Tootfinder

Pogačar's (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) return to racing at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec on Friday was the scene of a rare miss, as the World Champion finished in 29th place – his worst one-day result in three years.
Julian Alaphilippe (Tudor Pro Cycling Team) claimed a brilliant solo victory, while Pogačar finished 26 seconds back in the chase group, his lowest placing in a one-day race since 2022.

"I ... think the odds of #Bluesky following #Twitter’s path is (sic) very high, given the structural similarities. Bluesky is a for-profit group still in the venture-capital honeymoon phase where it doesn’t need major revenue" — @…

A Mastodon Migration From Bluesky Would Be Different - Absolutely Maybe
The Mastodon migration from Twitter in 2022 was massive for the non-commercial community network: The number of accounts swelled with more than…

My niece is in charge of props for a local theater group and asked if I could try to get these light sabers working.
I have never used one of these but when I finally got it powered on and it said "Powered up!" I nearly shit myself.
I did not expect it to talk.
I've seen every Star Wars film and they never talk!
I got one of them working fine, the other had a spicy pillow so I'll replace the battery and see if that gets it sorted.

My niece is in charge of props for a local theater group and asked if I could try to get these light sabers working.
I have never used one of these but when I finally got it powered on and it said "Powered up!" I nearly shit myself.
I did not expect it to talk.
I've seen every Star Wars film and they never talk!
I got one of them working fine, the other had a spicy pillow so I'll replace the battery and see if that gets it sorted.

Day 30: Elizabeth Moon
This last spot (somehow 32 days after my last post, but oh well) was a tough decision, but Moon brings us full circle back to fantasy/sci-fi, and also back to books I enjoyed as a teenager. Her politics don't really match up to Le Guin or Jemisin, but her military experience make for books that are much more interesting than standard fantasy fare in terms of their battles & outcomes (something "A Song of Ice and Fire" achieved by cribbing from history but couldn't extrapolate nearly as well). I liked (and still mostly like) her (unironically) strong female protagonists, even if her (especially more recent) forays into "good king" territory leave something to be desired. Still, in Paksenarion the way we get to see the world from a foot-soldier's perspective before transitioning into something more is pretty special and very rare in fantasy (I love the elven ruins scene as Paks travels over the mountains as an inflection point). Battles are won or lost on tactics, shifting politics, and logistics moreso than some epic magical gimmick, which is a wonderful departure from the fantasy norm.
Her work does come with a content warning for rape, although she addresses it with more nuance and respect than any male SF/F author of her generation. Ex-evangelicals might also find her stuff hard to read, as while she's against conservative Christianity, she's very much still a Christian and that makes its way into her writing. Even if her (not bad but not radical enough) politics lead her writing into less-satisfying places at times, part of my respect for her comes from following her on Twitter for a while, where she was a pretty decent human being...
Overall, Paksenarrion is my favorite of her works, although I've enjoyed some of her sci-fi too and read the follow-up series. While it inherits some of Tolkien's baggage, Moon's ability to deeply humanize her hero and depict a believable balance between magic being real but not the answer to all problems is great.
I've reached 30 at this point, and while I've got more authors on my shortlist, I think I'll end things out tomorrow with a dump of also-rans rather than continuing to write up one per day. I may even include a man or two in that group (probably with at least non-{white cishet} perspective). Honestly, doing this challenge I first thought that sexism might have made it difficult, but here at the end I'm realizing that ironically, the misogyny that holds non-man authors to a higher standard means that (given plenty have still made it through) it's hard to think of male authors who compare with this group.
Looking back on the mostly-male authors of SF/F in my teenage years, for example, I'm now struggling to think of a single one whose work I'd recommend to my kids (having cheated and checked one of my old lists, Pratchett, Jaques, and Asimov qualify but they're outnumbered by those I'm now actively ashamed to admit I enjoyed). If I were given a choice between reading only non-men or non-woman authors for the rest of my life (yes I'm giving myself enby authors as a freebie; they're generally great) I'd very easily choose non-men. I think the only place where (to my knowledge) not enough non-men authors have been allowed through to outshine the fields of male mediocrity yet is in videogames sadly. I have a very long list of beloved games and did include some game designers here, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many other non-man game designers I'd include in the genuinely respect column (I'll include at least two tomorrow but might cheat a bit).
TL;DR: this was fun and you should do it too.
#30AuthorsNoMen

Branching Out: Broadening AI Measurement and Evaluation with Measurement Trees
Craig Greenberg, Patrick Hall, Theodore Jensen, Kristen Greene, Razvan Amironesei
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.26632

Branching Out: Broadening AI Measurement and Evaluation with Measurement Trees
This paper introduces \textit{measurement trees}, a novel class of metrics designed to combine various constructs into an interpretable multi-level representation of a measurand. Unlike conventional metrics that yield single values, vectors, surfaces, or categories, measurement trees produce a hierarchical directed graph in which each node summarizes its children through user-defined aggregation methods. In response to recent calls to expand the scope of AI system evaluation, measurement trees …

Generative AI alone may not be enough: Evaluating AI Support for Learning Mathematical Proof
Eason Chen, Sophia Judicke, Kayla Beigh, Xinyi Tang, Zimo Xiao, Chuangji Li, Shizhuo Li, Reed Luttmer, Shreya Singh, Maria Yampolsky, Naman Parikh, Yi Zhao, Meiyi Chen, Scarlett Huang, Anishka Mohanty, Gregory Johnson, John Mackey, Jionghao Lin, Ken Koedinger
https://…

Generative AI alone may not be enough: Evaluating AI Support for Learning Mathematical Proof
We evaluate the effectiveness of LLM-Tutor, a large language model (LLM)-powered tutoring system that combines an AI-based proof-review tutor for real-time feedback on proof-writing and a chatbot for mathematics-related queries. Our experiment, involving 148 students, demonstrated that the use of LLM-Tutor significantly improved homework performance compared to a control group without access to the system. However, its impact on exam performance and time spent on tasks was found to be insignifi…

@…: Reform is spewing more lies. This time it’s using attacks against women as a cover for attacks on migrants. We can’t let it stand. Email Reform. #Goodlawproject

Tell Reform to stop exploiting women’s safety to fuel attacks on migrants
Reform UK is pushing racist claims that migrants are a threat to women’s safety. This toxic narrative paints an entire group of people as inherently dangerous. But there’s no credible evidence to back it up. Reform MP Sarah Pochin suggested that migrants have a “warped view of their right to sexually assault women”. She claimed that men from “predominantly Muslim countries like Afghanistan” hold a “medieval view of women’s rights” and that “women are at risk of sexual assaul…

The visual of 3 cops leading away an inflatable penis.. #ACAB #NoKings
https://bsky.app/prof…