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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Cosby had been denied a fair trial "That’s why Cosby—with the assurance that he wouldn’t be prosecuted—divulged in a civil case brought by Constand that he had given quaaludes to women he had pursued sexually, as explained by The New York Times. But years later, after Castor’s departure from office, his successor Kevin Steele did not uphold Castor’s deal. When Steele moved forward with criminal charges, Cosby’s testimony in the civil case was used as evidence." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:11 PM PST - 96 comments

Clifford Stoll, yes that Cliff, has had the Amazon listing for his Klein bottles stolen by hijackers and there doesn't seem to be anything he can do about it
posted by Mitheral at 6:42 PM PST - 46 comments

Donald Rumsfeld GW Bush defense secretary is dead at 88.
posted by Dr. Twist at 1:13 PM PST - 143 comments

It's important for the US Census to collect and publish a lot of information. It's also important for individual respondents to retain their privacy. Re-identification techniques pose a problem, so The Markup's Julia Angwin interviews Cynthia Dwork, one of the creators of the "differential privacy" approach, about how differential privacy could help ensure the US can meet both goals.
posted by brainwane at 11:28 AM PST - 13 comments

The Methodist Church in Britain allows same-sex marriage in 'momentous' vote: Following a half-decade of consultation, and in an overwhelming 254-46 vote in favour, the Methodist Church is now the largest religious denomination in Britain to support same-sex marriage.
posted by parm at 10:23 AM PST - 15 comments

Quarantine, but for information. Harvard Law and The Blue's Jonathan Zittrain makes the long, strong case that everything on this mutable, decaying, glorious mess of an Internet is worth a heroic effort to save, even the things that are wrong and bad and should largely be, but not completely, forgotten. Sub-point: tip your librarians.
posted by leppert at 9:25 AM PST - 18 comments

"Who was first, Beijing or Wuhan? This is a very controversial question, as both cities claim to have given birth to Chinese punk. As always, the issue is more complex than it appears; the answer is not merely chronological, but also involves ethics and politics. Claiming that Wuhan is the true birthplace of Chinese punk means one favors political engagement over style, raw punk energy over complex musical arrangement. I am myself non-objective on the matter, as shown by the tattoo on my upper arm or the patch sewn on my jacket: I frankly lean toward Wuhan. For me, if there is one song that embodies Chinese punk, it’s not “All the Same” (都一样), the self-proclaimed “first Chinese punk song” by UnderBaby; it’s “Scream For Life” by SMZB. Here’s why."
posted by antihistameme at 8:34 AM PST - 8 comments

From Julie Cart for Cal Matters: Severe drought is gripping most of California, but its misery isn’t spread equally. While most of the state compares today’s extreme conditions to previous droughts, people in Tulare County speak of drought — in the singular, as in a continuous state of being. ...The entire West is suffering from extreme dryness, heat and fire risk, and the small, rural towns of northern Tulare County, outside of Visalia, are caught in its vortex. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:47 AM PST - 18 comments

A lot of athletes are incomparable and revolutionary in their respective sports. There are too many wonders in the world for any one person to pay attention to all of them... But if it’s even conceivable that you could care about baseball—or about boundary-breaking human achievement, regardless of the field—you should try to pay attention to Ohtani. Ben Lindbergh on Shohei Ohtani's incredible two-way performance this season in Major League Baseball, "Shobaes", and the oddity of an elite athlete who is "improbably pleasant".
posted by Cash4Lead at 7:39 AM PST - 22 comments

"On a recent afternoon, over a lunch of arancine and cannoli in a Palermo apartment that he shares with his partner, Michele Nicolosi — an abundantly tattooed Italian post office employee with a similar beard, identical outfit and warm sense of humor — Mr. Lepore described a saga worthy of Stendhal." A Latin Expert’s Odyssey, From the Vatican to the Gay Rights Movement - Jason Horowitz, NYT Rome bureau chief. Archive link.
posted by hippybear at 5:29 AM PST - 2 comments

Reflections on Zoom and Body Dysmorphia
posted by latkes at 2:32 PM PST - 50 comments

Six Degrees of Ryu is a Twitter account that, in the manner of Erdos numbers and the old Kevin Bacon game long discussed on the internet (and automated through the still-functioning Oracle of Bacon), counts the number of video game connections it takes to get from various characters to Ryu from Street Fighter. Pepsiman, Slenderman, and EVA Unit 01 all have Ryu numbers of 3. Jesus Christ, Joe Biden, and Snoop Dogg have Ryu Numbers of 2. Because of Scribblenauts, many historical figures, including George Washington Carver and Thomas Edison, have Ryu Numbers of 4. Deadmau5 has a Ryu Number of 7. (Previously, in 2001 and 2012) [more inside]
posted by JHarris at 1:31 PM PST - 58 comments

KDE Akademy 2021 - How We Can Solve the Personal Data Problem by Björn Balazs [more inside]
posted by thebotanyofsouls at 11:04 AM PST - 17 comments

Three leading ed tech companies, three major moves for money. To start with, major online program manager (OPM) 2U purchased much of online class provider edX for $800 million. As part of the deal Harvard and MIT will launch a new and so far unnamed education nonprofit. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:55 AM PST - 14 comments

"Noted local criminal Mark McCloskey played host to a barbecue/political rally on Sunday afternoon, drawing tens of admirers to the sweltering parking lot of a closed outlet mall in St. Louis County to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the time he pulled a gun on a crowd of people who otherwise would never have noticed or cared he existed." Riverfront Times writer Daniel Hill covers Mark McCloskey's cringeworthy rally as it should be covered.
posted by orange swan at 10:17 AM PST - 58 comments

Chaos and despair are regular guests in the Christian church: often cast out, but rarely interrogated. Demons, Panic and Memory: writer and podcaster Sam Thielman on the Satanic Panic and the compulsion to avoid horrific truths.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 9:10 AM PST - 29 comments

Last fall, Chileans voted to replace their Pinochet-era constitution (previously). The Constituent Assembly which will do the rewriting was recently elected, and it opens the path to plurinationality and recognition of Indigenous rights. It will be the first constitution ever to be written by equal numbers of women and men. Some Indigenous groups hope their voices will aid in protecting the environment – and their communities’ rights to protest – in the new constitution. The ruling conservative coalition was dismayed to fail to achieve the one-third of seats they'd need to veto constitutional changes.
posted by clawsoon at 8:36 AM PST - 14 comments

Some readers of this site may also be readers of Lauren Berlant, whose diagnosis of American life (but not just American) was deep, sympathetic, and challenging. You can get to know Lauren's work better through the summary of Cruel Optimism (Duke University Press), the book that to my mind is the best place to start, and a selection of their articles in Critical Inquiry.
posted by homerica at 8:08 AM PST - 9 comments

Architectural Digest takes a tour of her exuberant and fantastically decorated Los Angeles home. After Stephen Colbert joked about it in his "Meanwhile" segment, I had to go check it out. Possibly NSFW, but they did show it on TV.
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:32 AM PST - 91 comments

The visionaries behind Amazon Dating (previously) bring you PostDates, a new gig economy solution to handling the details of a breakup. [SL: parody]
posted by eotvos at 6:12 AM PST - 9 comments

How a podcast is helping this Catholic and gay Latino man break the stigma [National Catholic Reporter] The podcast is De Pueblo, Católico y Gay Really great interview with creator Eder Díaz Santillan on KERA's Think: Is There Room For Queer People In The Catholic Church? [31m]
posted by hippybear at 5:28 AM PST - 4 comments

Cheddar explains why he believes Electric Planes are Inevitably Coming - with particular reference to the economics of short distance, commercial flights. Electric Future announces"Electric Planes have arrived" - a review of current and models and those in the immediate pipeline. Real Engineering summarises the the technical challenges and limits. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 2:46 AM PST - 31 comments

“We find that those more skilled in producing satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit score higher on measures of cognitive ability and are perceived by others as more intelligent ... Overall, the ability to produce satisfying bullshit may serve to assist individuals in navigating social systems, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing others and as an honest signal of one’s intelligence.” from Bullshitting Is Actually a Sign of Intelligence, Study Finds [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:22 AM PST - 43 comments

Looking to inject some controversy into your 4th of July BBQ? Introducing the grilling innovation that pretty much no one asked for... The round dog.
posted by merriment at 5:21 PM PST - 136 comments

A lovely New York Times Magazine interview with LeVar Burton, now a contender to be the next full-time host of "Jeopardy": "There are times when I experience my life as having been for a specific purpose. I look at Kunta. I look at Geordi. I’ve been able to express humanity as enslaved in the past and as free in the future and do it as a completely liberated Black man. It’s kind of mind-blowing."
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 4:27 PM PST - 31 comments

"According to Navajo tradition, you’re not supposed to give a name to anything that is not good for the reservation . . . . The virus was like a monster. Traditionally, the more you talk about something like that, the more you’re inviting it into your home." Radio stations KTNN and KYAT working to serve as important information sources in pandemic times.
posted by JanetLand at 9:44 AM PST - 18 comments

"They’re beautiful, these dresses. But they’re also an echo of an echo of a song so familiar we’ve ceased to hear its sadness." Anne Helen Petersen does a deep dive into Laura Ashley, Ashley Dawn, and post-pandemic mommy-and-me fashion.
posted by orange swan at 9:09 AM PST - 118 comments

Will the real IRC please stand up? Freenode’s forest fire leaves ashes – and fresh growth. There then followed gag orders, staff changes and overnight coups, culminating in mass resignations of the volunteers, a forced take-over of control of 700-odd channels by the new management, and the wholesale migration of the user base to a new system, Libera Chat, run by the old staff. [more inside]
posted by Alex404 at 7:12 AM PST - 61 comments

The BBC spoke to five members of the LGBT community from different countries about what Pride means to them where they are.
posted by hippybear at 5:27 AM PST - 1 comment

The surprising and horrifying backstory behind Charles Entertainment Cheese. He never had his own birthday, so instead he fills the void by hosting birthday parties for everyone else. "Chuck E. would sleep above the kitchen in a pizzeria run by a friendly Italian chef named Pasqually. Chuck E. loved the smell of pizza," the book reads. "Plus he had plenty of music: Pasqually would listen to, and sing along to, the radio. It was a great place to live."
posted by geoff. at 6:42 PM PST - 40 comments

While the vast majority of Covid deaths in the US is of unvaccinated people recent numbers out of UK show a 60% of recent UK Covid casualties had at least one dose of a vaccine (43% fully vaccinated). This is expected and no reason to not get fully vaccinated. The Guardian explains why.
posted by Mitheral at 5:11 PM PST - 84 comments

"The best thing to come out of polyester suits and ruffled shirts, evah!"

...a Washington [DC] wedding band called Sixpence has become an overnight sensation. A grainy, black-and-white video of the cover band performing a note-perfect cover of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” has exploded on YouTube, racking up 340,000 views and garnering comments from around the world.

[more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:37 PM PST - 25 comments

The Broken Promise of Retirement. "If the US does nothing to fix its retirement system, 2.6 million formerly middle-class workers will be plunged into poverty by 2022." [more inside]
posted by Lyme Drop at 10:27 AM PST - 97 comments

Toei Company Ltd of Japan has long been a producer and distributor of anime and tokusatsu programs. While the Western world has seen many of their anime and Super Sentai programs (mostly in the form of Power Rangers), access to many other toku shows has been limited. Shout Factory TV has begun to bring Ultra, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai series to Western streaming services, but now Toei is releasing the first two episodes of more obscure tokusatsu programs in subtitled form on a new channel on YouTube. [more inside]
posted by Tchozz at 8:34 AM PST - 8 comments

"Serikzhan Bilash, a Xinjiang-born Kazakh activist who co-founded the channel and has been arrested multiple times for his activism, said government advisors told him five years ago to stop The channel, which unfortunately isn't in English. There's more Xinjiang material at Odysee, though.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:01 AM PST - 1 comment

The traditional way of eating a sandwich is to eat it with your hands, but not anymore. With bean plating, a new trend in sandwiches, the bread is folded around a filling and is eaten by putting the bean-side down. The Bean Plating competition is an annual event for the Wharton Marketing Association, and this year's competition was held on May 12th. The competition is meant to test the effectiveness of a company's marketing communications and its ability to measure the results of that effort. [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 5:51 AM PST - 46 comments

91-Year-Old Colorado Man Finally Celebrates PRIDE As An Openly Gay Man [CBS Denver] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:21 AM PST - 6 comments

From a 13th c. merchant's annoyance at bookkeeping to VisiCalc to the recent UK Govt 'misplacing' 16,000 Covid cases, spreadsheets are the swiss army knife of data. A chapter adaptation from Tim Harford's podcast Cautionary Tales, an exploration of Excel and its limits.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:59 PM PST - 55 comments

"Clashes of arms, he wrote, were usually preceded by wars of – and sometimes on – words, and therefore words could also be used to prevent them." From 2018 to 2020 the German government worked with a group of literacy scholars to anticipate geopolitical futures. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 2:17 PM PST - 8 comments

BreakfastNY makes artwork out of hand-built mechanical displays, including flip-dot displays, 'brixels' (rotating mirrored bricks), and moar.
posted by kaibutsu at 12:44 PM PST - 9 comments

The Tri-State Tornado of March 18, 1925, is the most destructive tornado on record in the United States. It was part of the deadliest tornado outbreak in U.S. history. This happened in the days before such events could be reliably forecast, and at a time when forecasters were forbidden to use the word "tornado." Stories from survivors are predictably chilling. Surviving the tornado required luck and a little counterintuitive thinking.
posted by bryon at 11:23 AM PST - 9 comments

Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity. "Seventeen researchers who specialize in widely different fields, from climate science to philosophy, make the case that academics should treat the study of technology’s large-scale impact on society as a 'crisis discipline'[:]...a field in which scientists across different fields work quickly to address an urgent societal problem."
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:20 AM PST - 68 comments

Japan proposes four-day working week to improve work-life balance - "The Japanese government has just unveiled its annual economic policy guidelines, which include new recommendations that companies permit their staff to opt to work four days a week instead of the typical five."[1,2,3] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 7:11 AM PST - 28 comments

“I’m bummed that it took me so long to be able to sit in queer joy.” - Julien Baker in conversation with Slate's Outward podcast. Extracted quotes on episode page worthwhile. Full interview (which ranges much wider and deeper) with Baker happens in the podcast play-gizmo at the bottom of the page, starting at 14:43, ending at 40:49. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 5:20 AM PST - 7 comments

Sable is a chill (at least in the demo) coming-of-age game with graphics that are clearly inspired by the famous French sci-fi artist, and a lovely low-key soundtrack by Japanese Breakfast. Demo available both for PC and XBox gives about an hour of gameplay (although I've played it much longer just to linger in the world).
posted by domdib at 4:07 AM PST - 16 comments

Matthew Butterick, lawyer, programmer, creator of the Pollen open-source book publishing system; author of the authoritative Typography for Lawyers and Practical Typography, has written a long, thoughtful post about the systemic abuse he has experienced from Matthias Felleisen of Racket/FOSS, and why he is choosing to now speak up and withdraw from the community. Matthew Butterick previously.
posted by Silvery Fish at 4:20 PM PST - 42 comments

The long-awaited Preliminary Assessment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, aka "that government UFO thing," has been released. According to the report, "a handful of UAP appear to demonstrate advanced technology."
posted by theodolite at 3:41 PM PST - 62 comments

SoManyOfUs, a website created as a response to creator Warren Ellis' targeting and manipulation of women, has released a statement about Ellis' potential return to comics. [more inside]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:38 PM PST - 40 comments

Roth IRAs were intended to help average working Americans save, but IRS records show Thiel and other ultrawealthy investors have used them to amass vast untaxed fortunes. (ProPublica, June 24, 2021) [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:44 AM PST - 62 comments

“[Val Shively] has a store called R&B Records in this sketchy neighborhood out past West Philly. ... The building is listing like the Tower of Pisa because he’s got five million records in there. It’s likely the biggest record store in the world and collectors fly in from the U.K., Germany, Japan and wherever else, in order to buy from Val. But if they say something wrong, or he doesn’t like their attitude, he explodes in an unbelievable rage and throws them out of the store.” [more inside]
posted by sepviva at 10:09 AM PST - 21 comments

You're Not Using the Web's Best Browser. It's about those damned tabs, my friend.
posted by storybored at 6:07 AM PST - 127 comments

"As historians, our role is not simply to regurgitate what was written, but to read between the lines. That’s the only way we’ll unearth the realities of subjects whose lives were either shielded by secrecy or erased, often on purpose, by the history that followed." - Roland Betancourt writing in Time Magazine.
posted by hippybear at 5:16 AM PST - 11 comments

Katelyn Gadd highlights a CNN chart which is more than a little misleading. Bonus: more terrible charts!
posted by Stark at 5:08 AM PST - 46 comments

World's fastest information-fueled engine designed by university researchers - "The development of this engine, which converts the random jiggling of a microscopic particle into stored energy, is [informing] researchers' understanding of how to rapidly and efficiently convert information into 'work.'" [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 1:11 AM PST - 11 comments

"Five hundred years after Hernán Cortés and his men conquered Mexico, a small boatload of indigenous Zapatistas are making the return journey across the Atlantic to “invade” Spain, rail against capitalist oppression, and perhaps throw the odd cumbia party." [more inside]
posted by kmt at 1:01 AM PST - 5 comments

The pandemic was economically ruinous for many cultural organizations. The Los Angeles Philharmonic slashed its annual budget from $152 million to $77 million. Museums lost millions in revenues. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills had to lay off 30 people. “It will probably take us 12 months to three years to get back to the same level of operation,” said Rachel Fine, the executive director of the Wallis. In addition to the challenge of philanthropy, the sheer difficulty of getting around this city — one sure sign that the recovery is at hand is that traffic has returned to roads and freeways — has long made it harder for theaters, music halls and galleries looking to draw crowds. The transit system is in the midst of a dramatic expansion, funded by a $120 billion mass transit plan. But it will be many years before it is completed. “It’s a wonderful place to live and it’s a wonderful place to work,” said Deborah Borda, who was the president of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for 17 years before becoming president of the New York Philharmonic. “And it’s truly a receptive place for the arts. But if you want be there for a 7:30 concert, you really have to leave at 6. I knew people who used to come but stopped: That would be a reason that they would give.”
posted by folklore724 at 6:38 PM PST - 13 comments

How vinyl records are trying to go green (BBC)
posted by oulipian at 12:44 PM PST - 27 comments

Winston Marshall, banjo player, posts "Why I’m Leaving Mumford & Sons," which he says is due to the reaction he has received after tweeting praise for Andy Ngo's book Unmasked.
posted by PhineasGage at 10:44 AM PST - 120 comments

Rudy Giuliani is suspended from law practice over Trump, election comments (Reuters) [more inside]
posted by flabdablet at 9:23 AM PST - 73 comments

The Rise of the $10 Million Disc Golf Celebrity
posted by box at 9:14 AM PST - 17 comments

Britain's spy agency honours codebreaker Turing in giant artwork - "Britain's GCHQ spy agency has installed a giant multicoloured artwork to celebrate codebreaker and mathemetician Alan Turing, who helped turn the tide of World War Two against Nazi Germany but was persecuted for being gay." (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:54 PM PST - 15 comments

Teen Vogue Presents GLAAD's 20 Under 20 2021: The LGBTQ Youth Shaping the Future [Teen Vogue] Single page with photos and bios. Quite a group of young people!
posted by hippybear at 9:58 PM PST - 2 comments

Is 2021 the year that the world finally catches up with Sparks, the weirdly wonderful, inventive, cheeky, and genre-spanning pop band formed by brothers Ron and Russell Mael in 1967? All signs point to yes. The Sparks Brothers, a new documentary by Edgar Wright, has been released to strongly favorable reviews (NY Times; LA Times; Rotten Tomatoes). And the musical film Annette — starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, with songs and screenplay written by the Mael brothers — will debut at Cannes on July 6, with a U.S. release later this summer. [more inside]
posted by lisa g at 8:16 PM PST - 33 comments

One Youtuber's trip into, and then out of, Youtube's alt-right ecosystem. (SLYT)
posted by clawsoon at 7:49 PM PST - 30 comments

John McAfee found dead in Spanish prison hours after his extradition to the US was approved. NPR story. (Warning, suicide references) [more inside]
posted by Melismata at 3:30 PM PST - 102 comments

On July 1, celebratory Canada Day events are typically held across the country. This year, after the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops, BC, and the deadly attack on a Muslim family in Ontario, the Toronto Star asks Indigenous and Muslim community members, “Should Canada Day be a point of celebration? Or a day of mourning and sombre reflection?” This is not a new question; once again, Idle No More reminds us that “Canada remains a country that has built its foundation on the erasure and genocide of Indigenous nations.” Victoria, BC has already cancelled its planned Canada Day celebrations, as have a growing number of other cities and towns across Canada. [more inside]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:25 PM PST - 59 comments

for 28 years in late night, you talk to someone, you do six minutes, you break, music, then you come back, you do another seven or eight minutes, you’re looking for the funny line to get out Whatever the medium is, what’s the format where I get to still be a kid? If there’s one message you take away from this, it’s that late-night comedy has kept me childlike, but the trick to that is you have to keep changing it up and keep looking for the next iteration and keep looking for the next format and keep looking for the new outlet.
posted by mecran01 at 12:53 PM PST - 43 comments

Electric Vehicles Won’t Save Us. "Cars, however they’re powered, are environmentally cataclysmic, break the tethers of community, and force an infrastructure of dependency that is as financially ruinous to our country as it is dangerous to us as people."
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:30 AM PST - 125 comments

A profile of champion cyclist Primož Roglič who “used to be nobody—a failed ski jumper, a college dropout, a janitor, a dreamer,” written by former internet phenom and architecture critic Kate Wagner: “I’m in this process of changing careers. I write mostly about architecture and design, but I started to get tired of it. Once I discovered writing about cycling, I was like, ‘Whoa, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ I guess I’m kind of in the process of quitting ski jumping of my own right now.”
posted by stopgap at 10:42 AM PST - 13 comments

Why You Procrastinate. It has nothing to do with self-control or time-management.
posted by storybored at 8:00 AM PST - 73 comments

Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Since 1989, he has self-published Jonathan's Space Report, a monthly free web-based newsletter that recaps launches of satellites, reentries and launches of manned spacecraft, and other recent spaceflight activity. [more inside]
posted by fizzix at 7:50 AM PST - 4 comments

India Walton claims upset in Buffalo mayoral race (from the Buffalo News): Speaking with reporters late Tuesday, Walton was asked if she considers herself to be a socialist. Her response: "Oh, absolutely. The entire intent of this campaign is to draw down power and resources to the ground level and into the hands of the people." [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 6:41 AM PST - 38 comments

A collection of photographs and words celebrating the complexities of motherhood and fatherhood (via Kottke).
posted by Stark at 5:33 AM PST - 3 comments

To the Last Man was a 2008 gay pornographic western (title taken from the 1921 novel by Zane Grey) with a budget of about US $200,000. Dan Cardone wrote about working as a grip on the production, which featured numerous action sequences, real guns and live ammunition, and the deaths of all but one of the characters (YT death montage, CW: one shirtless dude, many graphic and ridiculous murders, 144p -- does not contain any actual porn). [more inside]
posted by automatic cabinet at 3:06 AM PST - 16 comments

Story with a happier ending and a lot of hard-case humor on Radio NZ this morning, essentially two mates went off the rails big time and discovered yoghurt-making in jail while viewing a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall show. That's it really but well worth reading to the end about the yoghurt mafia.
posted by unearthed at 1:49 AM PST - 8 comments

A second very light sampling of communities holding Pride events for the first time this year: Aniwa, MI; Emporia, KS; Lincoln, NE; St Clair County, MI [photo essay]; Hamilton, OH; Isle Of Man
posted by hippybear at 9:57 PM PST - 2 comments

Anheuser-Busch contributed more than $35,000 to 29 legislators it described as anti-LGBTQ+ between 2015 and 2020. “You can’t turn your logo rainbow on social media, call yourself an ally, and then turn around and make donations that fuel hate,” Lentz said in a statement. “There are really no excuses, and companies like Anheuser-Busch need to own up to what they’ve done.”
posted by folklore724 at 6:18 PM PST - 33 comments

Britney Spears Quietly Pushed for Years to End Her Conservatorship "Her father and others involved in the conservatorship maintained that it was a smooth-running machine that had rescued her from a low point and benefited Spears, and that she could move to end it whenever she wanted. All the while, she stayed largely silent on the subject in public. But now, confidential court records obtained by The New York Times reveal that Spears, 39, expressed serious opposition to the conservatorship earlier and more often than had previously been known, and said that it restricted everything from whom she dated to the color of her kitchen cabinets." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:16 PM PST - 91 comments

From the "be careful what you wish for" files: journalist Lee O. Sanderlin suggested a penalty for coming in last in the fantasy football league he participated in - 24 hours in a Waffle House. Which was a lark - up until he wound up being the one sentenced to Waffle Hell. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 5:21 PM PST - 64 comments

In what is hoped to become a model for other historic sites, the descendants of enslaved persons at James Madison's estate, Montpelier, will be co-equals in sharing governing power and responsibility for the site.
posted by jedicus at 12:19 PM PST - 5 comments

Usually when a tornado comes through, the path of destruction is more haphazard. It can sometimes look like the vortex drops down and picks up one house but leaves the neighbor’s untouched, or will tear a roof off here but not there. This wasn’t like that. Everything around as far as the eye could see to the east and to the west, was flattened. Flatter than hammered shit. [more inside]
posted by latkes at 11:45 AM PST - 46 comments

"At the beginning of a traditional planner, there’s usually an overview of the current year, and sometimes there’s an overview of the next. Looking at these grids, seeing today in the context of many days, I am soothed; looking at the future log of a bullet journal, in which all but the most important dates are unrepresented, I am at sea. Bullet journals work when you don’t feel the need to construct a clear vision of what’s ahead." [more inside]
posted by antihistameme at 8:24 AM PST - 89 comments

Chris Jones is a physicist and a nuclear engineer. He’s also just announced he’s running for Governor of Arkansas. This is his campaign ad: It’s about time.
posted by Mchelly at 8:18 AM PST - 38 comments

On the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Joni Mitchell's Blue, the NYT talks to 25 musicians about the work countless critics have pointed to as a definitive masterpiece of the confessional singer-songwriter album. [more inside]
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:17 AM PST - 48 comments

"World Journey of My Memory or Journey of the Heart (世界わが心の旅 , Sekai Waga Kokoro no Tabi) was a travel program that was broadcast on NHK BS2 Television from 1993 to 2003. The series featured celebrities from various fields visiting places that shaped who they are as individuals. [...] [Two episodes] featured Studio Ghibli cofounders Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki. In the first program, Miyazaki visits France and the Sahara Desert to follow the footsteps of the famous early French aviator, poet, and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The second episode centers around Takahata's visit to Canada to meet the late Frédéric Back, the Oscar award winning animation film maker of The Man Who Planted Trees." [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 11:50 PM PST - 1 comment

Scientists Have Created A New Gene-Editing Tool That Could Outperform CRISPR - "It is faster and simpler than CRISPR, enabling millions of genetic experiments to be performed simultaneously." [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:49 PM PST - 9 comments

June 21, 2021 -- Carl Nassib Is The First Active NFL Player To Come Out As Gay [NPR] Page includes embedded Instagram video which is playable in-window, and has arrows that point to text. Congrats Carl! Thank you, and nothing but the best on this new chapter of your journey! [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:56 PM PST - 19 comments

John Paragon , best known for his role as Jambi the Genie on the television series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” has died. He was 66. Paragon was a member of the Groundlings improv troupe in LA where he worked alongside other future stars such as Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman), Phil Hartman, and Cassandra Peterson (Elvira). Pee-wee and Elvira posted farewells to John recently after learning the news.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:27 PM PST - 19 comments

Every Pixar Movie, Ranked [The Ringer], or All 24 Pixar Movies, Ranked [Vulture] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:56 PM PST - 58 comments

California man arrested for allegedly stealing 42,000lb of pistachios (SLGuardian). [more inside]
posted by ec2y at 2:05 PM PST - 41 comments

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court has upheld the the Ninth Circuit's ruling that the NCAA's restrictions on paid educational benefits violate antitrust law. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:10 AM PST - 95 comments

There were no politicians or corporate sponsors when the first Pride parade rolled through San Francisco on June 25, 1972. Spirit Of 1972: Photos from the first S.F. Pride parade [San Francisco Chronicle]
posted by hippybear at 9:55 PM PST - 9 comments

Something really good is happening next month. A celebration of the expanded Child Tax Credit in the American Recovery Plan, and a plea to make it permanent. "Children cost money, but a market economy does not magically allocate extra money to the parents of children relative to non-parents. In fact, it is somewhat more challenging to earn money when you have a kid because they impose logistical barriers to working. As a result, unless the government provides parents with extra money, the living standards of families with young children will be systematically lower than those of the childless. That’s one important reason why the poverty rate for children is so much higher than the poverty rate for adults." [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 5:35 PM PST - 16 comments

The prestigious institution has tied itself in knots over a dispute involving one of its most popular—and controversial—professors, Amy Chua. The question has arisen, in online comments sections and on Twitter, why anyone is even talking about Amy Chua. Who cares about a parenting memoirist’s removal from a law-school teaching roster? The answer is, in part, because this story manages to touch on seemingly every single cultural flashpoint of the past few years. Chua’s critics see a story about #MeToo—because of her husband, but also because Chua supported the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, even after he was accused of sexual assault. Meanwhile, Chua’s defenders see a morality tale about liberal cancel culture. “What they’ve done to you is SOP”—standard operating procedure—“for conservative allies but chills me to the bone nonetheless,” a supporter tweeted at her, earlier this month. Megyn Kelly weighed in, tweeting, “Make no mistake: this is retribution for her support of Brett Kavanaugh, & it is disgusting.” Chua’s allies have also suggested that anti-Asian bias is involved. “The woke academy reserves a special vitriol for minority faculty who don’t toe the line politically,” Niall Ferguson, a historian, tweeted.
posted by folklore724 at 3:21 PM PST - 80 comments

The term “smooth” effectively erases any point of reference. Even as an adjective, “smooth” functions as a verb: It is the buffing out of character, the sanding down of the distinctions that make great spirits great. In the quest to triangulate the specific qualities of a spirit, “smooth” instead forms a binary of acceptability. It is a value judgment on whether or not one finds the spirit drinkable, one that can easily be impressed upon an unwitting consumer. This is exactly why the term is so ubiquitous in the marketplace, and—for decades, if not centuries—a red flag among connoisseurs. From Let’s Talk About “Smooth” by Danny Chau
posted by chavenet at 10:38 AM PST - 104 comments

Combinators and the Story of Computation - "The idea of representing things in a formal, symbolic way has a long history... But was there perhaps some more general and fundamental infrastructure: some kind of abstract system that could ultimately model or represent anything? Today we understand that's what computation is. And it's becoming clear that the modern conception of computation is one of the single most powerful ideas in all of intellectual history—whose implications are only just beginning to unfold. But how did we finally get to it? Combinators had an important role to play, woven into a complex tapestry of ideas stretching across more than a century." (also btw The Nature of Computation previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 2:23 AM PST - 27 comments

It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders breaks out of its usual form and talks to Sarah Schulman ACT UP: A History Of AIDS/HIV Activism [50m]. Transcript sadly not available, but some quotes from the interview on the page. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:54 PM PST - 12 comments

Dear Intern is trending on Twitter after HBO Max put out this statement claiming that yes, it was the intern who accidentally sent this integration test email to... seemingly everyone on the internet, judging by the reaction. [more inside]
posted by taquito sunrise at 8:05 PM PST - 44 comments

Jane Gilbert, who worked for many years on the city’s climate resilience initiatives, is the first person to hold a position of this kind in the world. Cities are known as “urban heat islands,” meaning they’re significantly warmer than other settlements because of the way they’re constructed, with buildings and roads absorbing heat and then reemitting it. “We’re just roasting people in cities,” Baughman McLeod says. Many of Gilbert’s prospective initiatives are based around design. She mentions installing cool pavements and roofs by using materials that reflect sunlight to drive down temperatures, and enhancing shade along pavements with tree canopies so people can walk, bike, and wait at bus stops that will feel 20 to 45 degrees cooler (which will also help encourage the use of public transportation instead of individually air-conditioned cars).
posted by folklore724 at 2:49 PM PST - 49 comments

“'There is no nationally recognized moment where this country takes a pause and says, you know what, this country enslaved people, broke up families, in perpetuity for generations. Juneteenth is becoming a time when the country can do that,' [Dr. Brian] Purnell told BuzzFeed News." But before it was signed into law as a federal holiday, Black communities in different parts of the country have been recognizing Juneteenth since 1866: Photos Of How People Celebrated Juneteenth 100 Years Ago.
posted by taz at 11:19 AM PST - 5 comments

Neutrinowatch broadcasts daily from a series of parallel timelines which have 32% (± 7%) in common with our own reality. In an innovative new fictional podcast from Answer Me This!'s Martin Austwick, episodes are updated every day and can be re-downloaded and streamed daily for a slightly modified user experience. [more inside]
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 6:35 AM PST - 12 comments

From the Los Angeles Review Of Books comes a long read in three parts by Michael Nava: Creating A Literary Culture: A Short, Selective, and Incomplete History of LGBT Publishing. Part I - Out from the Shadows: Beginning, 1940–1980, Part II - The Golden Age (1980–1995), Part III - Picking Up the Pieces: Queer Publishing Now [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:52 PM PST - 5 comments

As it turns out, 2021 may be a good year for Noctilucent Clouds after all. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 5:22 PM PST - 14 comments

Based on the same 3 second model, 2400 CGI artists submitted their own interpretation. These are the 100 best. (SLYT)
posted by jontyjago at 2:29 PM PST - 41 comments

Rosalie Abella is set to retire from the Supreme Court of Canada on July 1. Rosalie Abella was the architect of a number of advances in Canadian jurisprudence, including an influential report on employment equity and extending pension benefits to same-sex spouses. Previously
posted by jacquilynne at 7:56 AM PST - 8 comments

A browser-based 'game' with a cool vibe Not so sure about the AI-generated haikus, but the aesthetic and mood are peaceful.
posted by domdib at 5:13 AM PST - 18 comments

Verb is a very good boy and goes heckin' fast to win the 2021 20-inch class and Masters Champions title (SLYT).
posted by Harald74 at 4:34 AM PST - 28 comments

Like the rational reorganization of bureaucracies in the second half of the nineteenth century, computers began as an implementation of the power to abstract away means and uniformly apply a mindless, rule-based order on unruly reality ... and this power has only grown greater, thanks to both an unprecedented capacity for data gathering and analysis and the increased propagation of digital tools in every facet of human life. Mobile applications, whatever their purpose, are little bureaucrats with a checklist or a punch card in our pockets. Whether they are centralized or distributed, deployed by the government or peddled by a small startup, the applications have the same effect: an increasing perfection of the totalitarian vision of nineteenth-century administration. from Paul Valéry and the Mechanisms of Modern Tyranny [Hedgehog Review] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:07 AM PST - 13 comments

It's not illegal to traffic icing sugar. [more inside]
posted by freethefeet at 3:46 AM PST - 26 comments

A 1997 painting by David Bowie, DHead XLVI, was purchased for $5 at a thrift shop three hours north of Toronto. Current auction bid is $50,100.00 [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:26 PM PST - 8 comments

Documenting a Trans Child’s Poignant Revelation It’s probably the best memory I have, telling you, ‘I’m not a girl,’ for the first time. But it’s probably the worst memory, too, because that was so hard for me. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 10:40 PM PST - 4 comments

Janet Malcolm, journalist, essayist, and author has died at age 86. As a longtime writer for the New Yorker and other publications, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literature, photography, and true crime, Malcolm became known for provocative critiques of her own profession. Her most famous book, “The Journalist and the Murderer”, can be found on the reading list of nearly every journalism student in the US. Originating in 1989 as a two-part essay in the New Yorker, it opens with one of the most arresting first sentences in literary nonfiction: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.” [more inside]
posted by theory at 10:38 PM PST - 9 comments

In A Night at the Sweet Gum Head, journalist Martin Padgett tells Atlanta’s overlooked queer history during the disco decade [Atlanta Magazine] A Q&A with the author and an excerpt from the book [includes a guest appearance from Burt Reynolds]. But Atlanta has so much more inside. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:51 PM PST - 2 comments

Gently Down the Stream: A gentle guide to Apache Kafka.
posted by kaibutsu at 7:26 PM PST - 16 comments

The Biden administration publishes a new map of American broadband access. It's a change from the FCC's map, in that it offers more data, more tools - and doesn't rely on ISP self-reporting.
posted by doctornemo at 7:07 PM PST - 25 comments

Who Won? Mystery in Small Town After $731M Powerball Win "Sometime in late January, someone bought a Powerball lottery ticket at the Coney Market, and that ticket’s six numbers won the big one — $731 million, the biggest jackpot ever in Maryland and the fifth-richest payout in U.S. history. That someone lives in Lonaconing, according to the mayor and the owner of the market. But because Maryland is one of seven states that allows lottery winners to remain anonymous, and because the winner is no fool, the identity of that someone isn’t public." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:05 PM PST - 84 comments

What is Juneteenth? This afternoon President Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, making Juneteenth a federal holiday. Juneteenth commemorates the effective end of slavery in the United States. [more inside]
posted by kirkaracha at 1:28 PM PST - 68 comments

Kids today, with their multi-gigabyte graphics cards and CPUs capable of billions of operations per second. In my day, the Atari Video Computer System (later known as the 2600) had 128 bytes of memory and a single 1.19Mhz processor responsible for both executing game code and manipulating and drawing graphics. How, you may ask? Well, it was a little tricky. (SLYT, 38 min). [more inside]
posted by hanov3r at 11:48 AM PST - 10 comments

[SL Guardian] From the British Library to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, a consortium of libraries and museums have come together in an “unprecedented” effort to raise £15m and save an “astonishingly important” set of literary manuscripts for the nation. [more inside]
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:29 AM PST - 9 comments

SparkNotes tweets about classic literature. Do you like some memes with your classic literature? She's got you.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:49 AM PST - 20 comments

On The Move was a BBC series from the 1970s that set out to address adult illiteracy - sample episode. It was a sort of "Sesame Street for grown ups". With a notably catchy theme tune. Bob Hoskins, played, Alf - the removal man who was struggling to learn to read and write. The show attracted 17 million viewers a week - (way beyond the size of its target audience) and helped make Hoskins famous. It was also responsible for persuading 70,000 people to sign up for adult literacy programmes. [more inside]
posted by rongorongo at 1:59 AM PST - 23 comments

“No Straight Lines” documents the history of queer comics and the early cartoonists who first published LGBTQA storylines. [News@Northeastern] No Straight Lines long trailer. (5m23s) No Straight Lines website. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:50 PM PST - 4 comments

The Associated Press said Tuesday it will no longer run the names of people charged with minor crimes, out of concern that such stories can have a long, damaging afterlife on the internet that can make it hard for individuals to move on with their lives.
posted by girlmightlive at 9:01 PM PST - 14 comments

Does what it says on the tin [slyt]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 8:34 PM PST - 19 comments

In 1979, a community of LGBTQ Christians bought an old church building in San Francisco’s Castro District. Over the next decade, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCCSF) became known in the neighborhood as the The Pink and Purple Church in the Castro. This exhibit is a visual and audio history culled from more than 1200 tapes stored beneath the floor of the church's music room and features liturgy, songs, and interviews with church members.
posted by vespabelle at 6:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Dot dot dot is a game of great gravity.
posted by kaibutsu at 6:33 PM PST - 26 comments

(According to White People)
posted by clawsoon at 6:14 PM PST - 20 comments

Airbnb is spending millions of dollars to make nightmares go away by Olivia Carville [CW: bad things happening to short-term renters, including assault, rape & murder]
posted by chavenet at 2:19 PM PST - 38 comments

THE (UN)NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS "People around the world ordered the life around them in very similar, even stereotyped ways, regardless of where they lived, what language they spoke, or which animals and plants they were ordering. People, it turned out, unconsciously followed a strict set of rules, universally creating a hierarchical ordering of living things based on how living things appear, that is, on similarities and dissimilarities in how they look, smell, sound, and act—the same sort of taxonomy that professional scientific taxonomists have ever been after. The countless varieties of folk taxonomies were fundamentally variations on a single theme: that same basic and effortlessly perceived natural order that people everywhere see."
posted by dhruva at 1:39 PM PST - 17 comments

Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976) argued that many of the failings of human life, both individual and collective, result from dualist thinking that separates mind and body, with the self centred in the former. He proposed a new model in which the self is understood monistically as an agent, and thought as the negative aspect of action. Macmurray presented his views in the Gifford Lectures. [more inside]
posted by No Robots at 1:02 PM PST - 3 comments

Sail away. A brief but delightful tribute to the Evergreen Ever Given. (SLYT)
posted by Kat Allison at 11:42 AM PST - 17 comments

The Rise and Fall of an American Tech Giant , The Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany, July/August 2021 [alternate link]: “Kodak didn’t just teach Americans to take photographs; it taught them what to take photographs of, and it taught them what photographs were for. The Kodak mythology [*], though powerful, was and is easily seen through.” *See Kodak History.
posted by cenoxo at 8:42 AM PST - 35 comments

Opinion: ‘These new vaccine mutants are extremely disappointing,’ by Magneto [slWaPo, "as told to" Alexandra Petri] [more inside]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:29 AM PST - 24 comments

If you think of a bowling ball as just a big, heavy ball, know that it isn't. Brendan I. Koerner, writing for Wired, disabuses us of the notion: [more inside]
posted by bryon at 7:08 AM PST - 31 comments

On the following pages, we've compiled 37 songs that fit that description, written by trans artists. But it's important to note: We wouldn't exactly call them "trans anthems." After all, there's not a universal "trans" experience shared by all trans folks, and there are so many identities across the gender galaxy. All of the trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, two-spirit, and gender-nonconforming musicians listed here write about so much more than gender and adversity within their bodies of work. - The Advocate in 2014 archive link [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:49 PM PST - 21 comments

The New Yankee Workshop site has 153 episodes of the show (with more to come) available for free viewing. Via.
posted by Mitheral at 7:36 PM PST - 29 comments

I was blown out of the atmosphere when [Grateful Dead drummer] Billy Kreutzmann said he wanted me to take a crack at writing the music to these lyrics by the late great Robert Hunter [previously]. I cried like a baby for like an hour after I hung up the phone.

Bluegrass phenomenon Billy Strings [previously, previously] premiered Thunder in Louisville, KY last May.
posted by treepour at 3:38 PM PST - 11 comments

The Silt Verses is an audio drama about Carpenter and Faulkner, two members of a destroyed cult returning to the religion's former epicenter to look for remnants of their faith. They must deal with horrors (both familiar and welcome but also hostile and decidedly not) as well as the suspicions of townspeople and police investigators. Also, the pair are not too fond of each other. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:06 PM PST - 10 comments

What The Endless Summer Gets Right—and Wrong—About African Surf Culture by Kunyalala Ndlovu from Afrosurf via LitHub [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:52 PM PST - 7 comments

While a bipartisan group of Senators is trying to reach agreement on a budget package, progressive Democrats in Congress are signalling opposition to the likely outlines of such a deal, and White House officials have now told House Democrats to prepare to go it alone on infrastructure. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer also announced that Wednesday he will begin the process known as reconciliation, to allow Senate passage with simple majority votes.
posted by PhineasGage at 1:29 PM PST - 53 comments

Before being zoned out of existence, boarding houses gave less privileged city dwellers a place to live. Some places are bringing them back. In Reasons to be Cheerful, Diana Lind writes about a new law in the State of Washington. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 9:57 AM PST - 89 comments

"Today, chickens are perhaps most often associated with comfort foods like soup and roast dinners. In ancient Athens, however, the owners of a 2,300-year-old ceramic jar containing the remains of a dismembered chicken appear to have used the animal for something far more sinister: a ritual designed to paralyze and kill upward of 55 people." (Smithsonian Magazine) [more inside]
posted by taz at 6:31 AM PST - 54 comments

Stephen King: Are you afraid of the dark?

Transcript [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 5:03 AM PST - 22 comments

Gorgeous and inspired by, among others, Le Guin, Book of Travels TMORPG (TINY Multiplayer... for small numbers of player per server) reaches early access on August 9 on Steam.
posted by domdib at 3:56 AM PST - 6 comments

The Mistake Waltz - a short ballet choreographed with intentional and comical errors that can't help but make you smile. (via Kottke)
posted by Stark at 3:42 AM PST - 15 comments

Florence H R Scott (@FlorenceHRS, 06/13/2021): "My aim with my newsletter is to eventually have written a biography of every single woman we know existed in England between roughly 500 and 1100" [ThreadReader; "Some clarification ..." and ThreadReader for it too]. The newsletter: Ælfgif-who? Issues to date: Cynethryth: Mercia's Forgotten Queen?; Breguswith: Portents and Pendants; Godgifu: The Bare Truth Behind the Lady Godiva Legend; The North Elmham and Fairford Women: Two Black Women in Tenth-Century England; Judith: The First Crowned and Anointed Queen of Wessex... At Twelve Years Old; Æthelflaed and Ælfwyn: The Women who Ruled Mercia in the Viking Age; Hugeburc: The Earliest English Woman Writer, Who Hid her Identity in a Secret Code; and Hild of Whitby: Politician, Religious Leader, Teacher, Saint.
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:45 AM PST - 13 comments

Zapping: The boisterous protest tactic that ignited early LGBTQ activism Designed to disrupt the status quo and gain support for gay rights, these theatrical tactics included everything from duck costumes to pie throwing. [National Geographic] Archive link. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:48 PM PST - 8 comments

The China National Space Administration's Zhurong Mars rover has taken a selfie [image heavy link in Chinese]; and it is cute as hell. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 7:06 PM PST - 23 comments

"What kind of representation actually counts as gay representation? What counts as pandering? What counts as baiting? And what's the difference?" How Gay is Gay Enough? (about the anime Yuri on Ice* but also about queer representation in media in general) [more inside]
posted by simmering octagon at 5:05 PM PST - 28 comments

SMILY-Didgeridoo, a.k.a. Kazuki Kitagawa, is a didgeridoo craftsman, educator, and performer with a distinctive style based on beatboxing. In recent years he’s achieved some publicity for making a didgeridoo from a giant spider crab to promote the small fishing town where he lives.
posted by mubba at 3:55 PM PST - 3 comments

Next week more than 16,000 Southern Baptist pastors and leaders will descend on Nashville, Tennessee. Some of them will be bringing pirate flags, part of an ultraconservative attempt to "take the ship" back. They want to take it back from people like Russell Moore, former president of the denomination's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who wrote a pair of long, scathing letters condemning the racism and lack of support for sexual abuse survivors in the SBC's leadership. The letters have caused an “earthquake,” not just in the SBC but throughout conservative Christendom. Some are blaming the current state of the church not only on the marriage between Republican politics and the SBC, but also on the theology and institutions of white evangelicalism itself. [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 1:04 PM PST - 107 comments

Midwest Modern’s Architectural Road Trip: Josh Lipnik uses his Twitter account Midwest Modern to document regional architecture and design, creating a visual archive across space and time [Belt Magazine]. Midwest Modern on Twitter.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:23 PM PST - 12 comments

Corrie Francis Parks’s absorbing stop-motion short “Foreign Exchange” is all about perspective. Through a continuously evolving landscape of minuscule stones and banknotes, mini-universes emerge that meld the two materials into culturally significant tableaus. “Between the dazzling layers of currency and sand lie connections that can be mined in infinite ways. Each person who views this film will unearth different associations filtered through their worldly experience and national background,” Parks says. Sand and Currency from Dozens of Countries Converge in an Endless Interchange of Culture and Economics [Colossal]
posted by chavenet at 11:47 AM PST - 4 comments

For the data-loving dendrophiles, NYC Parks has mapped every streetside tree in the city. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye at 11:35 AM PST - 12 comments

Just before 8 AM Sunday, NPR's Scott Detrow tweeted, "Well, ten minutes to @NPRWeekend, just about none of the software we use to put on a show is working. We will be on the air either way, tune in on your local NPR member station!" Audio engineer and Technical Director Stu Rushfield broke down how they pivoted to produce the show live in a Twitter thread. [more inside]
posted by fedward at 8:25 AM PST - 19 comments

The University of Toronto's Sociology Department posts the reading lists for its PhD comprehensive exams. This is the list of books and articles that the faculty think are required for serious scholarship in these subfields; it's also a great place to look for syllabus ideas for courses in related fields. (h/t Raul Pacheco-Vega) [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:22 AM PST - 16 comments

A bunion is a minor deformity of the big toe. It angles the toe outward from the foot, with a bony protrusion forming at its base. By far the most common contemporary cause of bunions is constrictive boots and shoes – with high heels often blamed for today’s bunions. It seems that shoes contributed to bunions many centuries ago too. Of the 177 individual skeletal remains we examined in our study, at least 18% had bunions. But when we dated the skeletons, we found that only 6% of people who’d been buried between the 11th and 13th centuries – long before the pointed shoe was in vogue – had suffered from bunions. The Conversation looks at the physical cost of wearing fashionable shoes in the 14th century.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:25 AM PST - 38 comments

Variety’s Power of Pride List is a celebration of community and of change makers, placing a rainbow-hued spotlight on LGBTQ+ entertainers who use their power to promote inclusion.
posted by hippybear at 9:44 PM PST - 4 comments

Historian Dominique Kirchner Reill: "[M]y job in the almost 80 questions that followed was not to disabuse the court of ideas of adulterous encounters but instead to explain what this strange profession of 'historian' was, and what role it played in bringing Klinger into that Astoria park on the day he died."
posted by bryon at 7:01 PM PST - 15 comments

Untitled Theater Company #61 released a 3-part, roughly 2.5 hour adaption of Jack London's The Iron Heel. The production is enlived by songs from the IWW's Little Red Songbook. [more inside]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:29 PM PST - 4 comments

The errand hang - where you hit your homie up to accompany you while you tend to the tasks that come with adulting - the grocery run, getting a pair of pants tailored, helping you pick a new bedframe, etc. The errand hang dismisses the usual setting of a bar or a lunch. It waves off the expected script of “give me the summarized updates on your life and then I’ll give you the sum on mine.”

Instead, the errand hang dances in the sweet vulnerability that comes from the everyday. Errand hangs sing: “ok I’m a human and you’re a human and we’re going to take an intimate walk through this seemingly ordinary part of my life, but if you look closely, this moment will reveal something delightfully specific and illuminating to what makes me - me, and I want to share that with you because quite frankly - I just like your company, and even in the silence (sometimes especially in the silence) it makes me feel somewhere between warm and content to have you here beside me.” [slSubstack]
posted by ellieBOA at 5:14 AM PST - 115 comments

It Wasn’t Just Another Nightclub "Five years ago, I went to cover the Pulse shooting—and found myself unexpectedly close to the story." Ari Shapiro writing in The Atlantic. Alternate link. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:44 PM PST - 13 comments

Liszt's beautiful etude, Un Sospiro is a piece written using the Three-hand effect. This is a means of playing on the piano with only two hands, but producing the impression that one is using three hands. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:35 PM PST - 22 comments

Each year on this date, "Loving Day" celebrates the historic ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which declared unconstitutional a Virginia law prohibiting mixed-race marriage — and legalized interracial marriage in every state. (Previously.)
posted by clawsoon at 12:28 PM PST - 13 comments

Why Everyone Is Wrong About Critical Race Theory In Schools A Very Special Clapback Mailbag by Michael Harriot, from The Root "The problem with this controversy is that there is no controversy. In fact, there are more states who are trying to ban Critical Race Theory than there are schools that teach Critical Race Theory."
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 8:07 AM PST - 38 comments

We’re here, we’re queer, and some of us have had the privilege of coming out openly to our friends and family…but are there certain stereotypes and expectations in the queer community that keep us from feeling valid? [...] Impostor syndrome tries to trick us into thinking it only shows up in the board room. But, the reality is that it can sneak its way even into the spaces where we most expect to experience belonging. In the group chat. In the Pride march. And even in our very own mindsets (gatekeepers who invalidate bi and pan folks with cis male partners — I’m looking at you!). [Autostraddle]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:09 AM PST - 37 comments

Massive melting of glaciers has tilted the planet’s rotation, showing the impact of human activities Some scientists argue that the scale of this impact means a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared. Since the mid-20th century, there has been a marked acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the destruction of wildlife and the transformation of land by farming, deforestation and development.
posted by folklore724 at 12:20 AM PST - 9 comments

"Vote against corporate interests and greedy politicians. Vote against the two party system. VOTE for our future and our children's future. Vote Jo Crain to represent Missouri in the U. S. Senate!" America Progress Now ran Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections. Who is America Progress Now? Turns out that it doesn't really exist: the ads were actually run by Rally Forge, a digital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump Turning Point USA. The Guardian: Rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats.
posted by russilwvong at 12:04 AM PST - 32 comments

Netflix has dropped a teaser trailer for the long awaited Masters of the Universe: Revelation series. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 11:55 PM PST - 68 comments

The total percentage of rural queer Americans mirrors the percentage of rural Americans overall: around 15-20% of queer Americans live in rural areas, while around 19% of total Americans live rurally. Rural Queer History: Hidden in Plain Sight from The Daily Yonder ["Keep It Rural"]. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:34 PM PST - 5 comments

Four Americas by George Packer. Longform essay at the Atlantic on how the United States has ended up where it is.
posted by zardoz at 2:08 PM PST - 40 comments

The Rise and Fall of Planet Hollywood ; or, 'Planet Hollywood Origin Story History Interview'
posted by box at 1:32 PM PST - 19 comments

The brain's representations of the world are surprisingly unstable. Ed Yong at the Atlantic reports.
posted by biogeo at 10:51 AM PST - 36 comments

Cereal taster (and occasional New York Times columnist) Jamelle Bouie (previously) takes on Kellogg's Green Onion Chex from South Korea (previously). Spoiler alert: it did not go well for him.
posted by Cash4Lead at 10:18 AM PST - 48 comments

Photoshop, but in the browser and completely free. (Found via which also has a bit of discussion on how interesting/useable this is.)
posted by MartinWisse at 4:14 AM PST - 46 comments

Far-right movements have long dreamed of a moment that ends society as we’ve known it. Now, experts say, so-called accelerationist thinking is proliferating in ways that could destabilize democracy. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 3:41 AM PST - 36 comments

After HOA banned their Pride flag, couple got creative. Rainbow lights on a Florida bridge were abruptly turned off. Now, the Pride Month display is back on.. Written in stone: For East Greenwich students, Pride message can't be erased [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:32 PM PST - 7 comments

Scientific Beekeeping's Randy Oliver gave the inside honeycomb perspective on the high stakes negotiations between beekeepers and California's almond growers. With the huge jump in almond acreage came an increased need for pollinators, an estimated 1.3 million bees were needed in 2007. With California home to only a half million bees total, what price would motivate Midwestern beekeepers to truck their bees into California? $50 per colony? $80? $125? $160? By 2012, some hives rented for $150 each, with each individual bee earning 1¢ for a month’s wages. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 7:08 PM PST - 27 comments

Because many of us like a time sink: Hermeticism: the nexus between science, philosophy and spirit has been a font of Art over the ages.
As Above, So Below. (Hermeticism Previously)
posted by adamvasco at 3:11 PM PST - 9 comments

Fascinating 22 minute video of a Transformation of a Japanese Larch Bonsai Tree by its keeper.
posted by dobbs at 10:06 AM PST - 33 comments

The latest expansion pack for The Sims (Cottage Living) appears to place you in some kind of hypercoloured bucolic rural English village. You can grow vegetables, enter them in the village show, milk a cow, have chickens, get your children to bake a cake, do some embroidery, socialise in a pub garden and, of course, groom your llama. The trailer also features Agnes Crumplebottom.
posted by Wordshore at 9:41 AM PST - 55 comments

A pivotal mosquito experiment could not have gone better. A microbe which stops mosquitoes from spreading the virus that causes dengue fever was previously tested in Australia. In a recent experiment in Indonesia, it reduced the number of dengue hospitalizations by 86%. Previously.
posted by russilwvong at 9:41 AM PST - 18 comments

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this sculpture—Melancholy, by Albert György—is worth all the words, all the languages.
posted by she's not there at 9:00 AM PST - 17 comments

Dunkey reviews Jacques Tati's Playtime
posted by oulipian at 7:57 AM PST - 22 comments

The Man: a Compilation. A poem by Rebecca Hazelton about the particular man that many women have not encountered, but know regardless.
posted by Drastic at 7:03 AM PST - 38 comments

Child Labour: Global estimates 2020, trends and the road forward is a new report from UNICEF and the UN's International Labour Organization that warns that "global progress to end child labour has stalled for the first time in 20 years. The number of children aged 5 to 17 years in hazardous work – defined as work that is likely to harm their health, safety or morals – has risen by 6.5 million to 79 million since 2016. In sub-Saharan Africa, population growth, extreme poverty, and inadequate social protection measures have led to an additional 16.6 million children in child labour over the past four years." [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 4:47 AM PST - 1 comment

In this series, the Globe editorial board outlines the key presidential reforms that would prevent a future authoritarian president — perhaps a more competent one than Trump — from abusing their power and subverting our democracy. Just because President Biden has restored a semblance of normalcy to the White House, Americans should not be lulled into inaction. Our government survived a scrape with authoritarian corruption. Next time, we might not be so lucky. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 3:31 AM PST - 28 comments

Original rainbow flag returns home to San Francisco after being lost for more than 40 years [ABC] This happened just this year! Article includes background on the flag from its creator, Gilbert Baker.
posted by hippybear at 9:31 PM PST - 7 comments

'This Should Be the Biggest Scandal in Sports.' Rampant illegal pitch-doctoring--with "sticky stuff" like Spider Tack and Pelican Grip--is Major League Baseball's latest cheating scandal. Most recently, a former Angels clubhouse manager named a long list of pitchers he's helped use sticky stuff, and, when asked point-blank whether he was cheating, Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole refused to answer. In response, MLB plans stricter enforcement of existing rules against foreign substances.
posted by Lyme Drop at 9:02 PM PST - 53 comments

FDA approves Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm (sl arstechnica). The approval is controversial because the FDA admits the drug has not been shown to be effective against Alzheimer's and carries a 40% risk of brain swelling. The approval is based instead on efficacy in reducing plaque and the reasoning that this is likely to have some positive effect. [more inside]
posted by ecreeves at 6:09 PM PST - 40 comments

[cw: photos of hooked fish.] Microfishing is a growing category of sportfishing in which anglers attempt to land the smallest fish they can. Microfishing has devoted fans, some of which travel the world in an attempt to catch all of the fish on their lifelist. (Note: Hakai Magazine offers an audio version of the first link here.) [more inside]
posted by forbiddencabinet at 5:43 PM PST - 15 comments

According to Michelin, the wing sail transforms wind into forward momentum to decrease overall vessel fuel consumption by 10 to 20 percent. [more inside]
posted by sammyo at 4:21 PM PST - 16 comments

“One member suggested car alarms. We researched the township’s noise ordinance laws and found out that a car alarm can go off for 15 minutes before the owner of the vehicle would be cited for a disturbance. On our breaks—every single break—we turned on our car alarms for 14 minutes and 59 seconds.”

How one local union managed to win their best contract in years.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:21 PM PST - 71 comments

Ear Trumpets work better than modern digital hearing aids. "...Ear trumpets and speaking tubes not only yielded a sound amplification of 10 to 25 decibels, they also suppressed sounds that came from other directions, further improving their workings. The speaking tube also reduced the noise between speaker and listener."
posted by storybored at 11:00 AM PST - 49 comments

Various outlets are currently shouting about RockYou2021, a 'jaw-dropping' leak that allegedly contains 8.2 billion passwords. Troy Hunt of HaveIBeenPwned.com calmly explains what RockYou2021 actually is, and why we should not panic this time.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 10:36 AM PST - 18 comments

Ms. Magazine interviews Dr. Jamie Phifer, founder of Abortion on Demand: Abortion on Demand Offers Telemedicine Abortion in 20+ States and Counting: “I Didn’t Know I Could Do This!”
posted by Mchelly at 10:32 AM PST - 16 comments

Email provider Fastmail has announced that, due to losing their court case against the Russian government, "Fastmail subscriptions will no longer be available for purchase in Russia." Fastmail "concluded that it would not be possible for us to comply from a technical, business, or financial perspective" to comply with the Russian data laws, partly "because subjecting any of our customers to their data access laws could create unacceptable privacy risks". Russia's government has increased its control over local internet access and usage in recent years; Fastmail noted, "Many email and digital companies worldwide have had to deal with this situation over the past few years, with similar impacts and outcomes, such as NordVPN, ProtonMail, Tutanota, Mailfence, and StartMail."
posted by brainwane at 9:09 AM PST - 9 comments

"These 30 movies reflect elements of modern queer (LBGTQ) history—sometimes dramatized, sometimes documentary, and sometimes because the film itself made history." -The hyperbolically titled 30 of the Most Important Queer Movies Ever Made from Lifehacker. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:24 PM PST - 29 comments

You Ain't Never Been No Little Girl, Taylor Townsend "America hating fat Black women — it’s just part of life. It’s in the culture. It’s in the health-care system. You see it in Hollywood, you see it in sports. You don’t have to look around very hard." [more inside]
posted by misskaz at 3:19 PM PST - 30 comments

Taiwanese American tarot author, occult practitioner, deck creator*, and (day gig) intellectual property lawyer Benebell Wen has reviewed dozens of tarot and oracle decks on her blog, including decks by fellow Asian diasporic creators such as Way of the Panda tarot, Morning Calm Oracle, Witchling Academy Tarot and Tarot of the Divine. Check out her suggestions on Asian tarot readers , her critiques of reiki in the West and the tarot certification process, her video on cultural appropriation of spiritual practices, and her comments on cultural alienation at PantheaCon. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 12:15 PM PST - 13 comments

The first western documented¹ Japanese to visit Washington State, in 1834, were three ship wrecked sailors. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 12:09 PM PST - 25 comments

Honestly I never thought a post that literally said more love less hate would result in this kind of backlash to a very small business that is struggling to stay afloat and spread a little cheer through baked goods. This story ends with a line around the block! A happy post some of us may need today. [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 6:39 AM PST - 25 comments

ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 5:08 AM PST - 146 comments

'When an Australian underworld figure began distributing customised phones containing the app to his associates as a secure means to communicate, police could monitor their messages'. 'From 2018, the FBI was covertly in control of An0m and Australian police introduced the technical ability to decrypt communications on the platform and monitor them for years'. 'Police claim the plan to use an encrypted app was hatched overseas over a few beers with FBI agents in 2018, before police figured out how to decrypt all messages'.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:52 PM PST - 71 comments

Buffalo News brings you The struggles of Buffalo’s gay community through the '70s But... [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:22 PM PST - 7 comments

Professional wrestling, to most American viewers, is a big-budget, mass-market, massively-muscled-lunkheads kind of product. The connoisseur, however, may opt to check out a rather different kind of wrasslin' experience... such as one that doesn't need ropes, or an elevated ring, or a live audience, or much of anything beyond a strong spirit, an emptied-out dentist's waiting room, and a dream. [more inside]
posted by delfin at 5:13 PM PST - 3 comments

Over the course of nine days in 1930, using the pen name Peter Pym, John Steinbeck wrote a pulp detective novel featuring werewolves. [more inside]
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:30 PM PST - 38 comments

Penrose tiling quilt and Art by Josh Millard [via mefi projects].
posted by aniola at 3:04 PM PST - 5 comments

NFL exposed to millions The NFL is busted for a racist notion that Black players are less intelligent cognitively than white or Hispanic players in a bombshell......... "PHILADELPHIA -- The NFL on Wednesday pledged to halt the use of "race-norming" -- which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive functioning -- in the $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims and to review past scores for any potential race bias. The practice had made it harder for Black players to show a deficit and qualify for an award. The standards were designed in medicine in the 1990s in hopes of offering more appropriate treatment to dementia patients, but critics faulted the way they were used to assess legal damages in the NFL case."
posted by Broncos 1999 at 11:56 AM PST - 52 comments

Bob Dole’s forgotten fight to get Washington to recognize the Armenian genocide [The Washington Post]
Over the course of a remarkable three-and-a-half-decade friendship, Kelikian became a guiding light, a “second father” as Dole puts it, an inspiration and a teacher. “You have to live with what you have left,” Kelikian told Dole. “You can’t dwell on what you’ve lost.”

“Pretty good advice,” Dole, now 97 and undergoing immunotherapy for Stage 4 lung cancer, told me in a recent interview at his apartment in Washington’s Watergate complex. [more inside]
posted by riruro at 10:58 AM PST - 11 comments

Photographer captures 'odd but exciting' crow behaviour known as anting
posted by oulipian at 10:55 AM PST - 36 comments

Don Scholz, a trained engineer and self-taught architect (and father of Boston front man Tom Scholz), was one of the mid-century's preeminent builders of pre-fabricated homes, and introduced contemporary California design concepts into middle America. Here's a neat Flickr collection of factory brochures and period press for some of the designs.
posted by hwyengr at 9:25 AM PST - 15 comments

John Finnemore (previous, previouslier) is an award-winning writer and performer of radio comedy in the UK. In the past he was worked on projects with Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Palin. However, his longest running series is the ensemble sketch comedy show John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme. [more inside]
posted by nangua at 7:33 AM PST - 19 comments

Time claims us all. This article shows scenes from resorts of the 1960s morphing into how they look today. [more inside]
posted by lon_star at 7:16 AM PST - 54 comments

The Matrix Sequels Are Good, Actually is a nearly two hour video essay by Eric Sophia and Sarah Zedig.
posted by Kattullus at 4:59 AM PST - 138 comments

How the Ford F-150 Lightning's Chief Engineer Linda Zhang Brought the World an Electric Pickup - "Zhang came to the U.S. when she was eight years old without knowing any English. Now she's the brains behind the Ford F-150 Lightning."
posted by kliuless at 10:19 PM PST - 150 comments

Legendary fencing coach David Dushman, 98, and the last surviving Soviet soldier involved in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has died. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 9:56 PM PST - 26 comments

Photographs of Fire Island’s Cherry Grove Show Its History as a Gay Sanctuary Vogue profiles photography exhibit Save/Haven, with 8 or 9 really delicious photos from the show.
posted by hippybear at 9:21 PM PST - 6 comments

The indie bundle for Palestinian Aid has 1000+ projects for $5+, with the possibility of more to come, is up and available until this Friday, June 11. The bundle's featured game is Liyla, a game based on actual events about a little girl in Gaza during the war in 2014. It also includes games like Mini Metro, VVVVVV, Pikuniku, Orwell and Calico, among many, many others. [more inside]
posted by simmering octagon at 4:52 PM PST - 24 comments

What has been lost? The materiality of control panels, and the peculiar layouts of their buttons, potentiometers, etc., have always made an aesthetic statement as well as a tactile experience, a gym for the fingers, exercise in tailoring precision movements to the variable surface tension of painted alloys and plastics. The satisfying resistance of a well-designed knob, the almost imperceptible click of the needle in a VU meter, the tapping of keys, the gentle whirring of reels and discs… simple pleasures. from The Control Panel Archive: The Tactile Beauty of Buttons, Meters, Knobs and Dials [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 12:31 PM PST - 117 comments

Librarian and researcher Dorothea Salo teaches an information security and privacy class that "asks students to investigate various aspects of the privacy/security situation surrounding their choice of campus-related data." Based on what they dug up, Salo requested records of her own library usage data at the University of Wisconsin, and published the dataset. It's big and detailed, goes back to 2002, and violates traditional library-patron privacy expectations. Librarian Kendra K. Levine: "The circulation data should not exist. I know it’s valuable for collection assessment but to the level of granularity tied to an individual?" Salo wrote a follow-up to "give you some idea where to go looking if you’re curious about a library’s stated practice".
posted by brainwane at 8:33 AM PST - 29 comments

No food security without food sovereignty. John, an Inuit hunter from Northern Canada, and Carolina, the Indigenous Knowledge and Science Advisor for the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Alaska, discuss how food security fits into a bigger picture of Inuit self-determination. Then, we hear from Mumilaaq, who’s addressing that bigger picture on an even larger stage: in Canada’s Parliament. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 8:29 AM PST - 2 comments

The NHL Says ‘Hockey Is For Everyone.’ Black Players Aren’t So Sure. This is about how overwhelmingly white professional hockey is and whether Black Canadians and Black Americans feel safe playing hockey while adapting in a very conformist culture that does not support the same level of activism like NFL and NBA....several coaches like John Tortorella who changed their anthem kneeling stance reluctantly...... [more inside]
posted by Broncos 1999 at 7:42 AM PST - 21 comments

Germany faced its horrible past. Can we do the same? SLWaPo essay. [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 5:41 AM PST - 35 comments

A very light sampling of communities holding Pride events for the first time this year: Yorktown, NY; Greenwood, IN; Marysville, OH; Lowell, MI; Ellsworth, ME; Shetland, Scotland.
posted by hippybear at 9:18 PM PST - 7 comments

Dr. Christiaan Barnard's first patient lived for 18 days. The second lived a year and a half.
posted by jumanjinight at 8:35 PM PST - 8 comments

Salad Mug - Dynamo Dream An amazing short science fiction film from Ian Hubert, representing 3 years of work and a remarkable mastery of Blender. [more inside]
posted by tdismukes at 8:02 PM PST - 9 comments

"Birds are one of the most popular playable classes in the game, with a huge number of successful builds and tons of cool strategies. However, some of these strategies have clearly been more successful than others. So today, we will be going over the bird tier list, to see which bird ranks highest." (LSYT)
posted by rebent at 2:23 PM PST - 14 comments

Conner Ewing discusses the cover art of the 1961 edition of The Federalist Papers, and the work it is based on. (SL twitter thread, and one very brief video and accompanying text summary.)
posted by eotvos at 2:11 PM PST - 10 comments

Fighting Nazis with a camera: The story of Faye Schulman. "In August 1942 Germans killed 1,850 people from the Lenin ghetto. They only spared 26 “useful” Jews, including a tailor, a carpenter, and a photographer - Faye, who'd learned photography from her brother. This brave woman survived the Nazi occupation, fled to a forest, and joined partisans. She was secretly taking and developing photos. And when she wasn’t shooting with her camera, she shot from a gun." Born in 1925 in Lenin, Poland, Faye passed away in Toronto, Canada on 24 April this year, at the age of 101. [more inside]
posted by Mitheral at 11:49 AM PST - 18 comments

A Star of the New York Times, a short story by Jim Windolf.
posted by chavenet at 11:28 AM PST - 13 comments

Unearthing root truths. The Garden Professors have a lot to say about roots and the appalling condition of most root balls. Some extol the benefits of washing and pruning root balls before planting. Horticulture professor Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott had to remove close to 70% of the root system of this tree due to poor root quality, a widespread issue in containerized and balled-and-burlapped trees. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Cities Have Unique Microbial 'Fingerprints' - the DNA on your shoe is likely enough to identify where you live. The three-year analysis turned up thousands of previously unidentified kinds of microorganisms, including almost 11,000 viruses and over 1,300 types of bacteria that didn't match any known species. [more inside]
posted by Gyan at 10:21 AM PST - 11 comments

Impressionism, Berte Morisot and the art of seeing and being seen. A sumptuous visual essay (SLNYT) takes us through nineteenth century impressionism, the social and cultural changes of the time and the role of the most underappreciated Impressionist, Berte Morisot. All this through a detailed examination of her painting: "In England (Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight)". [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:25 AM PST - 4 comments

How Rina Sawayama Turned Pop Inside Out — And Built One of Its Fastest Growing Fanbases: With her genre-obliterating sound and gripping lyrics about identity, Rina Sawayama became one of the most exciting queer voices in pop. Now she’s making room for anyone else who feels like an outsider. [Billboard] [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:02 AM PST - 3 comments

N.K. Jemisin's 'The Broken Earth' trilogy will be adapted to visual media. A brief synopsis of the series is here.
posted by Quonab at 9:23 PM PST - 28 comments

BBC News looks at The LGBT history you probably didn't learn in school, a UK-centered look at LGBTQ lives in decades past.
posted by hippybear at 9:06 PM PST - 10 comments

Want something like Channel 101 (Discord) but with less serialization? Look no further than Scream It Off Screen, the short film contest full of weirdness, randomness and audience capriciousness! Originally in-person, then online, and now both, the contest sees films battling for the Big Nasty Prize of $101.01 via audience vote - but only if their avoid the audience's wrath! When the red Screamy icon appears, use the vote link (preferably on another device) to decide whether she film should keep playing or end. Before the show, our new friend Mr. Ball will randomly choose which submissions will be featured. The show begins in MERE MINUTES. (If the present is not enough for you, explore the archive of past show recordings.)
posted by BiggerJ at 6:28 PM PST - 6 comments

Here's a thing that exists: geared unicycles.
posted by cortex at 10:20 AM PST - 38 comments

We all know we should challenge assumptions, but that calls on us to realize we are making an assumption in the first place, which is not as easy. More often than not the best advice, the things that stuck with me, came from people who had no background at all in software. We talk a lot about psychological safety and giving people permission to speak their mind, but there’s not a whole lot of guidance around how you do that. Being a person who is not afraid to ask the stupid questions and who lets ideas get thrown out easily without a big argument has created an environment where correcting each other and debate doesn’t feel like that big a deal. It normalizes the process and people stop keeping score because it’s clear that their boss isn’t. [more inside]
posted by mecran01 at 10:05 AM PST - 9 comments

How One Mail Order Catalog Changed Men's Fashion--and Queer Desire--Forever
posted by box at 10:00 AM PST - 29 comments

Were the group “Victorian cultists?” Were they LARPers? Were they con artists preying on emotionally immature women? Were they a game studio with a very unusual front? Or was there, as one embarrassed Irish reporter asked, “almost a gay element to the activities here?” Answers were not then forthcoming. Few are even today. [more inside]
posted by Hypatia at 8:03 AM PST - 25 comments

This guide will change the way you organize your email, for the better. "This article was written by the product team that created Microsoft Outlook for the best possible reason — our customers asked. Outlook is designed to be used by a wide audience with many work needs and styles. Although there's no one "right way," there are a few ways of working in the program that we know to be easier than others. We hope that by being aware of the best practices, you will have the best experience possible using Outlook." [more inside]
posted by bbqturtle at 7:00 AM PST - 101 comments

Some people are resistant to local anaesthetic, meaning they must endure dental and medical procedures without such pain relief. And we’re only beginning to understand why.
posted by aniola at 9:24 PM PST - 63 comments

Provocative trans spoken word artist Harvey Katz performs as Athens Boys Choir. A poem: Queer Revolution. [CW: descriptions of violence] [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:03 PM PST - 3 comments

The 2021 Milky Way Photographer of the Year "...we’ve gathered the best Milky Way images taken around the world....Buckle up because this trip is going to take you from the remote deserts of the American Wild West to the unfamiliar landscapes of the Australian Outback, passing by spectacular glaciers, volcanoes, mountains, beaches…always with the Milky Way shining in the sky."
posted by Lyme Drop at 5:55 PM PST - 22 comments

There are around 23,000 cemeteries and memorials worldwide where Commonwealth casualties from World Wars I and II are commemorated. One of the hardest to visit is on a plot of land located off Salah al-Din Road in Gaza City. [more inside]
posted by trotzdem_kunst at 5:54 PM PST - 3 comments

A little alcohol can boost creativity and strengthen social ties. But there’s nothing moderate, or convivial, about the way many Americans drink today. The Atlantic's Kate Julian explores the history of alcohol use in human societies and the history of drinking in the United States
posted by starzero at 4:06 PM PST - 129 comments

Website Carbon Calculator - metafilter.com - how does it work?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:41 PM PST - 42 comments

“It’s my face and my expressions which make people laugh" [NYT, alternative links on archive.org and archive.is]: meet Khaby Lame, a Senegalese-Italian former factory worker who has become the fastest-growing content creator on TikTok (66.1M followers and counting... he’s also on Instagram, 18.M), profiled in The New York Times by Jason Horowitz and Taylor Lorenz (who also mentions a recent article in Vox about "the blandness of TikTok’s biggest stars" and how "Khaby Lame is the antithesis of that" as he is "wholly unaffiliated with the Hollywood industrial complex").
posted by bitteschoen at 12:52 PM PST - 23 comments

Tasked to Fight Climate Change, the International Maritime Organization - A UN agency - does the Opposite, in secret. The NYT reports that the industry that generates more CO2 than all of America's coal plants has, for decades, suborned the UN agency tasked with regulating it. The IMO keeps on delaying and watering standards down (and neutering their enforcement) so much, that shipping is dirtier and more consumptive every year. Regulatory capture, old school transnational-capitalism style.
posted by lalochezia at 11:44 AM PST - 9 comments

Mackenzie Leake's CS doctoral dissertation is an algorithm for constructing patterns for paper pieced quilts. Here's the paper she'll present at SIGGRAPH 2021 (worth a look at the pdf - the graphs are so interesting!).
posted by bluefly at 11:11 AM PST - 8 comments

The “sculpture” is intended to be displayed in a 5×5-foot square and must be displayed in a private space free from obstructions where lighting and climate control are not required. Reiterating that even if you can’t see it, it does exist, Garau included a certificate of authentication to the purchaser. Italian Artist Salvatore Garau Has Just Sold an Invisible Sculpture for $18,000 USD
posted by chavenet at 10:04 AM PST - 66 comments

The heartbeat law recently signed into law by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, outlaws abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy as soon as a heartbeat can be detected and before many women are aware they are pregnant. The Texas bill joins at least a dozen other states that have enacted measures designed to ban abortion in early pregnancy. Unique to the Texas bill is a provision that would allow private citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone (doctors, staff, family or friends) who assists a woman in obtaining an abortion. The people of Austin Texas protested, but what’s getting the most press is Paxton Smith, Dallas area valedictorian who ditched her approved speech: "I couldn't keep my mind on the project. My mind kept wandering to the 'heartbeat bill' and what it meant. So, I started making some notes," she told The Associated Press. The speech she gave is one for the ages.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:20 AM PST - 91 comments

With Covid suppression measures like mask wearing, school closures, and travel restrictions driving flu transmission rates to historically low levels around the world, it appears that one of the H3N2 clades may have disappeared — gone extinct. The same phenomenon may also have occurred with one of the two lineages of influenza B viruses, known as B/Yamagata.

Fingers crossed: our countermeasures against Covid may have helped make the flu more manageable.
posted by MartinWisse at 7:26 AM PST - 42 comments

Urbanist, architect and politician, Jaime Lerner, the former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, passed away on May 27, 2021 at the age of 83. Lerner is perhaps best known as the creator of Curitiba's landmark Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, the inspiration for BRT projects on every inhabited continent. [more inside]
posted by Superilla at 11:13 PM PST - 13 comments

90-Year-Old Gay Man Recalls Long Struggle With His Sexuality Ari Shapiro reporting for All Things Considered in 2015. 8m listen, full transcript on page.
posted by hippybear at 8:36 PM PST - 6 comments

Seaweed Grows in Ireland (in Whetstone Magazine): Seaweed was once a highly prized resource. According to medieval Irish scholars, a rock that could produce a crop of seaweed had a value equivalent to two and a half cows... however today, “for most Irish people, seaweed rarely goes past being a momentary novelty.” Still, sleabhacán, a notoriously pungent traditional Irish health food made of boiled nori, is making a comeback.
Here are some seaweed varieties foraged on the west coast of Ireland. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:03 PM PST - 11 comments

The Mississippi Free Press talks to restaurant workers and employers who HAVE adapted about the narrative demonizing workers who media say "don't want to work." Can we now begin a fierce and honest conversation about what John Lewis called "plantation capitalism"? [more inside]
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:54 AM PST - 57 comments

There are just too many jobs out there, freeloaders- so you're cut off!! Indiana is joining a handful of Republican-led states in ending the state's participation in federal unemployment insurance programs that provide an additional $300 per week to jobless claimants nationwide, extend benefits beyond the normal six months of eligibility and make benefits to people who normally would not be eligible. [more inside]
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:21 AM PST - 65 comments

Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home With the coronavirus pandemic receding for every vaccine that reaches an arm, the push by some employers to get people back into offices is clashing with workers who’ve embraced remote work as the new normal.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:33 AM PST - 287 comments

When the young CEO of Canada’s largest cryptocurrency exchange is reported to have died while honeymooning in India, it sets off a cataclysmic chain of events that would leave about 76,000 people out of a quarter of a billion dollars and a trail of conspiracy theories around whether Gerald Cotten is dead or alive. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 2:43 AM PST - 47 comments

because there's a magician named rick lax who has a web of viral content pages, a subset of which is "thin white women do gross shit to food." this lady is a magician's assistant & part of the content network

Talia Lavin answers a horrified Tweet sharing a video of a woman making peanut butter & jelly sandwiches directly on the counter top. If you too were wondering why your social media is overrun with gross food videos, Ryan Broderick at eater.com has more background on Rick Lax.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:51 AM PST - 72 comments

The Blue's Clues Pride Parade 🏳️‍🌈 Sing-Along Ft. Nina West!
posted by hippybear at 8:33 PM PST - 42 comments

Wafa Ghnaim Uses the Traditional Craft of Tatreez to Preserve and Share Palestinian History [SL Vogue]. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 5:24 PM PST - 10 comments

Some geisha make their own makeup. Here's how. I'd read about a minority of such women, who mix and blend their own cosmetics. It took me this long to look up a few links on the subject. The above, plus.
posted by dr. zoom at 12:53 PM PST - 5 comments

Who owns American Judaism? What does that imply for the cultural and political autonomy of ordinary Jews in creating and sustaining Jewish life? And, given that the institutions of American Judaism are largely controlled by philanthropic capital, what are the possibilities for a genuine Jewish left? [more inside]
posted by latkes at 12:11 PM PST - 22 comments

"Covering the whole sweep of Sparta’s presence in politics and popular culture would be a post series of its own, and that’s not what I’m here to do. I want to talk about the actual Greek polis of Sparta, not the city-state of our imagination (to get a sense of just how far off the popular conception is, let me note now that Sparta was not a city-state for the simple reason that it didn’t have a city – it had five villages instead)." Content warning: Violence, sexual violence.
posted by clawsoon at 11:19 AM PST - 92 comments

Morphing computer chip repels hundreds of professional DARPA hackers (New Atlas): Engineers have designed a computer processor that thwarts hackers by randomly changing its microarchitecture every few milliseconds. Known as Morpheus, the puzzling processor has now aced its first major tests, repelling hundreds of professional hackers in a DARPA security challenge. Shape-shifting computer chip thwarts an army of hackers (The Conversation): Hackers need to be intimately familiar with the details of the microarchitecture to graft their malicious code, or malware, onto vulnerable systems. To stop attacks, Morpheus randomizes these implementation details to turn the system into a puzzle that hackers must solve before conducting security exploits. From one Morpheus machine to another, details like the commands the processor executes or the format of program data change in random ways. Because this happens at the microarchitecture level, software running on the processor is unaffected. [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 8:34 AM PST - 30 comments

A Newsletter about Everyday Life on the Chinese Internet. Their most recent article is on senior fashion and Wikipedia entries. [via mefi projects]
posted by aniola at 7:54 AM PST - 11 comments