August 5
Bangladesh's government overthrown by protests, P.M. flees to India
Following weeks of anti-government protests over job quotas, in which hundreds of protestors have been killed, Bangladesh's Prime Minister has ended her stretch as the longest-serving female head of government in the world by fleeing to India. [more inside]
"Google is a monopolist, and has acted as one to maintain its monopoly."
After a ten week trial in which testimony was heard from major players in the tech industry like Apple and Microsoft, federal district court judge Amit Mehta has ruled that Google and Alphabet have acted as a monopolist in the realms of online search and online advertising, in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. [more inside]
Program to protect frogs with saunas made of bricks
Anthony's idea for frog-saving saunas went global. Can he harness his viral moment?
At least 90 species of frogs have been made extinct by chytrid fungus worldwide. But a program to protect other frogs with saunas made of bricks is proving promising.
Fascism and antifascism in the UK
'Amid the chaos of far-right protests and violence I saw the best of Bristol' - as the UK is rocked by far right violence Bristol antifa successfully defend a hotel housing asylum seekers against a fascist mob.
"The NBA’s Conduct Will Cause Plaintiffs Irreparable Harm"
In a complaint filed at the end of July with New York State's Supreme Court (which is actually not the state's highest court), TNT Sports and Warner Brothers/Discovery have made good on their threat to sue the NBA [NY Times, archive here] with a claim that NBA failed their obligation to renew an 11-year contract to carry basketball games, choosing instead a $77B deal to run until 2035 with ESPN, NBC and Amazon. [more inside]
Maybe move to Lichtenstein and take up skiing?
Olympic medals per capita or GDP. Choose to view the data for one games or all of them, weighted or not, per capita or by GDP. [more inside]
I got the cards, but not the luck
Global Carry Trade Unwind Extends as Peso Drops, Yen Gains
"The closing of short yen positions represents a “real structural issue” with investors realizing they will have to pay a positive interest rate and unwinding the trade as Japan is expected to raise interest rates at least one more time this year"
[ungated] [more inside]
"Vexation is uncommon, in a creature as old as I am."
"I have always considered myself a cut above the rest. Where they must rely on trickery, I achieve my goals through tact and intellect." [NSFW] June Martin's short fantasy story "Of a Devil, of a Deal" (self-published June 6, 2024 on her Patreon) is a Not Safe For Work fable (no graphics, only text) about a particularly hard-to-fulfill bargain. Can this devil elegantly grant a wish that intertwines two kinds of desire?
Comes up with the craziest, wackiest but best ideas???
What vegetable are you? A delightful quiz to help you discover your inner veggie.
The mother of all public domain art search engines
Public Work is a search engine for public domain content. Explore 100,000+ copyright-free images from The MET, New York Public Library, and other sources.
Here's what happens when you give people free money
Types of people you meet on the Appalachian Trail (who are not trees)
Rusty Foster at WaPo: The Alphas tend to be more outgoing, quizzing any passing thru-hiker about whatever happens to be on their mind, whether hiking-related or not. I don’t believe this is a function of age; rather, it’s generational, since the Alphas as a whole are a feral, no-gods/no-masters generation who recognize no authority and will brook no hint of inequality with man or beast.
Can Lin Dig It?
Twelve years ago, songwriter/actor/singer/filmmaker/rapper/librettist and Emmy/TONY/Grammy/Pulitzer winner and MacArthur fellow Lin-Manuel Miranda started work on an unlikely-sounding project: a musical about the United States' first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. After resting on his laurels a bit, he has announced his next project: a musical based on Sol Yorick's novel The Warriors. [more inside]
Penguin Series Design
"This site explores the graphic design of Penguin book covers, with a focus on series editions." [more inside]
“Most of history gets forgotten, a foul ball sailing into the dark.”
I’m drawn to the mystery of Ring Lardner’s assailant and the details of Ike Francis’s life for reasons I find difficult to define. It’s a sense of something essential hidden away, a small secret part of what made us who we are. It makes me think of those scientists who comb the soil of the Amazon for evidence of ancient civilizations, where nothing else remains but the quality of the earth those vanished people fertilized. The world of the Central League went into the ground with World War I, in both literal and figurative ways. Even Jack Keefe, the Central League narrator of Ring Lardner’s short stories, finds himself eventually in the trenches of France. As the regional minor leagues died out, so-called industrial leagues began to proliferate—semipro organizations of ballclubs populated by workers at factories in New York and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. This world, too, was as complex as any before, and like all the others it ultimately goes into the ground itself. It is left to memory, and often not even that. from Ring Lardner’s Mysteries of the Central League by By Nicholas Mainieri/
CP/M is 50
The Register reports that CP/M, the "Control Program for Microcomputers," has turned 50 years old! Amstrad released a CP/M laptop, using 720K 3 1/2-inch disks, as late as 1993, as demonstrated by Poking Technology in this Youtube video (19 minutes). CP/M used single-letter designations, like "A:", to represent disk drives. MS-DOS picked that convention up, where it survived into Windows 95 and NT, and has remained a part of Windows throughout its life up to this very day. [more inside]
Is MetaFilter smooth or bumpy, hot or cold... and it's your free thread
Grass underfoot, Leipäjuusto in the mouth, stroking a cat, nettle stings on the body, fingers in clay and chocolate, and cold water and steam on bare skin ... after recent topics of smells and sounds and tastes, what are the textures, things you feel, which linger in your memories ... Or write about whatever is on your mind, in your heart, on your plate or in your journal, because this is your weekly free thread.
August 4
Famous Sycamore Gap tree illegally cut down now showing signs of life
Famous Sycamore Gap tree illegally cut down now showing signs of life. Eight new shoots appear on the stump of a famous tree that was illegally felled in northern England last year.
"Displacement of residents and change in neighborhood character."
I changed how I think about gentrification (Lindsay M. Miller, author of the 2019 essay 'We need to change how we think about gentrification', writing for Denver's Westword)
Muffin reigns supreme
Norwegian Olympic swimmer Henrik Christiansen really really really likes the "choccy muffins" served in the Olympic Village. [more inside]
Re-sourcing the Mind
What might we lose and gain through widespread usage of Large Language Models? The invention of writing allowed a way to offload our thoughts and memories onto objects and it has since formed an indispensable part of our civilization. Technology philosopher L.M. Sacasas examines the historical parallel and asks if we might be losing something fundamentally human as people start using it not just for boilerplate but deeply personal expressions.
Absolutely Nothing
More frightening still is that the stakes are becoming absolute all around. For China, Russia can’t lose in Ukraine or its most powerful ally against the West seeking to contain it will be formidably weakened. For Western leaders and their Asian allies, Russia can’t be allowed to win or the entire liberal order of open societies will be at risk of geopolitical bullying by well-armed autocrats, notably Xi, who they fear will come to believe seizing what they please by force will only be met with limited repercussions. from The World Is Assuming A Pre-War Posture [Noema] [more inside]
Threatened nativeplant species key to unlocking climate-resilient future
Threatened native plant species aren't cute and cuddly, but the key to unlocking a climate-resilient future. Brandan Espe goes to great lengths — and occasionally puts his life at risk — to collect rare plants due to their environmental importance.
August 3
The history of chemical laboratories: a thematic approach
“designed from the beginning to operate while in tatters”
Was the Internet Designed to Survive a Nuclear Attack? is an essay by computer historian Chris McKenzie which traces the origins of the popular myth that the Internet was the result of an attempt to create a military command and control network that wasn’t vulnerable to a single nuclear strike. Via Bruce Sterling, who wrote an early version of the narrative.
Milestone Achieved At Caltech
Earlier this week, Caltech announced that for the first time in its history, it has reached gender parity in its incoming undergraduate class. [more inside]
How do you kill this pest? By importing its natural enemy
How do you kill this pest? By importing its natural enemy. The
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) introduces a biocontrol fungus in the hope it reduces the spread of African boxthorn weed, but it is not available outside New South Wales due to lack of funding.
Jax wrote a song for her dad
I wrote a song about my dad getting older - Jax and her dad in the car. One of several charming and heartwarming songs/shorts by Jax. Recently discovered by me - though she has 3M followers on YouTube and 14M on TikTok. Enjoyable content for enjoyment. [more inside]
The most bleeding edge stack of all time
How to save $13.27 on your sAAs bill. Hilarious. Sometimes, the boundary between the real and the parody is just a few lines of code.
The very serious function of racism
On 30 May 1975, Toni Morrison, Primus St. John, John Callahan, Susan Callahan, and Lloyd Baker convened for the second part of the “Black Studies Center Public Dialogue" [PDF transcript] at Portland State University. During the dialogue, Toni Morrison said a number of important things, but one piece in particular has stood out in later years [previously; previouslier]. [more inside]
Bossman vs Roadman
As if a baby orca had been hitched to two snowplows
People in the industry tend to think that flight is useful and awesome, and not necessarily in that order. One of the reasons that the idea of flying cars has endured is that it seems to promise two different kinds of freedom: on the one hand, to get from point A to point B without a lot of hassle; on the other hand, to know the euphoria of exploring the third dimension. Most people at these companies got into the business because they were personally enraptured by flight. They are nonetheless well aware that airplanes and automobiles have vastly different requirements, and that the vision of a car that both drives and flies never made a ton of sense. from Are Flying Cars Finally Here? [The New Yorker; ungated]
"People are idiots."
What does it mean that hundreds of thousands of players are clicking on a banana? Clicker games are the inevitable end-point of the rise of bots and microtransactions.
August 2
Everyone thought this tiny lizard was extinct — then it turned up
Everyone thought this tiny lizard was extinct — then it turned up on Melbourne's fringe. Emi Arnold and Pat Monarca were about to finish work when they spotted a long-lost tiny dragon. Now Zoos Victoria is leading the charge to bring the reptiles back from the brink.
Stumpy lives! Iconic Tidal Basin cherry tree’s little ones take root
It was a sad farewell in D.C. when a beloved Tidal Basin cherry tree had to be removed in the spring. But there’s hope on the horizon as cuttings from “Stumpy” have taken root.
I was always more of a Maru guy.
The legend of Keyboard Cat: How a man and his cat(s) won the internet lottery. Part of Mashable's Tales of the Early Internet. [more inside]
Simone Biles has reached heights previously considered impossible
"Biles’s aerial somersaults reach an incredible height. In Tuesday’s floor routine, seven feet of air separated her four-foot-eight frame from the ground beneath her. Through the power of arithmetic, we can confidently say that means her head was eleven feet and eight inches above the ground. If that feels abstract, allow us to provide some concrete examples for you." A Partial Inventory of Items Simone Biles Could Jump Over in Her Floor Routine, from Dan Solomon at the always fabulous Texas Monthly.
See Me, Feel Me, LinkMe
The third in an ongoing series of experiments for a different kind of MetaFilter experience: Come across an interesting link recently that you'd like to share, but don't want to work it up into a full post? Share it here for our perusal, nbd. And if you'd like to post something but need some inspiration, check out the links here to see what other members have found interesting and would like to read more about! Just tag the resulting post "LinkMe" and include a nod back to the original suggestion. No self-linking and usual site rules apply, but otherwise feel free to post whatever you like! Look inside for a rundown of posts to come out of the last few threads. [more inside]
I Can Feel It Coming In the Gatorwine
Babish, aka Andrew Rea of the Babish Culinary Universe, ranks the strangest recipes submitted to him by his viewers. Featuring gatorwine, a number of brief musical interludes inspired by gatorwine, and a range of scores for the strange recipes going from 0 (tuna tacos. but not like, the good kind. you'll see.) to 10 (pokkorn, a delicious looking take on popcorn).
Cobra venom could potentially be treated with a blood thinner
Blood thinner could revolutionise treatment for cobra venom. Cobra venom could potentially be treated with a commonly prescribed blood thinner, new research has indicated.
At the Great Florida Bigfoot Conference
“You know, stranger things have happened than Bigfoot.” (slTheParisReview)
Team 10
$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt by Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig (WaPost gift link)
The Data behind "Childless Cat Ladies"
WaPo's Dept. of Data looks at the numbers. (gift link) In a similar fashion to Trump being confused about Harris being both Indian and Black, I stand for all of us who have cats and dogs. We're out, we're proud, we're spending too much on cat food because the dogs keep sneaking in and helping themselves to it.
The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector: 11 hours and 31 minutes
"How Long to Read is a book search engine that helps you find out how long it will take to read books and provide reading time data that is tailored to you. With our simple WPM (words per minute) test you can find out how long it will take you to read almost anything, and also use our search engine to find books that will fit the time you have to read." [more inside]
a babe without a name (SL music video)
A sad and sweet animated clip made for the Queen song All Dead All Dead. This song came out in 1977 on the album News of the World; the video was made in 2017 at the 40-year anniversary of the album. The lead vocals on this version were sung by Mercury, not May, who sang them on the original version. [more inside]
An antidote for fear
The question of student surveillance is made more difficult by a lack of clear data on whether it works and if so, whether the collateral damage to privacy is justified. School officials across the country defend the use of such surveillance by arguing that if it saves just one life, it’s worth it. But is it worth it if it turns schools into virtual prisons? “Through a careful review of the existing evidence, and through interviews with dozens of school staff, parents and others,” wrote a group of Rand researchers in February, “we found that AI based monitoring, far from being a solution to the persistent and growing problem of youth suicide, might well give rise to more problems than it seeks to solve.” from Spyware turned this Kansas high school into a ‘red zone’ of dystopian surveillance [Kansas Reflector]
August 1
it's the sound of the summer
A few days ago, Drew Daniel posted on Twitter: had a dream I was at a rave talking to a girl and she told me about a genre called “hit em” that is in 5/4 time at 212 bpm with super crunched out sounds thank you dream girl
In the days since, people have kept sharing their own.
“Today ... was a very good day.”
Journalist Evan Gershkovich has come home. Gershkovich and two other Americans who had been wrongfully imprisoned in Russia came home today - along with citizens of Germany, Britain, and Belarus. Seven Russians - political prisoners, some of them associates of Alexei Navalny - were also released. This is the largest prisoner swap since the collapse of the Soviet Union. [more inside]
Cute Story in Aisle Five
A social media post about 90s game show contestants brought the internet some warm fuzzy feelings this week. Dan Kois interviews the Supermarket Sweep set building "business partners" for Slate and reveals a bonus twist.
Differences between USA and AUS broadcasts of the Opening Ceremonies
On Friday, July 26, 2024, during the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, an artistic performance intended to be a part of the planned program was not broadcast in the United States. At approximately two hours into the broadcast, shortly after the introduction of France's athletes (the last group to be introduced), the program moved to a series of music and dance performances, including a floating disco and a Dionysian feast. During this, the US broadcast cut away to advertising breaks and exclusive interviews with US-based athletes while audiences outside the US remained with the main program. • See the differences in this segment, each broadcast side-by-side, via this fifteen-minute video hosted by the Internet Archive. [more inside]