Tootfinder

Poison in the water: the town with the world’s worst case of forever chemicals contamination – podcast https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2025/jul/28/poison-in-the-water-the-town-with-the-worl…

Esta mañana he añadido un enlace a la lista de enlaces de mi blog que me ha parecido estupendo. El enlace es https://url.town/

This German Town Carefully Reconstructed a 5,500-Year-Old Monument Lifting 13 Tons of Stone https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/this-german-town-carefully-reconstructed-a-5500-year-old-monument-lifting-13-tons-of-st…

This German Town Carefully Reconstructed a 5,500-Year-Old Monument Lifting 13 Tons of Stone
Archaeological work in the forests has identified ten settlements from the time, which may explain the monumentality of Küsterberg.

'They're scared': Leaked memo shows GOP urging lawmakers to skip town halls - Raw Story
https://www.rawstory.com/nrcc-town-halls/

Joni Ernst, at her town hall last night.
When the crowd said people will die due to Medicaid and SNAP cuts,
she said:
"well we all are going to die."
https://bsky.app/profile/aprilglick.bsky.social/post/3lqfej7g3ck2e

The @… recently released version 3 of the #PNG spec more than 2 decades after version 2 was released in 2003. The new spec largely makes official various extensions already in use like animated PNGs, HDR support, and EXIF metadata, so many browsers and graphics apps already largely suppo…

Rocky Mountain Straphanger
How the Town of Banff (pop. 8,000) Built one of Alberta's Most Successful Transit Networks
Taras Grescoe
https://www.highspeed.blog/rocky-mountain-straphanger/?ref=high-speed-newsletter

Rocky Mountain Straphanger
How the Town of Banff (pop. 8,000) Built one of Alberta's Most Successful Transit Networks

The timing of this video being published three days before the actual earthquake is obviously a coincidence, but what luck for the creator!
#earthquakes

Yes. (I almost forgot about this 🫣)
#PhanpySocial

gosha 🏴‍☠️ (@gosha@merveilles.town)
Attached: 1 image Ooh it turns out that @phanpy@hachyderm.io does it!

40 years ago tonight, the #GratefulDead in #maryland, opening 2 nights at merriweather post pavilion. some gate crashing & lots of MDMA around, which becomes illegal at midnight. early summer ’85, show #10.
soundboard:

This is the main square in Piran, Slovenia, early morning today. Only 10 minutes away, the 22nd Extended Semantic Web Conference ESWC 2025 will take place, starting on Sunday, June 1st, 2025. I'm looking forward to meeting dear colleagues as well as old and new friends, listening to exciting keynotes, great presentations, and many more activities.

A fern I saw last week in Shindagin Hollow; I took a lot of pictures this weekend in town and at Monkey Run but didn't do much developing because I was busy fixing a busted webcrawler (and playing some Death End Re:Quest)
#photo #photography

Wales' 'forgotten' architect of the welfare state, Jim Griffith's.
https://nation.cymru/news/event-to-commemorate-wales-forgotten-architect-of-the-welfare-state/

Event to commemorate Wales' 'forgotten' architect of the welfare state
Martin Shipton Fifty years after the death of Llanelli MP Jim Griffiths – a man described as “one of the greatest sons of Wales” – a special memorial event will be held in the town. The politician, who has been hailed as the founding father of the welfare state, became the first Secretary of State […]

Also recently finished “The River We Remember” by William Kent Kreuger.
The post-war tranquility in a small town in rural Minnesota in 1958 is upended by prejudice and bigotry as a murder is investigated.
4/5 stars
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101160

The River We Remember
In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by the murder…

I find it interesting that meteorology, volcanology, and seismology in Japan 🇯🇵 are all under the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
https://www.jma.go.jp
In the Philippines 🇵🇭 these are separated into two: the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration or PAGASA, and the Ph…

Caught the train at the very end of the line, along the lake back to town after the shower. Group ticket for 4 made it quite cheap.
#train #rail #Tegernsee

Yes. (I almost forgot about this 🫣)
#PhanpySocial

gosha 🏴‍☠️ (@gosha@merveilles.town)
Attached: 1 image Ooh it turns out that @phanpy@hachyderm.io does it!

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #VarietyMix
Sparks:
🎵 This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us
#Sparks
https://tributefestpgh.bandcamp.com/track/this-town-aint-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us
https://open.spotify.com/track/2rgHxOarlO4W35mg0IZ5u8

#TuneTuesday (Jul 29)
I first heard of #SufjanStevens when he contributed songs to the soundtrack of Call Me By Your Name and I instantly liked his dreamy and laid-back style of music.
But if I were to pick one song of his I really like, then it would have to be the demo version of “C…

A new sheriff in town in Big D: New culture for the Dallas Cowboys https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/new-sheriff-town-big-d-new-culture-dallas-cowboys/bbb894e8c7f833bb729797aa

For those who didn't know, we are currently on holiday in the Lake District.
There is a Booths supermarket in the town.
RIP our bank balance.

Basically the core argument of my last article
https://merveilles.town/@lrhodes/114869651115717099

This Town Started Charging for Trash by the Bag. Here's What Happened
https://gizmodo.com/this-town-started-charging-for-trash-by-the-bag-heres-what-happened-2000620226

"shy guys (jews)"

Mike Johnson urges Republicans to stay in town for megabill vote (Meredith Lee Hill/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/06/24/congress/mike-johnson-urges-republicans-to-stay-in-town-for-megabill-votes-00420372
http://www.memeorandum.com/250624/p80#a250624p80

Raising awareness of the unseen environmental impacts of floods #environment

Raising awareness of the unseen environmental impacts of floods
Just recently, the world watched as many people were injured and dozens died after a torrential flood swept through a Texas town early in July.

Of course they knew no local would go for it. So they would pick their targets, based in part on license plates which made it pretty obvious who was local, and who wasn’t.
My mother, living in Denmark at that point, despite being *from* the town, of course had a foreign car.
So the windshield wipers would always go to town on our car, in the hopes of making a fat tip I suppose.
And my mom would always roll down the window and curse them out in Polish for their little scam.

Amazon says it plans to bring same-day and next-day delivery to "tens of millions" of people who live in "more than 4,000" smaller US towns by the end of 2026 (Andrew J. Hawkins/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/691877/amazo

Amazon bringing same-day delivery to ‘millions’ of rural customers
Amazon announced that it was bringing same-day and next-day delivery to 4,000 small towns and rural communities by the end of 2026.

One of our town's former residents has died...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk8.TYYp.gl4ekMMTpL1R

Tom Lehrer, Musical Satirist With a Dark Streak, Dies at 97
A mathematician by training, he acquired a devoted following with songs that set sardonic lyrics to music that was often maddeningly cheerful.

Hindi ko maunawaan ang pagkakahati ng Senado sa mayorya at minoryang mga pangkat. 🤔
#phpol

Jets' Sauce Gardner, Ice Spice spotted during Lake George vacation https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45845019/sauce-gardner-ice-spice-vacation-lake-george-new-york

A very cool thread about live audio for video from @…
#gearsquad
https://old.mermaid…

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Zoe:
🎵 Uptown Top Ranking
#NowPlaying #Zoe
https://zoemazah.bandcamp.com/track/uptown-top-ranking-no-pop-no-style-feat-president-brown
https://open.spotify.com/track/2KvDMq1X7u7bpHK6PryM3U

Woohoo! The English Wikipedia has exceeded 7️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ articles! 🎉
#Wikipedia

Every day, 125 Americans are killed with guns.
But we can work together to make every town safer, and support solutions that will address the causes of gun violence in America.
Sign up today and become part of a movement of millions of everyday Americans.
https://everytownsupportfund.org/join/

Join Us
Every day, 125 Americans are killed with guns. But we can work together to make every town safer, and support solutions that will address the causes of gun violence in …

Small-town newspapers are shutting down due to the lack of a succession plan, not financial issues, in nearly a dozen US states, a growing problem (Liam Scott/Columbia Journalism Review)
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/small-town-newspapers-aging-succession.ph…

Small-Town Newspapers Are Dying Because No One Wants to Run Them
And it’s not just about the money.

Kennedy’s daughter, Kick, revealed in a 2012 interview that her dad once beheaded a dead whale and tied its head to the roof of their family minivan before embarking on a five-hour drive. “Every time we accelerated on the highway, whale juice would pour into the windows of the car and it was the rankest thing on the planet,” she told Town and Country.

After a few days in the emptied Spain (dozens living in a small town on the mountains of Almería), I've been thinking that reducing services like health care or education because there is no people just put the nail in the coffin. Services are not expenses but investment. People won't move to a place without services. You need to keep them or confront overpopulation in a place while emptying another

I rarely leave my neighborhood these days, so when the opportunity came last weekend to visit a town about 80 km from my home, I took a little detour to visit and take photos of the town’s only national historical marker.
(Those who have been following me long enough know that documenting historical markers in #Wikidata and

Landing at Nasugbu historical marker
NHI historical marker for the landing of the American forces at Nasugbu during World War II

Changes to local government in #Essex proposed: squish together the 14 district councils (who handle planning applications, bins, etc) into 5 new councils of about 300k population each. Then abolish Essex council (adult social care, roads, etc) and give the powers to the new councils.
It generally makes sense. Local plans (town planning) get done on a larger area. And no normal people u…

Today's #TuneTuesday theme is #LondonCalling - songs that name-drop a town or city in the title or lyrics.
This has long been a favorite, a song from an alt-country legend about Townes Van Zandt, the composer of some of the finest US songs of the 20th century. It mentions a whole series of cities.…

Query, Don't Train: Privacy-Preserving Tabular Prediction from EHR Data via SQL Queries
Josefa Lia Stoisser, Marc Boubnovski Martell, Kaspar M\"artens, Lawrence Phillips, Stephen Michael Town, Rory Donovan-Maiye, Julien Fauqueur
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21801

Query, Don't Train: Privacy-Preserving Tabular Prediction from EHR Data via SQL Queries
Electronic health records (EHRs) contain richly structured, longitudinal data essential for predictive modeling, yet stringent privacy regulations (e.g., HIPAA, GDPR) often restrict access to individual-level records. We introduce Query, Don't Train (QDT): a structured-data foundation-model interface enabling tabular inference via LLM-generated SQL over EHRs. Instead of training on or accessing individual-level examples, QDT uses a large language model (LLM) as a schema-aware query planner to g…

big if true. And by big I mean totally not unexpected. https://masto.hackers.town/@earthshine/114860028870561123

Thanks to @…, TIL the word “petrichor!” More from Wikipedia:
❝Petrichor (/ˈpɛtrɪkɔːr/) is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word was coined by Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Grenfell Thomas from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra) 'rock' or πέτρος (pétros) 'stone' and ἰχώρ (ikhṓr), the ethereal fluid that is the blood of the gods in Greek mythology.❞
Heh, “god-blood of stones.” Completely unnecessary levels of linguistic badassery. I approve wholeheartedly. https://infosec.town/notes/aag9xttylpw0a9p8

@… Imma leave this here.
https://oslo.town/@3rik/114852489190235610

I'm not a robot (@3rik@oslo.town)
Attached: 1 image M.S.B.R. / Kengo Luchi – 壱 [One] Kengo Luchi was a "noise-folk performer" about whom not much information is available. This release, in which he teamed up with MSBR is probably the easiest to find cheap. He sounds like a more primal version of Kazuki Tomokawa or Kan Mikami. A lot of agony and screams. Very nice, both with MSBR and in a band setting with other musicians. MSBR, of course, adds more noise, and a rather loosely structured solo track. #MSBR #KengoLuchi #noi…

Over the last 1 1/2 days I've hacked together a little Mastodon bot that posts once a day to update on how the #panoramax federation is evolving in terms of instances, images, and contributors.
I'm sure there's still plenty of bugs, but you can follow it under @… and it made its first little thread here: #openstreetmap

we had lunch at john boy’s, breakfast really — it’s breakfast-time all day at john boy’s.
i took this pic at noon and the place was empty but when we arrived at 11:30, every seat in the place was taken and we had to wait for a table. (i was told the lunch rush would begin in a minute.)
#alpena

My wife was just going walkies with her service dog 🐕‍🦺 around our little town. During that time, a Google Streetview car passed her multiple times.
My reaction?
"Great, after the update everyone will believe our town is fake, with the same copy-pasted NPC everywhere"
#Schweiz #switzerland

Morning peeps! I think my first job today will be to head into the centre of town and buy some nice coffee beans from the local indie roastery. The ones I bought from Nero the other day are sketchy at best 😬
Have a great day!
#Morning #Coffee #Beans

There's something comforting about hearing the swearing of your home town in your home town's accent.
Even Notts or Mansfield won't do.
Derby or nowt.

The last paragraph resonates, esp the last line:
"Oddly, that’s something that’s happening now, too.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/27/spanish-discovery-suggests-r…

A Maine Resort Town Feels the Pressure of Trump's Immigration Crackdown (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/travel/maine-wells-ice-immigration-tourism.html
http://www.memeorandum.com/250728/p35#a250728p35

This solve isn't particularly notable. But the word number is.
#Wordle 1,500 3/6*
⬛⬛🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩🟩⬛⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I’ve recently taken to watching the PBS News Hour for my dose of US-centric news, and I find their coverage to be refreshingly neutral (at least compared to other sources).
#PBS

View looking south from the hill near where I was taking photographs this morning in James Kennedy State Forest (the #marathon is for the town of Marathon, NY which is roughly 26 miles from Ithaca)
#photo #photography

Having to go to a food bank sticks with you
– it's time politicians knew about it
Amie, a town councillor and mother-of-two, had no choice but to use a food bank.
She’ll be joining more than 700 campaigners in Westminster on 18 June calling for urgent action against the rising tide of poverty in the UK
They are calling for an essentials guarantee,
which would help ensure universal credit provides enough to cover the essentials of life -- without having to g…

Having to go to a food bank sticks with you – it’s time politicians knew about it
Anti-poverty charities are calling for the government to introduce an essentials guarantee and prevent people needing to go to a food bank.

As expected, @… (OpenStreetMap France) has bid to host #StateOfTheMap 2026 in #Paris, #France

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #AfternoonShow
Cleaners From Venus:
🎵 Summer in a Small Town
#CleanersFromVenus
https://thecleanersfromvenus.bandcamp.com/track/summer-in-a-small-town
https://open.spotify.com/track/1p8Fz4Jr0ZcXpTmfQNfVOk

A tornado that swept through a rural town in North Dakota left at least 3 people dead | Courthouse News Service
https://www.courthousenews.com/a-tornado-that-swept-through-a-rural-town-in-north-dakota-left-at-least-3-people-dead/

Rewatching #HappyGilmore last night, so that we could watch the sequel reminded me of a scene from my youth:
In my family’s home town of Świnoujście there’s a river. Until very recently, the only way to get across was a municipal ferry service.
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s, it would be quite common for men with windshield wipers to walk down the queue of cars an…

Ok, 4.9M earthquake about 30 minutes ago but I only felt a small jog.
#earthquakes

Hundreds die after flash floods tear through Nigerian market town https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2025/06/hundreds-die-after-flash-floods-tear-through-nigerian-market-town/

Hundreds die after flash floods tear through Nigerian market town
At least 200 people have been confirmed dead and 500 more remain missing after flash floods devastated a Nigerian market town, media reported. Torrential rain started early on May 29, and within just a few hours caused intense flooding in the town of Mokwa, Niger state, a major trading hub for northern farmers selling beans, […]

#TIL that #NoisePollution is another negative thing coming out of the cryptocurrency industry thanks to this new video from #MorePerfectUnion.

A stylized map of #Manila, #Philippines 🇵🇭 on the wall at the Sheraton Manila Bay's restaurant.
#MapsInTheWild

With the #OpenStreetMap website’s new #VectorTiles, it’s nice to see that we can zoom in to level 23! Unfortunately, if the vector coordinates are not stored with OSM’s 7 decimal places for higher-zoom tiles, then what’s the point of all that zoom? 👀

#TuneTuesday (Jun 24)
For my final pick for #PrideMonth 🏳️‍🌈, here’s #TroyeSivan’s “Strawberries & Cigarettes”. This song by Troye, who came out as gay in 2013, was one of the very first songs t…

Oof. #OpenStreetMap minutely replication is currently broken: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/131884
For me this means that recent edits I made are not queryable via O…

Is OSM partially down? New data isn't able to be queried on the map, and new data isn't being rendered
I’m finding that I can pull data into JOSM and iD that I know exists (due to recently pushed edits), but a query on the map doesn’t list them (not to mention that they also aren’t being rendered; however, when something’s awaiting rendering, I always, at least by my experience, can still query it). For example, this query should list building=toilets, but it doesn’t. If I edit that location in iD I can see the aforementioned feature, and I can also pull it into JOSM, but it isn’t b…

I love that one of the accompanying images of the #OpenStreetMap blog post announcing the arrival of the official vector tiles on the OSM website is a map of #Manila’s old Spanish walled city of Intramuros.

Speaking of #JessicaSanchez (the recent golden buzzer from #AGT), I am absolutely miffed that her collaboration with #NeYo, “Tonight”, had long been pulled out from streaming platforms like Spotify. Even the offici…

Tonight (Jessica Sanchez song) - Wikipedia

#TuneTuesday (Jul 22)
I first heard of #WalkTheMoon’s 2014 song “Aquaman” only last year and it instantly shot to the top of my favorite songs from the band alongside tunes like “Shut Up and Dance”, “Surrender”, and “I’m Good”.
The song’s laid-back and chill vibe is reminiscent of 80s mu…

Manila is hosting this year’s #Wikimedia #ESEAP Strategy Summit and we’ll be starting the sessions tomorrow. For now, I’m co-manning the registration booth for attendees that are arriving at the hotel/venue. 🎉

ESEAP Strategy Summit 2025 - Meta

#TuneTuesday (May 20)
Until “Multo” (Ghost), the #PPop band #CupOfJoe hadn’t really entered into my music radar. But after I first heard this synth-pop tune—and I’ve been hearing it a lot lately on the radi…

#SilentSunday

There’s a new #OpenStreetMap website feature related to #Wikidata!
When viewing objects in OSM that have a Wikidata tag, you can now click the Wikidata icon to turn the opaque QID values into human-readable info (plus a link to Wikipedia if any).

#TuneTuesday (June 17)
Continuing with the #PrideMonth 🏳️‍🌈 theme, I’m selecting #DavidArchuleta’s “Hell Together” for this week.
Released in 2024, this song was inspired by David’s mom’s …

Media on #Eurovision 2025: Austria wins Eurovision 2025
Philippine media: Filipino-Austrian wins Eurovision 2025
#Philippines

Sixteen years ago today, the #OpenStreetMap #Philippines community 🇵🇭 held the first ever mapping party in the country. And our target was the picturesque city of #Tagaytay.

#SilentSunday

Earlier this month, #TomPatterson released a free (public domain) print-quality physical map of maritime Southeast Asia. It could actually almost double as a map of SEA except the northern part of Myanmar is cut off. 🗺️
https://

I saw that I have just passed a million total #OpenStreetMap map changes according to HDYC! 🎉🗺️
While this might seem a lot, this is still less than some of my OSM friends that have over 2 or 3 million changes.

So the 🇵🇭 Philippine Statistics Authority released the 2024 census report last Thursday:
https://psa.gov.ph/content/2024-census-population-popcen-population-counts-declared-official-president
A fellow

#TuneTuesday (June 10)
For #PrideMonth 🏳️‍🌈, I’m selecting #HeatherSmall’s song “Proud”, notably used in the American adaptation of the TV show

If I can only tell my self of 16 years ago about 2020...
https://www.plurk.com/p/v9lt0

Japan will be the reason if ever the WHO raises the H1N1 outbreak to Phase 6
Plurk by seav - 12 response(s)

Based on this thread, featuring one of #TarantadongKalbo's nostalgia comic strips, I learned that this typical 1990s PC setup is apparently not unique to the #Philippines 🇵🇭.
#comics

Adam Chase’s evil laugh at 26:15 will definitely be one of the top 3 moments of any season of #JetLagTheGame ever! 😁
https://youtu.be/C4w4jl4ODAk

I just learned that the person behind the YouTube channel Boulder Creek Railroad had started transitioning last year! 🏳️‍⚧️
In case you haven’t heard of them, they create these super realistic HO-scale (1:87) dioramas. Watch some of their videos and prepare to be amazed!
Website: https://www.bouldercreekrailroad.com/a…

Done mapping all 15 #barangays of Bien Unido, Bohol, #Philippines 🇵🇭 in #OpenStreetMap, updating their #Wikidata

I got a commission to render a map of the municipality of Macabebe (and Masantol) in the province of Pampanga, #Philippines 🇵🇭. So here’s a preview of the said map.
Almost all of the data is from #OpenStreetMap.
(Commissions are open if you want maps and like how I create maps. 😉)

Finally! @…, the venerable lightweight JS tilemap display library, is gearing up for a 2.0.0 release! 🎉
https://leafletjs.com/2025/05/18/leafl

I had been putting it off but I finally upgraded my #Linux laptop from #Kubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) to 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) and it seems like nothing was broken. 🎉
#Ubuntu

This is the first time that I got the purple (most difficult) group on the first try! And solving the puzzle perfectly too! 🎉
#Connections
Puzzle #730
🟪🟪🟪🟪
🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟦🟦🟦🟦
#NYTConnections

Silly #LinkedOpenData contribution of the day (month? year?): adding #Caltech’s iconic Fleming Cannon to #OpenStreetMap and #Wikidata

Node: ‪Fleming Cannon‬ (‪12880607063‬)
OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.

“I have a hypothesis: all of these [Women in Tech] initiatives are operating in closed and exclusive spaces, which is sending a strong signal to the male majority with the power to affect real change that they are not welcome here, and it is not their problem to solve.” —@…

Why Women in Tech isn't enough
Women in Tech spaces help, but fall short in the long run. Real progress needs systemic change and active involvement from men in positions of power.

While still partial and unofficial, the results for the Senate and party-list representatives are very surprising.
Based on months of polling, Bam and Kiko barely made it into the winning 12 circle, but now they are already in the top 5 with 3/4 of election returns counted.
And Akbayan is the top party list? They didn’t win any seat in 2019 and narrowly lost in 2022 but are now poised to get 3 seats?

#TuneTuesday (July 8)
The song “Restart” was never released as one of #SamSmith’s singles and was only included as a bonus track in his 2014 debut album. And this baffles me because “Restart” easily became one of my favorite Sam Smith songs almost from the first time I heard it.

Population density wasn’t the point of this video but it would’ve been cooler if he used an equal-area projection instead. 🗺️
#dataviz

I’ve never had a real need for these “activity notifications” so I wasn’t sure if these were available for #Mastodon. I checked and was not surprised to see that they are indeed already there. What surprised me was that #Bluesky only added them now.

Bluesky can really keep up with the news now that it has activity notifications
A new update has also added much more control over which notifications users will see, and who can trigger them. One thing that has been missing from Bluesky until now was the ability to turn on notifications for specific accounts, but now Activity Notifications are live. If you want to know every …