Tootfinder

Why did the press ignore a gathering of the world's leading fascists? (Charles R. Davis/The Redoubt)
https://www.theredoubt.net/why-did-the-press-ignore-a-gathering-of-the-worlds-leading-fascists/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260601/p44#a260601p44

Non-obvious Manipulability in the Additively Separable Group Activity Selection Problem
Maria Fomenko (Gran Sasso Science Institute), Giovanna Varricchio (University of Calabria)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05048 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.05048 https://arxiv.org/html/2606.05048
arXiv:2606.05048v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: In this work, we study the additively separable Group Activity Selection Problem (AS-GASP) in an imperfect information setting, where agents have private preferences over activities and weights over other agents. Our goal is to design mechanisms that assign agents to activities based on their declared preferences and weights, with the objective of maximizing social welfare while ensuring truthful reporting. We, therefore, focus on the notion of non-obvious manipulability (NOM), a form of resilience to manipulation. We first investigate the relationship between NOM and social welfare optimality. In this regard, our main result shows that, when preferences and weights are arbitrary or non-negative, any optimal mechanism is non-obviously manipulable. In contrast, when either preferences or weights are binary, we show that optimality and NOM may be incompatible. We then turn to computational aspects. While it is known that computing an optimal outcome for the AS-GASP is NP-hard even in restricted settings, we establish a strong inapproximability result showing that no polynomial-time algorithm can guarantee a bounded approximation ratio when preferences and weights may take arbitrary values. In turn, when preferences are non-negative, we show that a bounded approximation is possible, and we present two asymptotically optimal approximation mechanisms that are also guaranteed to satisfy NOM.
toXiv_bot_toot

Just wrote a fun little algorithm for iterating through all grid positions within X euclidean distance from a center, roughly in order of distance but also mostly ensuring each position yielded is at least diagonally adjacent to the previous. It's a fun problem to think about with lots of design tradeoffs and many valid solutions.
My solution requires that the origin be on the grid (I think?) and uses a bunch of caching instead of a bajillion distance checks, although I don't actually know what the memory/speed tradeoff is like or whether there are any gains at all (could be net losses, which I'm starting to wonder about more as I write this post). Thankfully I don't expect performance to be very critical here anyways, and doing the caching actually helped separate some logic in a useful way.
A fun little diversion from bigger stuff in the project and a reminder of some of the joys of programming design at a small scope. Feels kinda like mastering the local town's minigame while you're stuck on the main quest in an RPG.
#programming

Pogacar Makes History!
Tadej joins
Jacques Anquetil,
Eddy Merckx,
Bernard Hinault,
Miguel Induršin,
to have won the #TdF 5 times!
chapeux!!
#TourdeFrance #cycling

OMG, I'm having a laugh with Opus 4.8. They trained it to be more honest, but now it's like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar. Earlier it was like "I accidentally deleted all the work I just did, but it's okay - I fixed it." And now it's admitting every little mistake it makes. It's hilarious.

Åker en söndagstur i min favoritcykelrunda. Ett medley genom södra tunnelbanans förorter och skogar. Finns här https://happyride.se/turtips/bakvagen.141/
Nu paus i Nackareservatet

TourdeFrance is feitelijk voorbij, spanning is weg, na etappe 6 van de 21. Geen sportliefhebber kan hier blij mee zijn. Al kun je Pogacar niets verwijten.
#wielrennen #tourdefrance

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers:
🎵 Learning To Fly
#NowPlaying #TomPetty #TheHeartbreakers
https://open.spotify.com/track/17S4XrLvF5jlGvGCJHgF51

'Yesteryear,' a tradwife satire, understands Christianity better than most Americans
https://religionnews.com/2026/06/29/yesteryear-is-a-tradwife-satire-its-also-a-strikingly-accurate-portrait-of-american-religion/

'Yesteryear,' a bestselling novel about tradwives, is spot on about American religion
https://religionnews.com/2026/06/29/yesteryear-is-a-tradwife-satire-its-also-a-strikingly-accurate-portrait-of-american-religion/