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In a matter of minutes, the monthly Minnesota short film festival Scream It Off Screen. will hold its third annual New Year's Eve Central Time Zone Sphere Drop, including a showing of the festival's winners from this year. (It won't go too long because they stopped doing online-only screenings and haven't figured out how to stream the in-person screenings they're still doing.) There's no telling what you'll see - each month's films are chosen randomly from submissions, with sufficient viewer protests able to 'gong' films to end them early - except that they won in their respective months. As examples, here's the first and second NYE shows. (previously) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 6:49 PM PST - 5 comments

Margrethe II, the longest serving monarch of Denmark, will abdicate on January 14, 2024, the 52nd anniversary of her accession to the Danish throne. She will be succeeded by her eldest son, Crown Prince Frederik. [more inside]
posted by Ranucci at 6:15 PM PST - 17 comments

Thomas Lynch' poem 'Par Rum Pum Pum Pum. 'I Don’t Know . . . But I Live in Hope': A Conversation with Poet, Undertaker, Essayist Thomas Lynch. PBS 'Frontline' did a great job on 'The Undertaking' (full documentary, slyt.) 'Refusing at Fifty-Two to Write Sonnets'.
posted by clavdivs at 2:29 PM PST - 2 comments

Sound recordings from 1923 and works for 1928 are free to use and share under US copyright law.
posted by Ideefixe at 2:15 PM PST - 30 comments

Let's take a journey with Jordy McNeill back in time to an obsession of hers from 20-ish years ago: sport stacking. In The Strange Saga of an Early 2000s Craze, she spends 25 minutes examining the history of the sport, along with her own history with it, in a very interesting video about something that emerged from seemingly nowhere and took over the minds of many for a long time. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:10 PM PST - 8 comments

as someone who is Extremely Online™️ and a self proclaimed meme connoisseur here is a ranking of my top internet moments / memes of 2023 by Annie Wu [X; nitter] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:24 PM PST - 21 comments

An early graphic novel. Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (1445–1510), better known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He is perhaps best known (now) for creating one of the most famous paintings in the world, "The Birth of Venus", but strangely, it was some of his long-lost unfinished drawings that struck the imagination of the Pre-Raphaelites of Victorian England who championed him and revived his reputation. [more inside]
posted by acrasis at 12:00 PM PST - 5 comments

100 Little Ideas that Explain how the Human World works. "Bizarreness Effect: Crazy things are easier to remember than common things, providing a distorted sense of “normal.” Nonlinearity: Outputs aren’t always proportional to inputs, so the world is a barrage of massive wins and horrible losses that surprise people. Moderating Relationship: The correlation between two variables depends on a third, seemingly unrelated variable. The quality of a marriage may be dependent on a spouse’s work project that’s causing stress. Denomination Effect: One hundred $1 bills feels like less money than one $100 bill. Also explains stock splits – buying 10 shares for $10 each feels cheaper than one share for $100. Woozle Effect: “A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.” - Daniel Kahneman." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:53 AM PST - 35 comments

Getting tired of podcasts but still want to fill your headphones with words in 2024? For nearly a century, the BBC has been producing radio dramas and thanks to the Internet Archive, many older works are available for download... [more inside]
posted by gwint at 11:19 AM PST - 14 comments

Thirteen Discoveries Made About Human Evolution in 2023. Smithsonian paleoanthropologists reveal some of the year’s most fascinating findings about human origins.
posted by gudrun at 10:51 AM PST - 2 comments

Glorb has been posting violent drill rap tracks featuring AI-generated voices of SpongeBob, Squidward, Patrick, Mr. Krabs, Sandy and Plankton for about a year. And the songs and videos are FIRE.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:22 AM PST - 6 comments

The Washington Post Revisits Stories from This Year to See Where They Are Now In January, I posted this thread about Devon Henry, a Black Virginia contractor who was hired to take down a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery when no one else would. In doing so, Henry took on significant risk with workers walking off site, being told his business would be ruined, and having to wear a bullet-proof vest to work every day. An update is the 5th story at the gift link above. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 9:14 AM PST - 4 comments

She said she would not have paid $4.49 in October at an Aldi for a bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins, had she known that the candies not only lacked the "cute looking" carved eyes and mouth shown on the packaging, but any carvings at all. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:05 AM PST - 96 comments

The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again // Anil Dash on how the new year offers many of the promises of an online moment we haven’t seen in a quarter-century [archive]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:14 AM PST - 65 comments

As awesome as we are, on occasion we're reminded that other people are also kind of great. Which is why we at Bloomberg Businessweek practice an annual exercise in humility called The Jealousy List. Put simply, these are the stories so well executed by folks at other outlets that we wish we’d published them. from Jealousy List 2023 [Bloomberg; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:20 AM PST - 5 comments

United States Postal Service - Hold Music Collection on Bandcamp

To see the most recent status of your packages, enter your tracking number in any search box on USPS.com.

NOTE: The tracking information available to customer service representatives is the same information you will see on USPS Tracking.

Hours of Operation... [more inside]
posted by Spinda at 1:09 AM PST - 11 comments

Using three new technologies for conservation. Zoos Victoria has started using MouseSTAT Pulse Oximeter and Heart Rate Monitor to accurately monitor small rodents and marsupials having medical care. The Zoo Emergency Nutrition by Air (ZENA) system was developed by drone manufactures XM2, and allows remote access to wildlife effected by bushfires in order to deliver much-needed food and sustenance when their habitats have been destroyed. "ZENA helps to get out to the site and distribute food efficiently, across a wide area, at a very short notice and at quite a cheap cost, too," Mr Kazi said. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:35 PM PST - 3 comments

In so funny and cute🤣!The kitten took the rooster on an outdoor trip.The happiest rooster in the world [8m11s], a cat takes a rooster on a walk down to a lakeside. I don't think you can engineer this happening. It's a cat. Once they get there, the cat begins tasting the rooster but does not horribly eat them. They seem to be friends. It's a happy video.
posted by hippybear at 7:30 PM PST - 9 comments

After around a year and a half of work, this mod for Crusader Kings 3 has hit version 1.0. It converts the game's very graphical UI into plain text, and is thus screen reader accessible, thanks to OCR software. [more inside]
posted by Alensin at 4:41 PM PST - 8 comments

Tom Wilkinson: The Full Monty actor dies at 75.
posted by clavdivs at 4:05 PM PST - 32 comments

What happened when English villagers encountered black Americans during World War II? [more inside]
posted by Sebmojo at 3:10 PM PST - 13 comments

Mr Bates vs. The Post Office (video preview) is a dramatised account of the Post Office Fujitsu Horizon scandal [previously]. Full background of the case is available in 'The Great Post Office Trial' a series of BBC Radio podcasts from 2020. At the end of 2023 not a single postmaster has been given full financial compensation, making the compensation scheme a second scandal in itself. So few claims have been processed that the compensation pot has been reduced by half. Meanwhile as the Post Office Horizon inquiry concludes, lawyers say enough evidence has emerged for police to consider prosecuting former Post Office executives, which may include Paula Vennells CBE, the former CEO of Post Office Ltd.
posted by Lanark at 3:03 PM PST - 41 comments

I have tracked anti-transgender legislation for 3 years @erininthemorn on Twitter and TikTok. Every day, I’ve gotten messages from worried people wondering how they are supposed to assess their risk of staying in their home state. The messages range from parents of trans youth wondering if their children will be taken from them to trans teachers wondering if their jobs will be safe in coming years. Sometimes people just want to know if there is a safer state they can move to nearby. Writer and trans activist Erin Reed has mapped the United States from the perspective of safety for trans individuals. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 10:54 AM PST - 18 comments

Where The Atlantic’s Science, Technology, and Health reporters found wonder this year. (The archive for article and all of its links in The Atlantic)
posted by ShooBoo at 8:22 AM PST - 12 comments

Deconstruction is a term that has a very academic meaning but in faith circles deconstruction has a different meaning. And while this video covers a really wide range of topics that are brought up by the movie, at its center Barbie is a Deconstructionist Text [1h30m] holds forth that the destruction of previously-held personal belief systems is intrinsic to the Barbie experience. It's an in-depth look at this movie that I wasn't expecting but probably needed. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 6:48 AM PST - 22 comments

Game Developer's 2023 wrap-up: The events that defined the year [more inside]
posted by May Kasahara at 6:27 AM PST - 17 comments

"Five years ago, an unusual image appeared on Instagram. It showed Mohammed VI, the 54-year-old king of Morocco, sitting on a sofa next to a muscular man in sportswear. The two men were pressed up next to each other with matching grins like a pair of kids at summer camp. Moroccans were more accustomed to seeing their king alone on a gilded throne. The story behind the picture was even stranger. Abu Azaitar, the 32-year-old man sitting next to the king, is a veteran of the German prison system as well as a mixed-martial-arts (mma) champion." From April of this year, The Economist's 1843 Magazine, "The mystery of Morocco’s missing king."
posted by mittens at 6:06 AM PST - 5 comments

The celebration of Yule used to start in mid-winter throughout Shetland and last a total of 24 days with unique traditions. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:41 AM PST - 8 comments

Cretinism and goitre were among the great medical mysteries of 19th-century Europe. The overlap of the conditions was a source of fascination, as was their geographical specificity. Scientists, medics and armchair experts flocked to the Alps, seeming to discount nothing in their investigations: landscape, elevation, atmospheric electricity, snow melt, sunlight (too much and too little), ‘miasma’, bad beer, stagnant air, incest and ‘moral failure’. ... In 1876, a list of the most promising theories was published; it featured forty different hypotheses. from A National Evil [LRB; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:56 AM PST - 36 comments

A musical number about how in 2001, with his poll numbers dropping, the then-Prime Minister of Australia John Howard used fear and xenophobia to boost his ratings. Facebook link with professional captions. Youtube link with only crappy auto-generated captions. It's also noteworthy as a general song about how some politicians around the world wrap themselves in the flag and use persecution of refugees to boost their votes. This is from a 2023 Australian TV show called Australian Epic, which is a historical retrospective which intersperses serious interviews with key experts and witnesses with musical numbers by actors. This song is from the episode about the political showdown of the Tampa affair, when a Norwegian freighter carrying 433 rescued refugees was denied entry into Australian waters by the Howard government. If you are in Australia you can watch the whole episode about the Tampa affair here: unfortunately, it is geolocked.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:54 PM PST - 5 comments

It’s time for the Dogs of 2023. To no one’s surprise, the dogs were good again this year.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 10:59 PM PST - 18 comments

The website fatherhood.gov maintains a database of Dad Jokes. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 3:36 PM PST - 84 comments

Maine has now joined Colorado in finding Trump ineligible for primary ballot. (NY Times article, Internet Archive link.) Maine's Secretary of State Shenna Bellows speaks to CBS News about her decision. Maine becomes the second state to bar Trump from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:06 PM PST - 99 comments

First edible mascot in sports history stars in the Pop-Tarts Bowl is an article in which it is revealed that a dancing Pop-Tart, after declaring it to be his dream, was lowered into a gigantic toaster and delivered fresh and hot for the winning team to eat. I love the 21st Century!
posted by hippybear at 2:06 PM PST - 24 comments

Paper: "Private equity acquisition of hospitals, on average, was associated with increased hospital-acquired adverse events despite a likely lower-risk pool of admitted Medicare beneficiaries, suggesting poorer quality of inpatient care." Press release. CNN article. Rebecca Watson video with transcript. Private equity response.
posted by clawsoon at 1:13 PM PST - 42 comments

From the TV show Australian Epic: a song about why New Zealand is better than Australia. (Context is that this is about an event in 2001 where Australia under then-Prime Minister John Howard treated refugees very badly.) This is the Facebook link which has proper captions. This is the youtube link which only has crappy autogenerated captions.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:45 PM PST - 5 comments

The L.A.P.D. says it has the largest local airborne law-enforcement unit in the world. A recent audit found little evidence that its choppers deter crime.
posted by folklore724 at 12:32 PM PST - 33 comments

Perhaps the king of depravity could have pursued the life of a chef de cuisine, instead of founding a religion
posted by cupcakeninja at 12:03 PM PST - 6 comments

The Retrologist's Guide to Pizza Hut Classics [more inside]
posted by box at 9:18 AM PST - 21 comments

@TraceLoops makes animations and loops Traceloops makes trippy animations and music loops.
posted by falsedmitri at 8:07 AM PST - 2 comments

Sell your belongings for cash, sail the world for three years on a ship that hasn't been purchased yet. What could go wrong? [NYT Gift Link]
posted by hydra77 at 7:47 AM PST - 21 comments

52 Interesting Things I Learned in 2023, via Kottke.org
posted by cozenedindigo at 5:26 AM PST - 28 comments

This belief in tarot as a revealer of hidden truths is not the survival of some ancient tradition. It’s a modern idea grafted on to something that was originally intended as a bit of fun. Tarot was a card game played in a fairly recognisable way, with the players laying down a card to compete for the highest value in a series of tricks – but with 20 or so ornate picture cards, depending on the set, to complicate the scoring. These were so beautifully crafted, so visually splendid, that their designs now obsess and befuddle people centuries after it was first played by Renaissance courtiers. But tarot is no more mysterious in its origins than Happy Families. from Dr Terror deals the Death card: how tarot was turned into an occult obsession [Grauniad; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:26 AM PST - 74 comments

Angela Russell collects marsupial poo. A crack team of volunteers across Australia helps her out. The Marsupial Microbiome Poop Troop collects the droppings of wild marsupials to help save the lives of orphaned joeys.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:57 PM PST - 3 comments

The ACLU of Delaware filed a complaint arguing that too many Deaf children are being referred to Deaf schools. When the ACLU of Delaware filed a complaint against the Delaware Department of Education earlier this month, calling for the investigation into the Department's treatment of Deaf children, it raised some eyebrows. When they argued that the state was keeping Deaf students from the Least Restrictive Environment by sending them to the Deaf school, more eyebrows were raised. When they further argued that Listening and Spoken Language, a trademarked certification for oral-only education given out solely by AG Bell association, designated by some in the Deaf community as a hate group and who claim they can "make Deaf people hear", was the "gold standard" for Deaf education...well, you can imagine what happened next.... [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 9:42 PM PST - 27 comments

IRIS: A Space Opera by Justice (Official Video) [~1h] reminds me a bit of The Chemical Brothers, but I'm sure there are other things going on in here. I liked this enough to post it here.
posted by hippybear at 8:09 PM PST - 9 comments

Aretha Franklin/ Black Sabbath mashup. 'supernaut/'chain of fools' (slyt) and toss in a dash of Randy Rhodes. Steele makin' it real reviews.
posted by clavdivs at 2:35 PM PST - 14 comments

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies. [so many previouslies]
posted by chavenet at 11:52 AM PST - 76 comments

Title is Destin "SmarterEveryDay" Sandlin's hopes for the recovery [YT 15min] of his friend and fellow youtube science advocate Dianna "PhysicsGirl" Cowern. In mid-2022, Dianna . . . a) married Kyle Kitzmiller; b) launched her new science talk-show "Proof of Concept" as part of Curiosity Stream c) copped a 'Rona which led to the debilitating devastating Up and Down of long CoViD. Destin's quote is nerd-speak hoping for more Up and less Down. Quick text-based source for the story so far [cw: GoFundMe link]. Simone "Queen of the Shitty Robots" Giertz, not without her own medical problems, gave a health update [YT 5min] on Dianna in Feb 23.
posted by BobTheScientist at 10:34 AM PST - 13 comments

GROUP DYNAMICS AND DIVISION OF LABOR WITHIN THE ANTI-LGBTQ+ PSEUDOSCIENCE NETWORK [SPLC.org] is a really really long article outlining the exact way networks of funding and people work to promote anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience, and discusses its ties to white supremacy and the religious right. It gets into specifics and details, but the greater picture it paints is one of coordinated efforts to move public opinion and accepted science against LGBTQ+ existence in society. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 8:50 AM PST - 36 comments

After an 'astonishing' initial response, Nikki Haley acknowledges the Civil War was 'about slavery.'
posted by box at 7:50 AM PST - 87 comments

Many an actor has held a brush over the years, from Sylvester Stallone to Lucy Liu. Viggo Mortensen also paints, when he isn't writing poetry or taking photographs. Billy Dee Williams, a painter for decades, has work in the National Portrait Gallery. Count Jemima Kirke in, too, though she may be known even more for her art than her acting. What's that, you say? John Lithgow and Mark Gatiss paint? Once you expand the lens to "celebrities," of course, the list expands. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Bird was once valued at more than $2 billion and seemed to epitomize a shiny future of clean urban transport. But ridership slumped during the pandemic—and so did Bird’s shares after its 2021 stock market debut. In late 2022, after a series of business setbacks, the company warned investors that it could go bankrupt. It was booted from the New York Stock Exchange in September of this year for failing to consistently maintain a market cap of $15 million. As the company scrambled to survive, it has squeezed its fleet managers harder. On December 20, their situation became more uncertain when Bird announced it was filing for bankruptcy. from Blood, Guns, and Broken Scooters: Inside the Chaotic Rise and Fall of Bird [Wired; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:50 AM PST - 51 comments

Cultural burns are small, slow and controlled, and they're in high demand on private properties. Four years after the devastating Black Summer bushfires, Aboriginal fire practitioners say they're struggling to keep up with demand for cultural burns from private landholders, and they want more support.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:37 PM PST - 14 comments

Tom Smothers, Comedian, Musician and Scourge of CBS Censors, Dies at 86. [Hollywood Reporter] "He and his brother, Dick, "turned television upside down" on 'The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour' before they were canned." Tom was actually the one that was pushing the envelope. He was deliriously funny and always confrontational and hated the term "cancelled", preferred to use "murdered" to what happened to them. Here is the documentary Smothered - The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (2002) [1h32m] from Internet Archive. Smothered from previously this year.
posted by hippybear at 1:35 PM PST - 118 comments

Why did NASA create the Tire Assualt Vehicle (TAV), a model radio-control tank with a drill? The Space Shuttle Program had experienced some close calls with the landing and braking system, especially the tires. Hard data was desired about the response of the tires to various off-nominal situations. To obtain this data, a Convair 990 jetliner was converted into the Landing Systems Research Aircraft by adding an instrumented version of a Shuttle Orbiter landing gear. (StackExchange, with an answer by the creator of the TAV) [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 11:35 AM PST - 6 comments

"Put simply, one does not have the right to self-defence against a territory that one occupies." - Avi Shlaim writes for Prospect magazine || Jewish Currents: Israel’s “Humanitarian” Expulsion || WashPo: How Israel pushed over a million Palestinians into a tiny corner of Gaza (ungated) || NYT: Skepticism Grows Over Israel’s Ability to Dismantle Hamas || Guardian: Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to discuss postwar plan for Gaza Strip || CTV News: Israel's forces raid a West Bank refugee camp as its military expands Gaza offensive || Democracy Now: As Phone Line Breaks Up, Palestinian Journalist Akram al-Satarri Describes "Dire" Conditions in Gaza; Palestinian Christian Pastor [Rev Munther Isaac] Slams Western Silence on Genocide in Gaza & his Christmas sermon, "Christ in the Rubble" [more inside]
posted by cendawanita at 9:01 AM PST - 471 comments

John William Godward (1861-1922) was late Neoclassical painter who frequently painted scenes of Greco-Roman antiquity. His research was meticulous, though he is not as well regarded today as his instructor, Alma-Tadema. Neoclassicism wasn't the star of the 20th century, but Godward is still selling [NSFW]. You've probably seen his Dolce Far Niente.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:15 AM PST - 9 comments

The Shoegaze Revival Hit Its Stride in 2023 [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:55 AM PST - 31 comments

Researchers hope DNA will unlock the key to saving endangered gum tree from extinction. Sydney Botanic Gardens experts conduct genetic testing to help restore the only population of river red gums east of the Great Dividing Range.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:05 AM PST - 2 comments

Crossword lovers, like joke lovers, have a quick-draw inventory of memorable puzzle themes; Ghogre describes a quip puzzle that featured the answers pig-tight, bull-strong, and horse-high—old cowpoke parlance for what a good fence should be. Ghogre had never seen a pig, and, as he told me, “We don’t have fences.” from Can Crosswords Be More Inclusive? [The New Yorker; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:23 AM PST - 55 comments

"Tesla cars are shoddily built pieces of shit liable to fall apart and malfunction in dangerous ways at inopportune moments. No, this is not a blog from 2012! It is also not a blog from 2015 or 2018 or 2022. On Wednesday, Reuters published a big, thorough investigative story documenting a pattern of major parts failures on low-mileage Tesla vehicles—and Tesla's organized years-long effort to obscure the pattern and offload its costs onto drivers, so as to sustain the illusion that it is a profitable company making cars that are not piece-of-shit death traps. The reason Tesla hasn't "worked all the bugs out yet" is that the company is run by people who hold established best practice in ideological contempt, and is defined by a tech-industry culture that fetishizes innovation and regards product quality as a third-order concern."
posted by AlSweigart at 9:02 PM PST - 169 comments

Sabotage Holiday 2023 "It only took 4 years and a major global event but the kids were finally old enough to do the stunt work required to recreate SABOTAGE by THE BEASTIE BOYS for our holiday card this year. We hope you enjoy it as much as we loved making it. Happy Holidays one and all! (the original) [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 6:48 PM PST - 14 comments

The awkwardly titled Nobody Believes But It REALLY WORKS! 15 Brilliant (+1 FREE) Chef's Secrets Work Like CRAZY Magic! is 11 minutes of things that people might find useful in the kitchen. I hadn't heard of this channel before, but apparently Websppon World has over 1M subscribers, so I'm both late to the game and the YouTube algorithm is a slacker. The different tips are chapter linked in the "more inside" part of the video description. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:44 PM PST - 40 comments

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild, has a secret experience system that doesn't make your character stronger, it makes the enemies harder. Here's 102 ways to kill a bokoblin in that game. If you got it for the holidays and want some tips, here's 10. How to send Link waaaaay up into the sky with just a fan and a plank, using Oriented Carryable Objects (OCOs). And here's TerminalMontage's speedrun cartoon, featuring Cucuí Ganon. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 4:04 PM PST - 15 comments

Tiny ants swollen with honey could hold the key to new medical treatments. Aboriginal people have used honeypot ants to treat everything from cuts to colds for generations. Now a team of scientists from Sydney studying the West Australian ants say they could hold the key to new medical treatments. Kenya Fernandes, a researcher from the University of Sydney, said early tests found the honey was effective at killing some types of bacteria and fungi that can be life-threatening in humans. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 3:52 PM PST - 3 comments

There’s no better way to emphasize this general feeling than to break down the most important events of 2023 to their molecular level. (Although, as you’re about to see, “important” is a relative term; the word “most” is far more key here.) To recap the language that this year gave us—the seemingly ranch, the rizz, the ice cream yes yes yes—so that we can truly see just how constant, how compelling, and how bizarre our current existence is. Without further ado, these are the 84 sentences that defined 2023. [CW: almost entirely US-focused]
posted by chavenet at 12:38 PM PST - 63 comments

"This is hard to do with traditional knitting design software, which is generally focused on developing single outputs by hand instead of easily-adjustable parametric families of outputs.” [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 9:05 AM PST - 4 comments

"The units of paleontology, and of biology more generally, are different from the units of paleoanthropology, in that the latter are units in a story of our ancestors, and the ancestors are invariably sacred". A reconsideration of pre-human ancestors from biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks. [more inside]
posted by MetaFilter World Peace at 7:54 AM PST - 15 comments

Happiness journalist Gretchen Rubin's 24 for 24 is a fun way to rethink the usual new year resolutions. She's doing a #Write24in24... what's the Metafilter 24 in 24? What's yours?
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:42 AM PST - 10 comments

The NBA's basement tape: the origins and legacy of 1990's 'NBA Superstars' (YT)
posted by box at 6:18 AM PST - 2 comments

I couldn’t decide. Hmmm, I replied, then commented that I should have a ready answer. He wasn’t the first to ask, and I’d had time to think about the question. Plenty of time—years, in fact. So why didn’t I have a convincing reply? Probably because my answer felt inadequate. It wasn’t, after all, some verifiable claim I might make about Spanish customs or the Spanish character vs. the American. Rather, my feeling that it was so easy in the States to communicate with people in offices, shops, or on the street, with neighbors, friends, and family, compared with the struggle it often is to understand and be understood in Spanish. And my trouble with the Spanish language couldn’t, surely, be the essential difference between life in the States and life in Spain? Talk about solipsism! from Lighting a Match by Clellan Coe
posted by chavenet at 1:34 AM PST - 2 comments

How Accurate Is “The Muppet Christmas Carol”? [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:28 PM PST - 20 comments

Reindeer Sleep and Eat Simultaneously, Saving Precious Time in the Short Arctic Summer. While the animals chew their cud, they also enter a state of rest.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:49 PM PST - 6 comments

The villain who plans to demolish the toy shop in a Hallmark Christmas movie sets the record straight. By Joanna Castle Miller, December 2021.
posted by russilwvong at 11:12 AM PST - 23 comments

Paul Williams reflects on writing each of the songs in The Muppet Christmas Carol. [more inside]
posted by deludingmyself at 9:12 AM PST - 17 comments

Boost for endangered Australian icon after 100 seahorses released in Sydney Harbour tidal pool. The endemic White's seahorse has been in decline for decades, but now hundreds have been raised in captivity and released around Sydney Harbour, the latest in Clontarf tidal pool.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:30 AM PST - 5 comments

It is extremely likely that these kings, or the people who wrote their legends, consciously chose to the crowned on Christmas Day. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:12 AM PST - 3 comments

What Went Wrong for Ron DeSantis in 2023 (NYT gift, 12/24 (and Politico analysis)) [more inside]
posted by box at 6:04 AM PST - 75 comments

The shed held a mare with a suckling colt and the boy would would have put her out but they called to him to leave her. They carried straw from a stall and pitched it down and he held the lamp for them while they spread their bedding. The barn smelled of clay and straw and manure and in the soiled yellow light of the lamp their breath rolled smoking through the cold. When they had arranged their blankets the boy lowered the lamp and stepped into the yard and pulled the door shut behind, leaving them in profound and absolute darkness. No one moved. In that cold stable the shutting of the door may have evoked in some hearts other hostels and not of their choosing. From A Blood Meridian Christmas [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:13 AM PST - 7 comments

What has become a great Christmas tradition is still going. Since 1955 NORAD has been tracking Santa as he delivers Christmas presents to children around the world. [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:31 AM PST - 13 comments

(This is a free thread. But it also complements the not-free-thread. So write in either. Or both.) While some enjoy fine dining on the 25th, and do other things (inaccurate list), so others go to mass or surf, or eat domcă or plachie. But what are you doing? And while December 1999 was a quite different place on the blue of MetaFilter, what were you doing (or how was your life back then) on Christmas Day 1999?
posted by Wordshore at 12:22 AM PST - 129 comments

Hold back against the darkness Jon Solomon does the thing again. His 35th anniversary Christmas marathon is live on WPRB, going through 6 pm EST tomorrow. If you like off-of-center Christmas music, or are just looking for something to do in the next 20 odd hours, Jon Solomon is here for you.
posted by mollweide at 4:43 PM PST - 9 comments

May you all have a happy holidays! May you great people all have a great holiday season. MetaFilter is just the best. Enjoy your people, (and listen to the Roches). On to 2024, and what horrors that will bring. Love you all.
posted by Windopaene at 3:06 PM PST - 43 comments

Rare recording of mysterious night parrot captured, described as holy grail of ornithology. Aboriginal rangers manage to record the song of the extremely secretive night parrot in a remote part of Western Australia.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:42 PM PST - 4 comments

How Finland is solving homelessness. An incredible video to me, about Finland's housing and accompanying support solutions for homeless people. Showing so many benefits to everyone involved (as well as 'saving the tax payer money') by providing housing for everyone, however low they get. [more inside]
posted by many-things at 1:00 PM PST - 14 comments

Elephant sanctuary beginning in Portugal. Arguably also a climate-migration project.
posted by clew at 11:34 AM PST - 2 comments

All year, the new conservative Christian majority on the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had been searching for a way to get rid of Adeline Hambley They complained that they couldn’t trust Hambley. They accused her of supporting mask mandates and pushing coronavirus vaccines that they believed were unproven and possibly unsafe. They said her employees had encouraged dangerous, sexually perverse behavior by attending a local Pride festival, where they tested attendees for sexually transmitted diseases and administered the mpox vaccine. [more inside]
posted by bq at 11:21 AM PST - 25 comments

"Something’s off about this story." What's going on with Santa Claus and the northernmost tip of the Earth? Sam Kriss (previously) explores. (SLMedium)
posted by doctornemo at 10:44 AM PST - 14 comments

They Want You To Forget What A Film Looks Like: some people need their deep learning algorithms taken away from them.
posted by simmering octagon at 10:01 AM PST - 35 comments

Star Wars Holiday Special: 5K 60fps Upscale (1978) [more inside]
posted by Artw at 9:14 AM PST - 36 comments

Every year in the week before Christmas, John Peel would invite some musical pals to his home in the English countryside and broadcast their sessions as part of a live party there. Local choirs, bell-ringers and Peel's family took part too. The shows this produced were always hugely enjoyable, and I have two downloadable examples to prove it. The first has Lianne Hall, Camera Obscura, Cowcube & Melys among the guests and the second features Ballboy and Laura Cantrell.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:12 AM PST - 4 comments

From a scientific perspective, however, this dragon’s discovery was both exciting and unexpected.
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:42 AM PST - 6 comments

Anke Richter, Cult Trip; Inside the world of coercion and control publishers promotion. Interesting but disturbing book on modern day cults that took 10 years to write. Anke describes herself as a workshop junkie and lover of radical transformation who enjoys the buzz of "quick fix spiritual solutions". Her goal is to decolonize yoga of the frauds and the sex pests who have gravitated to it.
Centrepoint community first section of book.
Agama Yoga second section of book (on Thai island of Koh Phangan)
Glorivale religious community third section of book.
[more inside]
posted by Narrative_Historian at 1:59 AM PST - 11 comments

While Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham and spiced beef Lily went from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury potatoes wrapped in a white napkin. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:53 AM PST - 3 comments

It is a species so endangered that just five years ago only 20 birds returned from the species' annual migration. But 81 orange-bellied parrots have returned to Melaleuca in Tasmania's remote south-west from the mainland to breed, the largest number seen in 15 years. The orange-bellied parrot is one of the most endangered birds in the world, and the program saving it from extinction is starting to focus on the next phase of the birds' survival plan.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:53 PM PST - 5 comments

YouTuber Jeffiot goes digging for the origins of skull trumpet / doot doot / mr skeltal, and ends up taking a trip to the early web heyday of animated gif art, and ruminating on creativity and legacy
posted by jason_steakums at 9:38 PM PST - 11 comments

It’s Solstice 2023, the dark nights are at their peak (at least in the northern hemisphere) and The Magnus Protocol has crowdfunded and is forthcoming. Anyway, here’s another roundup of weird audio dramas! They may help you spend time while doing chores, or coping with personal, global, or holiday stress, or simply ease the pain of living in this terrible world with stories about even more terrible worlds. Most of the series are audio dramas with paranormal elements, but anthologies, fantasy, and science fiction are included. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:12 PM PST - 6 comments

Since I know you expect to be updated on the latest SFF YA writer drama, here you go: … since the infamous Lauren is trying to delete her racist tweets while simultaneously still harassing BIPOC authors, I guess we're doing this instead.
posted by signal at 5:30 PM PST - 46 comments

Christmas just isn't Christmas without a little Roddenberry. Please enjoy a Holodeck Holiday, this year's present from the fabulous (MeFite!) John C. Worsley. Previously. Previously. Previously. The whole collection (all of which I love). [more inside]
posted by kristi at 4:17 PM PST - 4 comments

Cows have friends and enemies in the herd. Pigs help each other out of traps. And goats... well...
posted by clawsoon at 4:17 PM PST - 22 comments

Here's another Christmas special for you all - the downright charming Coots and Critter in: Santa's Magic Book, directed by animator, cartoonist and cartoon historian Mike Kazaleh. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 3:55 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

BUILDING THE WORLDS BIGGEST MARBLE TRACK TO EXPLOIT THE GAME - Marble World Is Perfectly Balanced [50m] is completely entrancing. Nearly 1000 marbles begin the run, only a few will make the winner's circle, and many end up in the gutter. The Spiffing Brit has done this before [previously], but this one is even more unhinged than the first.
posted by hippybear at 2:57 PM PST - 5 comments

What can board games say that other art forms can’t? (SLNewYorker ungated, archive)
posted by ShooBoo at 9:53 AM PST - 19 comments

NYTimes notices the Hallmark Christmas movie meme trend and analyses the movies. gift link [more inside]
posted by theora55 at 9:16 AM PST - 24 comments

Watch Papa Noel read the story in his delightful Cajun accent during a swamp tour earlier this month
posted by cupcakeninja at 7:45 AM PST - 11 comments

Rare turtle lays eggs to edge species back from brink of extinction. Conservationists say it was incredible to find that a Manning River turtle had laid a dozen precious eggs as part of a breeding program aimed at saving the critically endangered species.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:32 AM PST - 2 comments

On Thursday, 34 years after the game's original release, a human player crashed NES Tetris for the first time. The game's original programmers assumed that nobody would get past the "killscreen" where speed doubled at level 29, but using the "rolling" technique discovered in 2020, players have been playing deeper into the game than ever before. It was known that a crash was possible after level 155 due to flaws in the scoring code, but no human had ever reached this point. 13 year old "Blue Scuti" was on level 157 and had been playing at killscreen difficulty for over half an hour, with a world-record highscore over 6.8 million, when he became the first human player ever to crash the game (full game video).
posted by automatronic at 2:07 AM PST - 16 comments

I like this idea of sweet watermelons coexisting with bitter ones, each type influencing our perceptions. The watermelon is a generous fruit: the flesh of one can feed a dozen people and can parent hundreds of melons with its seeds. Cultures throughout the ages have, and still do, interpret the watermelon as a symbol of good luck and fertility, a plant whose great fecundity might be shared with you. But in the United States, more than a century of racial denigration has cloaked and clouded this primordial symbol of solidarity, generosity, and abundance, transforming it into something almost unpalatable for many Black people. Of course, the watermelon itself is not to blame, but throughout its botanical, cultural, and social history, it has been a vehicle for our ideas about community, survival, and what we owe the future. from Tell Me Why the Watermelon Grows
posted by chavenet at 1:19 AM PST - 9 comments

Want to get cozy and watch a Christmas special from a bygone decade but can't decide what to watch? Here one that recently got retroactively inserted into the time stream: the 66th Creatures of Yes video, The One True Santa Claus Revealed at Last! - a 24-minute puppet show made in a 70's TV style using period equipment. The Creatures of Yes, after its Epic Saga Era and Bottle Season Era, is clearly now in its Variety Show Era. (previyesly)
posted by BiggerJ at 7:54 PM PST - 1 comment

"The only artist in the world to embed gold leaves in glass, Kirikane." Yamamoto Akane: 'Making Beauty'. (slyt) [via The British museum]
posted by clavdivs at 5:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Just over a year ago, we discussed Pentiment, a videogame about living in the age of illuminated manuscripts. The game was highly acclaimed but what hasn't been discussed is its historical accuracy. In Perusing Pentiment's Boisterous Bibliography [44m] Super Bunnyhop spends quite a bit of time talking about the gameplay, with a minimum of spoilers for actual story, but also dives into just a small handful of texts from the extensive bibliography [Reddit post of 4 slides of book titles from the end credits of the game] the game is based on, and exactly how they're reflected in the experience.
posted by hippybear at 3:04 PM PST - 6 comments

TimeGuessr is a game where you guess the location and year a photo was taken. [more inside]
posted by Klipspringer at 12:00 PM PST - 32 comments

It's nearly Christmas, it must mean that the King William's College Quiz has been posted to the Guardian or on the College's website. A shared Google Sheet is available for those who would like to play.
posted by snakeling at 11:31 AM PST - 37 comments

Following up on his previous shift in federal marijuana policy, President Biden has issued a blanket pardon for all people convicted of simple use and possession under federal law. (SLWhite House) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:42 AM PST - 61 comments

The 8 Worst Music Trends of 2023 (slStereogum)
posted by box at 7:35 AM PST - 29 comments

The Nigerian Hit Movie That Broke Netflix - "Government corruption, police brutality and the often futile struggle of ordinary Nigerians for justice form the backdrop for Effiong's impressive action sequences. 'Authenticity was key for us, showing Nigeria as it is, in a way that Nigerian people would recognize,' says [director Editi] Effiong. 'Not a Hollywood version of Lagos, but Lagos as we Nigerians see it.' The film's success has raised the bar for Nigerian movies, which have proven a driving force for Netflix and other streaming services as they look to expand across Africa and to export African cinema worldwide." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:32 AM PST - 10 comments

I wandered the aisles of craft supplies, nick-knacks, and hobby paraphernalia, not absorbing much, drifting into ennui, until I stumbled across a row of plastic model kits. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:15 AM PST - 44 comments

THE BARCELONIAN is a collective illustration project that pays homage to the legendary THE NEW YORKER through the covers of a nonexistent magazine. More than 100 artists illustrate their relationship with the lived city, with the city of their loves and hates, to show us corners, scenes, anecdotes and episodes from the multiple perspectives of their unique view.
posted by chavenet at 1:59 AM PST - 9 comments

Why Master of Arts graduates at Oxford had to swear an oath against a man who'd been dead for over 500 years [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:08 PM PST - 17 comments

It's not a Christmas album, but Duran Duran's sudden, surprise, entirely fun album release this year Danse Macabre came out just in time for Halloween. Inspired by an Oct 31 concert they held in 2022, they churned this out out in under a year, with three new songs, several covers, and some reworking of their own songs. The recordings included working with every member of the band official or otherwise, including Andy, Nile, and Warren. The opening track is a remake of a track from their 1981 debut, NIGHTBOAT, which fittingly includes Andy Taylor on guitar. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 4:47 PM PST - 20 comments

The Mask // story of a young man who loves Whos line is it anyway [SLYT 24:44] [more inside]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 3:35 PM PST - 2 comments

Also: Consultants Consult, 'Sad' Goat, God-given Middle Finger, Orca Moms & more in The 2023 Headline of the Year Nominees [X, nitter]
posted by chavenet at 12:18 PM PST - 20 comments

This paper describes an old and a new way to think about ChatGPT. Borges and AI is the title; the authors take a high-level view of the entire potential corpus of ChatGPT, guided by a few of Borges' stories that explore universes of infinite possibilities. [more inside]
posted by lwxxyyzz at 9:03 AM PST - 62 comments

December 2023 solstice from space. Let's check in on humanity's solar system exploration before 2024 kicks in. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 8:14 AM PST - 14 comments

Trimming With the Devil in Green Bay wherein the Satanic Temple causes a free speech brouhaha at the National Railroad Museum by trimming a Christmas tree perfectly within the museum guidelines [more inside]
posted by condesita at 7:14 AM PST - 69 comments

Craig Stewart, Emperor Jones Founder and SXSW Alum, Has Died at 53 Stewart ran the influential Trance Syndicate label with his husband, Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey, before starting the offshoot Emperor Jones in 1995. He also spent much of his career working for SXSW.
posted by mcdoublewide at 6:30 AM PST - 10 comments

"Just busted a 17 year old, already on the mic. What life advice could you possibly be sharing??" (slTikTok) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:44 AM PST - 28 comments

An interview with Susan Cooper about, among other things, her poem "The Shortest Day" [SLNPR] [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:29 AM PST - 11 comments

FD Signifier talks about the 'white rapper' paradox and how it functions with whiteness and commercialism/fame/etc. In discussion: mainly Eminem and his influence on hip hop, but also some focus on Vanilla Ice before him and Mac Miller after, shout-outs to El-P, Lil Dicky, Jack Harlow (where apparently FD was bugged about doing a vid on the recent superstar) and Marlon Craft. [more inside]
posted by Pachylad at 4:59 AM PST - 42 comments

Age-gap discourse, which is aimed primarily at older men dating younger women, grew out of that movement’s concern with power differentials and with coercion and consent. But it also sits at odds with Me Too’s core ethos — “Believe women” — by raising an outcry on behalf of women who, by all available public accounts, have no complaints about their relationships. Even if they say they are happy, the age-gap critics don’t believe them. from They say they’re happy. Why is it so hard to believe them? [The Cut; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:14 AM PST - 121 comments

“Yes, it’s her world and after reading her book I just wish I could move off-planet.” Lit Hub's annual best-worst reviews list.
posted by blue shadows at 11:53 PM PST - 10 comments

The Masks4All Wiki: Welcome! This page is intended to be an collaborative and evolving resource for finding information on what masks are out there and what we know about them. Hope you will find it useful. (reddit) [more inside]
posted by aniola at 11:11 PM PST - 10 comments

Inside Doom's My House Mod MyHouse.WAD Did you play doom? Did you play custom levels? This will be interesting for you. The Doom wiki give a pretty good explanation about what's going on but I think going in blind is best. The original poster said this: Excited to finally release this tribute map. Last August I lost a good childhood friend of mine and took it pretty hard. When I was visiting my hometown for his funeral, I connected with his parents who shared with me some of his old belongings. Among them was a copy of an old map of his backed up on a 3.5” floppy from high school. Thomas and I were into amateur Doom mapping in the early 00s but I had never seen this map of his prior to uncovering it on one of the old floppy discs. As a way of paying tribute to him and all the great memories we had together, I took the plunge and installed Doom Builder in order to polish up his map and add a few modern amenities just for convenience sake. I haven’t touched an editor in over 15 years so it was quite a surprise to find out how easy mapping has become. I may have gotten a little carried away with these new UDMF features and, as such, the map is designed for GZDoom. From the text file:
posted by ShakeyJake at 10:10 PM PST - 8 comments

May-Ying Mary Ngai (2011), "From entertainment to enlightenment: a study on a cross-cultural religious board game with emphasis on the Table of Buddha Selection ...," highlighted in 2021 by George Pollard on Twitter / IA / Nitter: "around 830 C.E. a man named Li He ... invents a game named 採選 Cǎixuǎn, Selection with Dice, about promotion and demotion in the ranks of the state bureaucracy," giving rise to Shengguan Tu (pics: 陞官圖 / 升官图). Serina Laureen Patterson's (2017) "Game on: medieval players and their texts" discusses fortune games like "Chaunce of the Dyse" (see also), "Truth or Dare" / Q&A games with a chosen king/queen, e.g. "The King Who Does Not Lie" or "Le jeu du Roi et de la Reine," and more. [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:03 PM PST - 3 comments

Game-changing downpour provides feast for rare birds. With its soft, twittering tune and brilliantly bright plumage, the scarlet-chested parrot is one of Australia's rarely sighted birds that is rejoicing in recent rain in South Australia's Riverland.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:51 PM PST - 2 comments

66 Good News Stories You Didn't Hear About in 2023 [FutureCrunch]
posted by hippybear at 3:28 PM PST - 31 comments

Darlene Love reunites with Paul Schaffer and David Letterman to sing her Christmas standard, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" for the first time since 2014. Bonus Love: Christmastime For The Jews.
posted by Diskeater at 3:17 PM PST - 11 comments

"Lance is one smart motherfucker,” says Kim Cruz, my Lyft driver, of Lance Gilman, the mastermind behind the industrial park. With his trademark Stetson and salesman smile, Gilman has been the not-so-secret power center in northern Nevada, a one-man mini-government that seems to run local politics, corporate affairs, and other hijinks from the same cell phone. He’s been an elected county commissioner for the past decade, helping to write the regulations and codes for the land his development company owns and conducting business from a trailer behind the Mustang Ranch, the famous brothel he also happens to own, where we have now arrived. from A Nevada Tale: Tesla, Google, and the Mustang Ranch [Alta; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:37 PM PST - 6 comments

Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen, AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real. Start from a photo of someone with their artwork; use generative AI ("image-to-image") to create a variant of it; post it to Facebook; get thousands of likes and comments. "20 years from now, I don’t know what it’s going to be like then, but I’m not going to believe a single thing anyone shows me on the internet ever again." By Jason Koebler.
posted by russilwvong at 12:50 PM PST - 52 comments

Good people of MetaFilter, IT IS HERE. The 2023 Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog (Drew Magary, Defector). That’s it. That’s the $4,999 FPP.
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:23 AM PST - 104 comments

A runner near Puy de Dôme, France inadvertently became a shepherd when a flock of sheep began following her through the woods; artist Eleanor Scholz captured the sheep's fun run and provided a brief update. [more inside]
posted by uncleozzy at 10:47 AM PST - 17 comments

Did an expensive Melbourne private school give Australia the word bogan?
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:39 AM PST - 3 comments

As reported previously on the Blue, geologists were monitoring a buildup of magma under the Reykjanes peninsula, with earthquakes and other seismic activity reported in the region. Subsidence of said phenomena had researchers stating that risk of eruption had lessened - until the 18th, when said eruption finally occurred. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:07 AM PST - 38 comments

The UK Supreme Court has just handed down Judgment against (YT 7½m) Dr Stephen Thaler in his quest to become patent holder / beneficial owner of two inventions created through AI by his machine called Dabus. There is a kinda crappy transcript and extensive explanatory "more" under the video. The US Supreme Court came to similar conclusions over Thaler v Vidal in May 2023. (i.e. Katherine K Vidal, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director, United States Patent and Trademark Office) [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:50 AM PST - 9 comments

Winter can be a drag even in the absence of military conflict across the globe. Need a quick way to boost your mood? Below are some ideas. Are they new? Absolutely not. Are they rocket science? See answer above. Have you probably forgotten a few? No doubt. Let the cheery links begin (as usual, your mileage may vary; these tips may help some individuals at some times but maybe not!). From Real Simple: 8 Science-Backed Ways to Improve Your Mood at Work. From Yahoo Life!: Birdsong. Psychology Today: Music. Washington Post: Breathing (archive).
posted by Bella Donna at 7:59 AM PST - 14 comments

...43% more penile fractures would have occurred in Germany from 2005 on.” ... “This injury tends to occur during wild sex - particularly in positions where you’re not in direct eye contact [with your partner], such as the reverse cowgirl” Guardian: Risk of penile fractures rises at Christmas, doctors find. Wikipedia entry (contains pictures) for penile fracture. Metro: Man who broke penis during sex has urgent surgery to fix ‘aubergine deformity’. Cosmopolitan: Is Reverse Cowgirl Really the World’s Most Dangerous Sex Position?
posted by Wordshore at 7:15 AM PST - 69 comments

Recent analysis of Scythian grave goods found various kind of leather, including leather made out of people. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:36 AM PST - 8 comments

An essay about aging by Anne Lamott. (WaPo gift link).
posted by JanetLand at 6:18 AM PST - 15 comments

Here in the Manuscripts Room, the space itself looks the same, but it does not sound the same; depopulated, it is oddly quiet. Loudly quiet! This quiet is completely different from the constant rustle of ambient noise that counts as what we could call “library quiet.” Today, the distinctive energy of the Manuscripts Room is nowhere to be found: on a typical day, staff and readers alike are focused, on the clock, working swiftly and deeply, using fragile materials that are, by definition, unique and irreplaceable. This distinctive energy is the product of a thrilling alchemy of two forms of raw materials: readers, and the works in their hands. Absent readers, absent works, the reading room is just a room. from How to Lose a Library [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:15 AM PST - 22 comments

Dimiter Kenarov writes about returning to Bulgaria after years in the US; about his childhood in the country under communism, the cultural explosion of the 1990s, and the sense of returning stagnation.
posted by automatronic at 1:22 AM PST - 6 comments

Nicaragua’s dictator goes after Miss Universe As Nicaragua has marched steadily toward dictatorship in recent years, its government has attacked opposition politicians, the Catholic Church, journalists and universities. Now it’s going after the beauty queens. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 9:15 PM PST - 9 comments

Skull shape can predict how extinct vultures fed on carrion. Variations in the skull shape of vultures have been found to coincide with the preferred method each species uses to feed on a carcass. Learning more about the form and function of living species is helping scientists to understand more about the behavior of extinct birds such as the giant Haast's eagle.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:09 PM PST - 4 comments

For their podcast Second In Command: A Veep Rewatch, Veep actors Matt Walsh [not THAT Matt Walsh, you're fine] and Timothy Simons just recently brought on Hugh Laurie OBE CBE for his first ever podcast interview! [1h14m] It's a wide ranging interview that goes well beyond Laurie's role on the show; a conversation that weaves in and out of awkward but is full of really genuine, delicious, encouraging human moments. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:50 PM PST - 1 comment

In a stunning decision, the Court ruled that Trump isn’t an eligible presidential candidate because of the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban.
posted by Rykey at 4:09 PM PST - 226 comments

In the United States today, organized Christianity is mostly associated with restrictions on reproductive autonomy, countermajoritarian and white nationalist agendas, and an embrace of free enterprise economics (even though it has also played a central role in civil rights and progressive movements throughout U.S. history). A Theology of Liberation, by contrast, represents a tradition that put religious reflection at the heart of the struggle of the global poor. By embodying ambition instead of compromise, it also offered an alternative to the schismatic tendencies of multicultural liberalism. from Salvation Now
posted by chavenet at 1:30 PM PST - 30 comments

Artist Ted Chin has his surreal digital art on tedslittledream.com and his instagram. He has been featured in mymodernmet.com (not affiliated with the MET), 121clicks.com, and was interviewed last month for forbes.com.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:37 AM PST - 15 comments

Earn cash while fighting crime. With your support, we can continue to implement our Autonomous Security Robots (ASRs) to keep communities safe. [more inside]
posted by diode at 7:23 AM PST - 66 comments

Copyright claim against Tolkien estate backfires on LOTR fanfiction writer. (slTheGuardian)
posted by Kitteh at 5:43 AM PST - 89 comments

When I spoke to people from East Berlin who remembered the Hanno Klein case, they were generally inclined towards the view that the letter-bomb must have been sent by men involved with West Berlin’s construction companies: businessmen who were keen to be seen as dominant figures and now found themselves dismissed by Klein. People who would have liked a piece of the action but kept finding Klein standing in their way. People driven by greed for profits and fear of losses. from The Killing of a Berlin Power Broker [Granta; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:26 AM PST - 3 comments

Megaraptorid dinosaur may have originated in Australia, study into skull fragment found on beach reveals.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:26 PM PST - 5 comments

Thai rice farmer Tanyapong Jiakham in Chiang Rai has created art in his rice paddies by planting rainbow rice seedlings depicting sleeping cats. The artwork takes as its theme a Thai saying "There is fish in the water and rice in the fields" as well as model cat Cooper, whose colouring will be reflected in the rice plants just before harvesting. [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 6:09 PM PST - 13 comments

Every year, John Waters sends a personally signed Christmas card to a select list of friends [Xitter; Nitter] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:42 PM PST - 14 comments

In June 1944 Maureen Flavin, at the post office, was responsible for phoning in the weather reports gathered by Ted Sweeney, the keeper of the Blacksod Light in County Mayo. The storm data from Blacksod helped tip the balance for deferring the Normandy landings a couple of days. Maureen later married Ted. She died yesterday in the fullness of her 100 years surrounded by her family. Tributes from Met Eireann 2023 and the US House of Representatives 2021.
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:22 PM PST - 18 comments

The Manhattan Transfer at The Old Grey Whistle Test (22 February 1977) is 41 minutes of the vocal group performing live. They're appearing on the strength of their single Chanson d'Amour, which was storming up the UK charts and would soon hit #1 for three weeks. This is before their emergence into US charts with Birdland [CW: eighties hair and shoulder pads] and Boy From New York City.
posted by hippybear at 12:43 PM PST - 18 comments

If you've been wondering why strangers started offering gifts to Clarence Thomas without any (direct) benefit, we now know. ProPublica is reporting that it all started in early 2000, when Thomas intimated that he would quit the court. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 12:42 PM PST - 85 comments

Pope Francis Allows Priests to Bless Same-Sex Relationships (NYT, WaPo, CNN, BBC, AP, Reuters, Advocate, National Catholic Reporter, Vatican News) [more inside]
posted by box at 9:32 AM PST - 107 comments

Announced today, the American company founded in 1901 by some of the original American oligarchs -- Charles Schwab, Andrew Carnegie, and J. P. Morgan among them -- intends to sell itself to the Japanese company for $14.9 billion including the assumption of debt. [more inside]
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:00 AM PST - 40 comments

This is both of those things. Gavin Crawford tells a story about his mother, Alzheimer's, and Christmas trees.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:41 AM PST - 14 comments

While we shove tartes of flesh into our mouths and read seasonal food reviews, we note that a week today 'twil be the birthdays of Humphrey Bogart (1899), Annie Lennox (1954) and Chef (1984). While invaluable goods continue to disappear, a new etiquette divider is those who ladle their gravy verses those who pour it from the boat, and the best peanut spread is Pindakaas, the question remains: what are you buying or making or planning to eat? Or ... just write about anything, because this is your Free Thread.
posted by Wordshore at 4:00 AM PST - 140 comments

Devotion to dairy has taken different forms throughout the Alps’s secluded valleys. “A popular culture of the cow … traverses all moments, objects, and events of the mountain peasant,” wrote Preiswerk. In Grimentz, it manifested in elaborate funerals. After a death, the bells of the deceased’s cows were removed, so that the animals, too, could mourn. Families added a “picnic of the dead” to the casket, which included a bottle of wine, bread, and cheese (as well as sturdy boots, as ghosts were rumored to wander the glaciers after dark). from The Valley of the Cheese of the Dead
posted by chavenet at 2:04 AM PST - 2 comments

Canadian researcher cracks 135-year-old coded message stashed in silk dress
posted by sardonyx at 9:21 PM PST - 15 comments

Watch this RAINBOW Pendulum Wave (Use Headphones!) [2h] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:21 PM PST - 12 comments

Crying on a regular basis can boost your mental well-being. So welcome to cry once a week, which offers a new short, sad video for that very purpose as often as you care to refresh the page.
posted by gottabefunky at 6:30 PM PST - 19 comments

Honest Government Ad: Visit the UK! (2024 election). (Political satire.)
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:45 PM PST - 35 comments

The Gävle goat is back for 2023, and is facing a new peril. Jackdaws have descended on this year's sculpture and are pulling it apart to eat the seeds left within the straw. 2022's goat survived thanks to a double fence and 24 hour guards, what will it mean if this year's goat falls to natural forces instead of arson? [more inside]
posted by polymath at 2:14 PM PST - 41 comments

Putting 31 volts through various holiday toys. (Youtube, 10 minutes)
posted by JHarris at 2:04 PM PST - 21 comments

Seven Things We Learned Analyzing 515 Million Wordles [NY Times; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:57 PM PST - 71 comments

George Bailey Was Never Born [podcast website with all episodes] is a 10 episode podcast which deep dives into the 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life [Wikipedia] through the lens of economic justice and populism, and how Mr. Potter seems to be winning in all aspects of THIS universe in which George Bailey was never born. The playlist on YouTube is in the wrong order but here is Episode 1: The Public’s Movie (1974-’92), and the rest can be found from there. Episodes average about 1 hour.
posted by hippybear at 10:13 AM PST - 24 comments

Pee Wee's Playhouse Christmas Special [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 7:52 AM PST - 16 comments

Fluid Motion: Each year at its annual meeting, the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics sponsors a contest for the best images in a variety of categories, all related to the flow of fluids.
posted by dhruva at 6:31 AM PST - 9 comments

This story is one of painful probabilities and possibilities. A husband, father, son, and brother either died in a horrific accident or used that accident to flee the life he was living. Either way, he would probably no longer be alive today. His family is forever left with pieces of a puzzle that can’t be made whole. The shapes that fit together over time weren’t always pretty. The gaps may be uglier still. from The Truth is Out There [Atavist; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:53 AM PST - 30 comments

In the Dáil (Lower House) last Wednesday, during PMQ Taoiseach (PM) Leo Varadkar announced: "I would like to confirm that Santa Claus has permission to enter Irish airspace and to cross our borders on December 24 through December 25. I want to thank IAA, Department of Agriculture and Revenue Commissioners for allowing necessary exemptions to occur". Further. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:14 PM PST - 12 comments

Timing of Opalization at Lightning Ridge, Australia: New Evidence from Opalized Fossils.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:04 PM PST - 4 comments

"BirdWeather is a visualization platform that... is continuously listening to over 200 active audio stations around the world and is actively plotting their results in a user-friendly map interface. We built BirdWeather to be a living library of bird vocalizations accessible to users via online map tools." You can explore top stations, top species (I'm not sure 'engine' is a species), or just watch the data come in via live updates. [via, via]
posted by jessamyn at 4:01 PM PST - 11 comments

Flag selected - tweaks expected! Minnesota is almost certainly getting a new flag and a new state seal next spring, and now we more or less know what they look like. But the devil is in the details... [more inside]
posted by OnceUponATime at 2:31 PM PST - 40 comments

"The aim of writing under the name of this nonexistent philosopher was, in Rorty’s words, ‘intellectual empathy’, understood as the attempt to enter into the mind of another thinker, a kind of exercise. This thinker, who does not exist, nevertheless takes up a particular perspective on the world, a perspective that rests on a different set of assumptions and preoccupations from the author’s." 'Forging Philosophy' [via: Arts & Letters Daily.]
posted by clavdivs at 2:15 PM PST - 9 comments

Are you afraid of sardines? Do you have a can of them stored in your cupboard waiting for you to get the courage to try them out? Don't worry, Matthew Carlson has a video for you explaining how to eat canned sardines. Watched that and you have some questions? He tries to answer them. Convinced and now you're hungry? He has reviewed and eaten 100+ different cans of sardines (and other fish) in the Canned Fish Files for you to choose from.
posted by simmering octagon at 1:58 PM PST - 51 comments

A different kind of Christmas television special from a different time entirely. The Ray Conniff Singers come together on television screens in 1965 for a solid 50 minutes of carol singing. The songs are all done in studio and performed in lip sync in the special, with actual studio sound for the talking segments. This is post Beatles-on-Sullivan, mid-Dissolution Of Folk Revival, and pre-psychedelic era. It's delicious in its earnestness and fashion choices made specifically to work with early color television.
posted by hippybear at 1:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Naomi Klein on the podcast Between the Covers. Part 1 transcript & audio. Part 2 transcript & audio: "We can’t accept the weaponization of traumatic memories, which are real. Nazis boycotted Jewish businesses. That memory is in Jewish DNA and that is going to be weaponized and used to say [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions advocates] are like the Nazis. At the same time, we have to somehow find a way to recognize that those feelings are real and trauma is complicated. We can’t just scream at people who feel things. We have to find a way to navigate that and hold more complicated spaces that allow for the reality of feelings without conceding the truth of the point." [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 1:46 PM PST - 12 comments

During the 1998-99 snow season, [The] Mount Baker [Ski Area] received 95 feet of snow, setting the national and world record for the most snowfall in a year. The mark stands 25 years later. (ungated, archive)
posted by ShooBoo at 8:19 AM PST - 20 comments

The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say. The NRF retracted its claims. The If Books Could Kill Podcast has an episode on the organized retail crime panic, released a few weeks before the retraction. [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 7:23 AM PST - 59 comments

Thought only female mozzies sucked blood? Not according to these 130-million-year-old male mozzies. It's a fact often trotted out at summer barbecues when mosquitoes are buzzing around — only female mozzies drink blood. But new research suggests that may not have always been the case.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:53 AM PST - 12 comments

Interview with Daniel Radcliffe's stunt double, who was paralysed on the set of Harry Potter
posted by plonkee at 3:20 AM PST - 13 comments

Treasured old cookbooks and recipes, and why they matter. (Australian ABC) [more inside]
posted by freethefeet at 3:08 AM PST - 3 comments

Zines, at their most glorious, are indifferent to dignity, reckless in the statements they reel off, determined to make a virtue of their limited resources. Back in 1978, the editors of a book called Copyart likened the photocopier to a “magical machine,” something that produced the “unplanned” and “unexpected.” All the magic in Copy Machine Manifestos is from another time, another country. from Copy Machine Manifestos
posted by chavenet at 2:04 AM PST - 10 comments

What if COLUMBO and DOCTOR WHO had a crossover? [8:50] [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:00 PM PST - 13 comments

Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen giving a speech to Howard Beale in the movie 'Network'. (slyt)
posted by clavdivs at 3:23 PM PST - 26 comments

Here is Uncle (6 minutes), a stop-motion short from 1996 by Adam Elliot. Elliot makes "clayographies," bittersweet and quietly funny stories about lives. Uncle had two direct successors, Cousin (1998, 4m) and Brother (1999, 8m). Here is an interview with Elliot about Uncle. Later on he made Harvie Krumpet (2003, 22m), Mary and Max (2009, clips + trailer: 11m; full movie [buy or rent] 1h32m), and Ernie Biscuit (2015, 20m). These are mostly all viewable, in much sharper detail, on Elliot's website, but they're harder to directly link to.
posted by JHarris at 1:36 PM PST - 6 comments

FunSearch: Making new discoveries in mathematical sciences using an LLM. "This work represents the first time a new discovery has been made for challenging open problems in science or mathematics using LLMs. FunSearch discovered new solutions for the cap set problem, a longstanding open problem in mathematics. In addition, to demonstrate the practical usefulness of FunSearch, we used it to discover more effective algorithms for the “bin-packing” problem, which has ubiquitous applications such as making data centers more efficient."
posted by storybored at 12:40 PM PST - 18 comments

20 Words // 20 Seconds is an addictive typing game by Kevin Hutchins where you have 20 seconds to type 20 words based on prompts that refresh every time you type a new word.
posted by Kattullus at 11:21 AM PST - 79 comments

Dr. Bayo Akomolafe interviewed on the podcast For the Wild on the subject of Ontological Mutiny. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe - Nigerian-born living in India, a “recovering” psychologist, writer, and speaker on such wide-ranging issues as whiteness (which he describes as the way we organize and are organized), neurotypicality, violence, animism, anticapitalism (as a project of capitalism), post-activism and more. A quote from a recent lecture by Dr. Akomolafe: To be seen is to be surveilled/ To be surveilled is to be useful/ To be useful is to be imprisoned/ To be imprisoned is to be stuck Dr. Akomolafe asks us to consider the breaks, fissures, openings, and cracks where we can stray from usefulness. [more inside]
posted by Word_Salad at 10:28 AM PST - 7 comments

From YouTube channel The Secret Life Of My Hamster, I bring you The Best Hamster Challenges! 25 minutes of horrifying, hair-raising encounters with heavy industrial equipment and treacherous mazes. Marvel in the sheer stamina and brilliance of different masters in four separate scenarios! Consult your doctor before viewing because the stress might destroy your heart!
posted by hippybear at 9:17 AM PST - 7 comments

"We've all been there: it's puzzle time, but once you dump out the pieces and start laying them flat, you realize you don't have enough space on your table. Join me as we use physics to find out HOW BIG A TABLE YOU NEED FOR YOUR JIGSAW PUZZLE?
TL;DR: an unassembled jigsaw puzzle takes up an area that is the square root of 3 times the area of the assembled puzzle, or about 1.7 times the assembled area. This is independent of the number of pieces."
posted by vacapinta at 9:14 AM PST - 12 comments

Behind the Scenes at the Dismantling of Roe v. Wade (slNYT)
posted by box at 8:47 AM PST - 18 comments

"...the fiery burn of its alcoholic components screech in dissonance against the brunchy flavors of maple, butter, cream and unexpected savoriness." Come for the Sippin' Cream, stay for the Doritos-flavoured vodka! [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 6:06 AM PST - 33 comments

After publishing her thesis on agrotoxins, brasilian researcher Larissa Bombardi had to self-exile. In a recent interview, Bombardi declared that she's still afraid to return: after being threatened, hacked and having her house robbed, it is safer to stay in Paris [portuguese], where she can continue to research and safely raise her two kids. [more inside]
posted by BruxoPimba at 5:09 AM PST - 5 comments

22 years after acquiring Deja News and its archive, Google will be ending support for Usenet on February 22, 2024 [more inside]
posted by Lanark at 3:12 AM PST - 97 comments

It is a coup then for the Tate to show such extraordinary (and extraordinarily expensive) pieces, and undoubtedly a benefit to the gallery-going public. A closer look at Gregor Muir’s job description reveals an emphasis not on curating, but on directorship of Tate’s international collection, which encompasses “[nurturing] and [expanding] the Tate’s existing international networks including the established acquisitions committees.” The show’s collaboration demonstrates success in this respect. Yet it sets a worrying precedent, especially given what feels like a lack of transparency into the monied roots of the show. from What We Lose When Curating Follows the Money
posted by chavenet at 1:37 AM PST - 7 comments

"An Oral History of Socially Distant Movie Night: 3 Years, Nine Months, and 182 Movies (mostly rom-coms)" appears in Avidly's RomCom Superlatives! series: "Destination Wedding has a 51% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where critics revile its 'utterly repugnant characters' and 'sewer-bile dialogue.' Turns out it hit the spot. Keanu and Winona hooked up in the desert under the watchful eye of a mountain lion, we all kept up a steady stream of snark and emojis, and for 87 minutes all was well with the world ... What follows is an oral history of our movie night in the shape of a romcom, spliced together from our memories." [more inside]
posted by Wobbuffet at 9:19 PM PST - 7 comments

Rope crossings saving possums at roadkill hotspot, researcher says. Rope bridges were installed at Ku-ring-gai in New South Wales in 2006 after a study found 600 possums (Ringtail possums and Brushtail possums) had died there in two years. Research suggests the strategy is working.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:46 PM PST - 9 comments

Apple announces Murderbot series starring Alexander Skarsgård. The series is based on Martha Wells' series of novellas and novels about Murderbot, a cyborg piece of security equipment who, after maybe probably definitely maybe murdering a bunch of its clients for reasons it can't remember, hacks its own governor module to free itself so that it can endlessly watch The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and other media whenever its clients aren't killing each other or getting eaten by fauna.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:16 PM PST - 186 comments

404 Media: 'A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads, according to a review of CMG marketing materials by 404 Media and details from a pitch given to an outside marketing professional. Called “Active Listening,” CMG claims the capability can identify potential customers “based on casual conversations in real time.”'
posted by mittens at 3:45 PM PST - 46 comments

If you're Hull musician Norman Cook and are looking to observe the 25th anniversary of the album that launched you to global superstardom, there's really only one way you can go. Fatboy Slim - You've Come A Long Way, Baby - All Mixed Up is a half-hour journey across the vocal and musical samples of the biggest hits from this seminal album, released in Oct 1998. Even while the magician is showing you his secrets, it feels thrilling and magical. BONUS: Becky Hill talks to Fatboy Slim for 40 minutes for her podcast, and it's a great conversation! [Becky Hill wikipedia, for the non-UKs out there.]
posted by hippybear at 2:53 PM PST - 16 comments

Naturalist David B. Williams first wrote in his newsletter about the recently extinct woolly dogs of the Salish Sea last year. In June of 2023, he wrote about some of their current depictions in Skokomish art and current Pacific Northwest design. Now, he reports on the DNA analysis of Mutton, the only known specimen of the breed, released today in Science (full article).
posted by bq at 2:23 PM PST - 12 comments

Can Pat Finnerty, pride of West Philly, execute step 13 of his simple plan and acquire a hot tub that fits in his rental? He answers that and more in What Makes This Song Stink Ep. 8: Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town."
posted by zenon at 1:22 PM PST - 27 comments

Today, December 14, 2023, a group of Substack publishers (also known as creators or writers) sent an open letter to the founders of Substack by publishing it in their individual newsletters. After salutations, the letter begins, "According to a piece written by Substack publisher Jonathan M. Katz and published by The Atlantic on November 28, this platform has a Nazi problem. ... We, your publishers, want to hear from you on the official Substack newsletter. Is platforming Nazis part of your vision of success? Let us know—from there we can each decide if this is still where we want to be. Signed, Substackers Against Nazis." [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 12:58 PM PST - 43 comments

On December 1, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected Donald Trump's claim that he had "presidential immunity" that makes exempt from criminal prosecution. (Full decision.) IMPOTUS is appealing the ruling in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, putting the case on hold. But Special Counsel Jack Smith is making some moves. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 12:57 PM PST - 43 comments

Putin tells Russia his war objectives are unchanged but EU to open membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova [BBC] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:11 PM PST - 33 comments

An Oral History of the George W. Bush Shoe Throwing, 15 Years Later.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:45 AM PST - 8 comments

Podwireless has just dropped its Best of 2023 episode, featuring an hour of the year's best "folk and roots music and associated weirdos". Toppermost of the poppermost in this particular world is Shirley Collins with her excellent 2023 album Archangel Hill.
posted by Paul Slade at 8:59 AM PST - 5 comments

The geographic locations of 1,001 novels set in the United States. [more inside]
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:21 AM PST - 27 comments

"Today the GCHQChristmasChallenge returns, pitting 11 to 18-year-olds [and bored adults!] against a series of tricky puzzles set by some of our finest minds."

Seven little puzzles designed to test skills such as codebreaking, maths and analysis. Direct link to the puzzles [PDF]
posted by Dysk at 4:28 AM PST - 21 comments

“Is this the land that time forgot?” Lopez gets animated as he recounts the time, money and energy he’s sunk into his home and the neighborhood. His wife wants to move. Then, he softens as he explains why he stays. “I stay here because it’s quiet. It’s peaceful,” Lopez says. “This place, it’s idyllic.” from The Tiny NYC Community Forgotten for Decades [Bloomberg; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Engineered stone will be banned in Australia in world-first decision. Australia's workplace ministers have agreed to implement a national ban on engineered stone (composite material used for granite-look kitchen benchtops), because its use has led to a surge in silicosis cases (painful, disabling and fatal lung disease) among workers. Safe Work found that while silicosis cases could emerge in several industries, the numbers were disproportionate among engineered stone workers. Engineered stone workers also suffered a faster disease progression and were more likely to die from it, the report said. The majority of engineered stone workers diagnosed with silicosis were under 35.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:17 PM PST - 84 comments

Robin Stone was a singer from childhood, from morning to night. But her background in R&B wasn't particularly aligned with the style of early single Show Me Love, full of New Jack Swing flavors and synths and even a saxophone, typical to 1990 production. But this song was revived in 1993 when a Swedish production duo laid her vocal on top of a new track in a new style: Robin S - Show Me Love. It was a huge global hit! Here's Robin S. telling the story of Show Me Love [14m, DJ Mag], full of her own wisdom gained across the decades,which has an unexpected coda. When Beyoncé released Renaissance and her song Break My Soul, Robin S. found herself once again a focus of world attention. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:53 PM PST - 9 comments

A federal judge has issued a 14 day temporary injunction against the NCAA enforcing limitations on players transferring to other schools, as part of a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of several states asserting that said rules are an unlawful restraint of trade against the players. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:48 PM PST - 43 comments

The Soul Stirrers -- He's Been a Shelter to Me (Paul Foster)
As the ranking comment reads: Paul Foster is a fire breather! Period! [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 7:36 AM PST - 9 comments

"You can only be ironic for so long — you can only post so many George Wallace memes — before you start thinking that two sets of water fountains aren’t a bad idea.” [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:57 AM PST - 413 comments

It is tempting to think that a career as long and productive as Kundera’s would finally assume a distinctive unity. But looking closely at the life and work has the opposite effect: what stands out are various ruptures and intimations of underlying incongruence, from Kundera’s disavowal of most of his early work in poetry and drama to his vacillation over the wording of his later texts, as well as his initial refusal to allow his late, French texts – from La lenteur (1995) to La fête de l’insignifiance (2013) – to be translated into Czech. from The Two Milan Kunderas by Alena Dvořáková [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Your top complaints and grievances of 2023 The Tampa Bay Times asked for readers’ petty complaints, and they delivered once again. [archive]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:39 AM PST - 115 comments

Andre Braugher, titan of modern TV acting, died on Monday at 61. [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 7:47 PM PST - 132 comments

Guttural, breathy mating calls of male koalas trigger new tracking devices. The distinctive call of male koalas looking for a mate has been programmed into sensors that are speeding up research into where the threatened animals live.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:11 PM PST - 6 comments

Poetry is not holy just because it speaks of things that are holy. Poetry is not beautiful just because it speaks of things that are beautiful. If we are asked why it is beautiful and holy, we must answer as Joan of Arc did when she had been interrogated for too long: “Next question.” from The Secrets of Beauty by Jean Cocteau [The Paris Review; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 3:27 PM PST - 5 comments

An artifact from a very different era of the internet, Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure is a 2004 one man show about searching two words on Google and being thrilled if only one result is returned: that's a Googlewhack. Exactly how this concept can lead to 2 hours of on-stage storytelling featuring slides and a bit of unhinged ranting in parts is an exercise I will leave up to the avid viewer. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 1:47 PM PST - 47 comments

POV footage of NASA's Artemis 1's Orion spacecraft's re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere: Real-time (25m); Time-lapsed 25x (1m)
posted by not_on_display at 11:51 AM PST - 29 comments

The nation’s largest pharmacy chains have handed over Americans’ prescription records to police and government investigators without a warrant, a congressional investigation found, raising concerns about threats to medical privacy. WaPo gift link
posted by PussKillian at 10:54 AM PST - 26 comments

2023 Will Go Down as the Year Twitter Died. A multipart package from The Verge looking at Twitter, for better and for worse. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole at 10:06 AM PST - 86 comments

After nearly three decades and a number of ups and downs for the event, the Entertainment Software Association has announced the end of the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, better known as E3, coming after a deal with geek culture event management firm ReedPop falling apart. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 9:43 AM PST - 12 comments

Dr. McLuhan's positive views toward people's tastes for unpackaged foods prompted us to refer to our bulk candy promotion as the 1st Annual Marshall McLuhan Bulk Candy Festival. In so doing we meant no disrespect to this great Canadian who is revered and respected throughout the world.
posted by clawsoon at 8:05 AM PST - 14 comments

What happened when marijuana money came to small U.P. towns [MLive]
It’s a 10-hour, two-meal round-trip drive to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to buy marijuana for some folks.

But the pot pilgrims don’t mind. It’s a pretty drive.

The proliferation of recreational marijuana shops on the Michigan side of the border has resulted in a proliferation of marijuana citations on the Wisconsin side. [MLive]
posted by riruro at 7:05 AM PST - 49 comments

One christmas novelty hit is still making money —its influence on modern licensing, Motown records, and what the composer’s kid still hears in it. Steve Knopper interviews Ross Bagdasarian Jr. for Billboard.
posted by Hypatia at 6:26 AM PST - 5 comments

SpiderHarp: Hatton’s SpiderHarp captures the essentials of how spiders use web vibrations to interpret worldly signals and pushes the idea from the realm of science to that of art.
posted by dhruva at 2:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Jessica Hawkins vs. Karahnjukar Spillway [CW: advertising] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:50 AM PST - 9 comments

Justice by Means of Democracy [archive|transcript] - "[T]he work of democracy is to continuously resist capture. There is no end of history. There is no state of rest for democracy. Democracy is the work of resisting capture by powerful interests and restoring power-sharing just over and over and over again. So we have to do work to introduce new governance mechanisms in the place of those that are not working."[1,2; link-heavy post!] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 20 comments

Travel from Southern Cross Station to Warrnambool terminus with Driver 667 [SLYT, 3hr20m] For railfans, lovers of slow media, and anyone else who needs some brain brillo for the upcoming festive season, this early Spring morning journey from Melbourne's Southern Cross Station to the south-western coastal city of Warrnambool offers a unique perspective on the landscape of Australia, suffused with the glorious gold of the southern sun... [more inside]
posted by prismatic7 at 9:03 PM PST - 16 comments

From the Daily Beast. Mira is a student of international business at the Artevelde University of Applied Sciences in Belgium. She recently received feedback on one of her papers—and was shocked to see that her instructor noted that an artificial intelligence detector flagged 40 percent of her paper as being written by a bot. She ended up discussing it with her professor, telling him that she didn’t know how she could prove she wrote the paper. He agreed to check it again—but she hasn’t heard back from him yet.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:53 PM PST - 132 comments

Why bodybuilding fish could meet the world's growing hunger for seafood. Researchers find that a simple exercise regime can help fish grow much faster and be more tolerant to disease.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:47 PM PST - 15 comments

Need something to put on in the background of a gathering? Not music, but not sports? Here is 5 hours of curated [by whom? no clue] QI! rounds from across its run. Guaranteed to have moments that are interesting and moments that are funny. Not sure if it will trigger your problematic drunk uncle, but everyone else should find it quite fine.
posted by hippybear at 4:48 PM PST - 25 comments

Together, Chin and his students made the most critical decision: It had to be secret. No one could know they were the ones sneaking avant-garde art onto television—indeed, no viewer should be aware that any art project was happening at all.
posted by juv3nal at 4:29 PM PST - 10 comments

Jezebel has arisen from a fresh grave. Previously the death knell of an influential, if not universally loved, staunchly feminist, and fond of snark has a resurrection story by way of Paste Magazine.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 2:17 PM PST - 10 comments

Covering long Covid solidified my view that science is not the objective, neutral force it is often misconstrued as. It is instead a human endeavor, relentlessly buffeted by our culture, values and politics. As energy-depleting illnesses that disproportionately affect women, long Covid and M.E./C.F.S. are easily belittled by a sexist society that trivializes women’s pain, and a capitalist one that values people according to their productivity. Societal dismissal leads to scientific neglect, and a lack of research becomes fodder for further skepticism. I understood these dynamics only after interviewing social scientists, disability scholars and patients themselves, whose voices are often absent or minimized in the media. Like the pandemic writ large, long Covid is not just a health problem. It is a social one, and must also be understood as such. From Ed Yong in the New York Times (archive link). [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 1:09 PM PST - 47 comments

Americans love avocados. It’s killing Mexico’s forests. (Alternate link here) The article discusses existing political approaches to solutions. But also, try growing your own! A worthy and fun long-term project. Here's an example of some people who decided to put some avocado pits in the ground. They're trying to grow a cold-hardy avocado that can thrive in the Pacific Northwest.
posted by aniola at 12:48 PM PST - 26 comments

To celebrate the 30th birthday of DOOM, here's a thread of everything that I've found that DOOM can run on. Some are real, some... maybe not. It's up to you to figure out which 😉 [X; nitter]
posted by chavenet at 12:24 PM PST - 14 comments

Canada to roll out federal dental insurance plan in May 2024 [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 11:10 AM PST - 28 comments

Eric A. Meyer: 'The tech industry continues to refuse to learn how to think like real, actual people when designing new features. Reddit, in the form of Reddit Recap, is merely the latest offender, though they do have the distinction of being nearly a decade behind Facebook in doing this.'
posted by Cardinal Fang at 7:43 AM PST - 29 comments

In Search of Lost Time. "If I’d gone to Boulder [NIST] expecting to find some unassailable master clock, surrounded by druidic time lords reverently conveying its results—the sacred source that had so captured my childhood imagination—what I found instead was rather disconcerting: Time, it would seem, is quite often out of joint." A lovely essay on the delicate measurement of time and other things.
posted by storybored at 7:29 AM PST - 27 comments

...or perhaps it is a free thread, in which case do? If a MeFite makes an irrelevant comment on a front page post, does anyone read it? What is commenting, anyway? What is commenting... not? Will the many academics who keep studying what we write on MetaFilter ever tell us? Discuss. Or don't. Does anyone care? And is Cool Whip really edible?
posted by Wordshore at 5:48 AM PST - 131 comments

"I call myself a part-time autodidact handyman, a playful term to distract folks from the fact that, on paper at least, I have no business whatsoever working on their house. I have a decent education in theology and literature, but zero official qualifications for building a deck or plumbing a kitchen sink or adding lights to an entryway."
posted by kmt at 5:20 AM PST - 27 comments

There are places that matter, sites of consecration and meaning, both natural and human, that possess, through the alchemy of time and memory, a holiness: very old churches, ancient baseball stadiums, certain groves of trees on certain campuses. The Romans called it genius loci, the spirit that inhabits the earth and air of a place. There are places and there are also nonplaces, forgotten or ignored or transformed by human progress into blind spots of experience where nobody wants to be, like the landscaping in front of a Burger King. The expansive lot with the fireworks billboard off the interstate was a nonplace, which is perhaps why I felt so irresistibly drawn to it. from Christmas on the Moon by Harrison Scott Key
posted by chavenet at 1:00 AM PST - 10 comments

Wombat nicknamed Ian Thorpe after being rescued from a Canberra lake by a woman in a kayak. A wombat earns the nickname, Ian Thorpe, after swimming for nearly 40 minutes before being rescued by a woman in a kayak from Yerrabi Pond in Canberra's north after a thunderstorm.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:23 PM PST - 7 comments

Geoffrey Lewis was one of those "Hey, he's that guy!" actors [7m, but you won't need that long]. Geoff Levin would be a "Hey, he's that guy!" composer if there were such a thing. [Look at his filmography.] Together they created the peculiar and enchanting music-and-storytelling project Celestial Navigations. Perhaps best described as "Baritone Actor Monologist Really Really Tells Stories Overtop Of Vangelis and Hans Zimmer Synths". They provided the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated short The Janitor [5m]. But I found a rare live performance of this piece with a holiday touch, The Train. [5m12s] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:10 PM PST - 5 comments

Willie Nelson — Stardust

Willie Nelson in concert at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast, Northern Ireland in June 2000. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 1:18 PM PST - 17 comments

To all the fans and everyone involved in the baseball world, I apologize for taking so long to come to a decision. I have decided to choose the Dodgers as my next team. [Instagram] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:52 PM PST - 38 comments

Wired called it the 'The Shadow Internet'. Inverse Phase (Previously) talked about 'How Software Piracy Birthed an Underground Art Scene' at HOPE 2018. A recently released full-length documentary (website) details how teenagers ignited a computing revolution in the 1980s with illegally copied video games. [more inside]
posted by Z303 at 9:11 AM PST - 14 comments

All the new laws coming into force in California in 2024.
posted by alby at 8:42 AM PST - 39 comments

when people say "enshittification", it's as if their core complaint about capitalism is the customer service, rather than the systematic exploitation of other people. people don't talk about union busting as "enshittification", or wage theft as "enshittification", let alone deeper systematic issues. [...] enshittification is someone experiencing the systematic problems of capitalism for the first time, and not seeing the tip of the iceberg for what it represents. it's walking past a picket line to complain to the manager. it's being mad that the star wars show got cancelled and hoping awareness will fix it.
posted by mhoye at 6:32 AM PST - 111 comments

Challenging the ‘received wisdom’ about mortality rates aboard Irish emigrant ships during the Great Famine can open our minds about the past, while also influencing how we think about the present. (1,700 word essay, RTE 8th Dec 2023) [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:26 AM PST - 22 comments

“It’s something that we’re not supposed to like, we’re not supposed to be interested,” she says of the broad appeal of guts and gore. But she found that thinking about actual bodies in all of their vital carnality really brought the historical characters she had been studying to life. from History’s Five Best Body Part Stories [Nautilus; ungated] [CW: body parts, amputation, gore, history]
posted by chavenet at 1:39 AM PST - 14 comments

Remember Lyle in Cube Sector? The game's developer is back after seventeen years with the extremely personality-filled 00's-style (Hot Topic aesthetic and all) low-poly 3D collectathon platformer Corn Kidz 3D, the world's second low-poly 3D platformer about a dreaming anthropomorphic goat (CK3D's dev is aware - there's a picture of the other game's protagonist somewhere in the game).
posted by BiggerJ at 9:55 PM PST - 4 comments

Octopus quicker to train than a dog: The insights of an underwater photographer. Underwater photographer David Hannan is on a mission to document the beauty of sea life. Along the way, he's had incredible encounters with some of the ocean's most playful, elusive and curious creatures.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:21 PM PST - 2 comments

Laurence Hewson has charmed commuters at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, Australia with his irreverent station announcements. He has become a local and international celebrity despite only being in the job for 3 weeks thus far.
posted by creatrixtiara at 5:13 PM PST - 8 comments

This is maybe the worst possible filmings of one of the best musicals of the past decade. Here is Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (Original Broadway Cast), a YouTube playlist of each song in this sung-through musical assembled from various audience cameras from across its run. Here's also the entire musical assembled out of these individual clips [2h14m], with slight tweaks to improve the flow. Bonus: Original Cast Album [YT Playlist] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 3:00 PM PST - 12 comments

Gilbert Archiniega's Youtube Channel has content he recorded in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. Most of the videos are 15 minutes to an hour long where he simply documents his life in the moment. It's like a Youtube time capsule.
posted by buffy12 at 11:12 AM PST - 2 comments

"Hands Down" movement advent calendar from Katy Bowman with some ideas on how to strengthen and take care of our fingers, wrists, hands, and forearms. Bowman previously on MeFi.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:19 AM PST - 2 comments

A somewhat obscure guideline for developers of U.S. government websites may be about to accelerate the long, sad decline of Mozilla’s Firefox browser. There already are plenty of large entities, both public and private, whose websites lack proper support for Firefox; and that will get only worse in the near future, because the ’fox’s auburn paws are perilously close to the lip of the proverbial slippery slope. [via Hacker News]
posted by chavenet at 2:10 AM PST - 118 comments

Crafters Make Custom Medical Device Covers, Giving Patients a Boost - by Roberta G. Wax with links to the patterns and shops featured for a little bedazzling of slings, oxygen tanks, eye patches, ostomy bags and more.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 11:17 PM PST - 13 comments

Pink to give out 2000 banned books at her Florida concerts.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:16 PM PST - 14 comments

In a meta-analysis of Kyle Chayka’s New Yorker essay about “what to call our chaotic era”, MetaFilter / Kuro5hin’s own Rusty Foster goes (slightly) long in his Today In Tabs newsletter about how the right name for the current era is “the Jackpot” -pace William Gibson-, Cormac McCarthy, and keeping going.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:16 PM PST - 40 comments

While the northern hemisphere is heading into winter, in Australia we are gearing up for a long, hot summer. Australian animals have some surprising ways of beating the heat, including mucus, saliva and tree-hugging. [more inside]
posted by Athanassiel at 6:46 PM PST - 5 comments

‘From the perspective of a cultural critic, the Tesla Cybertruck might be the single most interesting vehicle of the twenty-first century.’
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:30 PM PST - 81 comments

To our generation, being a mom looks thankless, exhausting, and lonely. Can we change the story? [Vox]
posted by riruro at 4:22 PM PST - 58 comments

This web app lets you search a song on Spotify and will then generate a never-ending and ever changing version of the song. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:52 PM PST - 72 comments

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two new gene therapies treating sickle-cell anemia, called Casgevy and Lyfgenia. [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 11:58 AM PST - 13 comments

It only costs $1,000 to get your name on the presidential primary ballot in New Hampshire, a far lower barrier to entry in other states. So, there's no shortage of lesser-known candidates.
posted by jim in austin at 11:36 AM PST - 10 comments

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton's office issued a statement saying the temporary restraining order "will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else from civil and criminal liability. The letter was sent to three hospitals where Damla Karsan, the doctor who said she would provide the abortion to Cox, has admitting privileges. [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 6:32 AM PST - 92 comments

Correspondence was a project where Swedish musicians Jens Lekman and Annika Norlin (a.k.a. Hello Saferide) wrote and sent each other songs in English on alternating months over the course of 2018. You can listen to the original versions on the website but the pair also rerecorded many of the songs with strings and released it as an album which is available to buy from Bandcamp or stream on various services.
posted by Kattullus at 5:37 AM PST - 6 comments

AV Club's 30 Worst Christmas Songs, Ranked [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 5:28 AM PST - 99 comments

Hello! It's been awhile
15 years in fact!
I hope you've been well
Me? I don't like talking about myself
Not directly anyway
The goo balls are doing fine
Better than that, they have a new game
Coming in 2024
WORLD OF GOO 2
I hope you'll enjoy it, I'll see you soon
Signed, the Sign Painter
posted by JHarris at 5:11 AM PST - 20 comments

Accordion Noir has posted its 2023 Christmas Special podcast episode. It includes a few artists you've heard of (The Pogues, EC Ball, The Tiger Lillies) and many more you haven't (Duckmandu, Southern Scrach, Christmas Jug Band). If you want a change from the usual musical drivel that dominates this time of year, give it a listen.
posted by Paul Slade at 4:03 AM PST - 5 comments

Army employee indicted for stealing $100 million from military youth program. [more inside]
posted by ndr at 3:06 AM PST - 35 comments

One argument against using historical base rates is that the present is so different from the past (e.g. due to technology) that base rates are meaningless. While today’s world is indeed different from the past, base rates can help sharpen rather than neglect these differences, by clarifying what’s actually new. For instance, the mere presence of technology cannot move us far above the base rate, because many technologies have been developed throughout history and none has caused a catastrophe in the sense defined above. Instead, we should look for technology that shares properties with the historical drivers of catastrophe: epidemics, famines, wars, political turmoil, climate changes, natural disasters, invasive species, and humans. from Analyzing the Historical Rate of Catastrophes
posted by chavenet at 1:42 AM PST - 9 comments

Lucy! [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 8:57 PM PST - 11 comments

Twenty-one critically endangered red handfish hatched in successful Tasmanian conservation breeding program. A lot is riding on this group of tiny baby fish — so much so, they'll be put through school to get them street smart before release into the wild in Tasmania. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 6:40 PM PST - 5 comments

"No CGI is really just INVISIBLE CGI" part 2 [SLYT] The first part took apart Top Gun Maverick (among other things). This part focuses on Christopher Nolan's Inception (among other things). The point about invisibility is a generous way of saying that it's just outright lying.
posted by bbrown at 4:03 PM PST - 53 comments

'Bluebird' by Charles Bukowski. (slyt)
posted by clavdivs at 2:50 PM PST - 7 comments

Stairway to Heaven. (YouTube via Invidious so you aren't tracked.) At the annual prize-giving ceremony at St Andrews College in Ōtautahi (Christchurch) in Aotearoa, the music department covers Led Zepplin's 'Stairway to Heaven' and absolutely nails it. It's going viral here but deserves a wider audience.
posted by vac2003 at 2:17 PM PST - 34 comments

She spent a month trying to help stray dog whose head was stuck in a jug [CW: happy ending]
posted by chavenet at 1:41 PM PST - 15 comments

This was the year she perfected her craft—not just with her music, but in her position as the master storyteller of the modern era. The world, in turn, watched, clicked, cried, danced, sang along, swooned, caravanned to stadiums and movie theaters, let her work soundtrack their lives. For Swift, it’s a peak. 'This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt, and the most creatively fulfilled and free I’ve ever been,' Swift tells me. 'Ultimately, we can convolute it all we want, or try to overcomplicate it, but there’s only one question.' Here, she adopts a booming voice. 'Are you not entertained?'

"For building a world of her own that made a place for so many, for spinning her story into a global legend, for bringing joy to a society desperately in need of it, Taylor Swift is TIME’s 2023 Person of the Year." [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 12:14 PM PST - 59 comments

Guardian: “As a BBC licence payer I demand more of this type of behaviour.” Huffington Post: “Undeterred by the faux pas, the newscaster simply composed herself and began reading from the autocue about the latest updates in the Boris Johnson Covid inquiry. Fortunately for Maryam, the moment took place when the UK feed was showing Prime Minister’s Questions, so only international viewers saw the moment play out live.” CBS News: “Maryam Moshiri, the chief presenter at the British network, said she was "joking around a bit with the team" when she stuck up her middle finger just as the broadcast went to air.” In the Metro, further BBC news mishaps.
posted by Wordshore at 11:27 AM PST - 25 comments

Most of us will experience the death of a parent. That experience is unique for everyone, yet there is so much we can learn from each other. Sumana Harihareswara has created an extraordinary collection of resources about Eldercare, Family Caretaking, and End-of-life Logistics: Stuff I Learned. It is full of detailed advice, good sense, and compassion. (created by brainwane, found at MeFi Projects)
posted by kristi at 11:11 AM PST - 20 comments

One of the important voices of modern Britain, Benjamin Zephaniah was not much like other poets teenagers get introduced to. [more inside]
posted by plonkee at 9:59 AM PST - 31 comments

The village of Hemsby has been on the East coast of England since Hemer the Viking started farming there over 1,000 years ago. Two weeks ago, a rather modest storm, which didn't even merit a name, carried away the road [BBC] which services a number of houses which used to be (safe) behind the dunes. Context below the fold. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 9:30 AM PST - 4 comments

BFI: 101 Hidden Gems: The Greatest Films You’ve Never Seen. “Hailing from every continent but Antarctica and spanning more than 120 years, this selection is, in its way, as representative of the riches of cinema history as that other list we released at the end of last year. Fiction rubs shoulders with nonfiction, films made by collectives sit alongside hand-crafted animation, and a healthy dose of comedy sidles up to heartbreaking drama – and then there are the films that defy all categorisation.” [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 9:11 AM PST - 26 comments

"Ken Gun Min is a daydreamer. 'I have one foot in reality and the other in fantasy,' the painter says as he sits on the floor of his Koreatown studio and sews beads onto a finished canvas. 'I have a fantasy-oriented brain. I am constantly daydreaming and creating stories'" The LA Times presents a story on the artist and his big, gorgeous, sumptuously gay paintings/collages/beadwork. But also, because I cannot get enough: Ken Gun Min’s Vision of Gay Utopia (Hyperallergic). And from his 2022 show (ArtNet).
posted by mittens at 8:53 AM PST - 5 comments

I've watched a lot of these Actors On Actors videos from Variety, but none of them have felt as truly interesting to me as Cillian Murphy & Margot Robbie meeting for the first time and talking about the phenomenon that was Barbenheimer. 45m
posted by hippybear at 8:38 AM PST - 6 comments

The ancient Cynic outlook was negative, but the Cynic did not become trapped by their negativity, or use a negative outlook on life as an excuse for doing nothing, for giving up on life, or for giving in. Cynic negativity was not associated with the idea that if everything is bad, nothing can be done, so let’s do nothing. Rather, Cynic negativity spurred the Cynic into action. Negativity was employed in a quest to become free of unnatural restraint, and to conjure a less servile state of mind. Negativity released the Cynic from social obligations, and social ties, and allowed the Cynic to think differently about the world around them. from How to live like a Cynic
posted by chavenet at 12:47 AM PST - 21 comments

Pressley, Welch introduce legislation to guarantee right to vote for people with felonies on record [more inside]
posted by aniola at 11:12 PM PST - 41 comments

Here Hold My Kid (SLRedBull) . Watch two of the best skiers on the planet compete for a sponsorship over the course of a winter season. [more inside]
posted by yeahwhatever at 10:26 PM PST - 6 comments

Never been done before: This audio search engine can identify Australian wildlife by the sounds they make. Australian researchers and Google have launched a first-of-its-kind search engine that analyses and identifies wildlife sounds.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:48 PM PST - 12 comments

Writer-producer-developer Norman Lear, who revolutionized American comedy with such daring, immensely popular early-‘70s sitcoms as “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son,” died on Tuesday. He was 101.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 8:34 PM PST - 49 comments

Tonight at 8PM Eastern: The fourth Republican presidential debate -- and the last one before next month's Iowa caucuses. Currently winnowed to just four candidates (and once again missing its runaway favorite), the NewsNation-hosted debate at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (roll tide), will feature Gov. Nikki "Koch Fiend" Haley, Gov. Ron "Poop Map" DeSantis, Gov. Chris "Just Happy to Be Here" Christie, and entrepreneur Vivek "Pharma Bro Bro" Ramaswamy. You can catch the debate live on NewsNation (or The CW), stream it for free on the NewsNation site, download their app, or check out a minimal-commentary livestream from YouTuber David Pakman.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:33 PM PST - 58 comments

There are foods I don’t associate with a specific memory so much as with the act of remembering. If all my favourite breakfast foods were laid out before me—smoked salmon and capers, ful mdammas, soft goat cheese and honey—I would reach for labaneh and zaatar first.
posted by curious nu at 3:52 PM PST - 5 comments

The woman who threw a burrito bowl in a Chipotle employee's face back in September has been sentenced to a fine and 180 days jail time, with that time reduced to 60 days in exchange for working 20 hours per week at a fast food restaurant for two months. "She got exactly what she deserved. She’s gonna walk in my shoes,” Russell said. [more inside]
posted by Night_owl at 12:51 PM PST - 82 comments

Following on the recent Rolling Stone best albums of 2023 posting and with a few media outlets yet to weigh in, a few more best-of lists from the media jungle, compiled for your reference and enjoyment. [more inside]
posted by the sobsister at 10:32 AM PST - 30 comments

It is now possible to turn your phone number blue on Android. Unlike the recent Nothing iMessage MITM debacle, this is a fully end-to-end encrypted interoperable system thanks to the reverse engineering of the iMessage protocol by jjtech
posted by autopilot at 9:06 AM PST - 123 comments

How does electricity decide whether to flow through an open circuit or a closed circuit, and how long does it take to make that decision?
posted by clawsoon at 9:04 AM PST - 44 comments

What if Drew Barrymore were a Jack Russell Terrier convinced she could help Santa complete his Christmas delivery mission? Olive The Other Reindeer [45m] is a 1999 Fox Television Special [Wikipedia] based on a children's book, with familiar voices ranging from Ed Asner to Michael Stipe [see tags], and was produced by one of Matt Groening's production companies.
posted by hippybear at 7:32 AM PST - 13 comments

Lately, instead of emphasizing the importance of criminal consequences, advocates have begun calling for drivers who hit pedestrians or cyclists to be held accountable through “restorative justice,” a term for an increasingly popular set of practices that eschews a focus on punishment in favor of an emphasis on repair and an effort to meet victims’ needs (slJewishCurrents) [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 7:30 AM PST - 54 comments

College students adopting Facebook 20 years ago; today they are fighting for their privacy.
posted by schmudde at 2:18 AM PST - 25 comments

What if the money you accumulated in life died with you? What if actuaries determined the amount of money people need to live a comfortable life, and earnings were capped there? What would a world look like in which the ardor of one’s work — not just luck and geography and privilege — determined a person’s wealth? from What If Money Expired? [Noema; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 1:26 AM PST - 41 comments

Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers

Teenagers' mathematics and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries and COVID school closures are only partly to be blamed, the OECD said on Tuesday in its latest survey of global learning standards. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said it had seen some of the steepest drops in performance since 2000 when it began its usually triennial tests of 15-year-olds reading, maths and science skills. Nearly 700,000 youths took the two-hour test last year in the OECD's 38 mostly developed country members and 44-non members for the latest study, closely watched by policymakers as the largest international comparison of education performance. Compared to when the tests were last conducted in 2018, reading performance fell by 10 points on average in OECD countries, and by 15 points in mathematics, a loss equivalent to three-quarters of a year's worth of learning. [...] Countries that provided extra teacher support during COVID school closures scored better and results were generally better in places where easy teacher access for special help was high. Poorer results tended to be associated with higher rates of mobile phone use for leisure and where schools reported teacher shortages.

[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi at 11:10 PM PST - 71 comments

I E Skin's Guide To All That There Is To Know—an indie ink-and-press 8" x 11" comic from the mid-1990s (and eventually distributed by the Onion's Features Syndicate). Examples: [ James Monroe | The Car | Passover 5753 | Capitalism | Wolves ]
posted by not_on_display at 9:33 PM PST - 2 comments

What is horsepower anyway?
The term was adopted in the late 18th century by Scottish engineer James Watt to compare the output of steam engines with the power of draft horses. This was not science for the sake of science, but an attempt to develop marketing blurb for selling steam engines by talking about how many horses they could replace.
The term is used with abandon in all sorts of ways by manufacturers of all sorts of engines, some of which may even be accurate. But what is a horsepower anyway? There are lots of different measures called horsepower and lots of 'standardised' ways of measuring it. [more inside]
posted by dg at 9:28 PM PST - 16 comments

Farm robots helping put healthier produce on the table by reducing herbicide use. Hand-weeding and mechanical cultivation fell out of favour following the invention of herbicides in the 1940s. But robots imported to Australia from manufacturers in countries such as Denmark and the United States are reviving these weed-control methods to slash chemical use. Guided by GPS and cameras, the machines use knives and wires to take out pest plants by hand instead of spraying. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 2:55 PM PST - 41 comments

On Thursday, the Washington Post's workers are going on strike for 24 hours. They've worked now for 18 months without a satisfactory contract, there have already been layoffs, 240 staff have been offered buyouts, and the owners are now threatening more layoffs. The staff have asked people not to engage with Washington Post content on December 7 from midnight to midnight (a full day). They also encourage you to send a letter to the Post's leaders asking them to stop the cuts and give a fair deal to employees.
posted by rednikki at 12:48 PM PST - 25 comments

"I can finally reveal some research I've been involved with over the past year or so." Three Polish hackers reverse engineered the PLC code of NEWAG Impuls trains that were locking up for arbitrary reasons. The manufacturer argued that this was because of malpractice by third-party workshops, and that they should be serviced by them instead. "We found that the PLC code actually contained logic that would lock up the train with bogus error codes after some date, or if the train wasn't running for a given time. One version of the controller actually contained GPS coordinates to contain the behaviour to third party workshops." Original article in Polish and translated to English.
posted by AlSweigart at 10:36 AM PST - 46 comments

Living in a privately rented home, as opposed to owning a home or living in social housing, is associated with twice the ageing effect of obesity and half that of smoking, according to a study of DNA methylation published in the the BMJ Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The study also found that the biological ageing effect was associated with falling behind with rent payments or living in a home affected by pollution.
posted by clawsoon at 7:17 AM PST - 58 comments

The 100 Best Albums of 2023 [Rolling Stone, Archive] As a certified Old, I was pleased that I recognized more than just a handful of names, but still overwhelmed by how completely out of touch I truly am.
posted by hippybear at 7:11 AM PST - 90 comments

“We’ll do it a few times,” Josiah remembers thinking. “We’ll cause trouble for a little bit, and then we’ll just forget about it. We’ll stop.” from The Mirai Confessions: Three Young Hackers Who Built a Web-Killing Monster Finally Tell Their Story [Wired; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Rockstar has officially released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6. [more inside]
posted by Diskeater at 5:41 PM PST - 82 comments

The weird, secretive world of crisp flavours. Why can you buy lasagne flavour snacks in Thailand but not in Italy? Which country can cope with the hottest chilli? And why do Germans like paprika so much? Amelia Tait for the Guardian. [more inside]
posted by Hypatia at 5:30 PM PST - 82 comments

TIME magazine's best inventions of 2023. From stuff you can use (Clipboard AI?) to dream tech that no one can afford and everything in between.
posted by storybored at 4:52 PM PST - 23 comments

The mysterious creature with bizarre anatomy that once roamed Australia. Palorchestes was an ancient sharp-toothed animal that also boasted an elephant-like trunk. It lived for millions of years in pockets of Australia, but its fossils are extremely rare.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:49 PM PST - 9 comments

Michael Palin and the mystery of Hammershøi. BBC4 (slyt)
posted by clavdivs at 3:11 PM PST - 7 comments

There is no piracy without ownership. [more inside]
posted by simmering octagon at 2:38 PM PST - 193 comments

How long can a shooting star fly for? (apropos of nothing, Katherine Ho, from the Crazy Rich Asians soundtrack, live)
posted by Gorgik at 11:43 AM PST - 68 comments

"I don't need to get the most juice out of every single lime" [TikTok] "If I could make as much money as possible I would be a total prick, a con man, or both!" [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 10:37 AM PST - 18 comments

"All the absurdity and chaos works, because, let’s face it, one’s early 20s are mostly absurdity and chaos anyway." MeFi's own JScalzi on his enduring affection for the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 6:28 AM PST - 36 comments

The Placeholder Girlfriend // a short story by Conor Barnes.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 4:20 AM PST - 50 comments

Our own perceptions of our current period of distraction therefore need to be seen in a longer perspective. Concentration is a social, learned behaviour that is more necessary in some contexts than in others. The modern appetite for bingeing on box sets and multi-episode podcasts makes it clear that we are not losing the ability to concentrate, merely directing it towards different media. We concentrate when we want to. from The big idea: are our short attention spans really getting shorter? [Grauniad; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:01 AM PST - 17 comments

Victor Klemperer's The Language of the Third Reich (1947) describes how the Nazis manipulated the German language in order to get the general population using extreme right-wing words and phrases in their everyday discourse without them even noticing. [more inside]
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:02 AM PST - 17 comments

52 things I learned in 2023, by Thomas Whitwell (SLMedium) [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 9:59 PM PST - 35 comments

Okay, yes, I know... Muzak is a brand name and this is actually Customusic.. but here are 8 hours of vintage department store Christmas music Customusic tapes, which as far as I can tell are not repeated [Wikipedia], but also are I am assured in a musical style that nobody under 30 has any experience with.
posted by hippybear at 8:05 PM PST - 54 comments

For four years each December, Québecois Marc-Antoine Goyette headed across the Canadian border, destined for a New York City street corner. Once there, Goyette built a small shelter to live in for the month, and sold fresh Christmas trees to residents from Manhattan and the Bronx. (a NYC law allows sale and display of coniferous trees on the streets without a permit, only during the month of December)
posted by jessamyn at 5:55 PM PST - 6 comments

Following in the footsteps of reimagined yuletide music of yore comes snethyxmasparty, featuring seasonal cello-and-kazoo favorites nipnees nuug n’blinting blaizdos and nuntos durgi​-​dog. Each track has lyrics inside.
posted by duende at 5:31 PM PST - 6 comments

JUICE launched on April 14th and has been making its way to Jupiter's moons! This 2 hour video is a loving, painstaking look at the incredible teams who worked within the European Space Agency to make JUICE. If you're into micro-details of things like testing to find out how clean the spacecraft is magnetically, to vibration testing of the solar panel array (which is 85 square meters deployed), to logistics challenges, to the contest to solicit art from children to decorate the launch vehicle, this movie is for you. You can also track JUICE's progress through the solar system in an incredible trajectory with multiple planetary fly-bys to pick up speed here.
posted by jasper411 at 4:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2023: Fighting crabs and friendly turtles round out People's Choice finalists.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:19 PM PST - 7 comments

On Saturday night, Kiss closed out the final performance of their “The End of the Road” farewell tour at New York City’s famed Madison Square Garden. But as dedicated fans surely know — they were never going to call it quits. Not really. from Kiss say farewell to live touring, become first US band to go virtual and become digital avatars [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:09 PM PST - 53 comments

On May 1, 1982, 300,000 students took the SAT. There was one question on the test that every single student got wrong.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 1:47 PM PST - 70 comments

Paralympic athletes answer some of the most searched questions about disability.
posted by ellieBOA at 1:09 PM PST - 6 comments

"The chip stand differentiates us from our American neighbours. It is not a food truck. It is not a diner. The very nature of the chip stand is defined by it being a combination of both." Every Chip Stand, by illustrators Chantal Bennett, is an attempt to illustrate every chip stand in Ontario and some neighbouring provinces, "thus chronicling the visual history of these structures that are slowly being replaced by professional food trailers and trucks."
posted by Shepherd at 6:03 AM PST - 52 comments

HBomberguy's latest video is about plagiarism. It's almost 4 hours long but really worth a watch.
posted by Pendragon at 5:05 AM PST - 316 comments

Scottish Gritter names. Previously
posted by Phanx at 3:16 AM PST - 19 comments

A campus plot might not be as high-stakes anywhere else in the world, because the stakes of the real world would be totally different. Nash Jenkins, author of Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos, said the campus itself “provides a sort of infrastructure that makes emotional intensities more coherent and less solipsistic.” But this is no longer entirely true, as the borders between the campus and “real life” are much more porous, and the campus is open for public scrutiny. from Is the Campus Novel Dead? [Esquire; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 3:01 AM PST - 20 comments

The Pirate Who Penned the First English-Language Guacamole Recipe. William Dampier’s English food-writing firsts included the use of the words barbecue and chopsticks.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:21 PM PST - 29 comments

A simple theory of cancel culture, by Joseph Heath (previously). It's a social phenomenon that's independent of political ideology: a celebrity chef in China recently sparked outrage by posting a recipe for egg fried rice. "Social media have expanded the power of individuals to recruit third parties to conflict. This has dramatically enhanced people’s ability to escalate conflict, which has two notable effects. First, it has resulted in many minor conflicts, such as routine violations of etiquette, becoming much more severely contested and sanctioned. Second, it has made it possible to intimidate individuals and institutions in ways that had previously not been possible." [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 7:47 PM PST - 41 comments

Here's a pro-filming of Julie Andrews in the Blake Edwards-directed Broadway production of Victor/Victoria. [2h25m] I've only ever seen Andrews in films so seeing her filmed on a stage felt a bit jarring. A clever musical farce adaptation with brilliant staging.
posted by hippybear at 6:43 PM PST - 13 comments

Maine-based gardening cooperative Fedco, founded in 1978, announces severance of ties to Syngenta: "In the years since we began labeling Syngenta varieties, our alarm at its practices has only grown. While our engagement with Syngenta is nominal within the massive global seed trade, in the words of activist Angela Davis, “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”" [more inside]
posted by missmobtown at 4:59 PM PST - 5 comments

WaPo editor Robert Kagan argues that we are dangerously close to seeing a Trump Dictatorship. Is it true, or is it alarmism? He lists markers, but the American public (and mefites) will need to decide for themselves. [more inside]
posted by corb at 3:49 PM PST - 273 comments

The word for orange and its cognates in several Indoeuropean languages arrived in Europe via Persian (نارنگ‎ nārang then, and نارنج nārenj nowadays). At the same time, in Persian oranges are called پرتقال (porteqāl) which literally means... Portugal! Why is that? from Portuguese Orange, Persian Portugal
posted by chavenet at 3:31 PM PST - 9 comments

Dancing with the Stairs is an interactive and joyful visual of exactly that. Poetry in motion as they say....
posted by storybored at 9:01 AM PST - 13 comments

"Voice of a Star Wars Fan" is a fan video perhaps like no other. Better to know as little about it as possible before watching, but if you love old school model making, ILM, and the original Star Wars films, this SLYT video will surely be worthy of your time. [more inside]
posted by gwint at 8:56 AM PST - 23 comments

“The tsundere is a well-known anime trope, that many people still love to this day. But something happened to it since its inception, and I want to talk about that.” [19:05] [more inside]
posted by ob1quixote at 8:39 AM PST - 10 comments

The Haunted City is an essay by Azania Imtiaz Khatri-Patel about the ghosts who haunt modern life, concentrating on London, Mumbai and Japan. Meanwhile Andrew Kipnis' essay The Haunting of Modern China focuses on the ghosts of urban China, and the living's changing relationships with the dead.
posted by Kattullus at 6:27 AM PST - 5 comments

But crypto kept growing until the control systems could not ignore them any longer. And the control systems cannot continue to avoid knowledge of the crimes. So, so many crimes. Many of them are what crypto advocates consider as utterly inconsequential, like serially lying on paperwork. And also Binance gleefully and knowingly banked terrorists and child pornographers. That’s not an allegation; that has been confessed to. There is no line a Bond villain will not cross. They will cross them performatively. from The Bond villain compliance strategy
posted by chavenet at 3:51 AM PST - 26 comments

Extreme power naps: These penguin parents sleep for four seconds 10,000 times a day. Antarctica's chinstrap penguins could get the same benefit of longer periods of snoozing by taking microsleeps during nesting season, according to a new study documenting one of the most extreme examples of incremental sleep in the animal world.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:20 PM PST - 13 comments

It’s official: Evernote will restrict free users to 50 notes. After Bending Spoons acquired Evernote in November 2022, the company laid off 129 people in February 2023. At that time, a spokesperson told TechCrunch that the notetaking app has “been unprofitable for years and the situation was unsustainable in the long term.” I was lucky enough to see this in my news feed yesterday, and went into scramble mode. More luck: I quickly found noteapps.info, which not only catalogs the features of different notes apps, but also allows you to do side-by-side comparisons of the features, or dynamically filter your search by feature. I had to ask...who would go to all the trouble of making this, and why? [more inside]
posted by polecat at 6:39 PM PST - 86 comments

Imagine a future that doesn't have to resort to the sledgehammer of social compulsion - no mandates and worse, and no risk of poorly designed and implemented mandates that arguably make things worse - because the infrastructure of public health is woven into the fabric of civilization. These worlds are possible, and a medium amount of funding into bio-defense could make it happen. The work would happen even more smoothly if developments are open source, free to users and protected as public goods. from My techno-optimism by Vitalik Buterin
posted by chavenet at 3:42 PM PST - 32 comments

A lovesong This is a song that the Danish artist Sebastian wrote for the Norwegian artist Sissel Kyrkjebø when she was very young. They are accompanied by the amazing bassist NHØP. [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 2:29 PM PST - 3 comments

"Peter Gabriel's I/O finally dropped and it is a good morning for some new music." - theBigRedKittyPurrs from earlier today. It's a complicated release [linktree] with three different mixes of the album [Peter explains, 3m] including one immersive audio mix. But I'm here to bring you the music videos from i/o. The first to be released was the disturbing AI hallucination The Court (Dark-Side Mix) (Oranguerillatan Official Video). [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:04 PM PST - 23 comments

The Simple Truth According to John Romero Games journalist and designer Duncan Fyfe reviews John Romero's recent autobiography Doom Guy: Life in First Person for Remap Radio, with special emphasis on how it reveals as much about its subject and author by what it does not say as by what it does.
posted by firechicago at 1:06 PM PST - 9 comments

This is a fascinating 12 year old video of gun enthusiasts shooting at a pound of Tannerite in the freezer compartment of an old fridge. [more inside]
posted by jamjam at 12:55 PM PST - 23 comments

Writing for Heated Wednesday, Emily Atkin reminds us, “COP28 Sucks. Pay attention anyway. The fossil fuel interests attempting to corrupt the high-stakes summit would love nothing more than for us to look away.” [more inside]
posted by ob1quixote at 12:52 PM PST - 30 comments

As filler material during their coverage of the 1991 Icelandic parliamentary elections, TV station Stöð 2 asked Björk to perform some jazz tunes with Tríó Guðmundar Ingólfssonar off their record Gling-gló. The trio had been asked by Icelandic public radio to record some old Icelandic standards and recruited the singer, who chose the 14 Icelandic songs, as well as a couple of foreign standards. The recording was then released as an album. Below the cut I'll include links to originals of the Icelandic songs, and here's one more TV performance from 1990 of Kata rokkar. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus at 12:08 PM PST - 6 comments

Ruth Tappin is a gilder and antiques restorer in Britain. The creation of these 24 tree ornaments serves as a sampler of gilding techniques, further explored in a large and varied collection of longer project videos covering object repair, surface preparation and gilding. Great effort is put into communicating a sense of material properties.
posted by brachiopod at 11:45 AM PST - 8 comments

An Ancient Art Form Topples Assumptions about Mathematics: The sand drawings of Vanuatu follow principles from a branch of mathematics known as graph theory (archive, original in French)
posted by ShooBoo at 11:45 AM PST - 16 comments

Natural disasters are costing the US insurance industry a fortune. What happens when no one wants to pick up the tab? [more inside]
posted by aniola at 10:59 AM PST - 60 comments

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the court, died Friday in Phoenix, Arizona. She was 93 years old. As noted on Wikipedia: O'Connor most frequently sided with the Court's conservative bloc but demonstrated an ability to side with the Court's liberal members. She often wrote concurring opinions that sought to limit the reach of the majority holding. Her majority opinions in landmark cases include Grutter v. Bollinger and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. She wrote in part the per curiam majority opinion in Bush v. Gore and was one of three co-authors of the lead opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
posted by wicked_sassy at 9:11 AM PST - 29 comments

Santos is out. And by a fairly decisive margin of 311-114. Watching the election from across the pond, I just could not believe this charlatan was able to convince so many people of his lies. Now let's see him behind bars along with the Orange Shitgibbon.
posted by essexjan at 9:03 AM PST - 89 comments

Speaking to me during an interview at his home outside of Eldoret (known as the City of Champions), Kenyan marathoner Elisha Rotich highlights the social factors in his own running career: "in our culture we say kidole kimoja hakiui chawa [Kiswahili for “a single finger does not kill a louse”]... One person can’t win gold."
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:36 AM PST - 3 comments

You can watch him at work here You can read an interview here. And you can see more examples of his work here and here.
posted by BWA at 7:15 AM PST - 4 comments

What intrigues me about musical anhedonia, and the 5 percent of the human population who supposedly suffer from it, is the possibility—indeed, the likelihood—that 5 percent is an underestimate. I strongly suspect there are a lot more than four hundred million people out there who would rather opt out. from Who Doesn’t Like Music? Nabokov, For Starters, an excerpt from Listen by Michel Faber
posted by chavenet at 2:30 AM PST - 59 comments