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Why have philosophers had so little to say about Descartes’s stove, and so much to say about his dreams, his resolve, and his conception of analytic geography on that winter’s night? Suppressing the agency of the stove makes it easier to tell a simple story about the agency of the individual thinker. But it has made it that much harder to discern the subtle yet powerful ways in which modern air conditioning technologies condition thought, culture, and social experience. from Descartes’s Stove by the author of Air Conditioning, Hsuan L. Hsu
posted by chavenet at 2:09 AM - 1 comment

Sumatran orangutan becomes first wild animal seen using medicinal plant to treat wound. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:42 AM - 7 comments

Buttonwood Zoo (in Massachusetts, USA) has a Red Panda Cam.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:47 PM - 2 comments

What happens when your toddler is haunted by memories that aren’t hers? In Louisiana in 2000, 2-year-old James Leininger would wake screaming, repeating the same phrases to his baffled and disturbed parents: “Airplane crash on fire! Little man can’t get out!” Over the following year, a story unspooled in memories and drawings: He was a World War II pilot whose plane took off from a boat, and he died when he was shot down by Japanese forces. James offered names of people and places, and his account would ultimately become one of the most prominent and thoroughly documented “cases of the reincarnation type,” or CORT, ever recorded.
posted by Toddles at 8:05 PM - 37 comments

Patrick Gill discusses Helldivers 2, Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, and satire. And how satire of fascism can be missed by viewers, undermined by its medium, or embraced by genuine fascists.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 5:49 PM - 12 comments

Menswear writer Derek Guy compares UK TV personality Piers Moron's fashion style with that of Kermit the Frog. That is all. [a thread on X]
posted by chavenet at 3:08 PM - 20 comments

The only thing that can be improved under self-evacuation is the flow of information towards people in emergency. This leaves us with eyesight and hearing to work with. Visual aids are greatly more flexible and easy to work with. However their huge drawback is their usefulness expires quickly once the smoke sets in. 2500 dense Lisp programming words from Eugene Zaikonnikov via lobste.rs, whence this YouTube ad.
posted by cgc373 at 1:34 PM - 10 comments

Slippery Slope: How Private Equity Shapes a Ski Town (Nick Bowlin for Harper's)
posted by box at 1:25 PM - 6 comments

Dad Baby is an episode from season two of Bluey, the Australian children’s cartoon, which Disney has refused to make available for streaming, has been uploaded in full to the official Bluey YouTube channel. If you are unfamiliar with the hijinks of the Heeler family, you can watch a selection of episodes on YouTube, either as one long compilation or individually: [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 12:08 PM - 30 comments

Waluigi sings "Rainbow Connection." It'll consume two minutes and 44 seconds of your day, but no more than that. That's all. That's enough. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 9:46 AM - 14 comments

77,000 Young Salmon Were Dumped Into the Wrong Creek After a Truck Crashed in Oregon. The spring Chinook salmon smolts should still be able to find their way to the Pacific Ocean and help boost the threatened population of the fish, officials say, though another 25,000 salmon died in the accident.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:54 AM - 22 comments

Boston Dynamics two latest bangers All New Atlas and Sparkles. For once, sort by “top” and definitely read the YouTube comments. [more inside]
posted by lalochezia at 5:20 AM - 68 comments

People who care about internet monoculture and control are often told they’re nostalgists harkening back to a pioneer era. It’s fiendishly hard to regenerate an open and competitive infrastructure for younger generations who’ve been raised to assume that two or three platforms, two app stores, two operating systems, two browsers, one cloud/mega-store and a single search engine for the world comprise the internet. (Noema sl) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:19 AM - 47 comments

A bookshop in East Sussex has launched an early morning initiative to help writers. Kemptown Bookshop, in St George's Rd, Brighton, opens its doors at 05:00 BST on the first Wednesday of every month for a silent writing session. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 3:40 AM - 5 comments

In this episode we'll look at how production notes flat out lie about the making of a film, we'll look at two different sides of Gran Turismo, and we'll check out the history of CGI and why it fell from grace. We'll bust some common misconceptions about CGI, and we'll look at the most notorious "no CGI" project that I know of. the 4th and final episode of "NO CGI" is really just INVISIBLE CGI [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:23 AM - 13 comments

What the heck bro! Here are 16 videos of avalanches (no audio needed). Just for fun. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 9:26 PM - 22 comments

Skeleton of famous whale-hunting Orca "Old Tom" reassembled for new museum display. The orca known for working alongside human whalers has been given a new exhibit that museum curators hope pays better homage to its legacy.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:19 PM - 10 comments

Nathan Heller on the secretive Order of the Third Bird: There is a long-standing, widespread belief that attention carries value. In English, attention is something that we “pay.” In Spanish, it is “lent.” The Swiss literary scholar Yves Citton, whose study of the digital age, “The Ecology of Attention,” argues against reducing attention to economic terms, suggested to me that it was traditionally considered valuable because it was capable of bestowing value. “By paying attention to something as if it’s interesting, you make it interesting. By evaluating it, you valorize it,” he said. To treat it as a mere market currency, he thought, was to undersell what it could do.
posted by jshttnbm at 5:39 PM - 12 comments

His Book Was Repeatedly Banned. Fighting For It Shaped His Life. (Robert Cormier and The Chocolate War, NYT gift)
posted by box at 5:21 PM - 8 comments

Biden administration forgives $6.1 billion in student debt for 317,000 former Art Institute students [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:26 PM - 33 comments

You could call them “sky flowers,” but that doesn’t really make sense either—after all, the faded blue behind each squiggle is water, not sky, and the squiggles themselves don’t represent solid objects in any tangible, meaningful way. But they look right. The reds and greens and yellows add life and color in a way that a flat blue might not. Those odd shapes, suspended motionless with no clear reason or value, establish a tone. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense on SpongeBob SquarePants. But there’s a clear and coherent vision that runs through the entire show, from the design of SpongeBob’s kitchen-sponge body down to the squeaky-balloon sound of his footsteps. It’s a perspective, and a warm, specific, crazy little world. Of course it has sky flowers in it. What else would be up there?

Today marks 25 years since the original broadcast of "Help Wanted" -- the pilot episode of marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg's educational comic that became a delightful romp of "relentless optimism and fundamental sweetness", a hothouse flower of inventive and absurdist imagination, a cultural touchstone for multiple generations, and one of the most iconic and beloved animated franchises of the 21st century. Are you ready, kids? [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 3:55 PM - 23 comments

Remember back in 2017-2020 when everyone was aglow with the warmth and camaraderie of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen? And then, well, Milkshake Duck happened. But not all is lost.... [more inside]
posted by drewbage1847 at 1:06 PM - 16 comments

Palm OS and the devices that ran it - a retrospective on the popular PDA and precursor to the smartphone.
posted by Stark at 12:54 PM - 36 comments

Paul Auster, the prolific novelist, memoirist and screenwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with his postmodern reanimation of the noir novel and who endured to become one of the signature New York writers of his generation, died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening. He was 77. [NY Times; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:22 PM - 24 comments

As part of Secret Base's Patreon based restructuring, Internet video troubadour and oddity explainer Jon Bois has ressurected his long defunct Pretty Good series with a three part video on the rise and fall of Henry Ross Perot's political party/personal vehicle - the Reform Party. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:14 AM - 24 comments

Part 1: From the S Dynasty to the Chin Dynasty. Part 2: From the Chu-Han contention, through the first Chinese golden age of the Han dynasty, to the Warring States, and the Northern and Southern dynasties. To clarify, this YouTube series is NOT about the actual history, but how Chinese history is interpreted through Chinese cinema. This is a continuing series from Accented Cinema. Previously from AccentedCinema. For those interested in the actual history, he recommends Cool History Bros.
posted by toastyk at 8:40 AM - 8 comments

Endangered Ocelots May Be Expanding Their Range in Texas. DNA testing of an ocelot killed in 2021 raises the possibility that the creatures may be roaming outside their established South Texas territory, which is currently their only stronghold in the country.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:15 AM - 22 comments

At the frame shop there is so much beauty, it can’t be real. Maybe this is the afterlife, I think. Or purgatory. ... When my boss stomps up from his frame-building cellar and sees me, he always barks: Are you still here? Which is literal, because I’m new and only working part time, but also existential because how am I still here—or back here? It’s been a year since I returned to Chicago, but it still doesn’t feel like real life from Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife by Wendy Brenner [Oxford American; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:20 AM - 8 comments

Shockingly, the 20th Anniversary of Marillion's album Misplaced Childhood is over twenty years ago! Anyway, FISH - Return To Childhood 20th anniversary tour of misplaced childhood [3h12m] is an odyssey, with Fish's solo career dominating the front half and a full playthrough of Misplaced Childhood and a rundown of other Marillion songs in the second half. It's a really delicious feast of this particular style of prog rock. If you're a fan of early eighties Genesis and don't know about Marillion/Fish, check this out. It's what you're looking for. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:46 PM - 15 comments

Hundreds of properties bought after Queensland floods start new life as green space. The collective size of the new green space being added to Brisbane's suburbs in the wake of 2022 floods is the equivalent of about 25 rugby league fields.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:13 PM - 13 comments

The long, strange, ridiculous saga of the NHL team formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes. Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski of ESPN chronicle the poor decisions, bad luck, and outright chicanery that led to the NHL forcing the owner of the Coyotes to sell the team, which is moving to Utah.
posted by goatdog at 5:17 PM - 35 comments

The California man who hid for 6 months in a secret room inside Circuit City
posted by brundlefly at 12:43 PM - 37 comments

You might call this kind of defiantly ahistorical setting the Magical Multiracial Past. The bones of the world are familiar. There is only one change: Every race exists, cheerfully and seemingly as equals, in the same place at the same time. History becomes an emoji, its flesh tone changing as needed. [more inside]
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 12:23 PM - 90 comments

A New York State forest ranger who worked in the Adirondacks, she died after falling about 1,000 feet from a peak at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. (SLNYT gift link) [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 11:51 AM - 24 comments

Ken Klippenstein resigns from The Intercept. In his announcement released through his newsletter, Ken details some of the machinations between the management class controlling journalism, and the journalists out there trying to do the work. Klippenstein will continue publishing his work independently along with legendary editor and national security researcher William Arkin, as well as FOIA specialist Beth Bourdon.
posted by slogger at 11:04 AM - 27 comments

"So when you say judging, it’s not, this soil is great. This soil is bad. It’s classification and analysis, right?" (scroll to bottom for transcript). To prepare for the National Collegiate Soil Judging Contest, they spent three intensive practice days describing soils derived from glacial till, outwash, lacustrine sediments, and loess. They braved freezing temperatures, snow and sleet, high winds, pits partially filled with water, and muddy conditions before the weather finally cleared up for the two competition days.
By the way, did you know there are state soils? (folder of pdfs for all states & PR & VI) and New Jersey’s is named Downer. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:24 AM - 14 comments

The Jazz Lincoln Center Orchestra feat. Wynton Marsalis [1h43m] "The South African Songbook is a musical celebration of South African democracy, 25 years after apartheid's end. With special guests Nonhlanhla Kheswa, Melanie Scholtz, Vuyo Sotashe, McCoy Mrubata, Nduduzo Makhathini and Thandi Ntuli." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:35 AM - 2 comments

The Top Six Lessons I Had to Learn From Reality TV Because Chabon Said No About the Couch Thing
posted by BWA at 9:02 AM - 12 comments

Keep truth human - take this short quiz from the Canadian Journalism Foundation to find out if you recognize AI generated, false news content.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:46 AM - 27 comments

A discovery about how a circular trough filled with lighter fluid can create looping mini-flames leads to a fascinating set of experiments and an explanation of excitable media. [more inside]
posted by Stark at 8:20 AM - 15 comments

Jerry Seinfeld is a Lazy Hack Out of Touch with the Real World - and Who Can Blame Him? Paste Magazine's brief riposte to the New Yorker's Jerry Seinfeld interview in which Mr. It's About Nothing feels that comedy has been killed by "the extreme left" and "P.C. crap."
posted by Kitteh at 8:19 AM - 92 comments

JZD Slušovice was a collective farm established in 1952 in the village of Slušovice in the south east of Czechia, at the time in central Czechoslovakia. When 27 year old František Čuba was appointed chairman of the coöperative in 1963, he decided to use the pretext that the farmland wasn't productive as a reason to branch out into alternative. And so, over the next 25 years the small village turned into an industrial powerhouse, developing amongst other things, a holiday resort and the first Czechoslovak Personal Computer. [more inside]
posted by ambrosen at 8:19 AM - 3 comments

A Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly. Cigna Threatened to Fire Her. Nurses in the Phillipines are doing the initial reviews, and making major mistakes. Cigna wants their reviewing doctors to take about four minutes to check the reviews and decide if warranted, or if it should be approved, and penalizing doctors who do the work to know what's really going on. [more inside]
posted by mephron at 6:41 AM - 36 comments

Kiwi takes a nap in Far North woman's chicken coop (New Zealand/Aotearoa).
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:07 AM - 22 comments

Even as stars among her contemporaries have faded into relative obscurity, Niedecker's poetry pitched resolutely between — between avant-garde experimentalism and ethnopoetics, between the gnomic and the manifest — has sustained, across the decades, stalwart devotion. Her position within the canon of twentieth-century American modernism may seem to be in flux, shifting between various contexts — Objectivism and ecopoetics, white settler colonialism, geological and geopolitical history, the artistic legacies of the New Deal and the Popular Front, midcentury feminism, Thoreauvian hermeticism transplanted to the Midwest. Her work can feel both elusive and profusive, her poetic evolution traced across fugitive volumes produced by tiny presses and now appearing in Selecteds and Collecteds rife with textual variations. In our attempts to locate Lorine Niedecker, we do not seek to pin her down but rather to let loose the frustrating delights and joyful contradictions of her art. from Locating Lorine Niedecker by Brandon Menke and Sarah Dimick [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:26 AM - 2 comments

WDR BIG BAND - The Prince Experience | Konzert [1h40m] "The WDR BIG BAND plays the music of PRINCE together with internationally renowned guests Liv Warfield (vocals), Cassandra O'Neal (vocals, keyboard), Ricky Peterson (Hammond B3), Paul Peterson (vocals, bass), Mike Scott (E -guitar), Kirk Johnson (drums) and Luis Ribeiro (percussion). Vince Mendoza, Composer in Residence of the WDR BIG BAND since 2016, has specially arranged PRINCE's compositions for the WDR BIG BAND. The concert was recorded live during the Bonn Jazz Festival (August 2023)." Song list in video description." [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:54 PM - 12 comments

The Book of Miracles unfolds in chronological order divine wonders and horrors, from Noah’s Ark and the Flood at the beginning to the fall of Babylon the Great Harlot at the end; in between this grand narrative of providence lavish pages illustrate meteorological events of the sixteenth century. In 123 folios with 23 inserts, each page fully illuminated, one astonishing, delicious, supersaturated picture follows another. Vivid with cobalt, aquamarine, verdigris, orpiment, and scarlet pigment, they depict numerous phantasmagoria: clouds of warriors and angels, showers of giant locusts, cities toppling in earthquakes, thunder and lightning. Against dense, richly painted backgrounds, the artist or artists’ delicate brushwork touches in fleecy clouds and the fiery streaming tails of comets. There are monstrous births, plagues, fire and brimstone, stars falling from heaven, double suns, multiple rainbows, meteor showers, rains of blood, snow in summer. [...] Its existence was hitherto unknown, and silence wraps its discovery; apart from the attribution to Augsburg, little is certain about the possible workshop, or the patron for whom such a splendid sequence of pictures might have been created.

The Augsburg Book of Miracles: a uniquely entrancing and enigmatic work of Renaissance art, available as a 13-minute video essay, a bound art book with hundreds of pages of trilingual commentary, or a snazzy Wikimedia slideshow of high-resolution scans.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:53 AM - 15 comments

A team of cavers helped rescue a 50,000-year-old kangaroo fossil.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:35 AM - 13 comments

A Series of Headaches is a video from the London Review of Books following printer Nick Hand as he prints a page from the magazine using methods as close as he can get to those used to print the First Folio of Shakespeare plays. The page selected is an old LRB article about the First Folio by Michael Dobson [archive link]. The video is made in conjunction with Folio400, a website with lots of information about the First Folio, as well as a series of articles on it.
posted by Kattullus at 8:29 AM - 11 comments

After WB's success with Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, there was Freakazoid!. Originally conceived by Bruce Timm as a straight laced superhero gig, Steven Spielberg kept pressing it to be more and more zany. How zany? Get your freak on with every episode at the Internet Archive, or talk about anything you like, it's your Monday morning FREE THREAD. [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:50 AM - 83 comments