Tootfinder

from my link log —
Speed wins when fuzzing Rust code with #[derive(Arbitrary)].
https://nnethercote.github.io/2025/08/16/speed-wins-when-fuzzing-rust-code-with-derive-arbitrary.html
saved 2025-08-22

Progress report on our family De-Googling project: #google

De-Google Project Update

Klingt ja simpel, aber schon erstaunlich, dass Instrumente nicht angepasst sind…
When surgical tools don’t fit: how gender bias in design puts female surgeons at risk
https://theconversation.com/when-surgical-tools-…

When surgical tools don’t fit: how gender bias in design puts female surgeons at risk
Why surgical device design is changing to match the diversity of today’s operating rooms.

Maxx Crosby points to NBA's Thunder when talking hopeful Raiders turnaround: 'We've got a lot of work to do' https://www.nfl.com/news/maxx-crosby-points-to-nba-s-thunder-when-talking-hopef…

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025/06/29/mark-oconnell-i-love-wikipedia-so-much-i-hardly-even-minded-when-it-killed-me-off/

Mark O'Connell: I love Wikipedia so much, I hardly even minded when it killed me off
ChatGPT is so unreliable as to be effectively worse than useless. No-one would say that about Wikipedia

Look, Jeff Atwood, it is difficult to take you seriously when you write authoritatively on a subject you clearly don’t understand.
GDPR doesn’t mandate cookie notices.
Cookie notices are *malicious compliance* by the surveillance-driven adtech industry.
If you’re not tracking people, you do not need a cookie notice, period.
If you’re only using first-party cookies for functional reasons, you do not need a cookie notice, period.
If you’re using third-party co…

When Hospitals Act Like ICE | Portside
https://portside.org/2025-08-29/when-hospitals-act-ice

Sonnet 049 - XLIX
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advis'd respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here,
Within the knowledge …

When Liberals Hated National Injunctions (Allysia Finley/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/when-liberals-hated-national-injunctions-law-politics-e3985134?st=JjUWHJ
http://www.memeorandum.com/250629/p95#a250629p95

Hill: Raiders GM undaunted when faced with tough cutdown decisions https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/sports-columns/adam-hill/hill-raiders-gm-undaunted-when-faced-with-tough-cutdown-decisions-3432081/

When an Alaska Native group asked state law enforcement officials in June for a list of murders investigated by state police
— one of the most fundamental pieces of data needed to understand the issue
— the state said no.
Charlene Aqpik Apok launched
"Data for Indigenous Justice"
in 2020 after trying to collect the names of missing and murdered Indigenous people to read at a rally,
only to discover no government agency had been keeping track.

Alaska Vowed to Resolve Murders of Indigenous People. Now It Refuses to Provide Their Names.
When the nonprofit Data for Indigenous Justice filed public records requests with the Alaska Department of Public Safety concerning cases it had investigated, the state rejected them.

When Truthful Representations Flip Under Deceptive Instructions?
Xianxuan Long, Yao Fu, Runchao Li, Mu Sheng, Haotian Yu, Xiaotian Han, Pan Li
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22149 h…

When Truthful Representations Flip Under Deceptive Instructions?
Large language models (LLMs) tend to follow maliciously crafted instructions to generate deceptive responses, posing safety challenges. How deceptive instructions alter the internal representations of LLM compared to truthful ones remains poorly understood beyond output analysis. To bridge this gap, we investigate when and how these representations ``flip'', such as from truthful to deceptive, under deceptive versus truthful/neutral instructions. Analyzing the internal representations of Llama-…

How to keep moving even when it hurts #webstories https://muz4now.com/web-stories/whats-in-the-works-the-muse-never-rests

How to keep moving even when it hurts
Stan Stewart - @muz4now

Study by SEO platform Authoritas: when Google AI Overviews is present, publishers witness a drop of 47.5% in clickthrough rate on desktop, and 37.7% on mobile (Alice Brooker/Press Gazette)
https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audie

AI Overviews cutting publisher clickthrough rates by 50%, new report finds
When AI Overviews is present, publishers witness a clickthrough rate drop of 47.5% on desktop and 37.7% on mobile according to new report.

Death Literacy is essential for a good quality of life for every stage of life, including our end of life and dying. *
Got questions? I'm an end of life doula and I'm here to help.
#GDEPAU
#AskAnnetta
#EOLD

If people are wildly optimistic and non-critical about deploying something that is destructive, that should never be framed as a positive.

And continuing on this, if I am being critical of optimism in this scenario, that’s not ”slowing progress” or ”being backwards”. That’s being cognizant of bad outcomes and resisting them.

This all reminds me of when people are understandably confused by ”negative” results in healthcare, when they can be the most welcome of news.

When I started law school our very first case was Gideon v. Wainwright - where criminal defendants were given the unambiguous right to have an attorney, even if the state had to pay for it.
Well, here the trumpies are trying to overturn that case.
This is un American.
Deportation is a significant deprivation of rights and the new policy amounts to extending criminal penalties beyond what Congress enacted when it enacted our various Federal criminal laws.
By-the-way, o…

You've gotta get 'em while they're young. #RailFan https://aus.social/@perkinsy/114765328985785218

Folks, #Trump & the his ilk LAUGH AT YOU when you call them elitist, racists & fascists.
You think it's a factual insult.
They wear that badge with PRIDE.
And it's even funnier to them when you use terms like 'unhinged' & 'strongman govt' . Those terms are irrelevant to their plain spoken base.

Jerry Jones shares Micah Parsons trade timeline of when Packers deal came together https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/jerry-jones-shares-micah-parsons-trade-timeline-when-packers-deal-came-together

Good advice by @… on using phrases like "increase by X #percent" and so forth in a way that people can follow:
Comparing #Numbers Badly

Finished 1923 this week. Doesn't have the elŠn of Yellowstone/1883, esp when it comes to dialogue, but was a very solid ride nonetheless. My favorite thing is how they brought the era to life.
You don't have to have watched anything else to get it, but the other stories fill in context.
That said, I'd start with 1883, to this, to Yellowstone if I was new to it.
#film

1923
Follow a new generation of the Dutton family during the early twentieth century when pandemics, historic drought, the end of Prohibition and the Great Depression all plague the mountain west, and the Duttons who call it home.

https://clickhole.com/inspiring-your-airbnb-host-managed-to-own-a-beautiful-property-even-though-she-seems-functionally-illiterate-when-messaging-you/

Inspiring: Your AirBnb Host Managed To Own A Beautiful Property Even Though She Seems Functionally Illiterate When Messaging You

Since when is knowing what you're doing a bad thing

From a boost last night but which went wonky…
“When Good Intentions Meet Poor Design at the movie theatre: Why Nothing About Us Without Us Still Matters”
https://blog.blackspheretech.com?p=478
About the crappy Dolby Accessibility Solution at movie theaters.

Eagles' Vic Fangio doesn't hold back when assessing this veteran CB during training camp

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/eagles-vic-…

"When is cancer political?" Medical researchers, patients decry Trump admin's layoffs, budget cuts - CBS News
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-is-cancer-political-medical-researchers-patients-decry-trump-admins-layoffs-budget-cuts/

Bookmarked: Talking About Muslims in Middle French: The Potential of Word-to-Vector Models for Studying Semantic Relationships in Medieval Languages – DH Lab #Digital_Humanities

So #Gentoo #Python eclasses are pretty modern, in the sense that they tend to follow the best practices and standards, and eventually deal with deprecations. Nevertheless, they have a long history and carry quite some historical burden, particularly regarding to naming.
The key point is that the eclasses were conceived as a replacement for the old eclasses: "distutils" and "python". Hence, much like we revision ebuilds, I've named the matching eclasses "distutils-r1" and "python-r1". For consistency, I've also used the "-r1" suffix for the remaining eclasses introduced at the time: "python-any-r1", "python-single-r1" and "python-utils-r1" — even though there were never "r0"s.
It didn't take long to realize my first mistake. I've made the multi-impl eclass effectively the "main" eclass, probably largely inspired by the previous Gentoo recommendations. However, in the end I've found out that for the most use cases (i.e. where "distutils-r1" is not involved), there is no real need for multi-impl, and it makes things much harder. So if I were naming them today, I would have named it "python-multi", to indicate the specific use case — and either avoid designating a default at all, or made "python-single" the default.
What aged even worse is the "distutils-r1" eclass. Admittedly, back when it was conceived, distutils was still largely a thing — and there were people (like me) who avoided unnecessary dependency on setuptools. Of course, nowadays it has been entirely devoured by setuptools, and with #PEP517 even "setuptools" wouldn't be a good name anymore. Nowadays, people are getting confused why they are supposed to use "distutils-r1" for, say, Hatchling.
Admittedly, this is something I could have done differently — PEP517 support was a major migration, and involved an explicit switch. Instead of adding DISTUTILS_USE_PEP517 (what a self-contradictory name) variable, I could have forked the eclass. Why didn't I do that? Because there used to be a lot of code shared between the two paths. Of course, over time they diverged more, and eventually I've dropped the legacy support — but the opportunity to rename was lost.
In fact, as a semi-related fact, I've recognized another design problem with the eclass earlier — I should have gone for two eclasses rather than one: a "python-phase" eclass with generic sub-phase support, and a "distutils" (or later "python-pep517") implementing default sub-phases for the common backends. And again, this is precisely how I could have solved the code reuse problem when I introduced PEP517 support.
But then, I didn't anticipate how the eclasses would end up looking like in the end — and I can't really predict what new challenges the Python ecosystem is going to bring us. And I think it's too late to rename or split stuff — too much busywork on everyone.

The chaotic urge to tell Linux evangelists to "Just install Windows" when they post even the smallest gripe about Linux...

Zuckerberg says superintelligence is in sight, and, when personal superintelligence comes, context-aware devices like glasses will become our primary computers (Mark Zuckerberg/Meta)
https://www.meta.com/superintelligence/

Pitfalls when tackling the exponential concentration of parameterized quantum models
Reyhaneh Aghaei Saem, Behrang Tafreshi, Zo\"e Holmes, Supanut Thanasilp
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22054

Pitfalls when tackling the exponential concentration of parameterized quantum models
Identifying scalable circuit architectures remains a central challenge in variational quantum computing and quantum machine learning. Many approaches have been proposed to mitigate or avoid the barren plateau phenomenon or, more broadly, exponential concentration. However, due to the intricate interplay between quantum measurements and classical post-processing, we argue these techniques often fail to circumvent concentration effects in practice. Here, by analyzing concentration at the level of…

"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."
-Cynthia Heimel
#acting #coaching

When somebody is harmed by police or ICE or whatever thugs this awful wave of fascism unleashes on us, and when you hear that that person deserved it, or that the harm just sort of magically •happened• but nobody •did• it, ask:
“Says who? How do we know?”
“•Who• caused the harm? Does the language the police are using hide the actor?”
“Did that story come from anyone beside a cop?”
“Could they have made this up? Does it sound like all the other stories we now •know• they just made up?”
“Are the reporters who brought me this news asking •any• of these questions? Or do I have to do it all myself?”
Believe with caution.
/end

When We Get Komooted - BIKEPACKING.com
https://bikepacking.com/plog/when-we-get-komooted/

For me this also highlights the incredible sleight of hand that can occur when a metric swaps from lab to field data.

"He was arrested by Israeli police for questioning, but was later released on house arrest while an investigation continued."
Unfassbar.
"Basel Adra, the Palestinian co-director of the No Other Land documentary, wrote. “He was standing in front of the community centre in his village when a settler fired a bullet that pierced his chest and took his life. This is how Israel erases us – one life at a time.”"

I was 18 when I protested at EuroMaidan. I’m proud of new generation protesting now: https://benborges.xyz/2025/07/24/i-was-when-i-protested.html

When Proximity Falls Short: Inequalities in Commuting and Accessibility by Public Transport in Santiago, Chile
Cesar Marin-Flores, Leo Ferres, Henrikki Tenkanen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21743

When Proximity Falls Short: Inequalities in Commuting and Accessibility by Public Transport in Santiago, Chile
Traditional measures of urban accessibility often rely on static models or survey data. However, location information from mobile networks now enables large-scale, dynamic analyses of how people navigate cities. This study uses eXtended Detail Records (XDRs) derived from mobile phone activity to analyze commuting patterns and accessibility inequalities in Santiago, Chile. First, we identify residential and work locations and model commuting routes using the R5 multimodal routing engine, which c…

When Networks Mislead: How Partisan Communication Undermines Democratic Decision-Making
Hsuan-Wei Lee, Po-Kang Hsiao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21820 https…

When Networks Mislead: How Partisan Communication Undermines Democratic Decision-Making
Democratic societies increasingly rely on communication networks to aggregate citizen preferences and information, yet these same networks can systematically mislead voters under certain conditions. We introduce an agent-based model that captures two rival forces in partisan networks: honest noise filtering that lifts accuracy and strategic bluffing that embeds bias. Extensive simulations show that communication architecture shapes voting accuracy more than any individual-level trait. When cand…

When is the diagonal contractible?
Xi Chen, Frank Gounelas
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21889 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.21889…

When is the diagonal contractible?
For a smooth projective complex variety $X$, we prove that there exists a birational morphism $X\times X\to Y$ to a projective variety $Y$ contracting the diagonal $Δ_X\subset X\times X$ to a point if and only if $X$ has maximal Albanese dimension and irregularity $q\geq 2\dim X$. We also give necessary and sufficient conditions for arbitrary contractions of the diagonal and for the existence of a birational morphism which is an isomorphism outside the diagonal.

I found an even faster way to make it so people do not talk to me when I answer the phone. I just say:
"Thank you for calling Pete. How may Pete assist you today?"
And I usually can't even get the whole thing out before they hang up.
The old version of my script would often go 10 to 15 seconds before they hung up, now we're down to 5 to 10 seconds!

Geez, when you're so bad that even Marjerie Taylor Greene calls you out, you know you've done fucked up badly.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5426025-greene-gaza-genocide/

When it's too hot to turn on the oven, we use the barbecue instead.
#baking #cooking

lT security 101: Don't leave your company laptop with authentication smart card inserted, applications open and without screensaver at your seat when using the lavatories on a train. Unbelivable...

When I switch on the giant fan in my office, the temperature goes up ☹️

On Identifying Why and When Foundation Models Perform Well on Time-Series Forecasting Using Automated Explanations and Rating
Michael Widener, Kausik Lakkaraju, John Aydin, Biplav Srivastava
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20437

On Identifying Why and When Foundation Models Perform Well on Time-Series Forecasting Using Automated Explanations and Rating
Time-series forecasting models (TSFM) have evolved from classical statistical methods to sophisticated foundation models, yet understanding why and when these models succeed or fail remains challenging. Despite this known limitation, time series forecasting models are increasingly used to generate information that informs real-world actions with equally real consequences. Understanding the complexity, performance variability, and opaque nature of these models then becomes a valuable endeavor to…

I read Bostrom's book SUPERINTELLIGENCE back when I worked at Google —
Blaise A— insisted that it go on the "AI" SF book club reading list
(as an aside: I started the book club; we were mostly reading, uh, cautionary stories)
SUPERINTELLIGENCE is garbage, & I said so: throw around big numbers until your moral calculus has a floating-point overflow & you can be convinced of obviously crazy things
(phrasing wasn't so clean at the time)
.…

Age of Estimates: When to Submit Jobs to a Markov Machine to Maximize Revenue
Sahan Liyanaarachchi, Sennur Ulukus
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.22865 https://…

Age of Estimates: When to Submit Jobs to a Markov Machine to Maximize Revenue
With the dawn of AI factories ushering a new era of computing supremacy, development of strategies to effectively track and utilize the available computing resources is garnering utmost importance. These computing resources are often modeled as Markov sources, which oscillate between free and busy states, depending on their internal load and external utilization, and are commonly referred to as Markov machines (MMs). Most of the prior work solely focuses on the problem of tracking these MMs, wh…

I guess it's always nice when someone cites a paper. But too often, it's very clear that they haven't read it. If they had done, they would have realised that they were writing stuff that that I showed to be wrong in 1987. Sigh.
The extent of innumeracy in pharmacology is worrying.

Frontiers | The flexibility of SABRE, a new quantitative receptor function model, when fitting challenging concentration-effect data
The Signal Amplification, Binding affinity, and Receptor-activation Efficacy (SABRE) model is the most recent general and quantitative model of receptor func...

The Santa Barbara Ring Shout Project honors a tradition that our enslaved brothers did when they arrived in America.
It consists of calling and responding to the acapella style of singing.
SBRSP dances in a circle to the beat of a sticker, beating on a wood floor to make rhythm.
Ring Shout uses the entire body,
the main focus is rhythms.
SBRSP greatest accomplishment was joining the Gullah/Geechee shouters for a closeout exhibit of Lorenzo Turner's work …

Santa Barbara Ring Shout Project — Juneteenth
The Santa Barbara Ring Shout Project (SBRSP) honors a tradition that our enslaved brothers did when they arrived in America. It consists of calling and responding to the acapella style of singing. SBRSP dances in a circle to the beat of a sticker, beating on a wood floor to make rhythm. Ring Shout u

Just relaying a story I told elsewhere.
When I was young, maybe around 5, there was a cat in our neighbourhood who regulary came into our garden. His name was Monty. He was a really nice cat and my brother, sister and I really liked him.
At some point our parents bought us a cat and we disgreed on what our cat should be called but in the end we agreed to just copy the other cat's name because we liked that one so much.

Every one remembers the age they were when they finally realise that "I'll let you go" means "I want to leave"

»Life360 Secretly Sells Users’ Geolocation Data to Third Parties, Class Action Claims:
A proposed class action alleges family tracking app Life360 secretly sells data about users’ locations and movements to third parties.«
When apps are (almost) free, they make unlimited money by selling you. Don't trust any, if they don't communicate their data protection.
🕵️

Life360 Secretly Sells Users’ Geolocation Data to Third Parties, Class Action Claims
A class action alleges family tracking app Life360 secretly sells data about users’ locations and movements to third parties.

When the Wall Fell: Study of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in T Chamaeleontis using JWST
R. Arun
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21639 https://arxiv.org/pdf/…

When the Wall Fell: Study of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in T Chamaeleontis using JWST
We investigate the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission features of T Cha, a G8-type T Tauri star that has exhibited "seesaw"-type mid-infrared continuum variability over nearly two decades due to the destruction of the disk's inner wall, using JWST/MIRI and Spitzer observations. We report the first detection of weak PAH emission at 6.2, 7.7, and 8.6 microns in the Spitzer/IRS spectrum from 2005. The inner wall destruction in the 2022 JWST epoch allowed more ultraviolet photons to rea…

I see these images in my browser all the time. All sorts of them. I’ve never clicked on one, ever, but they still show up. I admit to being curious about this one, but since I don’t travel or stay in hotels anymore I don’t really need to know. Still, if anyone knows why it’s a good idea to wrap the doorknob in foil I’d appreciate the enlightenment.

always funny when someone who's been consistently interacting with my posts for at least a year randomly follows, like oh did the tea/pee pun tip the scales

Things I love about visiting the UK:
1. Seeing my family and old friends
2. Great bookshops, often featuring cake and tea
3. Pubs - especially the country ones
4. Good possibilities for outdoor activities like hiking and kayaking.
Things I dislike: all of this basically 👇
https://mastodon.social/@BylinesScotland/115116408717391541
BylinesScotland@mastodon.social - Having lived many years in the UK I got used to British standards in life; when back in Europe I realised that you can expect so much more | Tomasz Oryński
https://bylines.scot/news/world/take-a-deep-breath-citizen-we-got-it/?fsp_sid=1251

rare moment of honesty from cops about their politics. that being said, it's better when they feel they have to hide this allegiance, and SF sheriff is an elected position that is recallable.
https://missionlocal.org/2025/07/chad-bianco-paul-miy…

Why did we add Planned Dates to OmniFocus 4.7, when we already have both Due Dates and Defer Dates?
Defer Dates and Due Dates express constraints: you can't work on something before a date, or you need to finish something by a date. They affect the task's status: it's not available until its Defer Date, and it's overdue after its Due Date.
Planned Dates don't affect a task's status, they simply schedule when you currently plan to do the task. Goodbye, fake…

Planned versus Deferred date intended usage?
The defer date indicates when you want a task to become available. Until that date, it won’t show up in any perspectives that are filtering out unavailable tasks. It’s a way of hiding future work so it’s not distracting you today. You’ll start to see available tasks in various perspectives as soon as they’ve reached their defer date. The new planned date is for scheduling when you actually plan to do the task. It could be days or weeks or months later than the defer date. It doesn’…

fresh neil young & the chrome hearts soundboard from glastonbury in june, so pro mixed that you can hear spooner oldham's B3 (mostly inaudible when i caught them last week) https://heads.social/@livetapes/114990531689500576

Panthers' Taylor Moton gets emotional when discussing his potential final season in Carolina

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/panther

When Supporting Your Boss Becomes a Federal Crime: Trump DOJ Investigates Faculty for Backing Their President | Techdirt
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/29/when-supporting-your-boss-becomes-a-federal-crime-trump-doj-investigates-faculty-for-backing-their-president/

The wind blew pale grasses over the flowers as I was trying to photograph them but the effect was interesting & not unpleasant.
Footnotes:
1. Taken on a modern 40MP mirrorless Fujifilm camera shooting through an old weird Pentax 100mm lens (https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/20…

Records and Lenses

@… Ah, I see. It’s apparently what Mona (on macOS) does when you “quote post”. Just edited to move the URL above the hashtags. Should be fixed for you now. Thanks for the heads up :)

It is just INSANE that the GOP is going to 🆘 tax new solar and wind capacity,
as well as a whole bunch of other terrible energy policies in the BBB,
when electricity prices have risen 20% since start of 2022,
and the grid is ever more fragile.
Prepare for a lot of rolling blackouts.
https://…

An inside look at how Netflix's use of data led to generic "algorithm films" intended for broad appeal, with AI set to further entrench the production style (Phil Hoad/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/20…

"It's too scary to ride a bike on our roads, that's why I just ride an exercise bike at the gym"
https://www.nj.com/union/2025/08/man-killed-several-injured-when-a-car-goes-into-a-nj-planet-fitness-offi…

Man killed, several injured when a car goes into a N.J. Planet Fitness, officials say
Three other people inside the building were injured, investigators said.

Re this from @…:
When you hear it’s a “smart device,” ask: “Smart for whom?” https://dice.camp/@Faintdreams/114936165516652932

History says Cowboys will get Micah Parsons deal done — but when? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6521418/2025/07/30/micah-parsons-cowboys-contract-history-jerry-jones/

Just came back from vacation in Canada’s Maritimes. Doesn’t mean I have any insights to offer about the area, but it’s super photogenic and my blog is going to be bulging with pictures over the next few days. Starting here: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/20

Maritime Vacation

One of the TV or cable networks should totally have the Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the ready to play when the time comes.
Context: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-04/swan-lake-broadcast-signals-turmoil-in-russia/100881424

Swan Lake TV broadcast signals turmoil in Russia as independent media outlets forced to close
Staff at a leading independent Russian TV station resign before airing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, in a Soviet-era signal of political turmoil in the country.

Mastodon post quotes are coming soon. If you usually disable all email notifications, like I do, you might want to uncheck the new option in:
⚙️ Preferences
 ✉️ Email notifications

I maintain a page linking to comments I have left (or when I’m referenced) on posts at CSS Tricks and Smashing Magazine:
http://a11y-tricks.com/
I started this as a gag, but it’s been hella useful for me to go back and find posts that resulted in me having to debunk them face-to-face with people who believe…

Bikes with tiny wheels always look so weird to me. (I mean weird as a 6 foot tall adult. I rode 20" BMX bikes when I was a kid.)
Do these 20" bikes feel like riding a "normal" bike? Is it weird? Is it just me?
#biking #bikeTooter

Today's #comic by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal hurts even more when you are using #Emacs 🤓
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/stop-3

from my link log —
Firefox's optimized zip format: reading zip files really quickly.
https://taras.glek.net/posts/optimized-zip-format/
saved 2025-07-03

When I get a #spam where someone is offering to be my "deigner", and I'm like… why would I hire someone to deign?

Thousands of satellites with incredibly short lifetimes are being sent up into low Earth orbit.
When they fall back down they're fireballs of pollution — and what doesn't burn up hits the ground
https…

What goes up must come down: How megaconstellations like SpaceX's Starlink network pose a grave safety threat to us on Earth
Thousands of satellites with incredibly short lifetimes are being sent up into low Earth orbit. When they fall back down they're fireballs of pollution — and what doesn't burn up hits the ground.

Lame Sean Duffy Tries Giving Trump Credit For Biden's Trains | Crooks and Liars
https://crooksandliars.com/2025/08/critics-bring-receipts-when-duffy-gives

A look at the potential future of personalized, AI-generated entertainment, and how it could both submerge human originality and enable new forms of expression (Joshua Rothman/New Yorker)
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/09/01/ai-is-coming-for-cu…

A.I. Is Coming for Culture
We’re used to algorithms guiding our choices. But when machines can effortlessly generate the content we consume, Joshua Rothman asks, what’s left for the human imagination?

I suspect we’re doing something similar to the tank classifier when we ascribe intelligence to AIs: there are patterns such as (for example) grammatical correctness which we •associate• with this abstract thing called “intelligence,” and we thus mis-infer the existence of everything else we associate with the notion of “intelligence” when we see (for example) correct grammar.
Or should we just call the machine intelligent because we classify it as intelligence because our brains, which we assume are intelligent, think it fits the pattern of intelligence? And now you see what the OP means about “begging the question of intelligence.”

Predicting when the Cowboys' drama with Micah Parsons might end, plus eight NFL teams just got new uniform

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/predict

Kind of hard to feel empathy for Russian soldiers being scammed by Russian cops when this is how they transfer blame.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5rm41g34qo
Punching down is the Russian, and now American, theme.

When the glucometer gives 230 mg/dl, it's time to get serious and wash these hands.
#T1d #diabetes

1/2: Eeek!
https://blog.google/products/chrome/store-reviews/
Just me, or is this a horrifying prospect? The SEO wars and the Amazon homepage have taught us that businesses will do anything - ANYTHING, ethics be damned, to game their online reputations. This …

Chrome is helping you shop smarter and safer with store reviews.
We’re introducing store reviews to Google Chrome in the U.S. to make your online shopping experience safer and more efficient. This feature uses data from Google Shopping and other popular review websites to provide people with helpful insights when shopping on e-commerce sites.Just click the icon to the left of the web address and you can access an AI-generated summary of reviews. The description will cover topics like customer service, product quality, shipping, pricing and returns, helping…

Experts raise concerns that Malta's expedited MiCA licensing process may lack sufficient enforcement and oversight; OKX received a MiCA license in four days (CoinDesk)
https://www.coindesk.com/news-analysis/202

'Like Ordering McDonald's:' Malta's MiCA Fast-Track Draws Oversight Concerns
Some people think Malta is nimble and innovative when it comes to regulation. But others see a fast track to regulatory arbitrage.

I suppose the fact that DOGE’s people are clowns and its methods are bullshit means that DOGE’s failure does not prove wrong this theory of “a few great engineers could magically fix government.”
The trouble is, when such an effort fails, one can •always• imagine a hypothetical better engineer and say the theory is not proved wrong. It’s like dieting: it’s always •your• fault for not doing it perfectly, never the diet’s fault for being BS.

Daniel Jones reminds Colts GM of 'ultimate professional' Alex Smith when he was with Chiefs

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/daniel-

Over on CSS Tricks, another post about responsive text that fails to consider WCAG (other than mis-quoting a Level AAA SC):
https://css-tricks.com/setting-line-length-in-css-and-fitting-text-to-a-container/
I left a comment last week (still …

Setting Line Length in CSS (and Fitting Text to a Container) | CSS-Tricks
The many ways to juggle line length when working with text... including two proposed properties that could make it easier in the future.

When your opponent is Donald Trump you escalate in response to threats;
you don’t try to appease him.
Jerome Powell must do everything in his power to compel the conventional wisdom of market traders to more adequately “price in” the degradation of the rule of law.
This must include tying the rule of law and the threats to the constitution to the credibility and standing of the Federal Reserve itself.
Powell’s term expires in less than a year anyway.
If defe…

Powell Will Hang Separately: The Federal Reserve Has Already Failed its Duty to Lisa Cook and the Constitution
This is a free Notes on the Crises article. A reminder to readers that the various activities run out of the still-new Notes on the Crises office cost money, while an enormous amount of time and effort goes into my writing and my constant dedication to refresh and deepen my

When we travel from deep-blue states to deep-red states,
the ‘Fox-Book’ media diet increases by about 10 percentage points.
Likewise, the diet of political ignorance (no political media consumption) increases by about 3.5 percentage points.
Summing these two diets, we get a roughly 14-point swing in media consumption across the state partisan spectrum.
Obviously, this 14-point swing is not Orwellian: there is no state population that receives all of its political infor…

Partisan Politics and the Road to Plutocracy – Economics from the Top Down
In this essay, I take a deep dive into the history of American plutocracy and its conspicuously Republican roots.

Hakeem Jeffries,
when asked if he's endorsed Zohran Mamdani,
says "No... We don't really know each other well. Our districts don't really overlap."
https://bsky.app/profile/kenklippenstein.bsky.social/post/3lsrb3jns6c2o

Got a yard sign at the Evanston Main Street Fair from @katmabu.bsky.social.
Really respect her hustle in this campaign. Just out there at everything, meeting voters face to face. Her platform seems solid, and it would be great to have her enthusiasm and energy representing the 9th.
The best way to support her campaign is to donate

Tyreik Taylor had barely wiped the oil from his hands when the sky behind him lit up.
Fifteen minutes after the 26-year-old drove home, a roar thundered from the plant where he helped mix chemicals for motor oil and had just punched out.
Fire consumed the air, the collapsing metal groaning and liquids hissing as they escaped into the surrounding water, soil, and air.

Black Louisiana Community Coated in Toxic Fallout After Explosion at Oil Plant
“We need help over here and we’re not getting it,” said a resident of the city where 90 percent of kids live in poverty.

Congresswoman Nydia Velšzquez on Saturday held a rally outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New York City to promote her recently introduced "No Masks for ICE Act".
“We would never accept it if the NYPD operated in masks without names or badges
— and we shouldn’t accept it from ICE either,”
Velšzquez (D-N.Y.) said in a statement, referring to the New York Police Department.
“When agents hide their faces and identities they creat…

Velázquez Leads 'No Masks for ICE Act' Rally at NYC Field Office | Common Dreams
"When agents hide their faces and identities they create chaos, fear, and open the door to abuse. Immigrant communities are left wondering if they're being arrested or kidnapped."

Trump has vehemently denied that he is a racist,
pointing to a modest increase in supportamong African American voters in last year’s election, when his opponent was a Black woman.
But critics suggest that his effort to oust Lisa Cook fits a pattern of purging diverse voices from the higher ranks of leadership.
“He chose to fire her out of all the governors because she’s a Black woman,”
said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the organisation Black Voters Matter.
“H…

San Bernardino man arrested after he protested immigration officer shooting at his truck
Francisco Longoria,
a San Bernardino man who was driving his truck when a masked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer shot at it,
has been arrested and charged by federal authorities.
They allege he assaulted immigration officers during the incident.
In a statement, Longoria’s attorneys said Homeland Security Investigations agents arrived at the Longoria household at…

San Bernardino man arrested after federal officer shot at his truck
Francisco Longoria's arrest comes after he protested an incident in which federal immigration agents broke the window of his truck and one shot at him as he drove away.

Instead of using data to determine how to govern,
the Trump administration is manipulating, ignoring and even jettisoning data altogether.
Those who balk at the administration’s wishful thinking about reality face threats to fall in line or leave -- as Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook and now the C.D.C. director, Susan Monarez, have all experienced.
The administration has clearly embraced the strategic cultivation of uncertainty and ignorance.
It is not just trying to trim th…

Opinion | Trump Is Ruling by Willful Blindness
By turning away from evidence when it doesn’t suit, the administration is showing that it doesn’t think it matters whether it has the better argument.