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The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice issued a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding asylum seeking last week. Public comment is open in the Federal Register until March 27. [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 5:59 PM PST - 35 comments

The Soul of the American Teen Can Be Found Next to the Sbarro "The word is that the mall is dying: something about kids these days, something about online shopping, something about the food court’s legacy going the way of the three-camera sitcom and the middle class. In an effort that was part journalism, part exposure therapy, I put on my best “hello, fellow kids” regalia and lurked the food courts of Anchorage, Alaska; Tempe, Arizona; and Portland, Oregon, to find out what today’s mall teens had to say about it, if they even still existed at all. My question for teenagers and other youths across the West is simple: Is the mall food court still a cultural watering hole, or am I fucking old now?"
posted by General Malaise at 5:04 PM PST - 66 comments

The flâneur, the detective, and the comedian are precursors of the practitioners of the online cleverness that has become such a nuisance today. The Internet is a spaceless airport. Like passengers in an airport, its users are fundamentally idlers. They occupy themselves with browsing—both the objects available for consumption and their fellow consumers. They are placed in a similar but even more extreme position of impotent omnipotence. The world is at their feet, but they cannot really act in it except to pose and acquire. At the same time, the Internet enables control of people’s movements and desires in a way the airport could only dream of. All this naturally prompts a desire to wrest back some semblance of control. from The Impotence of Being Clever by Alexander Stern
posted by chavenet at 3:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Iskandar explored the Western regions and at the edge of the world encountered a shore where there were many coloured stones, blue, red, yellow and black, each weighing about five to ten pou Highlights from the Mughal Emperor Akbar's personal copy of an illustrated manuscript of Nizami's Iskandernameh or Life of Alexander The Great.
posted by MarianHalcombe at 2:25 PM PST - 2 comments

He was a decorated soldier, a whistle-blower against torture. Then he was undone by his own mind — and a health care system that utterly failed him. [The New York Times Magazine]

As an athlete with high grades, he was accepted to West Point, securing a place as a cadet in return for five years of active service after graduation. Newberry, population about 2,000, was proud. Placing a student at the academy was grounds to celebrate. His mother could not raise a glass. “It wasn’t that I wasn’t proud,” she said. “I was just devastated because I knew it would destroy him.” [more inside]
posted by riruro at 1:02 PM PST - 11 comments

A witness speaks. Ron Desantis was at Guantanamo and Fallujah. What was he really up to... [more inside]
posted by njohnson23 at 10:20 AM PST - 75 comments

It’s like thinking back to when Latin was the center of the world— Nathan Heller (previously) explores the decline of the English major in American higher education. (SLNY) (Archive.is copy)
posted by doctornemo at 10:19 AM PST - 44 comments

An interview with the authors (podcast with transcript) of Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies, by Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy. Ingall and McCarthy also created the site SorryWatch which analyzes apologies from celebrities, politicians, and more. Step 4 to a good apology (pop up window): "Be VEEERY CAAAREFUL if you want to provide explanation; don’t let it shade into excuse." Ingall on teaching kids how to apologize. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:49 AM PST - 18 comments

The U.S. Navy has rechristened the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville as Robert Smalls. Smalls was born into slavery and became a skilled ship's pilot. He was drafted by the Confederates, and 13 May 1862, he executed a daring escape out of the heavily fortified Charleston harbor with his family, other enslaved people, and valuable military cargo onboard, and successfully surrendered Planter to the U.S. Navy. He later served as the Planter's captain, then went on to a life of public service. He was a thorough-going badasss. This renaming is part of a larger process in the Department of Defense to remove names that honor Confederates & rebels. [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:30 AM PST - 32 comments

'Longtermism’ is .. the hubris of a species in more trouble than it is willing to admit. It is a bid to put a worn-out myth of progress on steroids, to boost our failed civilisational model further off the cliff." .. "Its blind enthusiasm for ever more tech and ever more people is likely to hasten our current descent into oblivion, if it gains further traction." .. "It is a lullaby sung to the tune of tired fantasies of human exceptionalism.  It is anaesthesia for the age of consequences." (Earth vs Futurism by Rupert Read) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 1:19 AM PST - 45 comments

The #1 adjective others seem to put under her creations routinely and casually shared on Mastodon is cursed. Sibera seems to think likewise. “They are terrible for the most part, but better out of my head than in,” she wrote when I asked. Marcin Wichary writes 2400 words with lots of pictures for the newsletter Shift Happens. [via lobste.rs]
posted by cgc373 at 7:59 PM PST - 20 comments

Old English Poetry in Facsimile. Per the about page: "A collaborative, open-access resource linking together moments of digital manuscript images, transcriptions, editorial annotations and translations of Old English poetry, to better allow people to study and explore these works." Quickstart video on YouTube (about 6m). The project uses the Digital Mappa platform to allow annotators to link to multiple items and viewers to compare them. The project should be complete sometime before 2030 and will include all the known manuscripts and works except Beowulf, which has been digitized to the standards of this project already. [more inside]
posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:24 PM PST - 3 comments

A free service to find individuals, families and local businesses/services who take COVID precautions in your area [more inside]
posted by aniola at 5:43 PM PST - 21 comments

Mr. Baka is one of roughly 60 professional bagels rollers working behind the scenes in New York's 250-odd bagel shops. Most shops don't sell enough bagels to require a full-time roller, so t In one shift, Mr. Baka can roll 10,000 bagels—enough to supply all five of his employer's locations the coming day.
posted by SituationNormal at 4:19 PM PST - 19 comments

Short-circuiting the very language of literary value, permanently wrongfooting the custodians of taste, Gravity’s Rainbow proposes a new way of thinking about what we treasure most, what we fritter away, and what is taken from us. from Join the Counterforce: Thomas Pynchon’s postmodern epic Gravity’s Rainbow at 50 [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:38 PM PST - 46 comments

Dexter Gordon was born 100 years ago today. A towering figure in many ways, the 6′6″ jazz tenor saxophonist was popularly known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His album Go is considered among his finest, and is a great place to start with his music. In addition to his musical career, Gordon was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Round Midnight.
posted by oulipian at 2:09 PM PST - 12 comments

Curious about what exactly goes on during a surgical procedure but too squeamish to watch a video of the real thing? Doctor/Youtuber TheBreakfasteur (and her 3-year old assistant) has you covered with her Playdough Surgery series. Total knee replacement. Hernia repair. Cochlear implant. Coronary artery bypass.
posted by gottabefunky at 12:57 PM PST - 38 comments

"Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute is an online community dedicated to developing a visual lexicon of consumer ephemera from the 1970s until now." Examples: Cyberdelia, Eco-Beige, Paperback Chic, Corporate Grunge / Grunge™, Genericana, and Dollar Store Vernacular. Each category has a "Gallery" -- select "Show" to display examples of the aesthetic. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 11:33 AM PST - 36 comments

If you've experienced symptoms of having kids in a country with no Federally funded childcare, comically short maternity leave, and rampant discrimination against working moms, then it's time to talk to your doctor about Cryo-Child.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:25 AM PST - 12 comments

"I don't know about you, but I get shamed for the things I say all the time, from supremacists and bigots, from people whose criticism I desire and from whose company I hope to be shunned. I would be ashamed to hold beliefs they would approve of. They may mischaracterize me, but they understand me very well. And I crave their understanding. I want them to know exactly what I think of them. That’s what the shunning is for." A.R. Moxon writes a fiery response to Scott Adams' racism (previously) and the New York Times' hypocrisy over J.K. Rowling and trans rights.
posted by clawsoon at 8:00 AM PST - 97 comments

Hello, voyagers, welcome to Monday and your free thread, fully authorized and unyeeted. [more inside]
posted by taz at 3:10 AM PST - 122 comments

What exactly is this job you ask? Well..... Art World Family. That’s the phrase that inspired me to click on the listing for an Executive Assistant position on NYFA’s classified listings, curious about what this mysterious organization Art World Family was. I never heard of it before. Was it some sort of nonprofit for families in the art world, a notoriously low-paying (for most jobs), healthcare-less, and not exactly family-friendly industry? A childcare service? A program offering art education to families? [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 10:52 PM PST - 56 comments

Before Minesweeper became ubiquitous as one of the built-in games for several iterations of Windows, it had to survive a culture at Microsoft that was deeply anti-game, that looked down on the idea of computer games. An excerpt from a coming book from Boss Fight Books tells of how Microsoft got over themselves enough to produce the Microsoft Entertainment Pack, which ultimately led to Xbox, Halo, and more. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 8:18 PM PST - 15 comments

Do the Lurch. How to do the Lurch. Wedsday teaches Lurch to dance. The Lurch. Previous Lurch.
posted by clavdivs at 7:43 PM PST - 6 comments

The king of creation fell out of Heaven, usurped by a seven headed beast. But the old king shall choose a new, and he will ignite the Third Conquest. He will be flanked by a white and a black flame, his coming will be followed by 108 burning stars. He will bear the terrible heat of the voice in his brow, the mark of his lordliness. He will face the beast and he will annihilate it. He will wield the terrible blade of Want, and the pillars of Heaven will quake with his coming. And his name... His name will be... Kill Six Billion Demons. [more inside]
posted by curious nu at 7:21 PM PST - 26 comments

It's Day 2 of spring training games and the pitch clock is already wreaking havoc. It's the bottom of the ninth in yesterday's Spring Training game between the Boston Red Sox and the Atlanta Braves. The bases are loaded, two men are out, and the Braves' Cal Conley has a full count. What happens next? Conley is given a strike by the umpire for taking too long to get ready and the game is over. Welcome to the new MLB season and the new rules.
posted by JoeZydeco at 3:23 PM PST - 69 comments

There is often a demand made on women, on people of color, on anybody who comes from a population that is not historically given a large or highly visible cultural platform, to produce their biography as an authentication of their right to speak, and preferably to give as much detail as they can about an experience, particularly if the experience has been hard or traumatic. I hadn’t thought about my own tendency to be elliptical or obscure when it comes to talking about myself as a feminist choice, but I did feel as though I wanted to refuse to be forced to say more than I wanted to say. I wanted to refuse to be forced to describe my life in the terms of a certain kind of literary realism. To me, it actually feels far more revealing to describe an emotion with precision than to tell you who said what at what time on what day. To me, that work of description is much more raw and much more uncomfortable. from “I Speak Only For Myself”: Anahid Nersessian on Keats, Feminism, and Poetry
posted by chavenet at 12:51 PM PST - 4 comments

There's a point close to the end of Josh Horowitz's interview with Marc Maron for his Happy Sad Confused podcast, right around the one hour point, where over the course of about 45 seconds the entire gamut of human emotions from joy to grief flow like a tidal wave. This moment of transparency comes after a conversation about love and loss and life that is dark, hilarious, and ultimately affirming. Marc Maron talks FROM BLEAK TO DARK, TO LESLIE, WTF, AVATAR -- HAPPY SAD CONFUSED [1h3m]
posted by hippybear at 9:21 AM PST - 12 comments

The hours between school dismissal and the end of the workday are a mess. They don’t have to be. (SLVox)
posted by toastyk at 7:37 AM PST - 75 comments

'They can't attack me. Now they're coming after kids.' Missouri leads the nation in anti-LGBTQ bills. Here's what the only gay member of the state senate thinks about it (slPolitico).
posted by box at 6:44 AM PST - 15 comments

Australia's current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, just became the first Australian Prime Minister to march in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. He marched with Rainbow Labor NSW, which is an advocacy group within the Labor party for LGBT equality. Albanese has been marching [as an ally] at Mardi Gras since 1983 (yesterday was the 35th time that he's marched with Mardi Gras), but it is the first time that he has ever done so as Prime Minister.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 10:57 PM PST - 6 comments

Nebraska state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh (D) on Thursday pledged to filibuster every bill on the state’s legislative agenda this session if two Republican-backed bills seeking to ban both abortion and gender-affirming health care for transgender youth are not immediately withdrawn. [...] “I have nothing, nothing but time,” Cavanaugh said, “and I am going to use all of it.” [more inside]
posted by aniola at 2:24 PM PST - 32 comments

'Blocked Search' - The Chrome extension that finally, sort of, lets you block Google's terrible search-result games. Blocking IP addresses won't stop Google from handing you a solitaire game every time you reflexively search for one -- but this extension can. It makes you do an "unblocking" step for every keyword search that you haven't previously done (soft blocking it), which actually can help a LOT. Only seems to work on The Goog. (Helpful Firefox extension covered in an AskMe).
posted by amtho at 1:56 PM PST - 20 comments

Tragically, one of the forces responsible for catalyzing Hobson’s own national security imagination, and the primary tool with which he sought to awaken it in others, was racism. That’s something we’d do well to remember today. As we turn, once again, to confront a geopolitical rival in the Pacific against a backdrop of rising anti-Asian violence at home, the story of Hobson’s hateful career ought to stand as a powerful warning to all of us. Its protagonist was a demagogue who used racism to hammer home an inflammatory message of inevitable conflict. We should be wary of anyone else who attempts to do the same. from “Yellow Peril” and Naval Power: Richmond P. Hobson and the Racist Imagination of American National Security [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:29 PM PST - 7 comments

TikTok’s teenage filter has us confronting our own mortality . Twitter thread of examples. TikTok feed. [more inside]
posted by gwint at 8:11 AM PST - 66 comments

A fan of winter makes a 5 minute video about Montreal's snow and snow clearing operations. The post title is from Émile Nelligan's famous poem Soir d'hiver (here is an English translation). Montreal snow clearing previously.
posted by Cuke at 6:56 AM PST - 18 comments

Kerbal Space Program 2 makes rocket science far more approachable, but no less complex [Polygon] “Despite its accolades, Kerbal’s zeal for orbital trajectories and delta-V’s can be intimidating. It is, well, rocket science. For its sequel, though, developer Intercept Games clearly wanted to make these systems more approachable for new players — and new interactive tutorials go a long way toward that end. None of which is to say that the designers have dumbed the series down. Rest assured, that signature customizability and attention to scientific realism remains fully intact. Even though Kerbal Space Program 2 is designed to ease potential rocket scientists into their new obsession, the many quality-of-life improvements that Intercept Games has introduced are just as much a boon to those who already speak Kerbin.” [YouTube][Gameplay Trailer]
posted by Fizz at 6:10 AM PST - 17 comments

The incredibly high [return on investment] on this activity of avoiding overtime wages might explain why we see firms across every industry — from Staples to JPMorgan, to Facebook to Walmart, to Verizon, to Avis, to Lowes — engaging in this activity even up through the present day.
posted by folklore724 at 9:04 PM PST - 37 comments

Rare, repeated upward lightning captured on video by storm chaser [text article with embedded photographs and video]. Michael Keene has been chasing storms for 20 years. But even he was shocked to see repeated lightning strikes shooting upwards from two broadcast towers in the NSW Southern Highlands recently.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:03 PM PST - 15 comments

"If you think about things too much, you become like a thing—stare too long at a grocery receipt on the sidewalk, and see for yourself. To keep walking, you need a story about what you are doing, and why—going out for cigarettes, running away from home. And things in themselves aren’t a story, any more than envelopes are a message. To tell a story you need imagination, which, precisely because it is outside (or inside, if you prefer) the envelope of experience, gives you a perspective from which to understand that there’s more to envelopes..."
posted by blue shadows at 7:41 PM PST - 6 comments

careers.twitter.com
posted by Going To Maine at 4:48 PM PST - 51 comments

In this week's Beyond The Scenes, Roy Wood Jr. sits down with her cowriter Lenny Marcus and the woman herself as Leslie Jones Reflects On Her Week As The Daily Show Host [56m]. There's a lot of really interesting, honest talk here about how comedy teams work, what kind of prep went into her week on the show, and then toward the end she sort of falls into a flow and things go off the rails. One of the better comic process interviews I've seen.
posted by hippybear at 2:43 PM PST - 5 comments

Health educators praise college students for less dangerous binge drinking. A borg is perceived as a more sanitary alternative to the communal “jungle juice” vats that many may remember from their high school or college days. Bon Appetit questions if this is a viral wellness trend. And a recipe for those who are curious/ insane/ ready to party this weekend. And don't forget the punny name!
posted by Word_Salad at 12:42 PM PST - 53 comments

This is the first year since records were kept in 1971 that the canal will not be open to skaters [more inside]
posted by narcissus_and_ambrosia at 12:40 PM PST - 20 comments

Urban hikes with transit available at the start and endpoints, and which give a feeling of being out of the city [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by aniola at 12:26 PM PST - 11 comments

When you live alone with characters you’re making up, you are more alone with yourself than you realize. Re-reading this book after twelve years, I see more clearly than I did then that it’s a hall of mirrors. Not everyone in it is me, but I distributed my own insecurities and madness quite liberally among the figures I modeled after people I knew. And the book I thought I was writing from such a dissembling distance from real life situations turns out to be transparently about people whom a great many other people reading it could readily identify. That doesn’t matter. I wasn’t indicting anybody in front of a grand jury. It isn’t a cruel book, or a score-settling one. from A Hall of Mirrors by Gary Indiana
posted by chavenet at 12:16 PM PST - 2 comments

Among the "biofuels" approved under a new speedy EPA process, about half come from waste products, especially plastics, which "the EPA acknowledges .. may present an 'unreasonable risk' to human health or the environment."  Among these, one new jet fuel by Chevron "could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer", a risk "250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA." [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 11:01 AM PST - 27 comments

Man, Social Media Platforms Really Want Us To Start Paying, Huh? "Twitter launched the $8-a-month Twitter Blue. Meta is launching a similar $12-a-month Meta Verified. YouTube already offers the $11.99-a-month YouTube Premium, which may start paywalling certain video resolutions soon... The reason this is happening is because the platforms that unbundled traditional media didn’t seem to anticipate that advertising would also unbundle. Though, I guess it should have been the logical conclusion. Advertising is about capturing the zeitgeist to grab people’s attention and these platforms fractured the zeitgeist and broke people’s attention spans. It might also just be that there is a certain size a website can be and perhaps Meta has reached it. "
posted by gwint at 7:47 AM PST - 75 comments

Cory Doctorow on people who defend fraudsters online, beginning with a side trip to Google's sponsored ads and how malign actors take advantage of them. [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 7:42 AM PST - 19 comments

Dragon's Dogma: Revisiting the cult fantasy RPG that found its own weird path to adventure [Games Radar] “On the surface, Dragon's Dogma appears a rote open-world action RPG – Japanese developer Capcom trying its hand at Western ideas and Tolkienesque fantasy. Dig deeper, however, and you discover something far more distinct and alluring. Capcom had its own vision for what a game like this could be: something built on turning left wherever its contemporaries turn right. At its core, Dragon's Dogma is about journeys – long, hard treks across its sprawling kingdom. It's about learning the landscape around you, managing dwindling supplies and the moment of relief when, after days on the road, you finally spot civilisation on the horizon. It's not afraid to inconvenience players in favour of giving its world and its quests a greater sense of scale. And it's not afraid to be scary – not simply hostile or difficult, but dangerous.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:16 AM PST - 34 comments

Artist Stacy Nguyen, while making a tomato and onion jam, "wondered: What is jam? What makes something authentically jam?" and learned about the definitions of jam, jelly, curd, preserves, conserves, fruit butter, chutney, confit, and marmalade, then decided "dude, this information would make a good infographic." and made a fun "Fruit-in-Jars 101" graphic. Graphic is near the end of the post, after the recipe. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 4:00 AM PST - 28 comments

Woke: The Journey of a Word is a new series of short programmes from BBC Radio 4. The first episode traces the term back to a 1938 Leadbelly recording of The Scottsboro Boys. It then moves on to consider the word's earliest usage in print and to the right's use of it as all-purpose insult. There's some interesting stuff there, I think.
posted by Paul Slade at 2:47 AM PST - 23 comments

How about some Modern Gaudí via AI?
posted by Marky at 12:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Content warning: racism. More in extended description. [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 8:19 PM PST - 222 comments

Debuting as a teenager with the Missy Elliot and Timbaland produced Make it Hot in 1998, a number of shelved projects meant Nicole Wray's next album would take more than a decade to appear as part of a duo with Terri Walker, Lady (2012). That was followed by solo albums Queen Alone (2016) and Piece of Me (2022). Earlier this month, she appeared on Tiny Desk Concerts. There's also an earlier appearance on KEXP.
posted by juv3nal at 7:36 PM PST - 5 comments

Imagine you're a cosmonaut in space in the early 60s. How do you know where you are above the Earth? You look at the Globus in your control panel. An amazing analog computer/extremely fancy clock. Brief video | Via.
posted by adamrice at 2:14 PM PST - 19 comments

The Side Eye: A climate change reality check. Northern New Zealand has been hit by a series of storm events over the past few weeks, culminating in a full blown Cyclone (Hurricane). It's our "find out" moment, even the right wing has been forced to get on to the "man made climate change is real" bandwagon. Toby Morris's always excellent Side Eye talks about a more personal view of dealing with extreme climate change.
posted by mbo at 2:11 PM PST - 30 comments

Rainbow Connection - A Benoit Blanc Mystery.
posted by mhoye at 1:00 PM PST - 24 comments

(youtube link) Rainbow Connection performed Choir! Choir! Choir! and Kermit the Frog Choir! Choir! Choir! (previously) and Kermit the Frog (previously) perform the Paul Williams (previously, also previously) classic. PS: There really aren't that many songs about Rainbows.
posted by DigDoug at 11:31 AM PST - 42 comments

Yet much of the anxiety provoked by today’s reaction economy consists in the possibility that, in our desperate hunt for feedback and our need to give feedback to others, we allow ourselves to be steered in directions we did not consent to, and may not wish to go. This has echoes of the mid-20th-century fears of advertising, PR and propaganda, with the difference that now, in the age of reaction chains, we are drawn towards controversy, absurd public spectacles, endlessly mutating memes, trolling etc. In these showers of feedback, much of the appeal is in the sheer quantity of reaction being circulated. Feedback mechanisms, which the cyberneticians viewed as instruments to achieve autonomy and facilitate navigation, turn out to be a trap. from The Reaction Economy by William Davies [LRB; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 11:30 AM PST - 14 comments

About a year ago, Nashville musician Jim Lill asked: where does an electric guitar's tone come from? Lill has since asked a few more questions and done his best to document some answers in additional short entertaining videos:
- where does sustain come from?
- where does guitar string tone come from?
- does scale length affect the tone?
- where does speaker cabinet tone come from?
- where does amplifier head tone come from?
posted by cortex at 9:07 AM PST - 35 comments

Lirdle - Like Wordle, but with one lie per answer [via mefi projects]
posted by curious nu at 7:01 AM PST - 51 comments

In 2016 Anthony Novak decided to create a Parma, Ohio Police Department parody page on Facebook. They tracked him down and jailed him for four days. The alleged crime was the "use of a computer to disrupt, interrupt, or impair police services.” He was acquitted at trial. Novak sued, and the district court eventually granted the officers qualified immunity. The Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. [more inside]
posted by Marky at 8:33 PM PST - 39 comments

What reporters found does not explain precisely why Hansen filed his fateful lawsuit or whether he appreciated its far-reaching ramifications. Hansen claims that he had only been trying to protect his own privacy and had not wanted the registries to be closed. But the findings do show why he, or his business partners, might have an interest in corporate secrecy. As it turns out, Hansen has been the director or owner of at least 117 companies in Luxembourg, the British Virgin Islands, Belize, the Bahamas, and other countries around the world over the past 16 years. from The Luxembourg businessman who got Europe’s corporate registries shut down – and his secret offshore interests
posted by chavenet at 11:24 AM PST - 20 comments

What words do English speakers use to describe things as good or bad or eh? In 2018 and 2019, YouGov did some surveys: Britons and Americans read selections of adjectives, such as "dreadful," "satisfactory," "decent," and "fantastic," and scored them from “very negative” to “very positive”. Meanings were broadly similar between the UK and the US but did differ, especially "at the most negative end of the spectrum." Also, across generations in the US, "cool," "awesome," and "nice" were the "top three words for describing something as generally favorable", but "fire," "far out," "superb," "poppin'," "fab," "righteous," and other adjectives differed in usage between age and ethnic groups.
posted by brainwane at 9:42 AM PST - 76 comments

In praise of the 7/10 [Eurogamer] “I like bad games. They can often be more interesting than the current standard of highly polished, triple-A titles that adorn our PlayStation's and Xbox's hard drives. This is partially because more often than not their supposed "badness" isn't because they are badly designed, but because they didn't come together in the way they perhaps deserved to. You can call me contrarian if you want, but that's not what I'm trying to be. It's more that I want to allow more time for games to breathe than I think they're sometimes afforded. [...] Games are still desperate to be recognised by the other arts, particularly film, evidenced by The Game Awards constantly having film actors present the awards to assign some supposed lack of legitimacy (you did your best though, Al). I think that's part of why games have to be masterpieces, constantly one-upping the previous "best game ever made," something that you do not find in any other medium. In turn, I think this leads to a general issue when it comes to continuing the discussion of games in a thoughtful way.”
posted by Fizz at 8:20 AM PST - 27 comments

How an Alleged Con Man Tore Apart One of the Nineties’ Biggest Bands
Live had some of the alt-rock era's hugest hits, but in recent years the former bandmates have been bitterly divided by legal drama and interpersonal conflict [more inside]
posted by Etrigan at 7:54 AM PST - 124 comments

Flaco, the escaped Central Park Zoo owl, proving he can survive outside enclosure. When he first escaped from his vandalized enclosure at New York City's Central Park Zoo, handlers of Flaco, a Eurasian eagle owl, doubted he could survive on his own.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:26 AM PST - 26 comments

gift link “Our producers, some of our smartest producers, have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years. We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.” [more inside]
posted by bendy at 9:56 PM PST - 94 comments

For more than 200 years, children have been neglected by archaeologists. It was part of a disciplinary bias towards adult men in archaeological interpretations. This began to change in the 1970s and ’80s with the rise of feminist archaeology and the archaeology of gender [...] The approaches advocated by these female scholars critically examined the roles of women in the past and, by extension, children started to become ‘visible’ too. But it is only in recent years that youngsters have truly emerged from the shadows. April Nowell writes 4400 words for Aeon Magazine.
posted by cgc373 at 6:04 PM PST - 12 comments

"Sayable Space is a television game for 1 or more people, it consists of saying "Space" out loud at the same time as Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) during the intro to Star Trek: The Next Generation." See also, therein, "Mike's Crush", where you say hi to the very briefly visible anonymous cool smoking woman near the start of the Night Court intro that Mike may or may not have said at one point he had a crush on.
posted by cortex at 5:42 PM PST - 46 comments

Braggoscope Nearly 1,000 episodes of Melvyn Bragg's fascinating In Our Time radio programme, categorised according to the Dewey decimal system. [more inside]
posted by mokey at 1:57 PM PST - 35 comments

Keith Lynch's timeline of net related terms and concepts (up until 2006)
posted by buffy12 at 1:12 PM PST - 15 comments

How Resy Won the Reservation Wars [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot at 11:48 AM PST - 24 comments

Why does the South have such ugly credit scores? You may already know that airlines are really credit-card rewards companies with a side gig of flying planes. Economists S. Agarwal, A. Presbitero, A. Silva and C. Wix used credit card rewards programs to look more closely at the monetary redistribution that results from credit card rewards use: they showed that poorer users pay for those programs, while wealthier users benefit. Agarwal et al. also noted a geographical distribution of credit that roughly follows the Mason-Dixon line. Andrew Van Dam of the WaPo's Department of Data then took a deeper dive into credit, debt, and health. [more inside]
posted by Dashy at 11:16 AM PST - 23 comments

After almost five years, Gloomhaven has been knocked out of the #1 spot on BoardGameGeek (with some back-and-forth thanks to review-bombing drama). The new top game (as compiled from ratings by BGG users) is Brass: Birmingham, an Industrial Revolution economic simulation. Brass: Birmingham is just the eighth game in BGG history to reach #1, and the second sequel (after Pandemic: Legacy); the original Brass (now known as Brass: Lancashire) is the 20th highest-ranked game on BGG.
posted by Etrigan at 7:38 AM PST - 42 comments

A plain-language primer on US health insurance billing terminology like "copay," "deductible," and "premium," and on coordinating benefits between multiple insurance policies. If your insurer has denied coverage for a test or treatment, a possible way to shame them into reversing their decision. And a public service announcement for US Medicaid members: "For the last three years – since the start of the pandemic – the federal government had the states stop checking the financial eligibility of Medicaid enrollees. They're going to resume doing that in April. This means, if you (or your kids) are on Medicaid, at some point in April or as soon as your state gets around to you, you're going to be required to do a bunch of paperwork to keep your Medicaid."
posted by brainwane at 7:10 AM PST - 13 comments

America's standard for small things, Rhode Island, faces serious upheaval in its congressional delegation as their second Representative plans to leave within a year. In January of 2022 Rep. James Langevin announced his retirement from his seat in the House of Representatives -- and now David Cicilline has announced that he's going to retire this May. Both men have used their role on the national stage to work for important causes, and will be missed. Whither Little Rhodey's delegation? [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:50 AM PST - 6 comments

It Is Finally Time For A New Civilization Game [Kotaku] “Like many of you I’ve been a fan of this series for life, and like many of you (or so the vibes seem) I’ve grown increasingly despairing of Civ VI, a game that initially seemed to try some genuinely interesting things to set it apart from its predecessors, but which has ultimately fallen prey to an obsession with its district-improvement meta, that has come at the expense of more important stuff like enemy AI and combat. I know this isn’t a proper announcement. There’s not even a Civilization VII logo to slap on that tweet. But it does at least publicly herald that Civ VI’s days are finally coming to a close, and that it’s hopefully not too long before we see something that shows us how the series plans to tackle its fourth decade of existence.”
posted by Fizz at 6:25 AM PST - 78 comments

“With today’s decision on New START, the whole arms control architecture has been dismantled,” the NATO chief added. “I strongly encourage Russia to reconsider its decision
posted by sammyo at 6:21 AM PST - 44 comments

Dianne Warren, a legendary songwriter, asked how there were 24 credited writers on a Beyonce song. This isn't unusual. It's part of a trend. Until 1991, the average number of songwriters on a hit song was two. Now, it's hovering around 7. Why are so many writers getting credits on pop songs?
posted by rednikki at 5:55 AM PST - 33 comments

We are coming up on the one-year anniversary of Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine. In the last days, Joe Biden has visited Kyiv, and Putin has just delivered his "State of the Union" speech. [more inside]
posted by Harald74 at 4:41 AM PST - 209 comments

Fossils of a 340-Pound (154 kilogram) Giant Penguin Found in New Zealand. Paleontologists unearthed the bones of two new penguin species that lived 50 million years ago.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:07 PM PST - 27 comments

I was trying to explain the plot of The Matrix to this 15-year-old once, and that the character I played was really fighting for what was real. And this young person was just like, “Who cares if it’s real?” People are growing up with these tools: We’re listening to music already that’s made by AI in the style of Nirvana, there’s NFT digital art. It’s cool, like, Look what the cute machines can make! But there’s a corporatocracy behind it that’s looking to control those things. Culturally, socially, we’re gonna be confronted by the value of real, or the nonvalue. And then what’s going to be pushed on us? What’s going to be presented to us? from Keanu Will Never Surrender to the Machines [Wired] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 5:03 PM PST - 39 comments

A new military alliance is emerging in eastern Europe which will redefine the geopolitical order in the region. It will also mark the emergence of Poland as a major European actor, entrench the position of the US and the UK in European affairs, and marginalise France, Germany and the EU. [more inside]
posted by dmh at 12:40 PM PST - 59 comments

New editions of the works of Roald Dahl are having some words changed or omitted and some readers and writers are displeased.
posted by twsf at 12:04 PM PST - 144 comments

"Superman Awakens is a passion-made CGI cinematic, inspired by Kingdom Come Superman and the work of the legendary Alex Ross." Available on YouTube and Vimeo, made by Floating House. (via CBR)
posted by Etrigan at 7:28 AM PST - 17 comments

Raquel Welch, an pop-culture icon who enjoyed film and TV stardom and pin-up status in the 1960s and 70s, has died at the age of 82. [more inside]
posted by drlith at 6:44 AM PST - 41 comments

Hello, buckaroos, it's the M-day again, I'm afraid. Now, there's no way this thread can make Mondays pain-free, but today, for your own good, we will give you some pain, free. [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:32 AM PST - 88 comments

U.S. productivity jumped in the second quarter of 2020 as offices closed, and stayed at a heightened level through 2021. Then, when companies started mandating a return to the office in early 2022, productivity dropped sharply in Q1 and Q2 of that year. Productivity recovered slightly in Q3 and Q4 as the productivity loss associated with the return to office mandate was absorbed by companies–but it never got back to the period when remote-capable employees worked from home.
posted by folklore724 at 11:49 PM PST - 70 comments

One of the major figures in anime and manga, Leiji Matsumoto, has passed away at the age of 85. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:31 PM PST - 16 comments

Using only a pixel baseball bat and one (or possibly more) balls, can you fend off an ever-increasing swarm of abstract dots? Find out in the delightful Vampire Survivors-alike Bases Loaded.
posted by cortex at 9:20 PM PST - 23 comments

An upbeat poppy song by Grace Petrie celebrating gender non-conformity, with a great music video to go with it. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 8:18 PM PST - 10 comments

The fact that five potentially new species have appeared in local creeks, did surprise Clare Kirkpatrick. The somewhat surprising discovery was made during the coronavirus pandemic, when some of Kirkpatrick's students could not carry out their normal microbe studies in the laboratory and were therefore sent on field trips to local creeks to see if they had any interesting microbes to offer. [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 7:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Richard Belzer, who became one of American television’s most enduring police detectives as John Munch on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and several other shows, died on Sunday at his home in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France. He was 78. [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 5:06 PM PST - 54 comments

To date, [Agatha] Christie is outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible. Beyond her vast body of work, her influence is apparent everywhere from Adrian Monk to Gosford Park. The latest crop of Christie homages is a testament to the writer’s enduring appeal, but also to the flexibility of the format she perfected. The whodunit has its tropes—the eccentric investigator, the isolated country estate—while acting as a vehicle for whatever social commentary, colorful characters, or cultural references its current steward wants to infuse it with. from The Everlasting Appeal of Agatha Christie [The Ringer] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:56 PM PST - 22 comments

Clickword is a new word puzzle game where you "drag letter tiles to a grid and build words to score points." It's a bit like Scrabble, but since words disappear after you form them and you get a few fresh tiles at a time to arrange on the board, it also reminds me a bit of Tetris (but it's turn-based; there's no ticking clock). Each game ends once you've placed 60 letters. From the creator of squareword. [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 3:21 PM PST - 28 comments

How intellectual property can hack digital power
posted by sapagan at 12:23 PM PST - 11 comments

It's 2023 and San Francisco still hasn't put in a bike path on their half of the Bay Bridge to Oakland. But the kids are alright. [more inside]
posted by aniola at 10:50 AM PST - 35 comments

In 1942, Mae Reeves acquired a $500 loan from the black-owned Citizens and Southern Bank in her own name to open Mae’s Millinery Shop. The shop is now recreated at the Smithsonian museum. “I was hoping you wouldn’t come back. I was going to keep this hat” from CROWNS by Craig Marberry (photographs by Michael Cunningham), which was turned into a stage play. And from 2012, WaPo on the "fading tradition" of "Church ladies and their big, bold hats."
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:50 AM PST - 3 comments

The Indigo Girls, almost preternaturally suited to the medium, perform a Tiny Desk Concert. [more inside]
posted by obfuscation at 6:15 PM PST - 31 comments

I like puzzles of all sorts. People who like crosswords like to have their knowledge and vocabulary tested, and people who like Sudoku like the purity of the logic challenge. And my experience is that they’re two vastly different groups of people. I’m one of the rarities who loves both. Will Shortz’s Life in Crosswords [The New Yorker; ungated] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:50 PM PST - 44 comments

I can't admit I've followed P!nk's career all that closely, but she's been on my radar. So when I clicked through and watched P!nk: 'TRUSTFALL', Touring & Motherhood [52m], her interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, I was pretty pleased with the honesty, openness, and depth of the conversation. I thought you might like it, too!
posted by hippybear at 1:45 PM PST - 9 comments

Joshua Turner flies a drone up the Matterhorn's epic Hornli ridge.
posted by ShooBoo at 9:05 AM PST - 25 comments

Writing songs for top acts used to be a reliable source of income. Now, thanks to a rapidly changing industry, songwriters face trouble making ends meet. (archive,today link)
posted by Etrigan at 8:44 AM PST - 35 comments

Each year, several trillion pounds of microscopic silicon-based skeletons fall down the water column to pile up into siliceous ooze.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:54 AM PST - 25 comments

"Rainforests have this incredible capacity to generate rainfall. Transpiration is the process whereby trees draw moisture from the ground, via their roots, to the canopy and they emit moisture. They transpire through tiny holes in their leaves called stomata. By this transpiration process, the forests returns water from rainfall to the atmosphere, preventing it from simply running back down rivers to the sea. Forests also emit tiny organic particles into the air. Pollen, specks of vegetation and spores of fungi create a nucleus around which future raindrops can form. A process called cloud seeding. Some rainforests have been found to generate up to 75% of their own rainfall through these processes. In essence, old growth rainforests enhance and create their own climate..." [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:41 AM PST - 15 comments

Wub WuBruhmance (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by nikoniko at 1:37 AM PST - 10 comments

Introducing The Hellcorder - an unholy mashup of recorder, pipe organ, and guitar amp. (SLYT) [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:14 PM PST - 16 comments

Do you perhaps like your historical/fantasy fiction short and silly? "first day as a second century warlord..." starts a 16-paragraph farce of mistakes, crucial conversations gone wrong, and accidental intrigue. Found via unpretty.
posted by brainwane at 8:58 PM PST - 13 comments

Zoomable Tree of Life All known species in one zoomable fractal.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:24 PM PST - 13 comments

Longtime Elvis fan Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson finally visits Graceland.
posted by Capt. Renault at 4:50 PM PST - 7 comments

“Julie” is a character, staffed by different people working across the globe who each play many different women. Operators, wherever they are, have a bank of photos of the women they play, and made up information, such as her likes (beer and burgers), her dislikes (her marriage), and location (somewhere near, but not too near the man she’s chatting to). from Inside a catfishing factory [Content warning: This story involves discussion of sexually explicit messages, racism and suicide.]
posted by chavenet at 2:29 PM PST - 19 comments

“Jambu takes about three seconds to kick in and then it happens all at once: the prickly buzz of electricity, the numbness, the intense salivation. It's the same unbearable yet pleasurable intensity of chilli pepper, except instead of heat, there's a cool, numbing sensation that takes a long time to subside and leaves you wanting more.” —Brazil's answer to the Sichuan pepper, from BBC Travel [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 11:34 AM PST - 14 comments

Mars Wrigley factory fined after two workers fall into chocolate vat US workplace safety regulators have fined a Pennsylvania factory after two workers fell into a vat of chocolate and had to be rescued. [more inside]
posted by ActingTheGoat at 9:51 AM PST - 40 comments

Throw the ball on the roof. 1. If you catch it when it comes down, that's a point. 2. If it hits the big chimney pipe, that's five points for a Ping. 3. If it goes up on one side of the ping pipe and down on the other, that's an Around for ten points. 4. If it hits the the small chimney pipe, that's a five point multiplier for the catch itself. 5. If it hits the grey Volvo on the way down, that's minus one point. 6. If it goes over the house, that's minus five points and you have to go get the ball.

Got it? Good. Let's play Roofball.
posted by cortex at 9:37 AM PST - 17 comments

Soft White Underbelly is photographer Mark Laita's Youtube Channel where he has 20 - 30 minute interviews with all kinds of people that many would consider outsiders, downtrodden, criminal, or a mix: addicts (crack, fentanyl, opiates, sex, meth, booze, plastic surgery), gang members, Compulsive Gamblers, the inbred, a Dominatrix, hoarders, strippers, survivors (skydiving, human trafficking, Doomsday Theorists, Only Fans models, cross dressers, prostitutes and their tricks, Klan members,cops and ex-cons, the homeless, and many more.
posted by dobbs at 9:15 AM PST - 14 comments

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [Official Trailer #2] [Official Trailer #1] [First Look/Teaser] “After years of waiting, Nintendo finally pulled back the curtain a little more on what fans can expect from The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. A snazzy new gameplay trailer revealed a ton, including a world that’s more than just a reskin of the one from Breath of the Wild. It starts with an unknown voice calling on its minions to destroy the world, followed later on by Zelda warning Link that he might not be table to take on the new threat poised by the strange zombified demon who sure bears a resemblance to Ganondorf from earlier Zelda games. Plus there’s Link riding a hot air balloon, tractor, and more. Previous trailers made it clear that Link will be taking to the skies in much of Tears of the Kingdom, both in terms of teleporting up to floating islands and making use of a new glider to cover long distances. The hero of time also sports a new magic glove this time around which augments some of the physics-based abilities from the first game and even includes a flamethrower mode.” [via: Kotaku]
posted by Fizz at 8:14 AM PST - 77 comments

It started with an arguably bizarre move in general - M&Ms worried about their spokescandies and their inner lives. Leading to predictable right-wing outrage - Tucker Carlson Is, Once Again, Mad About ‘Woke M&Ms’ But then! Maya Rudolph is the new face of M&M’s. Polarizing spokescandies are taking a ‘pause' “They failed to engage us in the story, but they have caught our attention based on a crisis,” USC Annenberg’s North said of the candy brand’s social campaign. “I’m not sure if that’s such a positive move.” [more inside]
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:20 AM PST - 43 comments

Owners should pay if houses stay empty, new alliance says, as push begins to address rent crisis. A new alliance of community organisations is pushing for a levy to be paid by owners if houses are not occupied, as a means of addressing Tasmania's rental crisis, pointing to Vancouver, Canada, as an example of a similar measure working.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 7:08 AM PST - 76 comments

A blind and deaf puppy swims for the first time. Bumper's videos are so, so cute and full of life and joy. [more inside]
posted by Zumbador at 1:46 AM PST - 7 comments

GQ Magazine actually tackles practical men's grooming! Famed bearded barber Matty Conrad does the unthinkable and shaves! But along the way, he demonstrates several facial hair styles. He says he's been 10 years for him.. It's been 37 years for me! And I ain't doin' it! 8 Facial Hair Styles on One Face, From Full Beard to Clean Shaven [13m49s]
posted by hippybear at 9:17 PM PST - 29 comments

were the words "utter"ed by Ken Utter of the Danbury Police Department to Seanpaul Reyes, after he was kicked out of the Danbury Library. (Youtube link to clip) (Full youtube video of Danbury encounter) [more inside]
posted by buffy12 at 8:46 PM PST - 55 comments

After seven years, Joel Golby's VICE column London Rental Opportunity of the Week reaches an end; half polemic, half retrospective: 'Landlords Are a Scum Class': Everything I've Learnt About London Renting [more inside]
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 6:03 PM PST - 35 comments

There are many hidden pleasures along The World’s Biggest Penis. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:54 PM PST - 37 comments

BookRiot.com, a bit breathlessly, gives us 20 genre-defying sci-fi books that broke the mold. I've read four of these, and they were all very good, so I'm taking a chance on sharing the full list.
posted by Harald74 at 12:54 PM PST - 83 comments

Former two time US Women's Chess Champion Jen Shahade revealed that Grand Master Alejandro Ramirez is under investigation by the Saint Louis Chess Club and others over allegations of sexual assault, harassment of female chess players, his students and children As part of this Jen revealed that she was one of his victims. Many of his actions appear to be centered around his involvement with the Saint Louis Chess Club. Since her tweet yesterday more victims have come forward. Popular chess Twitch streamer Alexandra Botez has also tweeted about her own experiences (although not with Ramirez) as a woman in chess facing sexual harassment and assault. Chicago base Chess Coach Misha Vilenchuk has tweeted that he was aware of allegations of groping players at chess camps back in 2011. Ramirez is a Grand Master in residence at the Saint Louis Chess Club (one of the main hubs of chess -- more below). He is also the head Coach of the Saint Louis University Chess Team. In these roles he's had a lot of access to many rising female players and the impact of his behavior maybe a huge setback for attempts to increase women's participation in the sport. [more inside]
posted by interogative mood at 10:10 AM PST - 28 comments

Originally titled Тетрис The trailer for Tetris, an upcoming Apple TV streaming film, appeared. It has an impressive true story. [more inside]
posted by gwint at 9:39 AM PST - 36 comments

In a news conference last Friday, John Tory promised to resign after admitting to a consensual relationship with a staffer. Last night, after presiding over the year's budget vote, he did indeed submitt his signed resignation, effective Friday 5pm. An election will be held, date TBD.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:40 AM PST - 67 comments

The overdose-reversing drug naloxone should be made available over the counter to aid the national response to the opioid crisis, U.S. health advisers said Wednesday.
posted by Etrigan at 8:12 AM PST - 26 comments

Originally titled Gaia The trailer for Extrapolations, an upcoming Apple TV streaming series, appeared. It has an impressive cast. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 6:34 AM PST - 9 comments

The judge overseeing the grand jury in Georgia, tasked with investigating Trump's potential interference in the 2020 election, will likely release the Introduction and Conclusion of the report today, as well as a section identifying concerns about witnesses lying under oath. Earlier this week, the same judge announced that the jury’s specific recommendations would remain secret, until District Attorney Fani T. Willis has made charging decisions.
posted by pjenks at 6:03 AM PST - 26 comments

Back in December 2021, tommasz linked us to the story of Leon the Lobster, a grocery store lobster that Brady Brandwood started keeping as a pet. Leon is thriving, and Brady has a playlist of Leon's entire saga so far, as well as a best episodes list, although I think they're all good. Super relaxing video to enjoy on its own or as background for other things!
posted by JHarris at 5:35 AM PST - 11 comments

A ballet director has been suspended after he smeared dog poop on a German newspaper critic’s face over a review he didn’t like. “[Ballet director Marco Goecke] has been given the next few days to apologize ‘comprehensively’ and explain himself to theater management ‘before further steps are announced.’” Also relevant: A Brief History of People Protesting Stuff with Poop
posted by Roverlaw at 6:44 PM PST - 35 comments

Neil Clarke writes that his SFF magazine Clarkesworld has been flooded with AI-generated spam submissions in recent months. "I’m not going to detail how I know these stories are 'AI' spam or outline any of the data I have collected from these submissions. [...] What I can say is that the number of spam submissions resulting in bans has hit 38% this month."
posted by Iridic at 4:10 PM PST - 72 comments

How Twitter Is Bad For You Some observations on Twitter's pernicious effect: It Separates You From Reality; It Gives You More People to Hate; It Wants You to Be a Shtick
posted by Ayn Marx at 2:58 PM PST - 41 comments

Ringo Starr reviews the (UK) singles of December 1964 [YouTube]
Song: "Ecstasy" • Artist: Lee Curtis "This is an old number by Ben E. King and it's rubbish compared to the original. I don't think this will sell anything, either. And I don't know who this singer is. And what about that terrible guitar solo? I don't like this at all. Turn it off. I can't stand to listen to it any longer. I don't know who it is and I don't want to know any more about it. It's terrible. Who is it? Oh dear...Lee Curtis. I know him, as well." [more inside]
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:27 PM PST - 17 comments

My Bug-Out Bag, the Wilderness, and Me
posted by box at 12:54 PM PST - 51 comments

Youtuber Beryl Shereshewsky regularly posts cheerful videos about the different ways people around the world eat various foods, showcasing submissions from viewers as she makes and tries the dishes, finding common ground through food. Check out her eight-part series on the many ways people around the world eat toast and get more new and delicious toast ideas than you know what to do with. [more inside]
posted by yasaman at 10:38 AM PST - 32 comments

"We write to you as a collective of New York Times contributors with serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people." An open letter to the New York Times.
posted by curious nu at 8:18 AM PST - 156 comments

The Tamagotchi Breeder on Her 65th Generation of the Digital Pet [Vice Gaming] ““Every morning, I wake them up, I check to see if they’re hungry, then I clean up if they’ve pooped,” she says. “I give them a bath, then I clean their homes or play with them.” Kostoglou isn’t talking about her kids or puppies, but about her Tamagotchis. She’s currently taking care of four at a time, the devices placed in both her hand. [...] Kostoglou, however, is a pro: These are actually the great-great-grandchildren of her original Tamagotchi pets. As a Tamagotchi breeder, her goal isn’t simply to keep her creatures alive – she marries them off once they’ve reached adulthood, and then makes sure they have children so those can grow up and procreate, too. Kostoglou’s personal record so far is 65 generations in a row.”
posted by Fizz at 5:44 AM PST - 10 comments

Bill Watterson, creator of "Calvin and Hobbes", has a new book coming out, a project done in collaboration with John Kascht.
posted by Ipsifendus at 3:41 AM PST - 27 comments

"Have you ever noticed decorative borders in certain Byzantine or Renaissance paintings that don't seem to make any sense? Beautiful, calligraphic, gibberish... ?" The Ornamentalist looks at "pseudo-Kufic" script, "a style of decoration used during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, consisting of imitations of the Arabic Kufic script, or sometimes Arabic cursive script, made in a non-Arabic context." (Wikipedia) via (mefi's own) Theophile Escargot, TheoEsc@mastodon.social.
posted by taz at 1:32 AM PST - 11 comments

The Owl Job: Lessons for designing a sightless escape room
posted by creatrixtiara at 9:33 PM PST - 11 comments

So you wanna be a writer' by Charles Bukowski. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 8:47 PM PST - 19 comments

An explanation by AI safety researcher Robert Miles on why making Large Language Models like ChatGPT tell the truth is a more intractable problem than one might think. While Robert Miles usually goes into the more wide-reaching ramifications of developing general artificial intelligence (summary: Step 1: Invent an AGI, Step 2: Apocalypse), here he talks about the seemingly simple task of training a language model to tell the truth. [more inside]
posted by tigrrrlily at 8:11 PM PST - 58 comments

One week ago, Microsoft unveiled Bing Chat, a web search interface based on a “next-generation” version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology (previously). Now Bing Chat is getting weirdly defensive and lying when presented with evidence about its own nature. [more inside]
posted by mbrubeck at 5:27 PM PST - 109 comments

Trees nourish each other through interconnected root systems; underground networks created by mycorrhizal fungi link individual plants and transfer water, carbon, nitrogen, and other nutrients and minerals. In an analogous manner, maroons shared what they had, supporting and protecting each other during times of need, while carving out complex yet sustainable ways of using the wetland forest.

These landscapes were places of danger, beauty, and secrets, two worlds at once — neither solid nor submerged; not completely safe from slaveholders and slavecatchers, but not easily navigable by them. By Diana Jones Allen.
posted by Rumple at 4:16 PM PST - 8 comments

Why do particle physicists constantly make wrong predictions?
posted by dmh at 3:06 PM PST - 23 comments

"I'm not announcing anything' says Dianne Feinstein an hour after announcing she won't seek re-election in 2024."
posted by Marky at 3:05 PM PST - 63 comments

Winter 2023-2024 will be the first in 74 years without a brand new Warren Miller ski movie. All future Warren Miller Entertainment films will be created from existing footage. [more inside]
posted by RockyChrysler at 2:22 PM PST - 11 comments

In another "tell everyone your crazy office story" submission request, Ask A Manager proprietor Alison Green called for the craziest stories regarding workplace caffeination. The readers did not disappoint. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:50 PM PST - 74 comments

What Did He Mean? Yusuke Narita says he is mainly addressing a growing effort to revamp Japan’s age-based hierarchies. Still, he has pushed the country’s hottest button. [As I read the article, it was impossible not to remember Soylent Green, launched exactly 50 years ago.]
posted by Roverlaw at 12:35 PM PST - 59 comments

What you learn about beauty and grief as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Bringley writes about going to the Philadelphia Museum of Art with his mother shortly after his brother’s death. They each gravitated toward a single painting. Bringley found himself before a medieval Adoration of the Christ, depicting Mary tender and peaceful with her newborn son. His mother, meanwhile, went to an early Renaissance Lamentation, in which Mary cradles her son’s tormented corpse. They each stood before their paintings, the way I had stood in the lovely May garden with my mother, and they wept." [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:27 PM PST - 3 comments

A century of American baby contests and eugenics. The 2022 Gerber Spokesbaby Contest, for example, erupted in controversy on Instagram with criticisms on their choice of winner – baby Isa, an adorable eight-month-old from Oklahoma who happens to be missing a femur and fibula in her right leg.
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:58 AM PST - 14 comments

Mr Joby Pool, a sheep owner from Tingley, appeared in a Worcestershire court and pled guilty of stealing almost 200K of Cadbury Creme Eggs and other chocolates. Early reports stated the stash was worth almost £40K ($49K US) though this has since been mysteriously rounded down to £31K.
posted by Wordshore at 11:01 AM PST - 33 comments

China accuses US of 10 balloon incursions in its airspace (archived)
posted by buffy12 at 6:10 AM PST - 56 comments

How will these smaller groups of happier people be monetized? This is a tough question for the billionaires. God does the wrath thing a lot in the Old Testament, punishing humans who would challenge divine authority. It makes sense to read the story of Babel in that light. But having lived through the past couple decades of the internet, I believe the story carries a different lesson. I’m an atheist, so take this theory with a grain of salt, or maybe even a pillar: God wasn’t keeping us out of heaven, smiting us for our arrogance. God was protecting us from ourselves. [more inside]
posted by craniac at 5:32 AM PST - 71 comments

Hey, you. Feeling a little tense? Take a long, restful stroll down a thread of starship corridors. [via: Twitter user @artoftrek] [Bonus: Star Trek Corridor Wiki]
posted by Fizz at 5:00 AM PST - 21 comments

“The nights are filled with explosion and motor transport, and wind that brings them up over the downs a last smack of the sea. Day begins with a hot cup and a cigarette over a little table with a weak leg that Roger has repaired, provisionally, with brown twine. There's never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly - most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire - but it's something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. Fuck the war.” [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:16 AM PST - 1 comment

Otters see the first snow of the year. Happy otters enjoy playing with snow, and swimming in a warm outdoor tub and a cold outdoor pool.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 11:30 PM PST - 11 comments

Drolatic Dreams of Pantagruel (1565) (youtube) . Learn more about drolleries(youtube). Look at the book.
posted by rebent at 6:35 PM PST - 9 comments

Here, have 2 heartwrenching short speculative fiction stories where parents, trying their best, say or do terrible yet ordinary things; their children eventually find imperfect ways to cope or heal. "Coming Through in Waves" by Samantha Murray -- content notes at the top -- "[My mother's] sentences all sound … reasonable on the surface. She’s pulling any immediate clues from the environment, from my expression, from words that knit well together, to cover the gaping wound which is her mind.". Summary of "Sand" by Jasmin Kirkbride: When Suzy was born, her parents filled her mouth with sand. But this is normal and natural and the way things are always done. And if she finds it uncomfortable to keep it there, to eat with it there, to talk with it there, she’s just going to have to learn to live with it.
posted by brainwane at 5:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Sometimes it's hard to fully comprehend what you're witnessing. Aired in the middle of the night earlier this year on TCM, in accord with some arcane agreement, we get The Dick Tracy Special: Dick Zooms In [27m20s], which features Ben Mankiewicz, Leonard Maltin, Dick Tracy, and eventually Warren Beatty discussing the 1990 film Dick Tracy, which was directed by, written by, and starred Beatty. For a bit of background, there's more inside. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 2:47 PM PST - 26 comments

There's a code of conduct and a dress code—for real! Fascinating and funny writeup by a "adult entertainment industry" journalist looking at how, over the past two decades, porn industry conventions have gotten mainstream and sanitized.
posted by AnneK at 2:01 PM PST - 33 comments

Approximately the last 40 seconds of Wire's "Ex Lion Tamer" looping for an hour and a half. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. Stay glued to your TV set. STAY GLUED TO YOUR TV SET.
posted by scratch at 12:11 PM PST - 15 comments

What happens when no one can call a villain a villain
posted by Etrigan at 10:47 AM PST - 125 comments

Ingels played around with designing a house that could be entirely printed, including the roof. “You get forms that look incredibly fresh,” he told me. “These mixes of squares and domes, these ‘squomes.’ ” Can 3-D Printing Help Solve the Housing Crisis? [New Yorker] (archive link) Or at least make housing less uniform? A look inside ICON House Zero. [more inside]
posted by Mchelly at 8:41 AM PST - 36 comments

Recently, it came out that a male Twitch streamer had found and viewed pornographic deepfake videos of a number of notable female streamers created without their consent, being released on an OnlyFans style website where the creator was receiving payment for the videos. In a follow-up piece, several of the the women involved discuss how these deepfakes not only harm their public image, but also threaten their safety.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:23 AM PST - 33 comments

Plug Two of the iconic hip-hop group De La Soul, Dave "Trugoy" Jolicoeur has died at the age of 54. No cause of death has been announced, but Jolicoeur had been suffering from congestive heart failure in recent years.
posted by 40 Watt at 7:58 AM PST - 59 comments

For this almost very special day (yes, it's Monday!), I give you this special topical quiz: What is the best kind of love? a) Free b) Pete Davidson c) Brotherly d) This thread. [more inside]
posted by taz at 2:56 AM PST - 88 comments

Unenforceable sex contracts hearken back to a core of sensual and intellectual pleasure that might even power enforceable, non-meretricious contracts, like the standard form contract at AT&T or Verizon. Such a modern “form contract” eschews negotiation and “dickering” altogether, requiring total submission to predetermined terms: they certainly feel sadistic. from The Sadomasochistic Cenote and Its Legal Upwellings [language, theme may be NSFW]
posted by chavenet at 1:50 AM PST - 5 comments

After the downing of Big Balloon off the eastern seaboard following monitoring and riffing, the USA air force has been busy shooting down an array of [redacted] over several locations. 10th February, off north Alaska. 11th February, over the Yukon territory. 12th February, near Lake Huron. There is much uncertainty. New York Times: U.S. Destroys U.F.O.s. BBC: "'I will let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out,' Gen VanHerck said when asked if it was possible the objects are aliens or extra-terrestrials. 'I haven't ruled out anything at this point.' NPR: "'We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground...'"The UK will apparently shoot down [redacted] over its airspace, though hopefully not all.
posted by Wordshore at 1:47 AM PST - 135 comments

Normally the guys at Bloodbath TV (formerly Bloodbath & Beyond) riff on horror movies, but they've made an exception for an absolute baffler of a film called Love on a Leash. It's about a sassy talking dog named Alvin Flang who magically becomes a man each night, falls in love with a woman and spends half his time as her pet and half his time as her boyfriend. Things only get weirder from there. [more inside]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:24 PM PST - 13 comments

Browse around the Infinite HD to see what using a Mac in the mid 1990s was like.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:01 PM PST - 63 comments

One of John Brown's funders gave 3,000 land grants so that the recipients could qualify to vote. The New York State Archives has a copy of a ledger showing transactions from Gerrit Smith, an abolitionist and among the wealthiest people in New York. The effort was, in part, to enable the recipients to meet the state's property requirement for voting. The Albany Times-Union has a story about the ledger and Smith.
posted by thescoop at 2:23 PM PST - 7 comments

On Trump's Truth Social: Ads for Miracle Cures, Scams, and Fake Merchandise (slNYT gift, Internet Archive, previously)
posted by box at 2:17 PM PST - 25 comments

I’m in at 6am every day, except Sundays when I start a bit later.... I have a bike to get around the factory. It’s 50 years old and my father had it in front of me. It’s the same one – powered by a car battery. I have all my accoutrements on it too – a horn, sanitiser and a bell. I need to let people know I am coming! The secret diary of Sir Boyd Tunnock, aged 90 and 11 days. Tunnocks has been a family business in Scotland since 1890 - it produces such iconic sweet delights as the caramel wafer, the snowball and the tea cake which Sir Boyd invented himself back in the 50s. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 11:58 AM PST - 16 comments

Four Loko, the "blackout in a can", fifteen years later. It tasted of the artificial tang of Smarties with a foreboding bitterness; the sun set over the skyline, and then—nothing. I was told later that we ate pizza, that I called my partner, that I ran... somewhere, and that I hadn’t even finished my can. Oh wait, there was one more memory: This felt weirder, wilder and darker than being drunk.
posted by Hypatia at 10:49 AM PST - 75 comments

A list of 140 rules that are completely correct in everyway and definitely won't cause extended arguments about how to etiquette.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 10:21 AM PST - 148 comments

Without makeup, costumes, or sets, and with minimum orchestration, here is the delirious Act One curtain number from the 2011 production of "Anything Goes," directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, performed in rehearsal by the full cast led by the otherworldly Sutton Foster. You're welcome.
posted by How the runs scored at 9:48 AM PST - 36 comments

ChatGPT Just Beat Stockfish using techniques that attentive observers of politics over the past few decades will recognize and appreciate. GothamChess, YouTube, 16m1s
posted by flabdablet at 11:43 PM PST - 43 comments

Double Fine and 2 Player Productions present PsychOdyssey, a 20+ hour & 32-episode documentary seven years in the making about the development of Psychonauts 2. Trailer, playlist
posted by juv3nal at 11:03 PM PST - 11 comments

Even so: Read the book. “Timeless and timely” is a cliché, but sometimes it happens to be true. Feminist debates aside, the novel’s conflicts between solipsism and human connection, sexual agency and the need for love, echo and anticipate today’s conversations about sexual freedom; its world of endless socializing and fear of social “ruin” evokes today’s social media and “cancel culture”; and its rarely equaled ability to create characters who are “problematic” yet riveting, hateful and sympathetic, goes to the heart of the modern war over art and morality. Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which triumphantly survived more than a century of censorship and suppression, tells us that in this war, the right side of history is the one where great art is. from Love and Libertinism: The Endless Fascination of ‘Dangerous Liaisons’
posted by chavenet at 2:48 PM PST - 8 comments

Chick-fil-A (PR Newswire release) is testing a fried-cauliflower sandwich (Southern Living and USA Today reviews) in certain markets. Conservatives are pissed (Gizmodo tweet roundup), and not because it isn't vegan (VeggL).
posted by box at 2:13 PM PST - 114 comments

How to Play “Diagram Critique Bingo” by Abby Covert, information architect and author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess.
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:21 PM PST - 7 comments

Meet the last man without a cellphone Beyond breaking down on the freeway, the 3% of people without cellphones are finding society is blocking them out more than ever. Yet they can memorize directions, read a ton, and are possibly the most chill dudes on the planet.
posted by SituationNormal at 9:05 AM PST - 106 comments

Tonight seven countries (Estonia, Romania, Denmark, Croatia, Latvia, Italy and Malta) hold finals to select their entries for the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest. With 87 days to go, ten songs have already been chosen. In other Eurovision news, John Lydon will not represent Ireland with his song, Hawaii, a moving tribute to his wife Nora. And the Worst Kept Secret in Norway has been revealed: the identities of 2022's entry Subwoolfer, of Give That Wolf a Banana fame.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 8:57 AM PST - 11 comments

Ted Chiang explains how ChatGPT is better understood as a lossy compression algorithm (New Yorker; archive link; Chiang previously).

Imagine what it would look like if ChatGPT were a lossless algorithm. If that were the case, it would always answer questions by providing a verbatim quote from a relevant Web page. We would probably regard the software as only a slight improvement over a conventional search engine, and be less impressed by it. The fact that ChatGPT rephrases material from the Web instead of quoting it word for word makes it seem like a student expressing ideas in her own words, rather than simply regurgitating what she’s read; it creates the illusion that ChatGPT understands the material.

posted by automatronic at 5:22 AM PST - 100 comments

The FDA's power to approve drugs faces sweeping challenge in lawsuit seeking to pull abortion pill from U.S. market - "Just how far the FDA's authority extends into states with abortion bans that conflict with the agency's decisions on mifepristone is a question which will be decided in federal courts in the months ahead, [ASU Center for Public Health Law and Policy's Jennifer] Piatt said."[1] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 22 comments

The Violent Femmes interviewed on Milwaukee local news by Howard Gurnette, 1983. An amazing juxtapostion of 80s local news guy and weird/peevish new wave dudes. They also played "Prove My Love."
posted by escabeche at 9:31 PM PST - 15 comments

Ian Hislop's Fake News - A True History (BBC) [60m] With his over 30 years on Have I Got News For You, and more years as editor of satirical magazine Private Eye, not to mention his status as a British icon of Standing Up To Power, he knows what is what, and presents the history (and the terrifying future) of fake news and news fakery.
posted by hippybear at 8:02 PM PST - 5 comments

In a new era of rage, dining out has become downright volatile — with both customers and servers aggrieved. [slNYT] [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 3:25 PM PST - 124 comments

The seventies ushered in the era of the clinch—arguably the most iconic and easily recognizable genre cover in publishing—and it reached its peak in the eighties. A clinch cover features a couple embracing or close to embracing. One or both partners typically have exposed skin and long, flowing locks. This cover type exemplifies the sweeping emotions between the pair around whom the central narrative is based. Other clinch cover characteristics include cursive or stylized fonts for the title and author name and a background or object meant to be representative of the story. The clinch cover embraced design excess and its roots in pulp illustration. These designs play into the public’s idea of the books selling sexuality as uncontrollable desire, says Dr. Kamble, eliciting an almost puritanical societal response. from A Brief History of the Clinch [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:45 PM PST - 23 comments

This page generates nonsense words based on a frequency list of phonemes as they occur in legitimate English words. Generated words are checked against a list of approximately 500,000 English words. An actual word may slip through occasionally but it should mostly generate pronounceable gibberish.
posted by Etrigan at 12:04 PM PST - 66 comments

John le Carré was probably always a critic of American hegemony. But as he grew older he was less subtle [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 11:47 AM PST - 24 comments

Fast X [Official Trailer] “Fast X, the tenth film in the Fast & Furious Saga, launches the final chapters of one of cinema’s most storied and popular global franchises, now in its third decade and still going strong with the same core cast and characters as when it began. Over many missions and against impossible odds, Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his family have outsmarted, out-nerved and outdriven every foe in their path. Now, they confront the most lethal opponent they’ve ever faced: A terrifying threat emerging from the shadows of the past who’s fueled by blood revenge, and who is determined to shatter this family and destroy everything—and everyone—that Dom loves, forever. ”
posted by Fizz at 11:25 AM PST - 81 comments

Sarah Glidden's comic Invaders looks at the question of invasive species (beginning with the alien Passer domesticus coming to dominate New York): What are they, why are they here, and how should we think about them?
posted by mittens at 10:43 AM PST - 18 comments

Spoutible launched fully yesterday and his been running relatively smoothly (with a few minor glitches). It's a Twitter alternative that aims to stop the spread of misinformation and hate. [more inside]
posted by dobbs at 10:14 AM PST - 34 comments

The Inquisitive Biologist has reviewed over 400 fascinating science books. Recommendations in 2022 include A Natural History of the Future (by Rob Dunn) and The Sloth Lemur’s Song: Madagascar from the Deep Past to the Uncertain Present (by Alison Richard). [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:32 AM PST - 5 comments

Black Crossword is a free daily mini crossword puzzle that places emphasis on terms and clues from across the Black diaspora.
posted by box at 8:24 AM PST - 7 comments

Trevor Kennison (@trevor_kennison) is a sit-ski freeskier. He is paralyzed from the waist down. The trailer for his upcoming film dropped today...which chronicles his return to the spot where he was paralyzed...and where he attempts a world first double backflip on a sit ski. [more inside]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 5:51 PM PST - 4 comments

Last Friday a 50-car train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. It was carrying vinyl chloride, and burst into flames after the wreck. On Monday the emergency crews released toxic chemicals into the air and set them on fire, to ensure the containers didn't explode. On Wednesday the evacuation order was reversed and the air declared safe. At a news conference Wednesday, things got weird.
posted by chavenet at 2:39 PM PST - 64 comments

Composer Burt Bacharach, winner of multiple Grammy, Oscar, and Emmy Awards as well as the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize, has passed away of natural causes at age 94.
posted by fedward at 12:11 PM PST - 77 comments

My grandmother died at home, just as she wanted. It cost $145,000 My grandmother died at home recently, surrounded by her family and loving caregivers with the support of a hospice team. It was exactly how she pictured the end of her life, and it cost our family $145,613.79.
posted by NoThisIsPatrick at 7:46 AM PST - 73 comments

Martin Luther King, Jr, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin are towering figures in Black American culture, politics, and community. Their lives and backgrounds have been thoroughly dissected, but what of the influence of the women who birthed them? How did the relationship with their individual mothers shape the men they became? Author Anna Malaika Tubbs explored that question in her book, The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. In a 50 minute NPR and TED Radio Hour interview, she discusses the impetus and history behind writing the book.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:30 AM PST - 3 comments

The Futurists tried to abolish pasta and all they got was this delicious dish.
posted by Etrigan at 7:17 AM PST - 43 comments

When a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist publishes a poorly sourced controversial story who is to decide whether it is True or False?. Coverage was sparse across the spectrum, with most major outlets appearing to publish no coverage of Hersh’s story or the White House’s rebuttal. Whilest many Reddit posts were deleted the sub reddit Boring Distoptia has a small discussion.
Seymour Hersh's wiki page has links to some interesting reading.
posted by adamvasco at 4:11 AM PST - 226 comments

The Bureau of Lost Culture presents: "Alan Moore on counterculture" (SLYT)
posted by Meatbomb at 1:08 AM PST - 2 comments

Twitter experiencing international outages; most users can’t tweet or DM. Seems like its the 2nd or 3rd time in the last couple of months.
posted by buffy12 at 5:48 PM PST - 230 comments

The 90's neoliberal fantasia as experienced by daria morgendorffer, millennial, a video essay.
posted by simmering octagon at 5:21 PM PST - 22 comments

Survivor in rubble sparks hope for more 'miracles.' Death toll passes 11,000 in Turkey and Syria. Syria's White Helmets are urgently asking for international help.
posted by spamandkimchi at 3:47 PM PST - 21 comments

There’s this thing called “match the hatch.” It’s when there’s a natural bug in the air the fish are eating and you use an artificial fly that’s the same color. I have a protective coloration. I try to blend in. That’s what I do. When I’m getting dressed, if people are going to be wearing a suit, I wear a suit. If people are wearing blue jeans, I’m wearing blue jeans. I’m comfortable in all kinds of company. If they’re serious, I’m serious. They’re not serious, I’m not serious. And if they’re too fucking serious, I’m not serious. (Laughs.) I don’t know why people have an expectation of me. I come in all colors. I don’t know who’s going to show up. But it’s usually me and it looks familiar. from Harrison Ford: “I Know Who the F*** I Am” [The Hollywood Reporter; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 2:37 PM PST - 26 comments

Modern D&D leaves much of the world building to the DM these days. But back in the era of First Edition AD&D, the DM had a chart for everything, as this collection of charts from the 1e Dungeon Master's Guide illustrates. (SLGizmodo)
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:23 PM PST - 46 comments

99 Luftballons (1983) and 99 Red Balloons (1984) was a song by the German band and singer Nena. The lyrics of the 1983 version were written by band member Carlo Karges, while the 1984 version were written by Kevin McAlea, one of Kate Bush's backing musicians. Both versions depict a release of balloons leading to unfortunate situations. Ahead of Nena's 2023 tour, the song is currently floating up various online charts. Covers by The Renegades and Flat Out, and a laid-back jazz lounge version featuring Aly Ryan and a xylophone. [Previously]
posted by Wordshore at 12:41 PM PST - 37 comments

Three short essays by Japanese poet Hiromi Itō about her aging, beloved German Shepherd named Také. Each essay, translated by Jeffrey Angles and his students, portrays Také at different stages of life, from puppyhood to her final days.
posted by Kattullus at 11:29 AM PST - 4 comments

Making an Infinite LEGO Domino Ring (SLYT) More LEGO automata from JKBrickworks: Orrery, Sisyphus, Archer, Combination safe, Popup Book
posted by gwint at 9:28 AM PST - 8 comments

"The Getty Family’s Trust Issues" (NYer paywall, archive) provides a rare look inside the "wealth-defense industry." (from Season 274 Episode 3 of The Daily Zeitgeist) [more inside]
posted by slogger at 9:09 AM PST - 16 comments

An exterminator in Santa Rosa, California recently discovered 700 pounds of acorns stashed in the wall of a local home. According to The Guardian: acorn woodpeckers – peculiar little birds with a shock of red feathers on their head – ... are prodigious acorn collectors. Normally, the birds store thousands of acorns in small holes they drill into dying tree stumps, which they protect with outsize pluck. “But that instinct to fit an acorn in a hole and store it is pretty strong with these guys,” explained Angela Brierly, a PhD researcher at Old Dominion University who studies the species at the Hastings Natural History Reservation. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:11 AM PST - 18 comments

Gautam Adani was Asia’s wealthiest man coming into 2023. Now, he’s lost billions after a bombshell report from a small US investment firm.
posted by Etrigan at 6:54 AM PST - 29 comments

"The only known video interview with Belgian physicist Georges Lemaître, widely considered the "father of the Big Bang," talking about the birth of the universe has been rediscovered almost 60 years after it was lost." [more inside]
posted by mhoye at 6:54 AM PST - 3 comments

The traffic is terrible, the rents are high and what do you mean I have to sit at a desk from 8am to 4pm? Former Taliban fighters working for the government in Kabul have complaints that seem like those any rural soldier going to work in the big city after a war might have. They also cite similar benefits: everything from hospitals to shops to parks is accessible and people don't meddle in your life. But other joys and complaints are unique - and some reveal how the West lost the war for Afghanistan.
posted by rednikki at 5:46 AM PST - 54 comments

"Meet King Joe" 1949. (yt) [CW: racist ethnic depictions] [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 1:12 AM PST - 4 comments

How clean is hydrogen really - worse than methane? Robert Llewelyn from Fully Charged on a podcast with David Cebon from the Hydrogen Science Coalition about the "colours of hydrogen", the lobbying process in play at the moment and the relationship with the underlying science. Its an in-depth, but informative discussion, I found.
posted by rongorongo at 12:44 AM PST - 58 comments

Marlon Williams - My Boy [more inside]
posted by Start with Dessert at 12:26 AM PST - 4 comments

The Complete Master List of Palindrome Baby Names. From Namerology, the replacement for Baby Name Wizard. (Namerology previously and previouslier on the Blue.)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:30 PM PST - 24 comments

In about half an hour, President Joe Biden will be making his second State of the Union address -- the first before a divided Congress, and widely seen as a soft-launch for his 2024 re-election campaign. Watch on YouTube (PBS), or check out Politico's cheat sheet for an advance transcript, background, and analysis. More: NYT: Biden’s State of the Union Prep: No Acronyms and Tricks to Conquer a Stutter - Politico: Biden’s 2022 State of the Union report card: Where he delivered — and fell flat - FiveThirtyEight: In Defense Of The Mostly Pointless State Of The Union - AP: U2′s Bono, family of Tyre Nichols’ among Jill Biden’s guests - State of the Union 2023: Who is the designated survivor? (unannounced at press time!) - Republican response: newly-elected Arkansas governor (and former Trump press secretary) Sarah Huckabee Sanders - Rep. Delia Ramirez to give progressive's response - Don't forget MeFi Chat for live reactions!
posted by Rhaomi at 5:35 PM PST - 68 comments

“Some of you say pig vets have no heart,” he continues softly. “That might be true, but find us when we have to liquidate a farm. Those days I still carry with me.” from Our Business Is Killing by Andrew Bullis [CW: animals in pain, euthanasia, suicide. This is a hard read, feel free to skip it. But it is worthy.]
posted by chavenet at 2:21 PM PST - 45 comments

Flappy Birdle Yes, this is a Wordle and Flappy Bird clone, which acts as you expect (one flap per letter).
posted by RyanAdams at 12:59 PM PST - 19 comments

LeBron James is 36 points from becoming the leading scorer in NBA history. He may beat Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record while playing for the Los Angeles Lakers against the Milwaukee Bucks -- the two NBA teams Abdul-Jabbar played for. If you want to be at courtside, be prepared to shell out five or six figures. The Washington Post looks at How the NBA scoring record evolved from Wilt to Kareem to LeBron (gift article), and The Athletic looks at James's longevity as measured by the nine father-son duos he's played against (archive.today link).
posted by Etrigan at 6:41 AM PST - 75 comments

Legendary bass player Carol Kaye demonstrate how to play with a metronome. Interview with Carol Kaye, session musician, educator and writer. (The link goes to a moment 10 minutes into the interview but the whole video is worth watching.) [more inside]
posted by Zumbador at 1:41 AM PST - 27 comments

Retired, but lovely, "Frank", #3 at the link and his reoccurring visits have become an issue at the office, what to do? Ask-A-Manager posts the eventual solution.
posted by Lesium at 7:40 PM PST - 27 comments

CatGPT is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got a cat wedged into a ChatGPT interface, or why.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:38 PM PST - 35 comments

“I’ve always thought that my books are more interesting than my life...The world appears to disagree." David Remnick in The New Yorker provides an overview of Salman Rushdie's life and career up to now, including a new interview regarding his new novel and his recovery from the August, 2022 stabbing attack. (SLNewYorker) [more inside]
posted by dnash at 5:27 PM PST - 9 comments

If Star Trek: The Original Series Episodes Opened Like Mission: Impossible. (SLYT)
posted by gentlyepigrams at 4:14 PM PST - 30 comments

The worst literary agent? Bryan Denson begins the story by describing how journalist/literary agent Robert Eringer helped Earth Liberation Front spokesperson Craig Rosebraugh develop a book. Then things take a turn. (SLNYT) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 2:33 PM PST - 8 comments

The Great Gatsby of Gold Took Their Millions—and Vanished; Shady Gold Guru Burnished Image With Paid-For Media Titles [The Daily Beast; ungated 1 and 2 ]
posted by chavenet at 2:14 PM PST - 17 comments

Kelly Link in Praise of Ursula K. Le Guin's Genuine Magic - "It is also, notably, Le Guin's deliberate foray into Philip K. Dick's territory, with its hallucinatory beginning, its drug-using protagonist, and its surreal, literally world-melting alternate realities. Dick and Le Guin were admirers of each other's work and occasional correspondents." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 5:56 AM PST - 26 comments

Hidden pictures, exploded diagrams, and cross-section illustrations are a type of detailed image well known from famous coffee table books and children's book series (previously). A modern book featuring such illustrations is commonly referred to as a wimmelbilderbuch or wimmelbook, but the concept has been around for centuries. Wimmelbooks are also the subject of study, both as tools for childhood literacy and as semiotic playgrounds.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:21 AM PST - 10 comments

American actor Viola Davis becomes the 18th person to reach EGOT status, after winning her first Grammy Award. EGOT = a person who has won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony award during their career, reflecting their work in television, music, film and theatre.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 5:00 AM PST - 43 comments

Happy Monday, everyone! If you are returning to work today, you may want to contemplate the Latin term, "otium" or "leisure time." As in "dang, I sure wish I had more otium." Well, this thread can help. In a way. [more inside]
posted by taz at 3:11 AM PST - 105 comments

The French lyric version of Chaise Longue. As posted previously, Chaise Longue is a song by Isle of Wight band Wet Leg. Live performances: Green Man, Copenhagen, Glastonbury, and Live on the Porch. Also by Wet Leg: Wet Dream, Ur Mum, Angelica, Oh No.
posted by Wordshore at 3:04 AM PST - 26 comments

How to reckon with the ideology of “Anna Karenina,” “Eugene Onegin,” and other beloved books. [slNewYorker]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 5:24 PM PST - 28 comments

Golden Egg Fried Rice with Tuna-Mayo - Delicious. How to Make a Seafood Ramen - Delightful! TryToEat adds some fun to cooking.
posted by rebent at 3:38 PM PST - 14 comments

After 43 years of publishing in one form or another, by fans for fans of Bruce Springsteen, it's with mixed emotions that we announce Backstreets has reached the end of the road. ... If you haven't yet read that editorial ("Freeze-out," July 24, 2022), or the crux of response to Rolling Stone in November, we encourage you to do so; we don't want to rehash those issues, but we stand behind our positions and points. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:01 PM PST - 78 comments

How the Internet filled up with wrong ideas about the origins of the iconic dummy text.
posted by Etrigan at 2:00 PM PST - 23 comments

African Shifts Report has extensive data, projections, stories, and even a documentary about climate forced mobility in Africa. "By mid-century, under the high emissions and inequitable development scenario, internal climate mobility is predicted to reach [between 88 and 113] million people on African continent", despite mobility being universally "a response of last resort" (tweet summary). [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 10:52 AM PST - 24 comments

“It all started as a project to help me to improve my skills in the use of architectural rendering software tools...I have always been in love with Wright’s architecture, and I thought it would be useful, from an academic point of view, to recreate those buildings that have been demolished or never built.”
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:52 AM PST - 15 comments

Fairy Tale as MFA Antidote by Lincoln Michel: Some writing advice from the stories that eschew all the writing advice
posted by vincebowdren at 8:24 AM PST - 28 comments

Change - "Think about how you think. You can fluidly look at something, identify and modify it in your head, move it around, describe it ... What we call understanding isn't the sum of knowledge, it's the sum of the relationship to all of that information. Knowledge is the layer above information, which is transformative." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM PST - 31 comments

Solomon Perel, a German Jew who outwitted the Nazis by posing as a member of the Hitler Youth during World War II, an extraordinary story of survival that was dramatized in the 1990 film “Europa Europa,” died Feb. 2 at his home in Givatayim, near Tel Aviv. He was 97. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 3:49 PM PST - 39 comments

In Feb. 1927, Justin Spafford and Lucien Esty published Ask Me Another [alt.], a trivia book that let readers compare scores with Anita Loos, Dorothy Parker, John B. Watson, Ruth Hale, Alice Duer Miller, and others. Interview with Esty and Spafford (cont.; cw: stereotyping). By March, 100k copies were in print. By April, a second volume was in print, appearing later in an omnibus. By May, it inspired a comedy song and parody book (or two). The same year, it inspired music history / theory quizzes with scores from prominent musicians. Newspapers ran brief quizzes supplanting the crossword puzzle rage, itself deeply rooted in trivia puzzles (see also 19th C. question books or Renaissance memory / conversation games such as "Vittorie d'Hercole"). Last month, before passing away, Mefi's Own eotvos described a planned project for an online edition.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:38 PM PST - 12 comments

Former Del Fuego, NYU professor and Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen biographer Warren Zanes shares his opinion about the Grammys. Are they outdated? Useless? Do they ever actually award the right people? Well, Zanes feels there may be some value to the Grammy Awards.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 3:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Hillel Wayne interviewed 17 people with experience in both software and “traditional” engineering to answer the question: “Are we really engineers?” [more inside]
posted by learning from frequent failure at 2:46 PM PST - 78 comments

The Live-Service Game Bubble Looks Ready To Burst [Gamespot]

“Fortnite is several weeks into the first season of its fourth chapter. In real time, it's been going strong since the summer of 2017, and though Epic doesn't share player counts, by any available metric it seems to still be doing incredibly well. But in the live-service world, Fortnite's success feels increasingly rare. While there do exist other major successes in the pocket of the games industry where studios operate one game for years on end, many others are closing their proverbial doors for good, which is extremely scary both for players worried about gaming history and future developers concerned with the trends they may be tasked with chasing. Can live-service games survive modest successes, or must they all be as massive as Fortnite to make it?”

Amid a host of live-service games announcing their shutdowns, it's starting to feel like there's no safe middle ground between Fortnite and foreclosed. [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 1:35 PM PST - 47 comments

So Norway has now removed all religious status and related state subsidies from the Jehovah's Witnesses. This on the heels of a recent move in which Norwegian courts reversed a disfellowship decision the Church made. [more inside]
posted by Meatbomb at 11:35 AM PST - 35 comments

Chawne Kimber on constructing quilts and speaking history. "The name of that quilt is 'The One for Eric G'; it says “I can’t breathe” nine times, and it’s meant to look like graffiti scrawled on the wall in a dark alleyway. But the background fabrics are all Civil War–era prints in black... So you can’t miss that I’m making commentaries about then and now at the same time." Virtual Studio Tour with Artist Chawne Kimber, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Sept 22, 2022) Title of the post (and this quilt): "In essence, I am a sophisticated cotton picker" is an Eartha Kitt quotation. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:27 AM PST - 7 comments

Even as Opel’s fifteen minutes ticked down, his quest for exposure was just getting started. The Oscars were not his first or his last brush with history, and five years later he’d be dead. from What Became of the Oscar Streaker? [The New Yorker; ungated] [CW: references to antiquated 1970s language about homosexuality]
posted by chavenet at 8:42 AM PST - 14 comments

Will Steffen's "ideas were grounded in his view of the Earth as a complex, interconnected, evolving system" .. "Viewing the world in this way helps us understand what we have done to our environment – and how to begin fixing the problems." (see also the Climate Council and his talks on youtube) [more inside]
posted by jeffburdges at 6:36 AM PST - 5 comments

Is this poison ivy?
posted by swift at 6:15 AM PST - 93 comments

Mr. Darkside By Sub-Radio (recently,previously)
posted by Gorgik at 9:55 PM PST - 16 comments

When held up to the light no useful information can be gained through a security envelope. […] What is kind of mind boggling to me is just how many different patterns there are. If you think about it, five to ten patterns could have been created and that would have satisfied any security needs. There seems to be a lot more than ten patterns…
posted by cardioid at 4:24 PM PST - 28 comments

Inside Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Reality Show Disaster: ‘The Conditions Were Absolutely Inhumane’ [Variety]. What could possibly go wrong?
posted by hippybear at 3:48 PM PST - 37 comments

Lucy Scholes (Prospect, 01/25/2023), "Meet the archive moles": "There's a growing band of people digging through library stacks and second-hand bookshops in search of lost classics. I'm one of them." A reading list of reissues accompanying the article includes titles from Boiler House Press, Pushkin Press, Daunt Books, Faber (Memoir), Lurid Editions, Handheld Press, Another Gaze Editions, Penguin Modern Classics, British Library Publishing, and Vintage Classics. The article also mentions The Neglected Books Page, Virago Modern Classics, Persephone Books, Faber (Classics), and McNally Editions, where Scholes is an editor. Scholes previously and previouslier.
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:22 PM PST - 10 comments

Anadvora is an adorable nerd person on Youtube who posts songs, video essays and other stuff that will charm the socks right off of you. Her ragtime version of the Kinks' Lola is not to be missed, nor is Stacy's Aunt, her hilarious sequel to Stacy's Mom. And then there's her absolute mania for classic series Doctor Who... [more inside]
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:52 PM PST - 19 comments

Love this personal essay about the stress of parenting This is the only advice we've ever found to be actually useful: The Bucket System. You each have a 'bucket,' and the more stressed and overwhelmed you are, the fuller your bucket is. When the bucket gets full, like you can't handle anymore: that's it. There's nothing you can do. You're overwhelmed, game over, and the best thing for everyone is if you take a break. At any point either one of you can say, 'My bucket is full,” and the other person knows that means they need to step up, no questions asked, so the full-bucketee can take some time away.
posted by SituationNormal at 1:59 PM PST - 49 comments

After rocky start, hopes up in Oregon drug decriminalization In November 2020, Oregon voters passed Ballot Measure 110, which made it the first state in the union to broadly decriminalize drug possession, a response to an untenable status quo. In addition, the measure pledged to support the expansion of drug treatment and harm reduction programs in the state through funds from cannabis taxes. [more inside]
posted by Selena777 at 1:07 PM PST - 6 comments

That's it. (SLYT)
posted by Ipsifendus at 11:25 AM PST - 17 comments

A 30-year-old Portuguese dog has been named as the world's oldest ever by Guinness World Records - beating a record that stood for a century. Bobi is a purebred Rafeiro do Alentejo - a breed that has an average life expectancy of 12 to 14 years.
posted by chavenet at 7:34 AM PST - 30 comments

I watched Groundhog Day every day for a year. Here’s what I learned [more inside]
posted by logicpunk at 6:13 AM PST - 46 comments

Therapeutic Goods Administration approves psilocybin & MDMA for use in treating Depression & PTSD. Australia's medical regulator has approved the use of psychedelics to treat some mental health conditions, making the country one of the first in the world to officially recognise MDMA and psilocybin as medicines.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:42 AM PST - 12 comments

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, in collaboration with the Mauritshuis in The Hague, has organized a blockbuster exhibition this spring featuring the paintings of Johannes Vermeer—the largest ever—bringing together 25 of the 34 works that can be firmly attributed to the Dutch Golden Age master, whose paintings are rarely loaned out from the lucky handful of collections that possess them. Three additional works with disputed attribution will also be included, following a recent and somewhat controversial authentication by Rijksmuseum curators [previously]. Despite record-breaking ticket sales and extended museum hours, countless Vermeer enthusiasts won’t be able to attend. Fortunately for them the museum has also commissioned a virtual exhibition featuring ultra high resolution photos of Vermeer’s paintings. Click on a thumbnail to peruse specific works on your own, or take an in-depth guided tour with your choice of docent: Stephen Fry (in English) or Joy Delima (in Dutch).
posted by theory at 7:47 PM PST - 17 comments

A growing number of non-Māori New Zealanders are embracing learning te reo – but there’s more to it than language. An article in The Conversation by Brian Tweed and Pania Te Maro, on approaching language learning in New Zealand Aotearoa through the lens of whakapapa: 'the emergence of new entities from their previous forms'.
posted by tavegyl at 5:50 PM PST - 24 comments

There are 69 weather-forecasting prognosticators in Canada or the USA who made predictions in 2022 — including 39 ‘alternative’ groundhogs. [Ed. other parts of the site have been updated for 2023]
Use the Groundhog Map to locate your fave prognosticator.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:52 PM PST - 21 comments

For the 20th anniversary of Dinosaur Comics, creator Ryan North posted a special giant-size update. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 1:34 PM PST - 14 comments

London “A long-running dispute over pay and working conditions came to a head Wednesday, with hundreds of thousands of British workers taking part in what organizers said was the biggest day of industrial action in more than a decade.”
posted by Selena777 at 11:28 AM PST - 41 comments

The '70s Ends On a Cliffhanger (SLYT)
posted by Meatbomb at 10:55 AM PST - 5 comments

A short surreal animated film by Felix Colgrave: DONKS.
posted by cortex at 8:40 AM PST - 14 comments

When my husband suffered a stroke, I was determined that this was not going to be the thing that unwound our love. [more inside]
posted by Kitteh at 8:08 AM PST - 11 comments

I watched Groundhog Day every day for a year. Here’s what I learned [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 7:22 AM PST - 58 comments

Building on the work of other scientists, data scientist Floe Foxon says that most sasquatch sightings in the United States and Canada were probably black bears, walking on their hind legs. [more inside]
posted by joannemerriam at 5:22 AM PST - 46 comments

Every September, the City of Binghamton, New York hosts LUMA, a free projection arts festival. Warning: flashing lights. For two nights in September, buildings in downtown Binghamton are transformed through projected light. The results are dazzling. Buildings split, flip over, melt, are destroyed and rebuilt, and turn to gold. [more inside]
posted by kinnakeet at 5:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Neurodivergent people face some very specific challenges when it comes to physical and mental health, and often don’t respond well to treatments that are designed for neurotypical people. Even when our differences are recognised, treatment is often pathologising. They try to cure or mask difference, rather than meeting our actual needs. This is rooted in a pathologising view of neurodivergence: Nick Walker, a queer, transgender, autistic writer and educator explains: Throw Away The Master's Tools: Liberating Ourselves from the Pathology Paradigm [more inside]
posted by Zumbador at 3:42 AM PST - 11 comments

He has never interviewed a scientist for any of his stories despite the fact that, because of their fidelity to scientific ideas, they often read like they were written by one. “My understanding of science comes entirely from the written word,” Chiang says. Just as SFI’s scientists can’t predict what fresh perspective they might glean from conversations with Chiang, Chiang can’t predict whether those conversations will spur him to write new stories. 1000-word press release via MeFi's own Nelson's linkblog
posted by cgc373 at 2:58 AM PST - 5 comments

Bay Area Cities To Lose ALL Housing Zoning Powers [today; thread] - "Old law proposes to turn the Bay Area's zoning system into something like Japan's in just two days."[1,2,3,4,5] (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 32 comments

The wikipedia article is an good overview. TLDR: some computers keep time by tracking seconds since January 1, 1970. A subset of these computers used a 32-bit value to do so, meaning that it only has space to track the time until some date in 2038. Most of the major systems have migrated to 64 bit numbers, but not all.
posted by buffy12 at 3:35 PM PST - 84 comments

The Cage Gauge. Every Nicolas Cage movie, ranked.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:07 PM PST - 56 comments

That’s A Wrap On The Public Domain Game Jam! Techdirt has just concluded their fourth annual Gaming Like It's 19XX game jam, a celebration of creativity, gaming, and the public domain. All submitted games include reference to materials from 1927 that have now entered the public domain in the United States. All the submissions are up on itch.io.
posted by N8yskates at 2:47 PM PST - 4 comments

On the 20th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, Ars Technica published two articles; the first asks if NASA has fixed its safety culture, and the second, a reprint of a 2014 article with some updates, wonders if, had the damage to the ship's wing that occurred on launch been detected before they started reentry, the crew could have been saved. (Previously on the blue; Columbia previouslies) [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:13 PM PST - 44 comments

Wonders of Street View [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:02 AM PST - 47 comments

Women have been misled about menopause Hot flashes, sleeplessness, pain during sex: For some of menopause’s worst symptoms, there’s an established treatment. Why aren’t more women offered it? or maybe we should talk about extending reproductive longevity. After all, we don't fully understand the purpose of menopause as most mammals don't experience it. There are theories.

Or perhaps we should Cancel Menopause altogether?
posted by [insert clever name here] at 10:22 AM PST - 80 comments

Jeanne Theoharis, author of A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of the Civil Rights History, on our tendency to focus on protests, on complaints about Black Lives Matter causing disruption, and on how we trap Rosa Parks on the bus as the mild-mannered secretary and not the uncompromising fighter for justice. Theoharis speaks of how, during the 2013 unveiling of a statue in her honor, the Supreme Court was hearing Shelby County v Holder (which gutted the Voting Rights Act). Four minute video: 5 Myths of the Civil Rights Movement. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:19 AM PST - 4 comments

Artifact, Relic, and Monument The story of Coil's 'Tainted Love,' the first musical AIDS benefit and the first music video to be added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. [more inside]
posted by box at 8:25 AM PST - 12 comments

By 1681, Didus ineptus would be gone, by 1710 so would every last settler from Mauritius. The enterprise here would have lasted about a human lifetime. ... To some, it made sense. They saw the stumbling birds ill-made to the point of Satanic intervention, so ugly as to embody argument against a Godly creation. But now A 'De-Extinction' Company Wants to Bring Back the Dodo
posted by chavenet at 6:47 AM PST - 35 comments

Philanderer? Fraudster? Spy? The British MP who faked his death and ran away to Australia. He was a British MP who faked his own death to start a new life in Melbourne. But what's the truth about the elusive, alleged spy John Stonehouse?
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 4:32 AM PST - 7 comments

There's no way you could write a script so tedious and lacking in drama as Tape of me and my friends, which records a momentous summer day in 1993 wherein four extremely stupid teenagers from Gardner, Massachusetts drive to Nashua NH so Mike can buy a TV. Cluelessness pervades every second of this video. Try to count the amount of times someone raises a middle finger to the camera. And don't blame me if you get that Overkill song stuck in your head. [more inside]
posted by Fritz Langwedge at 4:03 AM PST - 31 comments