Tootfinder

"Congratulations" to #LdnOnt, the third-worst large city for cycling in Canada (77th place) and sixth-worst city of any size in Ontario (28th place)! https://cityratings.peopleforbikes.org

On Friday, Right Wing Watch reported that President Donald Trump's religious-right activists have been nearly unanimous in their demand that the Trump administration lend its full support to Israel in its growing conflict with Iran because they believe that it is key to bringing about the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.
On Saturday, after Trump ordered U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, MAGA cultist and self-proclaimed Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau immed…

Lance Wallnau Says Trump's Strike On Iran Is Setting The Stage For 'The Antichrist Emerging'
Christian nationalist Lance Wallnau is excited about Trump's military strikes on Iran because it is setting the stage for "the Antichrist emerging."

Here’s what Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia, a Republican and founder of Latinas for Trump, had to say about ICE’s raids:
This is not what we voted for…
I understand the importance of deporting criminal aliens,
but what we are witnessing are arbitrary measures to hunt down people who are complying with their immigration hearings
— in many cases, with credible fear of persecution claims,
all driven by a Miller-like desire to satisfy a self-fabricated deportation…

David Barton’s Defense of ICE Actions in LA is as Wrong as His History Lessons
David Barton's propaganda on current events is every bit as believable as his Christian nationalist history. 

Signal-to-noise and spatial resolution in in-line imaging. 2. Phase-contrast tomography
T. E. Gureyev, D. M. Paganin, K. M. Pavlov, A. Maksimenko, H. M. Quiney
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.20277

Signal-to-noise and spatial resolution in in-line imaging. 2. Phase-contrast tomography
In the first part of this paper, quantitative aspects of propagation-based phase-contrast imaging (PBI) were investigated using theoretical and numerical approaches, as well as experimental two-dimensional PBI images collected with plane monochromatic X-rays at a synchrotron beamline. In this second part, signal-to-noise ratio, spatial resolution and contrast are studied in connection with the radiation dose in three-dimensional PBI images of breast tissue samples obtained using propagation-bas…

A somewhat shitty day vastly improved by discovering that the French version of #bluey has Bandit speaking Italian in Pavlova
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENdrIDTRAts

Google researchers say Android's early-warning system detected and issued alerts for 1,200 earthquakes since 2021, sometimes giving up to 15-60 seconds' notice (Kasha Patel/Washington Post)

Your Android phone is getting better at warning you about earthquakes
An early-warning system on Android phones has detected more than 1,000 earthquakes worldwide since 2021, sometimes giving people 15 to 60 seconds’ notice

Orbital and Physical Properties of the Pleiades Binary 27 Tau (Atlas)
G. Torres (CfA), A. Tkachenko, K. Pavlovski, S. Gossage, G. H. Schaefer, C. Melis, M. Ireland, J. D. Monnier, N. Anugu, S. Kraus, C. Lanthermann, K. Gordon, R. Klement, S. J. Murphy, R. M. Roettenbacher
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.15933

Orbital and Physical Properties of the Pleiades Binary 27 Tau (Atlas)
We report new spectroscopic and interferometric observations of the Pleiades binary star Atlas, which played an important role nearly three decades ago in settling the debate over the distance to the cluster from ground-based and space-based determinations. We use the new measurements, together with other published and archival astrometric observations, to improve the determination of the 291-day orbit and the distance to Atlas ($136.2 \pm 1.4$ pc). We also derive the main properties of the com…

Texas Republicans have locked Democratic Rep. Nicole Collier inside the state house chamber and refuse to allow her to leave?
Honestly, I think livestream: dance on other legislators’ desks. Mock w/parody lyrics from show-tunes, raid copier paper to stuff empty suits and print out opposition faces and put them in seats & act out humiliating legislative scenes.
You’re not locked in with them, their seats are locked in with you.
h/t @peoplefor.bsky.social

Differential Privacy in Kernelized Contextual Bandits via Random Projections
Nikola Pavlovic, Sudeep Salgia, Qing Zhao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13639 htt…

Differential Privacy in Kernelized Contextual Bandits via Random Projections
We consider the problem of contextual kernel bandits with stochastic contexts, where the underlying reward function belongs to a known Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space. We study this problem under an additional constraint of Differential Privacy, where the agent needs to ensure that the sequence of query points is differentially private with respect to both the sequence of contexts and rewards. We propose a novel algorithm that achieves the state-of-the-art cumulative regret of $\widetilde{\mat…

Eric Metaxas declares that holding members of the Obama administration responsible
is "a moral test for America":
"With this kind of filth, you cannot have the America that was given to us by God through the founders. It needs to be cleaned out. We need to have the equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials."
http…

A Moral Test For America
Unethical, Illegal, And Treasonous The Greatest Mass Murderer In History That's Quite A Line Up