Tootfinder

from my link log —
Putting rigid bodies to rest: analysis and design of resting configurations of rolling dice, without physical simulation.
https://hbaktash.github.io/projects/putting-rigid-bodies-to-rest/
saved 2025-11-28

Russia's friends helping each other:
Germany’s far-right AfD invited to join Munich Security Conference 2026, on initiative by JD Vance
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/29/german…

Rust's Block Pattern
Here’s a little idiom that I haven’t really seen discussed anywhere, that I think makes Rust code much cleaner and more robust.
— by @…
🦀 https://notgull.net/block-pattern/<…

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the western German city of Giessen on Saturday
as the far-right Alternative for Germany’s new youth organization was set to kick off its founding convention.
Groups of protesters blocked or tried to block roads in and around the city of some 93,000 people in the early morning.
Police said they used pepper spray after stones were thrown at officers at one location.
The new youth organization of the anti-immigration Alternative for G…

Thousands protest as Germany’s far-right AfD to launch new youth wing
Party hopes to exert greater control over new group after the previous youth party was declared a proven right-wing extremist group by authorities and dissolved

Chargers to rest Herbert in finale; Lance to start https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/47448001/chargers-rest-justin-herbert-finale-trey-lance-start

Sources: legal AI startup Harvey raised $150M led by a16z at an $8B valuation, up from a $5B valuation in June, bringing its total raised to over $1B (Iain Martin/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/iainmartin/2025/10/29/le…

AI Startup Harvey Raises $150 Million At $8 Billion Valuation
The San Francisco-based startup that provides AI tools for lawyers has raised a new round of funding, its third in 2025 alone, led by Andreessen Horowitz.

https://apnews.com/article/croatia-protest-far-right-surge-4f76f067fef8ea56f682c79bb5fae61d

📢 Wilders Rechtspopulisten laut Prognose nicht mehr stärkste Kraft
Bei der Parlamentswahl in den Niederlanden ist die Partei des Rechtspopulisten Geert Wilders einer Prognose zufolge nicht die stärkste Kraft geworden. Die erste Prognose sieht stattdessen die linksliberalen Demokraten 66 als Sieger. Allerdings lägen beide Parteien sehr dicht hintereinander, so dass sich das Ergebnis noch ändern könne, meldete das niederländi…
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Wilders Rechtspopulisten laut Prognose nicht mehr stärkste Kraft
Bei der Parlamentswahl in den Niederlanden ist die Partei des Rechtspopulisten Geert Wilders einer Prognose zufolge nicht die stärkste Kraft geworden. Die erste Prognose sieht stattdessen die linksliberalen Demokraten 66 als Sieger. Allerdings lägen beide Parteien sehr dicht hintereinander, so dass sich das Ergebnis noch ändern könne, meldete das niederländische Fernsehen nach Schließung der Wahllokale.

The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol

Chargers to rest Justin Herbert vs. Broncos, as Denver eyes No. 1 seed https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6927430/2025/12/29/chargers-rest-justin-herbert-broncos-top-seed-afc/