Tootfinder

A distressing story less told about drug overdoses- and I can't help but wonder if wider adoption of the Zurich "Four Pillars" approach might help prevent these outcomes.
It's pretty clear that current policies related to #drugs and #addiction are not doing such a great job.
…

A distressing story less told about drug overdoses- and I can't help but wonder if wider adoption of the Zurich "Four Pillars" approach might help prevent these outcomes.
It's pretty clear that current policies related to #drugs and #addiction are not doing such a great job.
…

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

Series C, Episode 05 - The Harvest of Kairos
INTERCEPTOR LEADER: [V.O.] Interceptor Leader to Control. Request instructions!
SERVALAN: Hold position, Interceptor Leader, and wait for instructions from Assault Leader One. We will attack when the Liberator breaks out of Alpha Sector. Four should do it nicely. Well, Dastor, I think it's time we had a little strategic counsel. Bring this - Jarvik to me.

Still in shock over recent events. We lived in Blair Street in the mid 80s and my daughter's first school was the local p.s. by the beach. My heart goes out to everyone impacted by this tragic act of hatred.
#Australia

This. 100% this: «…the economy itself is driving us into the ditch. It’s based on the creed of cancer — steady growth — and you can’t have endless growth in a finite world. The global economy is far too big, it’s got to shrink, and it’s got to be distributed more equitably around the world.»
The problem is that even the politicians who understand this are helpless to do anything about it. We have surrendered our future to global corporations and the mega-rich and their hand-picked poli…

It is always disturbing when MAGA politicians go off halfcocked about socialism.
Here are some of the “radical left” socialist programs that Warner must be complaining about:
Medicare
Medicaid
The Affordable Care Act
Social Security
SNAP (food stamps)
Meals on Wheels and Office of Aging services
Every single one of these programs was once characterized by right-wing politicians as a
“socialist program.”

This MAGA politician's disturbing rant shows a party hellbent on hurting its own
“It is hard to watch other states and cities across our nation leap toward socialism… Let’s keep our state moving forward by always rejecting the falsehoods sold by the radical left.” — Secretary of State Kris Warner, Facebook post, November 5, 2025. Although I should be accustomed to it, it is alw...

On divisibility of Hecke eigenvalues of Ikeda lifts
Sanoli Gun, Sunil Naik
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07056 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.07056

On divisibility of Hecke eigenvalues of Ikeda lifts
In this article, we estimate the density of the set of primes $p$ such that the $p$-th Hecke eigenvalue of an Ikeda lift is divisible by a fixed positive integer. One of the main ingredients involves the study of abelian subfields of fixed fields of the kernel of Galois representations attached to elliptic Hecke eigenforms. Further, we study the distribution of Fourier coefficients of elliptic Hecke eigenforms in arithmetic progressions.

Series C, Episode 05 - The Harvest of Kairos
SHAD: Get hold of Command.
DASTOR: [On screen] Command. Yes?
SHAD: It's the harvest, sir. It's been good. Very good.
DASTOR: [On screen] And?
SHAD: Well, we're loaded and ready for lift-off, but, er...
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/305/201