Tootfinder

The case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia ended on Wednesday
with a filing for dismissal by the state prosecutor who took over after the removal of Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney.
Pete Skandalakis, the prosecutor and the executive director of the prosecuting attorneys’ council of Georgia, confirmed to the Guardian that
“it’s over”after superior court judge Scott McAfee issued a one-page order on Wednesday dismissing the 2020 racketeeri…

I explained something for a friend in a simple way, and I think it's worth paraphrasing again here.
You cannot create a system that constrains itself. Any constraint on a system must be external to the system, or that constraint can be ignored or removed. That's just how systems work. Every constitution for every country claims to do this impossible thing, a thing proven is impossible almost 100 years ago now. Gödel's loophole has been known to exist since 1947.
Every constitution in the world, every "separation of powers" and set of "checks and balances," attempts to do something which is categorically impossible. Every government is always, at best, a few steps away from authoritarianism. From this, we would then expect that governments trand towards authoritarianism. Which, of course, is what we see historically.
Constraints on power are a formality, because no real controls can possibly exist. So then democratic processes become sort of collective classifiers that try to select only people who won't plunge the country into a dictatorship. Again, because this claim of restrictions on powers is a lie (willful or ignorant, a lie reguardless) that classifier has to be correct 100% of the time (even assuming a best case scenario). That's statistically unlikely.
So as long as you have a system of concentrated power, you will have the worst people attracted to it, and you will inevitably have that power fall into the hands of one of the worst possible person.
Fortunately, there is an alternative. The alternative is to not centralize power. In the security world we try to design systems that assume compromise and minimize impact, rather than just assuming that we will be right 100% of the time. If you build systems that maximially distribute power, then you minimize the impact of one horrible person.
Now, I didn't mention this because we're both already under enough stress, but...
Almost 90% of the nuclear weapons deployed around the world are in the hands of ghoulish dictators. Only two of the countries with nuclear weapons not straight up authoritarian, but they're not far off. We're one crashout away from steralizing the surface of the Earth with nuclear hellfire. Maybe countries shouldn't exist, and *definitely* multiple thousands of nuclear weapons shouldn't exist and shouldn't all be wired together to launch as soon as one of these assholes goes a bit too far sideways.

George's corrupt Republican party finally gets its way and kills the election interference case against Donald Trump.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/26/politics/georgia-prosecutor-drops-trump-election-interference-case

I spent much of today cleaning my office. It's amazing how messy it gets due to ongoing projects (my own and client projects) and so much paper. I was saving a lot of it for paper making but I've still got plenty of pulp in the fridge to use.
On Friday, the plan is no shopping, just cleaning the basement getting rid of cruft, maybe finding some things to donate or give away if possible.

The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation plans to gradually cut 900 jobs to help it save $334M by 2029 as it faces a lower license fee and falling commercial revenues (SWI swissinfo.ch)
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/swiss-broadcasting-corpo…

Swiss Broadcasting Corporation confirms plan to cut 900 jobs by 2029
Under the ongoing restructuring process, 900 full-time equivalent job cuts are planned, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) confirmed.

High-precision luminescence cryothermometry strategy by using hyperfine structure
Marina N. Popova, Mosab Diab, Boris Z. Malkin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.19088 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19088 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.19088
arXiv:2511.19088v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: A novel, to the best of our knowledge, ultralow-temperature luminescence thermometry strategy is proposed, based on a measurement of relative intensities of hyperfine components in the spectra of Ho$^{3 }$ ions doped into a crystal. A $^{7}$LiYF$_4$:Ho$^{3 }$ crystal is chosen as an example. First, we show that temperatures in the range 10-35 K can be measured using the Boltzmann behavior of the populations of crystal-field levels separated by an energy interval of 23 cm$^{-1}$. Then we select the 6089 cm$^{-1}$ line of the holmium $^5I_5 \rightarrow ^5I_7$ transition, which has a well-resolved hyperfine structure and falls within the transparency window of optical fibers (telecommunication S band), to demonstrate the possibility of measuring temperatures below 3 K. The temperature $T$ is determined by a least-squares fit to the measured intensities of all eight hyperfine components using the dependence $I(\nu) = I_1 \exp(-b\nu)$, where $I_1$ and $b = a\nu \frac{\nu}{kT}$ are fitting parameters and a accounts for intensity variations due to mixing of wave functions of different crystal-field levels by the hyperfine interaction. In this method, the absolute and relative thermal sensitivities grow at $T$ approaching zero as $\frac{1}{T^2}$.and $\frac{1}{T}$, respectively. We theoretically considered the intensity distributions within hyperfine manifolds and compared the results with experimental data. Application of the method to experimentally measured relative intensities of hyperfine components of the 6089 cm$^{-1}$ PL line yielded $T = 3.7 \pm 0.2$ K. For a temperature of 1 K, an order of magnitude better accuracy is expected.
toXiv_bot_toot

CATL is making major moves on two continents. The world's largest EV battery maker is partnering with Stellantis on a carbon-neutral 50 GWh factory in Spain, creating thousands of jobs.
Meanwhile, they're restarting a lithium mine in China that could impact global prices and potentially lower battery costs by 2026.

CATL Battery Factory in Spain, Lithium Mine in Yichun - CleanTechnica
Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe. CATL is the largest EV battery producer in the world. It continues to progress, with the latest news being a factory under construction in Spain and restarting of a lithium mine in China. CATL + Stellantis Battery Factory in Spain ... [continued]

RE: https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/115957799005351310
I would never have suspected that the US of would execute a restrained wounded protester and that the shooter could get away with it.
(I hope 'get away for now and get prosecuted later', but I don't know...)

This is so damning. The top of the CBC story (JP Tasker reporting)
“Smith said she got Carney to back down on most of the Trudeau-era "nine bad laws," as she calls them, that restricted oil and gas development in Alberta.
Carney, meanwhile, says he got Alberta to buy into the Pathways carbon capture project to try and decarbonize the oil pumped out of the province.”
It would be like Putin saying he got Zelenskyy to back down on Donbas and Crimea, but Zelenskyy says Putin agreed to security guarantees from Russia and the USA.
Carney = Capitulator
Also... YOU CAN'T DECARBONIZE OIL.
ffs. what a stupid statement.
Maybe Putin will De-TNT his Ballistic Missiles.
#baitandswitch #climateEmergency #ABPoli #CanPoli #CdnPoli #RussiaUkraineWar
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/livestory/alberta-ottawa-memorandum-of-understanding-energy-deal-pipeline-bc-9.6993431

Email: Future plans a "significant restructure", with 45 editorial redundancies while creating 15 new roles at titles including TechRadar and Tom's Guide (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/future

Future plans 45 editorial redundancies at titles including Techradar and Tom's Guide
Future plc has proposed to make 45 editorial redundancies in its tech vertical including at Tom's Guide and Techradar.