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Don Rickles roasts Clint Eastwood. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 9:22 PM PST - 6 comments

A History of Horror is a three-part BBC documentary series by Mark Gatiss about horror in film. Frankenstein Goes To Hollywood, Home Counties Horror, The American Scream. Covering from Phantom Of The Opera through Halloween. Each episode is just about an hour. Previously, long ago.
posted by hippybear at 8:40 PM PST - 25 comments

The New York Times Buys Wordle (NYT; archive.is link).

Wordle was purchased from its creator, Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, for a price “in the low seven figures,” The Times said. The company said the game would initially remain free to new and existing players.

posted by fight or flight at 2:04 PM PST - 159 comments

Sony buying Bungie for $3.6 billion Destiny studio will remain multiplatform, able "to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play" [more inside]
posted by CrystalDave at 10:16 AM PST - 36 comments

For the first 14 years the Creative Commons (CC) license stated that the it would “terminate automatically upon any breach.” Basically the five terms included naming the creator and license, providing a URL for the work and license and noting if the work was modified. Falling short means that you are no longer a licensed user. Copyleft trolls are taking advantage of that framework to automate finding copyleft infringement - using willing artists, automated search tools and robosigning mills to find and threaten anyone infringing on the copyright with the $150,000 in statutory damages for “wilful infringement.”

Of course Cory Doctorow has been targeted by Pixsy on behalf of photographer Nenad Stojkovic. [more inside]
posted by zenon at 9:35 AM PST - 31 comments

Germany’s White Supremacist Problem—and What It Means for the United States , LAWFARE Foreign Policy Essay, Anna Meier, January 30, 2022. As the United States wrestles with the threat of white supremacist violence, observers often look to Germany for lessons on how to deal with a racist past. The University of Nottingham’s Anna Meier argues that this is a mistake. She finds that German officials often minimize the extent of the problem and, as a result, ignore the deeper structural reforms needed to reduce racism.
posted by cenoxo at 8:36 AM PST - 25 comments

"Last year, in cooperation with many of my friends on a private social network, I took an idea from neighborhood organizations here in Chicago and started a small online-only mutual aid fund. Over twelve months, we distributed more than seven thousand dollars from some friends to others, mostly in increments of $100 USD..... A number of the people involved made requests at one point and donations at another, which I think illustrates how important the fluidity of a mutual aid project can be." Brendan Adkins writes about how the group did this, in case you'd like to set up something similar. Disclaimer: written by a friend of mine.
posted by brainwane at 4:32 AM PST - 27 comments

Congress May Be On the Verge of Fixing the Electoral Count Act - "Experts and politicians agree: The measure is in desperate need of reform, in order to avoid a repeat of 2020 in 2024."[1,2,3] (previously) [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:12 AM PST - 35 comments

Jenny Nicholson: Here's my cover of the commercial for the DVD box set of China Beach
posted by Cash4Lead at 9:24 PM PST - 30 comments

At first glance, the [Swedish] tradition of Påskkärring, or “Easter Hags,” seems quite innocent—these are children after all, and it’s suspected the tradition has gone on since the early 1800s. But deeper study reveals a dark history, one of oppression and persecution.

The “witch crisis” arrived as a hot pot of clashes between older folklore and the new Lutheran religion. What these beliefs had in common was an ontological starting point: that outside our visible world existed a spiritual and celestial one that was equally real.
posted by Rumple at 8:42 PM PST - 10 comments

The past fortnight in space. Updates from humanity's exploration of the solar system.
On Earth's surface: using data from three satellites, scientists published a visualization of an unusually violent star. A "hard start" delayed an ABL Space Systems rocket test launch. An uncrewed SpaceX Dragon module safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 1:27 PM PST - 9 comments

The actor and comedian Howard Hesseman, perhaps best known for playing disc jockey Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati (and its subsequent syndicated sequel series The New WKRP in Cincinnati) and history teacher Charlie Moore on Head of the Class, has died. He was 81. Hesseman's longtime friend Michael McKean had this to say on Twitter: "Impossible to overstate Howard Hesseman’s influence on his and subsequent generations of improvisors." The two appeared together in the films This Is Spinal Tap and Clue. [more inside]
posted by guiseroom at 12:45 PM PST - 110 comments

The "Complete" Metropolis [2h28m] is available on Archive.org for viewing or download. There's still about 25 minutes missing, apparently, that might be discovered at some point. This is also available on YouTube, if you prefer. Also, Metropolis [1h22m], from 1984, the first restoration of the film, with an 80s fever dream soundtrack by Giorgio Moroder [Archive.org, full film soundtrack (not the soundtrack album)]. Or perhaps you prefer a colorized, dubbed version [2h12m]? They all have merits; they are all Metropolis. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 12:00 PM PST - 32 comments

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. On this day in 1972, British Army troops opened fire on a peaceful civil march organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association against Operation Demetrius, a British Army operation of internment without trial of people suspected of being members of the IRA. During the shooting, the British troops killed 13 unarmed civilians and injured 15 more as they fled or tried to save each other. (Note: some links may contain graphic images or descriptions of death and injuries.) [more inside]
posted by fight or flight at 5:17 AM PST - 24 comments

John Locke's nutmeg pancake recipe. [more inside]
posted by killdevil at 4:53 AM PST - 52 comments

From The Atlantic: Could the self-paralysis of American national governance somehow usher in a rebirth—our own Dark Ages, but in a good way? Examples include a state university running a local K-12 school system, free community college in more than a dozen states, and mayor and governors stepping up to the plate on climate change after Trump the USA out of the Paris climate accord. [more inside]
posted by NotLost at 9:08 PM PST - 28 comments

"Georgetown is now at a crossroads that will shape its future. While winning last year's Big East tournament title provided a boost of optimism, it did not solve the program's woes. Ewing, handpicked by Thompson, has not yet proved that he can lead the Hoyas into a brighter chapter. With Georgetown a heavy underdog heading into Tuesday's matchup with longtime Big East rival UConn, Ewing, it seems, is running out of time to restore the program he helped build."
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 3:53 PM PST - 13 comments

Question: What is the maximum speed of a fart? What causes barking spider plumes? Need a bespoke air biscuit? Or maybe you want to turn that text into Morse toots? And what on earth is the reason for the Invisible College of Experimental Flatology? [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:07 PM PST - 23 comments

@jnack (John Nack): *.@Pixar has shared the full “Art of Luca” book digitally. Happy Friday.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:56 AM PST - 5 comments

Neil Young Demands Spotify Remove His Music Over ‘False Information About Vaccines’ ... Joni Mitchell Plans to Follow Neil Young Off Spotify, Citing ‘Lies’ ... James Blunt jokes he will release new music on Spotify in Rogan protest [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 8:55 AM PST - 286 comments

“Back in the sixteenth century, kestrels were known as windfuckers and fuckwinds.”
posted by oulipian at 8:30 AM PST - 18 comments

If you've been to a temple or shrine in Japan, chances are you've seen people lining up with small, colorful books. These goshuincho (御朱印帳) are for collecting goshuin (御朱印) - red stamps with calligraphy written over the top as a record of your visit. Goshuin should not be confused with stamp rallies or commemorative stamps found at many train stations and tourist sites - while they are increasingly popular for their variety and beauty, originally goshuin were given as proof that a religious pilgrim had copied sutras. But it's still considered polite to follow a few protocols before you receive one. [more inside]
posted by emmling at 6:33 AM PST - 12 comments

Vínill vikunnar is a weekly radio program on Iceland’s state broadcaster RÚV. The idea is simple, the play a whole vinyl album from start to finish. Each album is introduced in Icelandic, before playing side A, and the presenter speaks in the middle while they turn the record around and play side B. The picks range from canonical albums from the 20th Century ( Billy Holiday, David Bowie and Lauryn Hill), to world music (Osibisa, Umm Kulthum and Mulata Astake), to indie classics ( Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees, P. J. Harvey and The Pixies), to the overlooked (Alberta Hunter, Alice Coltrane and Maki Asakawa), and of course Icelandic music (Einsöngvarakvartettinn, Björk and Ellý Vilhjálms). There’s lots more to choose from, and shows are streamable for a whole year.
posted by Kattullus at 5:55 AM PST - 5 comments

Historical costumer Bernadette Banner unboxes a Wilcox & Gibbs chainstitch sewing machine from 1876.
posted by metaquarry at 4:32 AM PST - 25 comments

Technofeudalism is a new system in which the techno-lords are extracting a new power to make the rest of us do things on their behalf.
posted by clew at 11:06 PM PST - 28 comments

DON'T YOU LECTURE ME WITH YOUR THIRTY DOLLAR HAIRCUT
Make music with emoji and meme sounds. The name itself references a specific meme, but what people have done with it already transcends that. [more inside]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:45 PM PST - 11 comments

Low-wage workers in Chinese immigrant communities often lack access to the social safety nets intended to help people living in poverty — in part because of “model minority” stereotypes. Since the pandemic began, it's had disastrous consequences in New York City. [more inside]
posted by praemunire at 3:00 PM PST - 21 comments

Today sees the release of Stylophonika, the debut album from the Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra. As both the album title and band name suggest, the Stylophone features heavily throughout... [more inside]
posted by deeker at 12:56 PM PST - 10 comments

A anti-vax protest convoy of vehicles reached their destination of Ottawa today. Many exaggerated claims as to the size of the convoy have been made, including the false one of the convoy having set a new Guinness World Record, but according to David Aikin, Chief Political Correspondent for Global News, several police sources put the numbers at: 8 separate convoy captains ("core organizers"); 230 tractors/tractor-trailers & 725 personal vehicles from Toronto and Western Canada; 200 vehicles out of NB/NS; possibly 2000 pedestrians from QC; and an unknown number of other actors. Antihate.ca traces the racist, violent, far right roots of this protest. Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly says there will be numerous police cameras recording Saturday's demonstration and warns this evidence will used to prosecute any crimes that may occur. The protestors have also not applied for a protest permit. Thankfully, an estimated 90% of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, remain on the job, and grocery stores across Canada are currently well-stocked.
posted by orange swan at 12:52 PM PST - 342 comments

The New York Times goes long on Amy Schneider, who with 40 wins now has second-longest winning streak on Jeopardy! after Ken Jennings:

• A short interview by Julia Jacobs at the streak’s end: “Amy Schneider on the Final Game of Her Whirlwind ‘Jeopardy!’ Run”
• Shane O’Neil with a profile of Schneider and a dive into the whole experience: “‘Jeopardy!’ Hasn’t Had a Player Like Amy Schneider”

(Nothing should be paywalled, go nuts.)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:23 AM PST - 30 comments

In which London's venerable Vagina Museum asks and answers the burning question: did Paris and Janeway fuck? If so, how did they fuck? [SLtwitter thread/threadreader alt] [more inside]
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 10:17 AM PST - 44 comments

Statistician David Cox, known among other things for the proportional hazards model, died last week [paywalled WSJ].
posted by eotvos at 8:56 AM PST - 7 comments

On Writing an Abcedarian. 26 intensely short essays on writing. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 7:57 AM PST - 4 comments

Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, Maus, has been banned by a Board of Education in Tennessee. It's now sold-out on Amazon. Spiegelman has made a statement.
posted by valkane at 7:47 AM PST - 188 comments

Saga is back. That's it, that's the post. [more inside]
posted by signal at 6:59 AM PST - 24 comments

CNN: Snow-covered bridge in Pittsburgh collapses hours before scheduled Biden visit to talk infrastructure [more inside]
posted by tonycpsu at 6:16 AM PST - 38 comments

CW: sexual assault
In the ’80s, Susan Headley ran with the best of them—phone phreakers, social engineers, and the most notorious computer hackers of the era. Then she disappeared. Searching for Susy Thunder
posted by juv3nal at 2:10 AM PST - 37 comments

Will California Create Nation's First Universal Health Care System? [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 10:21 PM PST - 54 comments

Is a website that tells you how many people are currently viewing it. [more inside]
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:56 PM PST - 53 comments

The great Barry Cryer has died. Barry Cryer, comedy writer, has died at the age of 86. He wrote for many of the giants of British comedy but is possible best known for the long-running BBC radio comedy show I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, the antidote to panel games.
posted by stanf at 3:14 PM PST - 29 comments

"Why is a typeface named Jim Crow? In the digital era we use typography effortlessly, scrolling through hundreds of options, serif and sans serif, bold and thin, choosing fonts for their aesthetics and legibility. Oftentimes software makes font choices for us, and we go along with the default. It can be easy to think of typography as neutral, disassociated from politics and culture. But of course, typography is made by people, and thus cannot be separated from human history." Sarah K. Kramer on typography, race and the story of J for Jim Crow (The Believer). [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:53 PM PST - 7 comments

In 2006, John Cameron Mitchell (writer and director of Hedwig and the Angry Inch) released Shortbus, a movie that famously features a whole lot of unsimulated sex. Mark Harris revisits the early days of the making of that film. (NSFW) (archive link)
posted by Gerald Bostock at 12:15 PM PST - 36 comments

What happened at The Root? Since April, 15 of the site's 16 staffers have quit—the latest in a series of collapses at G/O Media, most recently the AV Club and Jezebel, formerly Deadspin (previously). See also: the mass deletion of pictures from posts across G/O Media in October. For more context, you'd have to go back to the death of the site that eventually became G/O Media: Gawker Was Murdered by Gaslight, and How Things Work (also previously). [more inside]
posted by rorgy at 9:07 AM PST - 43 comments

… for some very important information. Our train, up until just now, consisted of two parts going to different destinations… (SLYT, audio in German, English subtitles available)
posted by wachhundfisch at 8:14 AM PST - 45 comments

"The thousands of hikers who brave Hungary’s Blue Trail each year must face down unexpected obstacles, a bureaucratic, socialist-era stamp system, and a litany of rules. Which begs the obvious question: why bother at all?" [more inside]
posted by kmt at 2:41 AM PST - 10 comments

In a study reminiscent of last year's finding that Black babies are more likely to survive if they have Black doctors (study), a new study has found that women are 32% more likely to die after operation by male surgeon (study). [more inside]
posted by clawsoon at 7:41 PM PST - 30 comments

Justice Stephen Breyer to retire from US Supreme Court. Justice Breyer’s retirement, at 83, will give President Biden the opportunity to name a new justice.
posted by russilwvong at 3:20 PM PST - 146 comments

Alex Falcone has nothing to hide [SLTikTok]
posted by aubilenon at 2:49 PM PST - 12 comments

This is a museum of baseball history. What purpose does that museum serve when it purges entire pieces of history from its walls? You’ve ripped the guts out of the thing and left it as not only a dry branding exercise, but a culturally irrelevant one. Only the weirdos who file FCC complaints about vulgarities during the Super Bowl halftime show would ever want to visit it. from By Leaving Out SF Giants Legend Barry Bonds, the Baseball Hall of Fame Finally Signs its Own Death Certificate by Drew Magary [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 2:39 PM PST - 100 comments

The description of the property in the listing (“Sharswood”, Circa 1820. On ten acres in Virginia. $220,000) 2 years ago (“There is an old farm office on the property. Would make a cute guest house!”) reads different now: “An old Virginia plantation, a new owner and a family legacy unveiled.” (Washington Post, similar text at Tell Us USA.)
posted by channaher at 11:05 AM PST - 13 comments

Next thing I know I have this 50 ton whale coming right at me, and I'm thinking "Oh my God. Stop, I just saved you." Yeah, she's rising up towards me. And I'm just thinking this is going to hurt, and, uh, when she was only inches away from my chest... She stopped. And pushed me on the chest backwards, and then released me, and then kind of pushed again, and then release, and pushed again, and again. And then she swam up right next to me, puts her head up above the water so that her eye was above the water, and then came up and looked directly at me... for what felt like 30 seconds, she just stared...

James Moskito's account [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 7:46 AM PST - 14 comments

Promises is a 2021 studio album by British electronic musician Sam Shepard, aka Floating Points, and American jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. [more inside]
posted by saladin at 7:24 AM PST - 30 comments

The Biography of the Pixel - The Elementary Particle of Pictures "I have billions of pixels in my cellphone, and you probably do too. But what is a pixel? Why do so many people think that pixels are little abutting squares? Now that we’re aswim in an ocean of zettapixels (21 zeros), it’s time to understand what they are. The underlying idea – a repackaging of infinity – is subtle and beautiful. Far from being squares or dots that ‘sort of’ approximate a smooth visual scene, pixels are the profound and exact concept at the heart of all the images that surround us – the elementary particles of modern pictures." An essay by Alvy Ray Smith, one of the early founders of Pixar. [more inside]
posted by storybored at 7:03 AM PST - 31 comments

The Writing on the Wall: Sci-Fi’s Empty Techno-Optimism by Eli Horowitz for Blood Knife.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 4:45 AM PST - 59 comments

Elizabeth Sandifer suggests that we are now experiencing a "clear aesthetic shift in how sci-fi works" in observations that started as this Twitter thread. She notes "Diversity as an underlying assumption....A massive dollop of fanfic and romance influence....It’s stylistically a big tent" and suggests the prospective name "Tor Wave." (Followup comments from Sandifer.) A related conversation about the label "squeecore" started with an episode of the Rite Gud podcast (transcript) and has drawn responses from Doris V. Sutherland - "'Squeecore' and the Cartoon Mode in SF/F", Camestros Felapton - "Is there a dominant mode of current science fiction?", Cora Buhlert - "Science Fiction Is Never Evenly Distributed" & "More on the Squeecore Debate", and Simon McNeil - "Notes on Squeecore". [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 4:21 AM PST - 47 comments

"The dwindling number of Black and Latino students at these high schools is a great concern and a mystery. Bill de Blasio, when he was mayor of New York, suggested the heart of the problem." "That does not reckon with history. Decades ago, when crime and socioeconomic conditions were far graver than they are today, Black and Latino teenagers passed the examination in great numbers. In 1981, nearly two-thirds of Brooklyn Tech’s students were Black and Latino, and that percentage hovered at 50 percent for another decade." [NYT link]
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 12:48 AM PST - 63 comments

The Snowflake Mystery - "I've done a lot of my career in astronomy and astrophysics. Nobody ever asks you what it's good for, I mean, never. Not even once did anyone say, 'What are those black holes gonna be used for?' No, 'Saturn's rings, why do you care about Saturn's rings? What's the motivation for studying Saturn?' nobody asks that. Every time I give a talk, people are like, 'What are you doing? What on earth is this for?' I'll tell you the real reason, the real reason that I got into this. You look at a snowflake and you kind of go, 'Um, actually, (laughs) we don't have any idea how that works.' Well, that doesn't work. We have to know how that works, dammit!" [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 12:21 AM PST - 16 comments

American photographer Steve Schapiro has died. Never heard of him? You've probably seen his work: MLK, Ali, Robert Kennedy, James Baldwin, the American Civil Rights movement, John Lewis, Midnight Cowboy, Brando, Magritte, Warhol and Sedgewick, De Niro, Bowie, Ike & Tina Turner. [more inside]
posted by BlahLaLa at 8:56 PM PST - 12 comments

All Eyes on You So you wish to fight street crime but you want to maintain your privacy for reasons. [more inside]
posted by jadepearl at 8:13 PM PST - 16 comments

What happens when cartoons try to make cartoons and fail? This. I Like Pink (1994). Wacky Delly (1996). Dedede: Comin' At Ya! (2002/2003). Handsome Keroro (2004 - skip to 48:53). Mint's Hints (2011).
posted by BiggerJ at 7:44 PM PST - 11 comments

⋈ The Armed are an anonymous hardcore punk collective from Detroit. Their latest album Ultrapop scored an 8.2 on Pitchfork. This is the video for WHERE MAN KNOWS WANT (live). This is ALL FUTURES (Live).
posted by signal at 5:34 PM PST - 13 comments

Marcel Duchamp archives have been put online by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and two international institutions.
The Archives; over 20,000 documents and nearly 800 museum exhibits all zoomable. Enjoy.
posted by adamvasco at 3:36 PM PST - 8 comments

Lighthouses of Europe
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:29 PM PST - 27 comments

It's been nearly a decade since we last saw it, so why not take another starlit stroll through the Planetarium and Projector Science Museum.
posted by cortex at 2:09 PM PST - 20 comments

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter made all sorts of creative people (artists, game designers, musicians, etc) despair when they announced they were moving to the blockchain. [more inside]
posted by rikschell at 1:01 PM PST - 71 comments

Results of a 20-year study have established a causal link between the Epstein-Barr virus and Multiple Sclerosis. [more inside]
posted by Dashy at 12:29 PM PST - 41 comments

You Are Not Owed a Reason for Somebody's Abortion Caitlin Cruz writes about writing about reproductive rights: "No one owes us their reasons for having an abortion, and it is not our job to convey relief, give praise, or recoil at certain reasons for abortion if we do learn them." [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 12:25 PM PST - 9 comments

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is at L2. What’s next? (Previously on Metafilter)
posted by cenoxo at 8:46 AM PST - 40 comments

Economists Behaving Badly. A senior economist at Stanford submits a paper to the Journal of Political Economy. It gets rejected. The story doesn't end there. Featuring: the University of Chicago free speech policy, "I do not negotiate with terrorists," uncertainty quantification. Via Andrew Gelman's blog.
posted by escabeche at 7:27 AM PST - 41 comments

Australian university teacher Tegan Bennett Daylight on student mental health issues: "....20-something student Tom Paech described his generation as being “agonisingly well-informed” – a perfect phrase to describe young people who have “no means of remedying the situation, like the captain of a sinking ship who knows exactly where the hole is in the hull but has no way of plugging it”. Note his use of the word “captain”, which I know was partially unintentional. These young people don’t just feel like the crew on a sinking ship. They feel like they’re the captain, which suggests they are helplessly responsible while the ship goes down."
posted by MiraK at 7:19 AM PST - 39 comments

"...I had to remember to breathe, and to blink. Hours passed. I stopped to finish my water and looked ahead to see our destination, a lake glittering in the far distance. Almost all Robinson’s novels involve an experience of this kind—a long, difficult, rocky journey through a mountain landscape, on Earth or elsewhere, accomplished through sustained concentration that lifts one out of time. The main thing is to start, then to keep going, finding your way one step at a time. It never occurs to you to stop. Even if the path isn’t set, the job before you is clear: you have to get down the mountain before dark."

The Best Case Scenario
posted by y2karl at 5:50 AM PST - 39 comments

It slaps, it's funny, it's sharp as hell, and there's a cowboy and a Sims character in it. What more could you want? It's Love Online, by Bungalow Jonathan.
posted by rorgy at 5:03 AM PST - 2 comments

Bookfeed.io is a no-frills way of following your favorite authors. You provide a list of writers you like, and Bookfeed generates an RSS feed with their new books. [more inside]
posted by yankeefog at 4:02 AM PST - 11 comments

Rare African script offers clues to the evolution of writing - "In a study just published in Current Anthropology, a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, showed that writing very quickly becomes 'compressed' for efficient reading and writing. To arrive at this insight they turned to a rare African writing system that has fascinated outsiders since the early 19th century."[1,2,3,4,5] [more inside]
posted by kliuless at 11:26 PM PST - 15 comments

Line Goes Up is a very long, highly detailed, and meticulously researched investigation into and polemical take-down of the NFT and crypto scene by Dan Olson. [more inside]
posted by motty at 6:31 PM PST - 110 comments

Denton Welch -- restorer of immaculate doll houses, painter, writer -- wrote for only eight years before passing away in his thirties. And yet in his short life, which stretched from England to Shanghai, he found himself at the heart of a web of writers from Roald Dahl to William Burroughs, crafting an acutely observed, quasi-colonialist, literature of personal and emotional displacement that ties together a sub-canon of the subaltern, sexually complex, and aesthetically charged. A role model to John Waters and influence on Auden, Forster, and Sitwell, his melancholy and dyspeptic presence seems right to recommend for a winter's read.
posted by SandCounty at 2:50 PM PST - 10 comments

Six minutes of trailcam inside and near a beaver lodge in Washington State. No background music or narration; background noises and explanatory text. No-one gets eaten. Furry beasts pass back and forth. [more inside]
posted by clew at 2:30 PM PST - 27 comments

Treat yourself to almost forty minutes of exploring the raw tracks of the Bee Gee's 'Stayin Alive' and see how it is put together, courtesy of the Youtube channel Home Studio Simplified.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:20 PM PST - 31 comments

Maryland football has a ceiling on how strong fan interest can become, as the school has to compete with two passionate NFL fan bases in Washington and Baltimore. So I've been baffled by the school's decision to invest so heavily in a sport where they have to contend with heavyweights like Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan in their own division.
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 12:59 PM PST - 11 comments

He's been seen on screen since 1950, starting with an appearance on Groucho Marx's 'You Bet Your Life' and at 92, is showing no signs of stopping now. The TCM host chatted with the actor with 445 credits on his IMDB page, for CBS Sunday Morning.
posted by Webbster at 12:28 PM PST - 19 comments

What in the wet wonder of the watery world? Wait - a sea duck?!? NO. This is no duck. (How many ducks do you know who have their anus on their throat?) Intriguing, no? Well then slither your slender snipe self into the ---> [more inside]
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:48 AM PST - 6 comments

"....[Github's] Copilot doesn't just limit itself to code. It also likes to insert itself into my writing. So, as an experiment, I decided to let Copilot write a post for me."

Software is a complex business. It's a lot like a food industry. You can make a lot of food, but you can't make a lot of food without a lot of people. Software is the exact opposite. You can make a lot of people, but you can't make a lot of people without a lot of software.

posted by jenkinsEar at 11:29 AM PST - 24 comments

It's a fourth Free Thread and this is the one that has Alicia Silverstone in it I guess? I really hadn't planned this whole thing around the Warner Brothers run of Batman movies but it just sort of happened. Anyway, no link, no topic, just come on in and chatter about stuff. Oh, and if you're newish or lurkerish on MetaFilter or just feeling friendly, you should also stop by the Introduce Yourself thread over on MetaTalk and give a wave. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 10:50 AM PST - 150 comments

It’s 1992, and you’re sitting in your school’s computer lab. In between assignments, you whisper to your friend, “Check this out.” In the C:\DOS directory, you run QBASIC.EXE, then load up GORILLA.BAS. Before long, you and a friend are two gorillas battling it out atop skyscrapers with exploding bananas.
posted by curious nu at 8:46 AM PST - 25 comments

Thought old music was killing new music? Bandcamp's Essential Releases of the 2021 - just one of their extensive Best Of 2021 lists - and Soundcloud's 2021 Playback are here to prove you wrong.
posted by mhoye at 8:40 AM PST - 27 comments

The Labor market is in disarray. Is what we're hearing the same thing we're experiencing? You Quit. I Quit. We All Quit. And It’s Not a Coincidence. What is work like for those of us outside of the media maelstrom? [more inside]
posted by Violet Blue at 8:24 AM PST - 104 comments

As part of his postings on the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money, labor historian Eric Loomis has a running series where he visits the graves of notable and infamous figures in American History. (Previously on the Blue.) Recently, he reached a major milestone, and thus the thousandth grave he visited was that of televangelist, "faith healer", and con man Oral Roberts. [more inside]
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:04 AM PST - 19 comments

It's all about just doing fun things — the kind of stuff you always dreamed about doing as a kid [...] a pretty significant part of my life is believing that you shouldn't stop doing that. SLYT — you may want to skip this if you have a fear of heights.
posted by wesleyac at 5:59 AM PST - 4 comments

As one of the founding members of the Ventures and the composer of the original Hawaii Five-O theme, Don Wilson was a legend in the genre of surf guitar, in spite of never intending to be part of the subculture's scene. While at home, Wilson passed away at the age of 88.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:22 AM PST - 20 comments

The question: What do I do when I know exactly what I want to do in life but the odds always seem to go against me? The suggestion: Our brains are masterful collectors. If you were to illustrate a map of our clever little minds, they might look like the interior of one of my favorite museums, the former home of Marjorie Merriweather Post (heiress to the Post Cereal fortune). […] Sometimes, I visualize my brain this way: various rooms each with a different purpose defined by fixation, and a collection of dusty, difficult-to-find objects to support that purpose. [From Out of the Blue, a newsletter by Mari Andrew, via]
posted by ellieBOA at 3:36 AM PST - 13 comments

Take an online journey through the history of math - "'History of Mathematics' explores the origins of arithmetic, algebra, geometry and more... Take the Pythagorean theorem. The Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who lived in the sixth century B.C., famously related the side lengths of a right triangle in the equation a² + b² = c². But a clay tablet reveals that people in Mesopotamia had worked out the relationship more than 1,000 years earlier."[1,2,3,4]
posted by kliuless at 11:11 PM PST - 4 comments

SL Atlantic: "The casita is threatened. The heart must be restored. But all is not lost, the future is not set. That’s the message. America has bounced back from worse, much worse—but it’s not just Miranda who is worried. More and more of the world sees the flame of America’s miracle flickering too."
posted by contrapositive at 6:30 PM PST - 38 comments

Manfred Thierry Mugler, the French designer known for his precision cuts and sense of theatricality, has died at age 73. Born Dec. 21, 1948, in Strasbourg, France, Mugler began designing in the 1970s. He eventually became known for his dramatic, avant-garde designs. [more inside]
posted by kitten kaboodle at 6:14 PM PST - 14 comments

All Praise the St. Louis Bagel and Its Infinite Potential The infamous, vertically sliced St. Louis bagel is not an abomination—it’s a brand-new playing field for a brand-freaking-new game.
posted by lalochezia at 6:06 PM PST - 56 comments

Saturday: four monkeys escaped from a truck in Pennsylvania. Three were recaptured but the fourth is on the loose. 24 hours later: a monkey is spotted running into a wood near Canterbury, Kent in England. So, just how fast can a monkey swim?!
posted by fallingbadgers at 1:50 PM PST - 41 comments

The best place to start, perhaps is with the Grammy Award-winning Original Cast Album [Grammy.com] for Tony-winning musical Jagged Little Pill [Wikipedia], with music by Alanis Morissette and book by Diablo Cody. Two ways to listen: YouTube Playlist, or (much more fun) a Virtual Album Celebration with the cast [1h16m] as they listen to the album together for the first time ever and record their reactions. Now, let's dig in. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 9:55 AM PST - 4 comments

There's the official name of places and what people actually call it. For a long time, Vancouver, B.C. had Guelph Park. But when Viktor Briestensky put up a sign proclaiming it, "Dude Chilling Park" and the city took it down, residents resisted and signed a petition to keep the name what they called it. A surprisingly chill Parks Board listened and renamed the park. Last November a barge washed ashore (NYT) at Sunset Beach in Vancouver during flooding. Despite attempts to dislodge it, it has remained firmly in place. Residents have adopted it, taking selfies, and made requests to decorate it. The Parks Board, for the general amusement of the public, have placed a sign, "Barge Chilling Beach". The barge even tweets. [more inside]
posted by blueberry monster at 9:51 AM PST - 20 comments

An injunction has been granted against seven health-care workers changing jobs. Several employees of Wisconsin's ThedaCare-Neenah hospital told their employer on dates between December 21 and January 7th of their intent to cease employment there and begin work at Ascension St. Elizabeth on January 24th, citing better working conditions and benefits as a primary motivator for their decision to change jobs. This Thursday, ThedaCare filed in court to block their former employees' new employment, and on Friday, Outagamie County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis granted a preliminary injunction, preventing the seven health-care workers from working at Ascension pending resolution of the case. [more inside]
posted by jackbishop at 9:06 AM PST - 141 comments

It was described by residents of north Brooklyn Heights as a mechanical chirp or a high-pitched, repeating whirr. Some thought it was a car alarm; others, a motor noise. It had a strange way of seeming to move around the neighborhood depending on where you stood. Whatever it was, as it continued nonstop for days, and then weeks, it slowly drove people crazy.
posted by ShooBoo at 9:01 AM PST - 54 comments

Turn primitive shapes into realistic landscapes. Watch a demo. Try the online app, or download the nVidia Canvas desktop app, though you will need a graphics card with RTX.
posted by adept256 at 4:01 AM PST - 12 comments

Following a weeks-long walkout, several dozen game developers at Raven Software have formed the Game Workers Alliance Union. [more inside]
posted by ®@ at 7:58 PM PST - 11 comments

Literature Clock tells the current time (or close enough) in the form of a literary quote. [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 7:37 PM PST - 18 comments

Silent Pictures

Version 1 -- Paris Review: Art Spiegelman on Lynd Ward

Version 2 -- Vulture: Art Spiegelman on Forgotten Comics Pioneer Lynd Ward

From Jan-Peter Semmel's Pinterest: Art by Lynd Ward

and.... [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 6:37 PM PST - 7 comments

Astra and Sunaura Taylor on veganism: When [Joaquin] Phoenix’s remarks entered our newsfeeds, we confess we cringed like countless others — but not because we thought his observations were hysterical or overwrought. We cringed because Phoenix violated an unstated precept we have spent decades trying our best to live by: to not be annoying vegans. By crashing a party of millions with talk of animal abuse, he did the very thing we have desperately attempted to avoid, albeit on a much humbler scale. While both of us have been public about our veganism, we have tried not to antagonize people lest we inadvertently hurt the cause. At countless social gatherings and restaurant outings people have asked us, “Do you mind if I eat this?” before chomping down on what was, until recently, someone else’s wing, leg, breast, or rump. Feeling it better to be disingenuous than discomfiting — lest we reinforce the stereotype that vegans are, in fact, insufferable and arrogant ascetics — we have always said no, choking back our honest thoughts to permit others to eat in peace. [more inside]
posted by jshttnbm at 5:14 PM PST - 55 comments

One week ago today, an underwater volcano whose 5km-wide caldera sat 150 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean erupted, sending a plume of ash into the stratosphere and across most of the Kingdom of Tonga, an island nation of 100,000 people. Its sonic boom was heard 9,000km away in Alaska, the atmospheric shockwaves circled the world twice, and it caused a tsunami which reached New Zealand, Peru, California, and other Pacific nations—but most badly affected Tonga itself, just before most of the country was blanketed by ash. [more inside]
posted by rory at 1:49 PM PST - 38 comments

The Future of E-Bikes "The best feeling on a bike is cruising down a hill, barely pedaling, and taking in the surroundings. E-bikes are like that all the time. "How do you know if someone has an e-bike? They'll tell you!" goes the joke." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 12:10 PM PST - 92 comments

How Palestine’s Radio Alhara is taking a grassroots approach to shaping a new landscape for protest, culture and local journalism online. Hunched down in front of a DJ console, Yousef Anastas assiduously manages the decks, preparing the mix and adjusting the atmospherics of the ambient track he is playing. It is haunting and trance-like: the drone-like synthesiser he has programmed melds into the repeated strumming of an oud – a Middle Eastern stringed instrument – with increasing intensity. It feels as if it is urgently attempting to break free within the mix. It seems like an apt sonic metaphor for life in the 33-year-old’s native Palestine. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 11:23 AM PST - 4 comments

You just need to sneak it in yourself like Dillon Helbig. The 8-year old from Boise always wanted one of his stories to end up in the library and he made that happen because he "always be sneaky."
posted by vespabelle at 9:59 AM PST - 19 comments

Igor skates
posted by chavenet at 9:03 AM PST - 3 comments

We have jetpacks and we do not care... For decades, humans have said they want jetpacks, and for thousands of years we have said we want to fly, but do we really? Look up. The sky is empty. Dave Eggers writes in the Guardian on flying and the time he took a jetpack training course.
posted by ShooBoo at 8:46 AM PST - 47 comments

"Old books are socially and culturally fascinating...Still, sifting through old books can be a hassle. You have to go to those search sites and filter for the right vintage (and public-domain-status). It’s a pain. So: I decided to partly automate this — by making my own search tool. Behold the Weird Old Book Finder." Clive Thompson has built A Search Engine That Finds You Weird Old Books (Medium).
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:18 AM PST - 13 comments

Robot vacuum cleaner escapes from Cambridge Travelodge. (BBC) "Staff said it just kept going and "could be anywhere" while well-wishers on social media hoped the vacuum enjoyed its travels, as "it has no natural predators" in the wild."
posted by fight or flight at 8:08 AM PST - 19 comments

What it says on the tin (SLYT)
posted by clawsoon at 7:56 AM PST - 28 comments

Overview of how scapegoating can make the people doing it feel better and which children get chosen The rebel (in authoritarian families, this can take very little). The sensitive one The outlier--described as a child who has a personality very different than the parent, but this can also happen to children who are low status by ethnic appearance. A reminder of someone the parent hates. [more inside]
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:51 AM PST - 12 comments

The 500-acre Singing Wind Ranch in Arizona is for sale at $1.5M. For decades it has been the home of one of the Southwest's best bookstores. After Winn Bundy earned her master's in library science from the University of Arizona in the early 1970s, she decided to open a bookshop—on the family cattle ranch north of the small town of Benson in southeast Arizona. Her family has tried to keep the 30,000-volume shop running since her death last year, but have decided it's time to sell the ranch. [more inside]
posted by Creosote at 6:21 AM PST - 6 comments

So you can Wordle. But can you wordle... TWICE? (Thus made Zaratustra, who you might know from a certain game about a flower that starts with a warning.) [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 4:49 AM PST - 35 comments

Comic and actor Louie Anderson passes away at 68 from complications from Lymphoma.
posted by rhizome at 2:50 AM PST - 34 comments

From Shibuya to Harajuku, or Shibuya to Tokyo Tower at night, or walking in the rain, or walking in the snow. And Tokyo isn't the only city where folks have uploaded hour-long videos from (walkable cities like Amsterdam are good too). Some folks watch these high-resolution virtual walking tour videos while on a treadmill or as a pandemic-era substitute for travel. Either way, they're a nice way to get a passive, unedited feel for a place that wasn't available before the YouTube era of the internet.
posted by AlSweigart at 11:28 PM PST - 31 comments

On the internet, we're always famous: Everyone is losing their minds online because the combination of mass fame and mass surveillance increasingly channels our most basic impulses—toward loving and being loved, caring for and being cared for, getting the people we know to laugh at our jokes—into the project of impressing strangers, a project that cannot, by definition, sate our desires but feels close enough to real human connection that we cannot but pursue it in ever more compulsive ways.
posted by blue shadows at 10:05 PM PST - 28 comments

"going forward, their iconic M&M characters will have more nuanced personalities." Most of the M&M characters are having their personalities changed. The female ones will have their shoes changed. Is this a thing we need to also get angry about in 2022, to have a less sexy green M&M? [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:04 PM PST - 54 comments

The Monks and Nuns of Plum Village, France: "Thich Nhat Hanh, 11.10.1926-22.01.2022": "This morning, the 22 of January 2022 Thay, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, has passed away peacefully at Từ Hiếu Temple in Huế, Vietnam, at 00:00hrs, at the age of 95." BBC News, "Thiền sư Thích Nhất Hạnh viên tịch tại chùa Từ Hiếu ở Huế, thọ 95 tuổi." The Life Story of Thich Nhat Hanh. A Nobel Peace Prize nomination letter written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An interview with bell hooks. "Awakening the Heart," a public talk given by Thích Nhất Hạnh. Eliza Barclay (Vox, 03/2019), "Thich Nhat Hanh's final mindfulness lesson: how to die peacefully."
posted by Wobbuffet at 3:36 PM PST - 78 comments

Was Luigi Cadorna one of the worst generals of World War I, or was he the worst? Bret Deveraux makes the argument: Luigi Cadorna Was the Worst. [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 3:32 PM PST - 19 comments

Imagine a personal heating system that works indoors as well as outdoors, can be taken anywhere, requires little energy, and is independent of any infrastructure. It exists – and is hundreds of years old.
posted by milkb0at at 1:53 PM PST - 89 comments

Build up or pay up. That is the message Massachusetts is sending to 175 cities and suburbs in the Boston area, as a bill to boost housing production begins to take effect. Almost every jurisdiction in eastern Massachusetts will have to do its part zoning for 344,000 new units of as-of-right multifamily housing—or lose access to some state grant programs. That means allowing apartments in many tony subdivisions currently reserved for single-family homes. (SLSlate)
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:24 AM PST - 61 comments

At doom’s doorstep: It is 100 seconds to midnight The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (about) updates their Doomsday Clock. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 10:38 AM PST - 13 comments

Perhaps you would like to start your weekend with a feel good story of community cooperation, dangling sausages and a rescued pup. (single link to CNN) [more inside]
posted by the primroses were over at 8:51 AM PST - 15 comments

And then there are the customers. Bill McCamley, former new Mexico labor official, spent time tending bar in Texas, and lays out the specifics of what the "labor shortage" is about. tldr is: everything. [more inside]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:44 AM PST - 68 comments

Meat Loaf: Bat Out of Hell singer dead at 74 [Grauniad] [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 3:15 AM PST - 137 comments

Part 3: Curtains and covers on secular paintings and looking-glasses From The Frame Blog…a fabulous collection of well researched articles on the aesthetics, function and social history of frames.
posted by brachiopod at 6:02 PM PST - 7 comments

The recent killing of a woman pushed onto the NYC subway tracks brings up this issue: Advocates have been calling on the MTA to install subway platform doors for years to prevent exactly this kind of tragedy. Instead, the MTA hasn’t built any. [more inside]
posted by ShooBoo at 5:38 PM PST - 60 comments

Apollo 11 astronaut (and second man on the Moon) Buzz Aldrin is 92 years old today.
posted by cenoxo at 4:47 PM PST - 43 comments

It’s a radio broadcast of a baseball game. It’s completely fictional. And it’s designed to put you to sleep. The Northwoods Baseball Radio Network is on the air with no yelling and commercials at the same audio level. In an interview with its creator, Chicago-based media producer Mr King said "I experimented with listening to podcasts and white noise, and I found I liked to fall asleep by listening to a west coast game that I didn’t really care about." One game has been "played" with more planned as part of a podcast.
posted by myopicman at 4:27 PM PST - 52 comments

'Brought together for a new book of the same title, Undo Motherhood is Diana Karklin's attempt to better understand why women love their children and are excellent mothers when judged according to society's standards but yet hate the oppressive "mother role" that "robbed them of their own existence and suffer through it in silence", often feeling it to be the worst mistake they have ever made.'
posted by DarlingBri at 4:00 PM PST - 16 comments

Harvard's Loeb Music Library is releasing a small subset of their early 20th century Arabic 78 collection. Acquired over many years, the Arabic 78 Collection currently contains nearly 600 cataloged recordings of Arab and Arab-American music spanning the first half of the 20th century, from roughly 1903 through the 1950s, valuable not only for their musical content, but also as artifacts of the early sound recording industry. [more inside]
posted by Ahmad Khani at 1:49 PM PST - 6 comments

Over 18 months of discussion and planning, the racist statue of Theodore Roosevelt at the entrance to the American Museum of National History has finally been removed. The statue will be re-contextualized at the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, set to open in 2026. [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 12:52 PM PST - 23 comments

Virtual Rome in 3D -- Aerial view, 8 minute flight over the detailed reconstruction. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:51 PM PST - 7 comments

Alex Cameron just published his latest music video, Best Life, today on YouTube, directed by Jemima Kirke. [more inside]
posted by erattacorrige at 12:13 PM PST - 8 comments

Sialis.org is a web 1.0-style site full of information about bluebirds and other small cavity nesters. That’s it!
posted by Going To Maine at 12:10 PM PST - 5 comments

Long-time very-online creative inter alia video type person Hank Green discusses how fucked TikTok's revenue-sharing is and why that's fine for TikTok-the-cash-cow but a bad long-term investment in TikTok-the-creative-hub.
posted by cortex at 12:00 PM PST - 7 comments

How to be a Dick in the Twenty-First Century is a short story by Chris Stuck, author of the anthology entitled Give My Love to the Savages. "I could get around just fine, but I didn’t have legs in the traditional sense. That morning, before I even realized I’d transformed into a penis, I’d risen out of bed and waddled about my home as I usually did, had a cup of tea and read a bit of the newspaper. It wasn’t until I was walking past my full-length mirror on the way to the shower, stripping off my pajamas, that I finally saw my new form. Where my feet usually resided were two watermelon-sized testicles sitting cozily in nests of hair. I moved what used to feel like my feet and the testicles moved. This was, needless to say, fucking freaky. Testicles should never be that big. They really aren’t appealing. Yet when I looked up and saw my reflection, almost without meaning to, I elongated and stood taller. Instead of being sickened, I was momentarily impressed at how majestic I looked. I stuck out my chest." [content warning: sexual assault] [more inside]
posted by storybored at 11:06 AM PST - 7 comments

The Restoration of the Red M&M.
posted by bondcliff at 9:55 AM PST - 48 comments

Brookside, Alabama, a town of 1,253 just north of Birmingham, reported just 55 serious crimes to the state in the entire eight years between 2011 and 2018. But in 2018 it began building a police empire, hiring more and more officers to blanket its six miles of roads and mile-and-a-half jurisdiction on Interstate 22. By 2020 Brookside made more misdemeanor arrests than it has residents. Months of research and dozens of interviews by AL.com found that Brookside’s finances are rocket-fueled by tickets and aggressive policing. In a two-year period between 2018 and 2020 Brookside revenues from fines and forfeitures soared more than 640 percent and now make up half the city’s total income. And the police chief has called for more. [more inside]
posted by martin q blank at 8:59 AM PST - 62 comments

'The Mushroom Hunters' by Neil Gaiman. [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 10:22 PM PST - 7 comments

It's gonna get cold here again in NE Ohio. Maybe time to experiment with bubbles (via Kottke). [more inside]
posted by kathrynm at 4:42 PM PST - 12 comments

All the growth in the music business now comes from old songs. Music writer Ted Gioia traces the decline of new music in a changing consumption landscape, observing falling Grammy ratings, a frenzy of labels buying up the back catalogs of legacy artists, and the continued commercial interest in vinyl records. He examines the forces behind this state of affairs and where music can go from here.
posted by chrchr at 2:50 PM PST - 165 comments

The Onion, Inc. Union reports on a mass resignation at "The A. V. Club" (SL Twitter)
posted by Ipsifendus at 2:33 PM PST - 63 comments

Why Do Grocery Stores Still Have Ethnic Aisles? NYTimes article (probably paywalled, but the main points are in the video). [more inside]
posted by mumimor at 2:22 PM PST - 96 comments

24 hours of trains in the Netherlands, created by taking one full day of actual train movements, as explained in the thread. SLTwitter.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:50 PM PST - 6 comments

In 2011, he began creating a “MINIATURE CALENDAR”, a form of art that sees him use alternative items to recreate everyday things in miniature form. Since then, he has been updating and uploading content to present online on a daily basis. [more inside]
posted by bq at 11:27 AM PST - 7 comments

If Your Mom Owned "Reviving Ophelia" in 1995, My Best Guess For Her Non-Fiction Purchases In Each Subsequent Year. From Daniel Lavery's Chatner: 'The “What Happened to My Daughter?” genre was strong that year. Who took my sweet little girl away from me? She was so affectionate when she was eight, but now she’s too princess, or she’s too pageant, or she’s too tomboy, or she’s too mental health diagnosis I’m suspicious of, or she’s getting transed (but I’m getting ahead of myself, as that particular anxiety wouldn’t hit the Reviving Ophelia set in a significant way for another few years).'
posted by snerson at 10:18 AM PST - 138 comments

Link to his obituary in Vogue. Fashion journalist André Leon Talley, often described as larger than life, has died at age 73. He was an American fashion journalist, stylist, creative director, and editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. He was the magazine's fashion news director from 1983 to 1987, its first Black male creative director from 1988 to 1995, and then its editor-at-large from 1998 to 2013. [more inside]
posted by wicked_sassy at 7:50 AM PST - 41 comments

If Willem Dafoe did commercial voiceovers as The Green Goblin. (sltwitter)
posted by everybody had matching towels at 5:25 AM PST - 12 comments

Chicago Public Media, home to WBEZ, will acquire the Sun-Times, with the Sun-Times joining WBEZ “as a not-for-profit subsidiary of Chicago Public Media.”
posted by Ghidorah at 11:20 PM PST - 29 comments

This Is What “Cozy” Looks Like Around the World (Apartment Therapy): “Is coziness an aesthetic brought about by carefully curated things, or is it a feeling rooted in something slightly intangible? You just know it when you see it and feel it, even if it doesn’t meet your own classic definition of cozy. We spoke to designers, creatives, and citizens of the globe to see what coziness looks like around the world.”
posted by not_the_water at 7:09 PM PST - 30 comments

"I think the reason I’ve hesitated to write about this one is that I don’t feel like I live a very poverty-stricken life. I have everything I need. No bills to worry about, no bank account to keep track of, no car payments or maintenance, no debts to pay off. I don’t have to go grocery shopping or rush around the mall trying to buy the latest fashions in clothing. I always have enough food to eat. I live a comfortable life. So what is poverty, and if I say that poverty is the first of the three vows I have taken, what does it mean to me?"
posted by clawsoon at 6:18 PM PST - 43 comments

"Obsessed with the ornithologist (Mario Cohn-Haft) who heard a birdsong he didn’t recognize in 1988, predicted that the song was made by a new species of bird, and then spent the next 25 years looking for it before finally discovering evidence for the previously undescribed species in 2013." Proposal (586) to South American Classification Committee. Predicted antwren birdsong and three recordings of other birdsong shared by Cohn-Haft on xeno-canto, "Sharing bird sounds from around the world".
posted by brainwane at 5:47 PM PST - 5 comments

The Last Design You'll Ever Make. "Designers were brought up to design from cradle to grave. Our new challenge is to postpone that grave as long as we can. How can we design the last product our customers will ever need buy? This is how to design for a right to repair." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 5:02 PM PST - 29 comments

What the Kids Are Reading. Paul Musgrave provides some data on how college students live in a different media world from their instructors - according to BLS surveys, average daily time spent reading for personal interest in this age group is less than 10 minutes. "I’ve started doing more direct reading instruction, including exercises to help students identify the thesis of a given reading and to teach the conventions of different forms of writing. This may seem basic, but it really isn’t: even within the kinds of general-interest readings I assign, the conventions of longform journalism, opinion writing, analytical essays, and straight news stories are as different as lyric poetry and free verse. And if you don’t know what’s going on, you really can’t read these, even if you can put every word and sentence together." [more inside]
posted by russilwvong at 3:45 PM PST - 29 comments

When the CEO of Pornhub’s mega-mansion mysteriously burned to the ground, there was no shortage of possible suspects. Now, for the first time, the site’s shadowy founders tell their story: XXX-Files: Who Torched the Pornhub Palace? [Vanity Fair] [Archive version] [story is technically SFW but it's about Pornhub so it's probably NSFW]
posted by chavenet at 2:46 PM PST - 16 comments

Microsoft Closing In On $70 Billion Deal To Buy Activision Blizzard – The Xbox owner is close to buying the beleaguered Call Of Duty publisher , Kotaku, John Walker, Jan 18, 2022: “In an extraordinary turn of events, Microsoft is getting near to a deal to buy Activision Blizzard, the Wall Street Journal reported today. This would not only be one of the most major shake-ups in the gaming industry in years but could also finally signal the end for its horrendous CEO, Bobby Kotick. Activision Blizzard has been going through a tumultuous time after widespread issues of sexual harassment and trauma were revealed within the enormous company…” [previously on MeFi.]
posted by cenoxo at 2:02 PM PST - 61 comments

Dun, Dun Duuun! Where did pop culture’s most dramatic sound come from? Yet though many of us are familiar with the sound, no one seems to know exactly where it came from. Try to Google it and … dun, dun, duuun! Its origins are a mystery.
posted by Cash4Lead at 1:36 PM PST - 33 comments

In April 2020, The Marsh family from Kent, UK cracked out a One Day More [check out the red flag 1.45m] parody about the then lockdown. Their latest sprightly commentary is on Boris Johnson's Government stonewalling on partygate: -"We'll Have to Wait for Sue Gray's Inquiry". Ms Gray may be the only senior civil servant in the corridors of power who hasn't been at a party . . . yet. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:35 PM PST - 7 comments

"Weird Al" Yankovic biopic will star Daniel Radcliffe. “When my last movie UHF came out in 1989, I made a solemn vow to my fans that I would release a major motion picture every 33 years, like clockwork. I’m very happy to say we’re on schedule.”
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 1:22 PM PST - 24 comments

"Hello, I'm sorry, this is going to sound weird but please give me a chance. When you were eighteen, did you have a childhood friend named Carli that you lost contact with after you left to go to college?" [more inside]
posted by brook horse at 10:29 AM PST - 44 comments

Dogs can distinguish language from gibberish—and tell languages apart. Many animals can pick out auditory patterns in human speech—but a study suggests dogs are particularly good at it. [more inside]
posted by fruitslinger at 10:06 AM PST - 34 comments

Both seasons of the critically-acclaimed queer web series The Outs are now free to watch. [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 9:37 AM PST - 4 comments

It's another Monday, by which I mean it's a Tuesday, and so it's time for another Free Thread! Come on in and talk about whatever, tell folks about an interesting animal and/or mineral you know something about, discuss your progress along the Kübler-Ross "five stages of social media Wordle score posting discourse" journey, etc. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 9:07 AM PST - 293 comments

In 2008, the Norwegian city Hamar decided to build a diving tower. The estimated cost was 1.5 million krone (roughly $170k USD). Seven years and 28 million krone later, it was finally finished. Here is the story of the most expensive diving tower in the world, told half as documentary and half as absurdist musical. [SL DailyMotion, subtitles available in English] [more inside]
posted by rorgy at 8:36 AM PST - 7 comments

Nikole Hannah-Jones (previously), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the The 1619 Project, was invited to give a speech about Dr. King, only to have a small number of members of the group hosting her claiming that her presence "dishonored" the Civil Rights icon. "So," Jones tweeted, "I scrapped my original speech and spent the entire first half of it reading excerpts from a bunch of Dr. King's speeches, but without telling anyone that I was doing so, leading the audience to think King's words were mine. And, whew, chile, it was AMAZING." Twitter thread starts here.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:06 AM PST - 33 comments

30 contributors selected a collection of 120 video essays on movies and how we view them
posted by gusottertrout at 4:37 AM PST - 4 comments

web3isgoinggreat.com is a schadenfreude filled timeline curated by Molly White that collects the grift, scams, hacks, and "rug-pulls" that seem to define the cryptocurrency ecosystem. She's also written about how blockchain-based systems are not what they say they are and that after more than a decade, it's not still early days for these projects. Extra bonus reading, Paul Butler's "Play-to-earn" and Bullshit Jobs, which explores the dismal grinding of the web3/NFT based games through the lens of Graeber's thesis about useless work, Nicolas Weaver's "The Web3 Fraud", which illustrates how web3 will still need all the same infrastructure since there is no actual decentralization there, and Natalie Weizenbaum's deeply disappointing list of otherwise decent people who are issuing NFTs.
posted by autopilot at 4:31 AM PST - 217 comments

Absurdle is like Wordle, but it hates you. (How it works.)
posted by Upton O'Good at 10:25 PM PST - 50 comments

Here We Have A Perfectly Nice Slice Of 32nd Street, Between 2nd And 3rd Ave. According To Present Day Google Maps, This Block Has A Dunkin, A Starbucks, And A Comic Book Store, As Well As Manhattan PS 116.

Now, With The Block-For-Block Program, This Charming Parcel Could Be Exchanged With A Lot Of Equivalent Size In Eastern Utah, Specifically The Area Of Arches National Park. Of Course, There’s A Bit Of Infrastructure Work To Do In Order To Account For A Substantial Difference In Topography, But We Can Talk Details Later.
posted by wesleyac at 9:21 PM PST - 25 comments

Wikitrivia by Tom J. Watson is a game you can play for free in your browser. You get cards representing historical events, and have to put them in chronological order (like the card game Chronology). The software reuses data from the Wikimedia project Wikidata (previously). [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 3:51 PM PST - 51 comments

"Surrounded by candles and crystals, [Erin Shade] described their relationship as an abuse of power. “People like Joss offset their trauma on other people in exchange for their energy, and take their energy to keep going — to keep themselves alive, almost,” she told me. “That’s why he’s so good at the vampire narrative.” (Whedon says he “should have handled the situation better.”)"

- The Undoing of Joss Whedon (Vulture, cw: descriptions of abuse, racism). Joss previously on the Blue, here, here and here.
posted by fight or flight at 3:01 PM PST - 130 comments

SPICEdao mistakenly believed it had acquired copyright to produce NFTs "Crypto group shamed for spending $3m on ‘Dune’ book, mistakenly believing it had acquired copyright to produce NFTs" [more inside]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 2:03 PM PST - 66 comments

The recent Nature-Deficit Disorder post reminded me of the video "Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud" [SYTL] on the Not Just Bikes channel. We don't want to go to nature to escape from cities; we want to escape from noise. Specifically, the noise from car horns, exhaust pipes, but especially tires. [more inside]
posted by AlSweigart at 1:52 PM PST - 33 comments

The Washington Post has examined thousands of pages of census records and historical documents and found that more than 1,700 congressmen once enslaved Black people. People who had been slaveholders continued to serve in Congress well into the 20th century. [more inside]
posted by Word_Salad at 1:27 PM PST - 6 comments

Do Cheetahs Prefer Cold Hard Concrete Or Warm Blankets Pillow & A Friend? Featuring feline behaviour that most of us know intimately from our own moggies.
posted by MartinWisse at 9:46 AM PST - 31 comments

This Central Valley outpost is one of the most fertile places on Earth, attracting thousands of seasonal laborers to harvest lettuce and reaping windfalls for big agribusiness. But for most of Rey León’s life, the city of Huron has been a transportation desert. ... now, as the Biden administration builds its multibillion-dollar blueprint for confronting deep inequities in the transition to green transportation, one of the few places it has to look for inspiration is Huron. Evan Halper reports for the LA Times on an innovative electric car ride-sharing initiative in a neglected Central Valley town. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 7:31 AM PST - 7 comments

When Bob "Jawbone" Zabor, a one-man blues band from Detroit, played a 2004 live session on John Peel's BBC radio show, the DJ declared him "almost a definition of what I would like this programme to be about". Peel played nearly every track of Jawbone's homemade CDR on the show and immediately invited him for another live session - but died before that offer could be made good. Jawbone, who still struggled to find gigs in America, released a couple of official albums here and remained a cult favourite on the UK circuit until 2008, when he suddenly dropped out of sight. Now he's back with his first new songs in over a decade and this exclusive PlanetSlade interview telling the full story. Listen on Spotify or Apple Music. [via Paul Slade’s mefi project]
posted by ellieBOA at 1:11 AM PST - 5 comments

Professor puts hilarious Deadwood-ish rant video up at the start of his class, drama ensues. "Barry Mehler is a Ferris State University professor in Michigan who was suspended after posting an expletive-filled video for his class in which he told students they were “vectors of disease” who should “stay the f*** away from me” due to COVID-19." [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:29 PM PST - 93 comments

Beatrice Mintz, 100, of Philadelphia, a pioneering, award-winning research scientist in developmental biology and genetics, gene-transfer technology, epigenetics, and tumor microenvironment, died Monday, Jan. 3 [more inside]
posted by sepviva at 7:06 PM PST - 10 comments

Some vintage feel-good pieces from Steve Dublanica's blog Waiter Rant: "Miracle Pizza", "Twenty Year Payback", "Bride & Groom", and the more bittersweet "Tapestry". (Previously, previously.)
posted by brainwane at 2:25 PM PST - 9 comments

Writers often toil in solitude. Here's a place we can gather, whether to write silently in the Studio or talk about books and writing in the Lounge. The 24-Hour Room is a free virtual writers space offering fellowship, structure, solutions, motivation and intellectual sustenance. [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 1:31 PM PST - 5 comments

You've heard of African Swine Fever in Europe before. Now that first cases have just been reported in Piedmont and Liguria, Italians are waking up to looming trade bans on some of their most prized exports, and lockdowns of large tracts of their beloved forests. Few Italians are aware, however, that Europeans colonizers are to thank for the emergence and spread of this flu/fever/pest/pandemic, or of Italy's direct responsibility (pdf here) in causing the previous animal panzootic in Africa, the devastating, genocidal rinderpest of the 1880-90's, in response to which European hogs were introduced to Africa in the first place... [more inside]
posted by progosk at 11:50 AM PST - 3 comments

There are plenty of towns our size, especially if you look outside the US, that are able to be financially solvent while we struggle. "This is a story about how we re-developed this town."
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 8:08 AM PST - 67 comments

Left Alive And Unchanged is the story behind the still extant website of the Heaven's Gate cult, whose infamous 1997 mass suicide in a mansion near San Diego, CA is still being talked about today.
posted by tommasz at 6:32 AM PST - 22 comments

This is no way to be human by Alan Lightman [archive version]
posted by chavenet at 3:34 AM PST - 42 comments

The Mary Worth comment board is unhinged and, frankly, a little frightening. “Honestly, the fervency of their devotion to this comic strip is impressive, and we should all wish for this kind of action.”
posted by marxchivist at 6:37 PM PST - 67 comments

"We’d stop writing about the guy if he stopped giving us fresh crap to write about." "Why on earth would Australia let in a reckless, twice-infected, antivaxxer who is clearly not interested in following rules, and quite possibly played fast-and-loose with the exemption protocols so that he could hit a yellow ball with a racket?" [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:36 PM PST - 96 comments

Dancing With Systems is an essay listing a dozen+ ways of thinking about, working with and enhancing systems. The author is Donella Meadows, one of the authors of environmental classic, The Limits To Growth. From the list, e.g. "#7. Make feedback policies for feedback systems. President Jimmy Carter had an unusual ability to think in feedback terms and to make feedback policies. Unfortunately he had a hard time explaining them to a press and public that didn’t understand feedback. He suggested, at a time when oil imports were soaring, that there be a tax on gasoline proportional to the fraction of U.S. oil consumption that had to be imported. If imports continued to rise the tax would rise, until it suppressed demand and brought forth substitutes and reduced imports. If imports fell to zero, the tax would fall to zero. The tax never got passed." [more inside]
posted by storybored at 4:43 PM PST - 9 comments

"A View from the Bridge" by Matthew O. Dumont, MD is an excerpt from his 1994 memoir Treating the Poor: A Personal Sojourn Through the Rise and Fall of Community Health. Blogger siderea recommends it as "a medical mystery – a psychiatric medical mystery – that goes in a very unexpected and illuminating direction" and recommends: "This is worth reading unspoiled." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 12:48 PM PST - 10 comments

Students are demanding to be protected from COVID-19 at schools. As schools return from winter break, the omicron COVID-19 variant continues to cause outbreaks among students, teachers, and staff at school. The staffing shortages have become so severe that some districts are asking parents to come in as substitutes and to fill in various roles at schools. In various cities, teachers unions and districts are fighting with over remote schooling and COVID safety. Amid the tumult, students are also fighting to be heard, and to guarantee their own safety in schools. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 7:51 AM PST - 147 comments

It all feels like some terribly boring nightmare, this gentle constant frustration in the space where hope used to be. Back to Normal Isn't Enough, from Kelsey McKinney, writing for Defector. [more inside]
posted by Ghidorah at 5:58 AM PST - 209 comments

A Spotify list with a theme.
posted by otherchaz at 4:02 AM PST - 16 comments

Looptap
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 2:41 AM PST - 16 comments

Good taste prevents me from providing a sample video above the fold because Here Thar Be Trigger Warnings. Yar! Short videos describe persons who made incredibly foolish decisions and the results thereof. Very scientific, very horrific descriptions ensue. Please stop and think before clicking upon...

                Chubbyemu's videos. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 10:15 PM PST - 35 comments

Jean-Jacques Beineix, stylish French film director, passed away at home in Paris on 13 January 2022 after a long illness. [more inside]
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 4:45 PM PST - 21 comments

Prince Andrew loses his military titles, patronages, and use of the term "His Royal Highness." A day after a ruling that Virginia Roberts Giuffre's lawsuit against Prince Andrew accusing him of rape will proceed, and after 150+ war heroes wrote a letter urging the Queen to strip Andrew of his titles, the Queen of England officially took away her favorite son's military titles*, patronages, and his "His Royal Highness" "styling--well, he technically still has that last one, he's just not really allowed to use it any more. The military appointments have been "in abeyance" since 2019 when Prince Andrew was forced to step down from public duties in 2019, but he still retained them until now. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:10 PM PST - 60 comments

A local scientist has just published a study of pre-human vegetation in Southern New Zealand Central Otago New Zealand - largely through analysing moa (Dinonis species) coprolites and bedding material in caves. This has taken forty years as the region is harsh (<400mm rainfall, -20 to +40°C), inaccessible and research was self-funded. [more inside]
posted by unearthed at 12:37 PM PST - 7 comments

... however much you may wish he would go away, he isn’t going to. His Brexit moment might have passed. But the future probably still belongs to people like him. And it remains as important as ever to try to understand what the other side thinks.

Single Link The Guardian longread on "the most interesting writer about politics in Britain today" ... Dominic Cummings
posted by protorp at 12:18 PM PST - 19 comments

Bidoof's Big Stand, a cute short film about everyone's favourite normal-type beaver-inspired Pokémon. Bonus: a 2 hour metatextual analysis of Bidoof's contribution to society.
posted by Stark at 10:15 AM PST - 18 comments

The Dystopian Existential Nightmare of Motel Makeover (SLYT)
posted by clawsoon at 9:31 AM PST - 36 comments

Olivia Colman + Adrian Edmondson read letters between Sultan Mehmed IV and the Zaporozhian Cossacks (3:56 YouTube) [more inside]
posted by Glinn at 9:01 AM PST - 25 comments

Winter Is for Regeneration. The Garden’s — and Yours, Too by Jess Housty is the first in a Tyee series of essays on winter’s meaning. [more inside]
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 8:07 AM PST - 1 comment

Claire Armitstead in The Guardian on a new documentary by Salomé Jashi. On the surface, Taming the Garden is a faithful record of the tough negotiations and brutal mechanics of tree removal. One family are delighted to sell their tree. They are in debt and have been trying to kill it for years because it blocks the sun from their mandarin orchard. Others are left in grief, with gardens cratered like bombsites. All are unaware that the chosen specimen may not be the only tree to suffer; so will any lesser trees unfortunate enough to impede its transportation, sometimes by two lorries abreast, along roads that have to be specially widened for each journey. From this limb-cracking progress emerges a profoundly moving meditation on power, the vulnerability of nature and the primordial impulse of men to bend the environment to their will.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:22 AM PST - 7 comments

People Building ‘Blockchain City’ in Wyoming Scammed by Hackers. [more inside]
posted by signal at 6:31 AM PST - 133 comments

Signature Theatre is thrilled to announce that special arrangements have been made to stream Everybody Rise: Signature Remembers Stephen Sondheim for free for a limited 72-hour period. [DC Metro] Trailer. YouTube Link for viewing that will go live this evening.
posted by hippybear at 5:41 AM PST - 7 comments

Dev corrupts NPM libs 'colors' and 'faker' breaking thousands of apps Developer of open source projects “colors” and “faker” decides to brick his own projects . GitHub has reportedly suspended the developer's account. [more inside]
posted by beesbees at 9:34 PM PST - 134 comments

Takeaways from the landmark sedition indictment against the Oath Keepers and why DOJ acted now , Marshall Cohen, CNN, Updated 10:39 PM EST, Thu January 13, 2022. The Justice Department on Thursday announced the first sedition charges related to the January 6 insurrection, a watershed moment in the year-long investigation. The case revolves around the Oath Keepers, a far-right extremist group, and its leader Stewart Rhodes.
posted by cenoxo at 9:24 PM PST - 75 comments

Corresponent Mike Leonard imagined in 1986 what Today would look like in 2022. [more inside]
posted by zaixfeep at 4:20 PM PST - 15 comments

Bring in the grain, uncover a mystery, and lose yourself in the dance of Peter Talisman. [more inside]
posted by overeducated_alligator at 2:11 PM PST - 12 comments

One of the most atmospheric bands of the late 1980s, Hugo Largo had a sound anchored by two bass guitars embellished with violin and the incredible voice of Mimi Goese. It was also the most direct link between Michael Stipe and Brian Eno (until Stephen Colbert, anyway).
posted by rikschell at 1:39 PM PST - 19 comments

Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self Part 6 Julie Nolke again, with green hair this time. [more inside]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:00 PM PST - 20 comments

Tiny House Villages (THVs) are a housing first solution that can create a sense of ownership, security, and dignity for residents. For example, Community First! Village in Austin Texas is expanding its 200-unit community of tiny houses and campers, surrounding community kitchens, workshops, health services. The Hope Factory in Seattle Washington has created an assembly line process for volunteers to build 4 tiny homes each week. [more inside]
posted by rebent at 10:27 AM PST - 35 comments

David Simon Made Baltimore Detectives Famous. Now Their Cases Are Falling Apart. [New York Magazine] At 7:45 p.m. on December 27, 1986, Faheem Ali was shot dead in the streets of Baltimore. No physical evidence tied anyone to the killing, and no eyewitnesses immediately came forward. But Baltimore homicide detectives Thomas Pellegrini, Richard Fahlteich, and Oscar “The Bunk” Requer were not going to give up easily.

Requer and Pellegrini are among a constellation of Baltimore Police Department officers who have, through Simon’s work, defined what it means to be a homicide detective in the popular imagination — and whose biggest cases are starting to fall apart or have been overturned.
posted by riruro at 10:09 AM PST - 53 comments

Individually Ticketed Films are honestly a great deal at $20 and they go on sale today. The promise of online Sundance last year literally kept me going through the darkest days of covid winter and I am truly grateful they are doing it again this year. [more inside]
posted by wowenthusiast at 9:24 AM PST - 17 comments

Author and pastry chef David Lebovitz shares a recipe for tangerine sorbet and musings on citrus. Lebovitz also links to his recipe for bergamot marmalade, references the California Rare Fruit Growers organization, and name-checks kumquats (which are "either members of the citrus family, or they're not".) [more inside]
posted by fruitslinger at 8:05 AM PST - 27 comments

"On a cold winter’s evening back in 2009, over a few pints in a Bath pub, four transport professionals discussed where the most unlikely place would be to run a bus service." The answer was the uninhabited village of Imber, closed by the Ministry of Defence during World War II and since used as an urban warfare training site. And the result was bus service 23A, also known as Imberbus, most recently operated on 21 August 2021 with 18 old and new Routemaster buses stopping at Imber and Gore Cross on their way to Brazen Bottom with up to 15-minute headways, maps, printed schedules, rollsigns, and all the accoutrements one would expect from a scheduled public bus service, but maybe not one that operates once a year. An All The Stations video on the Imberbus Ghost Village Bus Service shows the route and a short interview with Sir Peter Hendy, one of the most prominent British transport executives, but also organizer of the service and apparently a huge bus nerd.
posted by grouse at 7:47 AM PST - 17 comments

@TarynDeVere: "My style challenge for Jan is to dress inspired by something in my house each day. Today it's sink unblocker." (Interview from Australian TV).
posted by rongorongo at 6:34 AM PST - 24 comments

Michigans "Sherwood Forest: How it began; How it ended." [more inside]
posted by clavdivs at 10:39 PM PST - 21 comments

Ronnie Spector has died at age 78. Best known as the frontwoman of The Ronettes (and the only one who actually sang on their signature hit, 1963’s Be My Baby), she survived a bright spotlight and a tight wardrobe at a young age, and later, an abusive marriage to a certain murderous record producer. [more inside]
posted by armeowda at 10:07 PM PST - 42 comments

Students Are Doing What Adults Won’t in the Fight Against Omicron [Vice/Motherboard] " “We are tired of adult leadership not being able to represent the voice of the people that are affected by the shit that they're putting into place,” Santiago De La Garza, a 16-year-old junior at Solorio Academy in Chicago who plans to participate in the walkout, told Motherboard."
posted by hippybear at 8:46 PM PST - 31 comments

Making a milk crate, stop motion style . omozoc makes stop motion videos that are surreal, hilarious and captivating. The sound is great, too. [more inside]
posted by Gorgik at 8:03 PM PST - 12 comments

In December 2020, George Meyer—once called "the funniest man on the funniest show on TV by the New Yorker—launched a new online comedy enterprise, Frogs & Turtles. It consists of two pages of occasionally-updated humorous bits, one of which is called Frogs, and the other of which is called Turtles. In many ways it's reminiscent of his old publication Army Man, which was the birthplace of a shocking number of American comedy greats (previously here, and miraculously archived in its entirety on Tumblr). Come for the groundbreaking next-level web design, stay for the... frogs and turtles, I guess.
posted by rorgy at 2:36 PM PST - 36 comments

Code is Just is the twitter memoir of Shahid Kamal Ahmad, a largely self-taught programmer and diabetic Pakistani teenager in 80s London. He talks about his home life, his early experiences with game making and publishing, how he was asked to port Jet Set Willy to the Commodore 64 in under a month(!) and how he attempted to single-handedly reverse engineer Knight Lore's isometric 3d. Threadreader version. Footnotes twitter thread.
Content Warning: Racism, Health issues
posted by Sparx at 1:54 PM PST - 17 comments

The T.A.M.I. Show [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 12:17 PM PST - 30 comments

Physics simulations of bounching balls, simulated forward and backward from a perfect moment in time. More where that came from. [via Kottke]
posted by cortex at 11:38 AM PST - 24 comments

Derek Lowe on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' decision to not pay for the controversial Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm except for use during a clinical trial: PhRMA should want drugs that work; instead, they're coming out in favor of drugs that are approved and are reimbursed by insurance, and Aduhelm is evidence that those categories are not the same. I wish they were. I wish a lot of things. [more inside]
posted by metaquarry at 9:24 AM PST - 20 comments

Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike weighs in on web3: When people talk about blockchains, they talk about distributed trust, leaderless consensus, and all the mechanics of how that works, but often gloss over the reality that clients ultimately can’t participate in those mechanics. All the network diagrams are of servers, the trust model is between servers, everything is about servers. Blockchains are designed to be a network of peers, but not designed such that it’s really possible for your mobile device or your browser to be one of those peers.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:50 AM PST - 144 comments

So many TV shows and movies now have a dull filter applied to every scene, one that cuts away vibrancy and trends toward a boring sameness. Every frame’s color scheme ends up feeling the same as every other frame. And when there are so many projects using similar techniques, you end up with a world of boring visuals that don’t stand out. Colors: Where did they go? An investigation that includes history, examples, and not much snark by Emily VanDerWerff in Vox.
posted by Bella Donna at 7:43 AM PST - 75 comments

Violinist Hilary Hahn encourages Instagram musicians to practice 100 days in a row. She started earlier this month with her fifth round of #100daysofpractice challenge, inviting people to join, but emphasizing that it's not a challenge. So far, she has been joined by other violinists, violists, pianists, harpists, clarinettists, saxophonists, and many other musicians from around the world. [more inside]
posted by easternblot at 7:42 AM PST - 11 comments

Michigan DOT Snowplow Names (h/t)
posted by May Kasahara at 6:53 AM PST - 39 comments

"A small handful of filmmakers mastered the 'talkies' and made movies that look and sound as if they could have been made years later...It’s full of familiar classics, with a film or two that will probably be unknown to many." The ten best films of 1931. [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 4:09 AM PST - 31 comments

Over on Cartoblography, Kenneth Field has published his annual look at his favorite maps from the past year. His list includes Stamen 2020 Headquarters by Catalina Plé, 500,000 lives lost by NBC News, Population change by US state since 2010 by Adrian Blanco and Tim Meko at The Washington Post, Global Glacier Loss by Niko Kommenda, San Marino Bus Map by Jug Cerovic, It’s Coming Home by Dan, Algonquin Canoe Trip by Warren Davison, Tokyo Olympics Opening Ceremony Drone Globe, Atlas of the Invisible by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti, St. Vincent Island by Aaron Koelker, Arctic Warming by Greg Fiske, The Lost Treasures of Isla del Coco by Jakob Listabarth, and Murky Waters by Andrew Douglas Clifford.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 3:31 AM PST - 6 comments

The forgotten medieval habit of 'two sleeps' “ For millennia, people slept in two shifts – once in the evening, and once in the morning. But why? And how did the habit disappear?”
posted by dhruva at 9:47 PM PST - 95 comments

Dozens of ostriches run on main roads after fleeing from farm in China
posted by ActingTheGoat at 8:37 PM PST - 13 comments

One woman sleeps with hordes of terrible men, and has a wonderful time doing so.
posted by Hypatia at 11:16 AM PST - 56 comments

(CW - rats) Dickens picked up on the qualities of HEROrats a while back, it seems. Magawa was a very fine fellow and even won a gold medal for being a fine stealthy and secret public servant. More about the organisation who trained Magawa. More about Magawa's folks.
posted by Martha My Dear Prudence at 10:11 AM PST - 13 comments

Meditation is an ancient technology. Can we hack it? This post will introduce you to the recent rise of consumer-grade at-home wearables aimed at assisting your meditation practice; and also list out some prominent western teachers and researchers who have adapted the ancient into the modern. [more inside]
posted by St. Peepsburg at 9:57 AM PST - 50 comments

"Mary Delany’s stunning works are a remarkable combination of art and science. Often mistaken for watercolours, they are in fact carefully constructed paper collages, or ‘mosaicks’ as she called them. Surprisingly, the story starts when the artist was 72, after she noticed the similarity between a geranium and a piece of red paper that was on her bedside table. The realisation prompted Delany to pick up a pair of scissors and imitate the petals in paper." [more inside]
posted by jedicus at 8:31 AM PST - 19 comments

Wigu, a webcomic by Jeffrey Rowland, turned 20 years old this month. Rowland has written other good comics too and founded Topatoco.
posted by curious nu at 8:07 AM PST - 18 comments

My money is on the kitties. [A tiny tiny link, just one twitter photo but it's cute and funny and I'm tired of real news.]
posted by JanetLand at 5:28 AM PST - 32 comments

Inventing an avant-garde movement and its principal protagonists, then attempting to institutionalize the movement with literary criticism written by yet more imagined personae: it seems, at first, insane. Indeed, Pessoa feared for his sanity as a youth, having watched his paternal grandmother lose her grip on reality. But as a student of fin-de-siècle theories that posited a correlation between artistic genius and mental degeneracy, Pessoa decided his mind was one thus afflicted. Regardless of its cause, Pessoa’s mad strategy succeeded. from Conceptual Personae - The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 4:18 AM PST - 3 comments

Best JoKeS Russian Dubbed Simpson's Treehouse of Horror XXVIII Pez dispenser intro

Best JoKeS Russian Dubbed Lego Simpsons action [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 3:38 AM PST - 10 comments

In light of recent reporting on conditions in the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City, Orion J Taylor decided to collect and visualize some articles they've encountered about deaths in detention centers across the US. The stories represent only a fraction of these, just one per county. (Each map region has a link to a article.) [more inside]
posted by eotvos at 7:16 PM PST - 10 comments

Are you a Californian with an idea for legislation? The California Democrats want to hear your ideas The legislative calendar for the 2022 season is rapidly filling up, and members of the Assembly would like to hear suggestions from their constituents. For California residents, the deadline is Friday January 14th. If you're a student in New York, there's asimilar competition going on (Middle School only). Students in Pennyslvania also have an opportunity.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 6:12 PM PST - 12 comments

"Consent" is the Wrong Framework for Experiencing Art by Gretchen Felker-Martin. [more inside]
posted by StopMakingSense at 5:06 PM PST - 83 comments

Kathy Loves Physics & History has created 50 5-10 minute episodes on the history of electricity.
posted by clawsoon at 1:24 PM PST - 23 comments

Story about a UPenn student who wins a Rhodes Scholarship -- (archive link). She claimed she was a first-generation, low-income student who had suffered severe abuse at the hands of her mother that landed her in the hospital and then bouncing between foster homes. Penn received an anonymous email claiming that she had falsified her background (they claim that she may have been abused but exaggerated the extent of it and exaggerated her first-generation low-income bona fides) and then launched an investigation and recommended that Rhodes rescind the award. Student claims that this was retaliation for standing up for a classmate who had died. Ends up withdrawing from the program and files a lawsuit against Penn. Definitely a crazy story and a wild ride. Curious to hear what others think of UPenn's response and the student's claims about her background.
posted by 47WaysToLeaveYourLover at 12:06 PM PST - 76 comments

Artist Wayne Thiebaud has died at 101. The art world lost painter Wayne Thiebaud on Christmas day. Known for his glorious portraits of food, especially desserts, the artist also painted landscapes and figures, chasing light and texture and shape obsessively. He painted daily up to his death. [more inside]
posted by PussKillian at 11:16 AM PST - 25 comments

In 2019's Dismissive Incomprehension: A Use of Purported Ignorance to Undermine Others, Matthew J Cull explores the common rhetorical tactic of pretending that someone has not made sense but has uttered "gibberish," in order to discredit their argument. How does the tactic work...and what can be done to counteract it?
posted by mittens at 11:11 AM PST - 22 comments

We had a free thread last week, and it was nice, and so by gum we're doing it again. Come on in and chat about whatever, share wee links, tell everybody something weird or interesting you just learned or that you've studied professionally for 20 years, whatever you feel like. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 11:03 AM PST - 372 comments

The Restaurant of Mistaken Orders (Japan): All of our servers are people living with dementia. They may, or may not, get your order right. However, rest assured that even if your order is mistaken, everything on our menu is delicious and one of a kind. This, we guarantee. Street Roots gives the history of how Japanese journalist Shiro Oguni got the idea for the pop-up restaurant when he visited a dementia care facility. The home, run by dementia care specialist Yukio Wada, treated residents with dignity and gave them opportunities to contribute to the daily routine via cooking. This charming 2 minute video shows the restaurant, happy customers, and waitstaff in action.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:54 AM PST - 15 comments

Karawan - your pixelated, hex based world is disintegrating, hexes falling away, chunks of land drifting off into the void. Recruit villagers and mages and forage for resources but keep moving forwards. [more inside]
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:47 AM PST - 10 comments

Damp greetings! Dip your toes back into the murk and discover the Pink See-Through Fantasia, a gorgeous sea cucumber with a visible digestive system! Splash this way! [more inside]
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:29 AM PST - 4 comments

The time, place, and plan for perhaps the greatest crime in American history have been identified. We have three years to stop it. ... The size of the threat, combined with the difficulty of addressing it, can feel paralyzing. But just because we can’t do everything, doesn’t mean nothing can be done. There is one achievable chokepoint that would make it nearly impossible for Trump or his heirs to steal the next election: winning key governors’ races. Author and cohost of Pod Save America, Dan Pfeiffer, suggests one key way to save US democracy. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 8:26 AM PST - 26 comments

The musical time machine. (previously, 7 years ago)
posted by kmt at 8:11 AM PST - 5 comments

Shelley Puhak writes in Smithsonian magazine about the long-reigning, ambitious Frankish queens Brunhild and Fredegund.
posted by jedicus at 7:53 AM PST - 5 comments

LOCO: The 88-million-word language of conspiracy corpus The spread of online conspiracy theories represents a serious threat to society. To understand the content of conspiracies, here we present (...) an 88-million-token corpus composed of topic-matched conspiracy (N = 23,937) and mainstream (N = 72,806) documents harvested from 150 websites. [more inside]
posted by Shepherd at 2:39 AM PST - 13 comments

The year is 2022. Our overpopulated planet is experiencing catastrophic climate change, megacorporations have excessive power over the government, and clean living is a luxury only the 1 percent can afford. from In 1973, ‘Soylent Green’ envisioned the world in 2022. It got a lot right. [more inside]
posted by chavenet at 1:17 AM PST - 63 comments

Dwayne Hickman has died, age 87. Protagonist of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (where his bestie was Bob Denver as the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs), early co-stars also included Warren Beatty and Tuesday Weld -- here they all are in this clip. [more inside]
posted by Rash at 10:43 PM PST - 26 comments

Sources familiar with the company’s deals say instructors make about $100,000 up front when they begin working with MasterClass and receive 30 percent of the revenue their classes generate.
posted by folklore724 at 7:30 PM PST - 30 comments

"I had no idea I did a 2 hr set tonight. I’m happily addicted again to this shit." Bob Saget did a standup set in Jacksonville, Florida Saturday night and was found dead in his room this afternoon. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 5:18 PM PST - 91 comments

An interview with musician Stromae on French TV news channel TFI that turns into something incredible [more inside]
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:17 PM PST - 14 comments

A collection of drawings of the root systems of various plants. Some background in this Washington Post article. Plant roots previously on MetaFilter.
posted by a feather in amber at 2:58 PM PST - 13 comments

What you alarmists in your lifeboat bubbles don’t realize is ordinary people don’t care about life jackets or buoyancy or physics, and when you talk about those things you sound out-of-touch.
posted by signal at 2:40 PM PST - 78 comments

Please, enough with the dead butterflies! [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 1:03 PM PST - 23 comments

Hostility and chronic stress are known risk factors for heart disease, but they are costly to assess on a large scale. A cross-sectional regression model based only on Twitter language predicted AHD mortality significantly better than did a model that combined 10 common demographic, socioeconomic, and health risk factors, including smoking, diabetes, hypertension, and obesity.
posted by COD at 9:36 AM PST - 30 comments

Stevie Martin and Lola-Rose Maxwell make sketches about the frustrations of dealing with technology, work, and everyday situations, like verifying that you're not a robot, buying food online, working "for exposure", every time you try and go on a website, when you forget your password, trying to print something and others. [more inside]
posted by AllShoesNoSocks at 5:05 AM PST - 22 comments

"The earliest issues of the Neue Musik-Zeitung were anchored by short musical compositions, typically two pages in length for either solo piano or voice and piano, appearing on pages 2 and 3 of each issue... Beginning in the second year, music supplements were added in order to separate the notated music from the text. It is in these supplements that most printed music, advertisements, and the occasional catalogue can be found." [more inside]
posted by polytope subirb enby-of-piano-dice at 4:32 AM PST - 4 comments

The Adamant Gambit is a collaborative series of ten short browser adventure games set on board a generation ship over the course of a millennium. Tips after the jump. [more inside]
posted by BiggerJ at 6:31 PM PST - 3 comments

New Orleans City Council votes unanimously to rename Robert E. Lee Blvd for legendary musician Allen Toussaint (CNN, Chris Boyette and Keith Allen) [more inside]
posted by kristi at 5:55 PM PST - 22 comments

Chicken boxer vs. Wing Chun Cat.
posted by clavdivs at 3:44 PM PST - 10 comments

How Many Bagels Does It Take to Keep a Place in Business? - The NYTimes talks to Montreal's St. Viateur and NYC's Ess-a-Bagel about keeping the dough coming in and sending the dough out
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:28 PM PST - 8 comments

Prime Time Propaganda: How the White House Secretly Hooked Network TV on its Anti-Drug Message (Salon, 2000, see also NYT and WaPo). The author of the Salon article, Daniel Forbes, would report further on this program (and other Clinton-era anti-drug propaganda efforts) before it was quietly ended by George W. Bush, who hasn't used cocaine since 1974.
posted by box at 1:10 PM PST - 23 comments

Many people know the “Gimme Shelter” documentary pretty well, but there’s a lot more in this home movie. [more inside]
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:35 AM PST - 5 comments

Documentarian Georgina Savage returns to her native South Africa to document her family’s fight against rhinoceros poachers in Kruger National Park, but as she gets more immersed in the lives of those involved, she must confront the colonial past of her country and its implications on a conflict close to home. Follow her tracks in eight long, profoundly researched and beautifully written and reported podcast episodes: The Invisible Hand. [more inside]
posted by progosk at 10:33 AM PST - 3 comments

The secret deportations: how Britain betrayed the Chinese men who served the country in World War II. During the second world war, Chinese merchant seamen helped keep Britain fed, fuelled and safe – and many gave their lives doing so. But from late 1945, hundreds of them who had settled (some married, with kids) in Liverpool suddenly disappeared. Now their children are piecing together the truth.
posted by lalochezia at 10:11 AM PST - 12 comments

61 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2022. Rare Toni Morrison short story to be published this month. 24 Must Read 2022 Books in Translation. 25 Cookbooks to Look Forward to in 2022. 49 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2022. 55 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2022. [more inside]
posted by toastyk at 8:21 AM PST - 5 comments

Three weeks later, the cats are still holding it hostage. Happy Caturday
posted by briank at 7:54 AM PST - 63 comments

January 8 is Bowiemas. He would have been 75 years old today. This is going to be a big party. [Rolling Stone archive link] You can buy a ticket to attend! [box office link] Madame Tussauds London announce new David Bowie figure to celebrate his 75th birthday [NME] David Bowie - Shadow Man (Unplugged & Somewhat Slightly Electric Mix) is a recording you've never heard before, released just yesterday. [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:46 AM PST - 11 comments

Photographer David M Bird creates model creatures out of acorns which he calls becorns and then contrives to get real birds to pose with them.
posted by Mitheral at 7:27 AM PST - 10 comments

Dr Meg “Canopy-Meg” Lowman is used to being the lone woman in a man’s world. She is currently working with a committee Ethiopian priests to protect “church forests” from grazing by cattle and encroaching cultivation by neighbouring teff [MetaPrev] farmers; in collaboration with Alemayehu Wassie Eshete. [more inside]
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:55 AM PST - 4 comments

OFF BOOK: The Improvised Musical is a podcast where Jessica McKenna & Zach Reino accompanied by Scott Passarella, Brett Morris, and Dana Wickens create an improvised musical every episode. They recently featured on dropout.tv's Gamechanger show (paywalled, but songs on YT here) but what I'd like to draw your attention to is this live show from 2018 wherein you can learn more than you ever thought you wanted to know about high school mock trials.
posted by juv3nal at 11:27 PM PST - 3 comments

What did we get stuck in our rectum last year? 2022 Edition. Previous rectal adventures.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 10:08 PM PST - 60 comments

The philosophical and musical failings of the "DeepLudwig" project to complete Beethoven's last symphony. [more inside]
posted by blue shadows at 8:53 PM PST - 29 comments

Many found The Matrix Resurrections surprising with its irreverently metatextual approach, but it was probably less so for anyone who played Shiny Entertainment's video game tie-ins: Enter the Matrix and The Matrix: Path of Neo. Read the oral history of their development and learn how close we came to a Godzilla crossover. [more inside]
posted by subocoyne at 5:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Sidney Poitier, Oscar-winning actor and Hollywood's first Black movie star, dies at 94.
posted by lharmon at 4:24 PM PST - 58 comments

Like the show it uses as a jump-off point, the YouTube video "On Max Headroom" is not just about one pretend-robotic talking head. It's about pretending, about talking heads, and about the media landscape 20 minutes into the future. [more inside]
posted by kandinski at 3:28 PM PST - 49 comments

Ahmaud Arbery's killers have been sentenced.
posted by box at 12:17 PM PST - 42 comments

"Ham is a lifestyle, one that requires you to be a responsible steward of this preserved leg. Just because you think you can eat that much cured pork in a reasonable time doesn’t mean you’re ready to go quarter hog. You really don’t know the impact of having a preserved animal leg on display in your home until it’s there, but it’s kind of awesome. You can walk up and slice your daily ham ration or bring a platter-full to a party or carve a huge chunk to simmer for broth, and somehow there’s still ham left."
posted by Lycaste at 11:46 AM PST - 58 comments

SLTimeWaster: Gas Pump Golf.
posted by slater at 9:58 AM PST - 22 comments

In the 1700s, there was a vogue for carving fantastically exact models of ancient buildings in cork. Sir John Soane's Museum in London maintains a large collection of cork models, including an 8 foot square Pompeii; the ruins are depicted exactly as they were in 1820, in an early phase of excavation. The Museum offers a 3D virtual tour, which means you can view models of models of buildings within a model of building. [more inside]
posted by Iridic at 8:29 AM PST - 17 comments

Top 200 most common passwords compiled by VPN provider NordPass
posted by chavenet at 7:45 AM PST - 117 comments

I'd Buy That For a Dollar is a podcast about “inexpensive, common and underappreciated records that are waiting to be rediscovered.” Hosts Sean Hartman, Peter Cook and Jeremy Ruggles (plus guests) plunder the vinyl discount bins for gems of all genres, mostly from the 70s and 80s. Recommended episodes inside! [more inside]
posted by oulipian at 6:58 AM PST - 6 comments

According to Click2Houston: Houston is warning the public about a scam they’ve learned about in Texas cities and may be affecting people using on-street parking stations in Houston. Officials said Wednesday that fraudulent QR codes are being affixed to on-street parking pay stations. These fraudulent QR codes link to a non-city-affiliated website or a fake vendor. In the past three weeks, Houston officials say parking enforcement officers in both San Antonio and Austin discovered fraudulent QR codes affixed to on-street parking pay stations. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 5:31 AM PST - 66 comments

Homo Ludens is a book originally published in Dutch in 1938 by Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga. It discusses the importance of the play element of culture and society. [more inside]
posted by y2karl at 2:19 AM PST - 21 comments

90 Day Fiancé Star Has Medical Emergency After Farting In Jars Too Much For Side Business
posted by Literaryhero at 12:56 AM PST - 117 comments

Brik Font by designer Craig Ward [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:29 PM PST - 3 comments

All Thing Considered host Audie Cornish is departing. She shares, apparently reluctantly, on twitter: "It seems my assumption that I would have a quiet transition was naïve. So I will attempt to provide whatever insight I can… using language the internet understands lol 🧵#NPR". Threadreader version.
posted by hippybear at 8:48 PM PST - 26 comments

Linux in a Pixel Shader - A RISC-V Emulator for VRChat. 'kind of wild that when you join a vrchat world someone can run a linux kernel on your gpu by packing it into a shader on their avatar' - suzuha (Twitter) [more inside]
posted by asok at 2:01 PM PST - 22 comments

Siberia-based photgrapher Roma Gostev captures the snow-coated serenity of his city Nizhnevartovsk [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:21 PM PST - 13 comments

Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun: January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election. [more inside]
posted by NotLost at 9:03 AM PST - 182 comments

New 33 1/3 Book Zooms In on John Prine’s Debut Album (No Depression): "Much more than a detailed analysis of the album, though, Osmon’s contribution to the series is a love letter from one Midwesterner to another, as well as an intimate portrait — drawing on archival materials and published interviews — of the folk clubs, neighborhood, and family that shaped Prine and about which he wrote so evocatively in his songs. As “a fifteen-year Chicago resident,” Osmon writes, “I’ve always understood Prine through the lens of our Middle American provenance, and admired his singular ability to convey our commonplace happenings to universal effect." [more inside]
posted by not_the_water at 8:46 AM PST - 10 comments

A short comic in which the protagonist (as a child) loves a particular soup, grows up, and then discovers she feels differently about it.
posted by brainwane at 8:16 AM PST - 61 comments

An Afghan girls soccer team rebelled to play the game they love. Now they're refugees [NPR]
posted by chavenet at 6:54 AM PST - 3 comments

Cold Days is an award winning Hungarian* drama from 1966 about the Novi sad raid. The movie follows the often contradictory memories and self-justifications of four minor officers waiting for trial after the war. The raid started 80 years ago. [more inside]
posted by kmt at 5:40 AM PST - 3 comments

The Wire India has released a report on Tek Fog, an app claimed by whistleblowers to "hijack major social media and encrypted messaging platforms and amplify right-wing propaganda to a domestic audience" for the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling party of the Republic of India. It allows users to directly hijack Twitter and Facebook "trending" data, phish WhatsApp accounts, exploit databases to harass private citizens, and allow operatives to destroy all traces of their activity.
posted by Shepherd at 5:08 AM PST - 14 comments

Being really intentional about the space you're creating virtually or in person can help people feel comfortable and want to come back. That's how you build volunteer leaders. Then, the more volunteer leaders you have, obviously the more you can scale and remove the responsibility of work and burden on the actual campaign staff. For new newsletter Campaigner, Debra Cohen of political training organization Arena interviews strategist Ashley Williams, who worked on two of the largest volunteer recruitment and training efforts to help dump Trump: Organizing Together 2020 and Vote Save America.
posted by Bella Donna at 4:05 AM PST - 4 comments

If you’re vaccinated, an infection might not make you super sick, but don’t count on it making you super immune, either. “The amount of heterogeneity in people’s immune responses is just incredible,” Taia Wang, an immunologist at Stanford, told me. Some recently infected people might experience only a modest bump in protection—which might not be enough to meaningfully stave off another infection in the not-so-distant future. Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute, in South Africa, told me that he suspects the post-breakthrough luster may dissipate within weeks, as antibody levels naturally fall. There’s also no telling how well Omicron-specific protection—should it show up, and persist—would shield us against the next variant, or the next. The arithmetic of vaccine + vaccine + vaccine + infection just isn’t very satisfying. That last component is always essentially an unknown quantity, with an unknown shelf life, and no equation we’ve come up with—no combo of primary vaccines, booster shots, and variants—adds up to being done with COVID forever.
posted by folklore724 at 9:20 PM PST - 203 comments

Seat Safety Switch posts slightly askew short fiction primarily about the joys and trials of owning terrible cars; and has posted something most days for the past six years or so.
posted by solarion at 7:32 PM PST - 17 comments

A Century of Science is a website by Science News, where they delve into their vast archive of scientific news articles to present an overview of major developments in science over the last hundred years. Among the subjects covered are plate tectonics, by Carolyn Gramling, epidemics, by Aimee Cunningham, and worlds outside our solar system, by Lisa Grossman. But that is only a sampling of what’s on offer. You can also explore the articles through a timeline and the categories language, new areas of research, and unsung characters.
posted by Kattullus at 4:39 PM PST - 9 comments

Where Are The Robotic Bricklayers? and more generally, why did agriculture mechanize and not construction? (tl;dr? how about some mechanical harvester videos: grape, citrus, carrot, potato, olive, onion)
posted by gwint at 3:02 PM PST - 35 comments

The perpetrator of a mysterious phishing scam targeting unpublished manuscripts by authors including Margaret Atwood and Ethan Hawke has been arrested by the FBI (NYT): Filippo Bernardini, a 29-year-old rights coordinator for a major international publisher in London (previously)
posted by adrianhon at 2:57 PM PST - 36 comments

The blue tits make a family, over ~80 days. (tw: baby birds die a natural death, non-violently.)
From empty nest to first egg in less than 8 minutes.
First egg hatching to chicks in 23 minutes. Here is the same thing in 21 minutes, without the upsetting parts.
Want to see all the details, every day? More inside! [more inside]
posted by Melismata at 12:36 PM PST - 7 comments

Olúfémi O. Táíwò writes about the privilege of being-in-the-room for The Philosopher. (Likely related the soon to be published book, Elite Capture.)
posted by eotvos at 10:23 AM PST - 10 comments

The British Film Institute has compiled a list of 100 overlooked films directed by women: "In this list we aim to write women back into film history by championing 100 female-directed hidden gems that have been forgotten or unfairly overlooked – with contributions from Jane Campion, Greta Gerwig, Claire Denis, Isabelle Huppert, Agnès Varda, Tilda Swinton, our regular contributors listed below and many more special guests."
posted by carrienation at 10:01 AM PST - 22 comments

Welcoin to Cryptoland! [more inside]
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:27 AM PST - 55 comments

literal best person on TikTok Petey's new cover of Crash Into Me is good, actually.
posted by cortex at 9:06 AM PST - 18 comments

One year later, a more complete picture of the January 6th rioters has been uncovered by detailed research into 700 arrestees. "[O]over half of those who have been arrested are business owners, CEOs from white-collar occupations, doctors, lawyers, and architects.... 52 percent are coming from counties that Biden won in the 2020 election.... The No. 1 feature of the county sending insurrectionists, aside from simply the size of the population overall, is that these are the counties losing the most white population in the United States.... When you ask questions about their belief in “the great replacement,” you see that that is head and shoulders the No. 1 belief that’s driving the difference between being in the 21 million versus being in the rest of the body politic." [SLSlate]
posted by clawsoon at 7:00 AM PST - 215 comments

QUEER ADULT SFF BOOKS OF 2022 -- release dates through November 2022. Original tweet is here.
posted by curious nu at 6:20 AM PST - 15 comments

Look at this marvelous rat!
posted by loquacious at 7:09 PM PST - 58 comments

"Religious symbols, rituals, identities, banners, signs, and sounds suffused the events surrounding the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. This project begins to trace the thread of religion that wound throughout that day through pieces of digital media." Uncivil Religion: A Collaborative Digital Project Between the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama and the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. [more inside]
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:30 PM PST - 25 comments

Where do they come from? Are they prisoners? Are we complicit in their captivity? Why do my children love them so? After Teletubbies debuted, some parents and the Reverend Jerry Falwell were briefly appalled (the latter was concerned that Tinky Winky, who speaks with a male-sounding voice and carries a large red handbag, might be gay). But the show’s primary demographic—young children, although the show also became a cult hit among stoners—was immediately hooked. The tubbies released a hit single in 1997 (“Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’”), signed merchandising deals with McDonald’s and Burger King, and made the BBC more money than any previous show in its history.)
posted by folklore724 at 5:45 PM PST - 40 comments

We trained goldfish to drive a wheeled platform that reacts to the fish’s movement (Twitter link)
posted by Cozybee at 5:38 PM PST - 31 comments

Manhattan has a new District Attorney, Alvin Bragg. And now that he has been sworn in, he is coming in hot with a policy memo directing Manhattan prosecutors to stop prosecuting certain crimes (e.g. misdemeanor pot, jumping turnstiles, prostitution) and sharply curtailing pretrial detention, in addition to a number of additional significant reforms (like a presumption that cases against adolescent defendants will go to family court). [more inside]
posted by prefpara at 4:30 PM PST - 57 comments

The ski season in parts of North America is in full swing, with massive storms in the West, including a record setting December in California, with more on the way. But it's the record crowds and pressure on small ski towns from Covid, massive increases in season pass sales, an influx of remote workers causing an afforability crisis for ski town workers, and labor shortages that are causing significant problems. [more inside]
posted by inflatablekiwi at 4:05 PM PST - 20 comments

Kosperry is an animator who occasionally reworks short scenes from Seinfeld as animatics for a ‘90s saturday morning furry cartoon: “Rabid Elaine”, “I’ll just eat some trash.”, “Hello, Newman”, “A Festivus for the rest of us”
posted by Going To Maine at 11:30 AM PST - 16 comments

A model sheet is a visual reference that depicts an animated character with a variety of expressions and poses, often from different angles. They're used by animators to establish a definitive style for a project and reduce variation between artists. Character Design References hosts an extensive collection of model sheets and other reference art for animated movies and television series. Want to hone your character design skills? The site has resources for that as well. [more inside]
posted by dephlogisticated at 10:43 AM PST - 6 comments

192 ways the world got better in 2021 from Reasons to be Cheerful.
posted by Bella Donna at 9:19 AM PST - 47 comments

Floating Motors – Video | Models | Gallery – creates a new water mobility experience for everyone. Our know-how in the nautical field makes FM capable to replicate any «instant classic» car model, with absolute quality and incredible finishing level, in order to deliver a unique and original water vehicle, respecting the original spirit of the vehicle. On request, Floating Motors offers the possibility to choose between twin hulls or foil. Each model can be used for leisure, or becoming a tender, or a private water taxi, or a beach hotel water-shuttle. (Concept by Lazzarini Design Studio, Rome, Italy)
posted by cenoxo at 9:13 AM PST - 21 comments

Stromae is back, raising a glass to "the conquerors of the worst work hours" with Santé. [more inside]
posted by metaquarry at 7:55 AM PST - 23 comments

In a shocking twist, 50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, LSE study says.
posted by signal at 4:04 AM PST - 69 comments

The 2022 Banished Words List including 'No worries'
posted by chavenet at 3:22 AM PST - 147 comments

"I advise everyone to find an island in this life. Find a place where this culture can't take energy away from you, sap your will and originality..." -- — The RZA Wait, not that island? Or this one, or any of these? [more inside]
posted by nicolaitanes at 5:46 PM PST - 10 comments

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes found guilty [more inside]
posted by shoesfullofdust at 4:56 PM PST - 58 comments

Why not enjoy an hour-long collection of Japanese Nintendo commercials from throughout the years?
posted by JHarris at 3:20 PM PST - 5 comments

"But if dieting is a practice that causes a great deal of harm — in the form of pain, suffering, anxiety and sheer hunger — and rarely works to deliver the health or happiness it has long advertised, then it is a morally bad practice. " [SL NYTimes, Archive link] [CW for discussion of dieting methods]
posted by Lycaste at 3:11 PM PST - 50 comments

Ten (actually, dozens) Of Notable Pre-1923 Recordings selected by members of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections They even picked out separately a few songs and speeches specifically on social issues (mostly women's suffrage, and the war). If you've seen other highlights from this year's awe-inducing audio trove, please post 'em!
posted by johnabbe at 12:30 PM PST - 13 comments

Ashton Applewhite (previously) is a blogger and anti-ageism activist. She was also, in the 1980s, the first person to have four books on the NYT bestseller list at the same time. But it wasn't under her own name; instead, the books were by Blanche Knott, author of the Truly Tasteless Jokes book series.
On the Decoder Ring podcast of December 7 (link with transcript available), Willa Paskin examines the politics of "filthy speech" from the '60s to the '80s and speaks to Applewhite, who undergoes a slow epiphany about the cost of her work.
(cw: racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic language) [more inside]
posted by Countess Elena at 11:25 AM PST - 22 comments

"For decades, only black-and-white photographs of [Klimt's painting] Philosophy existed. Now, thanks to artificial intelligence, we can see the work in full color. But does the re-creation really look like the original? Does it even look like a Klimt?"
posted by jessamyn at 10:44 AM PST - 23 comments

Toddler meets dog for first time due to pandemic

Pee Wee Herman version:

14th month old meets dog for first time.
posted by y2karl at 10:43 AM PST - 25 comments

"That’s when I first ran across the idea of the Persistent Uniform Resource Locator or PURL ....I guess PURL is the original URL shortener. But it was created not to abbreviate otherwise long and otherwise cumbersome URLs, but to make them more resilient and persistent over time." Ed Summers discusses the history of a piece of web infrastructure developed in the 1990s to mitigate broken URLs and still used by some organizations today, such as the Federal Depository Library Program.
posted by brainwane at 10:38 AM PST - 9 comments

Free thread! No link, no topic. This is an experiment for the new year, a place on the front page to chatter about the stuff that there's no post for or that doesn't really feel like it needs a dedicated post. Come on in and say howdy to other MetaFilter members, share a link, talk about web stuff, etc. [more inside]
posted by cortex at 9:19 AM PST - 484 comments

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen. In an excerpt from an upcoming book, Johann Hari examines the societal influences that are eroding our ability to focus on . . . [excuse me my phone just buzzed] . . . one thing for a significant length of time.
posted by JanetLand at 8:45 AM PST - 44 comments

Saloni Dattani and Nathaniel Bechhofer on replacing the traditional research paper with something that's living. [more inside]
posted by metaquarry at 7:32 AM PST - 12 comments

Is the Human Impulse to Tell Stories Dangerous? Evpsych-influenced literature scholar Jonathan Gottschall's latest book did not impress historian Timothy Snyder much. Leading to perhaps the most sustained dressing down of a literary work since Mark Twain bodied James Fenimore Cooper. [Archive link]
posted by kmz at 12:18 AM PST - 49 comments

For the December 2013 issue of mental_floss magazine, we scored a rare interview with the famously private Mr. Watterson. Here are seven more notes about the author, the boy, and his stuffed tiger (Internet Archive link) [more inside]
posted by dancestoblue at 8:27 PM PST - 22 comments

100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying
posted by NotLost at 7:35 PM PST - 97 comments

Photographer Alec Soth has been making videos from his home library in Minnesota, drawing on its substantial contents. In a series of videos he discusses the pairing of photographs and words in books: one, two, three, four, and maybe more to come. [more inside]
posted by waninggibbon at 6:10 PM PST - 2 comments

Millennials and zoomers aren’t forefathers and offspring respectively but rather siblings, one older and one younger, both forged by the internet; both rightly regarded as a single generation with some minor differences of opinion regarding slang, emoji, and hashtags. They’re a young, web-savvy generation forged by the development of a bustling digital monoculture since the turn of the century. --from It’s Time to Accept That Millennials and Gen Z Are the Same Generation
posted by chavenet at 5:18 PM PST - 63 comments

The light of song and celebration shines again after a ban plunged the onetime city of art and culture into the darkness of silence.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 1:34 PM PST - 5 comments

"Puuluup is a duo – Ramo Teder (Pastacas as a solo artist) and Marko Veisson. A pinch of surrealism, modern folklore and talharpa revival! The old and the new stick together like water and sleet in Puuluup’s oeuvre." Some of their music: Süüta mu lumi ("Light My Snow"), Paala järve vaala baar, ("Whale Lake Bar"), Heinakõrs, Riisalus, Käpapuu ("Paw Tree"), Liigutage vastu ("Move Against"), and Martafana. [more inside]
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:34 AM PST - 5 comments

River otters playing on a snowbound dock. Alternative YouTube link.
posted by y2karl at 10:37 AM PST - 26 comments

In lieu of a year in review, here’s 12 months of Foods My Cat Thought Were For Her, But Weren’t: A twitter thread. Threadreader version. The final picture really is the winner.
posted by hippybear at 9:37 AM PST - 24 comments

Five YouTubers. Five games. $10,000. ⋮ Money: the full series - YouTube. It's an hour long but five different rounds so you can take a break. [more inside]
posted by zengargoyle at 9:34 AM PST - 7 comments

Italian director Lina Wertmüller (Seven Beauties, Love & Anarchy, Swept Away), first woman nominated for Best Director Oscar, died last month at 93. [more inside]
posted by youarenothere at 9:30 AM PST - 11 comments

(SLYT) For your listening pleasure the Dutch Bert and Ernie from the Dutch Sesamstraat (Sesame Street) sing Maak er wat van. The song deals with how to make something new out of things that are broken. Lyrics and translation inside. More details about the song can be found here. [more inside]
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:41 AM PST - 7 comments

"I found this company, Woodland Manufacturing—you tell them how big to make them. I went out and measured and thought, Well, I think I can get some really big numbers." In the early days of the pandemic, I went on a quixotic quest to walk every one of the 1,114 blocks in my Arlington, Virginia, ZIP code, cataloging the styles of the address numbers on every house along the way. Not only did I learn a lot about how my neighborhood has evolved over the years and is changing even now, I also got to see some really spectacular and creative home design.
posted by folklore724 at 9:34 PM PST - 54 comments

The Best illusion of the Year Contest "The Best illusion of the Year Contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world’s premier illusion research community. Contestants from all around the world submitted novel illusions, and an international panel of judges rated them and narrowed them to the TOP TEN."
posted by dhruva at 7:43 PM PST - 27 comments

Nadia Popovici hadn’t woken up yet when what she had done to save a life was going viral on hockey Twitter.
posted by bondcliff at 4:18 PM PST - 13 comments

A short BBC video explores a room in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples containing erotic art preserved in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It’s worth noting that not all of the body parts depicted were meant to be erotic. Some were meant to ward off the evil eye. (Possibly NSFW) [more inside]
posted by fruitslinger at 3:41 PM PST - 24 comments

I let my gaze rest on the pink ends of her two-tone hair, before moving down towards her very toned forearms, every inch of which were covered in the same sort of tattoos as Diego’s were. If it hadn’t been for Luis, I would have assumed that she was queer, not only because this appeared to be the one culture that it still seemed okay to appropriate, but also because she looked as if she might actually sleep with women. Then, I looked at Luis. He too was covered in tattoos, and although clearly not a cowboy he wore such incredibly high, pointed cowboy boots that he walked with even more of a swish than our barman: a moustachioed guy in hot-pants and a gold chain that spelled out ‘A-N-A-L’. And yet in spite, or more likely because of, these very particular and completely on-trend ambiguities the four of us blended perfectly together. from an extract from the upcoming book The Jacques Lacan Foundation by Susan Finlay
posted by chavenet at 1:52 PM PST - 5 comments

"Queer and transgender people don't just exist. We thrive." [more inside]
posted by Neely O'Hara at 1:48 PM PST - 11 comments

Some sound advice I give myself like twice an hour/“Wear kneepads on the way to your ego, Andrea,”/being right is boring/comforts only the tiniest parts of us/ [...] I love you/because we both showed up to kindness tryouts/with notes from the school nurse that said we were too hurt to participate/but we learned how wrong we were/and weren’t those the best days?/the days we learned how wrong we were/and so got to grow into our own goodness [more inside]
posted by jocelmeow at 10:33 AM PST - 4 comments

This post pulls together a few resources with book recommendations for Yong Adult, Middle Grade, and Children's Literature that I learned about via the Rutgers' University Master of Information program. Don't let these age categories turn you off! As Sammie at The Bookwyrm's Den writes, "Fun fact: reading level is a myth after you hit a certain point. Well … it’s kind of a myth at every point, but that’s a discussion for another time. Once you’re an adult, you no longer have a reading level. You have books that you enjoy and books you don’t." (emphasis mine) [more inside]
posted by CMcG at 9:55 AM PST - 21 comments

different. I think in one way or another, that's most of us. "Cure For Me" by Aurora is a joyful but defiant rejection of forced conformity and a celebration of our unique, messy, confusing, weird, beautiful selves. Something to kick off the new year. [more inside]
posted by taz at 9:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Sensual, erotic, ethereal, dramatic, from a young Taj Mahal, stark or evocative realties to poignant realities. Home.
posted by nickyskye at 9:14 AM PST - 2 comments

Hello all creature-loving friends! Meet the WOBBEGONG! (YouTube Video) The name "wobbegong", from the tasselled wobbegong, is Australian aboriginal in origin, but its exact meaning is unknown. It is speculated that it may mean "living rock." Many other sources claim it means "shaggy beard," but there is little source evidence for this provided. They also may be known in Australia by their nickname, "wobbies." They are a wonderfully small group of fish, (and really really cute), so let's dive in! [more inside]
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Hania Rani - Live From Studio S2 is 25 minutes of live musical brilliance from the Polish pianist, recorded last March for Piano Day. [more inside]
posted by dng at 8:05 AM PST - 11 comments

The core of the trouble is that schemes for constructing a New You – whether in every area of life, or just one major one, such as your relationship with your children, or your physical fitness – are always devised by the Old You, who by their own admission has some pretty glaring issues. How self-improvement attempts may make you feel worse, from Oliver Burkeman in the Guardian. [more inside]
posted by Bella Donna at 6:54 AM PST - 37 comments

So apparently I missed Zelda Day? Never fear! I'll just play a quick, twinkly melody on my trusty ocarina (using only five notes!) and warp us all back to December 26 and attempt to provide a bit of accompaniment to JHarris' excellent post. 🎶 ▲ ▶ ▲ ▶ ◀ ▲ 🎶 [more inside]
posted by Mister_Sleight_of_Hand at 4:56 AM PST - 4 comments