Tootfinder

Sources: AI startup Project Prometheus raised $6.2B, including from Jeff Bezos, who will become co-CEO, his first operational role since leaving Amazon in 2021 (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/technology/bezos-project-prometheus.html

Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive
Called Project Prometheus, the company is focusing on artificial intelligence for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft.

tante.cc is again protected by the most recent iocaine version.
It's gotten really easy to set up and it's already capturing (and poisoning with Luddite writings) boatloads of "AI" bots
https://iocaine.madhouse-project.org/documentation/3/

📉 Record-Low Canadian Natural Gas Prices Prompt Production Curbs
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Record-Low-Canadian-Natural-Gas-Prices-Prompt-Production-Curbs.html

Record-Low Canadian Natural Gas Prices Prompt Production Curbs
Canadian natural gas producers are curbing output due to record-low negative pricing at the AECO Hub, driven by a warmer winter, sufficient storage, and increased production in anticipation of LNG Canada's export facility.

Prosecutor: A. Brown could face 30 years if guilty https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46999335/prosecutor-antonio-brown-face-30-years-prison-guilty

If you are up this late, maybe you want to stay up later. Go ahead, read my latest essay, What Did Vibe Coding just do to the Commons?
https://varnelis.net/works_and_projects/what-did-vibe-coding-just-do-to-the-commons/

What did Vibe Coding just do to the Commons? - varnelis.net
I write a lot about art and architecture, landscape, and the impact of technology on culture, but I haven’t written about coding since the 1980s, when I sold my first article to Creative Computing magazine. Back then I was a high school kid, spending hours working in both BASIC and 6502 assembler on the VIC-20. I ...

One of the things that made organizing a lot easier with the GDC was a thing called "GDC in a box." It was a zip file with all kinds of resources. There was a directory structure, templates for all kinds of things like meetings and paperwork you had to file (for legal reasons) and "read me" files.
We had all kinds of support. There were people you could talk to who had been there. There were people you could call to walk through legal paperwork (taxes). Centralized orgs are vulnerable and easy to infiltrate. They're easy for states to shut down. But there are benefits to org structures.
I think it's possible to have the type of support we had with the GDC, but without the politics of an org (even the IWW). I hope this most recent essay has some of the same properties. I hope that it makes building something new, something no one has really imagined before, easier.
This whole project is something a bit different. It's a collective vision and collective project, from the ground up. Some of it has felt like a brain dump, just getting things that have been swimming around in my head down somewhere. But I hope this feels more like an invitation.
Everything thus far written is all useless unless people do things with it. Only from that point does it become a thing that lives, a thing with its own consciousness that can't be controlled by any individual human.
Tech billionaire cultists want to bring a new era of humanity with AGI. That is definitely not possible with LLMs, and may not be possible at all. But there is a super intelligence that is possible, though it's been constrained by capitalism: collective human intelligence.
The grand vision of the tech dystopians is that of the ultimate slave that can then enslave all humans on their behalf. I think we can build a humanity that can liberate itself from their grasp, crush their vision, and build for itself a world in which people will never be enslaved again. Not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary. I think there are only two choices: collective liberation or death.
And that's what I plan to write about next time to wrap this whole project up. Today things often feel impossible. But people talked about the Middle Ages as though they were the end of the world, and then everything changed in unimaginable ways. Everything can, and will, change again.
"The profit motive often is in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings."

Seeing the discussion, I’d like to clarify:
This post is not a statement on #nuclear energy. I was responding to the specific article that I shared, where @… reported that tech companies are “using AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants.”
My point is - cutting corners and trying to “speed up” the construction or operation of nuclear power plants can have CATASTROPHIC effects.
Chernobyl was a disaster of mismanagement, cost cutting, and insufficient safety procedures.
I do not trust AI, a technology that is notoriously probabilistic and inconsistent in outputs (and with famously high error rates) to be reliable and competent for a use case where the risks are this high.
I also do not support the mindset of wanting to “speed up” ANY regulatory processes and safety checks when it comes to constructing nuclear power infrastructure.
Licensing is not a “bottleneck” here. It’s a safety prerogative.
(Thanks @… for bringing this to my attention!)

Saturday morning cartoons are a gateway drug to classical music
https://pressgag.com/study-finds-87-of-classical-music-fans-started-with-looney-tunes-stayed-there/

Study Finds 87% Of Classical Music Fans Started With Looney Tunes, Stayed There
SYDNEY— Reflecting on the formative power of children’s television, local man Ben Carter confirmed Tuesday that Bugs Bunny was his introduction to opera, though he admits he hasn’t exactly “kept up…

London Home Solar Power PV Pilot Project: Continued (2007) - Learn how I started to go off-grid @Home, and warming up to getting real (spendy). #solar #microgen -

London Home Solar Power PV Pilot Project: Continued (2007)
Learn how I started to go off-grid @Home, and warming up to getting real (spendy). #solar #microgen

Trump’s chief of staff acknowledges ‘score settling’ behind prosecutions of political rivals:
‘He will go for it’
– ‘In some cases, it may look like retribution,’
said Susie Wiles in a wide-ranging interview with Vanity Fair
Wiles also suggested the real goal of Trump's boat strikes is to topple Venezuela's Maduro
"He wants to keep on blowing boats up until [president Nicolšs] Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he w…