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CBC news article here [more inside]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 8:14 PM PST - 106 comments

These Happy Dogs Love Sliding Down Snowy Hills [3m15s] That's what it is.
posted by hippybear at 8:11 PM PST - 12 comments

The botanical imperialism of weeds and crops: how alien plant species on the First Fleet changed Australia. It wasn’t just colonists and convicts who invaded Australia in 1788 – invasive plant species arrived too.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:48 PM PST - 8 comments

"Yet the value of returning to the fantasy genre in later life cannot be understated. Mystical novels filled with world-building brilliance at once allow us to explore both the trials and tribulations of otherworldly creatures and of very human characters with preternatural destinies. In both cases, nevertheless, magic and mystery boil down to very simple universal truths and lessons. Indeed, it was Lewis Carroll in his beloved Alice in Wonderland who wrote, “Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it”." [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:33 PM PST - 91 comments

On Lit Hub, Rebecca Solnit writes about how to comment on social media:

1) Do not read the whole original post or what it links to, which will dilute the purity of your response and reduce your chances of rebuking the poster for not mentioning anything they might’ve mentioned/written a book on/devoted their life to. Listening/reading delays your reaction time, and as with other sports, speed is of the essence.

[more inside]
posted by yasaman at 1:50 PM PST - 57 comments

Yes, it is! No, it isn't!

Until scientists get more data from James Webb, or future missions such as ESA’s PLATO launch, it’s all down to what they can do with the existing numbers.

[more inside]
posted by johnabbe at 12:03 PM PST - 7 comments

The 65-year-old former foreign minister is second in the ­opinion polls “You could see that people could never imagine that gay men could be elected. But this has been changing.”
posted by folklore724 at 11:30 AM PST - 7 comments

Welcome to the fallow week between the final game of the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl between Kansas City and San Francisco. You could watch the Pro Bowl in Orlando, but filling the air with analysis, predictions and odds is an absolute must to keep the hype train rolling, but this year the Internet has stepped in to help keep the conversation going.... [more inside]
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:00 AM PST - 51 comments

How a writer fabricated a series of stories for Atlas Obscura.
posted by Kitteh at 5:28 AM PST - 78 comments

Lake Mungo made a modest impact when it was first released in 2008. It premiered at the Sydney Film Festival, screened at South by Southwest in 2009, and premiered in the United States as part of the After Dark 4 horror anthology in 2010. Yet residencies on Tubi, Shudder, and Amazon Prime exposed new audiences to this sad, frightening, and fascinating film more than a decade after its release, and its explorations of grief fit more comfortably with a horror landscape influenced by The Babadook (2014) and Hereditary (2018) than the 2000s post-Blair Witch Project (1999) found footage explosion.
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:40 AM PST - 17 comments

Pennsylvania has an equal rights amendment. Its supreme court just used that fact to dismantle the forced-birth logic of Dobbs (ungated). The decision (PDF).
posted by clawsoon at 3:14 AM PST - 22 comments

These Australian researchers think spider webs could be our secret weapon to understanding nature. While spider webs could not trap an elephant, their ability to trap minuscule fragments of DNA could change how scientists learn about wildlife, according to new Australian research. The Curtin University study on environmental DNA (eDNA) analysed 49 spider webs from the Perth Hills region and Perth Zoo, and identified the genetic signatures of 93 different animals. Among them were birds, native mammals, meerkats, and at the zoo — elephants. Lead author PhD candidate Joshua Newton said studying eDNA was a non-intrusive way of understanding the biodiversity of an ecosystem.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:59 AM PST - 5 comments

The upshot: Readers in America, where prior restraint is forbidden and where courts won’t enforce foreign rulings that violate the First Amendment, are blocked from reading a story based on a legal complaint that would be tossed out of most American courts. That’s not the only way the case is resonating in the U.S. from How a Judge in India Prevented Americans From Seeing a Blockbuster Report
posted by chavenet at 12:52 AM PST - 20 comments

Millennia-old mystery about insects and light at night gets a new explanation "At night in the Costa Rican cloud forest, Yash Sondhi and a small team of international scientists switched on a light and waited. Soon, insects big and small descended out of the darkness. Moths with spots like unblinking eyes on each wing. Shiny armored beetles. Flies. Once, even a praying mantis. Each did the same hypnotic, dizzying dance around the bulb as if attached to it with invisible string."
posted by dhruva at 11:22 PM PST - 7 comments

Tony Finch illustrates the steps needed to construct a four-point egg, and, as a bonus, offers an interactive egg.
posted by Lirp at 10:51 PM PST - 16 comments

Elmo Asked an Innocuous Question: Elmo was not expecting it to open a yawning chasm of despair. (NYT gift link) “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” In thousands of responses, social media users let Elmo know that no, actually, they were not doing too hot. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:15 PM PST - 24 comments

Hey you, American consumption unit! Have you done your best today to ensure some corporation's quarterly earnings look bright? Helped a marketing team hit its performance targets? Created delight for any institutional shareholders? No? Then grab some t.p., come on over to Starbucks for an Oleato and let us experiment on your body in service to the realization of Some Idea our former CEO had! [more inside]
posted by armoir from antproof case at 7:18 PM PST - 33 comments

Especially for my fellow northern Northern Hemisphere denizens, struggling through the gloomy season: a pair of brilliantly colorful pop music videos. Kẻ Cắp Gặp Bà Già (Diamond Cut Diamond) and Gieo Quẻ (Casting Coins).
posted by clew at 3:50 PM PST - 16 comments

"A simple Yankee swap in 1938 between neighbors in the quaint neighborhood of Folly Cove, in Gloucester, Massachusetts—design lessons in exchange for music instruction—became the foundation of the Folly Cove Designers, one of the longest running and most successful juried artist guilds in American history." A new book explores the design course begun by children's author Virginia Lee Burton. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:36 PM PST - 3 comments

The 50 Worst Decisions in the Past 50 Years of American Politics "...when politicians make dumb decisions, the results are quite a bit more serious. If the political ruling class had just a little more sense, we might live in a world where Al Gore was president, Sarah Palin never became a national figure, and Donald Trump remained nothing more than a crooked real estate developer and reality-show host." [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 3:14 PM PST - 128 comments

Delaware Court of Chancery judge Kathaleen McCormick has ruled that Elon Musk's $55B pay package at Tesla was unfair to stockholders and can be voided - a move that would put a significant dent in his wealth. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:59 PM PST - 29 comments

Obituary in Playbill. Two-time Tony award-winner Chita Rivera has died, at age 91. Among so many, many other roles, she originated the role of Anita in West Side Story. We and Broadway are much the poorer for her loss.
posted by humbug at 2:54 PM PST - 27 comments

Apple Vision Pro review: magic, until it’s not is a very lengthy review of the newest Apple device from The Verge, and it is longer than you expect, and reading it I felt like it answered nearly all the questions I had in my head. I'm not going to rush out and buy one, but this is a really in-depth description of what using one in a real way is like.
posted by hippybear at 2:24 PM PST - 100 comments

An Austin-based hedge funder went big on a calm, relaxing space Santostefano chose Primavera marble for the countertops for their gorgeous veins of blue and orange. 'It reminded me of blue cheese,' she says. // Price: $11,000
posted by folklore724 at 9:57 AM PST - 105 comments

This last weekend, Seattle's Joint Enforcement Team (JET), which is a coalition of Seattle Police, Fire, the state Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB), and others, raided four gay bars, among other nightlife venues, over "lewd conduct". They found a bartender’s exposed nipple and a few people wearing jockstraps. [more inside]
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:46 AM PST - 56 comments

Painting on the floor is good because it takes away your conventional skill and ability to see. The material itself is playing with gravity and I make marks and merge paint with a certain energy. It’s like a way to trap nature; to hold on to a sense of time. When you crash or slide colors together they are forever frozen in that moment. [NSFW]
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:59 AM PST - 6 comments

Banksias are iconic Australian plants, but their ancestors actually came from North Africa. "Our research, published in Perspectives in Plant Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, shows that the ancestors of banksias actually migrated here from North Africa. From early fossil pollen studies, we already knew that the protea family (Proteaceae), which includes banksias, grevilleas, waratahs and macadamias in Australia, originated in northwest Africa 130 million years ago. Our task was to track their migration to Australia, where they became the unique symbols of the Australian bush that we admire today."
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:41 AM PST - 2 comments

Now that Ian has been exonerated, he needs to reacclimate to life in the world. He had to get a driver’s license and learn how to use a smartphone. He needs to get comfortable around people again. These towns were small enough already. For decades the Schweitzers were the area’s greatest villains; now they run into people and those people are nice. At the market and at restaurants, they congratulate Ian and ask if they can give him a hug. It’s weird. He can’t help but think: Where were those people for the past 30 years? from The Neighbors Who Destroyed Their Lives [The Atlantic; ungated] [CW: rape, murder]
posted by chavenet at 12:55 AM PST - 12 comments

For about three weeks, folks living in Corvallis, OR have had their sleep disrupted by a sound of mysterious origin. Retired software engineer K Lars Lohn engaged in some clever acoustic detective work to pinpoint the source.
posted by mpark at 10:15 PM PST - 69 comments

The IRS Direct File pilot offers a new choice to file your 2023 federal tax return online. If you're eligible, you can file for free, directly with IRS. [IRS.gov about page] Directfile.IRS.gov
posted by hippybear at 4:57 PM PST - 56 comments

How long does it take to belong to a place? "From Here" by Annie Wenstrup for About Place Journal:
People introduce themselves like this: their name and how long they’ve been here. Like this, I’m Annie. I’ve lived in Alaska for twenty-five years, I’ve spent the last fourteen years in Fairbanks. There. Now you know I belong here, I’m not someone passing through. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:15 PM PST - 29 comments

Psychologists may have the answer Trump exemplifies extrinsic values. From the tower bearing his name in gold letters to his gross overstatements of his wealth; from his endless ranting about “winners” and “losers” to his reported habit of cheating at golf; from his extreme objectification of women, including his own daughter, to his obsession with the size of his hands; from his rejection of public service, human rights and environmental protection to his extreme dissatisfaction and fury, undiminished even when he was president of the United States, Trump, perhaps more than any other public figure in recent history, is a walking, talking monument to extrinsic values.
posted by folklore724 at 11:46 AM PST - 488 comments

untranslatable.co is a searchable database of slang from nearly 100 languages.
posted by gwint at 8:45 AM PST - 17 comments

About a quarter of the paintings in Open Season were begun before the pandemic. I made a substantial model inspired by attending a 4H fair, and noting with curiosity that it seemed to attract both extreme ends of the political spectrum. I wanted to challenge myself to make images outside of the domestic realm. Painting crowds in the open air seemed like a counterbalance to the isolated interiors I had been immersed in. But it wasn’t long into lockdown that the theme felt too disconnected from our alarming new reality. We could finally see what a paradise we’d lost. [NSFW]
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:44 AM PST - 14 comments

How oyster shells, foam and zip ties are offering a critical life raft for declining shorebird populations. Sea rangers hope an artificial floating roost made from oyster farm pillows will help provide vital habitat for endangered shorebirds.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:22 AM PST - 2 comments

After last week's epic thread of The games MeFites play - which you can still contribute to - this week there's no optional topic. It's just ... you. Talk about anything and everything in your life and your world as this is your free thread.
posted by Wordshore at 1:43 AM PST - 199 comments

We require leaders who recognize before disaster strikes that mass panic is largely a myth, not after they have mismanaged it. This is a hard thing to ask of a governing class. One reason this myth has persisted despite decades of evidence to the contrary is that narratives of panic are a useful crutch for leaders under pressure. By projecting their own insecurities onto the masses they lead, elites find a ready scapegoat for their own failings. A leader who does not measure up to the demands of disaster will find it easier to blame the crowd for panic than accept the crowd’s harsh judgments on his own performance. from The Myth of Panic [Palladium; from 2021]
posted by chavenet at 12:07 AM PST - 16 comments

Wondering what upcoming Broadway shows to see? Up next, our panel of opinionated theater experts tell us THEIR must-sees. CUNY TV THEATER: All the Moving Parts 2024 Spring Preview of Broadway Shows [~1h]
posted by hippybear at 7:02 PM PST - 11 comments

Top pop from seventeenth-century England. Broadside ballads were single-sheet songs that sold for a penny a piece. This website presents lyrics and recordings of over 100 of the most successful, from The Judgement of God shewed upon one John Faustus, Doctor in Divinity to A True Relation of the Life and Death of Sir Andrew Barton, a Pyrate and Rover on the Seas. Come and sing along with the chart toppers of the seventeenth century.
posted by verstegan at 4:25 PM PST - 9 comments

This Device Might Be England’s Oldest Dated Scientific Instrument. The 712-year-old artifact is a horary quadrant, a medieval tool used to tell time based on the position of the sun. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:21 PM PST - 2 comments

"Some honeybees in Italy regularly steal pollen off the backs of bumblebees... Pollen stealing has been seen before, in the United States. But now, researchers in Italy have also observed honeybees snatching pollen off the backs of bumblebees. The observations, published December 21 in Apidologie, are among the most extensive documentation of bee-on-bee larceny to date." previously
posted by clavdivs at 2:20 PM PST - 14 comments

In Vox, Alex Abad-Santos explains what TikTok’s true love test is all about: Would you dump someone if they didn’t peel you an orange? So far, everything I've read about this is specious, because nobody's specifying what kind of orange. [more inside]
posted by Rash at 9:33 AM PST - 105 comments

"Lose Yourself" - Eminem x ELO supercut (YT, NSFW in flashes) Jonathan Keogh is known for his hyperkinetic supercuts, & now works as video editor at The Criterion Collection. William Maranci does fun & sometimes-cursed mashups. What happens when you combine the combinations?
posted by CrystalDave at 9:19 AM PST - 10 comments

An attorney for Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles leader Melina Abdullah is demanding that the Los Angeles Police Department return or destroy any privileged attorney-client records officers may have photographed while searching his Hollywood home this week. (LA Times, not paywalled for me but if it is for you I'll try to find another link) Less info but same story at AP
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee at 8:12 AM PST - 16 comments

“Generation Alpha can oftentimes challenge and refuse to accept the status quo, questioning rules and customs that may seem arbitrary or hypocritical” ... “The internet and social media have created a generation that can see anything at any moment, including social injustices and influencers who voice their opinions on anything and everything” ... "This can feel empowering and liberating to a child." [Parents.com / Axios] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 6:39 AM PST - 34 comments

Way back in 1980, friends and fellow art school students James Gurney (previously) and Thomas Kincade (previously) hopped a freight train together, sketchbooks at the ready. Gurney has also posted audio about the trip, as well as a recent Substack post. The two published a now somewhat rare book on their journey that has not been reprinted [Archive]. As has been mentioned before on the blue, the two also collaborated on the 1983 film Fire & Ice, notable for its rotoscoping and the collaboration of Ralph Bakshi with Frank Frazetta.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:24 AM PST - 10 comments

Equal parts Murder Mystery Party, Escape Room, and Parlour LARP, Jubensha are the Chinese gaming experiences that you've probably never heard of. (NYT) [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 12:01 AM PST - 4 comments

Nine of the Weirdest Penises in the Animal Kingdom (Smithsonian magazine). [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:11 PM PST - 20 comments

In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries. That gap took just six years to open up. Germany also now shows a 30-point gap between increasingly conservative young men and progressive female contemporaries, and in the UK the gap is 25 points. from A new global gender divide is emerging [Financial Times; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 5:56 PM PST - 137 comments

Random computer and mathematical animations by Etienne Jacob of bleuje.com.
posted by AlSweigart at 5:24 PM PST - 8 comments

Presented in three parts -- Sincerely Yours: The Making Of "The Breakfast Club" [IMDb] Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, a lightly-edited [to get past YouTube's robots] examination of the ridiculously iconic 1985 film.
posted by hippybear at 3:55 PM PST - 11 comments

Broadway musical historian Seth Rudetsky deconstructs the song "I Got Love" from the 1970 musical "Purlie" Sung by the astonishing Melba Moore. He's fun to watch.
posted by Czjewel at 2:11 PM PST - 3 comments

RIP, David John Skal. The novelist, horror scholar, NPR interviewee, occasional movie writer and guest died at 71. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:40 AM PST - 7 comments

CNN: Developers want to build America's tallest skyscraper in an unlikely location: Oklahoma City. And they want it to be, in part, an apartment building. [more inside]
posted by Rash at 10:12 AM PST - 61 comments

After a very long hiatus, in “Cool Ghosts 4” [25:08] Matt Lees reviews Frost Punk, The Outer Wilds, and The Shrouded Isle and explores the meaning of, "You did what had to be done," death and reloading, and pragmatism and hypocrisy in video games. Also, Virtual Steven finds out about virtual reality games the hard way.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:42 AM PST - 8 comments

LolDoku is a fun-filled daily puzzle where you have to complete the daily grid by finding the correct champions. You are given roles / factions which will help you narrow down the right answers! Time to put your LoL knowledge to the test
posted by andrewmc at 8:47 AM PST - 1 comment

Vegemite is a thick, dark brown Australian food spread made from leftover brewers' yeast extract with various vegetable and spice additives. The New York Times says, "First concocted a century ago, the spread is widely adored by Australians — and loathed by almost everyone else" and reveals "The Corner Lot Where All the World’s Vegemite Comes From" (ungated & archive). Oh, and there's a song. [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 8:30 AM PST - 49 comments

From 1960 to 2019, with a nod to Melanie's 'Brand New Key"
posted by bluesky43 at 7:35 AM PST - 9 comments

Robert Darnton in 1982 on the history of books and bookselling. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:08 AM PST - 2 comments

Trump ordered to pay $83m for defamation of E. Jean Carroll. Is it too early to dance in the streets?
posted by mokey at 4:20 AM PST - 82 comments

It’s not a moon, but it’s also not not a moon. A strange label on his child’s bedroom poster leads Latif Nasser on an exploration of the solar system. Via Thread Reader and Radiolab.
posted by chrisulonic at 3:45 AM PST - 16 comments

The War on Gaza. The cartoonist Joe Sacco uses his medium to illuminate the plight of people in trouble spots and war zones throughout the world. His acclaimed books, researched during Sacco's long visits to these places and his many interviews with those affected, include Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza and Safe Area Gorazde. Today he begins a new series of short online strips titled The War on Gaza.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:52 AM PST - 4 comments

There is quite a bit at stake in entertaining the possibility of linguistic relativity – it impinges directly on our understanding of the nature of human language. A long-held assumption in Western philosophy, classically formulated in the work of Aristotle, maintains that words are mere labels we apply to existing ideas in order to share those ideas with others. But linguistic relativity makes language an active force in shaping our thoughts. Furthermore, if we permit fundamental variation between languages and their presumably entangled worldviews, we are confronted with difficult questions about the constitution of our common humanity. Could it be that there are unbridgeable gulfs in thinking and perception between groups of people speaking different languages? from Our language, our world
posted by chavenet at 2:01 AM PST - 16 comments

Meet the Dibbler, also called Wyalung in the Nyoongar language, or Parantechinus apicalis. It's a small marsupial, 14–15 cm (5.5-5.9 inches) long, and weighs 40–100 grams (1.4 ounces to 3.5 ounces). It eats ground-dwelling insects and other invertebrates, small lizards, small birds and small mammals. It was critically endangered, but its conservation status has improved considerably after Perth Zoo spent 26 years breeding 1173 of them and releasing them into suitable wild habitat. Here's a 48-second video. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:14 PM PST - 7 comments

A Strange Plastic Rock Has Ominously Invaded 5 Continents That probably shouldn't have happened. [more inside]
posted by stevil at 7:33 PM PST - 12 comments

Sheep,dogs,birds, and CATS...Oh, and chickens! A rural home, a baking session, and lots of critters. Bonus, no voice, some sublime background music.
posted by Czjewel at 6:33 PM PST - 12 comments

What's inside this crater in Madagascar? Vox went to insane lengths to discover who lived in a remote village in a remote extinct volcano in Madagascar they discovered on Google Earth and satellite images.
posted by peacay at 4:13 PM PST - 15 comments

The vague idea that “we’re all in this together” comes at the expense of the smaller organizations and most marginalized writers. There are inspiring local stores that love and stock indie books and are essential allies to smaller presses making this choice despite the commercial obstacles to it... But many independently owned, noncorporate bookstores aren’t willing to work directly with SPD or individual publishers, which would require more labor but offer better terms than Ingram. They don’t value independently published, noncorporate books enough to push back on or find alternatives to [Ingram]. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:11 AM PST - 22 comments

Michael Joseph's compelling portraits of America's young travellers
posted by goo at 9:49 AM PST - 38 comments

New research suggests that consciousness is a quantum wave that passes through the brain's microtubules. My humanities-steeped brain is having trouble parsing this, but it sounds like there's some work that suggests an outsider theory about how consciousness works, involving quantum superpositioning to find the most efficient energy transfer, has gotten some proof. And the study involves.. tryptophan? Isn't that the thing that makes you sleepy at Thanksgiving? I'm curious what the smart people here on MF think. Is this what the journalists at Popular Mechanics think it is?
posted by heyitsgogi at 8:31 AM PST - 185 comments

Drone operator films cownose rays that looked like glitter in rare mass migration off NSW coast. Daniel Lukic's spectacular vision of a massive fever of rays off a Forster beach has caught the attention of a researcher, who says it may contribute to ongoing research about the species.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:06 AM PST - 19 comments

It's hard to estimate how many of LinkedIn's 1 billion reported members are using the site to find love.
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:46 AM PST - 31 comments

The Charge of Genocide - Darryl Li writes for Dissent Magazine: "Israel and its supporters have responded to the ICJ case with accusations of antisemitism (describing the case as “blood libel”), attempts at distraction (arguing over quantities of humanitarian aid it allows into the Gaza Strip), and technical legal objections. But South Africa’s willingness to file the case is a sign that the old tactics used to police discourse about genocide have lost much of their power." [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 12:55 AM PST - 310 comments

Likability is charisma in a muzzle—its weakling little sibling, the tamed runt of the personality family. It helps the bitter pill of technocracy go down, providing just enough quasi-populist flair to prop up and lubricate broken social architecture that has left us at risk of full-blown fascism. from You Really Like Me! [The Baffler; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:51 AM PST - 3 comments

Under Scott Stuber, the streaming giant spent lavishly on original movies, but insiders point to the Bela Bajaria-run TV unit as the future: "Middle of the road programming." Netflix has spent lavishly on original movies, and the results have not been dazzling. Stuber has made no secret of his view that maintaining quality control was impossible given the crushing volume of movies that Netflix insisted on rolling out. The streamer put out 90 original movies in 2018, with Stuber overseeing most of them. Since then the company has steadily dialed back the number of originals: 85 in 2022 and 49 last year, when the company restructured the film division and made a handful of layoffs. Still, this year Netflix will release at least 36 original English-language films — far more than any other company.
posted by folklore724 at 10:32 PM PST - 26 comments

In November 2022, we set ourselves a challenge: make a real-time animation that looks like a standard short animated movie, with the constraint that it should fit in 8 kilobytes. The goal was to have decent graphics, animations, direction and camera work, and the matching music… Yes, 8 kilobytes, less than half of this post, for everything.
posted by flabdablet at 8:11 PM PST - 26 comments

Vets seek fresh feathers to get Stan the wedge-tailed eagle back in the air. A Byron Bay vet team is searching for a suitable feather donor for a procedure they hope will help get an injured wedge-tailed eagle soaring again.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:51 PM PST - 9 comments

The Ingenuity helicopter will fly no more. After three years and more than 2 hours of cumulative flying time, the first human craft to fly on Mars is grounded. [more inside]
posted by SPrintF at 3:08 PM PST - 35 comments

Alice Parker (Wikipedia), choral composer, arranger, conductor, and teacher, passed away on Christmas Eve 2023 at the age of 98. [more inside]
posted by rekrap at 1:50 PM PST - 10 comments

Watch Something Wonderful [CW: random videos, wonderfulness not guaranteed]
posted by chavenet at 1:41 PM PST - 4 comments

“I watched a bad video hocking AI-created comedy pretending to be a beloved comedian so you don't have to, and you shouldn't” - though maybe the whole thing is just a scam.
posted by Artw at 10:06 AM PST - 90 comments

'Exhibiting Forgiveness', directed by artist Titus Kaphar, premiered at Sundance last weeekend (Variety review by Owen Gleiberman, Q&A at ABCNews by Lindsay Bahr). This is the artist's second film to appear at Sundance, after last year's documentary 'Shut Up And Paint' (Oscar Contender ‘Shut Up And Paint’ Reveals Dilemma Of Artist Titus Kaphar, Whose Work Is Valued, But His Message Not, Matthew Carey in Deadline). [more inside]
posted by bq at 9:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Yesterday, the UK press were astir over the prescription of an American chemistry professor (or "egghead", as UK journalists know them) for the perfect cup of tea, to which she recommended adding salt, of all things. The outrage! Ridiculous! Etc. The US embassy issued a tongue-in-cheek press release about how this didn't represent official US policy, and how they would “continue to make tea in the proper way—by microwaving it.” This, in turn, was an excellent excuse for the UK press to keep the story going (warning: Daily Mail) by pretending to take them literally.
posted by rory at 8:06 AM PST - 103 comments

While liberal arts have been declining on college campuses, medical education is moving in the opposite direction, using the arts and humanities as teaching modalities within the traditional basic and applied sciences coursework that dominates medical school curricula. Through literature, poetry, theater, and visual arts, students acquire important professional capacities, such as tolerance of ambiguity, skillful clinical communication, and sensitivity in listening to and learning from patient stories.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:47 AM PST - 31 comments

Penn Jillette Wants to Talk It All Out (SL Cracked Interview) Jillette has renounced libertarianism (after being asked to MC an anti-masking event) and is terrified of Trump. He still has a lot on his mind.
posted by thecaddy at 4:30 AM PST - 63 comments

A beautiful and free platform for Musicians. In the aftermath of Epic selling Bandcamp to Songtradr, Bandcamp has found itself in a place of instability. Half of the company’s employees were laid off post-acquisition, leading many to speculate over the beloved platform’s future. Most importantly, many artists who depended on the service are left looking for alternatives. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 4:18 AM PST - 18 comments

Today on the 150th birthday of W. "Willie" Somerset Maugham, prolific author of plays, novels and short stories, he sums up his life in letters [1m50s]. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:37 AM PST - 13 comments

Keats had no particular regard for consistency, and what he says in his letters about poetry and the imagination constitutes no systematic defence. Poetry was essential to his existence; for others, he knew, its value might be less. Nevertheless, even in playful musings on the unreal and the unvalued he is thinking about the power of address, of recognition, to bring into being what might not otherwise exist. from Hooted from the Stage [LRB; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:51 AM PST - 2 comments

'One Revolution Per Minute'. A short film by Erik Wernquist. (slyt. 6:23)
posted by clavdivs at 10:07 PM PST - 10 comments

The FDA Warned an Asthma Drug Could Induce Despair. Many Were Never Told
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:45 PM PST - 22 comments

"Current Boeing employee here – I will save you waiting two years for the NTSB report to come out and give it to you for free: the reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeings own records." In two comments on an aviation blog, someone claiming to be a Boeing employee details the exact steps leading to door plug bolts not being installed on an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9. The Seattle Times investigated and called the account convincing.
posted by clawsoon at 7:55 PM PST - 44 comments

The Most FUTURISTIC Conveyor Belt Sushi Restaurant [17m] may not be about exactly that, but it is about a very futuristic suchi restaurant that has a lot of ways to order and then your food just magically appears. And at prices that feel unimaginable in the US today, so inexpensive! A fun little food adventure.
posted by hippybear at 7:10 PM PST - 17 comments

If you’ve tried to find a therapist recently who fits your specific needs, takes your insurance and has an immediate opening, you already know it can be as rare as an orca spotting. But just how hard is it? The Seattle Times tried reaching 400 different therapists to find out. (archive)
posted by ShooBoo at 4:03 PM PST - 26 comments

Melanie Safka passes away at 76. She became famous as a singer at Woodstock and her song about that, was a top ten hit. She was symbolic of her time and now she is gone.
posted by pyramid termite at 2:51 PM PST - 50 comments

NEW LIGHT ON THE GROUP PORTRAIT OF ELIHU YALE, HIS FAMILY, AND AN ENSLAVED CHILD (Yale Center for British Art): “ What follows is an explanation of why this change was made and a description of the ongoing research into the picture previously titled Elihu Yale; William Cavendish, the second Duke of Devonshire; Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and an Enslaved Servant, referred to here by its accession number, B1970.1.” [more inside]
posted by bq at 1:18 PM PST - 23 comments

Janikka Perry never made it home from her shift at the bakery of a supercenter in Arkansas. At age 38, Janikka Perry died of a heart attack at work, on her bakery shift at Walmart in North Little Rock, Arkansas, but you will not find her death recorded by OSHA as workplace-related. The New Republic‘s investigation has revealed that while Walmart touts an enlightened approach to time off, it expects associates to work while sick, or in Perry’s case, deathly ill. “The store was short-staffed, and her manager allegedly told her to ‘pull herself together.’”
posted by JonathanB at 12:33 PM PST - 20 comments

Jon Stewart Returns to ‘Daily Show’ as Monday Host, Executive Producer [Variety]

After scuttling a months-long search for a new host, the Paramount Global network said it has enlisted Jon Stewart, who presided over the late-night mainstay’s most popular era, to serve as its host on Monday nights throughout the 2024 election cycle and to run the program. He is expected to play an oversight role at “Daily” that could extend through 2025, and will start his on-air duties February 12. Various “Daily Show” correspondents will host the program Tuesday through Thursday nights, and Jen Flanz, the current executive producer, will continue her duties on the show.

This news comes on the heels of The Problem with Jon Stewart's unexpected Apple TV+ cancellation over "creative differences" after an incisive two-season run, following a hiatus Stewart spent pursuing filmmaking, animal rescue (and animal rescue), and fighting for first responders. Weekly guest hosts following the 2022 departure of Trevor Noah included Leslie Jones, Wanda Sykes, D.L. Hughley, Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman, Hasan Minhaj, Marlon Wayans, Kal Penn, Al Franken, John Leguizamo, Roy Wood, Jr., Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic, Dulcé Sloan, Michael Kosta, Ronny Chieng, Desus Nice, Charlamagne Tha God, and Michelle Wolf.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:26 PM PST - 48 comments

Why Are Young Liberals So Depressed? Because they have reason to be would be the first answer. But there's perhaps more to think about. "Some of it might be selection effect, with progressive politics becoming a more congenial home for people who are miserable. But I think some of it is poor behavior by adult progressives, many of whom now valorize depressive affect as a sign of political commitment. The thing about depression, though, is that it’s bad. Separate from the Smith/Levitz project of arguing about recent political trends, I think we need some kind of society-level cognitive behavioral therapy to convince people that whatever it is they are worried about, depression is not the answer. Because it never is."
posted by storybored at 11:37 AM PST - 58 comments

The White House has its own pharmacy—and, boy, was it shady under Trump [Ars Technica] [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:07 AM PST - 61 comments

Respectable reviewers were aghast. Martin Amis’s infamous and vinegary assessment in The Observer set the tone: “By page 20 the rats are slurping up the sleeping baby after the brave bow-wow has fought to the death to save its charge… enough to make a rodent retch, undeniably—and enough to make any human pitch the book aside.” When Herbert went to his local W.H. Smith’s to ask if they had a copy, he was told, “no, and nor were they likely to.” [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:30 AM PST - 27 comments

When she had started that process of probing the Bitcoin ecosystem, Meiklejohn had seen her work almost as anthropology: What were people doing with bitcoin? How many of them were saving the cryptocurrency versus spending it? But as her initial findings began to unfold, she had started to develop a much more specific goal, one that ran exactly counter to crypto-anarchists’ idealized notion of bitcoin as the ultimate privacy-preserving currency of the dark web: She aimed to prove, beyond any doubt, that bitcoin transactions could very often be traced. Even when the people involved thought they were anonymous. from How a 27-year-old busted the myth of Bitcoin’s anonymity
posted by chavenet at 12:46 AM PST - 31 comments

“One time I did three classes in one day: a 6 a.m. and a 7 a.m., then I went to work, then there was traffic in L.A. so I was like, ‘Let me just go do a Barry’s at night.'"
posted by folklore724 at 10:55 PM PST - 20 comments

A 500-Page Book Explores the Japanese Folkloric Tradition of the Supernatural Yōkai Entities.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:36 PM PST - 7 comments

A Denver Pastor who runs Victorious Grace Church has been civily indicted on fraud for selling INDXcoin which cannot be cashed out. “One of two things have happened,” Mr. Regalado said, “One: Either I misheard God and every one of you who prayed and came in, you as well, or two: God is still not done with this project and he’s going to do a new thing.” Gift link via NYTimes.
posted by Word_Salad at 6:04 PM PST - 64 comments

WikiFlix is a tool to browse and search the films uploaded to the Wikimedia Commons. Created by Magnus Manske, and inspired by Sandra Fauconnier's project, it is a companion to WikiVibes, which is a similar tool for songs. Among the movies on offer are classics like Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon and a whole bunch of Chaplin.
posted by Kattullus at 2:58 PM PST - 7 comments

Michael Kruse, writing in Politico, ‘This to Him Is the Grand Finale’: Donald Trump’s 50-Year Mission to Discredit the Justice System, is a VERY long read that begins with the Trumps being sued for racist rental properties in the early Seventies and being defended by Roy Cohn, and moves forward decade by decade and provides a LOT of really interesting and necessary context for what we will be seeing happen this year in various courts around the country. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:20 PM PST - 26 comments

She was pressured into convicting a man she believed was innocent —and was haunted by remorse. Three decades later, she did something about it. [more inside]
posted by zinon at 11:03 AM PST - 23 comments

On the 19th anniversary of the original animated epic, Avatar: The Last Airbender returns adapted into live action for the second time. Here is its trailer. [more inside]
posted by Atreides at 10:39 AM PST - 58 comments

Oppenheimer 13, Poor Things 11, Killers of the Flower Moon 10 ... There were so many wonderful movies last year! [more inside]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:28 AM PST - 157 comments

In her in-the-making series of four episodes, Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, audio-documentarian Jess Shane investigates ethics and power in non-fiction storytelling: here's an introductory 27-minute commentary-less edit, otherwise ep 1 and ep2, and its rss feed. [more inside]
posted by progosk at 8:24 AM PST - 2 comments

GALZ XYPHER, a cypher by Cocona, Maya, Harvey, and Jurin, the four rappers of Japanese k-pop breakout group XG, who usually sing in English but here rap in English, Japanese and Korean.
posted by signal at 5:16 AM PST - 8 comments

In the summer of 2021, as Chinatowns continued to grapple with the fallout of the dramatic decline in business brought on by the pandemic and an alarming rise in xenophobia and racism against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, the National Trust for Historic Preservation worked with Karen Yee, a graduate researcher studying at the University of Maryland, to develop a tool and research ways to identify, elevate, and preserve these treasured places that tell Chinese American history. Part of this story involves gentrification, of course, from New York to San Francisco.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:14 AM PST - 30 comments

Organized crime is mining sand from rivers and coasts to feed demand worldwide, ruining ecosystems and communities. Can it be stopped? Maybe, like so: Sandy Fingerprints Trace Supply Sources
posted by chavenet at 1:54 AM PST - 18 comments

New comedy starring Mawaan Rizwan about a young Pakistani British gay man navigating his relationship with his boyfriend and his family.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:51 AM PST - 3 comments

Welcome to the secret world of competitive arm-wrestling, where big biceps don’t necessarily equal success and whose enthusiasts variously compare it to chess, ju-jitsu and geometry It’s dimly lit beneath the State Highway One flyover in Victoria Park, in downtown Auckland, but the bridge keeps the rain off, the concrete is flat for their tables and the night-time views of the Sky Tower are beautiful. Even on wet wintry nights, the Auckland Armbenders can find themselves sharing the busy park with fire dancers, bagpipers and basketballers - and every so often, someone wandering past will ask them what the hell they are doing and can they have a go too?
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:50 AM PST - 5 comments

"Space is a harsh, incredibly forbidding domain. It can play with the mind" Not everyone on a space mission is subject to the same rigorous tests as others - this assymetry between professional astronutters and mad scientists was once put to the test when one of the latter, Taylor Gun-Jin Wang, couldn't get his experiment to work - and spiralled into a deep funk... especially when the boss told him to not waste time trying to fix it...
posted by bookbook at 9:38 PM PST - 27 comments

For decades, Scott Frank earned up to three hundred thousand dollars a week rewriting other people’s screenplays—from “Saving Private Ryan” to “The Ring.”
posted by folklore724 at 7:19 PM PST - 45 comments

I suspect BetterHelp therapists feel pressure to help quickly— in order keep up their caseload and avoid being ghosted on a platform where patients are encouraged to provide a star rating for each session.

The interviewer said I could start seeing patients once I completed a background check by a third-party service and completed a quiz I would receive shortly by email. The quiz included six easy multiple choice questions about psychotherapy, followed by a prompt to write a response to a female patient’s initial written request for therapy. The interviewer said no one she screened had ever failed it. The background check was completed quickly.
posted by spamandkimchi at 6:08 PM PST - 31 comments

After another successful Kickstarter, today sees the premiere of Hanging With Doctor Z Season 3, with guest Kevin Pollack! Nox Aeternum posted the first three episodes here back in 2021, and all the episodes can be seen on the show's Youtube channel. Here's the show's website! [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 3:12 PM PST - 10 comments

Back in 2008, Tom Waits went out on a tour [Wikipedia]. Not related to an album, this was a tour all about the atmosphere. "Tom Waits - Glitter And Doom Concert Experience [1h46m] is a compilation of professional footage and fan films to reconstruct an entire Tom Waits concert from his "Glitter and Doom Tour" of 2008. I used all the released soundboard audio that had footage to accompany it to make a concert film that should make a good experience of what it would have been like being in the audience." Set list in video description.
posted by hippybear at 8:12 AM PST - 21 comments

The Trump movement is turning America fascist w/Jeff Sharlet The Chris Hedges Report on The Real News Network An interview based on Jeff Sharlet's new book: Undertow; Scenes From a Slow Civil War. [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 5:36 AM PST - 235 comments

Divination is a way of revealing otherwise unknowable and unobtainable information about important matters. But interestingly, diviners are not often considered to be the ones who possess this information. They are skilled technicians who can read what’s hidden elsewhere: in the cards, the tea leaves, the entrails—or the algorithms. [CW: entrails, woo]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:00 AM PST - 21 comments

Dungeons and Dragons? Scrabble? Wordle? Animal Crossing? Tabletop Role Playing Games? Board games? Chess? Go? Some other game of any kind? Or a game you've made, on your own or in a team, for work, fun or personal satisfaction? Or talk about anything and everything in your life and your world as this is your free thread. [more inside]
posted by Wordshore at 2:36 AM PST - 204 comments

What a concatenation of memories, then, strung itself together when I read Ken’s name in Raritan! The individual links in the chain are surprisingly vivid, but put them together and the result is as jumbled as a dream. As one gets older, dreams and memories become increasingly indistinguishable anyway. The occasions mashed together or juxtaposed; the different roles I was playing; the varied fields of knowledge, each with its distinct vocabulary and bibliography, each impinging on my life from a different direction, each with its own kind of urgency: had this congeries been in abeyance for the decade that had elapsed from 2006 to 2016? from The Trembling Web and the Storage Facility by Rachel Hadas
posted by chavenet at 12:32 AM PST - 1 comment

Bizarre Fossils Are Neither Plant Nor Animal, But a Weird Fusion of Life. Euglenids are a group of unicellular eukaryotes that gain energy through both photosynthesis, like a plant, and through consuming other beings, like an animal. These aquatic organisms split off from other eukaryotes roughly a billion years ago, and yet their fossil record for all that time on Earth is scarce. Now, an international team of scientists argues that they have found ancient Euglenid fossils hiding in "an extensive paper trail" of already published scientific research. For years, the shell-like fossils were misidentified as possible worm eggs, algal cysts, or fern spores, partly because of their tiny circular 'ribs' on the inside.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:44 PM PST - 8 comments

WorldCon 2023 is long over and the Hugo Winners were announced back in October, after a controversy involving boycotts from some creators in protest of the Uighur minority persecuted by China, and the invitation of Sergey Lukyanenko as a guest of honor. When the list of award nominees came out, there were some curious absences, specifically R. F. Kuang’s Babel, previously considered a front runner. There were suspicions that some works had been removed from contention for political reasons. The nomination statistics for the awards have been released (this is required by the Worldcon charter if I understand correctly) and they are not just curious, they are super hinky and the math literally doesn’t add up. Blockbuster analysis with links to additional commentary here by Cora Buhlert. [more inside]
posted by bq at 6:24 PM PST - 240 comments

So this isn't an audience bootleg, but it isn't a pro-shot video. What it is, is a single camera direct-on shot of this 25th Anniversary production by Washington D.C.'s Shakespeare Theater Company of The Secret Garden [2h], based on the book by Francis Hodgson Burnett [Wikipedia, Archive.org], music and book by Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman [Wikipedia]. It's a beautiful production, the static shot works fine, and it features Tony Award winner Daisy Eagen, who won for playing Mary Lennox in the first production, as Martha in this performance along with many other excellent performers. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:23 PM PST - 5 comments

Exit DeSantis. Florida governor Ron DeSantis ended his campaign and endorsed Trump just before the New Hampshire primary. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 12:31 PM PST - 182 comments

In July 2022, YouTube channel Auto Shenanigans started a new series called Secrets of the Motorway. With the posting of part 3 of the M25, the series is now complete, and we have 80 short videos about every motorway in mainland Britain. [more inside]
posted by YoungStencil at 9:21 AM PST - 17 comments

Margaret Cavendish's multiverse science fiction from 1666 predates Mary Shelly, Jules Verne and Marvel by more than a century. She also published books of poetry under her own name, discussed her science research at the Royal Society, and designed gender neutral clothing that she wore at Queen Mary's court. Samuel Pepy's mentioned her a few times, although he was not a fan.
posted by autopilot at 7:58 AM PST - 15 comments

It's that time of year again... the time I surface and look around with a sigh and a smile having spent 3 weeks immersed in the Best of 2023 lists from Headphone Commute. As resolutely restrained in its format and delivery (12 unranked lists, albums released in 2023 only, shared sporadically from the 1st January onwards) as it is particular in its choice of genre names, if you can get past the whimsical titles you'll find a treasure-trove of new pathways and inroads to stunning ambient / instrumental / experimental / electronic / modern-classical music. [more inside]
posted by protorp at 4:23 AM PST - 13 comments

Secret plan against Germany is an investigative report by German magazine Correctiv about a meeting near Potsdam where Neo-Nazis and members of far-right political party Alternative für Deutschland met to talk about plans for mass deportations from Germany. These plans, and and other fascistic ideas discussed, have led to calls to ban the party altogether. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has called these plans an attack on German democracy and this weekend around three hundred thousand people in Germany marched in protest.
posted by Kattullus at 3:50 AM PST - 24 comments

What Caused the Mysterious Extinction of Gigantopithecus, the World's Largest Ape? The massive primates were unable to shift their diet to keep pace with a changing climate, according to a new study, forcing them to eat less nutritious bark and twigs. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:23 AM PST - 8 comments

Romanticists need to accept that the nobility of suffering has always been a coping mechanism — a way to sustain hope through the long twilight of apparent futility. And they need to accept that heroism is always inherently self-destroying — that saving the world requires that the world is worth having been saved. And they must at least try to understand that in a more general sense, happiness isn’t truly shallow — it just has a different kind of depth. from Toward a shallower future
posted by chavenet at 1:51 AM PST - 29 comments

Pinocchio is a Story About Art and God [45m] is Jacob Geller's latest video. It draws from a great number of the popular Pinocchio depictions from the original novel to the Lies Of P. I think the title is pretty self-explanatory. I hope you watch and enjoy.
posted by hippybear at 4:13 PM PST - 21 comments

Population rebound for critically endangered truffle-loving WA marsupial. Woylies play an important part in the Australian ecosystem but their numbers dwindled because of foxes and feral cats. Now, conservationists are seeing signs of a comeback.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:05 AM PST - 4 comments

"Most previous studies have used two-element (setup and punch line) jokes as stimuli and have been based on an experimental design and cross-material methods, such as comparisons of funny jokes with nonfunny nonjokes, as well as comparisons of material with incongruity and resolution with material that has incongruity but no resolution (i.e., a comparison of joke types between sentences) ... Furthermore, previous studies have mainly conducted comparisons in the two elements of setup and punch line to clarify the process of humor processing. The main contribution of this study lies in its use of a specific three-element joke." [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 10:37 AM PST - 54 comments

Howard Waldrop, award winning speculative fiction author of stories such as The Ugly Chickens and Night of the Cooters died on 14 January age 77. Waldrop was a true original and wrote many short stories that often played with alternative history or remixes of other SF and fantasy stories by drawing on a large and eclectic knowledge of history and genre. He never achieved wide popularity but he was well known and appreciated within the SFF community. [more inside]
posted by crocomancer at 7:54 AM PST - 35 comments

Inventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85. Dave Mills created NTP, the protocol that holds the temporal Internet together, in 1985. [more inside]
posted by lewiseason at 7:27 AM PST - 52 comments

One possible reason grifts seem to have proliferated is elite overproduction, specifically elite overproduction of extroverts. There's an ongoing debate over whether or not people skills are undervalued, and perhaps for many people they are, but it's hard to deny that there are many, many more ways for someone who doesn't like social interaction much to get rich. If ads and sales are on the same continuum, then the world's best salespeople are engineers, data scientists, and product managers. from A Theory of Grift
posted by chavenet at 1:59 AM PST - 26 comments

Steven Morris (The Guardian, 01/01/2024), "Cerne Abbas giant is Hercules and was army meeting point, say historians" (archive.org). Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos (Speculum, Jan. 2024), "The Cerne Giant in Its Early Medieval Context" (PDF): "This huge, naked figure was cut into a Dorset hillside not, as many have supposed, in prehistory, nor in the early modern period, but in the early Middle Ages ... In this article, we propose an explanation for when and why he was originally cut as an image of Hercules." Hercules in the Old English Liber Monstrorum. Hercules in an Old English dream book. Hercules in Ælfric's Lives of Saints. Previouslies: 2021. 2019, 2007, and also 2007.
posted by Wobbuffet at 12:49 AM PST - 19 comments

The government of Newfoundland and Labrador has been pursuing a Resettlement policy of drawing in the tentacles of its reach, so the limited tax bucks can get better bangs - as defined by levelling payment per tax-payer. Recent case in point is Gaultois; a tiny settlement on a biggish (½ the size of Nantucket) island off the South coast of Newfoundland. In Spring 2023, a 64% majority of the stake-holders voted to accept an offer of ~$250,000 CAD each to leave their home. Not reaching the threshold of 75% meant that nobody could claim the resettlement grant. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:55 PM PST - 19 comments

'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley. (slyt. 2:23) via: a kid with a camera
posted by clavdivs at 8:08 PM PST - 32 comments

The About Science Series Collection is made up of 75 radio interviews focused on the advancements of science. Produced by the California Institute of Technology, the series aired on KPPC* in Pasadena from 1966 to 1968 ... Each half-hour episode introduced one or more experts who examined a specific area of interest. Episodes like “About lead in the atmosphere” and “About developments in family planning” provide a unique lens into the technological, political, social, and environmental concerns of the time. Many episodes shed light on advancements that have only become more relevant today, such as “About computer languages,” “About international cooperation in space,” and “About ocean pollution.” [more inside]
posted by mykescipark at 7:30 PM PST - 3 comments

The genes which protected our ancestors from cattle diseases now raise the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS). There are about twice as many cases of multiple sclerosis per 100,000 people in north-western Europe, including the UK and Scandinavia, compared with southern Europe. Researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Copenhagen and Oxford spent more than 10 years delving into archaeology to investigate why. They discovered that genes which increase the risk of MS entered into north-western Europe about 5,000 years ago via a massive migration of cattle herders called Yamnaya. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:03 PM PST - 11 comments

When Disco Ruled The World [1h]
I Was There When House Took Over the World [40m]
We Call It Techno! [1h40m]
Techno City: What is Detroit Techno? [36m]
Idris Elba's How Clubbing Changed The World [1h40m]
posted by hippybear at 6:05 PM PST - 5 comments

So I mean it when I say that I am going to outlive every man I will marry. It is a fact, familial, but it is also a feeling.
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:49 PM PST - 29 comments

Sure you can get your video game lore fix from Dark Souls or Halo, but why not Enter the Danceverse and start your journey down the rabbit hole of the Just Dance Universe, where the perfection obsessed Night Swan battles Mihaly, Brezziana and others the for control of the many worlds of the Danceverse.
posted by PenDevil at 12:28 PM PST - 3 comments

"Got tired of having [the trolley problem] conversation over and over again so I just spent way too much time making this." [SLMastoImageLink, via your friends in IWW IU 520, Railroad Workers.) [more inside]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:28 AM PST - 57 comments

Condé Nast is folding Pitchfork into GQ, with layoffs (NYT). Sports Illustrated lays off most of its staff, threatening iconic brand’s future (WaPo)
posted by box at 9:47 AM PST - 82 comments

Old'aVista: The most powerful guide to the old Internet (via, h/t)
posted by May Kasahara at 7:00 AM PST - 27 comments

In March 1945 the air force may have bombed a southern right whale from the air after mistaking it for a submarine. An article from the Wagga Daily Advertiser in March 1945, reports the air force examined the southern right whale carcass and confirmed it had been hit by an aerial bomb after likely being mistaken for a submarine.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:09 AM PST - 25 comments

There was something else, too, harder to explain. I often felt as though I’d made contact with a deeper order. I would have been ashamed to describe it, this sense that—whatever any editor’s conscious agenda—we might all be making edits to a vast, intricate work whose meaning we could not perceive. from The Hofmann Wobble by Ben Lerner [Harper's; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:14 AM PST - 25 comments

Red Means Recording pulls out the OP-1 to produce a new drum n bass track and discuss, in bursts of large white letters, the ups and downs of their year. Show up for the sick beats, stick around for the poignant reflections.
posted by kaibutsu at 6:03 PM PST - 16 comments

"It turns out that regular cells—not just highly specialized brain cells such as neurons—have the ability to store information and act on it. Now Levin has shown that the cells do so by using subtle changes in electric fields as a type of memory. These revelations have put the biologist at the vanguard of a new field called basal cognition. Researchers in this burgeoning area have spotted hallmarks of intelligence—learning, memory, problem-solving—outside brains as well as within them."
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:52 PM PST - 58 comments

"Should everyone in America pay to subsidize the ability of a segment of our population to live in places that are, objectively speaking, stupid to live in, because they are very likely to be burned up or washed away or underwater in the near future?” Hamilton Nolan, The Insurance Apocalypse Conversation America Won't Have.
posted by mittens at 1:58 PM PST - 96 comments

Where the drop in severe-COVID incidence is clear and prominent, the drop in long-COVID cases is neither as certain nor as significant. Plenty of new cases of the chronic condition are still appearing with each passing wave—even as millions of people who developed it in years past continue to suffer its long-term effects. In a way, the shrinking of severe disease has made long COVID’s dangers more stark: Nowadays, “long COVID to me still feels like the biggest risk for most people,” Matt Durstenfeld, a cardiologist at UC San Francisco, told me—in part because it does not spare the young and healthy as readily as severe disease does. Acute disease, by definition, eventually comes to a close; as a chronic condition, long COVID means debilitation that, for many people, may never fully end. And that lingering burden, more than any other, may come to define what living with this virus long term will cost.
posted by folklore724 at 1:08 PM PST - 33 comments

First you came for the periodic table of visualization methods, now stay for the Interactive Homage to Ben Shneiderman
posted by chavenet at 12:35 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Sub Berlin - The Story of Tresor [1h24m, mixed language with embedded English subtitles] is a 2012 documentary about the Berlin nightclub [Wikipedia] that started before the Wall came down, and was one of the defining actors in the evolution of Techno in the early Nineties.
posted by hippybear at 12:31 PM PST - 5 comments

Social Networking site Ello, is no more. [more inside]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 8:50 AM PST - 51 comments

Josh Drummond takes a harder look at Substack content, and departs for Ghost.
posted by Shepherd at 6:27 AM PST - 52 comments

This is not to say that there is no climatological mystery to be explained. The countries of northern Europe do indeed have curiously mild climates, a phenomenon I didn't really appreciate until I moved from Liverpool to New York. I arrived in the Big Apple just before a late-summer heat wave, at a time when the temperature soared to around 35 degrees Celsius. I had never endured such blistering temperatures. And just a few months later I was awestruck by the sensation of my nostrils freezing when I went outside. Nothing like that happens in England, where the average January is 15 to 20 degrees warmer than what prevails at the same latitude in eastern North America. So what keeps my former home so balmy in the winter? And why do so many people credit the Gulf Stream? from The Source of Europe's Mild Climate
posted by chavenet at 1:10 AM PST - 46 comments

U dance team 'elated' after 22nd national championship and online attention A sequence in the choreography took the dancers through a long series of one-legged spins, ending with all 20 dancers flipping an aerial turn in unison. "That's a hard skill to get on, with 20 people on the floor," Tumbleson said. The dancers and coaches initially planned that only a few dancers would execute the aerial, but the team decided to choreograph the routine with all the dancers making the flying turns. Story here [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 9:19 PM PST - 24 comments

Peter Schickele, aka Professor Schickele, Head of the Department of Musical Pathology at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, sometimes performing as P.D.Q. Bach, the "pimple on the face of music," longtime host of the public radio show Schickele Mix, died yesterday at his home in Bearsville, NY. He was 88.
posted by gauche at 5:59 PM PST - 110 comments

For older women with money, it’s yes to love but ‘I don’t’ to marriage. Money is, of course, only one of many considerations. But for many, the answer is clear: Date, fall in love, even live together. But make it legal? No thank you.
posted by Toddles at 5:50 PM PST - 78 comments

Warning: sharp, startling static sounds

Turns out if you crash a GBA game and wait a couple hours, it will start singing the entire content of its memory to you: Dumping the ROM of a GBA game by crashing it
posted by cortex at 1:43 PM PST - 19 comments

"Sail with the first fair wind, approach the unknown coast, march through the unknown country, and attack the unknown cities of the most potent nation of the universe”. You may remember David Hume from your Philosophy 101 class, (or perhaps Bruce's Philosopher Song) but did you know about his military career? [more inside]
posted by Ishbadiddle at 1:30 PM PST - 19 comments

SCOTUSblog: Supreme Court to hear major case on power of federal agencies

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument on Wednesday in a case involving the deference that courts should give to federal agencies’ interpretations of the laws that they administer. From health care to finance to environmental pollutants, administrative agencies use highly trained experts to interpret and carry out federal laws. Although the case may sound technical, it is one of the most closely watched cases of the court’s current term [...] The doctrine at the center of the case is known as the Chevron doctrine. It is named after the Supreme Court’s 1984 opinion in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council [...] Justice John Paul Stevens set out a two-part test for courts to review an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers. The court must first determine whether Congress has directly addressed the question at the center of the case. If it has not, the court must uphold the agency’s interpretation of the statute as long as it is reasonable. [...] it became one of the most significant rulings on federal administrative law, cited by federal courts more than 18,000 times. At the same time, Chevron has been a target for conservatives, who contend that courts – rather than federal agencies – should say what the law means.

Politico: Conservative justices seem poised to weaken power of federal agencies | NYT: A Potentially Huge Supreme Court Case Has a Hidden Conservative Backer | Vox: The Supreme Court's new “Chevron” case threatens to sow chaos throughout the government
posted by Rhaomi at 12:11 PM PST - 44 comments

Research confirms that search is getting worse. We all feel it. Some scientists have measured it. "We can conclude that higher-ranked pages are on average more optimized, more monetized with affiliate marketing, and they show signs of lower text quality." Link above is to an article on The Register. Link to original paper.
posted by moonmoth at 10:50 AM PST - 96 comments

Either the wildest success story ever or an elaborate scam: One man’s wild journey from prison and gangs to high finance.
posted by chavenet at 2:50 AM PST - 12 comments

What happens if you have a bar, sort of in the middle of nowhere, that becomes a really popular local music spot with a super loyal local crew, but then that grows and everything begins to blossom beyond your expectations? The Pomp Room: A Rock N Roll Bar Story [1h40m] is set in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, covers decades, and was bigger than you think.
posted by hippybear at 8:05 PM PST - 13 comments

What's the smartest animal in the bush? Bettongs, chuditch, quendas and antechinus as well as possums, skinks, kangaroos and echidnas were put through their paces to see which Australian native animals could complete puzzles left in bushland.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:00 PM PST - 7 comments

Determined not to let parenthood rob them of their raving days, ten years ago Hannah Saunders and Natasha Morabito had a revelation. They decided that no, they weren’t done with raving. They’d just have to do it differently. [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:13 PM PST - 36 comments

The global median life expectancy is 72 years old. As part of a photographic project looking at the global community of over 60s we take a look at the lives of a diverse group of people in later life. A photo essay by Ed Kashi, Ilvy Njiokiktjien, and Sara Terry in The Guardian.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:18 PM PST - 18 comments

Everything you need to propose and implement a CO2 monitor lending program for your community's library.
posted by aniola at 11:21 AM PST - 6 comments

Wish you could revisit New York's Tower Records circa 2005, or San Francisco's Sutro Baths before it was demolished in 1964? Disappointed Tourist is a series of paintings by Ellen Harvey depicting places that no longer exist. Some reach as far back as Ireland's prehistoric rainforest or the City of Troy; others are painfully recent. Each painting is nominated by someone who cares about that place. [more inside]
posted by Miko at 9:54 AM PST - 38 comments

Dorothy Gambrell of Cat and Girl (which has been running for almost 25 years now... pre·vi·ous·ly) has a new comic reflecting "on being listed in the court document of artists whose work was used to train Midjourney with 4,000 of my closest friends and Willem de Kooning." [more inside]
posted by nightcoast at 9:36 AM PST - 81 comments

"Bobi", world's oldest dog, stripped of title Bobi, who passed away in October at the alleged old age of 31, has been stripped of his "World's Oldest Dog" title as questions swirl about the legitimacy of the claim. Interested parties (me) can confirm that whether or not he lived to the ripe old age of 31, Bobi was a good boy. (previously and previouslier)
posted by dis_integration at 8:53 AM PST - 18 comments

"As an artist, he dissolved into his work: not quite absenting himself, or not only that, but diffusing himself throughout. He moved in the direction of creating, let's say, systems that would self-generate music, or that he could switch on and switch off, with which he could engage and disengage. Once the system was in place, his job was to assemble its players and feed it bits of input. 'All I did,' he said in his autobiography regarding Bitches Brew (1970) and Live-Evil (1971), 'was get everyone together and write a few things.'" Ben Ratliff on the electric music of Miles Davis (NYRB; ungated). [more inside]
posted by Gerald Bostock at 8:48 AM PST - 18 comments

New York State isn't just The Big Apple and far-right extremist groups are common in many rural areas. North Country Public Radio takes a look at the various extremist groups that are thriving in areas far the the NYC metro area. This story is part of their podcast on far-right extremism called 'If All Else Fails.'
posted by tommasz at 7:34 AM PST - 27 comments

The old way the music industry used to work was: a band would be discovered and signed to a contract. Over the course of two, three, four albums the band would be given the chance to develop and grow and see if they connect with an audience. This system worked complete gangbusters for music promoter Don Kirshner and a supergroup of local musicians, witness -- Kansas: Miracles Out of Nowhere [1h16m]. It's both a fascinating look at the industry from a band's perspective, and also a reminder about how brilliant this American prog band really was.
posted by hippybear at 7:20 AM PST - 18 comments

How Trump went from disgraced insurrectionist to Iowa caucus winner - "By most accounts, the Republican old guard has no great fondness for the man who executed a hostile takeover of their party, saddled them with daily political headaches during his time in office, and then instigated an insurrection that nearly got some GOP leaders pummeled, if not killed. Yet McConnell and his allies have proven incapable of steering their party in another direction." (via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 4:56 AM PST - 161 comments

Fossils Reveal a Possible New Tyrannosaur Species, the Closest Relative of T. Rex.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:57 AM PST - 7 comments

In professional horse racing, it takes a fraction of a second for a race to change course entirely, so if a bettor can spot that a horse in second place is making a late charge before anyone else, they can place a bet on it winning when the odds are more favourable. from The Horse, the Drone and the Epic Fight for Gambling Success [Wired; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:48 AM PST - 12 comments

Favorite Dance Moves. Ed People gets people to show their favorite dance moves from all around the world.
posted by storybored at 5:25 PM PST - 19 comments

Dr. King's "I have been to the mountaintop speech." 'The Journey Of A Civil Rights Icon: Rare Photos Of Martin Luther King Jr.'
posted by clavdivs at 2:07 PM PST - 11 comments

The state of Iowa is in a state of emergency today, with candidates and voters alike beset by a bitterly cold winter storm bringing wind chills of 20-below to the pivotal first-in-the-nation caucuses. Former President Trump maintains his fanatical hold on the field, besting his nearest rivals by record margins despite (or perhaps because of) his multiple indictments and flirtations with fascism. In his wake, late-breaking establishment favorite Nikki Haley vies for second place with a floundering Ron DeSantis, who risks joining Pence, Christie, Ramaswamy, and various other also-rans. The Democrats, meanwhile, are largely sitting this one out -- thanks to the embarrassment of the 2020 contest (and a push from President Biden), their first primary will take place February 3rd -- in South Carolina. The caucusing starts tonight at 7 PM Central Time (1 AM UTC), with results about an hour later; follow the NPR live blog for the latest updates. [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 2:05 PM PST - 72 comments

People lose millions of items at airports each year. Follow the journey of the stuff from found in Seattle to sold in Alabama or auctioned in Pittsburgh. Inside Airport: Lost & Found [NatGeo, 45m] is a fascinating look at just how hard so many people work to try to reunite lost objects with the travelers who left them behind. Also, what happens to objects that can't be returned?
posted by hippybear at 10:45 AM PST - 25 comments

Karen Puzzles is a delightful Youtube channel about puzzles and competitive puzzling, including participating and commentating on the 2023 World Jigsaw Puzzle Championship.
posted by roaring beast at 9:52 AM PST - 10 comments

Brainy quiz show University Challenge gets pedantic over the difference between drum 'n' bass and jungle, and Nathan Filer calls for remixes of Amol Rajan's insistence that "We need jungle I'm afraid!!" The internet responds. My favourites: One Two Three Four. Amol explains his delight at going viral.
posted by mokey at 8:25 AM PST - 44 comments

BBC Micro bot runs your Mastodon toot on an 8-bit computer emulator and replies with a video. Toot-sized programs are written in BBC BASIC - a language created by Sophie Wilson in 1981 for the BBC Micro.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:17 AM PST - 16 comments

Learning lessons from Black Summer, these Gippsland locals are planting fire-wise gardens. East Gippsland communities hit by the Black Summer bushfires are planting trees with low flammability to reduce the risk of radiant heat and embers destroying homes and other assets.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:04 AM PST - 6 comments

"Start Often, Finish Rarely": "start as many things as you have the ability, interest, and capacity to, with no regard or goal whatsoever for finishing those projects..... You can be finished with your project whenever you decide to be done with it. And 'done' can mean anything you want it to be. Whose standards of completion or perfection are you holding yourself to anyway? Forget about those! Something is done when you say it is. When it's no longer interesting. When you've gotten a sufficient amount of entertainment and experience from it. When you've learned enough from it. Whatever, whenever. Done is what you say it is." A bit of inspiration, for the subset of us who'll find it helpful. Related: the No Maintenance Intended badge.
posted by brainwane at 5:28 AM PST - 37 comments

... has now been announced. The series itself is promised "soon". In the past few weeks Britain's Channel 4 has also aired the latest New Year Treat and Champion of Champions specials. If you're outside the UK, I'm sure you can find them somewhere online, but I don't know where. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 5:03 AM PST - 43 comments

We share the following sample of 24 abstracts here as an invitation [SLPDF], should anyone wish to develop these ideas. Furthermore, abstracts themselves constitute a genre of scholarly communications, the art of which might be developed to make research more accessible, abstracts themselves being situated in front of paywalls. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:05 AM PST - 5 comments

On paper, all streaming platforms are affected by piracy. While it’s hard to put an accurate dollar number on the impact, it’s safe to say that streaming services would have more subscribers if piracy magically disappeared overnight. Not all platforms are hit equally, however. from Could Piracy Help Netflix Win the Streaming Wars? [TorrentFreak] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:39 AM PST - 46 comments

Who are the friends, the people (or sometimes non-people), who really matter to you? Your bestie from a long way back? Someone you met in middle age or at a record fair? A school friend? Your partner? A relative? Your pet? A work colleague or neighbour? A digital construct? A dispenser of advice? Or talk about anything and everything in your life and your world as this is your free thread.
posted by Wordshore at 12:03 AM PST - 82 comments

"With this desperation comes an openness to the idea that what we've done so far isn't enough." An brutally honest interview of Andreas Malm* on how it feels when "the enemy has never ceased to be victorious – and it's more victorious than ever" in this stage of the climate crisis. Gift link to the NYTimes article. *author of “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” and now co-author of “Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown.”
posted by coffeecat at 8:16 PM PST - 25 comments

This 288-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Scrap of Skin Is the World's Oldest. The remains, found in an Oklahoma cave, belonged to a lizard-like reptile.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:27 PM PST - 3 comments

Biden Administration Unleashes Powerful Regulatory Tool Aimed at Climate The Biden administration’s crackdown on methane leaks from oil wells is based in part on a new powerful policy tool that could strengthen its legal authority to cut greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy — including from cars, power plants, factories and oil refineries. ... [W]ithin the language of the methane rule, E.P.A. economists have tucked a controversial calculation that would give the government legal authority to aggressively limit climate-warming pollution from nearly every smokestack and tailpipe across the country. [more inside]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:24 PM PST - 30 comments

BOOM [6m40s, École des Nouvelles Images] A couple of birds try to save their eggs from a volcanic eruption.
posted by hippybear at 6:10 PM PST - 2 comments

A study in BMJ Oncology last year reported a sharp global rise in cancers in people under 50, with the highest rates in North America, Australia and Western Europe.
posted by folklore724 at 4:06 PM PST - 48 comments

After retiring from a busy university ... I was able follow some of my more extreme inclinations... when choosing a grandson’s gift that I got seriously lost in contemplation of a gleaming chrome unicycle. My wife said “buy the bloody” thing, which I did on the whim of the moment. After months of practice at home ... and finally town roads. I couldn’t avoid being noticed; in turn, I couldn’t avoid observing the form that notice took. Because at the time there were no other unicyclists in the area, such sightings would have been exceptional, yet I soon found that the responses to them were stereotyped and predictable. I realised that this indicated an underlying biological phenomenon and set about its study. Sam Shuster from BMJ. 2007 Dec 22; 335(7633): 1320–1322. [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 2:31 PM PST - 55 comments

Bélizaire and the Frey Children is a rare American portrait of an enslaved Black subject depicted with the family of his enslaver. Jeremy K. Simien, an art collector from Baton Rouge, spent years trying to find “Bélizaire” after seeing an image of it online in 2013, following its restoration, that featured all four figures. (NYT) Intrigued, he kept searching, only to find an earlier image from 2005, after the painting had been de-accessioned by the New Orleans Museum of Art and was listed for auction by Christie’s. It was the same painting, but the Black child was missing. He had been painted out. [more inside]
posted by bq at 2:05 PM PST - 4 comments

Born from marginalized communities, flamenco’s history explores themes of immigrant life, oppression, pride, and injustice,” Flamenco Vivo’s “Comunidad” page explains. But even as Santana champions an art form comprised of Romani, African, Sephardic, and Andalusian traditions, she routinely abuses and discriminates against people of color who work for her, according to lawsuits filed by three former employees. from Famed NYC Flamenco Dance Group Accused of Rampant Racism [Daily Beast]
posted by chavenet at 1:35 PM PST - 2 comments

Star Wars in one 123-meter long infographic by Swiss graphic designer, author and illustrator Martin Panchaud. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:11 PM PST - 19 comments

These entrancing maps capture where the world’s rivers go. When Hungarian cartographer Robert Szucs looked online for a map of the world’s rivers based on their ocean destination, he found nothing on a global scale with high resolution. “It’s like, how does this thing not exist? So, I just instantly put it on my to-do list." [more inside]
posted by rory at 8:03 AM PST - 23 comments

Baseball And The Algorithm: The MLB YouTube channel has posted 291,289 videos. If you had to guess what happens in the video with the very most views, what would you say?
posted by imabanana at 7:57 AM PST - 31 comments

One of Australia's rarest reptiles found in regional Western Australia years after relocation program. An endangered western swamp tortoise was found on a dirt track near Northcliffe.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:33 AM PST - 1 comment

From his flaming skull to the hellfire motorcycle, Ghost Rider, aka the Spirit of Vengeance, became a unique symbol of the Bronze Age, embodying the era’s shift towards complex, flawed characters and more mature themes. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:25 AM PST - 17 comments

Did you know that for a long time, Girl Scouts has openly included transgender and nonbinary individuals in its membership? I first learned of this three years ago while searching for a source for my annual Girl Scout cookie purchase. At that time, a wave of anti-trans sentiment was intensifying, prompting me to seek out transgender Girl Scouts from whom to order. One major benefit of their online ordering system is that it allows for trans girl scouts to sell their cookies with relative privacy and no contact between the scout and the purchaser when it comes to online orders. ... the kids are under attack this year more than ever, so let's give them some joy. Erin Reed on where to get your cookies.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:42 AM PST - 31 comments

The movement is almost entirely caused by a reaction to the deteriorating conditions experienced in core web spaces and services, particularly on social media networks (the combination of social media with social networks). This reaction can be conscious or unconscious, with most individuals being semi-conscious of it. Efforts from peripheral inhabitants to convince core inhabitants to move to the periphery are almost entirely spontaneous and disorganized. The intention is short-sighted, missing any long-term strategy for sustainability or retention of new people within the peripheral web. While there are many social and mental benefits to migration, deeper societal issues are never addressed and are often reproduced in the absence of a sustainable organized effort. from The Yesterweb
posted by chavenet at 2:29 AM PST - 8 comments

I've watched a LOT of stuff related to Barbie. Panels and interviews and contrived videos... but I'm going to say that Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera on Barbie | BFI in conversation [40m] is the single most grounded, real-feeling conversation I've seen. Ryan and America seem to be sitting with a small group of friends talking about this experience they both went through, and it just feels so honest and bare and naked... Hard to describe, great to experience.
posted by hippybear at 6:51 PM PST - 9 comments

The Cheapest Places to Live in 2024. "By moving from where you are to where you could be, it’s easy to cut your monthly rent in half (or double your apartment space), cut your healthcare costs drastically if you’re American, eat out more, and have more fun. You’ll probably discover some positive side effects like eating more fruit and vegetables (because they’re so cheap), getting more exercise (because many foreign cities are more suited to pedestrians), and dialing back your stress (because people aren’t in such a hurry all the time)."
posted by storybored at 6:42 PM PST - 52 comments

Laser-sensor technology reveals ancient cities in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest. The settlements were occupied around 500 BC and 300 to 600 AD — a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:52 PM PST - 9 comments

The Professional Women's Hockey League is now in its second week of operation. Live games can be found on their Youtube channel, including the third period of Boston at Montreal happening right now.
posted by clawsoon at 2:57 PM PST - 15 comments

He spent his life building a $1 million stereo. The real cost was unfathomable. Ken Fritz turned his home into an audiophile’s dream — the world’s greatest hi-fi. What would it mean in the end? [more inside]
posted by bq at 9:24 AM PST - 107 comments

Why watch heads never set the time on their watches.
posted by rory at 7:13 AM PST - 94 comments

New laws aren’t meant to be exciting – but this one could sedate a buffalo.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:34 AM PST - 18 comments

Created by Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, AI-powered news app Artifact is no more. A statement from Systrom on the closure.
posted by mittens at 5:43 AM PST - 9 comments

Macadamias as rare as the Wollemi pine get new national recovery plan. A plan of action is adopted to help save the world's only wild macadamia plants from extinction. Among other reasons, preserving wild macadamias is important in case pathogens like viruses or fungi wipe out the genetic monoculture that is commercially-cultivated macadamias.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:30 AM PST - 1 comment

You want tomorrow to be different than today, and it may seem the same, or worse, but next year will be different than this one, because those tiny increments added up. The tree today looks a lot like the tree yesterday, and so does the baby. A lot of change is undramatic growth, transformation, or decay, or rather its timescale means the drama might not be perceptible to the impatient. from Slow Change Can Be Radical Change by Rebecca Solnit
posted by chavenet at 2:17 AM PST - 13 comments

As fat women, we may be a cheap, tasty snack, not a proper meal, then: the sexual equivalent of junk food. They’ll throw away the wrapper and brush away the crumbs, sated but vaguely disgusted — with both us and themselves — when they are done with us. Our bodies may be desired but deemed low-status, then, rendering us disposable. Fat women are regarded by some men as fuckable but not loveable.
posted by Francies at 12:52 AM PST - 13 comments

This week, the world’s most-skilled Age of Empires II players are gathered in an apartment in Berlin. On Twitch alone, over 30,000 people are watching live.
posted by one for the books at 10:14 PM PST - 12 comments

Voting begins in Taiwan's critical elections watched closely by China - "Polls opened on Saturday in Taiwan's presidential and parliamentary elections which China has framed as a choice between war and peace and are happening as Beijing ramps up pressure to get the island to accept its sovereignty. Taiwan has been a democratic success story since holding its first direct presidential election in 1996, the culmination of decades of struggle against authoritarian rule and martial law."[1,2,3] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:21 PM PST - 13 comments

AI is keeping watch day and night to help protect Australia's forests from bushfires (forest fires). From detecting smoke rising from timber plantations to scanning bushwalkers' photos to assess fuel loads, artificial intelligence is becoming an essential part of protecting the nation's forests.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:16 PM PST - 8 comments

Rockets of the world
posted by chavenet at 2:18 PM PST - 26 comments

I feel like the Rolling Stone article Lily Gladstone Is Seizing the Moment — and Making History manifests Gladstone into the perfect person for right now for me. I haven't seen the film yet, but I've seen some interviews and this article expanded and confirmed a lot to me -- she's a very deliberate actor who is making careful and masterful choices. I can't wait to see what she does next.
posted by hippybear at 1:59 PM PST - 4 comments

Sometimes wrong numbers work. On the East African savanna, Maasai herders can form important new social connections when they misdial their mobile phones, a new study of these communities found. Maasai have traditionally lived in relatively independent, homogeneous groups, but these misdials introduce them to strangers near and far. And some even become friends or business partners. When asked why people use phones this way, one respondent commented, “Good things happen.”
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:39 AM PST - 11 comments

From Futurism: New product listings are appearing on Amazon that appear to be AI-generated, with names like "I'm sorry but I cannot fulfill this request it goes against OpenAI use policy. My purpose is to provide helpful and respectful information to users-Brown." "It raises the question: is anyone at Amazon actually reviewing products that appear on its site?" [more inside]
posted by mittens at 9:30 AM PST - 65 comments

Dr Cat Hicks' Covid Data Log. "I'm not an artist or a designer, but I have this -- writing has always been one of the ways I have to make sense of the world. And truly looking at human experience is to me the highest duty of care that a psychologist has. Maybe someone has been where I was and needs to hear that someone cares. I care a lot. I am lucky to be alive and even more to be loved while I am alive. May you have the same."
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:06 AM PST - 8 comments

Why 'doing your own research' often backfires. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:58 AM PST - 69 comments

As ChatGPT gets “lazy,” people test “winter break hypothesis” as the cause
posted by clawsoon at 7:40 AM PST - 60 comments

Te shares scripts one can use in a medical setting to make it more likely one will get adequate pain medication and mobility devices; other Tumblr writers share additional tips on bringing a patient advocate ("medibuddy"), bringing written notes and defending using notes, etc. "Remember not to use too *much* *correct* medical jargon — they get suspicious about that."
posted by brainwane at 4:54 AM PST - 43 comments

Our results show that, unlike the javelin, the atlatl equalizes the velocity of female- and male-launched projectiles. This result indicates that a javelin to atlatl transition would have promoted a unification, rather than division, of labor. More new research on prehistoric women as hunters. Gender politics as imagined in fiction set in prehistory. Finally, the 'Venus of Willendorf' is always worth consideration. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:43 AM PST - 34 comments

Tonight marks the 125th anniversary of an epic RNLI feat to provide succour to the Forrest Hall a full rigged ship rudderless in the Bristol Channel. With adverse waves at their station, Jack Crocombe, the Coxswain of the Lynmouth lifeboat elected to haul their 10 ton 10 m boat Louisa through the storm, at night, 13 miles = 20 km across the moorland, and launch from Porlock Weir 11 hours later. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:40 AM PST - 12 comments

When we talk about exclamation points, people often think we’re talking about tone. But what goes unsaid is that tone is the performance of niceness or seriousness. It is the work of matching sentence structure to gender norms, industry norms, workplace norms, and generational norms. It is switching norms dozens if not hundreds of times a day, as you shift from text to email, from group chat to professional Teams Message. And we are doing this Tone Work exponentially more than at any point in history. from A Theory of the Modern Exclamation Point! [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:30 AM PST - 23 comments

How London Transport’s roundel was nearly a rabbit. London’s transport is world-famous for its roundel, but just under a century ago, it nearly became a rabbit – Wilfred the Rabbit.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:12 PM PST - 9 comments

[Jad] Sleiman, 34, was working as a reporter at WHYY, a Philadelphia-based NPR member station, last January when he was fired because executives had seen clips of his stand-up, which he said they called “egregious” violations of the outlet’s policies. [Washington Post]

“When a news organization says you’re a racist, bigot, whatever, people believe them,” he said. “So it was a lot of abuse from a lot of people who have never met me, who’ve never seen my stand-up just saw what WHYY said about me, which is not great.” [ABC News] [more inside]
posted by riruro at 7:38 PM PST - 24 comments

T-Pain - On Top Of The Covers (Live From The Sun Rose). Classic songs, fresh arrangements, tight backing band, intimate venue, charming banter (some NSFW/triggering language), no autotune.
posted by HeroZero at 5:04 PM PST - 12 comments

Tom Van Winkle (01/10/2024), "Fifty Years of Dungeons & Dragons": "Fifty years ago this month, the first 1000 copies of the original Dungeons & Dragons were printed and then boxed up at Gary Gygax's house. It's supposed to have been late in January of 1974, but we don't have a specific date. January 1974 is good enough for me. And what counts as the specific origin date, anyway? The final draft? The actual printing? The availability for sale? We're close enough. I'm saying it's been fifty years right now." [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:36 PM PST - 63 comments

The team at Dreaming Spanish use Comprehensible Input to help learners acquire Spanish the way most children learn their first language - by listening to real native speakers.
posted by sleepy psychonaut at 1:47 PM PST - 36 comments

announcement Probable new owner: Bending Spoons - "a technology company that owns and develops a suite of category-leading consumer products including Remini (an AI-powered photo enhancer), Splice (a mobile video editor), and Evernote..."
posted by amtho at 1:40 PM PST - 28 comments

Sometime last year, the World Gold Council tapped Idris Elba to host a corporate documentary about the gold industry; it was released in October. Yesterday, Dan Olson of Folding Ideas released his own documentary about that documentary and the gold industry overall. [more inside]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:24 PM PST - 6 comments

The Monday (and the week) after the last weekend of NFL regulation play is called Black Monday, as it is typically the day that head coaches around the league either get handed their pink slips or announce their departures. While a number of the dismissals were expected, such as Atlanta, Washington, and Tennessee dismissing their coaches, this year has seen a number of surprise departures in both the professional and college levels, with Pete Carroll, Bill Belichick, and Nick Saban all departing their head coach positions. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:29 AM PST - 37 comments

Predator: Dark Ages

Regarding the mystic power of a ludicrous sci fi one off featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger on generations of wannabe monster movie auteurs. Excluding of course any reference to the execrable corporate mashups of all things Alien vs. Predator and their occasionally molecular acidic ilk for all the obvious they suck reasons. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:23 AM PST - 21 comments

Every January, there's a new Australia Day lamb ad. This years is about the generation gap.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:09 AM PST - 26 comments

It is not common to have a dual emergence between Broods XIII and XIX. They occur once every 221 years and the last time these two broods emerged together was in 1803.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:29 AM PST - 60 comments

“Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on this mission to go to Mars as fast as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company." CW: Descriptions and a few photos of injuries. “SpaceX’s idea of safety is: ‘We’ll let you decide what’s safe for you,’ which really means there was no accountability,” said Carson, who has worked for more than two decades in dangerous jobs such as building submarines. “That’s a terrible approach to take in industrial environments.”
posted by chaiminda at 3:25 AM PST - 145 comments

Comics I Loved In 2023 by Ritesh Babu [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:16 AM PST - 15 comments

Articles asking us to feel sympathy for families barely scraping by on healthy six-figure incomes may be staples of the financial press, but it’s rare that they come packaged as real-world case studies attached to flesh-and-blood individuals. But that’s what happened just before Christmas... Clarence Thomas and the bottomless self-pity of the upper classes
posted by Artw at 9:42 PM PST - 72 comments

Sydney funnel-web spider Hercules sets record for largest specimen collected in Australia. With fangs that could pierce a human fingernail, the largest male specimen of the world's most venomous arachnid has found a new home at the Australian Reptile Park where it will be milked for venom to make antivenom. Since the inception of the antivenom program in 1981, there has not been a fatality in Australia from a funnel-web spider bite.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:34 PM PST - 15 comments

The magnificent, minimalist avant-garde composer and filmmaker Phill Niblock, who explored microtones like nobody else, died a few days ago at age 90. (Pitchfork obit/The Quietus obit.) Niblock's austere yet playful compositions, which he preferred to have performed at high volumes, are truly felt as much as heard. To honor his legacy, The Wire has made a 2006 article on him free for 30 days. [more inside]
posted by Dr. Wu at 3:55 PM PST - 13 comments

Terry Bisson, award winning SFF author of short stories such as Bears Discover Fire and They're Made Out of Meat (video) has passed away. [more inside]
posted by Hactar at 3:17 PM PST - 57 comments

Invisible Ink: At the CIA’s Creative Writing Group A mildly-interesting piece by Johannes Lichtman in the well-known CIA cutout, The Paris Review.
posted by slogger at 1:46 PM PST - 14 comments

I don't know what I was expecting when I sat down to watch Bill Hader on Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome and Leaning Into Discomfort [1h20m], from the Ten Percent Happier podcast but what I got was a bare-bones confessional of a man who suffers deeply from anxiety even while he lives one of the most public lives in the country. I think I needed to watch this, and maybe you need to watch it also.
posted by hippybear at 1:02 PM PST - 8 comments

"David Lynch’s 1984 sci-fi epic Dune is—in many ways—a misbegotten botch job. Still, as with more than a few ineffectively ambitious films before it, the artistic flourishes Lynch grafted onto Frank Herbert’s sprawling Machiavellian narrative of warring space dynasties have earned it true cult classic status. Today, fans of the film, which earned a paltry $30 million at the box office and truly bruising reviews upon its release, still wonder what Lynch would have done if given the opportunity to adapt the next two novels in Herbert’s cycle: Dune Messiah and Children of Dune."
posted by brundlefly at 11:50 AM PST - 67 comments

Community science helps us unlock some pretty quirky aspects of the natural world, and those discoveries often come from unlikely places. Take year 3 student Emma Glenfield, who started with a simple question about magpies and wound up conducting some cutting-edge research almost by accident. 8-year-old Emma wanted to know: is there anything about people's appearance that connects people most often swooped on by Australian magpies defending their nests? When 30,000 people answered her question online, she found that people with thinning hair or no hair at all are much more likely to have been swooped on. (She also found out that Australians in her survey really love magpies, despite the swooping.) [more inside]
posted by sciatrix at 11:12 AM PST - 35 comments

The Monsters Know What They're Doing is a blog that examines all of the D&D 5th Edition monsters, according to their rulebook stats and descriptions, and offers strategy ideas for the interested DM.
posted by JHarris at 9:37 AM PST - 30 comments

Rebecca Heineman on Blue Sky today: "Until we meet again… Jennell Jaquays 10/14/1956 - 01/10/2024." Intro to a 2022 interview: "an accomplished artist whose works were published in many D&D and other products; her adventures the Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia are held up to this day as examples of the best in dungeon design, and after working in the tabletop industry moved over to computer gaming where she worked on the Quake franchise." In 2017, she was inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame. RPGGeek entry listing her many publications. Memorial threads at EN World, r/RPG, and r/OSR.
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:34 AM PST - 27 comments

From 2008 to 2012 Bob Skelding drove a team hauling a caravan 9000 miles through the United States and published tales to his blog and published a free ebook on everything you need to go wagoneering. His only goal:

to see new places, meet plenty of nice people like yourself, and to enjoy this great country of ours like it’s meant to be enjoyed, but I found out that my travels and the horses positively affected the lives of countless people

posted by Mitheral at 7:31 AM PST - 16 comments

Scientists creating dictionary of saltwater croc sounds capture reptilian love song on tape. Spouting water, hissing and blowing bubbles might not work for humans on the dating scene, but according to Sunshine Coast researchers, for saltwater crocodiles it's a different story.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:50 AM PST - 5 comments

How Not to Speak to Someone With ADHD If you, your child, or your spouse/partner has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), you may encounter naysayers who simply do not understand the condition and its impact on everyday life. [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 6:16 AM PST - 141 comments

“Where the summers are warm and moist, it grows with great luxuriance.”
posted by Kitteh at 5:25 AM PST - 7 comments

The British Library is running an exhibition entitled Fantasy: Realms of the Imagination. Featured items include everything from Earthseaa drafts to Buffy clips to a playable Fallen London mini-game. The associated talks that are being streamed online look like something special, including Susanna Clarke and Alan Moore in conversation tomorrow (11 January at 19.30), and more yet to come, including Queer Fantasy, Black to the Future, and Goblin Market and Other Poems, among others.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:17 AM PST - 3 comments

If we must have road-haulage, let it be efficient. One tractor with two trailers is more planet-kind than two tractors with one trailer each. Simple enough if the rig is going forward. Not so easy reversing a B-train round a corner into a narrow dock. This is the moment I knew it would work [8m50s]. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:11 AM PST - 30 comments

All those iterations yielded a total game changer, not only replacing the company’s unwieldy 1.8-liter jugs with a handheld design that would work for home consumers, but establishing the soy sauce bottle as a cultural touchstone. The company, well aware of the intense affection its specialty bottles have generated ever since, has fully cashed in on collectors’ enthusiasm. from The Kikkoman Soy Sauce Bottle Is Priceless
posted by chavenet at 1:11 AM PST - 19 comments

THE TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION TELLS CHUCK TINGLE TO STAY HOME BUT WE PROVE LOVE ANYWAY “just when you buckaroos thought 2024 would be a break from book drama, here comes chuck tingle in the mix. recently i was asked to be a featured speaker at the TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION annual conference. a few days ago they rescinded my invitation. here is what happened….” [more inside]
posted by bq at 8:16 PM PST - 44 comments

How a fishermen's pact 30 years ago to protect this bay is now creating a future for their children. At the southern-most tip of the mainland, Corner Inlet fishermen have turned their gentle fishing practices into law to safeguard the bay and the livelihoods of future generations.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:33 PM PST - 1 comment

Four years after filing suit and a failed attempt at declaring bankruptcy, the civil fraud trial against the NRA and its head Wayne LaPierre by NYAG Leticia James has finally commenced. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:24 PM PST - 34 comments

Lindsay’s bawdy portrayal of myth and pagan beliefs fueled his art and created controversy in his time. [NSFW] [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:41 PM PST - 14 comments

New Three Body Problem trailer appears. Netflix posted a longer trailer for their upcoming series, adapted from Liu Cixin's novel.
posted by doctornemo at 3:31 PM PST - 75 comments

In Becky Chambers' book A Psalm for the Wild Built, Tea Monks travel across the planet of Panga, setting up their kettles to freely offer both tea and conversation to strangers wherever they stop. One pseudonymous writer, The Peaceful Revolutionary, was inspired by the idea of making this vocation a reality on Earth, and has written a guide for prospective tea monks.
posted by automatronic at 3:27 PM PST - 17 comments

Ivan Miranda decides to use a lot more 3D printing and a lot of hand tooling to, both figuratively and literally, complete his own seven-segment digital clock: BUILDING A MARBLE CLOCK - Pt. 3 and BUILDING A MARBLE CLOCK Pt.4 - NOW FASTER!!. Previously.
posted by hippybear at 2:00 PM PST - 5 comments

Judges Seem Skeptical of Trump's Claims of Immunity [more inside]
posted by box at 11:22 AM PST - 105 comments

Marlene Engelhorn is an Austrian heiress who gained media attention after saying in an interview that she is willing to donate 90 percent of her wealth and is in favour of a wealth tax. Marlene is a highly vocal advocate for a global wealth tax regularly appearing in newspapers and the media, she is also a founding member of the German speaking initiative Tax me now , asking for higher taxes on the wealthy. [more inside]
posted by 15L06 at 9:51 AM PST - 31 comments

An Open Letter to Jeremy Allen White Regarding His Recent Calvin Klein Ad Campaign [more inside]
posted by O Time, Thy Pyramids at 8:53 AM PST - 125 comments

"We thought we'd have a go ourselves, for the heck of it": The duo who pioneered Australian erotica. The forgotten story of the pioneering Sydney-based creative couple behind the one of the earliest explicit adult films produced in Australia in 1970.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:12 AM PST - 4 comments

"Some baby Jesuit who's into animal studies and science studies and feminist theory for some weird reason has been reading me," Haraway told EarthBeat.
posted by cupcakeninja at 2:41 AM PST - 13 comments

Through most of modern history the idea that the value of a whale was not discoverable through its market price would have seemed silly, at least to anyone operating in that commercial market. But for three centuries whales have occupied a peculiar point where economics and the environment meet, their fortunes tracing the changing relationship between the two. In the 19th century a drop in the demand for whale-based products worked to the whales’ benefit. In the 20th century, though, the supply of whale-based products became much cheaper and demand returned redoubled. Whales became increasingly endangered until societies newly focused on the environmental costs of affluence imposed a worldwide whaling ban. That made them literally priceless. from Where capitalism and conservation meet [The Economist; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:55 AM PST - 8 comments

AskAManager: "men are hitting on my scheduling bot because it has a woman’s name" [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 12:14 AM PST - 61 comments

How Google perfected the web [more inside]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:50 PM PST - 48 comments

So, I bought the DVD set for Soundies: A Musical History by Michael Feinstein and decided subsequently, via individual YouTube videos, to recreate it as a Christmas present for you all starting with...

Duke Ellington -- Hot Chocolate (Cottontail)

Cab Calloway -- Blowtop Blues

Louie Jordan & his Tympany Five -- Jumpin' at the Jubilee

Nat King Cole Trio -- Frim Fram Sauce

among others.... [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 6:34 PM PST - 9 comments

Copernicus's grave was lost for centuries. An unlikely discovery finally solved the mystery. A team of archaeologists discovered the remains of the 16th-century father of modern astronomy, who was the first to demonstrate that the Earth orbits the Sun.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:27 PM PST - 23 comments

YouTuber Billiam continues his examination of television series LOST (previously, previouslier) with his new video LOST: A DEEP DIVE INTO THE UNIVERSE [6h40m]. This fourth and not final installment examines season 5, the philosophical roots of the show, ancillary material such as novels, videogames, and ARGs, and tries to untangle the time travel maze of the plot. This is a deeper dive than you're expecting, even if you've seen the previous installments, and he's finding treasures in the depths. He swears the next episode will be the last.
posted by hippybear at 4:43 PM PST - 8 comments

After completing a corporate merger bringing the company under their umbrella, Western US convience store and fuel station operator Maverik is planning to retire the long-standing "Kum & Go" brand. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:46 PM PST - 35 comments

The ‘Chicago Rat Hole’ Is the Hottest Tourist Destination of 2024 The cement imprint has existed for at least a decade, although no one seems sure how it got there.
posted by tiny frying pan at 12:57 PM PST - 41 comments

The Guardian interviews Jodie Foster in advance of her starring role in HBO's upcoming (14 January) True Detective season 4 (NYTimes, ungated, archive). Here are•some•reviews. The trailer.
posted by ShooBoo at 12:48 PM PST - 13 comments

Need to put something on at work today to keep your mind alive? Do ya like sports? If you don't like sports, do you at least like crazy stories? Crazy stories about people finding the dumbest and/or wildest exploits in rules, such that rules have to be rewritten in their wake? Well, this past year, the gang at Secret Base compiled three volumes of "The Weirdest Rules in Sports and the Absurd Stories Behind Them." [2, 3]
posted by Navelgazer at 12:38 PM PST - 10 comments

Multigenerational Living Often Makes Sense. But That Doesn't Make It Easy.
posted by Kitteh at 12:36 PM PST - 33 comments

Why Does Superman Need To Save the Cat? From Steve Shives. (SLYT)
posted by Ipsifendus at 7:50 AM PST - 92 comments

Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Plain Text All of these assumptions are wrong. Top 5: Technical, Non Technical and Other - Full list = 77 items [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 5:31 AM PST - 99 comments

Even as David Bowie gets a street named after him in Paris for his 77th birthday and the 8th anniversary of his ultimate persona transformation, we should perhaps observe the first Bowie death we all experienced: D. A. Pennebaker's film Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, the final rock and roll suicide , July 3, 1973. [Vimeo, 1h30m] New for this year, Louder Magazine writes about the making of an earlier album, The Man Who Sold The World. But, of course, 2024 is the 50th anniversary of Diamond Dogs [YT playlist], lauded recently in Far Out Magazine, so here is footage of Bowie playing in Hollywood in 1974 [Dailymotion, 40m]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:23 AM PST - 26 comments

Gershwin had forgotten he was supposed to write a concerto until just two weeks before, when he saw the concert’s ad in The New York Tribune.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:13 AM PST - 34 comments

In Wintering, Katherine May wrote “In winter, we are invited into a particular mode of sleep: not a regimented eight hours, but a slow, ambulatory process in which waking thoughts merge with dreams, and space is made in the blackest hours to repair the fragmented narratives of our days.” But how do you 'Winter', either seasonal or metaphorical? (applicable to MeFites in either hemisphere) Attitude? Meditation? Sleep and sun? Vitamin D? Noting “After Christmas, every day is getting longer. We’re in the second half of winter and soon enough it will start to get lighter and warmer”? Or write anything as this is your free thread.
posted by Wordshore at 2:25 AM PST - 115 comments

“The real toll your behavior is going to take is priceless,” she continued. “How dare you pretend to care about justice involved people? How dare you pretend to care about Black businesses? How dare you sit at the Black leadership table with people who have cried, fought, and hustled to build real businesses and brands with nothing and from nothing…. You frequently talked about letting Black women lead. And even though that was clearly [a] fraudulent narrative you used to gain entry, you weren’t wrong. It’s Black women who will ensure you never do this again.” from Meet the Con Artist Who Deceived the Front Range Tech Community
posted by chavenet at 2:02 AM PST - 18 comments

Conservation dogs perform vital roles across Australia. Some are guardians protecting wildlife from predators while others put their powerful sense of smell to use as sniffer dogs or detection dogs
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:08 AM PST - 5 comments

No lie. This Guardian story has a link to his footage.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:53 PM PST - 30 comments

How much do you like Jimmy Carr? He's that weird-laughing UK standup comedian who still does sort of an old-fashioned joke-joke-joke act. He also hosts panel shows here and there. Well, anyway, here is Every Single Jimmy Carr Stand-Up Comedy Special - PART 1 [5h30m] and Every Single Jimmy Carr Stand-Up Comedy Special - PART 2 [6h30m]. "In total that's well over 10 hours of one-liners, heckles, roasts, dark jokes and put-downs." Put online by Jimmy Carr himself. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:35 PM PST - 96 comments

Death buy Lemonade. (slyt. 2:00)
posted by clavdivs at 2:04 PM PST - 11 comments

Meet the spotted water hemlock, the most poisonous plant in North America. "Those who eat it will die in two hours. It must be a painful death. It twists the arms and ankles and turns the head back. Finally they die in a last wretching convulsion. They say it turns the eyes back."
posted by goatdog at 1:29 PM PST - 29 comments

ProPublica has created a database of Supreme Court financial filings searchable by various categories. After the groundbreaking reporting from ProPublica on Clarence Thomas' gifts and loans from billionaires which led to the new toothless "ethics code" in 2023 for the Supreme Court.
posted by Word_Salad at 11:37 AM PST - 18 comments

India's Aditya-L1 spacecraft reaches Sun orbit. The spacecraft has reached its home for the next five years, an orbit from where it will study the Sun and its influence on space weather.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:03 AM PST - 14 comments

The authors found that each numerical code from rolls of the dice would indicate a different god, one from a mixed pantheon of Hindu, Buddhist, Daoist, or other local deities. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:45 AM PST - 8 comments

It is highly unusual for a reputable news organization like The Times to publish an article speculating on a person’s sexuality, let alone a figure of immense cultural significance who has previously denied the insinuations. CNN responds to Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do [NYT; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 3:30 AM PST - 155 comments

Hempuli, the brilliant designer behind the rule-modification puzzle game Baba Is You ($15 for Windows, Mac and Linux, previously, again), hasn't rested since that came out. (Everything mentioned is free and for Windows unless otherwise noted.) Baba Is You was so successful that now we have to help Baba File Taxes! Covemount (Web) is a simple Sokoban clone with an interesting numeric gimmick. Baba Is You XTREME adds an extra feature to Baba for reasons of "fun." And there's a collection of 16 Solitaire games! And a little Neko-like Baba friend/desktop toy! And... Mobile Suit Baba, a mashup of Baba Is You and Into The Breach?! ($4, Windows) There's lots more i left out only for brevity's sake: the rest is on Hempuli's itch.io page.
posted by JHarris at 2:15 AM PST - 16 comments

Five Facts About the Cassowary. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:14 PM PST - 34 comments

How a sting operation by a small european charity resulted in the conviction of dealers responisble for 50% of the world's illegal pangolin trade.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 3:20 PM PST - 9 comments

Starbucks' latest Stanley (Bon Appetit) collaboration causes havoc (Today, Detroit Free Press) at Target. [more inside]
posted by box at 10:19 AM PST - 139 comments

Noted author, past North Carolina Poet Laureate, and beloved teacher Fred Chappell has died at the age of 87. Chappell at the Poetry Foundation. Chappell on PBS. Chappell at the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:31 AM PST - 7 comments

Tchiks is an amateur woodworker from Brussels. He makes the kind of YouTube video I enjoy: Someone making things (in this case guitars), no chat-to-camera (though there's some in-the-room chat, usually dialogue with his daughter, who is now six years old), no music (apart from the demonstration of the instrument at the end), the only sounds are workshop sounds. Since 2019 he's occasionally been uploading videos of the guitars he's been building, including the one he made out of a shelf during quarantine (because it's the only wood he could get), the one he made with one hand (because he'd broken his arm) and the detailed reproduction of Brian May's Red Special. For their latest project Tchiks and his daughter built her a bass guitar together. Even if you're not interested in videos of people building guitars, it's worth skipping to the last minute or so of this one for the demonstration. [more inside]
posted by Grangousier at 3:43 AM PST - 7 comments

I started reading and it soon became the case that so long as Infinite Jest was in my hands, it was possible, okay even, for me to stick around. The core themes of the book that would soothe and sustain me over the coming weeks can be conveyed, I think, by its two dominant and contrasting venues – a halfway house for addicts in recovery on the one hand, and an elite and high-pressure tennis academy on the other – in conjunction with an underlying and unifying thesis: all of us, whether we’re chasing substances, achievements or whatever else we hope will satisfy us and make it bearable to exist, are afflicted. We are all, for lack of a better word, fucked in the head in the very same ways. from Saved by Infinite Jest by Mala Chatterjee [CW: depression, suicidal ideation, David Foster Wallace] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:39 AM PST - 15 comments

So, Richard Osman and Marina Hyde have a fairly new podcast, The Rest Is Entertainment, and for their FIFTH episode, they did a mailbag that is really quite good. How panel shows REALLY work and discussing if WWE 'is actually entertainment' [32m] is less incendiary than its title might suggest, and is full of really interesting information. Mostly UK centric, but the generalized bits apply everywhere.
posted by hippybear at 6:35 PM PST - 20 comments

Clothes and fire in the desert. Julia Shipley & Muriel Alarcón investigate a vast dump of used clothes and what it might mean for fast fashion and the circular economy. (also in Spanish)
posted by doctornemo at 6:00 PM PST - 26 comments

YouTubers hold microphones (including lav mics specifically designed to be clipped to clothing) to signal authenticity on a website where media corporations are getting increasingly better at camouflaging their visual style to fit in on a platform originally centered around individual creators. STYLE AS WEAPON [1-hour SLYT by Tom Nicholas] [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 5:04 PM PST - 56 comments

New trail camera video shared by wildlife enthusiast Jason Miller shows a jaguar in southern Arizona. Video shows new jaguar in Arizona, Tucson group says (Arizona Daily Star). [more inside]
posted by egregious theorem at 2:20 PM PST - 21 comments

Elusive ‘alligator’-like creature found in treetops of Mexico. Coapilla arboreal alligator lizards are “unusually large” and can reach about 9.8 inches in length, researchers said. They have yellow-brown scaly bodies covered in darker brown blotches. Their eyes are “pale yellow” with dark flecks.
posted by sardonyx at 1:10 PM PST - 14 comments

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint that SpaceX had illegally fired employees who had written an open letter criticizing the conduct of SpaceX's owner, arguing the dismissals were an illegal attempt to suppress organization of workers. In response, Musk and SpaceX have filed a countersuit asserting that the NLRB is unconstitutional in a case that could undercut the US regulatory state. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:16 PM PST - 25 comments

"By wastewater levels, JN.1 is now associated with the second-biggest wave of infections in the United States in the pandemic, after Omicron. We have lost the ability to track the actual number of infections since most people either test at home or don’t even test at all, but the very high wastewater levels of the virus indicate about 2 million Americans are getting infected each day. In several countries in Europe, wastewater levels reached unprecedented levels, exceeding Omicron. ... There is, however, some good news about this big wave of infections. It has not resulted in the surge of hospital admissions seen with Omicron." The U.S. is facing the biggest COVID wave since Omicron. Why are we still playing make-believe? (Eric Topol, LA Times, 4 Jan 2024)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:06 PM PST - 228 comments

At the onset of the year I like to write an intentional list of intentional things. Dreams and desires. Goals. Milestones. Needs. Changes. I don’t show it to anyone, I don’t post it. It isn’t content, only it is right now as I write this. It’s something only for me. Something I can do to keep my hands on the wheel and to consider the road ahead.
posted by Kitteh at 9:48 AM PST - 8 comments

Source of mysterious underwater BLOOP found. The loudest sound ever recorded underwater, a mystery until now. Previously.
posted by Goofyy at 9:24 AM PST - 32 comments

Early studies of interactive fiction focused heavily on digital texts and paid little attention to gamebook series that had sold millions of copies and shaped the imagination of a generation [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:08 AM PST - 29 comments

“For some, deciding to go to therapy is the hardest part of the process. For others, it's finding an affordable therapist. Nevertheless, once you make it onto your therapist's couch, you might find the hardest part is actually opening up out of fear your therapist will think you're weird. In reality, therapists have heard it all. In order to normalize these conversations and make people feel more comfortable sharing, mental health professionals across BuzzFeed and Reddit shared the most common thing their clients have been afraid to tell them that they really hear all the time.” Note: The linked article mentions sensitive topics including sexual assault, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, abuse, and PTSD. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:28 AM PST - 61 comments

Quanta Magazine revisits The Year In Math ... Computer Science ... Physics ... Biology
posted by chavenet at 12:54 AM PST - 4 comments

25 YEARS AGO TODAY: Mankind (aka the Hardcore Legend Mick Foley) defeats The Rock (aka global movie star Dwayne Johnson) in a No Disqualification match for his first-ever WWF Heavyweight Championship. It's no exaggeration to say this match changed the destiny of two companies, as this match aired on the same night as WCW's infamous "Fingerpoke of Doom" [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:10 PM PST - 6 comments

The hugely influential Swiss computer scientist Niklaus Wirth (pronounced "Veert"), the designer of Pascal and eight other programming languages and the winner of the prestigious Turing Award in 1984, has died at the age of 89. [more inside]
posted by Umami Dearest at 7:13 PM PST - 63 comments

"Predicting the future using cheese is something I do as a side business, and from what I can tell, there aren’t very many of us doing this anymore."
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:46 PM PST - 19 comments

This year saw the unexpected fourth season of The Lovecraft Investigations, The Haunter of the Dark. This “popular with MetaFilter readers” audio drama reworks a series of Lovecraft stories into a modern, mostly UK-based story, adding in a healthy dollop of spycraft and esoteric security activity. However, listeners may be unaware that… [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:11 PM PST - 8 comments

YouTube video essayist and composer Babila wants you to know you're not the only one with a large, gaping, unfillable hole in the center of your chest. [41:29]
posted by ob1quixote at 3:28 PM PST - 2 comments

This began as a quick-and-dirty experiment to visualize the UK National Minimum Wage in real-time, inspired by Blake Fall-Conroy’s Minimum Wage Machine. Then I added the US Federal Minimum Wage, since a sizeable proportion of this blog’s readership are US-based. Did you know the US also has a Youth Minimum Wage? I didn’t. Then I got curious, and added some CEO salaries for comparison. The vast disparity is nothing new to me, but seeing it like this... It’s fucking sobering.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 2:27 PM PST - 34 comments

Crab culture is an India-based youtube channel giving us DJs a hunger-inducing new context. "The recent series called "Crab in the kitchen" portrays artists performing their sets in the kitchens of aesthetic cafes and Restaurants, also showcasing the chefs and baristas working on their craft." [more inside]
posted by wellifyouinsist at 10:09 AM PST - 10 comments

A new aviation company has developed a type of jet fuel made entirely from human sewage. Chemists at a lab in Gloucestershire have turned the waste into kerosene. James Hygate, Firefly Green Fuels CEO, said: "We wanted to find a really low-value feedstock that was highly abundant. And of course poo is abundant." Independent tests by international aviation regulators found it was nearly identical to standard fossil jet fuel. Firefly's team worked with Cranfield University to examine the fuel's life cycle carbon impact. It concluded that Firefly's fuel has a 90% lower carbon footprint than standard jet fuel.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:02 AM PST - 73 comments

Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital. There are lots of reasons to continue or start a hobby even if you cannot become good enough to make it your full-time job. But even as I write that, I don’t really believe it deep down. I believe it for you. I think it’s a great idea for everyone else to do things that bring them joy and have no other benefits. But not for me.
posted by simmering octagon at 7:57 AM PST - 51 comments

"The word ‘pastiche’ originates from the Italian term pasticcio, which comes from the vulgar Latin pasticium for being composed of pasta, meaning dough, pastry cake, or paste. Accordingly, pasticium and pasticcio describe dishes made from a mixture of ingredients, such as savory pies, casseroles, or baked pasta with meat. But, unfortunately, this blog post is not about pasta." [CW: Pastiche in EU copyright law] Many works have been the subject of pastiche, with pasticheurs contributing to the worlds of characters like Sherlock Holmes and Cthulhu. Note that pastiche is not (usually) parody, though it's often considered in the context of postmodernity [SLPDF]. Pastiche may, of course, be consumed along with pastitsio.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:35 AM PST - 6 comments

My research has revealed that lowriding flourished in the southern California region—post WWII—and represents part of a larger movement characterized by individualized expression via car customization where returning veterans had more expendable income to personalize and modify their vehicles in unique ways .... Within the dominant mainstream culture, the practice of car modifications was embodied in high performance muscle cars best characterized as hotrods that are described as fast and mean. In contrast, Chicano car enthusiasts modified and customized their vehicle with a unique cultural aesthetic that honored ingenuity where vehicles came to be understood as artistic canvases on wheels and where the practice of car cruising down the boulevard brought forward a low and slow attitude bringing forth the creation of stylized and customized vehicles that shaped Chicana and Chicano culture. from The San Diego Lowrider Archival Project [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:15 AM PST - 12 comments

At the end of every year, NiemanLab asks for predictions about the coming year of journalism from experts in the field. Here's the latest batch predicting 2024. (previously) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 9:57 PM PST - 7 comments

MS-DOS was famously based on QDOS, later known as 86-DOS. which Microsoft purchased in 1981. Version 0.1-C was discovered, making it the oldest known build (previously it was 0.34). This was likely the first after changing from the QDOS name. It was uploaded to the Internet Archive, and can be booted with the SimH Emulator.
posted by MrGuilt at 9:04 PM PST - 16 comments

Electricity from the country’s first large-scale offshore wind project is officially flowing into Massachusetts and helping to power the New England grid. The Vineyard Wind project achieved “first power” late Tuesday when one operating turbine near Martha’s Vineyard delivered approximately five megawatts of electricity to the grid. The company said it expects to have five turbines operating at full capacity in early 2024. [more inside]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 7:02 PM PST - 30 comments

180 Songs That Turn 40 Years Old in 2024 [18m22s] is a cavalcade of song hooks coupled with titles. Great for making Gen X feel super old, or maybe as a reference piece for youngs who would recognize a melody but not know the title. It's a lot. I'm sorry.
posted by hippybear at 6:52 PM PST - 71 comments

In the dark before dinner yesterday, two aircraft collided at Tokyo Haneda Airport. Around 17:47 on January 2nd, a Japan Airlines Airbus A350-900 was landing on runway 34R after a short flight from Sapporo on the northern main island of Hokkaido. Meanwhile a Coast Guard Dash 8 had acknowledged the Tower's order to hold short of the same runway at intersection C5. But something went wrong and a few seconds before JAL 516's wheels hit the ground a giant column of fire was captured by airport CCTV. [more inside]
posted by midmarch snowman at 4:19 PM PST - 62 comments

"Slashdot's 10 most-visited stories of 2023 seemed to touch on all the themes of the year..." After 27 years, the still-publishing "news for nerds" site ended 2023 with its special year-end list showing what attracted the most eyeballs. The top story drew over 100,000 views, but the whole list succinctly summarizes the last 12 months in its handful of headlines - AI, electric cars, misinformation online, and two stories about Linux. +1 Insightful
posted by destinyland at 3:18 PM PST - 36 comments

I had my health. I had a job. And then, abruptly, I didn’t. A first person account from NY Magazine. Harrowing, with bonus understated outrage at the US' failing and disastrous healthcare system. [more inside]
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:07 PM PST - 47 comments

Immigrants are overwhelming us: I will control the border (Ron DeSantis, Des Moines Register, archive.is) [more inside]
posted by box at 11:56 AM PST - 46 comments

John Pilger has died at age 84. One of the most strident critics of US and UK foreign policy, Australian journalist John Pilger has died of pulmonary fibrosis.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 10:41 AM PST - 19 comments

Clarkesword Magazine interviews that most ornery of contemporary writers, Caitlin R. Kiernan. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 10:33 AM PST - 19 comments

Stephen Scullion is an Irish Olympic marathon runner with a personal best of 2 hours 9 minutes, and depression. (CW: depression, suicidal ideation, self harm, lots of talk about running). Most of his Youtube channel focuses on his running training regime, breakdowns of his race performances, and how to be a more effective distance runner and avoid injury. Even if you're not a runner, it's an excellent glimpse into the mindset and training required to compete at an Olympic level of a sport. [more inside]
posted by fortitude25 at 8:21 AM PST - 8 comments

Harvard President Resigns After Mounting Plagiarism Accusations. Gay, a political scientist, was the first black woman to be the president of Harvard. Her tenure lasted six months. [more inside]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:32 AM PST - 349 comments

Highlander II, considered one of the worst films ever made, is set in 2024. Highlander II: The Quickening is a 1991 science fiction film directed by Russell Mulcahy and starring Christopher Lambert, Virginia Madsen, Michael Ironside and Sean Connery. It is the second installment in the Highlander film series and sequel to the 1986 fantasy film Highlander. Set in the year 2024, the plot concerns Connor MacLeod, who regains his youth and immortal abilities and must free Earth from the Shield, an artificial ozone layer that has fallen under the control of a corrupt corporation. [more inside]
posted by lundah at 7:02 AM PST - 71 comments

... because there were no more worlds to conquer … Luke Littler is only 16. Global sporting fans will have found it impossible to miss that the World Darts Championship reaches its final day today at London's Ally Pally. [more inside]
posted by biffa at 6:16 AM PST - 27 comments

Perhaps more than any other town in Canada, Baie-Saint-Paul understands the appeal of its artistic side for tourists interested in hanging out where so many painters have found inspiration. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:51 AM PST - 1 comment

Silly, and highly addictive. Tap anywhere to turn Pacman. [Warning music is loud] [more inside]
posted by Faintdreams at 3:52 AM PST - 21 comments

Heavily persecuted, highly influential: China’s online feminist revolution - by Wanqing Zhang in Rest of World. I couldn't pick a favourite quote, they are all so good!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:45 AM PST - 5 comments

My dead sister-in-law was a human being. She could not emulate a Hallmark movie mom. Nor can her humanity be flattened into a corny hologram smiling over the people who miss her. She isn’t some straightforward Saint Mary watching over all of us. Rachel was complicated and messy and so was her life and her relationships. She gave with her whole heart and, even as her body failed, strived to carry the crushing weight of trying to do it all. It’s exactly this nuance and pressure that dies with these wife-mom characters. from ’Tis the Season to Kill the Dead-Mom Holiday Movie Trope
posted by chavenet at 12:50 AM PST - 17 comments

In a NYE performance, Green Day performed their classic hit "American Idiot" with a minor twist: they substituted the lyrics "MAGA agenda" for "redneck agenda." Conservatives are still, somehow, surprised. Still, the song's themes resonate today: we certainly haven't managed to vanquish American reflexive xenophobia or fix deceptive media outlets yet. As we approach the song's twentieth anniversary, it's hard not to feel a sting of failure when contemplating just how far we haven't come.
posted by sciatrix at 7:49 PM PST - 52 comments

An Anti-Defense of Science Fiction. If we’re going to give science fiction credit for solar power and electric cars, then it’s only fair, unfortunately, to give science fiction credit for child slavery in the cobalt mines. If we want to claim that science fiction inspired reusable spacecraft or even the lowly Roomba, we must also reckon with the fact that it inspired the gun-wielding drones sniping hospital patients and staff in Gaza.
posted by simmering octagon at 7:11 PM PST - 55 comments

The last Sydney to Hobart yacht race participants have arrived safely in Hobart, including Oli the cat. [more inside]
posted by freethefeet at 6:14 PM PST - 3 comments

Newport medieval ship's timber dated to within months using oxygen isotope dendrochronology - an advanced study of tree-ring data. Experts used oxygen isotope dendrochronology to estimate when the timbers were harvested which has been called a revolutionary development in dating wood, like the advent of DNA technology in criminology. "This process is only five to 10 years old and allows us to find answers today that we couldn't get before," said Prof Nigel Nayling, University of Wales Trinity St David's chair of archaeology.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:19 PM PST - 5 comments

French Fuse Music are two guys (Jerry et Ben) remixing the world's funniest clips into music... [more inside]
posted by kfholy at 4:07 PM PST - 3 comments

Gaze upon the list of artists that Midjourney was trained on, as submitted to the court.
posted by Shepherd at 3:50 PM PST - 78 comments

It's the start of a new year, and that means it's time for Defector's annual recap of (mostly self-)inflicted bodily harm - What We Got Stuck In Our Various Orifaces and What We Did To Mr. Happy in 2023. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:00 PM PST - 51 comments

Something I haven't seen often with any journalism outfits really, Wendover Productions brings us a bunch of updates in a single video: Everything That's Changed With Nine of Our Most Popular Videos. It's a half-hour of quick summaries plus updates of some of the situations and stories they've covered, and it feels good to know how the stories have progressed since first covered. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:11 AM PST - 5 comments

"A great loss for his community and all of us."
posted by Scout405 at 8:08 AM PST - 12 comments

New Years Resolutions for the climate. Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe famously adopts two new climate-friendly habits each year—“not because I think they’re going to change the course of climate change as I know it... but because it enables me to be consistent with my values and it gives me joy.” A NPR reporter suggests getting into energy policy as a stretch resolution. Yale Climate Connections recommends finding your lever (do you have a school-age kid? perhaps push the school district to switch to renewable energy?). The Climate Council asks us to move our money out of fossil fuel investments. And the Guardian reminds us to eat our leftovers and to eat less beef.
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:06 AM PST - 12 comments

The radio broadcast of the UK Shipping Forecast is one hundred years old. Previously (1), previously (2), previously (3), previously (4), previously (5).
posted by Major Clanger at 6:14 AM PST - 11 comments

The pillow has appeared previously on MetaFilter, but usually in the context of violence, professional or otherwise. There is a pillow book, and then there are pillow books. Choosing a pillow is a chore. Pillow-like things may or may not be pillows. Sleep has changed over time, but pillows have been around. Pillow research is ongoing.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:48 AM PST - 19 comments

(The West Des Moines Police Department declined to release its full investigative case file, because the Gosch case is still an active investigation involving state and federal authorities, and declined to make any current investigators available for an interview. It also declined to answer my extensive list of questions about the case. But the agency did send me a statement, which read, in part, “We understand how deeply this case has affected the family, the community, law enforcement officials and the nation. This case will remain open, and we won’t stop investigating until we have closure and answers as to what happened to Johnny Gosch.”) from An Iowa paperboy disappeared 41 years ago. His mother is still on the case [CNN] [CW: CSA, kidnapping, corruption, conspiracy]
posted by chavenet at 1:11 AM PST - 30 comments

It's exceeded all my expectations. Working in Finland has been easier than other roles I've held because there's less bureaucracy here. I don't need to ask permission to speak to different people in the company, and my values and opinions on my work are respected.
posted by folklore724 at 6:28 PM PST - 67 comments

By the time works resumed passing into the public domain in the US in 2019, countless people had grown up believing nothing would ever do so again. Techdirt invented a unique solution: an annual game jam in which all entries must include material from at least on newly public-domain work. The sixth has just begun - Gaming Like It's 1928! (Itch page. Pages for previous jams including submissions: 1927, 1926, 1925, 1924, 1923. Previously on Techdirt (including winner announcements and spotlights), Metafilter. Recent MeFi post on newly PD works.) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 6:18 PM PST - 3 comments

Billie Eilish, Cynthia Erivo, Dua Lipa, Jon Batiste, Julia Michaels, and Olivia Rodrigo sit down and have a powerhouse discussion of music, songwriting, and a lot of women's voices. Plus Jon Batiste being his wonderful weird self. Songwriters Roundtable: Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Dua Lipa, Jon Batiste, Cynthia Erivo & More [The Hollywood Reporter, 1h] This is full of really great moments and insights, truly.
posted by hippybear at 2:08 PM PST - 10 comments

A movie on local British ritual: Artist Ben Edge takes you on a journey through the British Ritual Year of 2019, documenting twenty remarkable folk customs and unknowingly capturing the pre-covid ritual landscape of Britain.
posted by PussKillian at 12:03 PM PST - 13 comments

Kevin Drum is still blogging. Kevin Drum began blogging in the 2002–2003 era when the practice really took off. Kevin has a knack for finding, presenting, and trusting the numbers for issues, regardless of his partisan political leanings. Here are 20 charts from the last year that may surprise you. [more inside]
posted by teece303 at 10:58 AM PST - 37 comments

After ten years, it's time to stop making videos.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:15 AM PST - 36 comments

Vigo the Carpathian is back in a slime-drenched art piece from artist Fabrizio Fioretti. Fioretti, who worked as part of the production company DNEG Vancouver, crafting visual effects for 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, announced earlier this year an expanded fan art series entitled, ‘Artworks inspired by the Ghostbusters Universe,’ drawing inspiration not only from the core films but also exploring aspects of the franchise’s non-canon adventures. The newest entry, released aptly in time for the New Year, resurrects Ghostbusters II‘s 17th-century tyrant Vigo the Carpathian, sitting atop a throne of blood, positioned in front of a stained glass window that cleverly recreates the psychomagnotheric river of pink slime.
posted by Servo5678 at 7:52 AM PST - 7 comments

Leslie Gray Streeter's resolution for 2023 was to make at least one recipe from each of the 45 cookbooks in her collection. For New Year's 2024, she writes about how that went. (Main links to The Baltimore Banner, which I think you should be able to access for 2 articles as a non-subscriber, but archive links provided for back up: 2023, 2024) [more inside]
posted by the primroses were over at 5:31 AM PST - 9 comments

'tis 2024 here, there, and everywhere, and welcome to a fresh slab of 365+1 days of calendar. Much will happen during this year, on earth and up in the sky; some sports in France, and the important vote in Sweden, but eventually eyes will turn to the USA to see who emerges victorious. But, sweet dear MeFites, what are your aspirations, hopes, desires, dreams for 2024?
posted by Wordshore at 5:01 AM PST - 95 comments

This study will discuss the building history of the monumental enclosures in the main area of Göbekli Tepe, as well as the chronological relations between them [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:39 AM PST - 9 comments

I was up and out early to count sheep (60 legs, 15 head, all correct). Too cloudy for a New Year sunrise and I'm too deaf to hear The Piper at the Gates of Dawn [22 mins of Tony Walker] . . . but I thought about it. Full text of Chapter 7 Wind in the Willows (1908) [3800 words]. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:38 AM PST - 9 comments

For much of this century, optimism that technology would make the world a better place fueled the perception that Silicon Valley was the moral alternative to an extractive Wall Street—that it was possible to make money, not at the expense of society but in service of it. In other words, many who joined the industry did so precisely because they thought that their work would be useful. Yet what we’re now seeing is a lot of bullshit. from It's All Bullshit [The Baffler; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:36 AM PST - 30 comments