Designers and artists are pushing the boundaries with some boardgames. Some wargames have beautiful boards. Some designs are beautiful and joyful. People make lists on Reddit and on BoardGameGeek. Some people design elegant boardgames.

As occasionally happens, a particular novel, read at a particular time, has a profound and instantaneous effect. The Mezzanine made me laugh out loud, and propelled me forward, but it also had that mysterious quality that can’t be anticipated or feigned: it made me want to imitate it. Its cerebral, labyrinthine sentences, which were simultaneously jubilant and precise, often making unexpected connections between things and written with palpable delight, surprised me. The Mezzanine would, I intuited, with increasing conviction as it settled into my subconscious, serve as a perfect model for my own writing. from Autobiography of Influence by Jordan Castro [The Point]

How Alzheimer’s undid my dazzling, creative wife in her 40s. We met on the dancefloor of a nightclub in 2004. I was 32, she was about to turn 35. Far too old for a place like that, but we were reliving former glories in honour of mutual friends – a last glance back at our careless youth. When the management turned us out after a long night of carousing into the next stage of our lives, Vanessa scribbled her number for me on a piece of paper. How she would have loved to be able to do that only 15 years later. ~~~ [more inside]

Clip: In four years, you won’t have to vote again. [more inside]

"Thomas Sperry of Cranford NJ and Shelley Byron Hutchinson of Ypsilanti MI, founded the Sperry and Hutchison Co. in 1896. They made money by selling the stamps to retailers who would then give them to their customers. 10 stamps for every dollar spent. Consumers would save up their stamps and then exchange them for products from the S&H Catalog (IdeaBook) at S&H redemption centers, which numbered 600 nationwide by the mid-1960s." 'The Sperry & Hutchinson Story.' Remembering S&H Green Stamps booklets and stores: Vintage photos The 1979 'style' Ideas book. (internet archive)

Wild dog or dingo? Ancient DNA study suggests there's not much dog at all. DNA analysis suggests dingoes breed with other dogs less than previously thought and reveals key populations pre-date European colonisation.

I [Nick Myles] became addicted to Sinéad O’Connor at an early age, and it’s been a long-lasting dependency that I’ve never had any desire to escape from. I couldn’t let the first anniversary of her passing go uncommemorated. 3700 words on Sinéad O'Connor for wearecult.rocks.

"To be sure, the worry is not that the AMOC is on the verge of a complete stop. The fear is that it will cross a pivotal threshold, and then begin a decline that is unstoppable. ... It follows, then, that you’d wonder how close we humans are to that threshold. Perhaps you’d heard about the AMOC’s frailty; the shutdown threat; maybe even the decades of fighting among scientists as they try to fathom this gigantic, interconnected, barely understood current. But it was only rather recently that someone dared to go right to the core and ask: How much time do we have left before the AMOC breaks?" How Soon Might The Atlantic Ocean Break, in Wired (archive), on the work of Peter and Susanne Ditlevsen to understand the timing of what's happening to the AMOC.

As the 2024 Paris Olympics opens (with sabotage by unknown actors), it's time to look back at one of the biggest marketing missteps of the Olympics - the McDonald's "When the US Wins, You Win" campaign of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. [more inside]

The Tour Divide is an unsupported race of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, a 2,745 mile/4,418 km route with over 200,000 feet/61,000 metres of climbing stretching from Banff, Alberta to Antelope Wells, New Mexico. This year 15 year-old Edyn Teitge became the youngest finisher ever completing it in 19 days, 13 hours, and 14 minutes. [more inside]

Like many other filetypes (Office, OpenDocument, EPUB, JAR), WinAmp skins (WSZ) are secretly just ZIP files with specific contents and their own file extension. Jordan Eldredge, the creator and maintainer of the WinAmp Skin Museum (previously, again), investigated a variety of corrupt skins, and from there found a wide variety of interesting stuff, including text and audio files, images, a simple game, and other WinAmp skins, many previously unknown. [more inside]

Welcome to the Agora of Flancia!

Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Representatives Hank Johnson (GA-04), Jerry Nadler (NY-12), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Adam Schiff (CA-30) have cosponsored The Judiciary Act, not just calling for Supreme Court reform, but introducing (again and again, since 2021 if I'm reading this correctly) actual legislation to make it happen. [more inside]

In an interview with noted right wing figure and transphobe Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk attacked his estranged transgender daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson, proceeding to deadname her while calling her "dead" because she transitioned, and saying he was "tricked" into signing off on her gender affirming care. In response, Wilson has given an interview with NBC News in which she details how Musk was both an abusive and absentee father while she was growing up, and how he lied about her interests growing up as well as his signing off on her care. [more inside]

In Japan, Turning the Tables on Rude Customers NYT: in Japan, there's a word, "kasuhara" that translates into "customer harassment." Customers harassing workers have gotten so extreme that now businesses are fighting back instead of kissing customer booty. [more inside]

This short gen fic from a cat's point of view amused me: If Comfy, Warm, and My Size, Why No Sit: A Meta-analysis of Research into the Warm Flat Rectangle by Dr Fluffy Jones

Marsh Family Songs: "Didn't like the way this J.D. Vance bloke (newly picked as Trump's running mate) slagged off the UK lately. Looked into him. Not great. Made a parody song inspired by ABBA called "Vance VP""

Flaming Puck Hockey is a thing.

The National Trust offers an alphabetical examination of its many bums

Generating sudokus for fun and no profit – Once upon a time, I decided to create a complete Sudoku application as my grandma wanted to play some Sudokus on her computer, and I wasn't satisfied with the free offers available. The project went on for some years and finally led to sudoku.tn1ck.com - a free and open source Sudoku app without any tracking. While working on it, I went down the rabbit hole of generating Sudokus of a specified "human perceived" difficulty and accidentally created a quite thorough analysis of it...

"France's easy-to-make yoghurt cake recipe relies on volume measures facilitated by the ubiquitous 125g terracotta yoghurt pot." Bringing Up Bébé’s Yogurt Cake Recipe. Yogurt cakes seem to do well with citrus. Yogurt research continues[SLPDF], as does functional cake research. There is also cake research, of course, which is not to be confused with cake ingredient science. [more inside]

Raising his paddles in every major auction, Philbrick became a constant presence at all of the stops in the “circus,” as art collectors call it: the Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips auctions; Art Basel Miami and Switzerland; Frieze London; the New York art fairs; and beyond. He became the darling of what one observer calls “the new collecting class,” to whom he offered something as coveted as the art itself: the VIP treatment. “You don’t want to buy a ticket,” the observer says. “That’s déclassé…. He was offering access to a lifestyle.” from The Confessions of Inigo Philbrick, Art Fraudster Extraordinaire [Vanity Fair; ungated]

The high court in the Buckeye State ruled 4-3 that bones are not a foreign substance and that the customer should have assumed a boneless chicken wing may still have bones. [more inside]

A (not-so) Quick and Dirty Guide for 4-Year Fans of Rhythmic Gymnastics Back in May, Reddit user freifraufischer posted a detailed look at the runup to the Olympics for rhythmic gymnastics, with dozens of links to gorgeous routines with the ball, hoops, ribbon and clubs, as well as info about RG's byzantine scoring system, recent judging scandal and years of domination by the horrifically brutal (and recently banned) Russian coach Irina Viner. [more inside]

In California's Central Valley, 2100 acres of farmland have been changed from farmland into rain-water catchment. It refills the aquifers and prevents floods. "In addition to these two functions, the restored swamp also sequesters an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to that produced by thousands of gas-powered vehicles. It also provides a haven for migratory birds and other species that have faced the threat of extinction."

More than 38,500 people registered to vote in the US in the 48 hours following President Biden's announcement Sunday - a nearly 700% increase in daily registrations (and more than the 34,000 who registered after Taylor Swift urged them to) - and younger voters, those between 18 and 34, make up 83% of them. The Alliance for Youth Action is here to help young people vote. [more inside]

This year's British Airways Safety Video alludes to period dramas and literature in various eras.

Color, with all its attendant theories, is one of the most basic components of art-making. Humankind has been preoccupied with its development and analysis for millennia, refracting it into a veritable spectrum of charts that articulate its practice. Whether you’re looking for the key to Paul Klee’s evocative interplay of line and color, curious about the ancestors of modern paint swatches at Lowe’s, or even searching for a captivating hue to inject into your next work of art, three new books give new meaning to the phrase “full color” by guiding us through its fascinating history. from The Delightfully Saturated History of Color Charts [Hyperallergic]

“The mentality, almost a weird reflex, in Washington has just become: If something bad happens, anywhere in the world, the U.S. is going to sanction some people. And that doesn’t make sense. We don’t think about the collateral damage of sanctions the same way we think about the collateral damage of war. But we should.” From the Washington Post: How Four US Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe.

UK train buff Geoff Marshall & friends have built a giant LEGO London Tube Map with working trains at the London Transport Museum Depot. Previously.

“It’s important that aquatic deoxygenation be added to the list of Planetary Boundaries,” said Rose. “This will help support and focus global monitoring, research, and policy efforts to help our aquatic ecosystems and, in turn, society at large.” Across all aquatic ecosystems, from streams and rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and ponds to estuaries, coasts, and the open ocean, dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations have rapidly and substantially declined in recent decades. [rensselaer polytechnic] [more inside]

Inside the two-year fight to bring charges against school librarians in Granbury, Texas An 824-page investigative file offers a visceral picture of an officer’s attempt to prosecute librarians amid a nationwide movement to criminalize books.

Moira Donegan, creator of the Shitty Media Men list, reviews and reflects on Christine Blasey Ford's memoir One Way Back, for Bookforum: "There are two ways to explain the moral wrong presented by Kavanaugh’s confirmation...Ford saw it the second way: she thought Kavanaugh wasn’t suited for the Court because what he did to her meant he wasn’t good enough for it. Perhaps her most revealing and tragic mistake is that she assumed that other people would agree. [more inside]

Al-Andalus y la Historia [English] focuses on the history of Muslim Iberia/al-Andalus/Andalusia c. 711-1609. A public-facing site, it features accessible articles by scholars working on the region and sprang from a topical 2016 seminar. Sample articles cover new research on and approaches to Vikings in al-Andalus and the Maghreb, the Reconquista, and El Cid Campeador.

Cole Escola explains the inspiration for his new smash hit play "Oh Mary" to Seth Meyers. Cole plays an alcoholic Mary Todd Lincoln who yearns to be a cabaret star. Little does she realize she's merely a beard for her gay husband, Abraham, who has a half Filipino lover on the down-low. Belly laughs and pratfalls ensue. Tickets are hard to get btw. [more inside]

Adding "site:reddit.com" to a Google search took an uptick in the past 18 months, as search result quality dwindled to keep eyeballs viewing search results (previously, previously, previouslier), and now 404 Media report that Reddit articles from the past 7 days are exclusively available to Google searches. [more inside]

UNESCO World Heritage site, Canada’s Jasper National Park in the Rocky Mountains, was evacuated Monday night due to wildfires. Thousands of residents and visitors to the park were displaced overnight. As of 6 pm (MDT) this evening, the fire has now reached the townsite of Jasper, causing massive structural damage to many of the town’s buildings, including the historic Jasper Park Lodge.

Stories of threats to our families and our homes seem to spread like proverbial wildfires. As scholars Angela McRobbie and Sarah L. Thornton noted more than two decades ago, this breathless state depends on, or even springs from, media engagement with these alleged dangers. Moral panics “guarantee the kind of emotional involvement that keeps up the interest of, not just tabloid, but broadsheet newspaper readers, as well as the ratings of news and true crime television, [and] even the media themselves are willing to take some of the blame.” Once an unintentional outcome of broadcasting the daily news, moral panics now seem to be the point of the news cycle. If McRobbie and Thornton’s assessment is accurate, how can we as media consumers sort the danger from the drama? ... The scholarship featured here highlights lessons from the past to help us detect patterns and language in the present. from Moral Panics: A Syllabus [JSTOR] [more inside]

Inside the race to track down our galaxy’s hidden, untethered worlds. "Not only do rogue planets outnumber visible stars, they probably also outnumber conventional planets like Earth, the ones that orbit their own suns and bask happily in their warmth. If anything, worlds like ours are the outliers. The tremendous abundance of the rogues implies that the process of planet formation is extremely messy, with many worlds getting kicked into the void almost as soon as they take shape. Lots of potentially habitable planets probably end up cold and desolate as a result. Then again, some exobiologists, who search for life outside Earth, speculate that certain types of rogue planets could become roving ambassadors, ferrying life across interstellar space."

How drones and tourists offer new insights on a rare subspecies of blue whale. Little was known about the behaviour of the pygmy blue whale, but research that has utilised tourist footage and drones is shining a new light on their activities in waters north of Australia.

The Sentinel project is completed. The French artist Marine, aka moonovermarine, has recently completed a beautiful series of 14 embroideries inspired by the video game "The Sentinel" (1986), previously mentioned in MetaFilter. This work of over two years looks fantastic, with a luminous atmosphere and a magnificent rendering of pixels. The color palette is faithful to the game's chromatic range of the ZX Spectrum version.

It is with heavy hearts that we bear the news that John Mayall passed away peacefully in his California home yesterday, July 22, 2024, surrounded by loving family. Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of this world’s greatest road warriors. John Mayall gave us ninety years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain. [more inside]

My family and other Nazis. [more inside]

With advocates on both sides framing their positions in terms of absolute right and wrong, it has become nearly impossible to have a nuanced conversation. (slMacLeans)

Scientists discover high levels of cocaine in Brazilian sharpnose sharks. Sharks off the coast of Rio de Janerio have tested positive for cocaine, but it is not known how it affects their behaviour.

As abortion pills cross state and federal borders, they also cross conceptual boundaries, shifting in status between legal and illegal. Any drug can acquire the label of a fake or falsified product, not because of problems in manufacturing but because of irregularities in packaging, distribution, regulatory authority, and mobility. Depending on its geography and the logistics of its journey, the same medicine can be considered licit or illicit, inexpensive or costly, even safe or dangerous. The Buyer, The Seller, The CEO, The Activist. Sydney Calkin for The Baffler (archive.org link)

Will Quinn posts daily bunnies over on BlueSky, also posting them to his website, Instagram, and (not so much anymore on) Twitter. Quinn also does comics. [more inside]

Dear Next Visitor There is a message waiting that has been written just for you...

James C. Scott, noted anthropologist and author dies after "having suffered from heart and kidney failures, Maung Hmek had decided to pull the plug on himself, declining dialysis and other medical interventions, but he was still following Myanmar affairs" (Remembering Maung Hmek aka Shwe Yoe aka James C. Scott) [more inside]

The microlino [wiki] is a cute little electric bubble car from Micro Mobility Systems [wiki] of kickscooter [img] fame. But is it any good? Why not watch a YouTube review from Aging Wheels, Fully Charged (and again) or The Late Brake Show to see what they have to say about it?