"Changing nominees at this point has literally never happened before—not even once. Richardson’s assertion that “in the whole picture of American history, if you change the presidential nominee at this point in the game, the candidate loses”—so clear, so forceful, so authoritative—is totally invented." 'Is the Age of the Resistance Historian Coming to an End? (via A&L Daily) - 3 comments

As far as we are aware, Ralf Schumacher is now the winningest gay driver in the history of Formula 1. - 6 comments

our real question is: Are you still up? [McSweeney's] - 7 comments

There is one checkbox. You all have to share it. - 21 comments

Molly White, independent journalist, maintainer of the site Web 3 is Going Great and the newsletter and podcast Citation Needed (not the podcast about Wikipedia), has a new project called Follow the Crypto. In 2024, the cryptocurrency industry has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to influence races across the US, more than the health or energy sectors despite being a much smaller fraction of the economy. Follow the Crypto reveals what's been learned about their enormous pile of lucre and the ways it is being wielded to distort the United States' political processes, by organizations like FairShake, "Defend American Jobs," and "Protect Progress." - 5 comments

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why. - 151 comments

Robert Towne, who wrote the script for Chinatown, punched up the script for The Godfather, and had numerous other writing and a few writer-director credits to his name, died July 1. - 13 comments

Death and the human A look at how the artistic figure of death taking people has changed over centuries, with links to sources. (SLPublic Domain Review) - 8 comments

A black hole 20,000 times bigger than the Sun could help us understand how galaxies evolved. Astronomers catalogued 1.4 million stars to find the black hole, 18,000 light-years from our Solar System, in the Milky Way. - 10 comments

Shannen Doherty has passed away from cancer at age 53 (NYT, BBC, People, Variety). The actor is known for roles in, among other things, Heathers, Beverly Hills, 90210, and Charmed. - 62 comments

TheGamerFromMars presents a thorough history of Scott Adams’s rise and fall, including his interactions with the blue. [slyt] - 22 comments

Morgan Freeman, DJ (SLYT) - 8 comments

Bird flu has been found in an ever-expanding variety of species and it likes the brain Also, for the first time there has been a rabies outbreak in marine mammals. I expect there is going to be more fun on the horizon for all of us soon. - 8 comments

Woody Harrelson reads a letter on stage, from novelist John Cheever to a friend who had burdened him with a cat, who would then become... vivid (6 minutes). From Letters Live, which has many such missives. - 2 comments

Did Sontag and Steiner get along? Don’t be silly. Like two positively charged particles, they were kept apart by powerful forces of repulsion. They ‘disliked and mistrusted one another,’ Boyers says; ‘the loathing they came to have for each other clearly had much to do with the sense that there was room on the current scene for only one such person.’ It seems hardly worth saying that Sontag and Steiner were alike not just as critics but as psychological case studies. Two False Selves, two mosaic-builders, busily building. If there is one true thing about a False Self, it’s that it loathes and despises other False Selves, perceiving in them, of course, the falseness that it can perceive in itself only at the cost of its existence. from The Devouring Mind by Kevin Power [Dublin Review of Books; ungated] - 1 comments

Happy Birthday, a 1981 song by Scottish band Altered Images, reached #2 in the UK singles chart. Altered Images also released "I could be happy", and "Don't talk to me about love", while lead singer Clare Grogan forged a career in film and TV, most notably in Gregory's Girl. Altered Images are still touring, playing in Worcestershire this summer alongside The Levellers, Holly Johnson, The Wurzels, David Essex, Bananarama and Jason Donovan. - 16 comments