Tootfinder

I keep coming back to the mirror dualities of the oppressed and oppressor under authoritarianism.
The oppressed is portrayed as both weak and godlike. The stereotypes are always some variation on sloth and incompetence, but yet somehow also a menace capable of destroying the "pure" society. To use the most relevant current example, Antifa being both little femme soy boys who would always get beat up by "real men" while also being an international terrorist organization on the brink of overthrowing the US government, the unarmed presence of whom makes the heavily armed agents of ICE flee for their lives. Antifa is both having absolutely no impact on ICE, and also having such an impact on ICE that the military needs to come in to protect them. The contradiction is obvious but never seems to occur to those who hold both to be true at the same time.
But few talk about the duality of the oppressor. The sovereign throughout history has always been both a ruler above the law, sometimes even the representative or incarnation of a divine force. Yet, this same superhuman/god-man is also a baby who needs constant care. This is absolutely a through line from the very earliest records of sovereign cults to modern cult leaders, CEOs, and Trump today. Power, for these people, is expressed both as the ability to force others to enact their will and in the ability to compel others to care for them. Can any of these "men" cook? Can they fix anything themselves? They are driven everywhere, cooked for all the time, constantly protected from danger. Kings are still dressed, at least for rituals. I could dissect masculinity here, but that's a whole thing.
It is as though the drive to care for our children, who must be taught to behave within acceptable norms, is hijacked by "leaders" who demand our care and attention... even at the expense of our literal children. And recently we've seen some of those very CEOs, with LLMs and return to office demands, show that their judgment is also little better than children, making decisions while pretending to understand a subject.
The oppressed are portrayed as both god-like and impotent and are, in fact, neither. Meanwhile the rulers portray themselves only as invulnerable and are, in fact, childish in their ability to survive without constant support. Their greatest fear from the collapse of society is figuring out how to make sure people keep taking care of them.
It just keeps rattling around in my head.
#USPol

#TGIF

LG smart TV owners say a webOS update pinned Microsoft Copilot to TV home screens, with no apparent way to remove the app; LG unveiled an AI TV strategy at CES (Luke James/Tom's Hardware)
https://www.tomshardware.com/service-provi

LG TV users baffled by unremovable Microsoft Copilot installation — surprise forced update shows app pinned to the home screen
Users report Copilot appearing after a recent software update, with no option to uninstall.

"Nicht die Nazi-Keule schwingen": Ex-Unionspolitiker fordern Ende der "Brandmauer" zur AfD. Ihre Begründung: Ausgrenzung führe zu Radikalisierung. #TOnline
Interessante Logik. Demokratische Abgrenzung zu Extremisten ist kein Versagen, sondern Notwendigkeit. Wer glaubt, Rechtsradikale durch Umarmung zu zähmen, irrt historisch wie aktuell.

»Oft faulenzt er tagelang, hat er aber viel Arbeit, dann arbeitet er Tag und Nacht mit unermüdlicher Ausdauer fort; eine bestimmte Zeit zum Schlafen und Wachen gibt es bei ihm nicht; sehr oft bleibt er ganze Nächte auf, dann legt er sich wieder mittags ganz angekleidet aufs Kanapee und schläft bis abends, unbekümmert um die ganze Welt, die bei ihm frei aus- und eingeht.« (Preußischer Spitzelbericht über Marx, 1852/53)

Shocked to hear of the antisemitic terrorist attack in Sydney. Full power to all affected including the passing fruit shop owner who selflessly managed to unarm one of the attackers.

Unrühmliches Ende? Jupitersonde Juno der NASA wurde wohl abgeschaltet
Für die US-Regierung gilt eine Haushaltssperre, auch bei der NASA wurde die meiste Arbeit eingestellt. Deshalb ist unklar, was mit der Juno-Sonde passiert ist.

💥 Growing popular unrest in India’s Ladakh region as New Delhi makes it a forward base for war with China and Pakistan
#india

Growing popular unrest in India’s Ladakh region as New Delhi makes it a forward base for war with China and Pakistan
On September 24, security forces opened fire on unarmed protestors opposing the Indian central government’s oppressive rule of the region, killing four and wounding more than 150.

How many samples to label for an application given a foundation model? Chest X-ray classification study
Nikolay Nechaev, Evgenia Przhezdzetskaya, Viktor Gombolevskiy, Dmitry Umerenkov, Dmitry Dylov
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11553

How many samples to label for an application given a foundation model? Chest X-ray classification study
Chest X-ray classification is vital yet resource-intensive, typically demanding extensive annotated data for accurate diagnosis. Foundation models mitigate this reliance, but how many labeled samples are required remains unclear. We systematically evaluate the use of power-law fits to predict the training size necessary for specific ROC-AUC thresholds. Testing multiple pathologies and foundation models, we find XrayCLIP and XraySigLIP achieve strong performance with significantly fewer labeled …

#TGIF