Tootfinder

How some political candidates and activists across ideologies and professions are pushing back on the spread of data centers and AI in the US (Andrew R. Chow/Time)
https://time.com/7377579/ai-data-centers-people-movement-cover/

The People vs. AI
Across red states and blue, a grassroots movement is pushing back on the unchecked growth of the artificial intelligence industry.

@…, bro, this you?
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-brussels-launched-age…

Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers say it took them 2 minutes to break it.
Cyber experts say they have found holes in Brussels’ age verification app, despite claims by the EU executive that it is “technically ready.”

In some Latin American and Caribbean countries, such as Suriname, it is up to 12 times cheaper to drive an electric vehicle than a petrol car (when looking purely at fuel costs)
https://www.agora-verkehrswende.org/publications/fuel-cost-map…

Satellite record shows boreal forests expanded 12% and shifted north since 1985 #environment

Satellite record shows boreal forests expanded 12% and shifted north since 1985
The boreal forest—the world's largest terrestrial biome—is warming faster than any other forest type. To understand the changing dynamics of boreal forests, Min Feng and colleagues analyzed the biome from 1985 to 2020, leveraging the longest and highest-resolution satellite record of calibrated tree cover to date. The study, published in Biogeosciences with four co-authors from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, confirms a northward shift in boreal forest cover over the past four decades.

One of my VR Lighthouses died last month. These things are gyroscopically spinning 24 hours a day for, what, a decade now? Nearly.
No wonder. Mostly the industry seems to be settling on using head-mounted cameras rather than sweeping infra-red beams and receptors on the head anyway.
It is true that lighthouses give accurate positioning, but means I can't easily take the headset next door, say. Or to a party.
So inside-out, as they call it, is fine for the headset now and mostly okay for the hand-controllers.
But it offers no solution at all for the foot-trackers and hip-tracker that I need for puppetting the characters in the #vr #slimeVR #trackers

Electrification of transport is essential to ensure Europe's energy resilience and achieve climate targets. This requires public #EV charging infrastructure in the right places, at the right time and at the right prices.
In this new Regulatory Assistance Project report we present 7 key building blocks:

🪛 5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
#tools

5,300-year-old 'bow drill' rewrites story of ancient Egyptian tools
A new study reveals that Egyptians were using a mechanically sophisticated drilling tool far earlier than previously suggested. Researchers at Newcastle University, and the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, have re-examined a small copper-alloy object excavated a century ago from a cemetery at Badari in Upper Egypt, and concluded it is the earliest identified rotary metal drill from ancient Egypt, dating to the Predynastic period (late 4th millennium BCE), before the first pharaohs ruled. The study…

Minimal and intrinsic topologies on monoids of elementary embeddings
J. de la Nuez Gonzalez, Zaniar Ghadernezhad, Paolo Marimon, Michael Pinsker
https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28419 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2603.28419 https://arxiv.org/html/2603.28419
arXiv:2603.28419v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: To every $\omega$-categorical structure $M$ one can associate two spaces of symmetries which determine the structure up to first-order bi-interpretability: the topological group $\mathrm{Aut}(M)$ of its automorphisms and the topological monoid $\mathrm{EEmb}(M)$ of its elementary embeddings, both equipped with the topology of pointwise convergence $\tau_{\mathrm{pw}}$. We investigate the relation of $\tau_{\mathrm{pw}}$ to other topologies on these spaces: in particular, when $\tau_{\mathrm{pw}}$ is minimal, i.e.~does not admit any strictly coarser Hausdorff semigroup topology.
A common method to prove minimality of $\tau_{\mathrm{pw}}$ on $\mathrm{EEmb}(M)$ is to show that it coincides with the algebraically defined semigroup Zariski topology $\tau_{\mathrm{Z}}$. We show that $\tau_{\mathrm{pw}}$ differs from $\tau_{\mathrm{Z}}$ on $\mathrm{EEmb}(M)$ whenever $\mathrm{Aut}(M)$ has non-trivial centre. We then provide general conditions on the behaviour of algebraic closure on $M$ that imply minimality of $\tau_{\mathrm{pw}}$. These condition cover, for example, countable vector spaces and projective spaces over finite fields. Turning to $\mathrm{Aut}(M)$, we describe the minimal $T_1$ semigroup topologies on the automorphism groups of model-theoretically simple one-based $\omega$-categorical structures with weak elimination of imaginaries. We conclude by proving that the metric pointwise topology $\tau_{\mathrm{mpw}}$ is minimal, equals $\tau_{\mathrm{Z}}$, and is strictly coarser than $\tau_{\mathrm{pw}}$, on $\mathrm{EEmb}(M)$ for the real and the rational Urysohn space and sphere.
toXiv_bot_toot

Good Morning #Canada
#HappyBirthday to Sir John Joseph Caldwell Abbott (March 12, 1821 – October 30, 1893) who was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 3rd prime minister of Canada from 1891 to 1892. Probably not well known by Canadians he nonetheless lived an interesting life and the attached Wiki is full of details both fascinating and informative, such as being the great-grandfather of Christopher Plummer. He was Canada's 1st native born PM, and one of just 2 Prime Ministers, the other being Mackenzie Bowell, to have held the office while serving in the Senate rather than the House of Commons. His political career had to overcome his signing of a declaration to join with the United States, and he was at the center of the CPR bribery scandal that brought down Macdonald's government. His 17 months as PM were regarded as effective, despite the fact that he spent a considerable amount of time trying to nominate John Thompson to take his place.
#CanadaIsAwesome #History
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Abbott