Tootfinder

Indigenous Australians were the world's first astronomers. But their knowledge is now at risk
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-indigenous-australians-world-astronomers-knowledge.html

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #MiddayShow
media puzzle:
🎵 Knowledge
#mediapuzzle
https://mediapuzzle.bandcamp.com/track/knowledge
https://open.spotify.com/track/5YZ5PRX0Wuyxwo9PSRKpN7

Kumulativer Zubau der #Windenergieleistung in #Deutschland mit Stand vom 17.02.2026.
Summen der Inbetriebnahmen minus Stilllegungen pro Jahr.
Der Datenbestand enthält ggf. unplausible Datensätze.
👉 Zusatzlesestoff: Warum

A starter pack of questions to help think about "discovery" and "knowledge":
1. When was X discovered?
2. Once it was discovered, who knew X?
3. 1000 years later, who knew/knows/will know X?
4. Is X true?
5. Which groups of people would say it's true vs. false?
When X is "a² b² = c² in a right triangle" we think there are nice clean answers to these questions. But when X is "COVID-19 transmits via small airborne aerosols and a mask is needed to reduce the risk of infection" things get more interesting, particularly the answer to question 1. Does something count as "discovered" if many/most people would say it's false?
People love to answer this question by appeal to "scientific consensus" but the scientific consensus on aerosol transmission is still shaky if you consider certain big institutions, and even if it's mostly settled now, there was definitely a period between "experts on transmission know it" and "there's a scientific consensus." So which counts as discovery? What if knowledge is held secret, like many military technologies? What about historical facts that become censored?

"The Pentagon’s cyber-warfighting arm is launching a task force to speed up the adoption of cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools with powerful hacking capabilities, according to three people with knowledge of the effort."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/20/n

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Sunday said Trump is “not well”
following a Wall Street Journal report that said his advisers limited his knowledge of rescue operations for two pilots downed in Iran due to the leader’s “impatience.”
“The commander-in-chief was excluded from commanding a military operation because he was acting so crazy.
Think about that,”
Goldman wrote in a post on X. 
“Trump is not well.
We need the 25th amendment before something really …

Sources: Google has created strike team to improve its coding models; Sergey Brin told DeepMind staffers that they must aggressively pivot to catch up on agents (Erin Woo/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-creates-strike-t…

Google Creates Strike Team to Improve Coding Models
Google has assembled a strike team of researchers and engineers to improve its AI coding models, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation, as it looks to automate more of its own coding and ultimately its AI research. The push was prompted in part by Anthropic’s recent AI ...

Every once in awhile I catch up on the state of knowledge about really early evolution and there's at least one phylogeny where you have to hunt for the eukaryotes
The archaeal roots of eukaryotic life https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2516062123

Indigenous knowledge confirms what scientists observe: Large birds are disappearing https://news.mongabay.com/short-article/2026/03/indigenous-knowledge-confirms-what-scientists-observe-large-birds-are-disappearing…

Indigenous knowledge confirms what scientists observe: Large birds are disappearing
Indigenous knowledge confirms a trend scientists have observed- large bird populations are declining faster than small birds.

Kumulativer Zubau der #Windenergieleistung in #Deutschland mit Stand vom 17.02.2026.
Summen der Inbetriebnahmen minus Stilllegungen.
Der Datenbestand enthält ggf. unplausible Datensätze.
👉 Zusatzlesestoff: Wie Solarparks Biodiversität fördern können