy 3000 Mk V? I dunno... I like the weathered look of the steel Mk V better but the software detail on Classic is so rich.
One thing I love: The audio port is also an FM antenna so the radio works waaaay better than the Mk V.
#fallout

"The chains that bind us are not English. They are #Capitalist and the UK state is one of capitalism’s most central nodes of political and economic power. Creating a new independent Scotland matters, not as a project to escape colonial rule by evil England — though there is of course a case to be made for Scotland’s raw deal within the UK — but as a hammer blow against the

Wha's Like Us?
The case for Scottish independence, with the nationalism taken out

The team had braved temperatures of -40C on the sea ice
to drill holes and pump 50,000 tonnes of ocean water up on to its surface.
It froze almost immediately,
thickening the
1.5-metre-deep ice by about 50cm, according to new measurements.
That has protected the ice, at the start of the melt season at least,
and is an early sign that one day, perhaps, it may be possible to refreeze a significant part of the Arctic.
The ice-thickening process gets a …

from my link log —
No-one knows the type of char char.
https://blog.knatten.org/2019/05/24/no-one-knows-the-type-of-char-char/
saved 2019-10-17

No-one knows the type of char + char
Quick quiz! Given the following: Which overload gets called by the following? Alternatives: f(unsigned int) f(int) f(char) No-one knows the type of char + char If you answered 4), congratulations! …

Numismatist alert!
I just found this very old penny in my pocket because it *stuck to my headphone case's magnetic clasp*
Wait, you say. Isn't ol' Abe supposed to be copper (or copper and zinc)?
Apparently not in 1943!

It has begun 🌀

100 years ago #OTD the #planetarium in #Jena (Germany) opened to the public: it's the oldest one in the world srill operating in the same location! Scroll down on https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2026/07/18/die-leuchtenden-nachtwolken-sind-weiter-aktiv for some news coverage back then and the wider context.

50 years ago tonight, the grateful dead at the orpheum in san francisco, their 5th of 6 nights, with one of my go-to ’76 sequences. no donna in the 2nd set.
now on “dave’s picks 18” with lively piano mix: https://youtu.be/K0-YN5ENfZ4
menke audience tape:

“It turns out blaming the blackout on “too many renewables” was like blaming a loss by Real Madrid on having too many non-Spanish players on the pitch.”
https://www.raponline.org/blog/remembering-the-28th-of-a…

Remembering the 28th of April: What You Think You Know About the Iberian Blackout is Probably Wrong
One year ago, shortly after noon on a mild spring day across the Iberian Peninsula, the electric grid collapsed. There were no dramatic satellite photos Michael Hogan explores the complex causes of last April's widespread blackout on the Iberian Peninsula, and what we can learn from them.

One True Measure
About the journey each of us must take to understand, define and in time measure success in our lives...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/one-true-measure/

Eli Manning: Father 'didn't like the idea' of forcing a trade from Chargers during 2004 NFL Draft https://www.nfl.com/news/eli-manning-father-didn-t-like-the-idea-of-forcing-a-trade-from-chargers-during-2004-nfl-dr…

RE: https://eldritch.cafe/@miranda_blue/116935608086213327
This is showing one thing that I think should become general principle: Using an LLM for someone else _is rude and bad_. Presenting something untranslated that _they_ can have an LLM translate is better than doing it yourself, and not showing that input — the prompt here is not included and is a key piece of context, and the results are also bad _with no recourse_.
Information has been destroyed. Trust has been broken (or in the case of commerce, failed to be established). Even if the total amount of LLM-use were the same, this is worse than the reader using it.
PROMPTING AN LLM FOR SOMEONE ELSE IS RUDE.

'Wolken' #FotoVorschlag 'Clouds'
I chose this one becasue without clouds, this photo wouldn't have been possible.
The photo came totally unplanned. I just walked a mountain in winter with my photo-backpack. I was looking for a completely different spot when I turned around and saw that scene in the distance. -- Knowing it wouldn't last for long, I suddenl…

Of all the AI angst in academia, the strangest one is undoubtedly the one about AIs making up references.
The solution is just so simple: IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE SOURCE, DON’T REFERENCE IT IN YOUR WORK. C’mon, people; it’s not hard.

I must confess to being confused at the information about building costs - in this case, 379 units (and 55,000 SF of retail for safeway - at a cost of $170 million, or (ignoring the retail space) a hair under $500K per unit. Yet I hear affordable housing costs $1 Million per unit from one source, and an SF Standard article (June 3) re 1633 Valenicia costing $525,000 per unit, with a cmparison ro the $1 million per unit number. All numbers from the industry. Sort of makes one wonder, doesn…

Formal permits filed for 379 units of housing on site of Bernal Safeway
Developers filed formal permits last week to develop 379 units of housing at the Safeway in the Bernal Heights/Mission area.

I must confess to being confused at the information about building costs - in this case, 379 units (and 55,000 SF of retail for safeway - at a cost of $170 million, or (ignoring the retail space) a hair under $500K per unit. Yet I hear affordable housing costs $1 Million per unit from one source, and an SF Standard article (June 3) re 1633 Valenicia costing $525,000 per unit, with a cmparison ro the $1 million per unit number. All numbers from the industry. Sort of makes one wonder, doesn…

Formal permits filed for 379 units of housing on site of Bernal Safeway
Developers filed formal permits last week to develop 379 units of housing at the Safeway in the Bernal Heights/Mission area.

NGL, my favorite one is the last one. If you don’t understand the actual definition of “collective punishment”, you probably shouldn’t use the term.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:y4kznwazezwlrpvo65qnt7s7/post/3mm2g7372yc2o

Dr. Holly Walters (@manigarm.bsky.social)
I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

I have a slightly niche CD-production request:
I’m putting together a collaborative CD release to accompany an artist’s monograph (the CD will slot into the book). We’re organising the CD-production side ourselves and everything but the audio itself is outside my experience.
The pressing plant the artist chose doesn’t offer DDP creation, and my mastering engineer friend isn’t able to do this one. I’m not really in a position right now to buy DDP software and learn the workflow in…

Immediate (and obvious) memeing.
When I first saw the photo, I thought there was no way it could be real, it had to be AI.
It's not. There's several videos of it, shot from several directions. I've seen them. This is 100% real. And this photo is one for the photos of the year.
#Russia's Moscow is burning. Hard. At long last.

Which one of these BGA fanouts is better?
Both are the same nominal trace/space, both are skew matched by the time you get to the vertical "home run" area heading towards the connector.
But TDR of the first one wasn't that great. Let's see if the second one is any better when the simulation finishes...

🚨new publication alert🚨
Some types of El Niño lead to more melt over the Ross Ice Shelf in #Antarctica.
In our paper led by PhD student Sanjiban Dutta, we look at the synoptic relationship where Eastern Pacific El Niños channel warm moist air over the Ross Ice Shelf. One to watch with the current #ElNino building..
#ClimateDiary https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025JD045932

Awesome feature of @… and Android: you can define multiple languages as preferred in Android and apps use it.
#TuskyApp uses it for your language selector.
That makes switching the language for your posts easy.

Hmmm...so three French travel websites were hacked over the weekend by a supposed white hat hacker who says they wanted to show how vulnerable France is to cyber attacks.
Gîtes de France among three booking websites to be hit by cyberattack
https://www.…

Gîtes de France cyberattack: 389,000 clients affected in France booking data breach
Gîtes de France is the latest travel site hit in a France cyberattack, with hackers accessing data linked to 389,000 clients. The breach is one of three booking website attacks affecting more than two million bookings over the weekend.

One of my favorite days of the year: the first batch of bread on the barbecue.
#cooking #bread

I'm technically not a manager but I'm juggling enough things at work right now that I've just set up the second calendar, one of my favourite ways to give the impression of having ducks in a row https://lornajane.net/posts/2023/managers-secret-second-calendar
(One of the ducks is a chicken, and the row was inspired by a fractal, but I'm getting there)

sp_infectious: Art exhibit dynamic contacts (2011)
This dataset contains the daily dynamic contact networks collected during the Infectious SocioPatterns event that took place at the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland, during the artscience exhibition INFECTIOUS: STAY AWAY. Each file in the downloadable package contains a tab-separated list representing the active contacts during 20-second intervals of one day of data collection. Each line has the form “t i j“, where i and j are the a…

Clients think a release is quick and easy. They don't see all of the work that goes behind the scenes. Like making sausages you really don't want to know how it is done.
So many steps. One person makes a change, documents it in the release document and at certain points to check the document back in and send the ISS and DEV team members a summary of what is completed, what is in progress and any issues. A second team member reviews the changes and marks the checkpoint as co…

The One Major Move Spytek, Raiders Absolutely Must Consider https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-one-major-move-spytek-absolutely-must-consider

Bernie Sanders proposes legislation to create a sovereign wealth fund financed via a one-time 50% stock tax on AI companies that reach $200M in annual AI sales (Joey Cappelletti/Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/bernie-sanders-ai-publ…

Bernie Sanders unveils plan for public ownership of AI companies
Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing a plan to give Americans ownership stakes in the country’s largest artificial intelligence companies. The legislation shown first to The Associated Press would impose a one-time 50% tax on the stock of major AI companies and place those shares into a sovereign wealth fund overseen by an independent commission. Sanders estimates the fund would be worth roughly $7 trillion and provide annual payments to Americans. While the idea of public ownership of AI compani…

Three large portions of the Filchner Ice Shelf
—dubbed A22, A23, and A24
—calved into the Weddell Sea off of Antarctica in 1986.
For National Geographic, Chris Heath documents the life and death of an iceberg called A23a,
known at one time as the largest iceberg in the world.
Born when it broke off A23 in 1991,
it was “at least 44 nautical miles long, 40 nautical miles wide, and somewhere close to 2,000 square miles in area, or roughly the size of Bali.”

Oh, here's one of our docs for anyone in PNW. It's incomplete (also, from 2018):
Running list of disaster risks in the Pacific Northwest:
EARTHQUAKE (Three main faults - Cascadia, Seattle, )
PANDEMIC FLU (Global risk)
Especially high in Seattle compared to many other large US cities due to the high number of international flights and international organizations based in the Seattle.
STORMS
HEAT WAVES
Seattle lacks a familiarity with extreme heat. Less than half of people have air conditioning. Growing wealth inequity, homelessness, and addiction increases the risks posed by high temperatures.
VOLCANIC ERUPTION
Mount. Rainier.
WILDFIRES & WILDFIRE SMOKE
“Harvard University researchers, in collaboration with colleagues at Yale University, have created a watch list of hundreds of counties in the western United States at the highest risk of exposure to dangerous levels of pollution from wildfires in the coming decades. Among them, heavily populated counties such as San Francisco County, Calif., King County, Wash., Alameda County, Calif., and Contra Costa County, Calif., are projected to face the highest level of risk of wildfire smoke exposure in the coming decades.” [source]

If you are a member of the NRA, or know someone who is, I’d particularly encourage you to demand to know why they aren’t leaping to decry the fact that the Trump admin today charged people with a crime for merely •discussing• legal carrying to a protest.
Not because the NRA will have some kind of rational “OMG” moment about it — they’re fashy through and through — but rather because this is one of the many fault lines on the right, and it’s our job to pry those fault lines open.

The Oldest Stars in the Galaxy Just Weighed In on One of Cosmology's Biggest Arguments - Universe Today https://www.universetoday.com/articles/the-oldest-stars-in-the-galaxy-just-weighed-in-on-one-of-cosmologys-bigges…

Oh! #FootpathFriday
One photo from the ruin of the castle #neideck which we visited.
I like castles and ruins not just for their look but because they offer a huge amount of information and history!
Well happy weekend! And happy reading

Mid year, trying to knock out a few blog posts. Finished the one on the Gemini protocol, since I wanted to do that one before I finish the small web one. Next up is a brief one on physical media, then the one on the small web after that. And maybe get a few more in after all those before the end of the year.
#blogs #blogging

An investigation reveals the South Florida Standard is one of 17 AI-driven news sites created by online reputation management firm The Discoverability Company (Kate Payne/The Florida Trib)
https://floridatrib.org/2026/05/14/the-rise-an…

The rise and fall of an AI-driven ‘local news outlet’ in South Florida
The search to find out who was behind the South Florida Standard shows how easy it is for the real people behind digital doppelgangers to remain in the shadows

"Research reveals honeybees use the same face-reading strategy as humans"
#Bees #Insects #Animals

Research reveals honeybees use the same face-reading strategy as humans | The Optimist Daily
Honeybees with brains of roughly one million neurons can learn and remember individual human faces with up to 90 percent accuracy.

Microsoft''s "focused" inbox view is the most confusing crap ever. It keeps me from seeing the email I need to see - the one purpose that the inbox is for.
Since my hosting provider had decided to move their stuff into Microsoft's cloud thing, I started having to deal with weird shit like that.
So luckily, there is an option to turn it off:

Those seeking to join Trump’s second administration had to pass a key litmus test:
Did they believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump?
With like-minded allies now positioned in key roles throughout the government,
Trump has trained the full arsenal of the federal government on one of his most persistent obsessions:
sowing doubt about the security of the country’s election systems.
Major agencies such as the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the Homeland Secu…

Trump Brings Full Weight of Government to Bolster False Election Claims
Intelligence agencies provided the White House with a trove of declassified documents that President Trump cited on Thursday as evidence of election vulnerabilities.

StackOverflow is truly one of the worst things ever made. First they sold off all content of StackOverflow (without giving their community members the option to even opt-out) to train gen AI on, but of course they're not allowing Gen AI it to be used on StackOverflow (because it's bullshit and used only for spamming).
Truly spectacular assholery.
I hope the owners have cold wet socks every day and continously step on Lego bricks.

Still don't know what's happening with the wee one. There was a MEETING today but we haven't heard the results yet. I am leaving for Civic in an hour, and husband was planning to drop my friend and me off at the nearest Rapid bus stop before making his way north to pick up the wee one from preschool. Left a message at CYF explaining our movements and that we need to know what's been decided (if anything) but haven't heard anything yet. Interesting times.

"The world is fast approaching temperature levels where insurers will no longer be able to offer cover for many climate risks, said Günther Thallinger, on the board of Allianz SE, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies. He said that without insurance, which is already being pulled in some places, many other financial services become unviable, from mortgages to investments."
#ClimateEmergency

Climate crisis on track to destroy capitalism, warns top insurer
Action urgently needed to save the conditions under which markets – and civilisation itself – can operate, says senior Allianz figure

The One Major Move Spytek, Raiders Absolutely Must Consider https://www.si.com/nfl/raiders/onsi/las-vegas-one-major-move-spytek-absolutely-must-consider

The incredible analytical work of John Burn Murdoch @… along with some other colleagues is one of the main reasons I subscribe to the FT. It's rather expensive but absolutely worth it.
https://fediscience.org/@Ruth_Mottram/116582689708855765
Ruth_Mottram - This is a fascinating and beautifully illustrated analysis, exploring convincingly why birth rates are crashing basically everywhere and while there are certain many factors, the smoking gun is actually a smartphone.
So what to do about it? I think I agree with the conclusions, housing and financial support is one element, equality between sexes in household tasks certainly another, but finally, perhaps our job as parents is to inculcate the habit of socialising with others into our kids, especially when they get to the teenage years.
Why birth rates are falling everywhere all at once - a limited 🎁 https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/8bf630d4-6e20-42c7-bb33-e98dd6a01571

Sigma, which sells a cloud-native analytics platform that sits on top of data warehouses, raised an $80M Series E led by Princeville Capital at a $3B valuation (Cristian Dina/The Next Web)
https://thenextweb.com/news/sigma-computing-series-e-80-million-3-b…

The Third Casket: How Shakespeare Taught Us to Choose the Thing We Cannot Refuse
A man walks into a room and finds three boxes waiting for him. One is gold, one is silver, one is lead....
https://bolesblogs.com/2026/06/16/the-

The Third Casket: How Shakespeare Taught Us to Choose the Thing We Cannot Refuse | David Boles, Blogs
A man walks into a room and finds three boxes waiting for him. One is gold, one is silver, one is lead. He has been told that his whole life turns on which one he opens, and that the rules forbid h…

I'd like to remind anyone calling for a new Neurenberg Tribunal that the original one was only necessary because Germans didn't respond appropriately to the evil shit Nazis were doing, when they were doing it. The tribunals essentially asserted that the German people would have been justified in using any force necessary to stop the Nazis, and that all who didn't try to use such force were complicit.
Sit with that for a bit and ponder the implications.

Arguably the most telling section of the White House report relates to its defense of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
The report’s authors bristle at any suggestion that this famously racist law may have been motivated by any kind of racial animus.
After all, such an acknowledgment might raise uncomfortable questions about the policies of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller
—policies that are explicitly modeled on laws like this one.
FOR THOSE UNFAMILIAR:
The Ch…

Racist Law From 1882 Is Not That Racist, Trump Says
Buried in the White House’s broadside against the Smithsonian is a bizarre—and revealing—claim about the Chinese Exclusion Act.

A US federal judge rules the State Department engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by denying visas to researchers studying misinfo and disinfo (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/07/15/rubio-

Rubio Wanted To Ban ‘Censors’ From Entering The US. A Court Says He’s The One Censoring.
Last year, the Marco Rubio-run State Department announced that it would start denying visas to people who worked in misinformation/disinformation research, content moderation, fact-checking, or oth…

A US federal judge rules the State Department engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by denying visas to researchers studying misinfo and disinfo (Mike Masnick/Techdirt)
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/07/15/rubio-

Rubio Wanted To Ban ‘Censors’ From Entering The US. A Court Says He’s The One Censoring.
Last year, the Marco Rubio-run State Department announced that it would start denying visas to people who worked in misinformation/disinformation research, content moderation, fact-checking, or oth…

A giant mirror to create
“sunlight on demand”
was just approved by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC),
despite opposition from astronomers and the public, and real safety concerns.
The FCC approved the company
Reflect Orbital
to test one satellite, named Earendil-1,
as a means of reflecting the sun’s rays back to Earth for extra solar energy
and wide-area lighting.
The light is expected to cover an area about five ki…

The U.S. just approved a giant space mirror to test ‘sunlight on demand.’ Low Earth orbit is getting weird
From space hotels and artificial meteor showers, to a new giant mirror that reflects sunlight to Earth — low-Earth orbit is getting weird.

Police coordinate with ICE all the time, even in sanctuary cities. They ignore the laws, they ignore orders, because they are a fascist gang. The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Trump *AFTER J6 RIOTERS KILLED COPS*. They have ignored anti-black pogroms basically every time they haven't been leading them. Portland Police literally had a squad to "fight communism" made of known Klan members. That kind of shit is *everywhere*. Washington police formed a death squad to assassinate Michael Reinoehl on Trump's orders. ICE is *still* carrying out ethnic cleansing, and police, who have always been racist and anti-labor, help them every chance they can. These cops are enforcing abortion bans, all while protecting Epstein billionaire. I'm not even touching on *half* of the shit.
They are murdering mothers, they are murdering children, they are kidnaping parents using children as bait, and they're doing all this while protecting child predators. This is one system.
Abolish ICE and the fucking police. Now.

It was a plan House G.O.P. leaders hoped would satisfy everyone in their party:
With a special budget bill, they would bypass Democratic opposition and provide tens of billions for the Iran war while imposing new election restrictions Trump has demanded.
Instead, a day after the leaders released the plan, which hews closely to a spending request the White House sent to Capitol Hill last month,
it became clear it is a product that no one really likes.
The measure, whic…

Republican Rifts Deepen Over $95 Billion Budget Plan for Iran War and SAVE Act
A House panel approved the measure. But Republicans are divided over its size, cost and policy provisions, and many are concerned about the timing before the midterm elections.

Sony is hiking the starting price of one-month and three-month PlayStation Plus subscriptions in "select regions", blaming "ongoing market conditions" (Jay Peters/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/games/932430/sony-playstation-plus-s…

Sony is raising short-subscription prices for PlayStation Plus
Sony is hiking the starting price of one-month and three-month PlayStation Plus subscriptions in “select regions” on May 20th, blaming “ongoing market conditions.”

Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone else alive.
Fossil fuel companies bankrolled his presidential campaign to stop the transition in its tracks.
-- But when you back a volatile narcissist, unable to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, you shouldn’t expect to control the outcome.
It’s not that the fossils are suffering yet.
As prices have soared since Trump and Netanyahu attacked Iran, oil executives have been selling sha…

Documents Trump released to support his claims — and previous assessments from the intelligence community — do not back up his most aggressive statements about election security.
In fact, some of the documents reach the opposite conclusion.
They also do not contain significant new revelations about vulnerabilities in election systems.
One of the documents posted on the White House website was blunt:
“We assess that vote tabulation systems would be difficult to manipu…

Takeaways From Trump’s Speech Claiming Election Vulnerabilities and China Interference
Documents released by the Trump administration to support the president’s claims did not back up his most aggressive statements.

New York Times veteran David Sanger blasted Donald Trump's assertion that his reporting on the Iran war amounted to treason.
Trump made the comment on Air Force One this week after Sanger asked,
"What would the use be of repeating the bombing?
You you did it for 38 days, and you did not get the political changes in Iran."
After claiming he had achieved a
"total military victory" in Iran,
Trump turned on Sanger, saying,
"I…

‘We All Know What This Is About’: NYT’s David Sanger Blasts Trump ‘Treason’ Accusation As ‘Effort To Intimidate’
New York Times veteran David Sanger blasted President Donald Trump's assertion that his reporting on the Iran war amounted to treason.

Alabama has one of the strictest conditions in the nation for medical marijuana
For women between the ages of 11-50, the state requires pregnancy tests every 30 days to keep their registration current,
unless they can show proof they’ve had surgery that prevents having children.

In Alabama, these patients have to take monthly pregnancy tests for medical cannabis
No other state in the nation mandates regular pregnancy testing for patients to qualify.

A group of Democratic senators
and one Republican, as well as two Democratic House committees,
sent letters Monday to the National Science Foundation
asking it to reverse course on its plan to dismantle a sprawling ocean monitoring network,
with House lawmakers going further and accusing the agency of acting illegally.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative is a network of more than 900 ocean sensors built at a cost of $386 million.
Over the last decade it has…

Lawmakers push to stop Trump dismantling of ocean observatory project
Lawmakers are demanding the National Science Foundation stop dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $386 million ocean monitoring network being wound down under President Donald Trump's administration. House Democrats on two committees call the action illegal. Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley says he's drafting legislation to freeze the removal of instruments until a full scientific review is completed. The National Science Foundation directed the removal of most of the system’s instru…

One of the world's top centers for brain science is taking a huge gamble on a tiny, transparent fish.
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus near Washington, D.C., has announcedan effort to use artificial intelligence and an unusual fish called Danionella to understand how the brain controls complex behaviors like social interaction.
Janelia plans to triple the space dedicated to fish to 6,000 square feet, which will make room for thousands of new t…

This book, The Day After, is a blueprint for how Democrats must govern in the future.
It doesn’t seek to entrench the status quo, but rather usher in a new kind of government that works for Americans.
A government that doesn’t allow the smallest obstacle stand in its way.
A government that isn’t in place to defend its own institutions, but rather one that focuses on outcomes for its people.

On Bluesky last night
Catherine Rampell noted that in documents Trump released
there were confirmations of Russia’s work on Trump’s behalf in 2020
and that China “did not intend to “try to affect the election.”
https://bsky.app/profile/crampell.bsky.social/…

Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social)
one of the supposedly damning docs the White House released tonight says Russia tried to undermine BIDEN. Also says China "prefers that President Trump be defeated" but actually "Beijing did not intend to try to affect the election" (!)

Patrons of Amazon Web Services have been landed with panic-inducing monthly bills running as high as
$1.5 trillion for subscriptions that usually cost less than the price of a cup of coffee.
From Bangalore to Bolsover, the bills have been causing alarm
after a computer glitch resulted in the astronomical invoices being dispatched around the world by Jeff Bezos’s company,
which provides data and cloud services to millions of customers, from students and small charities…

Amazon Web Services customers receive bills for up to $1.5tn after global glitch
One UK man whose bill is usually less than £1 says he ‘almost had a heart attack’ when he saw £5.8bn invoice

Plastics
“And these guys were very common,” [Gibson] went on, taking down a small plastic spaceman:
red, wearing an elaborately earmuffed helmet with an antenna on top.
“These spacemen were dime-store toys at a time
 — which I can actually remember! 
— when cheap plastics were still weirdly novel.
Like Gore-Tex or something.
You’d ask, ‘What is it made of?’ ”
He looked wistful, then thoughtful.
“I’ve decided that one of the most signif…

How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real
Midway through his career, the inventor of “cyberspace” turned his attention to the strange new world of the present, Joshua Rothman writes.